Letter from Slim Wolfe
Politics – January 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Brickbats and more
Editors,
On the national front:
Uncle Slimbo’s brickbat-of-the-decade award goes to the news crew at National Public Radio. When the government finally sends minders to oversee their broadcasts, they’ll find that NPR is already toeing the line. Here are a few of many news items you might never have guessed at if you relied on this so-called public source of information:
* No recount, no count: John Kerry won’t pony up a helpful million or two to contest the extreme irregularities in the Ohio vote count, although he has a campaign surplus of $52 million. Libertarians, Greens, and their allies have got to scrape up their own legal fees to mount the challenge which could put Kerry in the White House.
* A battery of lawyers in Canada are trying to deny entrance to George Bush. Canada law prohibits war criminals from entering.
* U.S. military forces refused entrance to Falluja by Red Crescent aid convoys and arrested the only unimbedded journalist on the scene (who was not with Al Jazeera). Few civilian casualties, they said….
* American and other lawyers are mounting a war crimes trial against Rumsfeld and Tennant in Germany, whose laws permit global trials.
Any given day’s comparison of NPR reports with those of Pacifica (Amy Goodman) and BBC (the London edition) a World Report, show how sadly watered down this once-useful institution (NPR) has become. And who cares? The well-off play with their computers and the rest play with crack, and nobody has time to be bothered, except the people on the streets in Kiev. Rumors are that Ukranians have drugs and computers, too, but apparently they know when it’s time to put them aside. Virtually every European nation’s popular opinion runs 80% against Bush and his wars despite suck-up governments and corporate media. How come those folks are smart enough to think independently and Americans are not?
In regard to Colorado Central:
I’ve followed the stories on the Sand Dunes parkification for a couple of years now (in the Crestone Eagle as well) but the map appearing with Marcia Darnell’s story in CC was the first reference I can remember to a wildlife refuge which extends down to Highway 17 and thus encompasses the contentious acequia which pumps out the closed basin aquifer for use elsewhere. I still don’t see how parkification changes the status of the water under the ground on the other side of the highway or prevents it from being pilfered for nefarious purposes. Perhaps one of your writers can expound on this.
A residential well a few hundred feet from my place had to be lowered a few feet this summer to compensate for groundwater level, which may or may not have any relation to deepwater levels. Mattingly doesn’t mention any change in his water table (just a couple of miles south of me and a couple of miles north of the aforementioned pumping project), but elsewhere in the region there have been numerous fluctuations, all descending…. Anyway it was refreshing to see something besides a knee-jerk whoopee for the new Federal Park.
And speaking of knee-jerk-whooppees, hello there, Ed. I liked your editorial position opposing sanctification, but what was the point of dragging it through the mud of nine-elevenism? Certainly the (praise God and hallelujah) World Trade Center was no more sacred than the stall of some chick-pea-vendor in Baghdad or Falluja who suffered the fate of flying missiles of some sort or other. Surely America for all its holy writ laid down by sanctified sages wearing three-cornered hats and high heels back in the foggy dawn of memory is no more sacred than any other place. Why does nine-eleven have to be the point of departure for every blip of thought on the radar of the new American catechism? Better minds than mine have pointed out that Dick Cheney was in a much better position to gain from 9/11 than Al Quaeda.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
