View From The Left Coast

“Iraqi Freedom” has a different meaning since the Johns Hopkins study was published in the Lancet last fall. Something around two and a half percent of all Iraqis have died since the US invaded, and one can safely assume that another 10 percent have been injured, and a whole lot more have lost their homes. Over a million people free of life, heath and home: that’s something to be proud of, America.

Experts with extensive scientific credentials, such as Tony Blair and George Bush said they didn’t believe the study. So did heavyweight intellectuals like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. They just didn’t believe it, and that was that. Suddenly, everything was fine. Meantime, even experts in the British Defense Ministry were privately admitting that the Johns Hopkins study used valid scientific methodology. That information was released to the BBC after a formal request for the information. If they try that in this country, they are just ignored. Freedom of Information? What's that?

Many people have not accepted the study because the thought of living in a country that sells cluster bombs, landmines, and nuclear weapons, has legalized torture, spying on its own people, set up secret torture camps all over the world and, by the way, killed or caused the deaths of 650,000 people who never harmed us, is too much for them to bear. The two leading candidates for President both supported the war, the “Patriot” Act, and NSA spying, and have done nothing to slow the killing, torture, and wholesale trashing of human rights that have become the American Way. That bodes ill for the next six years.

And two years from now, six years from now, when even the wonderful people who gave us this obscene war for oil will have to admit the only people who benefited from all this death and misery were a few executives from Exxon, Halliburton and Blackwater, will they be held accountable? Will Mrs. Clinton?

It has amazed me recently to hear otherwise intelligent people airing their fears that Moslem radicals are ready to invade and take over Main Street America. Perhaps it’s the Bush administration saying over and over, “If we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here” on Fox news. As we’ve learned over the past six years, any lie repeated often enough becomes truth. War is peace, ignorance is strength, and death is freedom.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 05:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fight fiercely, Harvard,
Fight, fight, fight!
Demonstrate to them our skill!
Howbeit they possess the might,
Nonetheless, we have the will!. . .

Hurl that spheroid down the field,
And fight, fight, fight!
--Dr. Thomas Lehrer, Mathematician

The recent story of HSU’s plans to raise student fees by $250 per semester didn’t surprise me, since I knew most universities are hurting for money these days. What did amaze me, though, was the statement that four fifths of the money was to fund the athletic program. And the fact HSU spends $2.2 million a year on it. This at an institution that budgeted zero dollars for new library books for the past several years, and frittered away $250,000 on pretty “gates” designed to let people who went there know where they were.

All this really begs the question: What is a university for? Is it a publicly-funded farm system for professional sports? Is it a source of entertainment for people who want to enjoy the thrill of victory without the agony of exercise? Or is it about books and learning and research and. . .education?

More and more universities, when they remember their mission, are opting to ensure students and faculty are provided with the tools they need to teach and learn. In the good old days, when money for schools was abundant, they could afford to waste it on things that had nothing to do with education. They could afford to pay coaches and staffs high salaries, to pay to fly teams and support staff to other cities or states to compete. They could afford to bribe star athletes to choose their school over another, to shed glory on the institution of higher learning by. . .physical prowess. And pay for tutors to help them pass courses for which they are ill-equipped and ill-prepared, so they can continue to “play.”

Well, playtime is over, kids. Colleges can no longer afford the luxury of confusing athletic skill with education. College athletes, up til now content to work “for free”, are now looking at their coaches’ million dollar salaries, and saying “we should get some of that, too.” And even sports writers are agreeing, and suggesting that intercollegiate athletics is a multi-million dollar business, has nothing at all to do with colleges, and should become part of the professional sports world.

But when the students have to pay $200 a semester so they can pay more to go to “games”, while doing without textbooks in their library, and doing without the classes they came here to take, it’s the schoolmaster who deserves the hickory stick. Let the jocks be paid like professionals, but not out of the kids’ lunch money.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Boy was I relieved the other day to read the Pope isn’t going to allow divorced Catholics to receive communion. Since divorce is clearly an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and Catholics who profane marriage this way will surely burn for eternity, that was the only decision the Pontiff could make. On the other hand, his Holiness knows God has a very different view of priests who molest children: when the heathen law enforcement agencies threaten these holy men with jail, the Church empties its coffers to provide the best legal help available. Doesn’t it say, right there in the Bible, that priests who molest children deserve the protection, the indulgence of the Church? All good Catholics know this, and accept the fact that the money they give to the Church will be spent doing God’s work. Certain godless heathen may question the priorities of the Holy See in defending molesters and trashing divorcees, but that’s only because they are weak in the faith.

Similarly, there are those who question the judgment of Our President in sending more and more American soldiers to kill and be killed by those heathen Moslems who deny the Christian faith and charge too much for their oil. If we haven’t wiped Iraq off the face of the earth and put its oil in the hands of righteous Christian corporations, it’s because faithless liberals have not believed that Mr. Bush is doing God’s work. They don’t understand that by sending men to fight and die, and keeping them in the war zone for tour after tour, then giving the wounded and maimed inferior treatment and cutting back on their benefits, The President is showing true patriotism. Anyone who doubts it is a hell-bound traitor!

Then again, there are those nattering nabobs of negativism who question HSU president Rollin Richmond spending $2.3 million per year on athletics at Humboldt, but nothing on books for the library. Last year he spent $250,000 on decorative gates for the campus while increasing student fees and keeping employees’ wages low. Now the students will fund the athletic program, whether they wsant to or not. Don't those students understand the reason the university is there is: to win the NCAA finals? What else is a university for?

A certain local billionaire has given us a new theatre and (soon) a new Home Depot on the one hand, but visits legal punishment on those who think they know better how to plan development in Humboldt County. If he is wealthier than you and I, surely it is because he is better than us in the eyes of the Lord.

How grateful we as taxpayers, as citizens, as sheep in the fold should be that we have such quality leadership! If we had something like democracy, think of the chaos and godlessness that would ensue! Who are we to question our betters? God put them over us for a reason, and any waste products that trickle down should be seen as manna from Heaven.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)