Crossword Replacement Protested
I object to your replacing the crossword puzzles in your paper with those of a highly amateurish nature. Henry Hook, Cox and Rathvon are highly regarded among cryptoverbologists. You have replaced them with puzzles of a pre-kindergarten level of skill. About the only reason I picked up your liberal publication was for the puzzles.
Peter M. Falandes
Charlemont
Deadlock Over Gaza
“In solidarity with the people of Gaza” [“Poetry for Gaza,” March 25, 2010], meaning, evidently, Hamas, elected by the Gaza Arabs, with the Hamas Charter that vows to annihilate Israel. How is any peaceful “two-state” solution possible with Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Supreme Leader [of Iran] all calling for the death of the “Zionist Entity”? Evidently the ’11 poets’ at the Odyssey Bookshop reading all clasp Ahmadinejad and the other genocidal fanatics to their bosoms and share the death-wish for Israel. My! How “progressive”!
August Bebel, the author of Women and Socialism, said that antisemitism is the socialism of fools (I prefer Bebel’s statement to the book by the same title by Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine. Lerner identifies the problem of real antisemitism on the radical left, then promptly crawls into bed with them.) Martin Luther King knew it when he saw it. “Don’t you know that is antisemitism?” he admonished some students who were of the radical chic anti-Zionist school of thought when he visited Cambridge.
My well-meaning poets: Israel is more sinned against than sinning and you know it. You have essentially declared yourself accomplices of Hamas. When they can bring themselves to utter the magic words, “We recognize Israel’s right to exist,” maybe there will be some hope. I leave with a quote from Muslim educator Abdul Hadi Palazzi: “Some Islamic thinkers are now ready to admit that hostility toward Israel has been a great mistake, perhaps the worst mistake Muslims have made in the last 50 years.” Would that some on the ideological anti-Israel left come to a similar conclusion.
Art Victor
Turners Falls
Oops! An embarrassing, and hopefully unintentional, gaffe appeared on the Arts page in the March 25th edition under the headline “Poetry for Gaza.”
Tristan Macdonald—in an otherwise laudable notice announcing a poetry reading “in solidarity with the population of Gaza”—wrote: “In 2007 Israel commenced its blockade of Gaza when the terrorist organization took over the region.” I assumed that in 2005, when Hamas won hands-down the freest and fairest elections ever held in the Arab world, thus becoming the elected government of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, they became more than just what Israel says they are: terrorists.
And while it is true that Israel, the United States, the European Union and, lamentably, some Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority conspired to strip Hamas of that indisputable democratic victory by driving them out of the West Bank, it is not true that Hamas “took over the region” as if it were some invading horde. The last time anyone asked all the Palestinians who they wanted to govern them, they choose Hamas. And Israel does not need an excuse to make the lives of Palestinians more miserable than it already has since 1967, or ’48 for that matter.
Words, as all poets know, are powerful, and to have gotten the facts so wrong in an announcement meant to offer solidarity to those who most suffer in Palestine is an irony worthy of a poem.
Joe Gannon
Northampton
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Social Security and Medicare: The Real Threat
There was much to admire in Danny Doyle’s letter published in the April 1 Advocate. I agree that expensive social programs that protect the poor and vulnerable are worth the cost. But the allusion to people getting back only a fraction of their contributions to programs like Social Security and Medicare is disheartening. It could perpetuate the myth that these are investment programs whose benefits are based on recipients’ contributions.
They are not. Recipients’ benefits are paid for by active workers who have Social Security and Medicare taxes deducted from their earnings. Current recipients’ past contributions paid for the benefits of people who are mostly no longer with us.
It’s the shrinking ratio of active workers to beneficiaries and the laws that limit the contributions of those with the highest incomes, prevent means-testing, and exempt investment income that threaten the solvency of the Social Security and Medicare funds, not some mythical failure of the government to invest our contributions wisely. Or maybe we all know that but are no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to take care of our fellow citizens in need.
Paul Cherulnik
Leeds
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Nuke Monitoring “Non-Glamorous”
The vote by the Vermont State Senate to stop the Vermont Yankee relicensing without forwarding the issue to the Public Service Board [“Generational Issue,” March 4, 2010] would not have been possible without the non-glamorous litigation work by the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution before the state Public Service Board and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Any time Entergy has been under oath, the New England Coalition has been there. Otherwise Entergy’s miscommunications about having miscommunicated would never have been found out. Every time the Coalition enters a legal battle, as they have done since 1971, they incur huge expense. Please support this work at www.necnp.org
Gary Sachs
Brattleboro
