Clarification: Boulder Weekly thanks the YMCA of Boulder Valley for contributing several photos to the 2010 Kids’ Camp special edition. Camp photos on pages 10, 12, 15, 18, 19 and 22 were provided by the YMCA, and BW apologizes for not giving the camp credit for those. See www.ymcabv.org for information about YMCA camps.
New Yorker go home
(Re: “Poop, plants and pollution,” Cover story, March 18.) Wow, I just don’t get people who move to Colorado for the beauty and open spaces, then complain about everything around them!
Just wait until these farmers go out of business because of uptight New Yorkers like this. Then the land will be filled with subdivisions and cement and the only waste to smell will be the garbage coming out of each other’s mouths!
Go back to New York!
C. Nicoll/Longmont
Sins of the fathers
(Re: “The dogma of bigotry,” Uncensored, March 18.) Amazing job, Pamela. Couldn’t have said it better myself. In a religion where serial child abuse has been overlooked, I wonder what impact one child being evicted from school can have? What will it take for the masses to climb out of the mundane to even glimpse the sadness of complacency?
Thank you for speaking for so many of us.
Barbara Truskalo/Boulder
Once again, Pamela White, you’ve demonstrated the very powerful power of the pen. Your writing just keeps getting better. Thank you for your editorial about the hypocrisies of the Church’s decision.
You are very brave and very wise.
Karen Nozik/Internet
While the church is kicking out kids of lesbian parents — I actually think the kids and the parents are lucky that their kids will not go to a house of bigotry and hatred in the name of God — let’s see what else is going on:
Rape and mistreatment of children by the church is not a U.S. phenomenon. In Canada, England, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, etc., it has been found that the church has been sexually abusing children.
The Pope’s brother Georg Ratzinger, an official of the church in Germany, is implicated in the cover-up.
And the big question is why the church has let this happen for decades, if not centuries, and turned a blind eye to the most vile of crimes.
The only answers seem to be that the church needs the priests, abusers of children or not. The
priests bring in the money. No priests — no money. And the other reason —
the rot reaches all the way up to the top.
It is time that the church be fully
investigated by civil authorities, with no-holds-barred access to all
church records, subpoena power — talk or go to jail, for the bishops,
priests, etc.
And
when the smoke clears, Ratzinger will be history; much of the hierarchy
will be history.
And
mankind will be free from this apparition that has yet to excommunicate
Hitler — born and baptized a Catholic in very Catholic Austria — for 50
million deaths.
And
to make the scene worse, the German Pope Ratzinger last year
un-excommunicated a Bishop Williamson, who is a holocaust denier.
They say the lessons of
one’s youth stick with you for a lifetime. Benedict- Ratzi was born in
1928 and raised in Nazi Germany. Need I say more?
Steven J.
Smith/Annapolis, Md.
End pit bull ban
I am a former
resident of Denver. I chose to move back to Arizona when my 4-year-old
pit bull was picked up for no reason other than her breed. I find it
astounding that Denver would spend a quarter of a million dollars on
putting dogs to sleep.
Wouldn’t it be more
productive to take the quarter of a million dollars and create a program
that allows animal control to police pit bulls in a more civil way? For
example, pay a few specialists to make random visits to pit bull
owners’ homes to ensure the safe keeping of the dog as well as to
examine the dog’s temperament. I believe that this would be a means of
ensuring that the dogs are not raised in violent homes.
The biggest problem with
pit bulls, in my opinion, is the owners. I am getting my teaching
degree, and I hope that one day this ban will be lifted so that I can
move back to Denver.
Elyssa Ruane/Tucson, Ariz.
Obama’s rhetoric returns
Did anyone else notice
that Obama’s soaring oratory returned only after he ensured that
the public option would not be included in the corporaterrorist bailout
bill? As soon as Obusha knew that the insurance cartel would be safely
ensconced in endless profiteering with no end in sight, he started to
give great speeches for the need for quote, unquote, health care reform.
Capitalism is where
people use their capital to make money while they sit on their
ass and do nothing. That’s why its called capitalism.
Socialism is where the
government uses our taxes for social programs that benefit society, like
public schools, libraries, etc.
Its not taxing the poor to give to the rich
through subsidies, kickbacks and bailouts.
So where are we? More like the middle of the
end.
And not just
of this great nation. For Western Civilization, and perhaps all of human
civilization.
The
beginning of the end happened even before this nation got started, when
England invented the limited liability corporation concept to allow the
East India Company to plunder India without legal consequences. Thus was
invented Corporate Personhood, the ultimate source of the majority of
evil in the world today.
Victor Forsythe/Lakewood
Israel vs. Palestine
There is a ridiculous
double standard whereby Israel is expected to act like Snow White in a
neighborhood of angry, murderous thugs. Palestinians have never pursued
peace. They consider Tel Aviv and the entire Jewish
State to be a “settlement.” Does anybody really think this is just a
real estate transaction and a few more acres will seal the deal? It is
high time for President Obama to distance himself from his long-time
relationship with Jeremiah Wright and choose sanity and peace over
hatred and war.
Tom
Kornfeld/Denver
In 2000, President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
agreed to help the Palestinian people create a state, including 98
percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, to be connected by an
underground highway. East Jerusalem was offered as its capital.
Imagine, had that offer
been accepted, how much economic progress the Palestinian people could
have enjoyed in these years. That momentous point in history was greeted
by Palestinian suicide bombers murdering innocents. Then Israel
withdrew all its settlements from Gaza, to test the idea that Israel
could create a Palestinian state without an agreement and was greeted by
daily missiles fired into Israeli population centers.
Israel awaits a Palestinian
leadership ready to agree to build a state for its people and live in
peace with Israel. Such leaders do not exist, as even the more
“moderate” leadership in the West Bank just last week proclaimed as a
hero a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis.
While Israel waits for
peace, it continues to build housing for its growing population in areas
adjacent to existing population centers, including East Jerusalem. This
building should help pressure the Palestinian leaders to seek a state
and peace before they lose more land in their potential state. Despite
being well aware of this Israeli policy, President Obama forced a stop
to building in West Bank settlements months ago, a move which created a
delay in potential negotiations and created terrible unemployment among
Palestinians in the West Bank.
And now the routine approval of more housing units in
an existing Jerusalem neighborhood has been elevated by the Obama
administration into a major crisis, which threatens once again to be
used by the Palestinians to delay real negotiations and, in the short
term, has been used as another excuse for violence instead of
negotiations.
Please
do whatever you can to encourage the United States government to focus
on demanding real negotiations from the Palestinian leadership and an
end to incitement to hate and violence against Israel. This will help
the Palestinian people more than creating crises with the United States’
greatest ally, Israel. Pushing for a real peace agreement that
recognizes Israel’s security needs is the only way to help the
Palestinian people to create a state that can live in peace and
prosperity with its neighbors.
Mark A. Levy/Denver
Israel’s decision to build Jewish
“settlements” in land bought by Jews in Jerusalem is not the obstacle to
peace.
Where is
your censorship of the culture of hate promulgated by the Palestinian
leadership? Where is your outrage when a children’s soccer team is named
after a shaheed (a terrorist martyr) who blew herself up in the heroic
act of slaughtering Israeli children?
Where is your condemnation of government-sponsored
children’s television using cartoon characters to incite children to
kill Jews (note: not just Israelis, any Jews) in the name of Allah?
Where are your deadlines and timetables that would hold the Palestinian
leadership accountable for their systematic inculcation of hatred and
martyrdom? Do you not think that this is a significant obstacle towards
peace? Or is Jew-hating so normal that you simply trivialize it?
Only when the depth and
gravity of Islamic anti-Semitism is confronted and included in the
conversation can any serious movement towards peace occur.
As one who voted for you,
President Obama, I am deeply frightened and profoundly disturbed by your
opacity in this regard. Where is your moral courage?
Miriam Pollack/Boulder
Boulder
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