Zumba Rama
Let’s keep it simple: The clients of the Kennebunk Zumba teacher must be allowed their day in court. The proof of their legitimate business with the teacher should be, not that she loved them, but that they learned to Zumba.
A simple five to 10 minute demonstration by each of them should be sufficient to settle the question.
Michael Grunko
Chebeague Island
A step toward peace
Douglas Kazdoy was wrong when he said, in an OpEd ( BDN, 9/22): “We do not invoke journalistic standards or morality differently between nationalities and religions,” regarding Middle East reporting. News organizations and politicians learned long ago to positively spin news about Israel or risk losing money and votes.
In 2002, the Atlantic Monthly mysteriously cancelled a piece that was nearly ready for publication. It didn’t see the light of day until 2007, as a book called The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. In 2003, demonstrators in 33 cities, and some U.S. Congressmen, pressured National Public Radio to make its Palestinian coverage more pro-Israel; after a Boston station lost more than $1 million in contributions, NPR started towing the line and still does.
I gave the Middle East little thought before the Bush neocons’ (actually Zionists’) full-court press, to “regime-change” Israel’s enemies, began to cost too much in lives, money and American moral standing. But when I wrote letters to protest the Israel lobby’s out-sized influence, I learned that anyone daring to criticize Israel risks being called an anti-Semite.
American news organizations routinely censor the news about Israel’s apartheid actions (often by simple omission), while we’re fed non-stop hyperbole about Muslims. Maybe if we focus on Muslims, the military industrial complex can keep growing, as our consciences shrink. And maybe we won’t think so much about Israel’s refusal to do the right thing by the Palestinians, which could be a giant step toward world peace.
Melodie Greene
Calais
Support programs
I am extremely fortunate to be a graduate of the Lifestyle Choices program at Parkview Adventist Medical Hospital. It is a very unique and special program taught in a positive, encouraging, honest, kind and compassionate manner by excellent doctors and staff. The doctors and staff at Parkview also speak at public events to further spread the word about how to achieve better health.
In a country where illness and disease is widespread and medical costs have skyrocketed, there is a critical need for programs like the ones at Parkview. Their philosophy and programs teach people how to move towards the best health they can achieve which not only makes people feel better, but also happens to be cheaper. Better health and less risk for disease results in fewer surgeries and medications now and in the future.
I have met people who have had great success with their health using the principles taught in Lifestyle Choices. I encourage anyone who has diabetes, pre-diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, a weight problem or any other health problem to sign up for Lifestyle Choices. The program will teach you how to move towards the best health you can achieve. If you don’t have any health problems that you are aware of, and want to have the lowest possible risk for disease, Lifestyle Choices will help you do that. Class participants will obtain valuable knowledge that they will not get anywhere else in the area.
I encourage everyone to support Parkview Hospital’s excellent programs.
Stacie Buccina
Wiscasset
Why LIVESTRONG matters
Fifteen years ago LIVESTRONG began. Since then, the foundation has raised nearly $500 million to serve people affected by cancer, and 2.5 million people have benefited from the foundation’s resources and services. The LIVESTRONG Cancer Navigation Center provides a range of free services for anyone affected by cancer.
My involvement with LIVESTRONG began in the spring of 2004 with the purchase of a yellow wristband, just months after my last round of chemotherapy. I believe in the “obligation of the cured,” the idea that those of us fortunate enough to survive our cancer should help others do the same.
LIVESTRONG has provided many opportunities for my obligation, including attending lobby days in Washington, urging our elected officials to invest in cancer research, prevention programs, and making cancer the national priority we deserve.
Recently the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Austin raised $1.7 million, and the 4,300 participants made it the largest cycling event in city history. Riding across the rolling hills of Texas, I often pulled up alongside other cancer survivors to congratulate them. I heard story after story of how LIVESTRONG helped them with treatment concerns, insurance issues, fertility options or emotional support.
Through LIVESTRONG, cancer has become a national and global priority transforming the way people talk and think about this disease. It is no longer the goal of someone diagnosed with cancer to just live. I’ve worn my yellow wristband every minute since that day in 2004, and I don’t intend taking it off anytime soon.
Jeff Bennett
Portland
Mad, mad world
EJ Chandler states in a letter on Oct. 15 that there is no evidence that Iran is trying to build a bomb. As a point in fact, a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is indeed self-defense given the many speeches from Iranian leaders declaring that they will wipe Israel from the face of the earth as soon as they are able.
In the days of the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia were both aware that triggering a nuclear war would be suicide and neither went there. The doctrine was called MAD, for Mutual Assured Destruction. But the Iranian leaders do not adhere to MAD. In fact, they embrace MAD. They would then become martyrs and their actions would bring forth the “Global Caliphate” they have been pursuing from their inception.
The most ludicrous statement in Chandler’s letter is that Iran is concerned that Palestinians would be among the dead. The Iranian leaders are not concerned about who else beside the Israelis that would be destroyed. In fact, they would think they had done the Palestinians a favor by allowing them to become martyrs alongside themselves.
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, is neither ignorant nor obsessed. He is a man trying to bring awareness of a pending “Holocaust of all Holocausts” to a so far non-hearing world.
Jim Miller
Pittsfield
Ms. Greene: I agree that there are plenty of details about Israeli society and government policy that the American public–who funds Israel and ensures their existence–hear nothing about from the Press and should. I have to say, tho, that I found NPR’s coverage in the early 2000’s oddly sympathetic to Palestinians. They are better now…mostly.
It’s not sensorship to stop donating to them…it’s capitalism at its finest.
Jim Miller has his information dreadfully wrong. Shrill, unsubstantiated comments like this ought to be embarrassing to ALL thoughtful Americans. Iran is not in fact building a nuclear weapon. What Iran is doing is developing a uranium enrichment cycle that if not monitored in the way the IAEA is currently and has been monitoring for several years now, or, if Iran diverts uranium products and materials for centrifuges to a secret facility, Iran COULD potentially enrich uranium to the 93% purity necessary to make a weapon. The IAEA performs nearly weekly inspections now, some of them unannounced, and has not found ANY evidence leading them to think a secret facility is being built or in operation, or that highly enriched uranium is being produced. Iran has enriched uranium in their various IAEA-monitored enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, to 3%, and to just under 20%. Uranium enriched to 20% is used to make medical isotopes, while it has the potential to be further enriched to 93%. The IAEA keeps as close as possible an inventory of how much and where the materials are. They do this under the stipulations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory. (Israel, by the way, is not, and it’s nuclear program and arsenal is unmonitored and secret.)
The real issue these days is whether Iran is showing “breakout” behaviors, or what is considered a dash toward taking their stock of 20% enriched uranium and further enriching it to weapons grade. Even if they do “breakout” and make this attempt they still have to develop the hardware that actually IS the bomb, and then some way to deliver it. They are not capable of either now, according to the IAEA and ISIS, the Institute for Science and International Security. (Links below)
Components for the types of centrifuges that are required are very, very difficult to obtain under the sanctions regime currently in place, and the technical difficulties of setting up an array that would be capable of quickly enriching uranium without detection are also very, very large hurdles to surmount. They would find it very difficult to be able to do so without detection. A military strike would all but guarantee that Iran would, one, continue enrichment in defiance of the US and Israel, and two, guarantee they try to develop a weapon…. in self-defense in the face of military aggression by the West.
In short, Iran IS NOT building a weapon and Miller’s misinformation is UNHELPFUL and IN ERROR. This type of loose, uninformed talk is certainly “protected speech.” But it falls in the realm of “you are entitled to your opinion, but not to your own facts.” Miller doesn’t have the facts as they are currently understood.
These links contain some of the most current thinking on where Iran is with their program. They discuss timelines, quantities, breakout scenarios, delivery systems based on the evidence.
http://isis-online.org/
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/5724/bibis-bomb-guide-for-the-perplexed
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/5699/how-close-is-iran-to-bomb-1
The FACT is that much of Iran’s nuclear program is secret and hidden. Based on that secrecy, hidden facilities and programs, they may be much further along than the publicly released material indicates.
You seem to think that they will not build the hardware , the actual “bomb” until after they have the enriched uranium for it. First of all there is nothing difficult about building an atomic bomb. A Hiroshima type device is ridiculously easy to build and even more modern designs are not hard. What is difficult is building a VERY SMALL, more efficient, and more powerful weapon. The “bomb” may already exist for all we know. There is no reason at all to believe that the hardware is ready to go and is just waiting for the enriched uranium to complete it. In fact, waiting until after you have the enriched uranium to build the rest of the bomb would be stupid.
Delivery system…. You seem to think that the only delivery system we need to worry about is a missile. Just because that is how we do it you shouldn’t limit your thinking so much. A Hiroshima type device is BIG and HEAVY, but simple to build. load it on a ship with enough shielding to prevent detection and simply drive int any one of a doxen major harbors. Or sneak it into Mexico, load it on a cargo plane, fly over the major city of your choice and air burst it. Devastating.
OK Mr. Trickle, let’s pretend you know what you are talking about (even though all you are doing is ignoring facts and making wild speculations) and that Iran is about to make itself a nuc of some sort. Tell us what they are going to do with it that makes any sense at all and that would not involve Iran in devastating war which would probably ruin their country.
Your problem Mr. Trickle is that you believe the Iranians are as stupid and war-like as yourself. And they aren’t. Your other problem is that you have thrown in with the neo-cons of this country that are drooling and slavering at a chance to go to war with Iran. They also are stupid and war-like, they would, however make huge profits from a war. You wouldn’t.
You attribute the motivations of Iran to be similar to ours. Iran was actually becoming a modern civilized society before the fundamentalists took over. And many Iranians want peace.
But what the Iranian citizens want really doesn’t matter. What does is the beliefs and motivations of their leaders in power. You seem to forget that the majority of Iranians are twelvers. And the leadership appears to belong to the most radical segment of that sect. That radical fringe actually believes that starting a final war will return the twelfth Imam to rule and will cause Islam to rule the world. It’s quite a bit more complicated than that but i don’t have time to type pages of detailed explanation.
The point is that the present Iranian leadership is not only not afraid of war but considers it their holy duty to start it if possible and the heck with what happens to them personally. They don’t care what happens to their country because any sacrifice is for the greater glory of Islam and Allah. Remember, they will all get 72 virgins…..
What will they do with a nuke…. 2 major possibilities. Give it to a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda to use against us or Israel or directly use it themselves against Israel.
Pfft, unless you can document what you claim the Iranian leaders want by actual quotes from their speeches and diplomatic interactions with other countries you are simply spouting the typical anti-Muslim crap spewed out by conservatives like the idiotic Michele Bachmann.
“What will they do with a nuke…. 2 major possibilities. Give it to a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda to use against us or Israel or directly use it themselves against Israel.”
And after the bomb went off. Then what?
The Iranians are, unlike you, capable of thinking from point A to point B. Setting off a bomb, nuclear or otherwise, would lead immediately retaliation and a devastating war which would lead to Iran’s ruin. They are not going to do that no matter how many virgins are offered.
Bullsh*t. All that conspiracy stuff is for Faux News dweebs… who are not very bright.
Conspiracy theories are easy to speculate about, and way too many do, hence ridiculously shrill letters like Miller’s. Your comments about Iran’s leadership appears to fall into the realm of wild speculation as well. Too bad. That sort of reliance on wild conspiracies without understanding the nature of the power structure, or the exaggerated demonization of personalities, even Ahmadinejad, makes for misinformed speculation leading to bad information. Ahmadinejad is a jerk, says stupid things, but his office is not especially powerful, and as Iran IS a modern state in many ways the regime is not suicidal. NOBODY who thinks about these things seriously believes they are.
The actual monitoring that is happening, nearly weekly as I said above by the IAEA, gives factual information that makes the conspiracy theories pretty thin. The Iranians may have secret facilities, but it is not very likely because of the monitoring… not just the fact that monitoring is happening, but the type of monitoring, the random visits that Iran has subjected themselves to, the record keeping that they do and must have inspected. Other types of monitoring and surveillance make secrecy not impossible, just not terribly likely given what is known. The information in the links I gave really is some of the most current information available to policy makers.
Small is difficult, but even building a bomb of the same type that was dropped on Hiroshima is not as simple OR as desirable to build for other reasons. ISIS discusses the work that is known to have taken place on bomb designs. Building a serviceable bomb and the means to deploy it is not as simple as you seem to imply.
I’d suggest you look through the links I gave and read more about what is and isn’t known. What has been given out in the media is very poor, not very accurate, easily used by folks that are not at all careful in what they say about any of these things. And then you have those that are intent on confusing and misinforming on purpose to serve their narrow interests… That is how we got into Iraq.
M. Grunko, J. Bennett: good letters.
Jim Miller…I think you are spot on in your letter about Iran. If it were up to me, I’d nuke the heck out of them fast…let them be martyrs..they’d be happy, they’d be GONE….I’d be happy.
Sounds like a win-win deal to me!
Plus it would freak out any other 3rd world crap-hole nation who ever gave a thought about messing with the USA.
But, given the results of the election, expect that making the Hajj to visit Mecca will soon be a tax deduction and if you don’t, then you will pay a penalty “fee”.
Sociopath. Just a reminder that actual human beings live there. Iran is one of the world’s oldest and most advanced civilizations. Your ignorance is stupefying.
The overwhelming majority of Iranians want nothing to do with nuclear war. Just the nut jobs who are currently in control. Not that they would ever be allowed to vote by the religious nut jobs, but if they were, the Iranian citizens would choose democracy tomorrow.
TJ Binkey: What an incredibly stupid and inhumane action to suggest. Fortunately people that think like you do, did not win the election.
Thankfully people that think like Binkey decidedly LOST the election. There is a real hope for positive, progressive change in this country.
50-48 is DECIDEDLY? Sounds like a pretty close split to most of us. And many of us have already seen way too much progressive change, and all of the negativity that comes with it, already in this country. Progressive in political terms is regression into barbarism in terms of reality. Let’s all glorify sin – it’s the best possible thing for the soul of our nation.
Not if you figure the seats picked up in the House and Senate, or the Maine legislature flipping… All together, not a bad day. Of course, none of that matters to reactionaries that don’t care about sound policy, given what the choice was. And sin…? Huh? We live in a secular society, and arguments about “sin,” as if one’s narrow religious beliefs can ever be substantiated beyond general moral principles, are as meaningless as debating whether apple pie is more delicious than blueberry. I know several completely non-religious people that I would trust to a far greater degree than some of the christians I have known. Anyone that claims to have some monopoly on truth or morality is by definition a hypocrite. I’ve read enough Jeremiah and Isaiah to know that much.
Personally, the Holy lands have caused enough blood shed over the last few millenium. I wouldn’t mind seeing a fence put around the so called ‘Holy Lands’ with one way gates. You can enter and never leave. Let it be whatever it wants to be inside the fence. Leave the rest of the world alone.
The US has spent untold millions trying to figure out a peace plan that the residents of the Holy Lands can live with. The rest of the world has spent untold millions in the same failed attempt. It should be evident that the residents of the Holy Lands have NO interest in real and lasting peace for themselves or their neighbors. They should renmane that part of the world the ‘Cursed Lands’.
Mr. Miller, you have been duped by the media about which Ms. Greene warns us. By your logic, since Nikita Khrushchev once said “We will bury you,” we should have fired nuclear weapons at the USSR first!
Actually, a better translation with less spin would be “We will be present at your funeral”, an old Russian proverb. It says we’ll outlast you but not necessarily be responsible for your demise.
Agreed. However, many jingoistic fools argued, at the time, that those words justified pre-emptive war.
Livestrong may matter, but it was founded by a guy who cheated his way to the top and then spent years lying about it.