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THE SPARROW SINGS (by: Don and Roberta) April, 2010 The regular media seems infatuated with the “tea party” folks. In fact, they are the product of Fox News and the numerous conservative talk show hosts heard round the clock on numerous radio stations. I remember when over a hundred thousand nonviolent anti-war folks protested in Washington and thousands more in many major U.S. cities, and the media did hardly any reporting of these events. For over 25 years, the Casa Maria CW community held a “Tea Party” to nonviolently protest war taxes and seldom were we covered by the media. However the same media always covers these small groups of conservative people who often use violence in their relentless effort to keep their money from helping others in need. What is even more exasperating is that they ignore the biggest reason for the poor economy, the U.S. military budget. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. The media tells us that the U.S. military gets only 20% of the budget pie, and it is never challenged on this fallacy. Much of military spending is listed in other departments other than the Department of Defense. Last year the U.S. military received, according the War Resisters League, 54% of each tax dollar or $1, 449 billion. This year the military will get 48% of the budget or $1,398 billion. In fact, last year the U.S. accounted for 48% of the world’s total military spending, more than the next 45 countries combined, and continues to be the number one exporter of weapons to cruel governments that use these to kill or maim their own citizens. Israel, a violator of 77 U.N. resolutions, received $2.775 billion in military aid and is now asking for $4 billion more. Since 1973, Israel has cost the U.S. taxpayers about $1.6 trillion. The U.S. continues to spend $12 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan and has already spent close to $1 trillion on these invasions since 2003. Now Congress is about to allocate $33 billion more to continue the armed occupations. The U.S. still has to pay to rebuild what it destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan, pay for the recovery of the young who were physically and mentally damaged , pay for the upkeep of the families of the many thousands of the vets who did not return or are disabled for life; and it has to compensate the families of the tens of thousands Iraqi and Afghan civilians who were killed and disabled for life. Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon cannot account for as much as $2.5 trillion it was given. Chuck Spinney, a retired employee at the Pentagon, said it could not account for as much as $1.1 trillion. He reported this to Congress, but nothing was done about it. No legislator will deny money to the U.S. military for fear of not getting re-elected to office. It is a “sacred cow.” Meanwhile, only 0.15% of the U.S. GNP goes toward assisting the 2 billion most needy in the world. My wife and I cannot, in conscience, give any money to the military because it leads to more invasions and occupations leading to more destruction of property and lives, more orphans and widows, more wounded for life, more sickness and death due to weapons tipped with depleted uranium, more hatred and determination to gain revenge and more waste of tax money that could be used to save lives both here and abroad . For this reason we continue to live below the taxable poverty level. If we have any extra money it goes to those who lack the basics of life. “The Tea partiers” need to ask, “Why is there always money for war and not for health, education and employment?” ----- Don Timmerman “A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. ---Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Show me who makes a profit from war, and I’ll show you how to stop the war.“ ---Henry Ford Sr.“Let them march all they want just as long as they pay their taxes.” ----late Alexander Haag, former Secretary of State “You know, the Catholic Worker is not a liberal movement. It’s a radical movement, and there’s a sharp difference. Liberals say, ‘Hey! The homeless aren’t being fed. Let’s march on City Hall.’ Radicals say, ‘The homeless aren’t being fed. Let’s feed them.’” ---Mike Baxter in Voices from the Catholic Worker by Rosalie Riegle A January survey showed that 23% of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the Union, and 24% of them said President Obama “wants the terrorists to win.” U..S. military spending will rise next year by a projected amount of $30,569,000,000.Percentage of private health-care spending in India is 75%. In China, it is 59%. In the U.S., it is 54%. In January Louisiana sued all 84 of its death-row inmates to block their legal challenges to the state’s execution procedures.Some 19 states tax the possession of illegal drugs. There were 78 reported U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan since Obama’s inauguration. There were 45 drone attacks during George W. Bush’s presidency. The 2007 regulations on power adapters have saved Americans $830,000,000 in electricity costs. There are 5,274 farmers’ markets in the U.S., and 46% of them were started in the past decade. ---Harper’s Index, April, 2010 Solar power in southeastern Ontario has is able to produce almost the same amount of power as all the nuclear reactors in the U.S. ---from studies conducted by the Queen’s University Applied Sustainability Research Group in Kingston, Canada Worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is flushed or dumped in landfills every day and roughly 10% of that total or 27,000 trees is attributable to toilet paper. The quantity of paper products composes 35-40% of our landfill space. ----World Watch Magazine On average, women who do the same jobs as men earn 20 cents less per hour than do the men. ----N.P.R. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed almost 8,900 lives in the past 2 years. Nearly 7,400 Palestinians, including over 1,500 minors were killed while 1,500 Israelis, including 139 minors were killed. ---http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/21/headlines An opinion survey of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army revealed that 94% of the respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group, and 85% regard the Taliban as “our Afghan brothers.” ---Inter Press Service, 4/19/2010 Amount spent on candidate races in North Dakota state elections in 2008: $7.3 million. Revenues of the largest corporations in North Dakota in 2008: $5 billion. When the 47 retiring lawmakers were recently asked to pledge that they would not take a lucrative corporate lobbying job upon leaving Congress, there were no takers! Surprised?----Public Citizen The U.S. spends about $40,000,000,000 annually on the war on drugs. As many as 1,841,872 people in the U.S. were arrested on nonviolent drug charges. In U.S. federal, state and local prisons and jails there are as many as 2,323,000 or 1 in every 99.1 adults It is the highest incarceration in the world. ----www.drugpolicy.org In order to pay for the new immigration law passed in Arizona, the state is canceling a program covering 47,000 low-income kids, more cutting Medicaid coverage for childless adults, dropping an additional 310,000 people from the rolls, eliminating full-day kindergarten and all funding for GED adult education.. At the same time, they are giving more tax breaks to the wealthy corporations and businesses. National Guard people will be used to patrol the border between Arizona and Mexico. ---Democracy Now, 4/6/2010 NOTES FROM TAMARACK COTTAGE: The month of May bespeaks of flowers, the greening of trees and the honoring of motherhood and Mothers Day. I am blessed with 4 children, 10 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild. With family comes a responsibility and a reverence for all life. That is what moves me to live simply and work towards a peaceful world. The following are thoughts of women on peace. “The will for peace will have to start with the women, and they will have to want peace sufficiently to be crusaders. It’s up to women.” (Eleanor Roosevelt) “Hope springs maternal.” (another mother for peace) From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says ‘Disarm, Disarm.’” (Julia Ward Howe) “An aroused woman is unstoppable. We’ve got the babies.” (Dr. Helen Caldicott) “But women know the next war will be the end of us, our children and our fragile beautiful planet….Our only hope is to prevent war, and the decision on how to do that is too important to be left to men alone.” (Joanne Woodward) In this month that honors mothers, let us heed what these wise women have said. Let us live and work towards a peaceful world. Peace, Roberta THE SPARROW SINGS Don and Roberta N15878 Tamarack Rd. Park Falls WI 54552 715-762-8239
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