Letters to the editor

Editor,

An Inconvenient Truth, the PowerPoint presentation turned feature length documentary narrated by Al Gore, seems to finally have brought widespread acceptance to the media (at least) that global warming is not just a possibility, but a clear and present danger. Gore’s organization, wecansolveit.org, is using an Obama-style grassroots effort to put pressure on governmental organizations and corporations across the United States to adopt sustainable energy practices and policy that might just turn this oil-guzzling ship around.

News organizations have responded to the critique Gore makes about the popular media in An Inconvenient Truth. He argued that most popular news stories covering climate change up to the making of the film gave credence to a non-existent argument that global warming might not actually happen. Gore claimed that reporters who cited sources arguing the other side of the climate change debate were almost always citing other journalists, and not scientists. I have had the impression from Bay Area news reporting that Gore’s message has been taken to heart. NPR now runs a series on the impacts of climate change. A Google news search I just conducted on the terms "Global Warming” revealed these top three headlines:

Govs to Gather to Address Global Warming (the Associated Press), Bush to propose global-warming caps this week (Seattle Post), and Intelligence Report: Savvy wildlands management can fight global warming (Salt Lake Tribune, United States).

Bush originally responded to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth by telling the press he would rather go see a Schwarzenegger film. Now, not even George W. can risk denying the existence of global warming.

A recent article by Dick Morris, former adviser to Bill Clinton, and columnist for The Hill offers a convincing prognostication that Al Gore will also be the senior statesman who ends the Democratic presidential primary. James Carville suggested in recent weeks that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was a traitor for endorsing Barack Obama because, as Carville suggests, Bill Clinton made Bill Richardson. Using this plutocratic argument one might suggest that Al Gore would be a traitor if he joined Richardson in endorsing Obama. Morris suggests that the score is even between Clinton and Gore, and even if it were not, Gore will do what is best for the party, if not the country. And Morris says that endorsing Obama is exactly what Al Gore will do. As one of the most decorated and yet unbiased superdelegates, Gore will have major pull with the remaining uncommitted supers who will likely follow his lead.

Talk about having the last word. Al Gore, loser of the 2000 presidential election under shady elections oversight in Florida, may just be the one who puts the Democrats back in office in 2009.

Jack West Jr.

Redwood City

This letter writer is

a physics teacher at Sequoia

High School in Redwood City.

Enough is enough,

impeach Bush

Editor,

I wonder at what point people and congress will think that the illegal acts of President Bush and Vice President Cheney warrant a hearing? Is lying to the American people and Congress an impeachable offense? How about unwarranted searches and seizures? American citizens held incommunicado? Spying on American citizens? Torture? When will we decide enough is enough?

Don’t get me wrong - I support the troops. I say, "Bring them home now.”

WMDs? Where are they? Was Iraq involved with 9/11? President Bush has exploited the Presidency by convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological weapons and nuclear weapons programs. He also, day after day and before the war repeatedly connected al-Qaeda and 9/11 to Iraq to convince us that Iraq was a threat to the United States.

We now know this provocation to war was based on lies, deceptions and cover-ups after being told by officials from within the administration and others of there falsity. Based on this false provocation, the House of Representatives should be prodded into initiating impeachment proceedings. Isn’t this as serious as lying about sex?

As Nazi leader Hermann Goering said during at the Nuremberg trials in 1946, "Naturally the common people don’t want war...But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Now we are hearing that President Bush ordered the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens without obtaining a warrant in accord with the Fourth Amendment and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). And, recent FBI targets of surveillance (nonviolent peace and human rights organizations, Catholic Workers Group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Vegan Community Project) prove that his administration’s goals have more to do with politics than with preventing terrorism. Mr. Bush’s insistence that such surveillance is justified and will continue is further proof of his contempt for the law.

You can get more information about impeachment at www.gp.org.

Join me now. I say, "Enough is enough.” Impeach Bush and Cheney now.

Allen Hatch

San Mateo

We are blindsided

by realities of war

Editor,

As we stumble into yet another year of death, destruction and bankruptcy, along with the 4,000th American life snuffed out in service to an illegal invasion based on forged documents and lies parroted by our corporate media, we hopefully give pause to reflect on the manner of our folly. Are not the same talking heads still collecting their six figures while spouting the latest "It’s actually Iran who is causing all our problems” banter while the folks who "got it right,” such as Scott Ritter, the arms inspector, as well as so many other voices in the wilderness remain out of sight still? Unless you subscribe to some of the more incisive websites such as Truthout.org and others, you will have not one really pertinent fact upon which to see the forest closing in on us as diversionary foliage is kept before our eyes. Will it be sixty years before we allow ourselves to see the reality of today’s actions? I recently read a fascinating book by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe called ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’ 1948, by One World publishers that relies on the diaries of David Ben Gurion and the recently released archives of the Hagana, now the Israeli Defense Forces, which should be required reading for all those letter writers who grace these pages so often. Indeed will we be so lax as to have to rely on posterity sixty years hence to see what we so stubbornly hold to be "self-evident” turn out to be mere delusion?

Mike Caggiano

San Mateo

Class act retires

Editor,

I read "Longtime city boss retiring” in the April 24 edition of the Daily Journal about San Mateo City Manager Arne Croce retiring with some fond memories of his tenure. Arne Croce is a class act. When he came in to the City Manager’s job 18 years ago he stood up in a community forum and proclaimed San Mateo was his new home, his children were going to go to public schools in the area and San Mateo was not merely some interim job and that he and his wife were planning on staying until retirement. To my knowledge he never wavered from his pledge.

In addition, Arne made one of his first orders of business to have the San Mateo city staff treat citizens as paying customers and instituted a customer satisfaction philosophy in departments such as Planning, Parks and Rec, etc. long before other city’s jumped on the band wagon.

I wish Arne Croce and his family the best in retirement, they have earned and deserve it.

David Altscher

Belmont