i must say, compared to the amount of unsolicited junk mail I get anyway, SftP
list is sometimes a breath of fresh air. I often hit the delete button, of
course, which takes less than a second. I guess my time is not as valuable as
that of some, though.
--
Best,
Michael
Michael H. Goldhaber
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George Salzman wrote:
> Friends:
> The flurry of sign-offs from Science for the People this past week
> troubled me, but also made me laugh at myself. Here I am trying to promote
> real worldwide democratic community development, with communication networks
> linking local communities, because I don't believe there's any other
> possibility to rid the world of the overwhelming destructiveness of global
> capitalism, and to build the kind of world I want. And as though to mock me,
> here this tiny, fairly homogeneous group that Steve Cavrak and I tried to
> resurrect a couple of years ago seemed on the verge of dissolving. Am I nuts
> to be trying? Has the dominant ideology so twisted everyone's psychological
> framework that even we can't stick together? I hope not. I'd love to see the
> people who signed off reconsider, but not because they are successfully
> "guilt-tripped." Rather, I think we ought to try to make the discussion list
> better serve the needs of all of us.
> One of those who signed off cited what "seemed to be a totally
> unfiltered flooding of the site with reported horror stories about science,
> accompanied by outraged messages, without any attempt to distinguish reality
> from distortion or fiction", and said that by contrast the Struik
> communications were very interesting. In that particular instance it was the
> public chiding of Martin Perl that was "the last straw", but clearly other
> straws preceeded it that motivated signing off. Although I don't agree that
> the postings on our site deserve such "broad-brush" condemnation, some of
> them have been pretty lacking. But any effort to mediate the site has its
> own serious complexity. My preference is that we try to be more respectful
> of each other.
> And now a different (but related) subject. An enormous change is
> happening in Mexico. Not only was the long-ruling Institutional
> Revolutionary Party (the PRI) swept out in the federal elections last July,
> but in Chiapas, an until-now near-feudally-run state, a unified opposition
> of many parties beat the PRI in August, and now, significantly, the federal
> government moved just this last week to arrest an important group of
> paramilitary thugs, whose very existence the government denied for years in
> its unremitting "low-intensity warfare" against the Zapatista base support
> communities. Conceivably these developments could be the beginning of a
> change of "revolutionary" stature in Mexico. I've written an open letter to
> the incoming president that gives my understanding of the reality
> confronting Mexico, and how to deal with it, and I'm inviting everyone who
> agrees to send it or a similar letter, with the (vain) hope of possibly
> influencing future events. The letter, in both English and Spanish versions,
> is available at
> http://www.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=6630
> Please feel free to use it, or to modify it to suit yourself. The mailing
> address is:
> Sr. Presidente-electo Vincente Fox Quesada
> Dirección bien conocido
> San Cristóbal, Guanajuato, Mexico
> If you want an easily printable file for the letter, I'll be glad to
> e-mail one, which fits on two sides of a single sheet. I'd have attached the
> files to this message if it were possible to do so.
> Sincerely,
> George
--
Best,
Michael
Michael H. Goldhaber
PH 1-510 339-1192
FAX 1-510-338-0895
CELL 1-510-610-0629
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