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Indigenous practices
can save the land
I applaud the indigenous tribes who are able to get treatment as a state designation under the Clean Water Act. However, the inconsistency with which government offices support or oppose indigenous land stewardship efforts, with the changing of political administrations, concerns me.
Indigenous cultures’ land stewardship practices are rarely implemented by non-indigenous land owners as they require significant care and attention and may take generations to become “profitable” as ecosystem services. Recognizing indigenous communities’ sovereignty and rights to determine the ecosystem health requirements is a good start, but Western cultures are not yet recognizing the rights of nature itself and our responsibilities to act in reciprocity toward it for our children’s sake.
While we can’t control the weather, we can absolutely control our farming practices, fertilizer runoff rates and soil health through permaculture practices such as riparian buffers, subsurface tilling and integrated pest management practices.
Leander Stewart McNeely
Oakland
Quake alert’s start
rests in Phillipines
Re: “Quake alert test rattles thousands” (Page B1, Oct. 20).
Trust in the developing merits of MyShake. The technology behind a legion of subterranean sensors works. I know firsthand.
In June 1991, scientist’s sensors predicted the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines. However, no man could have expected that it would hit the record books as the largest volcanic eruption in a densely populated area.
I was a young Marine when I survived Pinatubo’s onslaught. In anticipation of the epic event, U.S. forces conceived Operation Fiery Vigil. We credit the ensuing evacuation by sea and land for saving tens of thousands of lives. Sadly, many perished during this apocalyptic event. Pinatubo’s ash caused a global disturbance like no other in the 20th century. This was a celebration of science, but the power of nature humbles man’s arrogance.
My Marines and I survived the eruption because of a solid plan. We lived to dig ourselves out and into a new normal.
Mark R. Clifford
Moraga
Palestinians have
walked away from peace
Recent letters blame Israel for the Arab-Israel conflict and call for resuming a “peace process.”
There were many attempts at peace. After the 1967 war, the Arab League at Khartoum issued the 3 Nos — no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no peace with Israel.
In 2000 Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Barak, offered everything he was asked for and Yasir Arafat walked away and started the deadly 2nd Intifada. Both the Hamas and PLO charters spell out that violence is the method of choice.
The problem is that Israel wants peace, and the Arabs want Israel — not some of it, all of it, from “The River to the Sea.”
Keep in mind that Muslims are currently sovereign in 57 countries. The Jewish people are indigenous to Israel which is the size of New Jersey. The Jewish people have nowhere else to go.
Sheree Roth
Palo Alto
In this conflict,
Israeli kids count too
Re: “Children’s lives at stake in Mideast war” (Page A6, Oct. 24).
Linda Thorlakson hopefully asks whether children’s lives are worth whatever it takes to find common ground. Hamas has answers for her, but they are not the answers she would like.
The Hamas Covenant (page 1, second paragraph): “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Obliteration of Israel includes its children and is as clear a statement of intent as it is possible to make.
Article Thirteen states: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Ms. Thorlakson might wish to read the Hamas Covenant. Like ISIS and the Axis regimes of WWII, Hamas must be destroyed. Evil exists in this world, and if we do not destroy it, sooner or later we will find ourselves in its crosshairs.
Julia Lutch
Davis
Trump’s delay tactics
subvert democracy
Re: “Trump’s lawyers lash out over the timing of his federal trials” (Page A3, Oct. 13).
Recent reports state that Donald Trump and his lawyers are asking to delay his four separate criminal trials until after the election, so as not to “cripple his chances of being elected.”
That justification is false, and it is dangerous to our democracy. In fact, the opposite is true. Voters need to know whether a presumed candidate for president of the United States is guilty of any of the 91 serious criminal charges against him before the election.
Court trials, conforming to our system of justice, are the best and only way we can know whether an accused person is guilty or not guilty. An innocent candidate for office could be presumed to want the trials’ results before the election. A criminal candidate can be presumed to want to delay his trials until after we have voted.
Delaying trials cripples our chances of knowing if the candidate is a crook.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont
Source: www.mercurynews.com