Censor and Sensibilities

CURTIS CARTIER'S recent Currents column ("Mediating the Message," Jan. 6) reported that Vice Mayor Ryan Coonerty was incensed by some of the rants posted on a Sentinel-sponsored online forum. He is reported to have taken Sentinel editor Don Miller to task, telling him, "I think the newspaper has a lot of responsibility because they are creating the forum and profiting by it. If you are going to create a public forum then you have responsibility to keep these kinds of hateful comments out of it. Otherwise you shouldn't run it at all." 

I was quite surprised by his viewpoint, as the Coonerty family has been in the bookselling business for many years, Does this mean that any "hateful comments" found in the literature of the bookstore should be purged? Do we then start burning the books that offend us and excoriate the booksellers for profiting by it? Perhaps the vice mayor can persuade the city council to cut to the chase and pass a resolution forbidding any bookstore, news medium, theater, classroom, or any other publicly accessible venue from offering anything that offends his sensibilities. Or perhaps some wiser member of his clan can point out to him that excising the symptom seldom cures the disease and often exacerbates the problem.

Allan McLean,

Scotts Valley

Cougar Piece Hit Purrfect Note

I REALLY enjoyed the "Cat Power" article (Homegrown, Dec. 16), particularly the author's style of writing, the phrases she used, e.g., "dating advice since Mystery was still a toddler" (that's a new one to me); carrot peeling metaphor (righteous), "cleavage enough to swallow ... smaller Stanford students, ..." and "I, a mere Millennial." Entertaining style. Good luck to Miss Lussenhop—I see Vanity Fair in her future.

Kathy Cheer,

Santa Cruz

Bored With Banal Back-Patting

I SEE from all the promotions on TV that it's award season again. I'm losing track, since I haven't watched them for several years. Let's see: Academy Awards, Emmys, Golden Globe, Screen Actors, Tonys and an assortment of music awards, such as popular, country and, I believe, grunge polka. Now those are just the ones I remember. I'm sure they've added at least a dozen since then.

I've heard that this year there will be awards for the best supporting actor in a daytime commercial, the best dead victim in a crime drama and the best actor in a late night infomercial. I'm sure I've only scratched the surface here. However many there are, you can bet we'll be exposed to one or two big award extravaganzas, lasting several hours, each week until they are eventually replaced by March Madness.

Am I the only one who sees the irony in people who are placed in front of the public on screen and TV on a regular basis, are paid millions for this work and then get shoved in our faces again while they all congratulate each other with a fancy ceremonies and ornate trophies?

We get it! These people are mega rich and mega popular. Shouldn't that be enough? Do we have to watch them hug each other and give long-winded speeches?

Where are the awards for the people who fight forest fires, maintain our parks, scientists, teachers and the painless dentists?

Meade Fischer,

Watsonville

Strike One!

REGARDING Pieter S. Myers' open letter to President Obama ("Open Letter to Sports Fan-in-Chief," Letters, Jan. 6), Mr. Myers needs to brush up on his baseball before getting all cutesy with the metaphors. Two strikes would be an 0 and 2 count, not 2 and 0 as stated; 2 and 0 just means Obama has two balls. Which I'm guessing is at least one more than "sports fan" Myers has.

Russ Reynolds,

San Jose

Unsettling Conclusions, Indeed

"WHEN YOU have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth." —Sherlock Holmes For several years now I have been studying the general chaos that has been going on around us and have come to some unsettling conclusions.

1. The events taking place: 9/11 "Terrorists" attacks, wars, financial "panic," economic collapse, swine flu "epidemic," worldwide aerial spraying of toxic chemicals, etc., are all related, are created and directed by the same elite group of people, for their benefit and at our expense. (www.theflucase.com; The World Revolution by Nesta Webster)

2. There is an agenda called "The New World Order" (NWO), which is the intended ultimate outcome of all the created panic and destabilization. The Global Elite will create a "problem" resulting in panic and destabilization and then offer a "solution," which will be the NWO.

3. Depopulation of the world to a more manageable population of 500 million by the year 2050 is one of their goals. They are implementing this depopulation plan by several means. One is codex alimentarius, which will institutionalize the degradation of our nutritional standards to the point where large numbers of people will die due to malnutrition. Do you remember in 2002 when they tried to outlaw vitamins? They almost got away with it. Another is putting toxic chemicals in our public water supply, like fluoride and chloramine, which are known carcinogens that cannot be removed with carbon water filters. How about aerial spraying of toxic chemicals known to cause respiratory inflammation and death?

4. One part of their agenda is to take our rights away and return to the days of feudal bondage to a ruling elite who have the world as their playground. They will keep enough of us around (500 million) as technicians and slaves to provide enough food and toys for them to play with. Have you noticed that the response to all the "panic," wars and chaos in the world is to eliminate more and more rights of the people? The ultimate outcome of the NWO is to join all the world governments into one world bureaucracy with selected (unelected) officials accountable to no one except the ruling elite (international bankers, royalty, billionaires, etc.).

5. Our only defense and their only weakness is to educate our fellow citizens in what is left of our Democratic Republic to the reality we are faced with and the need to stand up and resist the NWO in every possible way. We also need to create and fight for alternative models of a peaceful, sustainable, economically and socially just society.

Drew Lewis,

Santa Cruz

Send letters to the editor here.