Bondage

Slaves -- some are self-imposed slaves -- mindless, spineless followers of ancient myths and cultures of ignorance, and others to the lies of politicians and false prophets -- sheep to be fleeced as followers of greed and power.

Others are victims of bondage to dictators with armies of possession and oppression. Others are economic slaves of nations owned by big businesses and called republics. These are not democracies because everything is controlled to not allow truth to be published or broadcast or allow workers to bargain for their wages and benefits.

Their Golden Rule is those with the gold rule and all the rest are just slaves without human value. Others are slaves to their self-imposed vices -- lost in slavery to drugs and drink and all their weaknesses of the flesh -- without the power of mind over matter -- lost in the greed for needless things. America -- home of the brave and land of the free is just another Paradise Lost to knavery and slavery.

--J. Ray Hunt

Draining Dry

(In response to Are you Pissed Off? on urbantulsa.com)

The Gas Prices and "Where's the Solutions" to make it through this..?

Recently President Obama mentioned how pursuing Electric Autos would be a great alternative to the now gas guzzling monsters many of us now own.

Does he stop and consider how this translates to everyone spending even more money to buy transportation..? Not to mention...so What Do We Do with the Cars we now own and in many instances still owe on?

Potted plant holders? Flower Pots?

In closing, of all the Congress people in Washington and all the other elected officials now in Washington, it comes across as None of Them have a clue as to what to do to help bring back down the ridiculously high gas prices!

Do the Oil Corporations care at all as to the overall affect this is having on families already struggling to make a go of things?

Oh ... and one last teeny tid bit here ... At the End of this Year ... Will Exxon, Sun, Sinclair, and many more "Boast" and "Brag" at how they made a multi Billion Dollar Profit off of all of US?

--Jerry Hawkins

Dizzying Daze

(In response to "What Unions?" in the March 17-23 issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly)

I'm not sure I've ever read anything so misinformed and misguided as Mr. Rall's insipid rant. His 'us vs. them' mentality is one of the many reasons organized labor is in this predicament. Once he realizes that the unions are part of the problem and not part of the solution he will be much better positioned to write an intelligent treatise on the matter.

He takes offense that the unions didn't get the preferential treatment they bought and paid for from Democratic presidents as if this will somehow sway the reader to empathize with the union's tale of woe.

His stunningly naive idea that white collar workers have a need, much less a desire, to become unionized show how out of touch he really is from today's workforce.

This entire piece is baffling at best, wrong-headed and detrimental to the true American workers at worst.

--Gerald Ransford

Another Brave New World

Perhaps one of the reductionism of the modern world is that man has ceased to have respect for the human being, considering it as a thing. It has lost some of the optimism and hope in the future, and enemies are everywhere: the different, the color or poor, even children scare us, and hamper the life. In third world countries it is easier to find a contraceptive pill or a landmine, than a plate of food.

Our expectation is that technological advances and science will solve the problems of the future, but science has very serious questions. Science and technology, that many times helps men, also requires significant easements. The field is wide and there is always the risk of crossing borders of ethical and legal standards to defend human life, which is no longer a hypothesis to become reality, there are already no barriers to curb excessive desire for those looking for a vein of gold in any activity, and we are seeing that "science" is big business.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's novel, appears increasingly possible. Advances in genetic medicine are important and will be more elaborated further in the future, but it is clear that not everything that is technically feasible is ethically desirable. Thus, it would be convenient to put some barrier for any mad genetic engineer. However, we have the experience of our politicians who always find arguments in favour of any proposal, no matter how silly it be, so they go ahead with the abortion, cloning, human foetuses for research, genetic manipulation, fertilization in vitro or proposals of euthanasia. The list can go on.

The human being is not a "gadget" to join in an assembly line: the person is generated, always unique and different. This is the scenario that must be developed in the battle for the defence of life from the moment of conception until the natural end of it.

--Agustín Pérez