Unofficial Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign

Post Reply
UtahOwl
Site Admin
Posts: 82
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 10:48 pm

Unofficial Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign

Post by UtahOwl »

.
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Quorum Failure and Brief Meeting Summary
From: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thu, February 7, 2013 3:47 am
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Brentz
Cassandre ("Charly")
Denise Chancellor
Thomas Chancellor
Rev. Keith Cupples
Ted Gurney
Nancy Kemp
Bill Lee
Marilyn Miller
Lori Noda
Julie Swaner
June Taylor

Dear Friends,

Although meeting attendance has averaged 10-11 in recent years, for last evening we had only 6 RSVP’s and 4 actual attendees.

And as you all know, we cancel if we do not have at least 6 RSVP’s to meet our minimum quorum of six. Though if we have at least 6 RSVP’s from recent attendees so polling our general membership is unnecessary, it is no longer practical to cancel once our final newsletter has been sent because some of the other 150 recipients may be planning to attend and 2-3 who have an interest in the particular topic often do.

Although there have been No Shows in the past (Rev. Cupples had a 102-degree temperature last evening), we have been fortunate never to have had fewer than 6 attendees during our 7-plus years of existence and we have had to cancel only once.

From pre-meeting communications with some of you and with quite a few of the other 150 recipients of our newsletter, there appears to have been widespread disappointment in President Obama’s Drone Assassination Program for a number of reasons. And the widespread heartbreak seemed to cause quite a few of our members to want to avoid even discussing the imbroglio.

At our meeting last evening, Bill Lee appeared to staunchly defend the Obama Administration on the grounds that they are in a position to know best what to do.

Bill pinned me down and I finally had to face a lot of conflicting ideas and feelings. But I responded that on balance, I opposed the Drone Assassination Program (1) because the number of civilian casualties and the high-profile nature of the program is doing so much damage to our image in the Muslim world, and (2) because special ops capture of the same targets should yield a lot of valuable intelligence both from interrogations and from captured files and documents while, hopefully, “leaving no fingerprints.”

Ted Gurney and Julie Swaner seemed to agree with me, though Ted did opine that he thought neither Drone assassinations nor special ops captures should take place unless there has been a Constitutional Declaration of War by Congress on Al Qaeda (or whomever) that would entail discussion and consensus.

The reason for providing this report is to lament that, for lack of a quorum, it was not possible to recommend a Six-Degrees-of-Separation E-mail campaign.

Because being aware generally of the views of Rev. Cupples and June Taylor who were not able to attend at the last moment, we probably would have reached a consensus for an E-mail Campaign to President Obama to substitute Special Ops captures for Drone Assassinations in most (if not all) cases. (A campaign aimed at our two U.S. Senators would be ineffective for a variety of reasons.)

[Our policy is to make a recommendation so long as there is only one dissent, in which case the recommendation is described as Consensus rather than Unanimous so even if Bill Lee could not have been persuaded, we could probably have proceeded.]

So obviously, the ultimate reason for providing this report is to encourage anyone who is so inclined, since we have Freedom of Speech, to start your own unofficial Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaign even though Reading Liberally does not have an official one.

Your friend,

John K.

PS = The focus for our 3/13/2013 meeting is The Measure of a Nation by Howard Steven Friedman, U.N. statistician and health economist ($13.60 paperback from Amazon.com + shipping – 269 pages).


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Post-Discussion Outline Developments
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Mon, February 4, 2013
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Brentz
Cassandre ("Charly")
Denise Chancellor
Thomas Chancellor
Keith Cupples
Ted Gurney
Nancy Kemp
Bill Lee
Marilyn Miller
Lori Noda
Julie Swaner
June Taylor


Dear Friends,

Sorry to bother everyone again, especially if you are one of our regulars who replied that you would be unable to attend our meeting Wednesday evening.

However, whether or not you are able to attend, you should be aware of three very-informative items that were posted on www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org after our Discussion Outline was sent out Saturday morning =

Utah Owl (aka June Taylor) posted two items last evening = (1) an OpEd by Bill Moyers entitled Barack Obama, Drone Ranger, and (2) a transcript of an interview by Bill Moyers on his weekly PBS show entitled Are Drones Destroying Our Democracy?

The third item was posted by Pat = the 1/3/2013 rejection by the US District Court for the Southern District of NY (aka Manhattan) of the FOIA lawsuits brought separately by the NY Times and the ACLU seeking release of the US Department of Justice legal memorandum justifying the Obama Administration's Drone Program.

You may recall that our Discussion Outline (as well as this month's Q&A's) questioned whether the Drone Program was (1) torture (especially when it only succeeds in maiming the target for life), (2) deprivation of life without Due Process of Law, and (3) as capital punishment, Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

If you read the US District Court opinion, you will see that the Obama Justice Department claimed that whether or not there even exists such a memorandum is also classified.

Does this remind anyone of the so-called DOJ Torture Memorandum promulgated during the Bush Administration???

*****
Although the purpose of this e-mail was to call everyone's attention to these three items whether or not you are able to attend Wednesday evening, there is also another purpose.

We have always had a policy of discouraging everyone from bringing to our meetings materials to pass around for other attendees to peruse.

The reason, of course, is that passing materials around during a meeting is highly disruptive.

And, of course, our bulletin board (www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org) is intended to make it unnecessary to pass around any materials at a meeting.

Accordingly, since Utah Owl (aka June Taylor) and Pat posted such interesting and informative items after the Discussion Outline was sent out, it seemed appropriate to Carpe the Diem not only to call everyone's attention to the three items, but also to remind everyone to check the Bulletin Board before coming to each meeting.

Thank you for your indulgence!!!

Your friend,

John K.

Post Reply

Return to “Discussion Outline - John Brennan's Nomination To Head The CIA - Feb 6th”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest