Surviving Family Suicide

I just wanted to thank you so much for publishing such an informative and well written article (Surviving My Sister's Suicide by Monique Giard) in your December issue.

I work with victims and their families and frequently have to address issues such as suicide. I’m sure this article will be very valuable to family members in similar situations. Keep up the good work.

~ Linda Thorp
Supervisor, Crisis Intervention Unit
RCMP 147 E. 14th St.
N. Van, BC, V7L 2N4
Ph: 604 985-1311, ext. 4377
Fax: 604 904-7361
Email: linda.thorp@rcmp-grc.gc.ca

Protect Family Farmers

Good call on featuring in your January 2004 issue of Common Ground magazine, the plight of Canadian family farmer Percy Schmeiser who is exposing Monsanto and its extremely heavy-handed approaches toward deploying its genetically mis-engineered seeds programs.

Canadians should be embarrassed for having allowed a large multi-national corporation to so severely trammel the rights of the Schmeiser family and many other multi-generational farming families like his who have been the backbone of Canada since the founding of the nation and remain so today...

More important than canola, Canadians should be very concerned about avoiding the possibility of irreversibly contaminating the internationally very valuable and important wheat crop through deployment of risky, genetically engineered seeds... I think the EU and Asian nations got it right by severely restricting this grand experiment.

Let’s not have our family farmers’ rights trammeled by a big multi-national corporation like Monsanto and let’s not take the chance of poisoning the world's biggest breadbasket by allowing genetically mis-modified wheat crops to be deployed.

~ Peter Roosen, Nanaimo, BC

On Behalf of Decent Americans

I found your website via a link from the Nature's Path site. Just when I thought I couldn't be more disgusted by the corporate greed that my country condones, I read Percy Schmeiser's story.

I've despised Monsanto since they convinced dairy farmers in the US to inject their cows with rBGH to produce more milk and filed lawsuits to stop everyone from stating their product is rBGH free. I naively thought they were only strong-arming people and small businesses in this country...

To add insult to injury, the Canadian courts found that, although Mr. Schmeiser did not buy Monsanto seed ... Monsanto owns any crop where their transgenics are found.

I can't believe this! It sounds like something that would happen here, especially now with Bush in the office of president (not by the people, by the way, but by the Republican controlled supreme court).

On behalf of the decent people in the USA, I apologize for the rest of us who think that money and power are worth whatever you have to do to obtain and maintain them. Please help us put the corrupt in jail for life so that honest, hard-working, decent people can live peaceful lives.

~ Dawn M. D'Arcangelo, Schenectady, NY

Dogmatic Christian Right

It might be a good idea to check details a tad further than the dogmatic Christian right believes to support the discussion regarding the Council of Nicaea.

There have been many councils and many encounters of those who believe they are "right" and "chosen" over the centuries; however if one looks at the similarities of early pagan religions such as dates and doxologies, one sees that what Constantine was attempting to do with his "move toward Christianity" wasn't miraculous or Godly, but in fact the only way he could keep his empire from tearing itself apart! The Council in 325 CE was to formulate the basis for the "new Christian belief."

If one compares the pagan beliefs that would have been widespread at that time as well as the "current" Christian belief, there are strong similarities.

The "sabbath" day that Jews profess as being the day of rest is in fact the correct day; however, in order to incorporate the pagans to the New Faith, the day of worship was shifted to Sunday (the day the pagans worshipped the sun god.)

Speaking of the sun god, if we look at Mithras, we see strong similarities to Jesus, such as the same birthday as well as the same death-resurrection scenario.

Taking it yet a little further, the concept of consuming the god for redemption is a very definite pagan belief, not truly a Christian idea.

Biblical scholars and fundamentalists are killing the religious belief of the common man in my opinion because they are too interested in the "letter of the law," instead of its true meaning. We have people who devote their lives to finding meaning in the words of other men by falsely believing the words are from God. I ask you seriously, where is God? Have you heard him speak? If so, where and how?

~ Rev. Ronald G. Cosseboom