Mailbag: Welcome (or not) signs and prayers for peace

Plight should not be overlooked

Prayers for Artsakh and peace to the souls of our new martyrs, healing to the wounded and comfort to the families of the victims were invoked on a recent Sunday at St. Mary in Glendale. Azerbaijan launched massive attacks on April 1, targeting villages and civilians, killing many people, some soldiers missing in action, also including the death of a 12-year-old Armenian boy.

We assume the world knows history, yet Armenians continue notifying the occurrences of the Armenian Genocide. The constant attack against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) and Armenia remains unnoticed, even when the enemy declares to make Armenian districts in Turkey their graves.

Armenia is blockaded and landlocked. We need your help relocating historical Armenia in the global world address; calling our ancestral cities with Armenian names. Today is not the past — April 24, 1915, is on the historical calendar. Help us locate Armenia’s Garden of Eden on the biblical map.

Build Armenia via historical Armenia. The Silk Road was paved by Armenians. How bizarre, now the world paves New Silk Road without heeding Armenians; meanwhile the bombing and demolishment of Armenian memorials, churches and neighborhoods in the Middle East receive no headlines in the news and the world condemns ISIS without repercussions. We’re here to remind all that Armenians are still alive.

Without enforcing peace treaties, there is no peace. Open your conscious window and listen to the truth! Join us for our annual marches every April 24. Help save our humanity! Step up to the platform. Raise your voices: Peace to Armenia!

Rachel Melikian
Glendale

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Hindenburg sign should remain

Unlike Cora Granata, I am not a “German American”. I’m an American — whose paternal ancestors were born in Germany. The current controversy about the sign at Crescenta Valley Park remembering Paul von Hindenburg is much ado about nothing.

Granata asserts the site’s name downplays “Hindenburg’s connections to Nazism,” which is wrong.

Hindenburg hated the Nazis and Adolph Hitler. The feeling was mutual. Exemplified is William Shirer’s masterful “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, quoting Hindenburg’s January 1933 comment to General von Hammerstein that he had “no intention whatsoever of making that Austrian corporal [Hitler] either Minister of Defense or Chancellor of the Reich.”

The world was in a massive depression, one affecting Germany more than any other nation. The Treaty of Versailles demanded excessive war reparations by the allies (mostly France) amounting to more than half of Germany’s GDP. Germany was prostrate, riddled with 28 different political parties and desperate.

Hindenburg was in his 80s and senile when he appointed Hitler as chancellor. Whatever park events took place in following years — the Bund, KKK, cultural celebrations or supposed Nazi activities — had nothing to do with Hindenburg. The Hindenburg sign should remain.

Allen Brandstater
Glendale

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Granata’s column is a thoughtful read

I sincerely hope that Carole Brennan of the German American League of Los Angeles and Stuart Byles of the Crescenta Valley Historical Society read the thoughtful Op-Ed by Cora Granata in the April 9 edition of the Glendale News-Press. Her suggestion of creating an exhibition in Crescenta Valley Park that provides an historical context to past events, rather than glorifying them, is an excellent one.

Marie Fish
Glendale

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Utility users tax should be increased

The arguments as to whether Glendale’s loss of revenue due to Measure N should be stated as a percentage of the general fund or the total appropriations are beside the point. What is more important is that the U.S. heavily subsidizes fossil fuel energy and the city’s utility users tax is a means to undo some of the damage of those corrupt subsidies. To get an idea of the size of the subsidies, compare German electricity rates of 35 cents per kilowatt hour to the GWP rate of 15 cents. The difference is primarily due to U.S. subsidies. The subsidies are applied at every level, from miners getting rights to operate on public lands at almost no cost to coal power plants being exempt from paying for the thousands of cancer cases that they cause.

The result of low electricity rates is that they lock our city and country into cheap and dirty power. It is difficult for wind and solar power to compete against fossil fuels that are priced at a fraction of their actual cost. As a result we continue to pollute much more than we need to, and we miss the opportunity to be a world leader in the energy of the future. Instead we are stuck on a dead-end road using century-old approaches to generating electricity.

The city’s utility users tax is a pragmatic approach to partially correcting a corrupt and damaging system of corporate welfare. It should be increased rather than repealed. If you care about our city services, the environment, or America’s technology leadership and jobs, vote no on Measure N.

Scott Peer
Glendale