by David Radcliff

The clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh killing hundreds — another in a string of such tragedies in the past year — is a reminder of the high cost of our cheap clothes.

Not only are the mostly female workers in these factories paid pitiful wages (in Bangladesh, as low as 14 cents an hour for 14-hour days), but they must risk their lives to labor in unsafe conditions. Meanwhile, the CEOs of the clothing corporations earn $10,000 to $17,000 an hour, shareholders rake in profits, and we brag over our latest “find” of an inexpensive garment purchased at the mall.

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Radcliff is director of the New Community Project. Originally from Blue Ridge, he now lives in Peoria, Ariz.

By Christopher Strom

Looking on the recent terrorist attack that occurred in Boston, it’s clear that the lessons from the past continue to persist unabated in our intelligence organizations.

After the terrorist attack of 9/11, then President George W. Bush sought enactment of the U.S. Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), which was signed into law October 2001.

This vital and ever-evolving law allowed federal law enforcement to monitor terrorist activity both inside the United States and around the world in order to keep us all safe.

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Strom, of Roanoke, is a former U.S. Marine, retired sergeant from the NYPD Intelligence Divisions Counter Terrorism Unit. He served in Iraq as the lead tactical debriefing officer and continues to instruct on domestic/counter terrorism strategies to U.S. special forces, law enforcement and colleges.

By Bill Gregory

The Roanoke Times editorial board sure is funny conjuring up U.N. helicopters (“Forward, not far out, in Roanoke County,” May 5 editorial). For those not familiar, Roanoke County decided to join ICLEI in 2007. At the time, little was known about the future downside of joining ICLEI. It was just some benign, smart-growth green-chutes-to-save-the-planet talk. It appeared to be a win-win for everybody.

I suspect the entire board of supervisors (who voted unanimously to join) had no idea what U.N. Agenda 21 was. At the same time, I would bet the local chapter of the Sierra Club and the Roanoke Valley Cool Cities Coalition knew exactly what U.N. Agenda 21 was when at least one Roanoke County employee visited a Sierra Club meeting to learn about ICLEI.

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Gregory is a mechanical engineer and has been a Roanoke County resident for 20 years. His is chairman the Roanoke Tea Party’s Anti-U.N. Agenda 21 committee.

Wikimedia Commons

By Donald Nuechterlein

Recent events in Washington, Moscow and Damascus suggest the U.S. is edging closer to limited intervention in Syria’s civil war. Israel’s bombing of facilities near Damascus, Secretary of State John Kerry’s talks with President Putin in Moscow and President Obama’s statement about Syria’s possible use of chemical weapons raise new options for U.S. action.

Yet, the question remains: Why should the United States get involved in Syria’s civil war? The conventional answer is: America has a responsibility to stop humanitarian outrages that endanger neighboring countries. But the more important question, one not addressed by those urging Obama to use force in Syria, is this: At what cost?

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Nuechterlein is a political scientist and lecturer who lives near Charlottesville. He is the author of “Defiant Superpower: The New American Hegemony.”

by Haya Ajjan

My home country of Syria is being destroyed. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad kill hundreds of people every day. Western nations have been reluctant to support the rebels more than two years after the dawn of the Arab Spring.

Dare I ask what world leaders see as an alternative? How about the destruction of Syria’s infrastructure, instability in surrounding regions due to the rise in the number of refugees in neighboring countries, or maybe a new safe haven for al-Qaida and other extremist groups?

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Haya Ajjan is an assistant professor of management information systems at Elon University.

Courtesy State Department
Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to members of the Association of Opinion Journalists. That’s the back of Luanne Rife’s head

By Luanne Rife

Secretary of State John Kerry pitched a dollar-and-sense argument as to why Americans need to invest more, not less, in diplomacy when meeting Monday with members of the Association of Opinion Journalists.

“You cannot,” as Kerry emphasized, “protect America with SEAL teams and drones alone.” Diplomacy offers a less expensive and more peaceful alternative. “It’s much cheaper to invest in diplomats than in troops,” Kerry said.

A lucrative return from investing Americans’ tax dollars on foreign aid was the underlying message by Kerry and a lineup of senior State Department officials who briefed the editorial writers throughout the day.

Kerry views foreign policy as domestic policy carried into a global marketplace.

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Rife is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

By John Kern

As I watched the Blue Ridge Marathon April 20, five days after the Boston Marathon — sadly, also the Boston massacre — I talked with a spectator, the father of a daughter and son-in-law in the race. He said, you probably don’t agree with me, but I hope that younger brother (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) dies, because his medical care, trial and appeals would be a waste of money. I anwsered, you’re right, I don’t agree with you.

As a member of the Society of Friends, Quakers, I don’t believe in the death penalty, I don’t believe in war and, of course, I don’t support random killing of civilians. As a historian, I Googled Chechnya, the birthplace of the Tsarnaevs, and learned of that country’s millennium of devastation: invasion by the Mongols, by the Russian Cossacks, by the Ottoman Empire, by Czarist Russia, by Communist Russia, by the Russian Army during World War II, and by two Chechnyan wars during the 1990s after the fall of Soviet Russia.

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Kern lives in Roanoke.

Stratton Wayne St.Clair

Re: Robert F. Boyd’s commentary of April 13, “There is no peace process”:

A few years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in Israel. Toward the end of my visit, I was staying at a hotel smack dab in the middle of the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. I was the only Westerner in the entire place. The rest were a contingent of South African Muslims making their rounds before going down to Mecca for pilgrimage.

The hotel had a rooftop restaurant that overlooked the old city.

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St. Clair is a former chef, graphic artist, Coast Guard veteran and works part-time up at the Salem VA.

by Kathy Cohen

Once again, Robert F. Boyd (“There is no peace process,” April 13 commentary) has placed before the readership of The Roanoke Times a one-sided, simplistic view of Israel and its desire for peace. This particular piece, in which he refers to Jews grubbing for money, has such an anti-Semitic bias that it was ill-advised of the newspaper to print.

Whether or not Boyd’s understanding of the Pew survey he cites is correct matters little. As many immigrant groups, Jews came to America with a drive to educate ourselves and serve this country. It is a Jewish value to educate our children, often through post-baccalaureate programs, then to serve through varied professions.

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Cohen is the rabbi at Temple Emanuel and lives in Roanoke.

By Rosemary Haskell

Our Blessed Margaret. Tina. That Woman. Maggie. Mrs. T. Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher. The Lady Who Was Not For Turning.

These are the terms used mainly by the British to describe the late Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. Actually, the milk-snatcher taunt goes back to her early parliamentary career when, as minister for Education, she infamously cut the free 1/3 pint of milk doled out daily to British schoolchildren.

And she was, acronymically, Tina, because, when she announced some particularly painful policy, she would say to her unlucky subjects, “There is no alternative.”

None of these terms is wholly, or even partially, complimentary to Thatcher, who was, after all, the first woman political leader of the United Kingdom, or indeed of any big-time European country.

I used to be British and cannot help but be taken aback by the huge coverage of the former prime minister’s death in the U.S. media, where almost unqualified admiration seems to be the order of the day.

I, too, have to admire Thatcher for her amazing skill as a politician. You can’t survive for 11 years as Top Person in the snake pit of Westminster without exceptional savoir faire, ruthlessness, dexterity, verbal wit and acute intelligence.

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Haskell is a professor of English at Elon University.