Since Director Weaver got a lengthy complaint letter recently, and it was good enough to share with all of us, I thought this might be of use to him or his constituents. One of my friends recently passed it along to me. It's a web site complaint generator. See --> http://www.pakin.org/complaint Try it out with Mr Jim Haynie or the International Amateur Radio Union or Mr Riley Hollingsworth. It's good therapy. -- Tom

My complaint about the American Radio Relay League

If you are stimulated by new ideas, and if you can think for yourself rather than simply accept what the American Radio Relay League dishes out, I think you will find this letter of interest. There are a number of reasons the American Radio Relay League isn't telling us as to why it wants to make people weak and dependent. In this letter, I will expose those reasons one-by-one, on the principle that its supporters consider its conjectures a breath of fresh air. I, however, find them more like the fetid odor of separatism. If I weren't so forgiving, I'd have to say that if the American Radio Relay League believes that human life is expendable, then it's obvious why it thinks that it holds a universal license that allows it to promote the lie of commercialism. The essence of lying is in deception, not in words. (Read as: my concern and outrage are not directed solely at the American Radio Relay League, but at all those who seek to impose a one-size-fits-all model on how socie! ty sho uld function.)

Please don't misread my words here; the American Radio Relay League likes thinking thoughts that aren't burdensome and that feel good. That's why it claims that its treatises are Right with a capital R. I respond that no one need be surprised if our culture's personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the American Radio Relay League. I would like to digress here. What conclusion should we draw from the American Radio Relay League's ventures? How about that the American Radio Relay League is a myth-generating machine? The American Radio Relay League is so confident in its own intellectual and cultural paradigm that it is blind to global realities. Sounds pretty loud, doesn't it? But is it any more so than the American Radio Relay League's unsavory assertions?

Although I agree with those who feel that unconscionable antidisestablishmentarianism is now and has long been a mainstay of the American Radio Relay League's wisecracks, nevertheless, I cannot agree with the subject matter and attitude that is woven into every one of the American Radio Relay League's cocky, predatory maneuvers. The more I think about refractory popinjays, the more troubled I become by the American Radio Relay League's litanies. The American Radio Relay League, get a life! I can't predict the future, but I do know this: What we're involved in with the American Radio Relay League is not a game. It's the most serious possible business, and every serious person -- every person with any shred of a sense of responsibility -- must concern himself with it. Is there a chance that the American Radio Relay League isn't hostile, ultra-mawkish, and unbalanced? From what I've seen, I doubt it. I, hardheaded cynic that I am, challenge you to ponder this subject with the ! broade st vision possible.

===== e-mail: k1ki@arrl.org ARRL New England Division Director http://www.arrl.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444