 |
  |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
SQUEEZE TIME Why haven't we taken to the streets? Now is the time to channel our pre-election optimism and our post-election despair into dissent-filled activism. This administration's "Plan for a New American Century" is in their grasp. Very soon I fear we will all feel the squeeze. Rigged election or not, four more years of war and crumbling human rights is a reality. We are skyrocketing towards an energy crisis and there is a potential draft in our midst. Now is the time for alternatives and conscientious objection. We must break this apathetic mold of "business as usual." With a deep sense of urgency, I call upon you to validate your grief and hopelessness, and then redirect it. We need to ask questions, share information, demand accountability, and pressure the media. Please, Eugene, when you see my friends and me on the street corner with our thought-provoking signs, know that we wholly appreciate your honks of approval and the peace fingers (we like the other types of fingers too — hence the thought-provoking). Consider parking the car and coming to join us. It feels really good! To the amazing organizations and individuals already dedicated to political activism, civil rights, or social justice — what if we combined forces? We need the power of numbers and the strength of solidarity. Those who continue to oppress and kill in our name using our loved ones as both killers and pawns must be stopped. This is our window. We have to be the timely revolution. Chiara Inhat, Eugene
WILD HONEY Hooray for Honey Vizer and her litany of libidinal pleasures to be had at the Eugene Public Library (11/11)! The Library should reward her as a featured performer in one of the concerts in its sexy rotunda, and let us all have a taste of that wild Honey! David Landazuri, Knight Library, UO
RAUNCHY CABLE I am greatly alarmed by the programming on some of the so-called basic cable networks. A new special report by the Parents' Television Council shows just how licentious and depraved some of the programming is on basic cable. I urge you to read the report, which can be found at www.ParentsTV.org The PTC's report shows that basic cable is rife with some of the most obscene themes and content imaginable, including pornography, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, threesomes, statutory rape, incest and bestiality. Why should I be forced to bring this sewage into my home in order to watch the Food Network or the Disney Channel? Why should parents have to subsidize channels that undermine their core values and beliefs? I ask you to consider families like mine when you decide on cable choice. By offering me the ability to choose the channels I want, and to pay only for those channels, you put power back in the hands of the consumer and force the producers of indecent or violent programming to fund their own raunch. These raunchy cable networks have been carried on the backs of American consumers long enough. It is time for this extortion to end, and you have the power to stop it. Frank M. Price, Eugene
PET POLICY Thank you so much for changing your policy about free pet ads. The announcement you ran in last week's edition was excellent, and I truly appreciate your responsiveness to your readers' concerns about the pet ads. I have always held EW's editorial side in high regard, and now am very impressed by your staff's careful consideration of advertising policies. Pam Dillehay, Eugene
FINISH THE JOB If you were on a business trip and the neighbor called to tell you the babysitter was abusing your children, you would not say "I hired her to do a job and I will let her finish." If your contractor or other employee was stealing from you, you would not say "I hired him to do a job and I will let him finish." If a teacher were abusing your child, you would not say, "The teacher started a job; it is best to let them finish." Then why the heck would you re-elect a liar, thief, and terrorist to lead us for another four years? I heard many people say "I will vote for him because he started a job and has to finish." Think about it, people. God bless America because George W. Bush sure isn't going to. Anna DeMarco, Springfield
WE NEED A CHANGE I'm writing in response to the lady who wrote about not being able to make it on her SSI (Ruth LeBrun, 10/2). I too live on disability and I have a very hard time making ends meet. If it wasn't for help from FOOD for Lane County, I wouldn't make it. If we think it's hard now, wait and see what happens when Bush gets in again. We'll all be on the street. We need a change. Let's all hope we can get a change. Leslie Swofford, Cheshire
TIME FOR JAIL I am an old leftist, a leftover from the 1960s, but the Democrats are basically all we have which is viable, and I have a new epistolary friend, Peter DeFazio. At the Ellsbert-Solomon doings I'm sure it was Ellsberg who said: "Four more years of this administration and some of us may go to jail." Yes, it's damned scary. I'm sure I have a fat FBI file, but I'm mainly a literary scholar and, now, a creative writer, not really in public view, and I can only hope for the best. Paul Green, Eugene
WON'T BE DUPED For the first time in my life I am actually afraid to speak out in my own country, after watching the voice of reason being shouted down by the screams of hate. I realize that there can be no democracy in a place where there is no tolerance for dissenting opinions, and when power is placed in the hands of madmen, there can be no freedom. I am part of the "blue disenfranchised 48 percent" with seemingly no voice to express our rights anymore. Where can we turn in a seemingly sold-out government? It looks as if the terrorists need not plant another bomb amongst us since we seem perfectly willing to destroy ourselves from within. I can hardly accept the notion that half of my countrymen have so willingly given up certain freedoms with not so much as a stutter and yet are willing to replace perfectly good rights with asinine amendments that create a whole new group of criminals! I feel as if I can hear the proverbial "boys in the back room" politicos laughing as they toast their own cleverness in placing this moron in the White House for yet another round. Part of their plan must be to make us all accept defeat and forget all the lies and outrages. Well, you cannot convince me! Only half of this country is duped. I believe that this 48 percent will not be silent! The existence of a silenced, complacent minority is totally false and will not last. You cannot quench the fire of freedom too easily. The voice of freedom-loving people everywhere (even among the Republican Party) will be heard. There is a new wind blowing and it will bear the stench away of these hate-mongers who are in office. Don L. Ferrell, Eugene
FOWL ABUSE There's a scam going on at your local grocery store, and you can find it in the egg aisle. Chances are you've seen or bought a carton labeled "Animal Care Certified," inferring the eggs were laid by hens in some type of benevolent setting. Nothing could be further from the truth. The logo is actually the creation of The United Egg Producers (UEP), the primary egg industry trade association, and 80 percent of U.S. egg producers participate in the "Animal Care Certified" program. The guidelines for the program, however, permit producers to: confine birds in cages so small they can't even flap their wings, starve birds to the point where they've lost 30 percent of their body weight in order to induce another egg laying period, and burn off parts of the beaks of chicks without painkiller. In a rare action, the Better Business Bureau recently turned in a complaint against the UEP to the FTC saying the ACC logo or seal is misleading advertising. The BBB national advertising board cited in their report that it gives the impression the eggs are produced by hens "accorded a more humane level of care than is actually the case." I would've liked to report that my somewhat perfunctory local investigation into the scam turned up only rotten eggs in the major grocery chains, but some of the natural grocery stores were being yolked as well. Bob Berman, Elmira
CAUTIONARY WORDS As a member of the local cat rescue network, I applaud your decision to discontinue the "free pet" classified ads. There are many of us in Eugene and Springfield who deal with the unfortunate results of giveaway kittens on a daily basis. Please continue to print your excellent cautionary statement whenever you can — we need all the help we can get with the overwhelming problem of pet abandonment and overpopulation. Jill Winans, Eugene
RELIGION & POLITICS Conservatives blame the U.S.'s decline on immorality spawned by secularizing the Christian republic. Religious fanaticism is the problem, however, according to liberals faithful to rational, expert, scientific, informed, computer-wielding leaders with "tolerant spirituality." Yet this vacuous dichotomy serves only Bushers and Kerryans. Republicans and Democrats are both mindless about sacredness, sympathy, prudence, wholeness, and humility. I'm no Gandhi, but obviously escalating violence consumes peace. Increasing bigness doesn't solve problems of bigness. World trade hurts nature and citizens. And globalization and disproportionate technology are double-edged. "Leaders" mock this, but to help Earth and this country support local farmers, manufacturers, artists and retailers. Adpot Wendell Berry's first political principle: "Landscapes should not be used by people who do not live in them and do not share their fate." Practice the oldest sacrament: caring for the immediate here, now. Wil D. Hormann, Corvallis
PIVOTAL ISSUES Excluding for the moment the argument that this may have been another stolen election, it has been reported that exit polls have concluded that the election may have been swung on the strength of evangelical Christians voting on "moral" issues. The campaign issues of stem cell research, abortion, and gay marriage seem to have been the pivotal issues that brought these people to the polls to vote for their morally upright leader. This focus on morality begs these questions: Is not war a moral issue? Is not environmental health a moral issue? Is not severe economic disparity a moral issue? Why is having one's uterus scraped considered by these people murder, whereas the death of thousands, and by the time we are done with it, perhaps millions of innocent lives at our hands, simply thought of as "collateral damage"? What makes George W. Bush such a man of God? Is it because he professes to be "born again" and to be personally informed by God himself? I ask you this: Do his actions jibe with his pious words? Do you really think that Jesus, whom he professes to follow, would sign someone's death warrant and then mock her, as he did as governor of Texas? Well, this is what I have to say to all you fundamentalist dunderheads. You are cut from the same mold as fundamentalist Moslems and fundamentalist Jews. You all worship at the same altar, invoking the god of vengeance and retribution, whether naming him Jehovah, Yahweh or Allah and you create hell on earth wherever you go. If you profess to be a Christian, then for Christ's sake, and for the sake of the rest of the world, follow the words and examples of Jesus .... or go to hell. David Bersch, Eugene
AMERICAN GULLIBAN The "rupture" has occurred. The Republican neocons have been lifted up on the backs of the fundamentalist American Gullaban. In the Naked Emperor's mind, he sits on the right hand side of God, poised to deconstruct what's left of the separation between church and state, the public school system, a woman's right to choose, protection against hate crimes, illegal search and entry, false imprisonment, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Don't the gullible ever stop their reflexive genuflecting long enough to wonder where Jesus is in this new religion? When Jesus said, "Suffer the little children" he wasn't issuing orders to fire missiles into their cities, to wound, maim, and kill them. The neo-religionists, these faux followers of Jesus are ignoring "the logs in their own eyes" all the while they are intent on gouging "the splinters out of their neighbors." The moneychangers and their political hit men have set up residence in the evangelical community of churches. They are the "force ministers" and the "kingdom now" castes of priest/warriors. Make no mistake. The Rupture has arrived, and woe to the environment and to those who have trusted and believed in their inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness under the Constitution of the United States of America. Morgan Songi, Eugene
BODY POLITIC Four moron years. Good thing military undertakers can use DNA tests to ID ribbons of flesh returned from Iraq. Greg Hume, Creswell
DEFINING MARRIAGE Your grandparents may not have been "legally" married — or great-grandparents. Tracing our lineage even further back lends a certain irony, if not humor to the current righteous quagmire regarding definition of family and marriage. In the brief human occupation of this great land, many cultures brought with them rituals of family bonding recognition to encourage and sustain community support. The book Weddings by Design by Richard Leviter has entertainingly researched some of these. Not very long ago, a private covenant was silently sealed by adding one's names to the family lineage on a ledger — or by the sound of a shotgun fired by a circuit rider in the outback (of Australia). Even more recently, the state mimicked the authority of the church in providing a covenant ledger of those not on ecclesiastical rolls. Although it is small revenue, the state gains in providing the civil service of marriage registration, it bears more legal authority than the church in doing so; it is simply that, a record of marriage registration. I respectfully offer this comment without value judgement to encourage further discussion and research. Lea Allen, Eugene
BACKUP NEEDED I work in the field of software design. Everybody who has used a computer knows the term "computer error." There is no infallible software system. It cannot and does not exist in the world of the electronic voting machines. To have designed such a system without a paper trail is unconscionable. We need to trust the accuracy and fairness of our electoral system. That is only possible with a secondary control. Every businessperson and accountant knows this. Now we must assess the accuracy of the 2004 vote count. Every vote is sacred. The media should give this the coverage it deserves. Kathy Thomas, Eugene
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
