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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 2, 2015)
2 Wednesday, December 2, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Rachel Marsden American Voices Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Letters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not neces- sarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: The KZSO frequency fiasco is a perfect illustration of Murphy’s law. An article in the October 28 edition of The Nugget (“KZSO loses its frequency,” pg. 1) alluded to KCOE’s interference “... with com- munications for air traffic into Redmond air- port.” Unable to reconcile how a commercial FM station could interfere with aviation com- munication, I spent hours researching KCOE and frequency assignments in the FCC data- base and discovered the answer. KCOE-FM’s interference at 106.5 Mhz had to do with transmitter siting on Powell Butte. The interference appears to be due to a bizarre coincidental gremlin in the nearby FAA radio site. Though the FAA admits it will have to address their problem, in this case their author- ity trumped the FCC’s, forcing the FCC to suspend KCOE’s testing and requiring KCOE to change frequency from the frequency the FCC reserved for covering Terrebonne. Links to public correspondence between KCOE and the FCC: http://bit.ly/1Rf0Iod and the techni- cal “smoking gun”: http://bit.ly/1OoiKDF that the problem is in the FAA equipment. What needs investigation is why the FCC originally assigned KZSO the “reserved” frequency for Terrebonne coverage at 106.5 since other frequencies were available. After I mapped FM channel allocations for our area, it appears there are any number of frequencies which could have been assigned to KZSO. It is also unclear why 94.9 Mhz was assigned when KCOE claimed 106.5, when 94.9 appears to be the last available commercial station fre- quency in our area, making it the only alter- nate frequency for KCOE. Why hasn’t the See LETTErS on page 24 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Rain Chance rain Chance rain/snow Partly sunny Cloudy Mostly cloudy 40/32 44/28 44/30 42/31 45/29 39/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Lisa Buckley Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2014 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. PARIS —The U.S. State Department has issued a blunt worldwide travel alert for Americans. Nothing cuts through murky rhetorical waters and diplomatic plati- tudes like a terrorist’s bomb. Suddenly, reasonable people are faced with a stark choice between keeping safe and taking the sort of laissez- faire approach to security that the Paris attackers were able to exploit. It should come as no surprise that in the wake of terrorist massacres, blunt speakers with a clear, sim- ple vision of how to make a dent in the problem gain in popularity. Since the Paris attacks earlier this month, far-right French National Front leader Marine Le Pen and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump have seen their vision trans- late into polling victories in their respective nations. Le Pen faces a criminal court judgment next month on charges of inciting racial hatred for comparing Mus- lim prayer in the streets of France to the Nazi occupa- tion — even though the pros- ecutor in the case has said Le Pen should be acquitted. Trump remains insistent on deporting undocumented migrants and building a wall to keep them out. Russia, long regarded as a close-minded nation, is now viewed by many as a white knight. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been vili- fied by the West, but in the absence of effective anti- Islamic State action by the U.S. and its allies, the world finds itself counting on Putin and his aggressive bombing campaign. U.S. President Barack Obama has smarmily implored the Russians to direct their bombs at Islamic State targets rather than at opponents of Syrian Presi- dent Bashar al-Assad — apparently trying to con- vince us that they’re not one and the same. Such rhetoric represents a political agenda rather than a solution to a global threat that has spiraled out of control. While the Russians are trying to bomb the Islamic State back to the Stone Age, Turkey — a NATO member that hosted an operational staging area for the so-called “Syrian rebels,” many of whom ultimately became Islamic State fighters — shot down a Russian fighter jet. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg responded with a rebuke ... for Russia. I’m based about four miles from the site of the Islamic State-inspired mas- sacres in Paris. Those of us who literally live inside a ter- rorist target have a very clear idea of who the enemy is. It isn’t Russia. Nor is it politi- cians with hard-nosed opin- ions on national security. Nor is the enemy the French police, as they execute hundreds of raids on long- watched terrorism suspects. The enemy, obviously, is the Islamic State and any other group that seeks to kill or injure innocent civilians. But this enemy is abetted by the so-called “intellectuals” who deny their own survival instincts and insist that oth- ers do the same, lest they be denounced as morally flawed. We are faced with a truly psychopathic threat that has spiraled out of control due in part to our insistence on confusing tolerance with self-sacrifice. It is insidious to think that people should suppress their self-preserva- tion instincts. In a recent New York Times article, aggrieved activists and academics whined about the risk of French authorities overreact- ing and potentially violating the civil rights of Muslim residents. The attacks in Paris killed 130 people and wounded scores of others. French authorities can cer- tainly be forgiven for taking additional security precau- tions. Is there middle ground between a total lockdown and “anything goes”? Yes, and Canada is providing an example. New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided that his country will accept Syrian refugees, but only women, children and full families. Single, unac- companied males, who rep- resent a greater security risk, will not be granted asylum in Canada. By refusing to cater to permissive leftists, Trudeau was able to come up with a sensible immigration policy. It’s a lesson that Europe is learning too late. © 2015 Tribune Content Services, Inc. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.