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Wednesday, July 20, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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N I
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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. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
A nice Sunday to be in the garden. But
there is constant aircraft noise. Five miles
from town by the Rodeo grounds. Get a muf-
fler, fly over unoccupied territory. There are
people living in the houses you are flying over.
Over and over. This is just common courtesy.
If you fly a really loud plane, don’t fly it low
over people’s houses. Take it to Burns at
10,000 feet. The whole having someone ride
a Harley with a leaf blower through my living
room thing is getting really old.
Bruce Berryhill
s
s
s
To the Editor:
Residents of Sisters Country from
Crossroads to Aspen Lakes, while sitting
in their homes and on their front porches,
and tending to their yards and gardens, have
expressed concerns with the noise of planes
flying low over their homes and circling for
hours overhead. They have lost the freedom to
live in their homes in peace and quiet.
And in response to appeals to the Sisters
airport, pilots, and the skydiving company to
modify their behavior and plans in ways that
would reduce their negative impact on the
community, a guest column titled “The sound
of freedom” is published in the July 13, 2016,
edition of The Nugget, implying that, draped
in the American flag with an electric guitar
version of the National Anthem blaring, mak-
ing noise and flying planes anywhere and any-
time, disrupting the private lives of people in
their homes, is a freedom that American sol-
diers have fought and died to protect.
In another article of the same edition of The
Nugget, an author laments the “I wanna do my
thing” attitude of ATV operators who enter-
tained themselves by destroying the Prairie
Farm Meadow, doing donuts and creating
deep ruts, abandoning a still-smoldering fire,
and leaving trash strewn about.
These things destroy community. God
help America and Sisters if “doing my thing”
See lEttERS on page 28
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Just when I was starting
to wonder if I was spend-
ing too much time writing
about terrorism in France,
Mohamed Lahouaiej
Bouhlel of Tunisia climbed
into a cargo truck and
mowed down a crowd dur-
ing Bastille Day fireworks in
the French city of Nice, kill-
ing 84 people and injuring at
least 303 more.
The attack came at a
particularly poor time for
French President Francois
Hollande’s Socialist gov-
ernment. A parliamentary
commission report examin-
ing the “means used by the
(French) state to fight ter-
rorism since January 2015”
had just been published. The
inquiry ultimately blamed
multiple attacks in Paris on
the French bureaucracy, to
which not even the intelli-
gence services are immune,
and which is easily bam-
boozled by nimble terrorists
determined to slip through
the cracks.
Interior Minister Bernard
Cazeneuve noted that even
though the attackers had
crossed many European bor-
ders, no other intelligence
services flagged them, and
“not even the American
services identified them
when they crossed Central
Europe.”
So there you go: It’s the
CIA’s fault for failing to
identify terrorists of French
citizenship running amok in
Europe.
French Prime Minister
Manuel Valls painted a bleak
picture in an interview with
the newspaper Journal Du
Dimanche following the
Nice attack.
“The terrorist threat
is now a central, durable
issue,” Valls said. “We could
refuse to see the reality in
front of us, forget, move on,
but I need to tell the truth to
the French: Terrorism will
be part of everyday life for a
long time.”
Sorry, but the ruling class
that created this mess with
poor immigration and secu-
rity policies has no moral
authority to download that
failure onto the public and
kindly request that French
citizens resign themselves to
a potentially violent demise.
Valls also warned against
the “Trumpisation” of
mindsets in response to the
Islamic State, which has
laid claim to all the attacks.
Again, sorry, but Valls has
no right to tell us not to be
fed up with mass murder,
either.
There’s still a way for
Valls and other French offi-
cials to make themselves
useful even after turning the
country into a ticking demo-
graphic time bomb.
Bouhlel, who had been
granted a 10-year residency
card had been unemployed
for some time, yet the Daily
Mail reported that he sent
240,000 Tunisian dinars
— about $108,000 in U.S.
dollars — to his family in
Tunisia in the days before the
attack. Investigators report-
edly found links to known
jihadists while examining
Bouhlel’s phone records,
including a local imam with
suspected ties to the jihadist
group Nusra Front, which,
like the Islamic State, is
funded by wealthy benefac-
tors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar
and Kuwait — all so-called
allies and trade partners with
France.
Here’s an idea: Sanction
the heck out of those coun-
tries. Freeze and seize their
assets to the extent that
you’re able. Who’s going to
violate sanctions to do busi-
ness with them? There an
entire radical jihadist system
that’s being funded from the
top down. You have to turn
off the tap before you can
start draining the swamp.
Meanwhile, stop trying to
tell the public how to react
to very real threats to their
lives. Valls looked foolish
when he said that former
center-right Nice Mayor
Christian Estrosi’s reaction
to the attacks on his city
wasn’t as dignified as that
of left-leaning Paris Mayor
Anne Hidalgo. This is war,
not a martyrdom contest to
see who can offer the most
virtuous quotes in the face of
a murderous rampage.
The head of France’s
domestic intelligence ser-
vice, Patrick Calvar, told the
parliamentary commission,
“We are on the brink of civil
war.” Calvar evoked the
possibility of the “far right”
setting it off. That seems like
a very real possibility if the
French government doesn’t
do more to protect fed-up
citizens.
© 2016 Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.