2
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
O
y
p
p
a
H
of
h
t
4
July!
The Nugget will be closed Tuesday, July 4
Early Deadline for display advertising, announcements and
events calender for the July 5 issue is 3 p.m. on Thursday, June 29
Early Deadline for classified advertising and letters to the editor
for the July 5 issue is noon on Friday, June 30.
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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
After reading the article in the June 21
Nugget about the Coles purchasing the 345-
acre Patterson Ranch, I was so happy to
see they were not going to cut up the ranch
for development, but leave it as-is for hay.
Having lived on and worked the 1,000-acre
“Old Macedo Ranch” in Danville, California,
producing cattle and red oat hay, it breaks
my heart to see beautiful ranches cut up and
homes there instead. I was happy to find the
Forest Service had made our old place part of
Mt. Diablo State Park so no building is pos-
sible, but a few thousand homes are built right
up to our old fenceline.
Now when I drive by that beautiful
Patterson Ranch, I can smile knowing it will
be preserved. Now if only the ranch on the
east side of town is so blessed.
Sylvia Cara
s
s
s
To the Editor:
Regarding the story “Spectacular sky show
is on the way,” The Nugget, June 21, page 1):
People who attempt to venture out along
See LETTERS on page 20
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
75/43
81/46
84/47
82/45
82/46
81/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 Easterling
Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken
Advertising: Karen Kassy
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. ©2017 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.
N
Robert C.
Koehler
The corpses pile up like
sandbags along the planet’s
geopolitical borders.
“Perhaps his condition
deteriorated and the authori-
ties decided it was better to
release him in a coma than
as a corpse.”
So said an expert on
North Korea recently,
quoted in the New York
Times following the death of
22-year-old Otto Warmbier,
six days after he had been
released in a comatose state
from a North Korean prison.
He had been sentenced to
15 years of hard labor a
year and a half ago because
he had taken a propaganda
poster off the wall in his
hotel.
Oh, Lord. The shocking
wrongness and horror of this
young man’s death — the
absurdity of his arrest, the
razor slash of his tears —
is all over the news. Who
couldn’t identify — with
him, with his parents? He
had been dehumanized.
He had a future, but it got
pulled away from him by
uniformed lunatics, or so the
news presents this tragedy:
in the context of America
and its enemies.
And this is the context
of the news and the limit,
apparently, of the conscious-
ness of the U.S. media.
The day the young man
died, for instance, a 15-year-
old lawsuit on behalf of
another group of wrongful-
arrest victims wound up
being dismissed by the U.S.
Supreme Court. In 2002, the
Center for Constitutional
Rights had brought the suit
against a number of offi-
cials in the George W. Bush
administration — including
former Attorney General
John Ashcroft and, ironi-
cally, Robert Mueller, for-
mer FBI director who is
currently heading up the
Trump-Russia investiga-
tion — on behalf of several
hundred South Asian and
Arab non-citizens who were
rounded up and jailed after
9/11.
“Based solely on their
race, religion, ethnicity, and
immigration status,” accord-
ing to the CCR, “hundreds
of men were detained as
‘terrorism suspects’ and
held in brutal detention con-
ditions for the many months
it took the FBI and CIA to
clear them of any connection
to terrorism. They were then
deported...
“Our clients were held
in a specially created
Administrative Maximum
Special Housing Unit ... in
solitary confinement. They
were purposefully deprived
of sleep, denied contact with
the outside world, beaten
and verbally abused, and
denied the ability to practice
their religion.”
That kept us safe.
Some years ago the
New York Times ran a rare
account of one man’s expe-
rience as a Gitmo detainee
and U.S. torture victim.
Lakhdar Boumediene, who
in 2001 was living in Bosnia
with his wife and daugh-
ters and working for the
Red Crescent Society of the
United Arab Emirates, was
accused of being a terrorist
and arrested one morning,
shortly after the 9/11 attack,
when he showed up for work
in Sarajevo. He wound up
imprisoned at Guantanamo
for seven years. In 2009, a
federal district judge, after
reviewing the U.S. case
against Boumediene and
four others arrested with
him, found them innocent
and ordered them released.
Regarding his treatment
at Gitmo he said: “I was
kept awake for many days
straight. I was forced to
remain in painful positions
for hours at a time. These are
things I do not want to write
about; I want only to forget.”
The mostly classified
6,000-page Senate report on
this topic, released in 2014,
contains almost unbearable
data about CIA “enhanced
interrogation” methodol-
ogy, including “rectal rehy-
dration,” threats against the
detainees’ children and par-
ents, quasi-drowning, mock
executions and “revved
power drills” held near their
heads. And many detain-
ees died and many remain
imprisoned without cause.
Reading about all this in
the context of North Korea’s
imprisonment and apparent
murder of Otto Warmbier
doesn’t lessen the hell he
went through as a victim of
“hostage diplomacy,” but it
does, I think, change one’s
sense of who the enemy is.
© 2017 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.