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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1995)
EDITORIALS. OPINIONS. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Unabombers manifesto may explode on media ■ OUR OPINION Thf promises of a terrors! should nof be believed For nearly two decades the l Inalwirnber has stalked, murdered or seriously Injured his victims through the postal system. Ho has also remained silent while evading and perplexing investigators for the past 17 years Suddenly, after taking the life of his latest vie tim in April, the t fnabotnber ail hut shut down busy I.os Angeles International Air port with a written bomb threat early in July It was his version ol a joke, but tin* ensuing media blit/ was enough to shame ,i Fortune S00 public relations firm or ad agency. I'he new controversy is over the Unahomlrer's sud den desire to stroke his ego fry seeing his views printed in Thr Washington Past and Ihr \’ri\ York Tmu-s via <i word self-styled manifesto. The Unabomber says ho will slop killing if this document is printed The issue is whether the media should cooperate with a terrorist and whether the man c an lx* trusted The answer to both quos lions is no. The media should not let a murderer coerce them into voicing his ideology An individual who kills people and ruins the lives of others t annot he trusted to “keep fits word." We are not dealing with a rational person here We are dealing with a clever but sick individual who needs to he stopped. I httil the killer is caught. authorities and editors should continue to keep him in the head lines anything to make him feel powerful. Then maybe he'll get careless and give himself away Increase in teen smoking not caused by ignorance ■ OUR OPINION: Young smokers know the risks, they just don’t care A ret <tnl survey by the Amerit an l.ung Association shows a 10 voar high in the number of tonnage smokers: H .2 percent of high school teenagers admitted to smok ing ( igarottes in a one month period. Anti smoking advocates arc ( ailing for stridor regu lation of the product, a ban on unattended vending machines, a reduction in the number of smoking ads dirot ted at teens and larger warning labels to combat the ini roaso. While all of the proposed regulations may help reduce the number of teenage smokers slightly, it misses the larger question of why teenagers are taking up the habit in the first plat e. All teenage smokers know that cigarettes r ause * ancer. Thoy live in a nation of non smoking offlt <*s. airports and restaurants Their par ents are less likely to smoke than any generation of par ents before them Will any of the new regulations keep them from lighting up? Probably not. Teens smoke for reasons that cannot be legislatively removed. They smoke be< ause it is rebellious. They smoke bet ause they feel invint ible, but they also smoke because they see a world of violent.**, drug abuse and absentee parents .* world when* they think diet are more likely to be shot or get AIDS than die of i ancer They rationalize that in tin* face of all that, what different o will a tilth* nicotine make? The solution to teen smoking, then, lies in showing Ameri * a s youth what they have to live for. not what can kill them. Owgon D»fy l • » pubh%f»<KJ skt?> U^^day though fr«toy du»-.#>g t»v* *. fMV JVXJ 1 oeacla, and Yhundty <Vr*ng the turntow by the Oregon Qftly l mwa« PgC&jpvg to hx at the U»w<w*ty of Oregon, t ugcne. Oregon The tTO»<wd op•*»)«» **Mpenden0y o) the UrtMwMy «ah eh», en .*> Su<l« JGQ o> V* £«t> Memorial Un*gn and 4 a member ol 9*# Aatouated Pre** Th* f tow art in private property The untaeriy r#m©*«i c* uswi o< pape** >» p»ow«cv»tab*e Editor m Chiet David Thom Aieoctete Editor* M*v< new* E<*wd» ;5irw-?h* Uarttn Sherry R*^- Sew n- v De&igner SlrvW' Ast:\»’y ^MOQriph«i IV a >i»wx} - fc v > ■ Nigh! Editor D#*d Thy General Manager Judy M**J Adverttting Director Mark Wafter Production Manager Mxhete Not* Advert) ting A:--e A lee Yen B*r Ju v* « (*..**» ik^NH i^hny.: ► <*-••!>• Lyon Tone ShiMWIB CUatitied. IW*.:Vy Muvhrt • Uj-i^fw Production; RaC-herf Gunnavghem. Jennuter RoUWXj Butinem*; Kafhy CtfttKe S-apevvreor Judy ConnoUy Distribution x>-'v-> l ;>-*g. i <* r v U,v . .* ; NMTWOOffi j Ou»in««» Office 346-M11 34*4512 Ompuiy Adverting Ct#AtMfUK) Advertising 34^3712 34^4343 Wf WW To keep THIS A surprise. r Tobacco , ■.... - it). And Firearms 4*Cwi I Think THE OTVfJ? CA^r/bATf i, | >N S/M/t 4C TDvc Hi All rv£<> L rut wv"t noou uk'nn j . ■HAV ivAv'f T'PPfD W'M OAT 7/ W* LETTERS Reanalogize I'd Iilu* Jo respond to the In ter submitted by James I. Humpy* {ODt:, Jul\ ZS) Beside the fat t that he is poorly informed about Bosnia llerze govina, his “Oregon analogy" makes me feel that he fries lo obscure the core of the problem Hrsl of all. it was not Mus Inns, fiut all of the Bosnians (Muslims, Croats. Serbs and ali others) who decided to setede from Yugoslavia It was the Ser hion nationalists (different from the Serbs who are loyal lo Bosnia) who started to prepare for the destruction of Bosnia well before Bosnia's hid for Hide pendente Bosnia is different from Yugoslavia Y ugoslavia was indeed an artifu lal < real ion In the major powers in the West However. Bosnia has been its own distinct historiml and jHilit ual entity since medieval times Sis ondly, it is true that atrot - dies have been committed by both sides. But he misses the jHimt The Serbian offensive was not .1 result ol a spontaneous explosion of intercommunal hatred, hut rather a well-coordi nated. well-planned ethnic cleansing by Serbian polilu inns. Intel!** tuals and the mass media in lx>th Bosnia and Serfna Atns ilies on non Muslims have been done hy Muslim extremist units who have always been dis< i plined or at least condemned hy the Bosnia government The Bosnia government, represent ing all sides, followed every sug gestion that the international community proposed before its independence Does Mr Bumpas know that the Bosnia President Alija Detbegovic. a devout Muslim committed to multicuituralisin. proposed the plan to preserve Yugoslavia when Croatia and Slovenia intended to secede from Y ugoslavia? It was the Serbian nationalists, with an insensitive, nationalistic polic y of the Croa tian government, w ho caused the disintegration of Yugoslavia Then* is a dangerous implica tion in Mr Bumpas' analogy, because he portrays that the Muslim" government selfishly sought independent e. disre garding .1 will of the S»*rhs Well, them is "another" wav to look at Bosnia Let's regard the Serbian nationalists In Bosnia as sepa ratist Oregonians That dearly explains the situation in Bosnia. Like A M Rosenthal anti Alexander Co kburn. his analy sis only gives a wrong impres sion about Bosnia to readers Certainly, oil politics is involved rhe Serbian leaders and arnty officials knew that the West could care less about Bosnia or Croatia than Kuwait after analyzing the Gulf War in 1991 Shin Yasut Committee for World Peace Farm Aid When I was a bov growing up in Texas, I was told that farmers were the backbone of our com munity The theory was, if the farms were doing well, the schools, businesses and church es in rural towns would do well, too In the ‘80s, rural America's backbone was broken. Farmers were hit with an economii cri sis that caught the attention of the entire nation It seemed like every nightly news report brought new images of devas tated families watching tfieir pre cious farms lining sold piece by piece on the auction block. In 1985, when we organized the first Farm Aid concert, we never imagined that we would still be around 10 years later The artists and farmers involved in putting together that show honestly believed that if enough people were made aware of the difficulties facing rural Amen ta, the problem would he solved. But it wasn't solved. In fact, the family farm < risis is more serious today than it was a decade ago. True, farm aut lions and foreclosures no longer end up on the front page or the evening news But. while many view this as a sign that the farm t risis is over, the fact is. the dilemma in roral America is less evident today Ims nuae there are so few fanners left to toll their stories Just last year, the Census Bureau announced that they would no longer include farm ers as a category in the census. hei auso farmers now make up less than two percent of the population. Since 1 l)8t). nearly 400,000 family farmers have lost their land, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture I very week, more than T>(M) fann ers am still going out of business That’s 70 every day. It's no wonder that young peo pie are moving out of rural areas to find opportunities in the cities This shortage of young people entering farming could create an even bigger ensis in the next Jt) years as a whole gener ation of farmers reaches retire ment age The reason so many of them are going out of business is very simple farmers are paid less for their crops today titan they were ID years ago With every family we lose, another piece of America's her itage is lost Now is tlie time for the ‘!H percent of us who depend on farmers for our food and clothing to do what we can to help families stay on the land Call your representatives and make sure they support farm policies that ensure increased income for family farmers and increased opportunities for young fanners. Willie Nelson Singer, songwriter LETTERS POLICY The Oregon Daily Emerald will attempt to print all tellers containing comments on top ics ot interest to the University community letters to the editor must be I rmted to no more than 250 words, legible, signed and the identification ot the writer must be yentied when the letter is submitted The Emerald reserves the nght to edit any letter tor length or styte
