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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 3, 1996)
VIEWPOINTS f QlIQRiAt $ OPlNtQHS KTTf RS TO INI COtTOR Despair may be reason for conspiracy beliefs ■ OUR OPINION: The emergence ol conspiracy theories reveals mistrust The Air Force fet carrying Secretarv of Commerce Ron Brown that crashed and killed everyone on board In Boania was malty the msult of another U.S. conspiracy aimed at removing blacks from positions of influence or (lower within the U.S Government. And AIDS was manufac tured by white scientists to wipe out African-Ameri cun. While it is unfortunate enough that some Atman Americans believe in these so-called conspiracy theo ries, the saddest part is that n»<» relations have beans had enough to allow even the consideration of these kinds of theories Mom than 100 years after the Civil War. and four decades since the beginning of Martin Luther king * II— -—-— Thu canyon has Jarred the people of this nation into two dutmtih paranoid camp$ of 'us and themor worse ret, us vs, them,' --j, national battle for desegre gation and civil right*, -we the people- of the*** United Stale* are still separated by a « hasm of mistrust, anger and despair. This canyon ha* forced the people of this nation into two distinctly paranoid camp* of ”us and them" — or worse yet. "u* v*. them .** The only way the differ ent races will be able to cro** over and move beyond this gulf of mistrust we all seem to have for each other is to begin nmlly communi cating with each other. The alternative is that we will continue to believe the worst about eac h other Navy continues course of harassment hypocrisy ■ OUR OPINION: iexuai harassment runs rampant «n and oof af the military Evan the way lha Navy's latest sexual harassment case was written up by Evan Thomas In the April 29 edi tion of Akrwfwmk smacks of sexism When “women were caught having sex at Ban croft Halt (the dormitory complex that houses the Naval Academy's 4.000 midshipmen in Annapolis, Md.j. the senior midship men (allegedly] offered them a deal — have sax with him. or face discipli nary charges." Though the midshipmen is lining accused of having "nnmxm sensual' mu with one or more women, disci plinary actions. if any, against the other men involved with the female midshipmen weren't even mentioned in the article Mow ran we hold the Navy (or any other branch of the military) to any expect* ed level of human decency when civilian society still has hypocritical attitudes toward the behavior of sex ist males7 It's lime for "boys" to grow up and society to are ata an atmosphere in which that can happen. w Su rpri se, sur/>r ir>e. *N»| (««-# **■'***' •» »<«*.«, MU* MyU 8* Twit ^ on. war War, famine and pestilence — oh my! 'W' lankml and thet* bmform m# was a pair m harmI lt» rider wm Dmih and Had** was m ftdbmng dose tmhind him — tknmhtkmi JL«m It would appear in (hi* modem *g*> of pm* parity end convenient# that the Four Horseman of the Apt* slips* base relumed Wu. Famine. Pestilent* and Death am among us once again (Joe need only look to the world aa it is now to mm thi* the violent * ami strife that plague our inner due# and other nation* around the globe, the starvation of million* in third world coun triw*. the plague* that silently invade u* and then kill without warning, and ultimately, death, which feed* upon it all No thia it not the wrath of God upon the unbeliever*, but rather an undoing of our own dtwign There simply are far too many of u*. War. one may argue, may be due to two thing* on* — man * inherent warlike nature (yea. a* mm h a* we try to overcome or »uppre*s it. it will a/wtm be a part of u*). and two — the raged rat syndrom* If too many nit* are put In a cage, they will suddenly become overly aggressive They then begin to kill each other off until the population density of the cage reache* an equilibrium. and lb* population is now controlled One may then apply thi* model to the inner cities. where the murder rate per capita is Mgh-r than it la in rural area*. Thi* n probably due to high population dentine*, and could explain why New Yorker* are always bubbling fountain* of joy. War* will be fought over any thing — whether il be land, an imagined insult, or soma twitted vision of religious or ethnic morality Human* are a war like people and will always continue to he such Famine i* when there i* too tittle to hied so many On# may argue that it i* the myriad of capitalistic imperial policies and such hum the Weal, but it (till come* back to the tame thing — too many people Our population grow* at an exponential rate, meaning that soon, there will literally be no room left if we continue to repro duce at this rale. Example take a thee* board and place • grain of rice on the first square, than put two grains on the next square, four on the next, and contin ue to double the amount for each subsequent square Since there are 64 square* on a diets hoard you will begin with one grain on the first square and end with over 0.000.000.000.000.000.000 (nine quintillion) grain* on tb# laat square We haven’t even added in all tb* rice on the other 62 square* Are we beginning to see the poaaibililie* beta if we don't put a curb on our growth? If we don’t atop reproducing so much, then other factors will alow us down. It is just the way thing* work. If It Isn’t arm or famine, than Mother Nature always has a far more insidious method: pestilence, Disease is what one may call Mother Nature’s "big guns ” When the bubonic plague, or black death, swept ac ross Europe in the Middle ages, it wiped out between 30 and 50 percent of the population in leas than two years War has never been that effective, and famine rarely Is. There is now a new plague quietly rampaging across the planet — the Human Immunodeficiency Vims (HIV). Il U almost ironic that some thing at incredibly simple at a virus could wipe out tome thing at "powerful" and “com plex'* at we Homo sapient HIV it actually quite effec live at what it does It infacis i!t host and then lies dormant lor about 10 years before the onset of AIDS. The immune system in annihilated leaving the body wide open ” m quu«? simple «— you get AJU3* you di« Perhaps one of the reasons HIV ii so insidi am is because one doMD*l know thst one is infected until AIDS has set in and others have already bean infected Tha cycle than repasts Remember that chess board with tha rice on it? Just wait, about to years from now it will really hit tha fan. Assuming that we do Anally And a vaccina for HIV. o» even a cure, how banaAcial will that be? Who's to say that something even worse won't come along at hasn't come along already? The new bug on the block is Ebola Instead of 10 years. Ebola wipes the host out in 10 days first, flu like symptoms, then liquefaction of internal organs, and then Anally tha host crash es and bleeds out. i e.. one ends up bleeding out of every ortAce as the virus attempts to "And" a new host. The host becomes, in essence, a viral milkshake HIV. Ebola and other viruses don't care who or what you are; black, whita. yellow, purple, red or green. They don't know if you're gay or ®*le w female, moral majority or athe 1st They're equal-opportunity killiws They are not plagues sent from Cod. but rather piques sent from Mother Nature to thin out tha para sitic simians reproducing like mad and raping bar planet In our attempt to dominate the globe we have «»ly found (thoee with the wisdom to realise it) that Mother Nature is in feet our master and that everything we do ultimately comas back upon us Nature will always have a way of controlling I Bohnt'Oancy. a senior majoring in bio chemistry, it a columnist for the Emerald E mail jbehney+ghdston, uonfon sdu
