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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2003)
TO THE EDITOR CROSSING OVER Mitzi (9/25) doesn’t like football and its implications, David and Mark (10/9) don’t like her attitude. I have several hippy friends who like Duck football and I know some jocks who enjoy the Oregon Country Fair. What kind of mixed-up bunch of people are we (me and my friends, anyway) who can’t seem to pick a side? Doesn’t seem very American of us, does it? Robin Lindsey Eugene DIRTY ROTTEN CARS Sondra Arrache (10/9) should be ap- plauded for becoming informed and involved in issues about air quality. However, due to both the lack of space available in a letter to the editor and my own omission, Arrache misses some important information. She said I appear willing to accept more pollution than what is already in the air from the automobile. I’m not. In a reasonable, sen- sible, and kind world, we would have no pol- lution from the automobile. Arrache does offer a solution; however, alternative fuels are a dangerous solution to the pollution and other ills caused by automobiles. Biodeisel, hydrogen, electric and solar power vehicles are still personal transport. They still require paving of public lands. This leads to water pollution by increased run-off, air pollution from the petrochemicals used for paving, habitat destruction, and social division. No matter the power source, the creation of an automobile still requires an amazing amount of raw materials (iron, plastic, foam, rare earth minerals, water, etc.) and energy. Even after its production, the tires still release an amazing amount of particulate pollution (in the U.K., an estimated 40,000 people die from tire particulate pollution each year). Indeed, compared to the automobile, field burning and grass production is benign. While the chemicals used on these fields are high in heavy metals, the outflux from an au- tomobile of these same heavy metals is greater. Neither sources of pollution are ac- ceptable, but at least a grass field is open space and creates something that some peo- ple can find beautiful. A highway or a traffic jam or a string of cars can never be beautiful. Cars kill people (an average of 118 in the U.S. every day), but I’ve never seen a news article with the headline: “Local man killed by sod.” Jeffrey Stout Eugene harm. For there is no harm that anyone else can do to a man that he cannot do to himself, no good that he cannot do if he will. And what was said long ago is true: Nations are built not of oak and rock but of men, and, as the men are, so will the nations be.” Michael Anderson Oakridge PENAL COLONY So — now our Boy Emperor George is turning his greedy little eyes toward Cuba again! Is it not enough that past U.S regimes have used chemical warfare on the island, mined Cuban harbors, attempted invasions and assassinations of Castro, etc? Is this to appease the bloodthirsty Miami Cubans? Or is this the plan to convert Cuba into another billionaire playground with poor Cubans waiting on them? Will our multi-billionaire global corporations set up more slave facto- ries there with their generous 50 cent an hour wages? And paying no taxes to the IRS? Or is the master plan, under Ashcroft’s in- famous PATRIOT Act, to turn Cuba into one vast penal colony like Guantanamo Bay? American dissidents can be disappeared to there and housed in those cozy human cages with the Taliban prisoners, no legal aid and free torture added to the cozy comfort. Will the same old lies be used by the corporate press to scare the American sheeple and the cowardly Congress into supporting another costly savage attack on another vulnerable poor country? Effective lies — Castro is de- veloping nuclear bombs to destroy the world. Castro is preparing to invade the U.S. with his vast army. And heaven forbid — Castro cares enough about his people to give them free health care and education! Can’t tolerate that! Perhaps it is too late, but now is the time for rational thinking people of conscience to remove this out-of-control Bush regime from power next fall, and not with the new corrupt electronic voting machines that can be pro- grammed to fix elections! Alice Keiser Greth Bend NEW CATEGORY I liked your Best of Eugene compilation. It’s nice to have a ready reference for adven- ture in Eugene for us out-of-towners. How ‘bout best advertisement: Sweet Potato Pie! Mike King Cottage Grove BRUTES AT THE RUDDER WASTE OF PAPER Arnold Schwarznegger has been elected governor in California. I am afraid for my country. Afraid of what its people might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusion. Afraid that it will embrace totalitarianism at home and world domination abroad, and the attendant destruction of our planet, with a whoop and a holler. It has happened in the not-too-recent past in other places, under similar conditions, and these conditions exist here, now. Reason, factual informed discussion, and especially, restraint, have been replaced by direct hind- brain emotional appeal to the sense of disen- franchisement, by brutish misogyny, humili- ation and the implied threat of violent retribu- tion for those who do not follow. Milton Mayer wrote in 1955: “If we suc- cumb to that concatenation of conditions, no constitution, no laws, no police, and certainly no army would be able to protect us from I have no “Free Tibet” bumper stickers, nor have I been to the Country Fair. I do find it a disturbing waste of paper to find the Ducks Illustrated section in every EW. Why not make the information available to those who really want it, instead of all of us (and believe me there are many) who aren’t inter- ested in football in the slightest? I find it ironic that letters pro-Ducks Illustrated are so aggressive, yet the writers of said letters fail to see a connection between football and aggression. I’m not attacking their game, I’d just like to see less waste. Kai Ariel Eugene SLAPPING RUSH The hypocrisy and irony surrounding Rush Limbaugh abounds. After rehab and a slap on the wrist for trafficking narcotics, Rush will come back to his microphone to OCTOBER 30, 2003 5
