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