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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (July 8, 2004)
TO THE EDITOR BETTER ENERGY BILLS Last year, Congress wisely defeated the President’s Energy Bill, which promoted fossil fuels at the expense of sensible clean and re- newable energy. Now the Bush administration has split the energy bill that Congress rejected into several smaller bills, which are just as damaging as the bill defeated by Congress. Just as it did last year, Congress should vote down the current energy bills. Our lead- ers should demand that our nation focus on an energy policy that will result in less pollution, disease, and war than the energy policies that have guided us to date. Maggie Bagon North Bend UNFRIENDLY SKIES Despite serious civil liberties concerns and unanswered questions as to its effective- ness, the Bush administration is pressing for- ward with its Comprehensive Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System II, or CAPPS. It is a frightening system designed to perform secretive background checks on the 100 million travelers who fly every year and to determine their “risk” to airline safety. This secret government security rating could change every time you fly, and the gov- ernment won’t reveal how you rate. You will have no meaningful way to challenge your score or to correct erroneous information. Your score will be based on credit information and secret law enforcement intelligence databases. This error-plagued system, easily abused by the use of false information, won’t do much to prevent terrorism, but it could devas- tatingly weaken your civil liberties — includ- ing the creation of a blacklist of passengers who will not be allowed to fly freely. Contact your representatives in Congress and express your opposition to CAPPS II. Ask them what they’re doing to stop this dan- gerous plan from moving forward. Tell your airlines not to share data and urge them not to be the government’s accomplices in error- prone background checks every time you fly. Tell them to oppose CAPPS II. Christopher Michaels Eugene NADER HELPS BUSH This letter is a response to Pam Driscoll’s letter (6/24). Yes, indeed “the lesser of two evils is still evil.” Yes, multinational corpora- tions are devouring us. But Realpolitik is Realpolitik, and Nader did everything possible in 2000 to elect the greater evil, and with help from shoddy ballots, voting fraud, and the Supreme Court he succeeded in electing Bush, who, if his last name were, say, Johnson in- stead, would likely be working selling ency- clopedias. And that little genius has gotten the country in such a mess he may cause a depres- sion and cause credit to America to be cut off. Swell! Clinton was the best friend U.S. busi- ness ever had but got the country out of the mess Reagan had gotten it into. So it is better to have the lesser of two evils. So why is Nader running anyway? Does he want to re-elect Little Elmo? And he obvi- ously doesn’t know his power urge is anal. And Nader is quintessentially just our man from Consumer Reports, who’s never seemed very concerned about poverty or huge tax cuts for the rich. He just seems to ad- dress himself to affluent middle-class, con- sumerist-maniac Philistines. Likewise, I doubt he’s read much in or on Marx, Engels, Lenin, anarchist theorists, or the Frankfurt School old boys, et al. In short, he doesn’t seem broadly radical at all, just a typical American obsessive with a pitifully narrow specialization and subjectivity. Paul J. Green Eugene THINKING POSITIVE Thanks to physicist James Wood for shar- ing his reaction to the movie What the Bleep Do We Know (Letters, 6/24.) However, from my science-education-deprived perspective, I applaud the creators of the film for encour- aging more people to think positively and to focus on what they want from moment to mo- ment instead of wallowing in self-pity and hopelessness. I agree that we cannot have everything that we dream because we are limited by time, space and the human body, among other things. On the other hand, science is confined by our current understanding of the world around us, regardless of the methods used to prove theories. Consequently, we still need to dream of new possibilities. Negative thinking may not have caused the horrendous state of the world. Perhaps we are doomed to live among wars and starva- tion simply because of the competitive nature of humans, despite our thoughts. But dream- ing feels good, benefits health and influences our behavior. And if there is the slightest pos- sibility that this will bring about world peace, which the current mentality of violence in re- sponse to violence certainly has not, then I am in favor of focusing our intentions on love and utopia, and want more films like this, even if they aren’t in alignment with current scientific principles. Pat Sweeney Eugene MUST DO SOMETHING As an avid (researched) activist after Sept. 11, the film Fahrenheit 9/11 did not contain anything shocking or new to me. In fact, I personally feel that there were important ele- ments regarding what really happened on 9/11 that were not included in the film. Fahrenheit 9/11 appropriately opens with perhaps a full minute of audio juxtaposed with a dark screen. This felt symbolic of how “in the dark” America is. And interestingly enough, when we exited the dark theater into the late af- ternoon sun we were greeted with a nearly blind- ing light — illumination to help wake us up! Fahrenheit 9/11 is powerful; I broke down three times during the film, twice during scenes from Iraq and then when a mom of a U.S. soldier lost her son to the war. Those of us who went to the movie together talked about it afterward, all feeling anger and grief, wonder- ing what we can do, because there is no con- clusion or resolution in the movie, leaving a restless feeling of a need for revolution. Michael Moore is beyond brave to go up against the U.S. government to expose the truth about 9/11 and the Iraq war! Now, it is the responsibility of each of us to rise up and decide how we will respond to the serious charges against the Bush administration. Barbara Raisbeck Eugene REAL ARTISTS The last time I was allowed and encour- aged to be a real artist may have been second grade. Sometime afterward I was told I could not hold a tune, had two left feet, and could not draw by someone trained to recognize JULY 8, 2004 5
