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