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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (July 30, 2015)
my pigeon began spinning just like my friend’s parlor rollers did an instant before the hawk made his attempted strike. The pigeon dropped out from under the hawk, leaving the hawk empty-taloned, and looking wildly around trying to fi gure out what happened. The pigeon fell about 50 feet (still a very long way from the ground) spread his wings and glided safely back to the coop, having done something to avoid a predator that could only have been behavior that was already encoded into all pigeons’ genes, with a little help from selective breeding in our domestic rollers. This past weekend, I had an opportunity to look at the pigeons at the Lane County Fair. I’m seriously considering building a small pigeon coop and buying a few rollers to get back into it. Carl Best Eugene ANARCHY IS WORSE Dillon Thomson (Letters, 7/23) is delusional if he thinks sabotaging “a handful of key nodes of infrastructure” (details unspecifi ed, of course) is going to stop the climate change express train. Assuming his intention is to take down the global banking system (one of the few conceivable choke points involving a relatively small number of relatively easily accessible sites) or some such by way of cyber-crime activity, the resulting calamity would engender a “rape” of the environment beyond comprehension. What does he think hundreds of millions of humans lacking food and basic utilities and turned loose to survive in the “wild” will do? Deforestation, wildlife destruction and pollution on an epic scale would certainly be the result. It’s bad now, but never say it couldn’t get worse, which is the likely outcome of any demented actions such as that which Thomson espouses. Anyway, it isn’t a mere handful of sources that are helping to cause climate change, but many hundreds of millions of actions by hundreds of millions of people. Mother Nature doesn’t need well- intentioned fools, for long after mankind has extinguished itself, nature will do its own thing as it’s done from the time when the only life here was a few single-celled amoeba in the oceans. Karl Stout Eugene to the people, but is intently listening to its corporate bedfellows. True to its mission to elevate people power over corporate control, Community Rights Lane County supports “The Right to a Local Food System Charter Amendment” which will recognize and protect Lane County residents’ right to local agriculture. Access to local food is at the heart of human health, food security, food justice and sustainability. Petitions are being circulated around the county to get this measure on the ballot. Sign them, please, and contact localfoodrights. com to become a signature gatherer. It’s up to us, we the people, to pass a local law protecting our food system that includes local farms, farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, restaurants, food manufacturing businesses, farm-to-school programs and food pantries. Our government is more inclined to pave the way for corporate actors who don’t even live here, to control how our food is grown and distributed, than to help us preserve a commonly held belief that we the people should decide what our community’s food future will be. Michelle Holman Community Rights Lane County Deadwood VIRAL BIRTH CONTROL A BALANCED VIEW Thank you for printing the July 16 letter from Mariah Leung, co-director of the Al-Nakba Awareness Project in Eugene. We need news outlets to give a balanced view on issues of race and the Middle East. Unfortunately, the voices of people of color and of Palestinians have been silenced for too long. Thank you for taking this step and we are looking forward to reading more. Elena Sante Eugene OUR FOOD FUTURE With the pro-GMO DARK Act breathing down our necks, it’s obvious that government has (again) turned a deaf ear Regarding extinction, I am just “Joe Blow” with no scientifi c expertise or appreciation for what is scientifi cally possible or not. However, it seems to me that a massive die-back is precisely what would save this planet from the fools inhabiting it. I refer to a planned die-back of the species, not a mass extinction event. Are there no rogue genetic scientists out there who can alter a relatively harmless, aerosol-transmitted virus, such as the rhinovirus, to cause sterility in a large percentage of the people who contract it? This would not kill everyone, but rather drastically reduce the birth rate for the next generations, in turn reducing the demand and consumption of the planet’s resources and also the pollution and waste generated by it. Not so? I am not addressing socioeconomic issues here, but rather the survival of the human species as seen by a layman. Todd L. Bone Junction City will be hurt if there is a glut of oil, lowering gas prices to $2 a gallon — because then the tar sands oil, the MX pipeline, the deep sea drilling and Arctic exploration won’t be economical. They are also bribed with millions from the Military-Industrial Complex, which wants perpetual war, and by AIPAC the Jewish lobby, which claims that Iran is the greatest exporter of terror in the world which will destroy Israel if they get a bomb. That is absurd on every point. Almost all the terrorist groups, ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and AQAP, are all Wahhabi Sunni groups that are funded by Saudi Arabian oil money. The extremist Wahhabi sect is different than the rest of Islam because they justify killing innocent civilians; thus, almost all suicide bombers are Wahhabi. In the proxy war between Iran, whose people love Americans, and repressive Saudi Arabia, we have been on the wrong side because we are addicted to their oil. Iran hasn’t invaded anyone for 220 years and only wanted a bomb as a deterrent. But the Republican’s greatest fear is that international diplomacy might actually work. If the U.N. can achieve peace, we won’t be able to justify our huge military budgets. Jerry Brule Eugene TIME TO DROP OUT THANKS FOR THE WEED I am writing to complement the section “What Can We Do About It?” from the July 16 “Radical Predictions” cover story. To stop climate change, we have to interrupt the rampage of industrial capitalism. One good way to do that would be to drastically reduce our dependence on money. People who are less dependent on money seek less profi t and more respect from their community and from all humanity. With this new goal, they are less likely to continue excessive industry and excessive energy consumption. People can become less dependent on money by dropping out, camping with friends and growing their own food. Crowdsourcing the creation of 2D computer RPG games, animated fi lms that look like those games and other media in which the characters burn the money for all the forest creatures, will generate a ripple effect that increases the number of people dropping out and anarcho-collectively growing food, arranging free campsites and developing radical media. Allies that are not yet able to drop out will also grow in number. When dropouts grow in numbers in certain areas without being attacked too fi ercely by the government, a second, more localized ripple effect further increases the number of dropouts and their allies. Peter Grotticelli Eugene If the Mexican drug cartels had not fl ooded our country with enough marijuana to supply everyone’s needs until the day when we could legally grow our own, to overwhelm and defeat the DEA’s war against us users, and from totally eradicating and interdicting the drug, thereby creating an ongoing scarcity, we would not be smoking either medical or recreational marijuana legally in the United States today. So, El Chapo got away; that is too bad. Evidently, the Mexican prison he was being held in had a bad case of tunnel vision. Yes, he is a bad-ass drug kingpin, and I do hope he and others like him somehow get what’s coming to them. However, to his or any other drug lord’s underlings, those at the very bottom levels of criminal business enterprises, who took enormous risks of prison time or even paying the ultimate price; to those who grow marijuana then smuggle ton after ton of it, across the desert, or over, under and through the border into America for so many years, for us to buy and enjoy using; to ones such as yourselves, your families, loved ones and those who perhaps never meant to hurt anyone, but to simply earn a living; including all of the American growers and distributors big or small, and all those who gave up their lives in this war for legalized marijuana: I raise my bong in a toast to you all in appreciation, and I say — thank you, thank you, thank you! Danielle Smith Springfi eld WHY FEAR IRAN DEAL? Is Republican hatred of the Iranian nuclear agreement just hatred of anything Obama wants, or are there reasons they don’t want to cut off any chance to make a bomb? It is also monetary. They are getting millions from the fossil fuel industry which EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • JULY 30, 2015 5
