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