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News: In Memoriam News: Monkey
Business Happening People: Hope Marston
STANDARDS
RESTORED Organic food consumers nationwide reacted strongly and Congress responded. A bill to rescind this rider moved rapidly through Congress, shepherded by Sens. Patrick Leahy and Olympia Snowe and Reps. Sam Farr and Ron Kind. It eventually gained 68 co-sponsors in the Senate and 103 in the House. Ultimately, this legislation was folded into the 2003 supplemental spending bill signed into law on April 16. Senator Leahy said, "The swift and strong groundswell of opposition to that rider [was] an eye-opener for many in Washington." ZAPPING
ACTIVISTS Dobson says she will be talking about microwave weapons that have been developed in the last 50 years and how to protect ourselves from them. "These have been used to harass me and others who are trying to expose stealth surveillance tactics or drug smuggling of rogue intelligence agencies," she says. The alleged surveillance began in 1993 after she won $123,000 in legal fees in a police fraud case in Washington state and moved to Newport. She says her privacy and health were compromised as she was tormented with "nonlethal" directed energy weapons targeting her residence. She believes "rogue" government agents mistakenly thought she had moved to Newport to investigate them. As years passed, she received information from sympathetic agents as to the weapons being used against her and techniques to shield herself. "This is a secret technology that few people understand," says Kathy Ging of Eugene who is helping organize the lecture and discussion. "We need to start talking about this." LCARA
CUTBACKS The proposed reductions would eliminate LCARA's cattery program dealing with stray and feral cats, cut one of the three remaining staff positions for field officers, and cut shelter hours by 20 percent. Concerned citizens are asked to lobby their city and county elected officials, or attend city Budget Committee meetings coming up at 5:30 pm May 5, 7, 14 and 19 at City Hall. For more information, call Diana Robertson at Shelter Animal Resource Alliance, 741-7253. WHAT
ABOUT U.S.? Bush is vowing to provide universal health service to Iraq and build 6,000 schools, 100 bridges and 5,000 miles of roads. DeFazio says this is happening "at a time when 45 million Americans go without health insurance; when Oregon's roads are crumbling and bridges have become impassable for large, heavy trucks; and when Oregon schools are underfunded to the extent that some districts are chopping more than a month off the school year." CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS
In
Memoriam Before we get swept away by Bush/Rumsfeld's next military adventure and our own need to figure out what to do, let us mourn Iraqi civilian casualties of the war, estimated so far from 1,252 to 2,325 dead and 5,100 wounded. Here are a few of the people: March 24: Nada Abdallah was 16 and newly married. She and her husband were spending their honeymoon at a friend's farmhouse near Diyala Bridge, away from Baghdad and the bombs. After prayers on March 24, everyone was drinking tea in the living room when a bomb landed, killing Nada, another young woman, and 8-year-old Fateha. Eight others were injured by shrapnel, glass and flying debris. Nada's husband could not stop crying. March 26: Faris El Baur made cushions for car seats, working in his shop in Al Shaab market in north Baghdad. Because schools were closed for the war, his 11-year-old son Saif was helping him. When two rockets struck the market, father and son were crushed and burned. More than 20 other people died, including a mother and three small children, incinerated in their flipped-over car, and a young man named Tajir, decapitated in a water-heater shop. March 28: Twelve-year-old Duha was buying pencils in Baghdad's Al Nasser market when a missile exploded, driving pieces of metal through crowds and house walls, amputating limbs and heads. Duha has a head injury and may lose his leg. Fifty-eight people were killed and 47 wounded, including many children. March 29: Failing to realize that their village was inside a "kill box," a free-fire zone designated by U.S. military, cousins 12-year-old Ibrahim and 17-year-old Jala walked to their neighbor's house for lunch. A U.S. pilot bombed and killed them. March 30: With two friends, 14-year-old Arkan Daif was digging a trench in front of his Baghdad house to protect his family from bombing. A bomb tore off the back of his head. He was a boy "like a flower," his father said. March 31-April 1: Azor Waled, 20, sat in Babylon Hospital with a wounded leg, holding her baby daughter, whose head was injured. Her other two daughters were dead, bombed near Hillah. Five-year-old Nader stepped on a cluster bomblet that blew out his left eye. Showers of cluster bombs killed 60 Hillah civilians and wounded 460. April 1: Razek al-Khataj was driving north with 15 members of his family to escape fierce fighting in Nasiyirah. A rocket from an Apache helicopter blew their truck apart. Razek lost his wife, six children, his father and mother, his three brothers, and their wives. April 2: Eight-year-old Aisha Ahmed was playing in the garden when a missile struck her family's farm in Radwaniyeh, near Bagdad airport. Her 4-year-old brother died. Her mother, father, older brother and sisters were critically injured. Aisha lost an eye; her face and body were peppered with shrapnel. She kept asking, "Mommy! Where is my mommy?" April 5: Abid Hamoodi invited his three grown children and their families to stay with him in his strong concrete house in Basra. Anglo-American forces bombed and the walls collapsed, killing Abid's wife and nine other family members. He saved a daughter and two of her children. April 6: Nadia Khalaf, 33, had just finished her psychology Ph.D. She and her sister were at home in Baghdad, talking and laughing, when a missile came through their window and drove Nadia's heart out through her chest. April 7: Sena Hassad, 36, and her daughters Rana, 10, and 7-year-old Maria, lived in Mansour neighborhood, Baghdad. Neighbors tried in vain to help Sena's husband, Abdil, dig his family out of the rubble created by four 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs. April 8: In Baladiyat, Baghdad's eastern edge, a U.S. plane fired at the home of Wael Sabah, her 12-year-old daughter Noor, and her 4-year-old son Abdel. They died in Kindi hospital while another son, stunned, sat on the floor beside his mother in a puddle of her blood. Nearby, 2-year-old Ali Najour lay soaked in blood with a tube in his nose. Both his parents had been killed. Eleven-year-old Safa Karim died slowly, bleeding internally from a bomb fragment in her stomach and writhing in pain. April 9: Children were playing in an olive tree grove near the remote northern village of Fathlia. When bombs fell, 6-year-old Hansa Omar was decapitated, her sister Jasim also died, and their friend, 10-year-old Ali Ramzi, was crushed against a tree. Abu Salam Gafur, a 16-year-old shepherd, was killed with his sheep. SOURCES: Robert Fisk of the Independent, iraqbodycount.org, antiwar.com, ccmep.org, Iraq Peace Team, Guardian, Washington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, Counterpunch, Agence France Presse, Alternet, Asia Times, Reuters, Mirror, Associated Press, BBC.
Monkey
Business The city of Eugene spent $22,000 on a business climate survey that wasn't designed to provide clear results. About 240 business owners responded to the mail survey with charges that the city is anti-business. But the survey itself admits that it's unclear that these businesses represent a scientifically valid sample of Eugene employers, saying, "It is difficult to determine if these perceptions are representative of all businesses in Eugene." The survey was sent to 2,000 randomly chosen Eugene employers in the fall of 2002. But only 19 percent responded. That has left many city councilors still wondering what businesses really think. "It's dangerous for us to generalize too much from this survey," said Councilor David Kelly at a meeting on the survey last week. "This is 20 percent of one constituency that has spoken up," he said, pointing out the council has also heard from others "in direct opposition" to the anti-regulatory views of the respondents. Kelly said it's "unfortunate" that a city press release on the survey results drew broad conclusions based on only the 20 percent who responded. The press release said the survey "found they [businesses] have a negative image of the business climate in Eugene," but did not mention that the survey respondents were not a statistically valid sampling of business opinion. A story in The Register-Guard, written after the press release, reported that the survey "unveiled a pervasive sense among Eugene merchants that city policies, staff and attitudes are anti-business." Councilor Betty Taylor said the survey results were biased because unhappy businesses were "much more likely to respond" to the survey than businesses who thought the city was doing a good job. "If everything is fine, you don't need to fill out the survey," she said. "We're talking about a very small group at one end of the spectrum," Councilor Bonny Bettman said. She faulted the study for not comparing the views of Eugene businesses to businesses in other cities. She said businesses across the nation all want lower taxes and fees and less regulation. "Are we really that much harder to work in than Salem, or West Linn or Lake Oswego?" Bob Parker, the UO planning consultant hired to do the survey, said the city could have conducted a scientifically valid telephone poll of a representative sample of Eugene businesses. But he said Mayor Jim Torrey and Councilor David Kelly wanted to ask businesses a long list of questions. "The depths of issues were too difficult to explore" in a reasonable phone call, Parker said. So a mail survey with seven pages of questions was sent. Despite the survey's uncertain meaning, pro-sprawl councilors said the city should move quickly to cut regulations, fees and taxes and increase subsidies as many of the survey respondents demanded. Councilor George Poling said the survey responses were an "embarrassment" for the city and the city should cater to the wishes of economically important businesses. "It may be a small minority, but without that small minority, where would we be?" "I realize this isn't everybody in Eugene," said Mayor Jim Torrey. But he suggested the council frame the business survey results up on the wall to remind them of what they should be doing. "I hope we take heed of this," said Councilor Gary Pape. "I don't want to see us go through what we did in the early 1980s." But while replacing environmental and livability regulations with industry subsidies may be popular with some businesses, it's likely to face overwhelming opposition from Eugene citizens. The city's 1996 Growth Management Study demonstrated strong citizen support for ending growth subsidies and controlling sprawl to protect livability and the environment. The comprehensive GMS survey also showed local business leaders to be out of touch with the citizens. For example, citizens favored more regulations to protect water quality and natural habitats by scores of 70 or more out of 100. The Chamber of Commerce gave such new environmental regulations a zero priority. The perceptions of the business survey respondents also seem disconnected from reality. The 2000 Census shows that Eugene grew at a 22 percent faster rate than supposedly more pro-growth Springfield in the last decade. Almost half of Springfield residents actually work in Eugene. Oddly, a vocal minority of businesses are now complaining about the city after a series of major decisions in which the City Council sided with the Chamber of Commerce over labor and environmental groups. The council recently voted to move forward with building the West Eugene Parkway through wetlands and killed a proposal for a living wage for city workers and contractors. On its website, the Chamber notes that "Eugene, Oregon, now has the distinction of being one of the few cities in the country targeted by the living wage movement to reject the idea. And that is important with respect to future economic development and to enhancing Eugene's image as a great place for businesses to locate, grow or expand."
HOPE
MARSTON
Know anyone whose good work deserves attention in this space? Call the editor at 484-0519 or editor@eugeneweekly.com |
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KLCC's
Morning Edition host Jenny Newtson has confirmed that she
is leaving the public radio station after 15 years. She plans
to go back to school at Lewis & Clark to take advantage
of a new family education trust. She says her last day will
be Aug. 20 "with a few week-long time-outs for the Country Fair
and the glass bead business." Jenny's bright voice and wit enliven
our moldy town more than she knows. Tune her in while you can
at 89.7 FM. 
