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After three days of waking up with headaches, burning eyes and lungs that hurt, I finally realized what was causing it as I was driving my kids to their schools open house today. As I gazed out over the thick brown layer of air that blanketed Eugene/Springfield I thought for a moment that I was in one of L.A.'s high smog alerts. It sickens me to think that two or three dozen farmers and their field burning can so dramatically foul the air for hundreds of thousands of greater Eugene/Springfield residents and create such a public health hazard. I thank God I don't have asthmatic children — yet. JA Claybaugh
BURNING WRECKAGE White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove has brought his slash-and-burn style of politics to Oregon — literally, if one were to believe the rumors in central Oregon that the B & B fire complex was intentionally set to provide a photo-op for George Jr. to pitch his scheme for lifting restrictions on logging federal timber. Bush lost Oregon by less than 6,000 votes in 2000 and Rove, unrivaled master of political "dirty tricks" who's also known as "Bush's Brain," plans to take our state in 2004. Oil interests are well represented in Washington by Bush (Harken Oil), Cheney (Halliburton), Rice (Chevron) and Donald Rumsfeld, but Rove and Bush have given our children only dirtier air to breathe and the cruel irony of the underfunded No Child Left Behind act to comfort them. Oregon's schools and communities, children and elderly, ill people without insurance and ordinary working families face increasing hardship while W. cuts his own taxes by $100,000 and his administration spends $4 billion a month on our current military adventures. From Congress come calls for more troops and the spending of hundreds of billions more to rebuild Iraq while the administration darkly warns of "disciplining" Iran. Does anyone see a pattern here? Like the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, should we not be wondering who's going to clean up all this wreckage? Fergus McLean
WAKE UP TO KUCINICH President Bush spoke last week as though he will continue to pursue our present course of military action to save us from "terrorism," regardless of world opinion. Sens. Biden and Hagel responded with their concerns that such a course will only increase the desperation and hopelessness which are the major roots of terrorism and waste precious resources needed elsewhere. Biden expressed the hope that our goal was not that of controlling oil fields and the politics of other nations, for that would surely fail. Congress is considering a bill to develop more nuclear weapons and revive nuclear power. If we truly fear weapons of destruction in others, why are we continuing on this dangerous path? The nuclear genie threatens us all. We need to let Sens. Smith and Wyden know that we oppose any further development of nuclear weapons. Instead, we need to turn around present priorities with a comprehensive program, such as that proposed by presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. He says, "It is the U.S. which can lead the way toward a global community which is inclusive and sustainable, which promotes democratic values and which enables the growth of the potential and the health of each person by putting human rights, workers' rights and environmental quality principles into each and every trade agreement." And he proposes concrete steps he would take to achieve these goals, including jobs with living wages, single-payer universal health care, corporate responsibility, education for all, care of the environment, campaign finance reform, and cooperation with other nations in building a peaceful and sustainable world with justice for all. Rude Awakening, the apocalyptic comedy that played last week in Eugene, brought out the possible end of the world that nuclear power poses. Do we not see the dangers we are creating? We need a new vision of our place in the world. We can have a different world. But there is a lot of work we need to do together to bring it about. Portia Foster
LOST HER BEARINGS It's been some time since City Councilor Nancy Nathanson displayed the courage of her convictions. Does she have a philosophy or core values that drive her decision making? If so, those values have been missing in action; her flip flop on the Martin Luther King street renaming is just the latest example of her floating adrift in the winds of public opinion polls. But then Nathanson's political ambition (mayor, Legislature) may be seducing her to forego the tough path of working in the greater public interest. If one can get elected with the support of the Chamber of Commerce and their campaign war chest (R-G, 8/24), why bother with the concerns and values of taxpaying residents and the livability of existing neighborhoods? This is sad; Councilor Nathanson is a good person who has lost her bearings in the ardor to curry favor with the Gang of 9 and well-heeled special interests. Our community needs principled and visionary leadership to galvanize all interests through the challenges ahead. Rob Handy
FORCED DRUGGING EW has not, as far as I have seen, covered the hunger strike going on in Pasadena by psychiatric survivors who are attempting to draw attention to psychiatry's claim without scientific evidence or definitive medical tests that mental illnesses are biologically based. This claim by psychiatry and NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) has led to psychiatric drugging, sometimes by force, as the primary and sometimes only treatment option given to those experiencing behavioral or emotional problems. Psychiatric drugs are powerful entities that have extreme, often debilitating, sometimes fatal side effects. They are also very expensive. The industry makes a lot of money drugging people. One of the hunger strikers is from Eugene and the sponsoring group, Support Coalition International (www.mindfreedom.org)is based in Eugene. The only reason I can see for this reporting oversight is that EW is a liberal paper and the current state psyche system is supported by liberals as humanitarian. The psychiatric take-your-pills-and-shut-up system is abusive, coercive, expensive and ineffective. Pharmaceuticals and psychiatrists reap profits while patients sacrifice their lives and futures. Blind do-gooder syndrome is no excuse for not demanding change. Jody A. Harmon EDITOR'S NOTE: We're happy to see SCI and David Oaks finally getting some mainstream attention. We did write about his fast briefly in our 8/7 issue and again 9/4 after this letter was submitted.
BUST THEIR BUTTS I am responding to Tom Clark's (8/21) letter. He says, "There's a cabal on the planet composed of wealthy and powerful men with incredible political and economic power... Question authority." I think a broader formulation would be better: In the past/present there have been/are many cabals of wealthy and powerful men with incredible political and economic power. Question all authorities created or subsidized by the rich for their prime goal is to rule the planet for the benefit of the rich and the degradation of the poor and of the planet's resources. The Bushies are just the current prime manifestation of this anti-democratic, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-compassionate and anti-scientific terribly gross tendency. We need to root out their secrets, publicize their secrets and bust their funky asses. We need to lionize the Ramsey Clarks, Coleen Rowleys, Greg Palasts and Arundhati Roys of the world. We need to create a loosely coordinated world society whose prime directive is peace, justice, health care, a living wage and real democracy for all people and for all environments. Sustainable world peace instead of continuous warfare between dominating creeps whose prime directive in practical results is to destroy decent life on Earth as a sacrifice to the Great God Money. For George Beres (8/28) and other concerned citizens, the list of Bush's creepy Portland donors should be at www.fec.gov about Oct. 15 (justice delayed). Bob Saxton
INFLAMING READERS The story of "Fire Season" by James Johnston (8/28) tends to simplify a very complex set of issues and paint a picture in black and white. On the one hand Mr. Johnston points out that this forest needs to burn. On the other, he attacks the fire managers for taking the opportunity to put some fire into the system by setting control burns. The truth is that this is the only time when there are enough resources available to accomplish these necessary burns. There is a blank check for fighting forest fires. Crews are available and ready to go, air support is assigned to the fire, and the operations team does not have to go through extensive environmental review to implement their strategies. The smoke intrusions are tolerated by residents as inevitable. If managers try to do prescribed burns in the spring to prevent later wildfires, this level of support is not available. One or two accidents with wind or judgement, such as we saw in Los Alamos, and the finger pointing begins. It is true that the military model has served fire managers well in the assembling and deploying of resources. They routinely set up and take down small cities in remote areas and manage the logistics required. Where the military mindset breaks down is in the sensitivity required to locate firelines on the ground. A field observer must go ahead of the fireline building process and hang flagging for hotshot crews to follow with chainsaw teams; dozers, hoses, pumps and holding crews may follow. The scouts are pushed by the crews, by the weather and topography changes, and by the fire coming hot on their heels. It is often difficult to make a landscape-wide decision under the canopy of trees. Backtracking and realignment can be impossible due to the pressures of the situation. Managers in the command post may lay out a line on a map but it is up to the people on the ground to make it happen. Training in fire ecology and stand dynamics is often missing from the job description of a field observer or saw team. Managing forests and natural processes like fire requires an evolving science, an awareness of cultural and political realities, astute observation and judgement, attention to intuition, and just plain luck. People have devoted their entire careers to this calling, often sacrificing lives, family ties, and especially summer vacations to provide this service. When James Johnston inflames readers to jump on the bandwagon of finger pointing and criticism it does more to hamper this ongoing effort than understanding and timely support would do. Mary P. Barton
CREATE HAVOC Tired of high gas prices? Feel that you as a citizen can't do anything to drive the prices down? Feel that Bush and his boys are owned by the energy companies (you would be right about that)? We can drive prices down. There are about 30 million cars in the U.S. When we fill our gas tanks, we allow our cars to become storage tanks for the oil companies. One factor concerning movement of oil by the oil companies, is that they expect "X" amount of cars to fill up their tanks when they pull into a gas station, on any given day. If enough citizens in any city or location were to only half fill their gas tanks, we would create havoc with the oil companies distribution. They would be forced to lower prices, to pull customers back to those location(s), to avoid problems with distribution. Tom Wilt
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