Letters to the Editor
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Trees valuable; BLM lurks as ‘greedy fox’
From Dorothea Hover-Kramer
Cave Junction
Thank you for printing the truly newsworthy article, “Mature trees Nature’s air
conditioners,” (Illinois Valley News, Aug. 15) to remind us of the gifts that trees provide our lives in Illinois Valley.
Trees not only provide energy-saving shade, cool our homes, give ambiance to our environment, and raise property values -- they are the heart of what is significant and worthwhile in the stunning presence of Nature that nourishes our souls.
Your page one article about the Bureau of Land Management’s further plans to dismantle the Northwest Forest Plan represents the limited thinking of a few who are looking with only financial gain in mind. Make no mistake, Medford District BLM is run by shrewd people who want the last of our old-growth forests under the guise of helping the county budget.
Trees are not like corn that you can cut down one season and regrow the next. The trees we currently see are mostly the survivors of 50 years of regrowth after the extensive logging of the 1960s. Unlike then, however, these trees are not large enough to yield the money that was generated in those booming days.
Instead, because of the generally poor soils, we will face 40 to 50 years of empty, scarred hillsides where regrowth may take longer because of the destruction that logging brings. Let us not be fooled. BLM’s promises to give Josephine County money and jobs is a ruse. While the public was mostly asleep, BLM has been planning dismantling of the N.W. Forest Plan for several years. Even Josephine County Commission Chairman Jim Raffenburg notes that it could take three years for any revenue to be realized from more extensive logging.
We should let our congressional representatives know that we do not want to see the N.W. Forest Plan dismantled. We should not let the greedy fox into the henhouse.
Enthusiasm expressed for climate change program
From Alan Eisner
Cave Junction
I am enthusiastic about an email I received, and want to share it.
On Wednesday, Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Josephine County Bldg. in Cave Junction, there will be a presentation by Kelly Tudhope, traveling from Australia, titled, “Climate Change, Despair & Empowerment Roadshow.”
This free event is sponsored by the Spiral Living Center, a new nonprofit in Illinois Valley, focusing on creating a sustainable community. Tudhope, a graduate in law and social sciences, will be accompanied by Pat Rasmussen, of the World Temperate Rainforest Network.
Many of us are aspiring to leave a gentler footprint, yet are mired by our culture’s momentum. When I read about this multimedia presentation, especially the psychological and emotional perspective, I felt hopeful, because I need to hear more about this, as well as suggestions for and connections to communities everywhere.
Our valley is quite beautiful and bountiful, and I try to augment this.
Biblical understanding, interpretation noted
From John K. Bazen
Cave Junction
I commend Wally Hardie (Illinois Valley News, Aug. 8) for reading God’s Word, but I agree with most of what he disagrees with.
I would suggest another understanding of the Scripture he mentioned.
We only need look at the Utah mine disaster to learn that we should not put into extreme risk many others for the sake of a few (agree ?) for the greater good, as mankind holds. Would not God deal with His children, who comprise humanity, with the same principle?
We know that human worship to manmade gods, and child sacrifice by fire, is not correct in God’s nor man’s eyes. Would Hardie concur? As with the flood and Sodom, including the 10 woes He applied to Egypt, these are stark reminders to all that His way is the only way for humanity to live.
We have not the wisdom nor the foreknowledge, to know all of God’s ways and purposes, for He is infinite; we are finite.
No one can know that He will judge those who were killed. For examples of “what not to do” may by His grace be counted to them for righteousness and share eternity with Him because life was removed for said examples.
Hardie’s understanding of rape and murder of young girls being allowed and unpunished would violate the 7th (Thou shalt not murder) and 8th (not steal their virginity) commandments. God does not contradict Himself, so this understanding may need research with prayer.
As for “poor Uzzah,” he violated direct orders from God. The Ark was only to be carried by use of wood poles by the Levite priests. Not placed on an ox cart.
Old Egypt worshiped all manner of manmade gods, and believed in the immortality of man. They had some good ideas, but so did Hitler, who got the trains to run on time. This is akin to feeding someone an arsenic-laden banana and saying, “Well, at least the banana was good food.”
Anyone can phone me; I’m in the book.
Presidential candidate; Satanic mind-conditioning
From Ray Karczewski
Cave Junction
Ron Paul (a Texas congressman and candidate for U.S. president) is not the savior to rescue America’s “Girlie Men: The Sissified Population.”
One looks at the state of affairs in America today and wonders how that could happen to the “Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.” That's an easy one: Satanic mind-conditioning.
Condition the girls to be men when they grow up, and condition the boys to be silly, verbal “girly men” twits, full of doubt, rationalization, masked, hypocritical behavior, and voila, you’ve got the “Home of the Coward & Land of the Slave.”
A man, a real man, one who stands erect with backbone and integrity, towers over the masses of hunched over, groveling, bowing and scraping peons who have already compromised their integrity over the slightest of advantages offered them along the way.
It’s all cumulative and occurs during a lifetime, so it is never noticed by those who love their secure chains of slavery. All they know is that they have lost their manhood. They are confused, emotional, unstable, “frozen in time,” needy, co-dependent children.
It is only contrasted when a real man comes upon the scene, and the enormous rift between a sovereign and a slave cannot be avoided. Why do slaves dream of being sovereigns, yet hate one when the slaves come in contact with one?
Ask the Jews of Jesus’ time, when their collective outside manipulative worship of an idol caused them to kill the “living, breathing, flesh-and-flood, sentient, natural man, whom Christians revere as the Son of God, a Christ, their subject of the Satanically inculcated illusory idol.
Ask the millions of Blind Believers in the past 2,000 years who worship an idea without ever having understood the source of that idea and are willing to sacrifice their own lives in martyrdom for such Satanic illusion.
Face it. The world of civilized man is nutz. Just plain nutz; and everyone else is nutz to be living the way they do. They’re either nutz, blind or dead in spirit.
Farm Bill misconceptions clarifed in some detail
From Lynne Vanderlinden
Cave Junction
Paul Grad’s letter of July 25 states, “The Farm Bill collectively gives away our money to farmers, the majority earning well above the average American’s income and many owned by wealthy corporations.”
It might shock Grad to learn that only 15 percent of “Farm” Bill money is allocated to farm subsidies, or that 90 percent of U.S. farms are family owned and the majority are far from wealthy. I do agree that in the past too many subsidies went to corporate farms, but the new Farm Bill has been restructured with earning and payment caps that will bring to a screeching halt payments to those mega-farms.
I think Grad has bought into some common misconceptions about where Farm Bill dollars go. Is he aware that funding for Food Stamps, WIC, School Lunch Program, Fresh Foods and Vegetables for Seniors and Children, and the Farmer’s Market Promotion Programs, comes from the Farm Bill? It’s the largest portion of the bill and comprises a whopping 66 percent. That’s the Nutrition Title.
Some also might be pleased with the funding for the environment and preservation. Included are grasslands, wetlands, wildlife habitat, resource conservation and renewable energy programs. That’s the Conservation Title (9 percent).
A goodly chunk (10 percent) also is earmarked for rural development; (No, I don’t mean strip malls on farmland).
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but when all is said and done, it appears to me that the Farm Bill is more beneficial to communities like Illinois Valley than it is to our farmers. The bill actually is titled the “Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act.”
In the 2007 bill, payments to farmers are actually reduced; conservation and nutrition programs are sharply increased; and the largest increase is allotted to rural development. Here are some hard numbers from the new Farm Bill:
- Total appropriation is $286 billion during a five-year period.
- $190 billion for the nutrition programs.
- $42 billion for farm subsidies.
- $25 billion for conservation programs.
- $29 billion for “other” including rural development.
I personally abhor all these world and fair trade agreements which allow Americans to buy unhealthy, unregulated,
uninspected, pesticide-and-antibiotic-laced foreign food cheaper than from the small farmer down the road. If the environmentalists and their bureaucrat buddies would get off the backs of our farmers, possible they could compete with our foreign “friends,” from whom even my dogs aren’t safe.
He’s strongly repulsed by federal ‘misdeeds’
From William Schneider
Cave Junction
I have heard for many years about the misdeeds of our government, and taken them in stride.
But after 9/11 I started really checking out things, and what I discovered is that much of what I was told is true. What really shook my heart and soul is the depth to which government will descend in order to lay out its will on an unsuspecting public at home and abroad.
It is one thing to hear about these misdeeds during demonstrations or gatherings of like-minded anti-government protesters, some screaming and yelling. And it is much easier to pass off as drivel than the declassified documents and live footage of meetings and events on and off the battlefield that show in vivid detail the deranged manipulation of people worldwide through terror, destruction and the visitation of Hell itself by members of the U.S. government.
Members who have used for personal power and who plan the lives of our children as callously as one would litter a highway. Who have no thought nor care as to how families are painfully shattered, collateral damage, from the deaths on the battlefield made even worse in that so many of those deaths are in vain.
Now this government and its ilk would like to reinstate the draft. I say “No times 10.” Those thinking of going into military service at this time should stop and ponder. They should study the history of our foreign policy during the past 60 years.
They should dig up declassified information that should scream in their faces. They’d only be cannon fodder. For the cause is contrived from day one, and it is not honorable. No one should become dishonorable in the service of a lying, thieving, murdering government. That is not what the American people want, I’m sure.
To be extremely clear, I do not mean that those serving the military are dishonorable in their service to their country. I am sure that the young people who volunteer do so for honorable reasons.
However, this administration is most dishonorable in its lies to the American people. Watch for an event that will be used for reinstating the draft, and to instill more fear in the public, a tactic that the military and CIA are quite good at implementing. I urge the impeachment of the entire Bush administration, and the firm rejection of any idea of a draft.
Need for trees, USFS oversight recommended
From Marjorie Reynolds
Cave Junction
I have written to President Bush, telling him that there are ways to deal with global warming caused by too much CO2.
There are many ways we all know about: lights, carpool, bike, eat local, live simple, etc. And what takes away CO2? Trees.
We need to plant more trees, not cut them as he suggests for S.W. Oregon. BLM has control of its part of this U.S. Forest Service (USFS)/BLM/private land checkerboard.
Fifteen years ago there was a huge fire in the Siskiyou, which is yet to regrow. And five years ago the 500,000-acre Biscuit Fire. And now the president’s great idea is to clear-cut most of the rest, and not care if it’s old-growth or salmon habitat.
I think that these O&C lands should be transferred to USFS, as it is better at taking care of the forests. The money saved could go to counties for police and libraries. And yet the president lets his forest biologists, not the forest industry, affect what happens here.
These low-elevation conifer forests and salmon might not survive if very much more of our forests is removed. It raises temperatures for the whole area.
I have asked the president to come to his senses; ask God; and think about his grandchildren.
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