Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Officers patrol timberlands

In response to Floyd Blaser's letter of June 8, I am not sure that he is very familiar with Lane County's new rural patrols.

First of all, the officers' duties will be to patrol the federal timberlands, an assignment that is required as part of the funding agreement with the federal government. Those patrols will enable all of us to have law enforcement dealing with the meth labs and other drug operations, the stolen vehicles and trash that are dumped each week, and the rampant vandalism and theft that occurs regularly in recreation areas. Although these new patrols will not stop everything, they will help to deter criminal activity, solve some of the crimes that have occurred and save the taxpayers some of the costs of cleaning up after the destruction in our forests.

Second, this funding is coming from the federal government and not from our property taxes. However, the officers will also respond to life-threatening emergency calls if they are in the area.

Third, unless there is an issue with cattle illegally running at large on federal lands and destroying things, the officers will be too busy dealing with real crime to worry about cow patties.

STEVEN W. BROOME Eugene

Stealing security, future

The corporate power structure may be a vague concept, but it has been solidified and needs to be defined for our simple survival as the wage gap widens, health care diminishes, animals suffer, education disappears and information systems consolidate. This intractable collusion with drugs, weapons and oil companies is stealing away our security, our well-being and our children's future.

The examples are simply overwhelming locally, nationally and internationally and will become crystallized when the new Oregon health care initiative is attacked by drug company money in the form of advertisements and editorial attacks by media conglomerates. Weapons systems and oil companies are leaving states helpless for personalized, humanitarian education. Drug treatment and prevention, foster care, elderly care, special needs, the arts and music and small farmer programs are also being snuffed out by the partnership of multinational corporations, media censorship and crooked politicians.

Once our community and family issues are discussed in an open forum, our bankrupt paranoia will be replaced by hope for adults and children. Money spent on social services, health and the arts has far greater return monetarily and spiritually than business or tax-cut schemes on the whole.

MIKE MEYER Eugene

Arab hatred misplaced 

What do Arab nations want? A Palestinian state, they say, but this had been proffered before.

Why did they reject a 1948 United Nations proposal to split Palestine into Jewish and Arab states with a buffer zone in between? As soon as Britain pulled out of Palestine in 1948, neighboring Arab nations invaded, intent on crushing the newly declared state of Israel. Israel emerged victorious, affirming its sovereignty; the impudence of this victory further inflamed the Arabs.

Jordan, Egypt and Syria - who initiated the Six-Day War with their increasingly destructive and violent attacks against Israeli citizens - had control of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and all of the Sinai Peninsula but lost them when Israel annexed them after winning the war.

In September of 1993, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the historic "Declaration of Principles." Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip and Jericho in the West Bank in 1994 as part of this agreement. In 2000 Arafat reneged, insisting that East Jerusalem must be Palestine's capital or there would be no deal.

Hasn't much of the Arab world made it clear for years that its only real goal is annihilation of the Jewish state? Young Palestinian men are enlisting as suicide bombers in the name of martyrdom, not out of any sense for revenge.

I find Arab arrogance, insensitivity and open hatred toward the Jewish people of Israel as pathetic and misplaced as that of a schoolyard bully who has forgotten the reason he began fighting in the first place.

BRIGITTA HAWES Eugene

Extravagant benefits

So Alice Dodge does not think the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System is so lucrative (letters, June 9). She should try working in white collar private industry - where retirement starts after 30 years and not "close to 20," where pensions are one-third of average earnings, where the vacation policy is use-it-or-lose-it, where accrued sick days are unheard of (never mind adding them, along with unused vacation, to the base for calculating retirement earnings), where medical insurance contributions increase every year, and where there are no cost-of-living increases.

I believe the phrase "save our schools" is nothing more than a euphemism for "save our PERS." No wonder schools are in trouble; the extravagant PERS benefits come right off the top of the school budget.

JIM CLARKSON Eugene

Terrorists are winning

If the war on terror were a football contest, the halftime score would show Osama bin Laden and his ilk running away with the game.

While we are hardly nearer to our stated goal of eliminating terrorism, the terrorists have achieved their objective - terrorizing us. We seem to have forgotten that the point of terrorism isn't to kill or maim, it is to put us in fear of being killed or maimed. The killing is simply a means to an end. How we respond to the fear caused by the terrorists can destroy the very thing we are trying to protect.

A new Gallup poll shows that four in five Americans are ready to give up freedoms for more security. Almost 80 percent of us want fingerprint identification cards, and a growing number want the government to scan e-mail messages. This is fear talking.

Whatever happened to the "land of the free and the home of the brave," or "we have nothing to fear but fear itself"? We are no longer brave, and because of that we cannot resist the temptation to cede liberties in the hopes of getting more security.

Americans have seen their freedoms steadily eroded since the Second World War. Our fears of international communism, drugs and now terrorism have provided wonderful reasons to clamp tighter controls on society.

I think President Bush was right when he said the terrorists hate our freedoms. They are obviously doing a good job at pushing us to eliminate that which they despise.

DAN CARLIN Creswell

Bush brushes off reality

I want to express my appreciation to The Register-Guard's editors for their excellent June 5 editorial on the Bush stonewall of the global warming report released by the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency run by his own appointee. Clearly, Bush does not stand behind the people he appoints.

The EPA reports, in agreement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that human-caused global warming is a serious problem which threatens our economic and cultural survival. Yet, in deference to the political atmosphere in the White House, it says we shouldn't do anything about it. In fact, it denies the findings of every climate scientist on the planet by claiming that we can't do anything about it.

Those recommendations - do nothing because it won't make any difference anyway - are clearly political sops tacked onto what began as a serious attempt to analyze a major problem.

As pointed out in the editorial, Bush has brushed off the report. Bush is pushing for increased drilling and paving and manufacture of bigger and bigger SUVs, trucks and motor coaches for wealthy consumers.

Evidently, the consumers believe that Judgment Day will clear the planet of all the plants and animals and inconvenient poor people, so they, the chosen ones, will live forever in a sterilized and sanitized heaven on earth with glorious wide highways paved with gold so they can drive and drive and drive their glorious gold-plated motor coaches for ever and ever.

It's time to cut the swine loose and restore our planet.

ANN TATTERSALL Eugene

Wasting tax dollars

Well here we go again, wasting money.

When we aren't emptying our wallets to Hynix, giving our Lane County commissioners $31,000 raises and cutting more from our schools and elderly, we are paying someone $30,000 to come from another state and tell us who we should hire as our Eugene city manager (Register-Guard, June 9).

I'd like to know where the money for this is coming from, especially since we can hardly keep the lights on in our schools. Can't Eugene make at least one good decision on its own? Obviously not!

JESSICA BAILEY Eugene

U.S. motivation: greed

Of the many deprivations instituted by the administration of George Bush, none is more appalling than the decision to support war on behalf of Israel rather than peace on behalf of humanity.

The war I mention goes far beyond the one-sided affair we have seen in the Middle East. It is a conflagration that will come to all when our government's blind subservience to Israel leads to full-scale war between East and West. That senseless U.S. policy - not jealousy or hatred of the United States by Islam - is what will bring needless catastrophe.

What motivates Palestine is desperation, which is understandable. What motivates Israel is fear, which is understandable. What motivates the leaders of the United States is greed, for which there is no excuse.

GEORGE BERES Eugene

Wyden deprives voters

I am concerned about the Bill Bradbury-Gordon Smith senatorial race and the impact Sen. Ron Wyden has on it (Register-Guard, June 6).

By saying he will not negatively comment on Sen. Smith - which I assume includes Smith's voting record - Wyden has decided not to help the public make an informed choice this fall. I believe Wyden's comments to be trustworthy, and I was looking forward to his opinions regarding Smith's voting history, especially the votes they disagreed on.

I am hopeful that Wyden will not consider this type of information sharing to be negative but truthfully informative.

CAROL HOLM Eugene

CAPTION(S):

The Register-Guard welcomes letters on topics of general interest. Our length limit is 250 words; all letters are subject to condensation. Writers are limited to one letter per calendar month. Because of the volume of mail, not all letters can be printed. Letters must be signed with the writer's full name. An address and daytime telephone number are needed for verification purposes; this information will not be published or released. Mail letters to Mailbag, P.O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440-2188 Fax: [phone] E-mail: [e-mail]