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July 12, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels June 28, 2004 City council praised for ordinance passage Thank you Ashland city council members for adopting the anti-nudity ordinance recently. When Mr. Jon Aaron equated full nudity of persons as a vehicle of artistic or used as political expressions is plain stupid. I believe that had you not passed the ordinance, the tourists trade would have dried up quickly. Hooray for the city council members. Noreen Tubbs Ashland Editorial variety makes opinion page better Diversity of opinion on a wide range of topics enlivens the Tidings editorial page. I, for one, appreciate commentaries on national/international issues by intelligent, incisive writers like Isaac Walker, Gerald Cavanaugh, Al Bodin, Harry Cook, Leah Ireland, and many others. When the Tidings editor opines on national or international affairs, should readers be prohibited from responding to the editorial? Or when outrageous claims suffuse a syndicated column (recall Dennis Prager's diatribes) should a refutation be disallowed? Letters and commentaries on local issues seem mostly to get timely published. Many have been important and informative, especially concerning the environment - a subject Eric Navickas and others have astutely addressed. Perhaps Mr. Bolsinger will consider some expansion to allow for separation of letters/commentaries on local matters from those outside that category. Then Mr. Enders and like-minded readers could easily ignore the non-local content. Marie Arvette Phoenix History lesson letter didn't give good information Larry Buchanan's "history lesson" about Israel/Palestine totally misses the point (as well as being a one-sided history). No amount of historical review can obscure the fact that Israel is trying to steal the West Bank from the Palestinians via its settlements and water appropriation. And with a brutal occupation that is destroying Palestinian society, it has instituted collective punishment, violating the Geneva Convention. The whole world knows this except the United States, and we refuse to see reality because Israel being our Middle East proxy (see Noam Chomsky's writings) and because of intense domestic political pressure from American Jews and some Christian fundamentalists. This isn't rocket science. There can't be peace until Israel gives the Palestinians their land back and withdraws to the internationally recognized border called the greenline. This won't happen until America stops funding Israel's occupation. Our tax dollars are what's allowing the violence to continue. It's painful to comprehend, but it's the truth. Eugene K. Robbins Ashland Letter about conflict misses the point Jody Zonnenschein's June 23rd letter touting the good life for Israeli-Arabs is not what the conflict is about. Israel is building an apartheid state in the West Bank where entire highways and towns are for Jews only on land that Israel doesn't even own. We wouldn't like it if someone stole our land, restricted our travel to certain streets and forced us to go through arbitrarily located checkpoints to travel even a few miles. So the problem is not how Israel treats its own Arab citizens, but rather that Israel is confiscating land and oppressing West Bank/Gaza Palestinians. There is no way to defend Israel's theft of Palestinian land. Bonnie Brodersen Ashland Tenn. victory obvious under ADA guidelines CNN has recently reported a victory for the disabled after the Supreme Court determined that Tennessee violated the ADA after a disabled person had to crawl two flights of stairs for a hearing. We the disabled feel that this is a Pyrrhic victory, and identify with the ancient Greek king, who said after a critical battle: "One more victory like that and we are all dead!" We feel that 15 years after the ADA has become the law of the land, this decision should have been obvious. The DOJ Guide to Disability Rights Laws states that the ADA "requires that State and local governments give people with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from all of their programs, services, and activities." The fact that so many ingredients of the ADA are not being implemented or enforced is a sad reflection of the backlash against the ADA in recent years. Another such gross violation can be found in the DHS Service Priority Rules, stating that a disabled person capable of crawling from his or her wheelchair to the bathtub is considered perfectly mobile. We in DUDE (Disabled United in Distressing Environments) are conducting a campaign to alert the public, the media, the legislature, candidates for election, and our own State government that it is unacceptable to play number games and balance budgets on the back of those who are the neediest and the most vulnerable. Do we need the U.S. Supreme Court to talk sense into them? Nathan Jacobi, DUDE President Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams