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July 3, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels June 22, 2004 Israel may not be the problem According to a 2002 U.N. Development Program report, the 22-nation Arab League produced a combined GDP less than that of Spain's. Real income of the average Arab citizen was just 13.9 percent of the average citizen of other Development Program countries. With not one real democracy, they had the lowest "freedom score" of all the world's regions, - F - even lower than sub-Saharan Africa. Some 65 million Arabs (two of three of them women) are illiterate. There's no doubt Palestinians are a people living in misery. Their existence is one of poverty, despotic leadership, corrupt government and intolerance. But, this has nothing to do with "Zionism" as some of your recent letters to the editor try to suggest. Suppose Israel never existed and there was simply a Palestinian state. What would it be like? A free, prosperous, democratic nation that strives to treat women and members of different faiths with equality and respect? Of course not. It would be a nation of poverty, despotic leadership, corrupt government and intolerance - just like any other nation in the Arab League. The U.N. report places blame squarely where it belongs - on unaccountable and unrepresentative governments in the Arab countries themselves. And that includes the Palestinian Authority. Susan Wilson Talent Skeptical on causes of global warming As one who is skeptical of those who extrapolate sound science into wild conjecture I remain unconvinced that global warming can be placed solely at the feet of carbon dioxide omissions that are the result of human activity, industrial or otherwise. There are simply too many other natural variables, all of which man has no control over, that contribute to drive the earth's weather patterns. Rather, I put more faith in the fact that over the last 700,000 years, the earth's climate has operated on a relatively predictable schedule of 100,000-year glaciation cycles with the earth currently in one of the interglacial warm periods. It is worth noting that during the Agricultural Revolution and the early Middle Ages, pronounced periods of warming occurred, when I might add, emissions from cars and factories were not a factor. I also believe that both the Clinton and Bush administrations did the right thing by questioning and not signing the Kyoto Protocol. We would do better to reduce trade tariffs and promote the advantages of free-enterprise to underdeveloped nations, than to ever sign this piece of egregious nonsense, for I am convinced that it is nothing less than a rather crude attempt by the U.N. to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor nations under the guise of addressing global warming issues. Given the deepening public skepticism over the causes of global warming, environmentalists, if they were ever truly interested in cause and effect, would have done better to address the problem of global human population growth. When it comes to global warming, they may have cried wolf once too often. Doug Forsyth Ashland Rey's free speech never threatened Recent opinions decrying the disruption of Bush Forest Service Undersecretary Mark Rey really missed the point. Rey's "free speech" opportunities were never threatened. In fact, after the disruption he ran right to the Medford Mail Tribune offices to receive yet another mass media opportunity for his opinion that our public lands should be logged. The real point is that the diversity of life across Earth is being destroyed for profit and at a rate unequaled for at least 65 million years. We better do something about it now. If "democracy" worked in this country, our public lands today would be protected. If "peaceful" protest worked National Forest and Bureau of Land Management logging would have stopped decades ago. People who care so much about Earth that they are willing to go to jail to protect life are desperate to do anything to stop the juggernaut of planetary destruction, of the destruction of the forests that are our homes. What if communities all around this country disrupted public appearances of Bush officials? I suggest that Ashland's reputation as a comfortable home of wealthy liberals who don't make waves significantly improved as a result of this action which stopped a Bush operative from his regularly scheduled activities. Tim Ream Little Applegate Valley 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