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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

And another thing …

The Spokesman-Review

Don’t swallow this ordinance. The move by Spokane City Council members Cherie Rodgers and Bob Apple to take water fluoridation off the table until the Food and Drug Administration deems it safe should be treated as a silly distraction.

First, fluoridation isn’t under the purview of the FDA, so the stipulation isn’t grounded in reality. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has touted fluoridation, but that hasn’t swayed critics. Besides, we doubt the imprimatur of the FDA would change many minds. If the past is any guide, opponents would discount the findings and latch onto a dissenter within the agency.

Second, ordinances that try to tie the hands of future councils are unproductive. Another council can merely vote to rescind the prohibition.

Third, the ordinance would block the discussion of a legitimate issue. That’s never a good idea.

Next time take the peace train. Cat Stevens (stage name), aka Stephen Georgiou (original name), aka Yusuf Islam (adopted name for the past 25 years) was taken off an international flight to New York on Tuesday and detained on national security grounds.

Agreed, Islam is an unconventional individual who has taken a disagreeable stand or two. He spoke out in support of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for author Salman Rushdie’s assassination, although he says he was misunderstood. He also was suspected by some of contributing to militant organizations in the Middle East, although he has denied it.

He’s also offered to donate profits from his work to victims of terrorism, including families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks.

But the government’s no-fly list includes his name (possibly all three of them), which means he shouldn’t have been allowed to board his flight from London to New York. When authorities learned he was aboard, though, they diverted the flight to Bangor, Maine, and arranged to send Islam back to London. Apparently, he’s not too much of a threat to let him fly out of the country.

We can almost hear him humming: “Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is. Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss?”