Letters To The Editor
PEOPLE AND ANIMALS
Circus animals are treated well
Re: Doug Clark’s (March 18) column concerning the treatment of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus animals:
Kelly Tansy worked for our organization only one year, over 17 years ago. He wasn’t involved in any aspect of animal care. His allegations show an appalling lack of knowledge. It is irresponsible for so-called animal rights groups to present Tansy as a circus “expert.”
True animal experts know that a positive, healthy environment is the only acceptable method of animal training. Each animal in Ringling Bros.’ care is provided a lifetime of veterinary attention, nutritious meals and a clean, safe home. They are stimulated by the activity around them, have time for play and social interaction with other animals, and use their physical and mental skills every day. Because of the superior care they receive, they live healthier, safer and longer lives than their counterparts in the wild.
The cornerstone of all animal training at Ringling Bros. is positive reinforcement, an approach that involves a great deal of patience, praise and food rewards. Trainers establish a bond with animals almost immediately from birth and spend a lots of time observing them at play and interacting with other animals.
Performances are carefully designed to mimic the animals’ natural abilities and reflect their individual personalities.
Radical activist groups have exploited the isolated behavior of a few irresponsible actors. We are very proud of our history of working with exotic animals and the role we have played in educating the public about man’s responsibility for their well-being. Andy Ireland, senior vice president Feld Entertainment, Inc., Vienna, Virginia
Caring people made a difference
March 5, a small, shaggy dog was brought to the Spokane Humane Society by a good Samaritan who found him lying alongside Highway 395 by Deer Park.
He was pitifully thin and dirty, and near death. We named him Tuffy and prayed he would survive. We heated towels to raise his body temperature and rushed him to a veterinary clinic which has helped us many times.
Tuffy’s prognosis was poor: unconscious with head trauma, possible fractured pelvis and/or internal injuries. Miraculously, two days later, he could raise his head and responded to the intensive therapy.
We picked him up on March 10. He was better but still couldn’t walk. A dedicated worker cared for him days at the shelter and nights at home. A few days later, he was walking.
Still too weak for a bath, Tuffy went home with a wonderful foster family. They renamed him Kramer because of his unruly hair.
A groomed Kramer visited the shelter Friday. He is a doggy miracle. After less than a month, this young poodle ran about, alert and seemingly healthy. Sometimes there’s a hitch in his get-along, but he no longer walks into walls and can jump into his owner’s lap.
Kramer is alive because a citizen cared and didn’t leave him beside the road; because our Compassion Fund exists and works with caring veterinarians; because our staff takes special interest in our animals; and because we have wonderful foster homes where people devote hours to helping God’s four-footed creatures. Dona M. Van Gelder The Spokane Humane Society
GENOCIDE
American holocaust well-documented
Re: “No holocaust in U.S. history,” (Letters, March 22):
While I am no scholar of history, I do read, listen and learn. I am aware that the statement, “The United States did the same things to the Indians that the Germans did to the Jews,” is truthful.
When Christopher Columbus landed at what is now San Salvador in 1492, ” … the history of European relations with natives … could be written in blood (with) endless betrayals, butchery and broken promises. … From the outset, superior weapons, force of numbers and treachery had been the Euro-American strategy for dealing with the Indians in manufacturing a genocidal tragedy that surely ranks as one of the cruelest episodes in man’s history.” (Kenneth C. Davis, “Don’t Know Much About History,” Crown Publishers, 1990)
Hollywood’s depictions of cowboy-and-Indian wars usually set in the “late 1880s,’ were untruthful in that, “By that time, the Indians were nearly finished, their subjugation complete, their numbers decimated. … The killing, enslavement, and the land theft had begun with the arrival of the Europeans” centuries earlier.”
Davis traces U.S. officials’ malfeasance all the way to the White House, where further wrongdoing occurred. An ” … official federal policy (was) initiated under (President Andrew) Jackson and continued by … (President) Martin Van Buren.” This policy, euphemistically named “removal,” served as a promising clarification of the “Indian problem.” ” … an early- 19th-century equivalent of Hitler’s Final Solution.
Davis has stripped away the myths and legends of history to expose cold, hard facts to discerning readers. Joyce M. Paris Spokane
Holocausts ongoing, with U.S. help
Holocaust survivor Naomi Ban perhaps benignly referred to the “Holocaust” of the natives, and while she has been chastised by some, a couple of well-documented letters (March 27) have adequately responded to the critics.
More eye-opening evidence of that genocide is available in a recent book by David Stannard, “American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World,” Oxford University Press, New York, 1992.
But so what? Despite hypocritical, self-serving “never again” slogans, holocausts stubbornly persist, though the magnitudes differ.
Ask the Bosnians. Mass graves and the usual brutalities are still being uncovered, and the perpetrators are happily living thereafter. To quote another Holocaust survivor, Israeli human-rights activist, Prof. Israel Shahak, the Holocaust is perpetually being inflicted upon another indigenous people, the Palestinians, by the Nazified Israeli-Zionist policies.
The 39 Heaven’s Gate cult members took their lives for their own cause, whatever that was. Israeli-Jewish fundamentalists, backed by Christian fundamentalists and our taxes, must annihilate the Philistines for their cause, i.e., to accelerate the first-second coming.
James Stripes in his letter tells us “Hitler’s crew got their inspiration for the concentration camps from the federal Indian boarding schools.” I should add similar inspiration also facilitates the land grabs and Indianization of “native” Palestinians.
Of course, we again have been the prime movers, given our domestic politics, etc. The lobby grip is much too powerful. Even our global loneliness won’t embarrass us. And poor Arafat - he is getting it from all directions! S.M. Ghazanfar Moscow, Idaho
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Stocks no way to fund all retirements
I was amazed that you recently devoted 25 percent of the editorial page to the benefits of privatizing Social Security. I’d like to offer a couple of thoughts why this is a bad, hand-in-the-cookie-jar idea.
Even experts lose money on the stock market. In 1994, Robert Citron, treasurer of Orange County, Calif., took public money and invested in the stock market as a way to raise revenue and avoid raising taxes. Citron and his broker, Merrill Lynch, lost $1.65 billion in the market and Orange County was forced to file bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch tallied nearly $1 billion in sales commissions for the same year.
Remember, Citron was a financial expert. How many Social Security payers are stock and financial experts?
Even stock market experts agree 15 percent of stock market purchasers will lose money. If 100 million taxpayers invest their own Social Security money on Wall Street, 15 million of those people will have no retirement income. Do we then return to the good old days of state old-age pensions and poor farms?
I have several magazines dating back to the 1930s in which a major insurance company advertized that Social Security could not survive. Since then, my grandfather, grandmother, father, aunts and uncles have all drawn Social Security retirement benefits. On Jan. 1, 1997, I drew my first Social Security check. And I truly expect my children and grandchildren will as well.
If the stockbrokers are really that concerned about retirees, why don’t they offer to waive their commissions on long-term retirement investments? Eldon D. Hutchins Newport, Wash.
Seems media are out to get Clinton
Media hypocrisy has never been more apparent than its well-orchestrated program lately to degrade both the Clinton administration and the president’s family.
The media magnify incidents concerning Clinton that they somehow missed where his opposition was concerned. Example: headlines about Clinton’s past history with the military as draft dodging, when the fact that House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Sen. Phil Gramm and Jack Kemp did likewise went almost unmentioned.
The media greatly expanded the importance of Whitewater, yet more costly scandals at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the savings and loan scandals during previous administrations were quickly hushed up or relegated to page 6. Even the muchrumored extracurricular marital peccadilloes of Bush, Nixon and Reagan were never given the space given to Clinton’s alleged indiscretions.
Why weren’t Ollie North’s drug deals with the Contras or the arms deal with Iran and Israel ever fully pursued? Why is so much made of guests to the White House now when more serious actions and allegations of Clinton’s predecessors were completely ignored?
Isn’t the White House the president’s residence? Isn’t he, as we are, entitled to have guests in his home?
Why do the media pay so little heed to our solid national economy, to the budget deficit Clinton has so drastically reduced and to the present world stature we enjoy, rather than constantly nit-picking? Could it be that 90 percent of the media are (as reported) really owned by Republican corporations? Andy Kelly Spokane
Fight Chinese incursion at Long Beach
This historic U.S. naval port in Long Beach, Calif., is being leased out to a communist Chinese company with direct ties to mainland China’s People’s Liberation Army. The chief of this communist company was at White House kaffeeklatsch fundraisers.
This same Chinese company was caught smuggling AK-47 semiautomatic rifles into America. This leasing of American soil was done with pressure from the White House.
If you don’t want American naval ports occupied by the Communist Chinese, you should write to your Congress members and tell them so.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with bombs and Japan lost. China is attacking with money and China is winning.
This problem has nothing to do with political affiliation. It is about leaving a free America for your kids and grandkids. All the young Americans who died for America are probably turning over in their graves. They gave their lives. Can you not at least pay attention and get involved? Betty L. White Tonasket, Wash.