Letters for November 9, 2006

Liberal means open-minded
Re: “Chico contrarians” (In My Eyes, by Evan Tuchinsky, CN&R, Nov. 2):

I don’t understand how people can call themselves liberal and be so intolerant of different ideas. This is in response to the blowback the paper received for its endorsements.

The dictionary defines liberal as “willing to understand or respect the different behavior, ideas, etc., of other people.” I call myself a liberal because I think I am intelligent and have the ability to make up my own mind regardless of who is making the endorsements.


Gabrielle Walters
Chico

‘Look before you leap’
Re: “Making friends in the mosque” (Newslines, by Simona Gallegos, CN&R, Nov. 2):

College student Kathleen Williams rightly discovers that Muslims don’t fit negative stereotypes imposed upon them in much of the media but accepts an idealized one: that “women are well-respected in Islam.”

While individual Muslims and communities influenced by Western culture are often egalitarian, their sacred text, the Quran, is not. Surah 4:34 states: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other … Good women are obedient … From those whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” Furthermore 4:43 and 5:6 warn men, before prayer, to ritually purify themselves from “pollutants” such as sickness, using the bathroom, or contact with women.

Nor are women respected by the first generation of Muslim leaders, whose interpretations and commentaries are revered in Islam. For instance, the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law Ali, the fourth caliph, warned: “Never ask a woman her advice because it is worthless … The entire woman is evil.”

Therefore, my appeal is that spiritual seekers such as Kathleen Williams will indeed seek beyond the initial fellowship of the faith communities they explore, to critically examine their core beliefs and traditions. In most of the world outside the United States, Islam is a whole social-political culture—not just another version of a church. For its traditional adherents, it asserts values and paradigms antithetical, even hostile, to those we take for granted in a pluralistic, tolerant liberal democracy. Look before you leap.


H.C. Jamieson
Chico

Falling into the gap
Re: “Sports and the gender gap” (Newslines, by Bryce Benson, CN&R, Nov. 2):

Your story points out an issue that I have been trying to warn people about for the past 15 years: that males are being disenfranchised in our educational system.

Only 43 percent of college undergraduates are male, compared to 58 percent in 1970. Today only 41 percent of master’s degree candidates are male. Ninety-one percent of all grade-school teachers are female. Boys constitute 80 percent of all high school dropouts; boys get 70 percent of all the D’s and F’s in K-12 and account for 71 percent of all school suspensions.

Though Chico State has more than a dozen Women’s Studies courses, it does not have even one Men’s Studies course to deal with the issues (and others) outlined above. Women are a majority: There are 6 million more women than men in the U.S. (250 million more worldwide), and here in America, bureaucrats are afraid of the female vote, so they pander to it. It is the tyranny of the majority that we are witnessing.


Michael M. Peters
Chico

Voting truth
If ever there was a solution looking for a problem, it is the imposition of black-box voting machines on the electoral process in Butte County and nationwide. Tell me, what problems exist that voting machines will help solve? Have we ever experienced a “hanging chad” in Butte County? No. Were butterfly ballots threatening the integrity of our elections? No. Are we lacking in volunteers to provide organization, humanity and a sense of community to our electoral process? No.

Hmmmm. So we’re replacing the reliable purple felt-tip marker, ballot and paper receipt with the hum and whirr of a computer—a computer built by one of several corporations that only stand to profit from this Rube Goldberg-inspired solution to a problem we experienced six years ago and 3,000 miles away. Feel better now?

Any information-technology professional with half a brain and no political agenda will attest to the fact that voting machines are dangerously prone to malfunction, misuse and outright abuse. In short, they introduce more uncertainty into the electoral process than they remove.

Maybe that’s it. Weary, misled, over-saturated and under-informed voters already have very little trust or interest in the electoral process. Our voter turnout numbers prove this. Now the black-box voting machine can do its part to further the disenfranchisement of the voting public, leaving the true decision-making to the political elite—both liberal and conservative. In California, at least we get a paper receipt. Let’s just hope that the choices printed on your receipt reflect those recorded in the black box.


Tom Welsh
Chico

Editor’s note: For a related sentiment, see Jaime O’Neill’s essay.

Root of the problem
Throughout the ongoing turmoil about North Korea’s development of a nuclear device, attention needs to be paid to the way all this has unfolded.

Our good friend Pervez Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan, who assumed power by undemocratic means (i.e. a military coup), seems to have been given a special dispensation by our government, which allows him to harbor elements of the Taliban (terrorists we are fighting) within his borders.

A certain Pakistani gentleman by the name of Dr. A.Q. Khan has been peddling nuclear technology to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea under our very noses, which makes him more dangerous than bin Laden, yet he has never been brought to trial. Instead he is under house arrest, living the high life in a spacious mansion in Pakistan.

Since 1945 the genie has been out of the bottle, or better yet, the sorcerer’s apprentice has unleashed the spirits. By now, nine acknowledged countries, including North Korea and Israel, possess nuclear weapons.

How is this whole thing ever going to end? Will countries come to their senses and beat swords into plowshares, or will it end with the annihilation of innocent mankind?


Joe Bahlke
Red Bluff

Next up: Bush?
Now that Saddam Hussein has been tried and sentenced to hang for the killing of 148 Iraqis, my question is when George W. Bush will be tried for the completely unjustified massacre of 650,000 Iraqis and deaths of 2,800 young Americans.


Victor M. Corbett
Paradise

Peaceful solutions
Reading Three Cups of Tea, One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations … One School at a Time from our local library, I find that this one man has undertaken the proper way to “fight” terrorism.

He is Greg Mortenson, and he is responsible for building schools that include girls in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as funding other worthwhile projects in these countries. If you would you like to help or learn more, go to www.ikat.org.


Norm Dillinger
Chico