Letters for December 22, 2005

Does that RFID have three sixes?

Re “They’re tracking you” by Devanie Angel (SN&R Feature story, December 15):

American fascism is the elite body guard for Amerikan corporate capitalism and utilizes all high-tech forms of civilian surveillance in order to preserve the present unjust social order and its system of profits no matter what the cost of human misery and suffering.

Under a fascist order that has secret European prisons, murders innocent prisoners by DNA mistake and refuses to relate to the American people’s basic survival needs, who can trust the abuse of such high-tech devices? The mark of the beast is already here now. In fact, we could be wearing it and not even know it!

I figure you got a lot of responses to this article in between folks going and buying their RFID-laden Xmas gifts!

Merry Christmas and happy New Year’s! Jesus Christ is the reason for the season!

Peter S. Lopez
Sacramento

Stop the slaughter—move!

Re “Sprawl and roadkill” (SN&R Guest comment, December 15):

I don’t know who labeled Ms. Baca a “neophyte activist,” but the “neophyte” portion certainly fits!

She seems completely oblivious to the fact that, as an owner of a six-year-new home in the Natomas area, she is part of the problem. If the offenses to animals and nature caused by this unmitigated sprawl bother her so much, she should sell her cookie-cutter box home on the flood plain (her purchase of which supported the “greedy developers” she so despises) and move into one of the older existing homes in the urban area.

Instead, she selectively picks on only that development which postdates her own housing tract. Neophyte, indeed.

Ed LaFrance
Fair Oaks

O’Reilly’s really right

Re “Happy Pagan Feast Day, Mr. O’Reilly” by Kel Munger (SN&R Essay, December 15):

First, I would like to put my comments into perspective. I haven’t been inside a church in 30 years. I’m not a religious person by any definition. So I suspect I’m representative of many millions of Americans.

With that said, I absolutely love what Bill O’Reilly is doing. I am so sick of all this political correctness, where one can’t do or say anything that might mildly offend someone.

My wife and I allocate $5,000 for Christmas shopping each year for all of our family and friends. We both decided that for this season we would not spend any of that money at stores that didn’t use the word “Christmas” in their stores or their advertising. Fortunately, businesses are ruled more by the almighty dollar than by political correctness. It was personally satisfying for me to see some of the big guys, like Sears, Kmart and Target, change their tune when they realized that O’Reilly had singled them out.

It has also been extremely satisfying for me to see the liberal progressive agenda take such a beating on this. This has got to be a devastating setback that has effectively undone years of progress by the liberal progressives to eliminate any reference to Christianity in our society. You take this Christmas thing, along with the massive defeats across the country on gay marriage, and the liberal progressives have got to be very worried. They are taking a pounding these days.

And yes, good ole Bill O’Reilly seems to be leading the charge.

The icing on the cake for me is hearing that people like Kel Munger “hate it.” That just makes my day. Like I said, I’m hardly a religious person, but I find myself squarely on their side on this one. Go O’Reilly! By and far, he’s the liberal progressives’ worst enemy these days.

Merry Christmas.

Steve Basker
via e-mail

No, O’Reilly’s really wrong

Re “Happy Pagan Feast Day, Mr. O’Reilly” by Kel Munger (SN&R Essay, December 15):

Thank you for this article. I know the true origins of this holiday, and I appreciate someone else “telling it like it really is.” These so-called Christians need to give pagans back their holiday.

There is so much fuss over saying “merry Christmas” or “happy holidays,” I actually feel sorry for the merchants.

I do not celebrate any of the holidays, and I do not feel left out, forgotten or deprived. I shop at Macy’s, Wal-Mart and Ann Taylor anytime that I choose. I buy things throughout the year for myself and family members who do not celebrate—and some that do celebrate—the holidays. All seem to appreciate that I thought of them and show my love in a material as well as in a physical way.

I really think that all of this fuss was because the “leaders” in Christendom had nothing else to do. Of course, there are no longer any sick people, or even depressed ones, so I guess they had to make up something to do.

All you intelligent people, please do research and give the pagans back their holiday.

Paul Casey
via e-mail

O’Reilly should just grow up

Re “Happy Pagan Feast Day, Mr. O’Reilly” by Kel Munger (SN&R Essay, December 15):

Fully nine-tenths of the strife in the world is summed up in one sentence from Kel Munger’s wonderful essay: “Emotionally stuck in grade school, they still think ‘different’ means ‘less than.’”

If only people like O’Reilly would just grow up!

Jan Klein
Sacramento

Bullshit on The Bomb

Re “Homegrown hip-hop” by Jonathan Kiefer (SN&R Music, December 15):

I’m not knocking Jonathan Kiefer as a writer, but that 103.5 The Bomb article was bullshit.

All I got to say is fuck 103.5. They screwed around with KNOZ because they were a small station playing nothing but 916 local hip-hop. Then some asshole from The Bomb snitched the small station out to the FCC. I hate that radio station, and when I heard one Sunday afternoon that they were doing the same thing with local hip-hop, I wanted to take my stereo and burn the damn thing.

103.5 needs to go because they bleed frequencies and their format is straight bullshit.

Now that I got that off my chest, have a merry fucking Xmas and happy New Year’s.

D.G.
Sacramento

Rewriting hip-hop history

Re “Homegrown hip-hop” by Jonathan Kiefer (SN&R Music, December 15):

KBMB might call itself Sacramento’s official hip-hop station, but no one in Sacramento considers The 916 Leak anything but posers and liars.

EQ states, “I’m playing the music no one else would dare to play because they don’t think there’s an audience for it.” Has she considered that KNOZ-LP 96.5 FM has been playing nothing but Northern California hip-hop, rap and R&B since their first day on the air, June 16, 2004?

Or does she think that by not acknowledging our presence, we do not exist?

I think that it is a slap in the face to our small but loyal listeners. When EQ and DJ Supe (an ex-KNOZ-LP 96.5 FM deejay and corporate radio spy) attempt to claim that The 916 Leak plays music that no other radio station dares to play, it becomes painfully obvious that KBMB 103.5 is attempting to rewrite history. KBMB 103.5 is engaging in the age-old practice of corporate revisionist history to take credit for a culture that they have tried to destroy in the past. Even coining the phrase The 916 Leak is a feeble attempt to jump on the local hip-hop bandwagon that our sister company, (916) Magazine, helped propel since its debut in November 2002.

Sacramento, do not let EQ and DJ Supe pee on your leg and tell you that it’s raining. Don’t let the hip-hop carpetbaggers regurgitate your own culture and feed it back to you. Recognize the real from the fake and be “sucka-free.”

W. Major
KNOZ-LP 96.5 FM

It’s a war of terror, not on terror

Re “Support the war!” by Jeffrey M. Barker (SN&R Feature story, December 8):

If you must devote five pages to a public-relations outfit with a tiny following that is daring to support—and profit from—an officially sanctioned war, at least don’t call the war in Iraq the “war on terror.”

The war on Iraq is a war of terror against the people of a country that had no weapons of mass destruction; no connection to 9/11; who had no air force; who were not any kind of threat to the United States; who must wonder every morning of their lives what they’ve done to live in the hell we’ve created in their country, why their children are dead or deformed from depleted uranium or blown up by some of the 700,000 tons of bombs we’ve dropped on Iraqi towns, why there’s still no safe drinking water—no safe anything.

The administration calls its illegal and immoral war on Iraq a “war on terror,” but almost all military experts now admit that it’s creating more terrorists. A true “war on terror” would go after the true perpetrators of 9/11, and before you say who you think they are, check out David Ray Griffin’s book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.

Jeanie Keltner
Sacramento