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All drivers on Shook Cove Road need to observe traffic laws
To the Editor:
When will stop signs be heeded? Do they really mean stop? Or do they just mean spin tires on pavement?
The people of Shook Cove Road, who live beyond the Bear Lake Reserve, are getting sick and tired of being nearly killed each and every time they leave their homes.
When we leave to go to work, to go see family, or to go to Sylva, we hardly get down the road before people from Bear Lake Reserve come flying out onto the road. There’s a stop sign there, do they see it? Surely they do, but do they stop? I think not.
I myself have been nearly hit almost every day because of people not stopping at the sign. These people coming out of this reserve need to realize people live on that road. There are houses other than the ones on the reserve. They need to take more caution for others’ safety and stop at the stop sign.
When coming out of Shook Cove Road before you reach the reserve, there is a curve. The people coming around that curve cannot tell whether someone is coming out of the reserve. So what is there to do? Keep going, being scared to death that someone is going to fly out of there and hit them? I think not.
We’re all sick of worrying day after day about getting our vehicles ruined by some person that’s not stopping at that sign. They need to understand that people live on this road – it’s not just for the reserve.
I want this madness to stop.
Melissa Farmer
Tuckasegee
Gas prices are not president’s fault
To the Editor:
When will all wake up and understand gas prices are not the fault of the President?
Supply and demand. Example: Fourth of July, all could have stayed home and had a picnic with family, but no – 4 million people hit the road, and you wonder why gas is so high. Tell me if you owned a gas station and knew 4 million people where going on the road what would you charge for gas?
You can vote for your Democrats all you want, but until the American people quit burning up the highways gas will stay the same.
Mike Gunter
Whittier
Herald editorial was incomplete
To the Editor:
I am writing in regard to the Herald’s editorial of Aug. 10 titled “County leaders acted wisely to protect citizens.”
Although I agree entirely with that title line, I have to admit to being just a bit offended by the fact that the Herald neglected to recall that quite a few other people worked very hard for more than a year trying to convince the commissioners to make that “wise decision.” The commissioners did not wake up one morning and suddenly decide to act so wisely. When the Qualla citizens opposed to a new asphalt plant first expressed concerns to the commissioners, we were told that due to a lack of zoning laws, there was little they could do.
We should all be thanking the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League for its pioneering work in helping various citizen’s groups organize and advocate effectively for polluting/high impact/industrial development ordinances. We should thank citizens in Ashe, Henderson, Cherokee and Macon counties who were fighting the same battle long before us. It was their experience with moratoriums and ordinances that allowed us to effectively advocate here in Jackson County.
We should thank Jim Renfro, the air quality specialist for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for the presentation he gave county officials on air pollution problems in Western North Carolina. Many officials told me that what they learned from him encouraged them to try to protect Jackson County.
We should all thank the Mountain Resource Center at Western Carolina University for helping us understand our rights to attend public meetings and have access to public documents. Our efforts to participate in county government were not always met with full cooperation. I still recall the day I called WCU to ask a question about our rights and was told that the chairman of the county’s Economic Development Commission had called just before me to see if he really had to allow us access to all EDC meetings and documents. Thankfully, they told us both “yes.”
The Herald need thank itself, for besides printing our letters, announcing our community meetings, and reporting on the effort, they kept reminding county government of its responsibility to obey North Carolina’s Open Meetings law and informed the public when government neglected to do so.
And finally, surely The Herald should thank the hundreds of people who supported the Qualla Community Development Council in working hard, for more than a year, to convince the EDC and commissioners to enact the ordinance we now have. I still have the database of supporters we created back in 2001, and it numbers well over 300 households of concerned people, and not just from Qualla. Several principal organizers took on what became a part time job to support our effort. The Herald’s own reporting of the public hearing just before the vote on the ordinance, after more than a year of hard work, reminds us that support among the commissioners for the full protection of the current ordinance was still wavering even then. Many citizens stayed late even that last night to talk with an undecided commissioners’ chairman.
I hope our past efforts will now protect the Tuckasegee community from unwanted development, but I fear The Herald’s editorial commending the commissioners for their wisdom, but neglecting to mention the efforts of so many others who campaigned for that wisdom, might leave people with a false sense of history, and their responsibility to be a part of our future history. The Industrial Development Ordinance was just one small step toward protecting the future of Jackson County, and was long overdue when enacted. It did not protect Qualla from the raceway or the helicopter, and there are a great many issues regarding unhealthy development it does not begin to address.
I do believe our current and incoming commissioners are increasingly trying to act wisely, but they still desperately need active public support to overcome the inevitable resistance to change. It is said that it takes a whole village to raise a child. It was my experience that it took a whole extended WNC community to “wisely” enact the Industrial Development Ordinance.
It is my hope that The Herald will have future opportunity to write editorials thanking the commissioners for many more wise decisions. I simply encourage them to remember to recall the whole story, the many sources of such wisdom, that we may consciously strive to encourage them all.
Robert Franz
Whittier
Terrorism – another wake-up call
To the Editor:
On Aug. 10, the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard, with assistance from other allied intelligence and security organizations, prevented a mass terrorist attack. They penetrated the plotters who planned to use liquid explosives contained in carry-on luggage to down at least 10 planes leaving for the United States.
Reports indicate more than 20 people have been arrested and perhaps the cell may contain as many as 50 people. If the terrorists had been successful, this operation could have caused an unimaginable catastrophe exceeding the casualties from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
This is the fifth anniversary year of that attack, which is a significant date for organizations like al Qaeda, which appears to be the terrorist group planning this attack. Al Qaeda seems to have a fixation on using commercial aircraft for their terrorist attacks. For example, Abdel Basit, who is also known as Ramzi Yousef, assembled a cell of operatives who began to plan for Operation Bojinka, a plan to simultaneously destroy 12 airliners en route to the United States from Asian cities. Their plan was to use a modular improvised device constructed of a doll stuffed with nitrocellulose, a detonator and a timer made from a modified Casio wristwatch. Once they got on the aircraft, the devices were to be assembled in the aircraft’s rest room.
In 1994, the cell tested its device on Philippine Airlines flight 434. The device detonated, but did not bring down the plane. It did kill one person and wounded 10. Because of this failure, they decided to augment their main charge with a liquid form of acetone peroxide explosive, which they were going to place in contact lens solution bottles. Fortunately, while brewing the liquid explosive something went wrong, and the apartment caught fire. A laptop computer was recovered from the apartment and the plans for Bojinka were discovered. Basit left the Philippines and fled to Pakistan, where one of his bombers turned him in. Richard Reed the shoe bomber is another example of al Qaeda’s efforts to use an aircraft to kill innocent people.
Once the decision is made to ban liquids and small electronic items from commercial aircraft, jihadists will find another alternative. They are flexible and learn from our mistakes, intelligence leaks and security procedures. Since Sept. 11, 2001, we are safer, but not safe.
Al Qaeda’s ability to plan and launch successful attacks against the western world seems to be degraded. Intelligence and security organizations like Scotland Yard, and our own Homeland Security organizations like the FBI and CIA are making a huge difference in protecting our people. The Patriot Act and National Security Administration wiretapping are also proving their worth in precluding the execution of terrorist acts.
However, al Qaeda’s importance may have diminished, only to be filled by another terrorist structure.
Iran continues to pursue efforts to develop nuclear weapons, while creating greater influence with Shiites in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran appears to be calling the shots with both of these groups. Militant Islamism appears to have passed from the Sunni/Wahhabi al Qaeda to the Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. This is a significant change and has the potential for creating even more instability in the Middle East while expanding the jihad against western civilizations.
I believe we have precluded a major terrorist act in the United States because of the vigilance of our Homeland Security organizations, and we have been on the offense by taking the fight to the terrorists. Being an isolationist nation reflects weakness, appeasement and surrender and will have catastrophic results. They are still going to come after us, which is what they have done for more than 30 years. Islamic fundamentalists only understand strength. They are not rational in their thinking and on a daily basis talk about the destruction of Israel and our economy and way of life. These people have a seventh-century mentality and want to take us back to the days of Muhammad.
A recent news media poll indicated more than 90 percent of American people do not understand what the war on terror is all about. A military person interviewed on television news recently said that our military is at war, and the American people are shopping at the mall, meaning they failed to understand the severity of the war on terror and the impact on our way of life. Hopefully, this recent foiled al Qaeda plan of attack and the potential for catastrophic results will serve as a wake up call for all of us.
Geoffrey Higginbotham, Major General USMC (Ret.)
Cashiers
The fleecing of America
To the Editor:
The American consumer is being had by the oil industry. Gas pricing is a complicated business by design but the outcome is not – repulsive profits by the oil industry at the expense of the consumer. But there is much about the oil industry that is not complicated.
Things like competition for consumer business – this is a thing of the past. The oil industry has learned that they have a product that we must have in America and got together by design to eliminate any competition for consumer business.
In effect they said to each other, “Why should we compete when we can be teammates? Let’s design an industry where gas consumers do not have a choice about the price of gas.”
Much of this was accomplished by big oil companies buying up the smaller ones. Locally, you can see this effect when the stations where you buy gas set their prices together with other stations in the area. When was the last time you saw a “price war” between local stations for your business? What drives this industry is their greed for maximum profit. This is seen in their quarterly reports of excessively obscene profits at the consumers’ expense. And what they do is legal. Of course, being legal does not mean it’s the right thing to do.
Another area of consumer concern is gas-price stability. One would think the oil industry would have contingency plans in place to prevent extreme gas price jumps from unexpected events such as hurricanes, gas line repairs or disturbances in the Middle East. This was the norm not that many years ago. But they figured out they could use the unexpected to jump prices and increase profits. They now even jump prices on what might happen, and seemingly there is nothing the average man can do about it because it’s all legal. The oil industry understands the law of supply and demand, therefore they control the supply of gas to increase demand and increase prices. I do not believe that there has ever been any shortage in supply of gas, but I do believe gas supply has been held back to push gas prices even higher.
Today, it is even more apparent that the oil industry is using world events and natural disasters to manipulate and condition the average consumer in regard to gas prices. We have all noticed that something happens, such as a storm in the Gulf, and gas prices go up 10 cents a gallon for a period of time but then will go down 5 cents. Later it’s something else – prices go up a lot and then come down some. This happens over and over until the prices are extremely high and the public shows they can handle the higher prices. Then we have been successfully manipulated and conditioned.
Well, I am not sure what can be done about the fleecing of America in regard to gas prices, but I am sure we will see continued high prices as long as the public remains quiet and takes it without a fight. I would encourage each person to vocalize their unrest and dismay with the current gas price situation. Contact your legislatures at both the state and national levels, flood the newspapers with letters, organize against the oil industry, do something and do not forget to vote.
John Dills
Webster
Impressed with local emergency responders
To the Editor:
Last Saturday my son and I were right behind the accident that occurred on U.S. 441 South. My son called 911, and we waited for help to arrive. We would like to commend everyone involved in responding to the accident.
The person that answered the 911 call was clear and kind. The first responders arrived within a couple of minutes, followed very closely by a truck from the Savannah Volunteer Fire Department. Immediate steps were taken to control the traffic, to be prepared for fire, and to keep the accident victims calm and as comfortable as possible. The N.C. Highway Patrol officers were very professional and thorough in their investigation and were very courteous to the witnesses and others involved. The WestCare emergency personnel were exemplary in their care of those injured in the accident, as were the members of Mission Hospitals’ MAMA transport team.
While I was shaken by our proximity to the accident and the severity of the injuries we saw, I am very grateful to live in an area where emergency services are so prompt, professional and caring. My son is moving to New York City next week. I hope that should he ever have a need for them, he will find people just like the ones we saw at work last Saturday.
Kathleen Redman
Sylva
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