Opinion

Ed toons

Letter: UNM should join in effort to rid the world of nukes

Editor, It is a shock to read about the conference this Friday hosted by UNM and Sandia National Laboratories to discuss their collaboration on the reliable replacement warhead. The announcement of this event sounds almost celebratory. Of course, we a

Letter: New Sigma Chi members not responsible for past

Editor, In 2000, while I was a junior at UNM, the infamous Sigma Chi incident occurred in which a member of the fraternity duct-taped a swastika onto a car parked illegally on the frat's property. That member was appropriately disciplined. Two years later, the fraternity managed to egregiously violate its own charter and its terms with UNM.

Column: Sweetener subsidies

by Whitney J. Davis Daily Lobo columnist If you have ever read a food label, then you might have heard of high-fructose corn syrup. It is found in nearly every processed food in the United States, including sodas like Coca-Cola. If you have ever bought a Coke outside the U.

Column: Fear silences 1st Amendment

by Mario Hernandez Daily Lobo columnist I have always thought the human race's greatest gift was free will and the ability to let free expression bloom. However, it seems in recent times that this gift and our ideas are being stifled. We are being told what to think, what we can read, what we can write and what we should and should not say.

Column: Q & A: Denis Halliday: Former assistant secretary general of the United Nations

by Matthew Chavez Daily Lobo columnist Denis Halliday is the former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and was appointed U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq in 1997 by Secretary General Kofi Annan. Halliday, regarded as a leading Western expert on Iraq, resigned one year after his appointment, ending a more than 30-year career.

Letter: Billions of dollars wasted to fight imaginary threats

Editor, It should serve as some indication of the dire straits that we are in when the current spending habits of the U.S. military exceed those at the height of the Cold War. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the United States military has an allocated 2006 budget of nearly $420 billion, not counting nondiscretionary spending and the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Letter: APS keeps bond money even if West Side splits

Editor, I don't know why people aren't more upset. The $351 million school bond issue passed a week ago. A lot of people think that West Side interests would be served by splitting from Albuquerque Public Schools. But APS says that if the West Side splits, the city can keep the bond money.

Letter: Comic lacks creativity; artist should get a life

Editor, As a committed reader of the Daily Lobo, I just wanted to express my disappointment in the paper for publishing something of as little quality as the Herb and Pete comic. The Herb and Pete comic that you regularly print lacks any ingenuity or creativity at all.

Letter: Liberals should support giving rights to children

Editor, I enjoyed Benjamin Sanchez's letter to the editor in Thursday's Daily Lobo. He might enjoy taking a broader look into philosophy. One great philosopher, often called the father of conservative thought, is Edmund Burke. He believed that strong traditions have withstood the test of time and should not be changed based on whims, fashion or folly.

Letter: Remarks of Hugo Chávez held to different standard

Editor, I would like to commend Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, on their public defense of President Bush in the face of the hostility of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Among other things, Chávez asserted that Bush was "the devil" at a speech addressing the United Nations.

Letter: Negative effects no match for tobacco ads' strength

Editor, As college students, it may be difficult to believe the media is still campaigning intensely toward our age group in hopes that our minds will be easily molded by their tactics. It is not only high school and middle school youth that are greatly targeted by tobacco corporations in magazines, gas stations and product placement ads within movies and TV shows.

Ed toons

Letter: White phosphorous not made for use on humans

Editor, This is in response to Brian Fejer's letter citing statistics on dead Iraqis and on the use of weapons such as white phosphorous. The current statistics, according to the Web site Antiwar.com, cite 48,000 Iraqis dead. Though not a small amount, this is much lower than the 150,000 quoted by Fejer.

Letter: Fear should be instilled in Middle Eastern countries

Editor, On Aug. 6, 1945, American airmen detonated a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, and three days later dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. The bombs are estimated to have killed almost 300,000 people, most of them civilians. Had we invaded Japan, a country with an army far larger than Iraq, the cost of life would have been far greater for the U.

Letter: War profiteering at UNM has caused great harm

Editor, Nuclear weapons are poor tools for making peace. Nukes are indiscriminate weapons of mass murder. They kill women, children, the sick, the ill and anyone nearby. They contaminate the gene pool of future generations with mutations and cancers. That is why weapons of mass destruction are called terror weapons, and people around the world have worked hard to get rid of them.

Letter: Democratic take on family respectful and tolerant

Editor, I wanted to respond to a letter in Thursday's Daily Lobo by Benjamin Sanchez regarding the Democratic Party's stance on family issues. After several readings, Sanchez's letter appears to boil family values down to three main issues: abortion, homosexuality and religion.

Letter: Colonial thinking used to label cultures as evil

Editor, I was disturbed to read Damian Erasmus' attack on multiculturalism in a letter to the Daily Lobo on Sept. 15. The view that one culture must be superior to others mirrors imperialist and colonial thinking; a viewpoint which throughout history has justified oppression and outright genocide toward cultures viewed as inferior or not fully human.

Letter: Meaning of 9/11 stolen for political purposes

Editor, On Sept. 11, 2002, it was raining in Albuquerque. The day fit the somber mood of the people gathered Downtown to pay tribute to those killed on that tragic day one year earlier. On Sept. 11, 2003, it was a beautiful fall day in New York, the time of year in which the city is alive as the suffocating heat of summer has ended.

Letter: UNM should be purged of corrupt administrators

Editor, UNM is unquestionably the most dangerous place in Western civilization to pursue an education. I don't believe too much of what the FBI says, but every year it puts UNM at the top of the list for most campus crime at a big university, and every year UNM responds by saying that the FBI doesn't know how to crunch the numbers.