Opinion - The Daily Lobo

Opinion

Letter: Voters choose candidates based on ignorance

August 20

American politics is quite silly – absurd, even. This irreverent perspective goes beyond a critique of the veneration that cartoon characters like Donald Trump receive from much of the conservative body politic: It is a viewpoint that strikes at a very deep, very real problem that appears to be embedded in the American political fabric. The problem, you see, is the American voter’s dutiful allegiance to a willful culture of ignorance. American culture, broadly speaking, is not well-known for scientific literacy. After all, we are rather good at turning out high school students who simply do not measure up in STEM areas compared to students from many other “developed” or “First-World” nations.

Opinion

Letter: Trump and his honesty are the only ways to save the United States

August 20

Editor, I strongly agree with Ms. Woods’ assessment of Donald Trump and his comments. He is one of the few politicians speaking what they think and meaning it. I may not agree with everything Mr. Trump has to say, but the fact that he is speaking honestly to the silent majority of people in this great country of ours is more admirable than I have the words to verbalize about.

Opinion

Letter: Support for Trump's hatred of immigrants not backed by facts

August 17

ntolerance is courageous? I grieved to read Rev. Mary Woods’ letter “Donald Trump shows courage in illegal immigrant comments.” As director of the NM Faith Coalition for Immigrant Justice, I dread ministers promoting intolerant messages so disconnected from Christianity. The heart of Rev. Woods’ message — that recent events have ignited discussion around racism bringing us to a crossroads — holds truth. Our country has skirted race for too long, and the imperative to address it is now. For someone experienced with racism to justify supposed “protective racism” is counterintuitive.

Opinion

Column: Don't just vote - you are ASUNM

Jenna Hagengruber and Alexandra Cervantes | August 17

Who honestly cares about ASUNM? What do they even do (aside from wearing bright colors and harassing people twice a year asking them to vote)? We know that student government can seem irrelevant, and the work we do sometimes doesn’t quite reach the student body in the way we hope it to. But we wouldn’t stand out there in heels, getting sunburns and creepily approaching strangers, if we didn’t believe in something bigger.

Opinion

Letter: It's only a matter of time before Trump backers are disappointed

August 17

It was with a great deal of disgust that I read Rev. Mary E. Woods’ letter entitled “Donald Trump shows courage in illegal immigrant comments.” Trump’s focus and forte center on only political non-correctness. Just because he can yell and scream like a brat, a certain segment of the population thinks that’s cool.

Opinion

Letter: Donald Trump shows courage in illegal immigrant comments

August 10

Recent events in America have ignited some serious discussions around racism and placed our country at the crossroads of social and political divide. As a Christian, providentially called and ecclesiastically ordained minister and board-certified chaplain, I am impelled to pen my sentiments during this trying time in the history of these United States of America. From my vantage point as an African-American of Cherokee and Blackfoot Indian descent, raised in the Jim Crow city of Birmingham, Alabama, I have always viewed racism as overt and covert; that there could be no reasonable rationale for this social stigma. Yet the remarks attributed to Donald Trump regarding Mexican immigrants led me to entertain the idea of “protective” racism, which can fall into either category cited above. In stating that “Mexico sends its rapists, drug dealers, et. al., to the United States,” I contend that he was speaking out of the realization and concern that steps need to be taken to rein in runaway immigration practices by our neighbors to the south, who somehow feel that they have an entitlement to the services and benefits that we citizens have struggled for years to enjoy.

Opinion

Letter: Blocking threats from the world blocks beneficial sharing

August 10

When you put together the recent large-scale hacking of classified U.S. personnel data by the Chinese with the extraordinary number of Chinese nationals at American universities today, you see a blurring of the lines between researching for purposes of pure scholarship and malicious spying. In that hack, the Chinese were allegedly looking for our spies operating in their country. But we spy on China well enough to tell that it is they who are spying. Then we have been known to block participation by Chinese scientists in international conferences held here, thereby stifling the growth of purely scientific and benign knowledge which can only happen these days if totally non-political research nerds can share discoveries and data openly without intimidating visits by national security agencies. We have even blocked the mutual sharing of scholarly scientific findings, even for medical benefit, with tiny Cuba.

Opinion

Letter: Daily Lobo's new direction may lead away from loyal readers

July 13

Just because everybody in the media world is jumping off the cliff like lemmings to join the digital world doesn’t mean the Daily Lobo has to as well. Clearly, this is an economic decision and I wish the editorial staff of the Daily Lobo had the huevos to simply come out and say it: Printing on paper with ink costs a hell of a lot of money. On the other hand, because just about everybody and their dog is going digital, the printed word has an impact like never before.

Opinion

Letter: Safety for Indian students is in jeopardy throughout US

July 6

What do the following international graduate students from India in the United States have in common: Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, both of Louisiana State University; Randhir Kaur of University of California, San Francisco; Sai Kiran of Miami Atlantic University? They were all innocently going about their business, working hard pursuing advanced degrees, and were murdered.

Opinion

Column: The reality of being a journalist

Kevin Haaf | June 29

When I applied for a job with the Daily Lobo I pictured a room crowded with papers and overflowing ashtrays. I envisioned coffee cups full of rum with melting ice. I heard, in my mind, people yelling across each other about the hottest topics, demanding phone numbers and confirmation: “Did the governor really say that?!” I saw myself taking a questionable assignment and prying open a window to get to the files that would finally put away that dirtbag politician. I would drag the hegemony down by blasting it with the holy light of journalism! I quickly figured out that I knew nothing of journalism. Everything Hunter S. Thompson taught me about reporting was wrong. With no experience and little functional knowledge in the field, my first two submissions were rapidly rejected. The world of journalism — especially college journalism — is full of obscure rules. Brought upon me with the most immediate rigor was the first-person rule: Nothing in a story is to be written in first person.

Opinion

Letter: Special session Legislature must reconsider education funds

June 15

On June 8, the New Mexico Legislature was called back into a special session to reconsider passing the $295 million capital outlay bill that died in the final days of the 2015 legislative session. The special session requires that lawmakers return to Santa Fe to reconsider spending on capital projects critical to higher education and communities throughout rural New Mexico. Not only does capital outlay provide improvements to public facilities in local communities, but it also provides much-needed jobs through the construction and improvements of facilities in a state that currently ranks 48th in job growth. The special session is an opportunity to restore some of the funding request made my colleges and universities throughout New Mexico. Gov. Susana Martinez and House Republicans had proposed a 44 percent cut to institutions of higher education throughout the state during the 60-day regular session — now is the time to restore these cuts. Some of those cuts included building and infrastructure improvement such as roof improvements to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, a tech center at UNM Gallup, and improvements to UNM’s Health Education Building. Smaller institutions critical to the state mission of higher education, such as Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, also depend on capital improvement funds to maintain buildings, and have requested $500,000 to upgrade a fire alarm system to be in compliance with fire regulations.

Opinion

LGBT edition column: How many strikes until everyone's out?

Thomas Romero-Salas | June 8

Not long ago, the idea of a gay athlete was foreign to many. Yes, there had been athletes who ‘came out’ after their playing days were over, but their stories were relegated to the back pages of the newspapers, or not talked about at all. That long-held stance has since fallen to the wayside with Jason Collins and Michael Sam breaking barriers by coming out as gay during their careers. Collins became the first openly gay active NBA player when he took to the court for the Brooklyn Nets in 2014. Sam was the first openly gay player to be chosen in the NFL draft when St. Louis selected him with the 294th pick just last year.

Opinion

Letter: Religious extremism should be rightly classified as psychosis

May 26

Now that we acknowledge drug-induced psychosis, we should also acknowledge psychosis induced purely by religion. After all, ISIL among the Muslims, the KKK among the Christians, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh among the Hindus are all gangs of violent psychopaths. The problem is that any religion is very clever at broadcasting that it is the corresponding non-believers who have this or that delusion, not they. Take climate change. Well-funded Christian fundamentalists, even in this scientifically advanced country, claim that climate change is delusion. In reality, it is they who are delusional about man-made climate change as fact — the most obvious causative factor to anybody breathing being the plumes of pollution blanketing the sky throughout the thin skin around Earth we call the atmosphere. But self-proclaimed Christian “scientists” get into government and say things like “You only have to reflect God, and you can breathe anything and you will never fall sick.” Then they take their hats off to the likes of the Koch brothers, who toss in more change. Or Christians imagine some “God” to be pulling the strings and sending down lightning with pinpoint accuracy in the manner of laser-guided missiles, and thus effecting climate change, not man.

Opinion

Letter: City promotes inequality by rewarding pay disparity

May 26

Some say the city has taken a step forward by giving preferred treatment on city contract bidding to employers who pay women within 10 percent of what they pay their male employees for the same work. So, let me get this straight: if you pay women less than men, you get preferred treatment in city contracts? Am I missing something here?

Opinion

Column: Reluctant reviewer reflects on critical years

Graham Gentz | May 4

I never wanted to be a monster. I never really wanted to be a reviewer. But I just want to say: it’s been a weird gig. I’ve always been a theater person — actor, writer and director, when I’m lucky — but I never thought I would ever take part in one of the most mysterious and maligned occupations around. In the summer of 2010 I was in the first “Will Power! Shakespeare Festival” at the Vortex Theatre. I was asked to talk about it in an interview for the June 14 issue of the Daily Lobo. Incarnations of it still exist online somewhere, including a picture of me standing in a tree.

Opinion

Letter: Groups like the Islamic State misrepresent claimed labels

April 30

UNM student Samuel Ryu’s Monday letter possesses some really ill logic. Is President Obama both a socialist and a secret Muslim? (He seems like more of a pragmatist and secret atheist to me?) How do Obama’s “secret Muslim beliefs” square with his strong support of human rights for women and gays? Is that all part of the conspiracy? How many infidels has the POTUS beheaded today?

Opinion

Letter: Senators' sensitivity does little for the suffering of Palestine

April 27

Referring to the protracted equivocation on the part of our ASUNM Senate to pass the resolution to divest from certain American multinationals implicitly supporting the effective imprisonment and brutalizing of an entire demographic just because they are Palestinian: Imagine a hypothetical ASUNM having a similar session back during World War II. The resolution demands UNM divest from companies, like IBM and Ford, that were supporting Nazi Germany, which was imprisoning and brutalizing an entire demographic just because they were Jewish.

Opinion

Letter: No matter who says otherwise, Islam isn't a religion of peace

April 27

I commend Dean of Students Tomas Aguirre for bravely stating that the ISIS panel denounced ISIS. Apparently his authority position gives credibility to this claim. But we do not need to settle for this. In fact, we should look higher — to our commander-in-chief/comrade-in-chief/secret Muslim (take your pick) in the White House. After all, isn’t this the ultimate authority figure in our nation who has claimed that Islam is a religion of peace? The problem is that these claims have no Islamic basis for justification. Simply claiming this or that without substantiation means nothing. However, we should keep in mind that these people are human beings too, and that they have made an error about “the religion of peace.” Muslims cannot explicitly deny jihad without discrediting authentic Islamic sources. Simply stating opposition to ISIS could actually mean frustration that a Muslim group has gone too fast and too far ahead of the rest of the umma — in this case, the likes of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Obviously, a more subtle approach such as civilization jihad is necessary, as advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood and recently by an ISIS manual on deception for Muslims.

Opinion

Letter: Student-parents should not be condemned for trying to succeed

April 24

Editor, I want to clear something up for those of you who saw my story on the news about a month ago, since a lot of people seem to think parents asking for more support on campus is an act of entitlement and being ungrateful. If a department chooses to have a lactation center, then they should fulfill that promise and make sure that resource is available to nursing mothers.

Opinion

Leonhart a sympton of DEA corruption

Jason Darensburg | April 24

Michele Leonhart’s days as head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency are numbered. Last week, members of the House Oversight Committee delivered a vote of “no confidence” in her leadership abilities. Leonhart’s tenure as chief administrator for the troubled agency has seen a litany of scandals including, among others, the massacre of civilians in Honduras, defying President Obama on medical marijuana, the use of NSA metadata to illegally spy on Americans, and systematically fabricating evidence to obstruct federal investigations into the agency.