Opinion - The Daily Lobo

Opinion

ISIS discussion was intended to denounce religious violence

April 7

Editor, Has the quality of education in America become so empty and meaningless that a UNM student would actually post an online video claiming the Muslim Student Association was holding a pro-ISIS rally at UNM? I am seriously concerned for the future of my country if a man can actually earn a high school diploma and be accepted at a university while being so woefully inadequate on such a basic level of critical thinking. Let me attempt to disabuse some of my fellow human beings at UNM about the MSA’s alleged support of ISIS.

Opinion

A sonnet in memory of Hector Torres, who was killed in 2010

April 6

The verses below, in Sonnet form, are written in honor of Hector Torres, a UNM professor killed five years ago. This Easter Monday would have been his 60th birthday.

Opinion

Defunding care for mentally ill can lead to tragedies

April 6

Editor, In the wake of the Germanwings Flight 9525 tragedy, it is hard not to ask questions about how better and more effective mental health services might prevent future catastrophe on large and small scales.

Opinion

Religious prejudice overtakes racism in the United States

April 6

Editor, In our country today, racism is being overtaken by religionism. That is quite a feat because there are all these completely different races constituting our epiphenomenon of a nation. Discrimination based on racism is on the decline because the laws that apply are well exercised by now. Not so with religionism, where there is dangerous regression.

Opinion

Letter: Video misrepresents MSA's position on ISIS, objective of event

April 3

Editor, Recent events on campus have created some division on campus. This was highlighted in the “ISIS Panel” that the Muslim Student Association held on AWednesday. Sadly, this event was misunderstood by a single student, and he presumed this was a pro-ISIS panel. The MSA stands firm in saying that this event was anti-ISIS, and MSA members had made this clear throughout the panel.

Opinion

Letter: Empathy is the core of religion, not antipathy

April 3

Editor, If I was a photographer, a baker or a florist, it would never occur to me to deny service to another human couple because they were different? If they were Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Scientologists, or Atheists, I’d take my camera equipment to the synagogue, the mosque, the church, the temple, the celebrity center, or the botanical gardens, and take the most exceptional photographs I could. If they were in the Tea Party I’d knock out some gnarly Obama jokes.

Opinion

Ignorant reaction to panel is no surprise

Sayyed Shah | April 3

In the wake of the recent reaction to the ASUNM resolution and the attacks on Muslim students across the United S. the reaction of the UNM student to an “anti-ISIS” debate arranged by Muslim Students Association was not a surprise. This is the way Muslims have been stereotyped by the mainstream media in the West, and this is the perception of Muslims some U.S. citizens have.

Opinion

Dr. Peg's Perscription

Dr. Peggy Spencer | April 2

In Blackout Theater’s infamous and irreverent video “S** Burqueños Say,” Lynette leans repeatedly around a corner, offering bottles of soda of varying colors and kinds (none of them Coke), asking each time, “You want a coke? You want a coke? You want a coke?” True to our melting pot nature, Americans have a variety of names for this type of beverage. Most common are “soft drink,” “pop” or “soda.” But whatever you call them, they are bad for your health. I know you know this. Sugary drinks are largely responsible for the obesity epidemic in this country. They rot your teeth and contribute to your risk of diabetes. I have seen patients who lost 20 to 30 pounds just by cutting out sodas. In 2012, New York City even made soda consumption into a public health issue by banning the sale of any soft drink larger than 16 ounces. Two years later, this ban was overturned, to public health officials’ disappointment and soda companies’ delight.

Opinion

Letter: GOP, not leftists, seem to forget we live in a republic

April 1

Editor, UNM student Sam Ryu fallaciously claims that Americans who criticize Israel are “supporting or thinking about seditious activities in order to overthrow the constitutional republic and replace it with a form of socialism.” Speaking of mental issues, what is Sam even talking about?

Opinion

Light pollution found to be wasteful and harmful

Amy Adams | March 31

Light pollution refers to excessive and unproductive artificial light that intrudes on the night landscape. Sometimes light pollution results from too many light sources crowding an area, which produce more light than needed. More often, light pollution results from lighting structures that direct light poorly, usually to the extent that less than half of the light emitted is used for the intended purpose of illuminating a particular object or patch of ground. Remaining light is wasted, usually radiating into space, illuminating unintended areas, or casting glare that interferes with night vision and surveillance.

Opinion

Letter: Injustice in race-baiting and U.S. treatment of Iran

March 30

The Republican letter to Iran stinks. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress also stinks, as does Elie Wiesel’s presence there. The American practice of vilifying Iran, dealing with them unfairly, specifically after it is American President Eisenhower who started their nuclear program, stinks.

Opinion

Letter: Leftists need to stop turning blind eye to reality

March 30

It is quite apparent that some UNM students are rabidly anti-Semitic and possess hatred for the constitutional republic that America is. It should make the reader question why these people want to live in America, unless they are supporting or thinking about seditious activities in order to overthrow the constitutional republic and replace it with a form of socialism. Nobody else is obligated to deal with the mental issues that these people project onto others. For example, claiming that 9/11 was a false flag operation that blames the Jews requires proof. Simply saying or claiming something does not imply the truth. The leftists who claim to value peace and freedom are contradicting themselves at every turn. What peace and freedom are these leftists referring to? Perhaps instead of making false accusations and personal attacks, these leftists should compete for the status of “ultimate victim.” Although leftists hate the notion of competition, they certainly don’t see a problem with a race for ultimate self-victimization. The fabricated versions of reality that these people produce may be associated with smoking too much marijuana or just being intoxicated with the socialist ideology, as they feel self-pity for their own selves, and become resentful and jealous of people who succeed the right way ... yes, the “right way” (no pun intended).

Opinion

Letter: Obama and Saudi Arabia are both in the wrong

March 30

I have heard more than one person say the United States has the best government money can buy. In what would seem to be an unfortunate confirmation of that statement, the Obama administration has recently given its blessing to Saudi Arabia’s recent invasion of Yemen. A popular uprising in Yemen recently sent former president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile, and Saudi Arabia seems hell-bent on shooting and bombing the new Yemeni government into submission.

Opinion

Letter: U.S. nuclear bombs threaten greatest massacres in history

March 30

The U.S. nuclear bombs designed for decades at Sandia and Los Alamos laboratories terrorize many whole nations. U.S. nuclear bombs threaten to incinerate many times more moms, dads and children than Hitler and the Nazis killed in gas ovens, concentration camps and Word War II. U.S. nuclear bombs are prepared to slaughter far more people than all the wars in human history combined. U.S. nuclear bombs are targeted to commit mass murder worldwide — thousands of times larger than the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. nuclear bombs are aimed to massacre far more human beings than all the street gangs, drug dealers, drunk drivers, rapists, deranged spouses, serial killers, Ku Klux Klan and Mafia combined. Even if the U.S. never again drops nuclear bombs on cities, the radioactive and chemical contamination from the making and testing of these weapons can sicken and kill millions of people for thousands of years. Many children will be ravaged by cancers or ruined immunity.

Opinion

Column: Gen-Y scores low on skills

Jason Darensburg | March 27

American Millennials are some of the most unskilled people in the world. That’s according to a recent study published by the Educational Testing Service titled “America’s Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future.” The Princeton-based researchers administered a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to measure the aptitude of adults in 23 different countries. Generation Y Americans — those born after 1980 — were shown to be lagging far behind their foreign counterparts in literacy, numeracy and basic problem-solving skills. Madeline Goodman is one of the report’s co-authors. She told Fortune magazine, “We really thought [U.S.] Millennials would do better than the general adult population, either compared to older coworkers in the U.S. or to the same age group in other countries, but they didn’t. In fact, their scores were abysmal.”

Opinion

Letter: Iran letter reveals who has interest in failure of peace

March 26

The recent letter sent to the Iranian leadership by 47 Republican senators threatening to repeal any peace agreement between the Iranian government and President Obama was quite shocking for an obvious reason. Treason is defined as “betraying one’s country.” Congress has acted at the behest of a foreign government, Israel, in order to betray its president in exchange for generous campaign contributions from Israeli allied special interest groups like AIPAC. If this action is not the very definition of treason, then I would argue that it comes uncomfortably close to crossing that line.

Opinion

Letter: Fear-mongering on oil prices ignores benefits to consumers

March 26

How come our media are mourning on and on and everywhere about how the drop of oil price per barrel is such a serious blow to our economy, and not a drop of relief mentioned on behalf of poor consumers who see lower prices at the pump? It is not just the corporatist media wringing their hands about the loss to profits to “big oil.” They could be expected to whine about how disappointed they are that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has refused to cut down on production so that oil prices can remain high.

Opinion

Letter: Attitudes expressed in letters show need for resolution

March 23

Yay for freedom of speech for revealing yet another bigot. And hurrah that our constitutional rights trump any University-wide resolution. I wonder: does Mr. Ryu’s letter in Friday’s paper qualify legally as hate speech? It certainly defames, mischaracterizes and slanders an entire religious community of millions of adherents. You could argue it threatens, too. It does not provide any support for the contention that the recent University resolution is a bad idea. Although I am not familiar with the specific wording in the resolution, my understanding is that, in the face of a real or perceived threat, students should be protected on a university campus in terms of their right to exercise their religious freedom in a safe and non-hostile environment. It is letters such as Mr. Ryu’s that make the resolution a necessity. The environment in the United States is one laden with fear and hostility towards Islam which, in the United States, is a minority faith. Muslim students, just like any other students, should not have to deal with this.

Opinion

Letter: Students need support in face of misconceptions about Islam

March 23

It has come to my attention that many negative and misleading things about Islam are being published in the Daily Lobo. As per my right to freedom of speech granted to me in the American Constitution, I would like to now respond to these attacks from the American Muslim point of view. First of all, I’d like to point out that lecturing people on what their religion teaches when you are not even a part of that religion is as if I went to a lawyer asking for a medical diagnosis. In Islam we have many different sects and schools of thought. In addition to the Sunni and Shi’a — the two main sects — in Sunni Islam we have four primary schools of thought, or madhebs. These schools of thought are set up to interpret Islamic jurisprudence. We also have many other different interpretations of Islam. So the idea that you can group everyone under “one” Islam is an ignorant attempt to paint all Muslims the same. Similarly, this type of language is actually utilized by terrorist groups in an attempt to make Muslims feel alienated from their societies and recruit them to join these organizations.

Opinion

Letter: Resolution 6S ignores violent history and bigotry of Islam

March 20

First, I’d like to thank David Lynch for showing fairness in publications and allowing fact-based criticisms of Islam to be openly voiced. The opposition to Resolution 6S is important because its intentions were made clear: attempting to treat “Islamophobia” as a hate crime. Allowing Resolution 6S to go unnoticed, unchecked or without consequences would set the precedent for future actions of bigotry to become accepted. It should also be noted that although ASUNM President Rachel Williams insinuated that Resolution 6S was not meant to force anybody into accepting a certain ideology, Resolution 6S and ASUNM urged the UNM administration to openly support the resolution. This goes beyond the realm of the “student body” and is a political attempt to enforce the resolution through UNM staff members. This action is an invitation for UNM staff members to become bigots themselves, as they show favoritism to Muslims and attempt to stigmatize, harass, intimidate or show prejudice against people who voice their anti-Islamic beliefs.