Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/446396
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Ah,winterhasarrivedinallitsglory,whichmeansonething: more sledding bans. According to The Associ- ated Press, Dubuque, Iowa, has banned sledding at 48 of its 50 municipal parks. The reason: costly lawsuits. In one case, a 5-year-old girl in Omaha, Neb., hit a tree while sledding and became paralyzed. In another case in Sioux City, Iowa, a man suf- fered a spinal cord injury af- ter sledding into a sign. The first case resulted in a $2 mil- lion judgment, the second in a $2.75 million judgment. To be sure, sledding comes with some risk. Newsweek cites statistics in a study by the Center for Injury Re- search and Policy at Nation- wide Children's Hospital — that sledding injuries send more than 20,000 kids to the hospital every year, of which 9 percent suffer traumatic brain injury. On one hand, I can't fault municipalities for banning an activity that may result in a sizable financial hit to their bottom line. At the same time, I lament the litigiousness and overprotectiveness that has become the hallmark of mod- ern times. When I was a young lad in the '70s, about a million kids hit the sledding slopes every time the snow fell. Unlike to- day, when you see two or three adults chaperoning every one kid, there wasn't a single adult in sight. About every 20 minutes, a kid would wipe out, tumbling round and round as mittens, ear muffs and boots came fly- ing off. The kid would lie at the bottom of a hill, moaning, for a little while. I certainly had my fair share of wipeouts. I had always been a Flexible Flyer type of fellow — I loved the superior steering control the thing gave me and it was safer than other nutty sled- ding devices, such as the alu- minum saucer, which gave a kid zero control — but I used it so much, it eventually broke. I had to revert to a poor kid's sledding device, the Mini-Bog- gan. The Mini-Boggan was in- vented by a woman named Eu- nice Carlin, who apparently was trying to kill her chil- dren. Carlin was tired of her kids using their book bags to slide down snowy hills, so she worked with her next-door neighbor, a plastics executive, to produce it. It was a thin, light, rectan- gular sheet that you laid on as you careened downhill at sev- eral hundred miles an hour, spinning uncontrollably un- til you collided with whatever you were inevitably going to collide with. I made the mistake of rid- ing a Mini-Boggan only once. Unable to guide the thing, I slid off to the far right of our course, where one father had sawed down six pine trees to stumps. My Mini-Boggan carried me over every one of them — six giant pistons that pounded into my ribs and stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I lay there in agony for several minutes before I was able to get up. Needless to say, the risk and liability of the Mini-Bog- gan were the stuff of dreams for lawyers — which is why, thankfully, it is no longer made. The regrettable truth is that there will always be risk in life. We can't protect our kids from all of it without also pre- venting them from growing, exploring and discovering on their own. So, what's the solution? When towns ban sledding on park hills to reduce their risk exposure, look elsewhere. And be cautious when sled- ding anywhere. Wear a hel- met. Invest in a good-qual- ity sled, which gives you su- perior control. Chart your course to avoid dangerous paths. And if somebody shows up with a Mini-Boggan, burn it TomPurcell,authorof"Mis- adventures of a 1970s Child- hood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pitts- burgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons. com. Tom Purcell Just in time for winter, a slippery slope The regrettable truth is that there will always be risk in life. We can't protect our kids from all of it without also preventing them from growing, exploring and discovering on their own. Cartoonist's take After the tragic shooting at a provocative magazine in Paris last week, I pointed out that given the foreign policy posi- tions of France we must con- sider blowback as a factor. Those who do not under- stand blowback made the ridic- ulous claim that I was excus- ing the attack or even blaming the victims. Not at all, as I abhor the initiation of force. The po- lice blaming victims when they search for the motive of a crim- inal. The mainstream media imme- diately decided that the shooting was an attack on free speech. Many in the US preferred this version of "they hate us because we are free," which is the claim that President Bush made after 9/11. They expressed solidarity with the French and vowed to fight for free speech. But have these people not no- ticed that the First Amendment is routinely violated by the US government? President Obama has used the Espionage Act more than all previous adminis- trations combined to silence and imprison whistleblowers. Where are the protests? Where are protesters demand- ing the release of John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the CIA use of waterboarding and other torture? The whistleblower went to prison while the torturers will not be prosecuted. No pro- tests. If Islamic extremism is on the rise, the US and French gov- ernments are at least partly to blame. The two Paris shooters had reportedly spent the sum- mer in Syria fighting with the rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Assad. They were also said to have recruited young French Muslims to go to Syria and fight Assad. But France and the United States have spent nearly four years training and equipping foreign fighters to infiltrate Syria and overthrow Assad. In other words, when it comes to Syria, the two Paris killers were on "our" side. They may have even used French or US weap- ons while fighting in Syria. Beginning with Afghani- stan in the 1980s, the US and its allies have deliberately rad- icalized Muslim fighters in the hopes they would strictly fight those they are told to fight. We learned on 9/11 that sometimes they come back to fight us. The French learned the same thing last week. Will they make better decisions knowing the blowback from such risky foreign policy? It is unlikely because they re- fuse to consider blowback. They prefer to believe the fantasy that they attack us because they hate our freedoms, or that they can- not stand our free speech. Perhaps one way to make us all more safe is for the US and its allies to stop supporting these extremists. Another lesson from the at- tack is that the surveillance state that has arisen since 9/11 is very good at following, listen- ing to, and harassing the rest of us but is not very good at stop- ping terrorists. We have learned that the two suspected attack- ers had long been under the watch of US and French intel- ligence services. They had re- portedly been placed on the US no-fly list and at least one of them had actually been con- victed in 2008 of trying to travel to Iraq to fight against the US occupation. According to CNN, the two suspects traveled to Yemen in 2011 to train with al-Qaeda. So they were individuals known to have direct terrorist associa- tions. How many red flags is it necessary to set off before action is taken? How long did US and French intelligence know about them and do nothing, and why? Foreign policy actions have consequences. The aggressive foreign poli- cies of the United States and its allies in the Middle East have radicalized thousands and have made us less safe. Blowback is real whether some want to rec- ognize it or not. There are no guarantees of security, but only a policy of non-intervention can reduce the risk of another at- tack. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential can- didate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. Ron Paul Lessons to be learned from Paris attack Another view By Dick Polman The terrorist massacre in Paris was a fundamental as- sault on freedom of expression. Everyone who thinks freely, writes freely, draws freely, and snarks freely knows what it was about. But, alas, our friends at Fox News have their own special take on the matter. Their message, distilled to its essence: This kind of terrorism hap- pens because Obama. This kind of terrorism happens because De Blasio. This kind of terror- ism happens because Hillary. I am not kidding. The Fox ap- paratchiks were in high dudg- eon on Wednesday — demon- strating, yet again, that even the most hideous tragedies are mere grist for their ideologi- cal grinder. I say this not in an- ger, but in exasperation: Even now, can't these people just give it a rest? Fox contributor Richard Grenell, referring to the Paris killers, tweeted: "Remember, Hillary wants you to empathize with these people." (Good luck trying to find a single instance when Hillary ever said that we should "empathize" with ter- rorists who kill western civil- ians.) Fox military analyst Tom McInerney, while noting that some Paris cops don't carry guns, predicted that "commu- nist mayor" Bill de Blasio might make it harder for New York City cops to carry guns. Fox host Eric Bolling said de Blasio is "pointing fingers at the cops, taking tools out of their hands, for whatever, for whomever they want to stop and frisk, lis- ten in to. It's very dangerous in light of what's going on around the world." But one of the Foxblondes took the prize. This, yesterday, from Gretchen Carlson: "It is what it is. It, meaning terrorism. Terrorism is what it is. So why does the adminis- tration continue to have such a problem telling the American people and the rest of the world just that? Is that a disservice to all of us? In some way giving us a false sense of security? That since our own leaders don't see any of these attacks as terrorism right away, neither should we?" It's the Benghazi playbook all over again, the Fox claim that Team Obama refuses to ut- ter the word terrorism and thus sends a message of weakness to terrorists. Why the Foxblonde felt compelled to dredge up that meme is a total mystery — be- cause, earlier in the day, Team Obama had already uttered the T-word. Repeatedly. This statement, from Obama himself: "France is America's oldest ally, and has stood shoul- der to shoulder with the United States in the fight against ter- rorists who threaten our shared security and the world....France, and the great city of Paris where this outrageous attack took place, offer the world a timeless example that will en- dure well beyond the hateful vi- sion of these killers. We are in touch with French officials and I have directed my administra- tion to provide any assistance needed to help bring these ter- rorists to justice." And this, from Secretary of State John Kerry: "The mur- derers dared proclaim, 'Char- lie Hebdo is dead.' But make no mistake: They are wrong. The freedom of expression that it represented is not able to be killed by this kind of act of ter- ror." But for Fox News, sadly, fac- tual reality is too much of a heavy lift. If only it had the pro- fessional grace to provide clear- headed perspective to its cred- ulous viewers. If only it had the journalistic chops to point out these obvious facts: The murderous attack in Paris, engineered by Islamic ex- tremists bent on enforcing their beliefs via terror, is eerily sim- ilar to the murderous attack in Amsterdam, on Dutch film- maker Theo van Gogh. (That occurred in 2004, when George W. Bush was president. I don't recall Fox News blaming van Gogh's murder on Bush weak- ness.) Extremists, wielding death threats, sent author Sal- man Rushdie into hiding in 1988; they even killed Rushdie's Japanese translator. And the supreme leader of Iran called for Rushdie's assassination in 1989. But in all the years since, I don't recall Fox News blaming that cult of violence on Reagan or senior Bush weakness. Point is, this extremist war against freedom of expression has been waged for decades — irrespective of who's in the White House. If only the Fox- heads would take this tragic op- portunity to rise above petty partisanship and behave, just this once, like responsible jour- nalists. After what happened in Paris, what we need most now is freedom of expression at its best. Dick Polman is the national political columnist at News- Works/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks.org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Philadelphia. Email him at dickpolman7@ gmail.com. Fox News stays in character OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, January 14, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6