I read with gratification your editorial about lifting the Cuban embargo and helping boost trade for Alabama. Many U.S. agricultural and food producing entities are now legally trading with Cuba for cash payments, none of which are from Alabama. It is amazing that Alabama has been left in the dust again.
Hopefully, Alabamians will contact Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby and voice their opinion to do away with this outdated policy that hurts American business more than it hurts a communist government.
This issue should not be a political football, but rather an issue of smart business. Nothing will change Cuba quicker than American dollars.
AlaCaribe will be taking several delegations to Cuba this year. For more information, write to P.O. Box 1985, Mobile, AL 36633.
Buffy Donlon, President
AlaCaribe Initiative, Inc.
Mobile
Shelter in place
The area around the entire Depot area is heavily dotted with mobile homes. With a test burn of live agents to conclude shortly, safety measures to insure “shelter in place” have not been addressed.Mobile homes are constructed like a sieve. Wall sockets admit outside air. Interior doors are open at the top and bottom. Open up the compartment where you install your air conditioner filters and look high and low and behold there is a 6-inch auxiliary flex hose running up to the roof vent. Whoa, Nelly.
No one has addressed this problem of safety. I have filled out several surveys because I am disabled. But I have yet to hear whom is going to assist me in making this a “shelter in place.”
Like myself, there are a number of residents adjacent to the Depot who are in their 70’s. What good is a filter going to do for me? Can’t turn on the air when it’s 100 degrees or heat when it’s 7.2 degrees.
Conrad Inamorati
1ST SGT., Ordnance Corps, Retired
Lincoln
Iraq
To those urging delay in efforts to disarm Iraq, I must say you have staked out the cleverest position possible.All we have to do is wait for the mushroom or nerve gas cloud to sprout and then proclaim: “President Bush knew all about it and could have stopped it.” In the meantime, no evidence short of a nuclear fireball over Berkeley will ever be enough.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was correct in saying this is not unlike refusing to prosecute corporate thieves until you can prove exactly where they stashed the loot. Companies such as Enron would do well to employ a strategy that asserts that everything not the fault of ‘the Jews’ or our capitalist system is the fault of a ‘cowboy president.’
Anyway, exactly what part of Texas does British Prime Minister Tony Blair come from?
I am puzzled by the fact that no peace movement ever gave the world a Saladin, a Teddy Roosevelt, a Churchill, an Ataturk or a Massoud.
August J. Lehe
Talladega
Incineration
I read, with interest, a recent letter written to Speak Out. It was in regard to comments made by J. Holland on his television show about the incinerator.I don’t know much about the incineration process, aside from what I read in the news. Or, for that matter, the neutralization process that I’ve read some about.
The only thing I do know about the chemical weapons stockpile at the Depot is that they’re dangerous and the longer we allow them to sit there and rot, the more of a danger they pose. In short, I want these weapons disposed of so that we can finally live in our community in some relative safety.
My problem with the letter writer isn’t his protests. It is the sometimes-violent way that he goes about his protests.
As heated as this issue can become, I believe in passive resistance.
I tend to agree with Mr. Holland on the various points he made in his response. Besides, you look less like a zealot if you try to make your point peacefully instead of pushing it into someone’s face.
Freddie L. Hinton
Oxford
