Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 1, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 2, 1991 Page: 2 of 12
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f * >* • \ i *
a—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM, Sulphur Springs, Tsms, Wtockreaday, January 2,1991
editorials
• ■ ■
Draft probably
is not needed
It was inevitable that American involvement fh the
Middle East would raise talk of reviving the military
draft. Although inevitable, the subject is also irrelevant
under immediate circumstances.
There is no way the draft can or should be reinstated in
a short-term crisis like that in the Persian Gulf. It is for
just such circumstances that the country maintains a
standing volunteer military and a ready reserve.
Any effort to resurrect the draft would likely involve a
prolonged and divisive political debate that really would
Se counterproductive. Even if the consensus pointed to
bringing back the draft, the process would take far too
forced into combat by the ag-
gressive intransigence of Saddam Hussein, it will of
necessity have to be a quick and decisive -strike. Popular
support and resources for a prolonged, Vietnam-style war
simply are not there. Nor does anyone seriously want
sucn an
such an involvement.
Already some liberals are saying our volunteer military
system puts an unfortunately heavy burden on the poor
id minorities, who make up much of the volunteer ar-
and minorities, who make up i
med forces. That is true, but it is hardly new.
In all except the major wars, American military par-
ticipation has generally been disproportionately borne by
sucn volunteers. It is an economic fact of life that the
most hazardous jobs in any society attract those who see
such employment as a way to improve opportunity. The
military also involves opportunity for educational advan-
ces for those who might otherwise be unable to afford
such training. \
One almost feels that some of those raising the issue of
the draft do so from cynical motives. They seek to raise
all possible issues to create turmoil, thereby weakening
the national will.
The draft is not a valid issue at this time. What happens
of the Middle
to voluntary enlistment levels in the wake of the
East situation — when people learn that military service
could actually involve military operations — could re-
quire a searching re-examination of the draft vs. an all-
volunteer military.
Until then, die real issue is maintaining a unified inter-
national resolve to .stop and roll back a ruthless expansion
while it can still be contained at lower levels of risk and
cost
The opinion page
Don't bet on gambling cure
B< Robert Walters
LAS VEGAS (NEA) - As this neon
washed gamblers mecca revels in a
boom of awesome proportions, some
skeptics are posing provocative ques-
tions about betting here — and else-
where in the nat ion — as a source of
economic growth--
Capping three decades of virtual!
uninterrupted expansion. Las Vegas'
and Nevada were the country's fast-y
est growing city and state, respective
Robert
Walters
T
Center for Pathological Gambling.)
The most blatant manifestation of
the gambling industry's growth here
has been the opening during the past
year of two casino-hotels that reach
new heights (or depths) of the wretch-
ed excess for which the city has long
been notorious.
That leaves critics of gambling to
ask several impertinent questions:
_ • If churches and governments —
!y~<hmflgthe‘i»*Os - and are^xpeclv supposedly the society's sources of
ed to retain that cherishfed positi
during the 1990s
V_
Moreover', even a severe recession
elsewhere in the nation could have lit-
tle or no impact upon its victims' pro-
clivity to bet on everything from the
spin of slot machine reels to the out-
come of the Super Bowl.
That's because during depressing
economic periods, many people turn
to gambling as a fantasy experience
that allows them to temporarily for-
get their troubles and could even pro-
vide a windfall to permanently end
their difficulties
Indeed, gambling has been growing
at a phenomenal pace during both
good and bad times in recent decades.
The amount of money wagered legal-
ly throughout the country on all
games of chance now is approaching
an awesome $300 billion annually.
More than three-fourths of that to-
tal is bet in casinos, but it’s the prolif-
eration of wagering opportunities
elsewhere that many knowledgeable
observers believe has fueled the Las
Vegas boom by providing gambling
with the broad acceptability it once
lacked.
Contests that encourage betting
upon the,performance of humans (jai-
alai), dogs (greyhound racing) and
horses (thoroughbred, harness and
quarter-horse racing) are sanctioned
by many states.
Undeterred by New Jerseys in-
creasingly negative experience with
casinos in Atlantic City, several Mid-
western states are preparing to offer
launch-waterborne casinos for river-
boat gamblers on the Mississippi.
As recently as 1964, there was only
one state-operated lottery anywhere
in the country (in New Hampshire),
but today they are well on their way
. to becoming universal. Even more
ubiquitous are church-operated bingo
games.
spiritual and secular leadership
aggressively sponsor games of
chance, is it surprising that people are
increasingly less inhibited about bet-
ting in Las Vegas casinos?
• Could that trend lead to the emer-
gence of ‘compulsive gambling as the
mental health epidemic of the
1990s?" (That prediction is offered by
the executive director of the National
The $630 million Mirage is best
known for its 54-foot-high ersatz vol-
cano. in front of the 3,000-room hotel,
that spews flames and pina colada-
scented steam during its scheduled
eruptions
The hotel also boasts a 1.5 million
gallon aquarium with a school of six'
dolphins, a more modest 20,000 gallon
aquarium with sharks and other exot-
ic marine life, a nine-story atrium
with orchids and bougainvillea, a pair
of trained white tigers, assorted wa-
terfalls and grottoes, a casino the size
• of two football fields and a “Salon
Prive" for high rollers where the least
expensive chips cost $1,000 apiece
The newer Excalibur costs a mere
$290 million but has 4,000 rooms and
a casino the size of four football
fields Its medieval theme is promot-
ed by employees performing as joust-
ing 4tnights. minstrels, jugglers and
jesters ..,:
Obscured by the hoopla surround-
ing the opening of those two hotels,
however, have been formal bankrupt-
cy declarations by the owners of the
Aladdin, Landmark. Marina and other
• i.< .»--1* - - ‘A'"-1
hotel-casinos
In addition, every major operating
hotel-casino in the city has dismissed
hundreds — and, in some cases, thou-
sands — of employees during the past
year Gambling here is hardly an eco-
nomic panacea
© 1990 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN
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Revisit the commandments
By George R. Plagenz
Yogoslav doctor punished
By Jack Anderson
and Dale Van Alta
WASHINGTON - Alush Gashi, a
Yugoslavian surgeon,' made the
rounds in Washington in October try-
ing to get someone to pay attention to
a chilling story. He made no secret
aboat his mission, even though he
fully expected to be thrown in prison
when he got home.
He was right. On Oct. 26, in Pris-
tina, Yugoslavia. Gashi was attacked
and beaten by a dozen or so police of-
ficers armed with machine guns.
Then he was pushed into a car and
driven to a detention center where he
was again beaten and detained for
four hours. He has been fired from his
job as dean of the University of Pris-
tina medical school, and says that
poison. They concluded that the chil-
dren were faking it.
But a well-respected French doctor
and human rights advocate, Bernard
Beneditti, was not convinced. He
traveled to Yugoslavia to do his own
investigation. It was harder than he
had anticipated. Serbian police
guarded the doors to the hospitals,
confiscating the passports of foreign-
ers and forbidding anyone from re-
moving documents or blood samples
from the hospital.
Beneditti managed to slip out
enough blood samples which, when he
studied them back home ill France,
convinced him that the children had
been exposed to a poison similar to
Cohen told us that it would have been
impossible for the Serbian authorities
to do adequate testing on all the chil-
dren and conclude in just a few hours
that there was nothing wrong with
them.
Copyright. 1990. United Future Syndicate. Inc
Let’s make 1991 the Year of the
Ten Commandments.
Let’s resolve to read or recite the
commandments once a day in the
next year.
That’s it?
That’s it.
But isn’t the whole idea to try hard- standards.
this hour in history, we are going to
have to begin a few steps back. We
are going to have to first restore our
belief in right and wrong.
We have been living these past
years, not on the firm foundations of
the Ten Commandments, Written in
stone, but on the shifting sands of
something known as “community
er to keep the commandments — not
just to memorize them or read them
out of book?
Yes, but in the case of our society at
The public forum
one used in pesticides. .. are preparing for the possibility of as tar as tne law emorcement
He now claims that nearly 3,000 Al-. rouiJd t^0 0f jhe nasty weather community, I know it is part of the
Citizen involvement
Editor, The News-Telegram:
As I am writing this letter, we
A special thanks should go to all
of the wrecker drivers. They all had
a long day.
As far as the law enforcement
1,000 of his colleagues have also been, tween February and May by someone
banian children were poisoned be- The reason for this letter is round
fired — all because of a story that the
Yugoslavian government says is a lie,
concocted by Albanian majority in
the Kosovo region to embarrass the
Serbian government.
If Gashi is not lying, someone tried
to poison hundreds of Albanian school
children in Yugoslavia and then
cleared the hospitals of Albanian doc-
tors so they could not prove what had
happened.
Albanians and Serbian ethnic
ups in Yugoslavia are not above
groups i
blaming each othqr for all the ills that
befall either, but Gashi swears the
poisonings were not mere rumor.
It happened on a day in March
when 400 Albanian students flooded
hospitals in the Kosovo region com-
plaining of nausea, stomach cramps
and breathing problems. Over the
next few days more children came in
with the same ailments. Federal
medical experts came from Belgrade
to investigate and found no traces of
who tossed canisters of toxins into the
schools during the hours only Albani-
an children were present. (Yugoslavi-
an schools are segregated.)
When the students began arriving
at hospitals, the armed Serbian po-
lice, not doctors, deeided who would
be treated and who would be turned
away. Then Serbian doctors were
called in and Albanian doctors fired
without cause. The Serbian doctors
were told not to discuss their findings.
One slipped and told Beneditti that he
suspected the children’s problems
were physiological, not psychologi-
cal. Beneditti told our associate Me-
linda Maas that when he went back to
get more information from the doc-
tor, be had been taken off the job.
Dr. Barend Cohen, a Norwegian hu-
man rights advocate and physician,
was on the scene with Beneditti. Co-
hen took his own blood samples and
found no traces of poison, but he will
not rule out Beneditti’s findings. And
one.
I have worked for the citizens of
Sulphur Springs for seven years
aixron Friday night, Dec. 21 and
Dec. 22, I saw a sight that I still
find hard to believe. I have never
seen so much citizen involvement
in any activity.
The folks here in Sulphur
Springs did themselves proud. They
made what could have been a very
dreary Christinas, a very warm and
friendly Christmas for a lot of
stranded people.
I am proud of all of you and
proud to work for you. You did a
great job.
job, but I think Hopkins County
law enforcement officers should get
a pat on the back. The Department
of Public Safety officers were
working around tire clock, Hopkins
County deputies were working
around the clock and SSPD officers "
were working around the clock. I
am not trying to ring our own bell,
but all of you did a super job.
A very special thanks from me
i from all of you
McClure
and I hope
go to die
all of
Harold
ou, should
Sr.
not many
like Hopkins County
Usually, we have a pretty slow
’ weather hits, but
night when the icy'
this was not the case Friday. When
we were not working accidents, we
were calling for a wrecker or show-
ing people where the shelter was
located. •
people are
citizens.
You folks are great and I lode
forward to seeing all of you again
in round (wo.
Andy Chester
President
Sulphur Springs Law
Enforcement' Association
Things once considered wrbng are
not wrong today if a majority of the
general public is not offended. The list
of such things is long and growing
longer.
The Ten Commandments are a re-
minder that our Judeo-Christian cul-
ture was founded on a code of right
and wrong that stands for all time.
There have been attempts to up-
date the commandments to accom-
modate them to our liberal culture.
Those calling for “situation ethics”
rejected absolute moral standards,
saying everything “depends on the
situation.”
* The word “ordinarily” was added to
each of the commandments: “Thou
shalt not commit adultery — ordi-
narily.” “Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbor — ordi-
narily.” It left the commandments
open to all manner of exceptions.
Jesus stood fast on the Ten Com-
mandments. When someone came up
to him once and asked what he must
do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told
him, “Keep the commandments.”
If Je$us put a new spin on the com-
mandments, it was to add to their re-
quirements, not to subtract from
them. We see on drug-store shelves to-
day patent medicine remedies like
Alka-Seltzer Plus. With Jesus it was
the Ten Commandments Plus.
As for reciting the Ten Command-
ments until we know them by heart
(how can we keep them unless We
know what they are?), it is probable
that is how the Israelites in Moses’
day learned them, We have 10 com-
mandments to match the number of
fingers on our two hands. It made it
easier for (he people to remember
them.
The Ten Commandments are often
criticized for being too negative - a
bunch of “Thou shalt nots.” We rebel
when told we cannot do something.
We hate “No Parking" signs. Some-
body has suggested we'might react
differently if the signs were phrased
more positively, like, “Park
Elsewhere.” - j , “ v.
Martin Luther may have been
aware of this anti-negative tendency
of ours. His explanations of the edm- ■
mandments included not only the pro-
hibitions against wrongdoing — he
also expanded their meanings to in-
clude commands to do right. \ f
For example, Luther gives this
meaning td the commandment
against killing: “We should fear and
love God that we may not hurt nor
harm our neighbor in his body, but.
nd him in every bodily
help and bef]
need.” Most of us may do well on (a)
but flunkfb).. .
Luther’s explanation of each com-
mahdnjent begins with the words,
“Wei should fear and love God ..."
Perhaps we need to recapture the
Israelites' idea of a God who must be
feared as well as loved. Perhaps we
need to be reminded that when his
commandments are not kept — when
“God is angry,” as the Bible puts it —
there can be tragic consequences.
God should perhaps be compared in
our thinking to electricity. Although
we can’t see it, it can light up our lives
and give us warmth and comfort. And
provide power. But it must also be
feared and respected or it can destroy
us.
Let us remind ourselves over and
over again In 1991 that the God of the
commandments is like that.
© 1990 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN
The write type in education
By Lewis Grizzard
A Mend whose son wants to grow
up and be a writer asked me what
courses the young man should con
cento* on to high school.
To answer, I had to look back to ray
own high school days. „
Certainly biology hasn’t meant
dldiey to me aa a writer. I could
these ct a frog with the best of them in
high school, but it hasn't come up
Lewis
Grizzard
Neither has algebra or geometry,
and I knew they wouldn’t at the time.
1 basically learned everything I need
to know about mathematics in the
third grade when they taught me to
Two times four is eight, which is
how many I need to write today so I
can take a couple of weeks off and
work on my upcoming novel, titled,
‘Don’t Get Near Mama, Sailor, She’s
Been Earin’ Navy Beans ’
Learning about ancient history
hasn’t benefited me. Who cares when
Rome was sacked? It should have had
a better offensive line.
And geography. There’s a lot of
sand in Saudi Arabia. I could have
learned that later in life simply by
watching U.S. Marines wishing for a
cold beer as they wait for President
Bush to decide whether or not he’s
going to get some of them killed.
History. When I was interviewed
for this job, nobody asked me any-
thing about Rutherford B. Hayes.
They did teach me grammar and
punctuation, but that’s why we have
editors.
W
grM
,r
What I finally decided was the most
important course I took in 16 years of
schooling was typing
I. have used this skill practically
every day of my professional life.
Mr. Sheets, the basketball coach,
taught me typing my. junior year of
high school. Typing teachers usually
don’t get a lot of credit for molding
our youth, but in my case I am
certainly beholding to Mr Sheets.
I’m not certain how many words I
now have to my credit, but I type each
of them. If you can’t type,you’re going
to be in a helluva mess if you want to
be a writer.
In the first place you can’t get a job
with a newspaper if you can’t type.
They’re going to sit you down at a
computer and ask you to produce,
and I don’t care how much you know
about computers, if you cartt negoti-
ate thf keyboard, nothing readable is
going to appear on the screen in front
of you.
*
i, I am told, write out
their books in longhand. That's
because they never learnedt° type. If
they had they wouldn't be scribbling
on a sheet of papers for months at a
time, wftich can cause severe pain in.
the hands and fingers.
That’s why Edgar Allan Poe wrote
all that weird stuff His hands and
fingers were always hurting him. The
pain became so intense he began to
see talking ravens.
So I told my friend to tell his son to
enroll, in a typing class as soon as
possible.
“But whak about foreign lan-
guages?” he asked. ^ -
“Maybe he ought to learn a little
Japanese,” I said.
Our golf courses today. Our pub-
lishing
industry tomorrow. It could
happen.
1900 by Cowles Syndicate. Irtc ,
Berry's World
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.......1
it
CIMIWMAM —.
HAVE A NICE YEAR!
•
' V-
mm
—-A''
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 1, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 2, 1991, newspaper, January 2, 1991; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823617/m1/2/: accessed July 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.