4 I The Lovell Chronicle I January 21, 2010
www. LovellCh ronicle.com
El AI Airlines has
the right idea
The attempt by Nigerian aI-Qaida
tool Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to
explode an airliner as it approached
Detroit on Christmas Day was like a
splash of water to the face of Ameri-
cans who had grown sleepy with con-
tentment and denial in the years since
the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
Perhaps we were lulled into a false
sense of security because there had
been no successful attacks or hijackings David Peck
since that horrible day 81/2 years ago.
After all, Homeland Security was keep-
ing us safe and the FBI and security agencies in other coun-
tries were in the news constantly for reportedly thwarting
various terrorist attempts, right?
And security at airports is better, too, we thought. Boy,
they won't sneak any bad things aboard an airliner, will they,
because we have to take off = our shoes at security!
And you can't have anything except tiny amounts of liquid
in your possession, and you'd better leave your tweezers at
home. Thatll keep us safe.
Now we have the underwear bomber.
Great.
I won't go into the systematic failure of security agencies
at home and abroad to stop the would-be bomber before
alert passengers had to pounce on him to prevent a catastro-
phe except to say that President Obama got it right when he
said last week that the failure was unacceptable.
Now they're going to ramp up security and crack down
even harder on already suffering passengers. That will mean
even more time at security in airports for such things as indi-
vidual hand-carried luggage checks and the next technologi-
cal wonder: full body scanners. Now, screeners will be able
to see under our clothing, except that, well, the jury is out on
whether they would have spotted an underwear bomb.
So now they'll probably get to the point of strip-searching
each passenger. Won't that be fun?
El AI Airlines - the official carrier of Israel - has a better
idea. As explained on news programs in recent days, secu-
rity screeners for El AI don't just look at your luggage or your
shoes, they look at you.
First of all, El AI hires highly trained professional screen-
ers who engage in the fine art of detecting suspicious people.
Every passenger who flies on El AI is subject to an intense,
albeit cordial and brief, interrogation before boarding a flight.
Looking into your eyes to .detect any out-of-the-ordinary ner-
vousness, El AI screeners ask you why you are flying to or
from Israel, where your travels will take or have taken you,
and other questions.
Susan ancl went through this process about 11 years ago
when we traveled to the Holy Land as part of a group tour of
religious sites. In Chicago, we were each politely interviewed
about our travel plans - where we were going, why we were
going, who we'd be seeing and the like.
On the way back, having traveled to Jordan on a tour ex-
tension, we received even more scrutiny. Screeners asked us
why we had been to Jordan and whether we knew anyone in
the country.
One of our fellow travelers was a radiologist from the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and he was the doctor who
Queen Noor of Jordan saw in the U.S. when she needed a
mammogram or other tests. So when asked whom he knew
in Jordan, he replied truthfully, "Queen Noor."
"Right, don't we all!" the young El AI security agent
quipped.
When our friend explained himself, the young lady blushed
and apologized.
El AI has it down. Not only do their screeners read people
rather than just x-ray screens, they do pre-flight background
checks on passengers and aren't afraid to single out people
who warrant special attention.
In short, they profile passengers, not based on race but
based on patterns of behavior and travel plans. There's no
way a single man with no luggage who paid for a flight in
cash would make it on board an El AI flight without some ex-
plaining to do.
When we traveled to the Holy Land, there was one flight
that day from Chicago to Tel Aviv. It would be impossible for
U.S. security to interview and background check every one
of the hundreds of thousands of passengers who fly every
day in the U.S., but maybe just international flights could be
checked and scrutinized - or, initially, flights to and from so-
called "hot spots."
The Israelis have a far better and, by the way, a far more
efficient way of screening passengers. An interview takes a
little time, but it sure beats a severe frisking.
4-H is great program for all youth
I attended the State 4-H Leaders Con-
ference in Buffalo last weekend. It was
great to see many of the folks from around
the state who have given so much of their
time to help our Wyoming youth "learn by
doing." I had the privilege of presenting a
program on caring for our yards and gar-
dens at the conference.
Parents with children that are 9 years
old or turning 9 this year are encouraged
to consider enrolling them in 4-H. It's an
easy process. In Big Horn County, you
need to call the Extension Office at 765-
2868 and ask for Jenny Good, the 4-H
Youth Educator.
I'm quite proud that in Wyoming our
4-Her's still say the Pledge of the Allegiance to the
Flag before each club meeting and county event.
They also pledge their "Head to clearer thinking,
their Hands to larger service, their Health to bet-
ter living and their Heart to greater loyalty." Not all
kids can be the top athlete, or make the cheerlead-
ing squad for school, but all the kids enrolled in 4-H
can help "make the best, better."
They can get a handle on life with their project
work and the success and failure that follows. The
key to their growth and development is with the
volunteer leaders who help them with their project
work and social skills. We need those adult volun-
teers to enroll, too!
Jim Gill
Ag Chat
***
I got kicked in the posterior recent-
ly by a local intuitive person to look into
Biochar. Biochar is a fine-grained, car-
bon-enriched product created when bio-
mass (like the Russian olives being torn
out as wood waste) is burned at relatively
low temperatures and under anoxic (lack
of oxygen) atmosphere. The process itself
is called pyrolysis and is similar to the
production of charcoal.
I think this product could have some
real merit in building soils. I have a pre-
mier researcher with the USDA Agricul-
ture Research Service Center from Kim-
berly, Idaho, coming to WESTI Ag Days
Feb. 2-3. Jim Ippolito, an ARS scientist who has
done extensive research on this product, will share
his conclusions.
***
Stan Jones, an organic farmer from the Burling-
ton area, stopped by the other day and left me some
information on an Organic Farming Conference that
will be held in La Crosse, Wisc., Feb. 25-27. If you
are interested in going organic, this would be a great
opportunity to gain some knowledge from others who
have walked the walk.
Stan encourages folks who might be interested
in attending to contact him at 307-762-3271. I have
registration information at the office, as well.
A cowboy's boots never tell a lie
Years ago, Jan, our three children and
I lived in a rural area of San Diego Coun-
ty. It's getting more difficult in that part
of California to find rural spotls, but that's
a different story.
We had a half-acre on Twin Peaks Ex-
tension, then a dirt road in the then-un-
incorporated town of Poway. At the time
there were four homes on the road and lots
of open space that formerly housed farms.
Last time we looked, there were three ma-
jor subdivisions and commercial develop-
ment. No farm property remaining.
We wanted to incorporate a bit of
farming and animal husbandry in our
lives, which is why we lived where we
did back then. So we had a small flock
of New Hampshire Red chickens and a rooster (or
two), a busily occupied rabbit hutch, a Nubian goat,
a Shetland pony, and a Duroc piggy. At various
times we also had (temporarily) a turkey, a donkey,
a goose and two ducks. Not to mention a veritable
horde of cats, and a couple/three dogs.
Oh yes, we also had a fairly large garden and
some fruit trees. Therefore, I decided that to fit the
role of a part-time rancher and farmer, I needed a
pair of cowboy boots. I hadn't had such boots since
I was in second grade at Chesterton Elementary
School in Linda Vista, a suburb of San Diego. My
new boots, brown they were, gave me added stature
(I thought) in more ways than one. Seems to me that
when I pulled on that Western footwear, my gait re-
sembled a swaggering John Wayne.
--Before weang them to ,"
Jan and I took an anniversary trip with our '65 "Sub-
urban" towing a 14-foot camp trailer. The kids were
left with her parents during our trip, which involved
Bob
Rodriguez
driving up the Golden State and into Or-
egon, making it all the way to Roseburg.
At one point we stopped for a meal
in Buellton, Calif., a bucolic and pastoral
place then. The cafe we chose (the only
one there) had pickup trucks (the working
kind), hay haulers and pickup trucks tow-
ing horse trailers parked in front and on
both sides. A couple of rigs had trailers
with steers inside.
Inside the eatery I stretched my legs,
and my new boots protruded a bit into
the aisle. Just like my pride, I believe,
thinking that I had arrived in the world
of ranchin' and farmin'. After a while, a
group of rough-hewn rancher types arose
to leave the cafe. One older, grizzled cow-
poke with obviously used boots spotted my footwear,
and as he walked past, he stared at them and me
sardonically. Didn't mean a thing to me at the time.
After returning to our chores at home, my boots
and I discovered that it's not easy to keep them look-
ing so good. Working with bales of alfalfa and big
sacks of feed; barbed wire, hog fencing and chain-
link enclosures; slogging through mud; stepping in
various piles on the ground; and just generally being
around critters took their toll on my footwear.
It took maybe only a few months before I had a
good look at those boots. They were scratched, dirty,
well worn. It was then thatIecalled.that ranch
hand in Buellton and his sardonic expression. And
the thought hit home: A cowboy's boots nevdr tell" a
lie.
Bob Rodriguez is the publisher of the Illinois Val-
ley News in Cave Junction, Ore., along with his wife,
Jan. They live in Lovell.
A sleepingpopulace awakens
BY GENIELLE BROWN
Last week in the mail, I received the follow-
ing quote from a friend, which most conservatives,
including myself, may have already known, but it
bears repeating. It was attributed to a historian
named Tytler, but when we googled to find out more
about him, I received a treatise by Loren Collins in
which he stated this could have come from Alexis
de Tocgueville, or Henning W. Prentis, and perhaps
several others. I like to know who says what, and
this was very confusing, but here it is:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form
of government. It can only exist until the voters dis-
cover they can vote themselves largesse, from the
public treasury. From that moment on, the major-
ity always votes for the candidates promising them
the most benefits from the public treasury, with the
result that a democracy always collapses over a loss
of fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dicta-
torship.
"The average of the world's great civilizations
before they decline has been 200 years. These na-
tions have progressed in this sequence: from bond-
age to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great
courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to
abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from
selfishness to complacency; from complacency to
apathy; from apathy to dependency; from depen-
dency back again to bondage."
Some time ago, I received the following from
a very dear conservative friend (so on this I have
no doubt who said it) where he stated it this way:
"When government functions properly, it protects
the rights of the individual. By doing so it makes
all society secure, for society is made up of individ-
uals. If, however, government attempts to satisfy
the clamoring of special interest groups, whether
minority or majority, at the expense of individual
rights, all society eventually suffers the losses of
all freedoms.
"In a constitutional republic it is understood
that an individual cannot delegate to government
any more authority than he himself has. The non-
acceptance of this principle is the reason we now
have a democracy, which means mob rule. A democ-
racy assumes that if a group of people clamor for
some special interest, the government can use that
clamoring as their authority to write a law to de-
prive other individuals of their rights. Today, we
live in a society which teaches that such activities
by government are acceptable...The power of col-
lecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the
most dangerous power entrusted to man."
We are seeing at this time in our national gov-
ernment the climax of allowing too much uncon-
stitutional power to exist, but there is an upside
to this: Mr. Obama and all his socialist czars have
awakened a sleeping populace to their duties and
responsibilities to check this outrage, and we can
see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it will
take more and more of us to wake up the rest of
the sleepers, especially in our own state, which has
taken on some socialistic agendas.
Do you remember David Wilkerson, a preacher
who, years ago, moved his family to New York and
was the subject of the movie "The Cross and the
Switchblade" starring Pat Boone? He still preaches
in New York and recently said, "Here is an impor-
tant truth for every believer: The hour of Christ's
• power is manifested at the very point of our help-
lessness," and then he said to remember Gideon,
Deborah and King Jehoshaphat.
We are not yet to a point of helplessness, but
if things don't change, we could be. Wouldn't it be
better to follow the advice in second Chronicles: "if
my people...shall humble themselves, and pray,
and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways,
then will I hear from Heaven, and will forgive their
sin, and will heal their land." Wouldn't the ACLU
hate that?
UPSP 321.060
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David Peck, Editor and Publisher
Editor ........................................................................... David Peck
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Staff ......................................... Dorothy Nelson, Marwyn Layne
Kymbre Moorehead, Jason Zeller,
Teressa Ennis, Don Dover, Mike Kitchen
the|OVe|! chromde
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