Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Feb. 20, 1964, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man .— .And He May Be Wrong On Cutting Off Water The admiral m charge has cut the water pipe between Guantanamo Naval Base and Cuba proper, which is some kind of exercise in futility. Dear Old Fidel had cut the water off long before the admiral sawed the pipe in two. But with a dirty rascal like Fidel tending the water hole we’d prefer to drink bourbon or some other liquid since such a character might throw a dead chicken in the water supply each morning just to give it a little character. For generations Americans have been told what a fortress this Guantanamo was and now we find it doesn’t even have a water supply of its own. Of course, the instantaneous pocketbook of old John Q. Taxpayer can cure all miser ies including the inability to make water, and an estimated $10 million dollars will be spent to distill sea water for the Marines and Sailors who man these distant ram parts. Defense Secretary McNamara says our ballistic missiles are .accurate and for years we have been told that they are very pow erful so actually there is very little need for such hangovers from another military era. We are stubborn and American enough to absolutely refuse to surrender such bases to such pigs as Fidel but aside from provid ing occasional international incidents and a warm place for old admirals to spend the winter this acreage is more of a liability than an asset. We might sublet it to the Russians as a base for tbeir “fishing fleet" and save the Russians the expense of building their own , submarine pens in Cuba. But we’d prefer to collect the lease money in advance and not lend Nikita the money to swing the deal as we are doing in the wheat disposal deal. On Military Costs Not an inconsiderable part of the waste that goes on in the name of our armed forces is that of supporting the families of military men in foreign countries. Added to this is the mountainous cost of taking these families to. and bringing them home again. As an ex-GI who spent Jthe best part of three years over seas without benefit of family, we assert that a faster rotation system for overseas personnel would be far cheaper in dollars and cents and would likely result in less “incidents” in those hundreds of places all over the world where our arm ed forces are located today. In the era prior to World War II the only military personnel permitted to haul their families around were the officer class, and at that time the ratio of officers to enlisted men was far lower than it is in'the modern armed forces. But present policy permits every buck private to take his entire family wherever and whenever he Is asked to spend Si. few months beyond the limjts of these sfujres. The total cost of such an operation is'"fan tastic and absolutely unnecessary. It is just one more of the huge chunks of -fat that have been added to the mountainous military. budget and it ought to be trimmed off im mediately. What Warren Said judge uari w sirren, some weeics ago stal ed categorically that there were some facts being turned up.ii? the investigation of the murder of President Kennedy by one of his fellow left wingers that might not be releas ed in the lifetime of the reporters to whom he was talking. '* ' i! This seems to be in direct contradiction to the promise made to the world by President Johnson when he appointed the investigat ing committee. He - said that every possible effort would be made to un cover every fact in the tragic event and that when this had been done the complete and _ . m typicnlWaab ingtph mat soraetnmg ms committee nas learnea might upset national security if it were made public. We assert that any fact known to Earl Warren can be trusted to any citizen of this land, because, on' the repeated record, the average one of us loves, protects and defends the basic principle of our govern ment more constantly and in more ways than this sociologist in jurist robes. We do not suspect for one minute that President Johnson will override Warren, but he has. promised fullest release of all in Not since the alleged conspirators in the murder of President Lincoln were hurried off to silent graves has a court room seen the likes of the Ruby trial. There, oi course, is no doubt that Ruby murdered Lee Oswald, and that the act was ope of premeditation. The only question there can be before any jury that may fin ally be seated is whether Ruby was tempo rarily insane at the time he planned and executed this assassination of an assassin. * Unfortunately there is not much prece dence in our law for such crimes of na tional passion. Certainly, no one can deny that the entire nation was in a severe state of shock at the time Ruby pulled the trigger iiL- a*—.iJi* . . . *• The news media had sp thoroughly dosed the entire nation with the terrible monstro sity of Oswald's crime; a,misfit who had murdered' a young man of great stature for no apparent reason other than that he op posed the political system of which Presi dent Kennedy Was the head. That this same young man had also at tempted to murder a soldier-politician of the extreme opposite political persuasion from President Kennedy accents the possibility that in the warped mind of Os wald this country’s drift toward state social ism was not proceeding rapidly enough so he created in his limited mind an obsession against anyone who stood for the status quo in government. So with all of this current of venom open ly running against Oswald, encouraged by Oswald’s own arrogance it surely is not too much to suppose that an emotional man may have lost his reason and decided that killing an Oswald was an act of divine justice. It certainly deprived Oswald of his fondest dream; that of front-stage center in a court where he could beat his breast and enjoy his fleeting hour of infamy. Tim Ruby jury has a hard decision to make and Jtjwill , not be a popular|one, no matter what” it is. ' ' . We’d dearly love to hear from any feder al official who thinks he has a good reason for families of military men being present in such danger spots as Viet Nam, Cyprus, The Congo, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana; to mention just a beginning few. Converting the old post office in Kinston into a so-called branch library of the main library which is only four blocks away is expected to cost from $50,000 to $75,000; but the most expensive price tag attached to this misguided project is that it will quite possible delay for the foreseeable future the constniction of a really adequate library to serve the county. Under our law it is , impossible to bring back the wench from prison who beat an aged Duplin County woman store keeper into a bloody pulp to rob her of less than a hun dred dollars. That particular wench is serving 3 short term for the. assault and robbery, now the aged woman has died, never flaying recoverd from the beating she suf fered. Such things as this are the best argu ment we can think of’for a liell after death.. wide the gates of conjecture, and permits the venal gossip with which Washington is more than overstocked to ply its trade without restriction. Covering up facts in such a monstrous af fair is much more a threat to our national security than releasing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what really did happen in Dallas last November. JONES JOURNAL JACK RIDER, Publisher Published Every Thursday by The Lenoir County News Company, Inc., 403 West "Vernon Ave., Kinston, N. C„ Phone JA 3 2375. Entered as Second Class Matter May rtment of nuts who are belabor* tag tooacco are a much worse threat to the nation’s well being than tobacco ever has ^ been or will be. All of the faddists, health club qheers, yogurt drinking, carrot juite types have lined up their BB guns on old Demon Nicotina. - There was a time when the intellectual ancestors of this assortment of nuts pep pered the nation" with pellets on the subject, of Demon Rum until a besodden congress and a tired public voted in something called Prohibition. This dropped law and order and respect for the law to the lowest point in the history of, these none-too-lawful Unit ed States. Tobacco is a rather foolish habit, but hun dreds of millions of people in every part of the world use it and enjoy it. For everyone that it sends to an early grave there are thousands for whom it makes life more pleasant .Now if use of tobacco was like fluorida tion of f^e water supply that would be one thing, but to belabor tobacco when it is one of societies electives is stretching the ab surd even to the breaking point. Nobody has to smoke, chew, dip or sniff tobacco. Each of us can take it or leave it alone. If these health faddists don’t want to use tobacco there is no law forbidding their abstinence. One of the more serious, but equally ab surd opponents of tobacco is the good gray lady of Boston called the Christian Science Monitor. This same paper is opposed to compulsory medication in such methods as water fluoridation, but it supports compul sory eradication of such items as whisky and tobacco. There are other less respecta ble nuts who would make the eating of meat illegal. And I support there are even organ izations who opposed to the eating of -veg etables — such outfits as the National h£eat Institute, no doubt. One evil, suspicious-minded friend of mine between puffs of his favorite cancer causa tive last week informed me that the entire propaganda blast at tobacco was a scheme to rig the stockmarket so that a handfull of people could make a few hundred million dollars. By depressing the tobacco shares as far as possbile the smart boys would buy in, and then come up with the astounding news that really, after all tobacco does not cause cancer. This same kind of iniquitous skull duggery hit the ancient art of distilling and during those 18 years sometimes called the “great drought” the smart boys bought in, and bought out so that now the control of the nation’s whisky making business is nearly as tight a monopoly as the cigaret-making trade. My friend suggests that this is no ac cident but a deliberate plan on the part of a handfull of people to profit from the hys teria being kicked up about tobacco by an irresponsible collection of cat’s paws. This kind of reasoning makes just as much sense as the case that has been made against tobacco in the relam of cancer, not an infinitesimal few; and then, pray tell, what gives cancer to the non-tobacco user? Tobacco and whisky and milk and carrots and all of nature’s gifts to an unthankful mankind are bad medicine if they are used intemperately. This is not news, of course, because reasonable people have known this for as long as there have been, reasonable people. It merely happens that at this day and date in history the unreasonable people seem to have control of the major media of communications and they are frightening the world on all fronts with a wild collection of "threats.” ' ■ • Radioactivity, herbicides, insecticides, hy drocarbons, detergents, tobacco, and of course, whisky are among are scheduled to (
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Feb. 20, 1964, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75