LETTERS

Is it a contest or a sales gimmick?

Attention is called to the item in the July 4 edition of The Sun Herald titled "Library of Photo- graphy announces photo contest."

In 1998, I entered "The International Library of Photo- graphy Contest," (same address) received a certificate certifying me to be "Editor's Choice Award." Guess what? I then received a letter and a form offering to sell me the book in which my picture would appear for $79.95 plus $7 postage and handling.

I bought the book and, guess what, there were 1,314 pictures. So if everyone buys a book you can imagine what money this generates. To top this off, the book was published in Hong Kong. Oh, yeah, the certificate was my prize.
This is like the poetry contest reviewed on TV recently, where the entire room entered a poetry contest. They were all notified that they were finalists, but they had to buy a book.

Don't get suckered!

FRANCES R. BERTUCCI
Gulfport

Taylor's votes echo his constituents' views

Let's hear it for our man! In the past few weeks the United States Congress has faced many important decisions. Congressman Gene Taylor has once again proven that he is South Mississippi's congressman.

Congressman Taylor voted to protect three very important issues in the eyes of most South Mississippians. Mr. Taylor voted to protect our flag, our religious freedom, and our Second Amendment rights.

Any time Gene Taylor has the chance, he votes to protect and support the people of South Mississippi. Let's return the favor and support Congressman Taylor anytime we have the chance.

HERBERT T. DUBUISSON JR.
Bay St. Louis

Changes would offer immediate traffic relief

In reference to your recent article concerning Murphy's plan to add to the downtown Bay St. Louis business district, which would obviously create a tremendous need for better parking availability, I would like to make the following suggestions to the city and county:

Make Beach Boulevard from U.S. 90 to Main Street a one-way street and install a three-way stop. This would create a safer traffic flow in and out of the downtown business district.

Establish angled parking as opposed to the present parallel parking, thus creating more parking spaces.

Enforce the present 25 mph speed limit more rigidly, and install a four-way stop at Washington Street, and three-way stops at both Nicholson and Coleman avenues.

This would give the residents of Beach Boulevard some relief from the steady flow of traffic.

This would be a temporary solution to a long-existing problem that should have been addressed many years ago.

THOMAS 'TOM' WILLIAMS
Hancock County

All should be free to honor their heritage

People should be allowed to be proud of their heritage whether it be African, Indian, the Confederacy, or whatever, and stop judging one another for personal convictions.

Aman who wrote was proud that he chained himself and intruded upon a Beauvoir celebration. No one that I know of has ever intruded upon a Black History Month, Juneteenth, Black Miss America, a Martin Luther King celebration, or an NAACP meeting with hostile intent.

When I was a child, an elderly former slave who lived nearby told us about his life on a plantation. Once he said, "I don't want you children to ever feel guilty about us. They treated us good." I didn't know about slavery until my mother, a teacher, explained it to us and I knew it wasn't right.

Today we hear only about the ones treated badly. Why should we feel guilty? We weren't even living then.

Our ancestors who gave their lives and those whose lives and homes were devastated in the Civil War for freedom from Northern domination should be remem- bered, just as we honor our ancestors who fought to be free from English rule in the Revolu- tionary War. That is our right and our heritage. The Confederate flag is merely a symbol.

Every town in the 11 Confederate states should have a boulevard named Jefferson Davis.

VIRGINIA G. HOSKINS
D'Iberville

Where will NATO find a new target?

Now that bombing practice is finished, Yugoslavia devastated, hundreds killed, a million people's lives destroyed or disrupted, Albania allowed to steal Kosovo from the sovereign province of Serbia, the terrorist KLA still functioning and billions that should have been used for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid wasted by Clinton's grandiose scheme, NATO will have to look for another target. Where? Why not Turkey?

We are now protecting Kurds from bad guy Saddam in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq; however, the Kurd terrorists are not satisfied and want to steal some eastern territory of Turkey, so why not side with ethnic Kurds as we did with ethnic Albanians? Since Turkey is a strong ally of the United States and a NATO member, we could bomb ourselves and settle that situation.

As Walt Kelly's "Pogo" said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

JIM NORBY
Biloxi

U.S. could not have ignored such slaughter

In his July 5 letter "Under a new flag, the killing continues," Gilbert Estrada stated that the killing continues and blamed it on President Clinton.

Does he really believe that the killing of two or three people by peace-keeping soldiers is the same thing as Serb soldiers armed to the teeth arriving in a village of unarmed citizens howling like wolves then systematically killing all fighting-age men and boys, raping all woman and young girls, taking babies by their feet and smashing their heads against a wall, stealing all their possessions then burning over 25 people trying to hide in a cellar? Does he think that the United States should have stood by and done nothing?
The United States is a part of NATO for our own protection. Other countries, such as China, would have seen our failure to back NATO as cowardice and the next thing we would all have to be learning Chinese, especially in light of the number of letters I've read from men who say they wouldn't fight for America.

ALMA LINDSEY
Biloxi

South has always been a foe of big government

Congratulations to columnist Donald Kaul for being the first Yankee to admit that the South at long last, has won the Civil War, also known as the War for Southern Independence. I never thought I'd be able to climb down from the "stool of everlasting repentance" and take pride in my Southern heritage for being a white descendant of Confederate soldiers on both sides of my family.

The North was oppressive to the South, and economics, not slavery, was the reason for the Confederate battle flag.

Truth has a mystical power of its own. The Yankee mindset is one of materialistic "money-grubbing." The pre-war Southerner, referred to as "plain folk" (not part of the plantation system), had a certain contempt for materialism, being a natural part of the cultural heritage of the Celtic people, from which the majority of them sprang.

The South has always been the eternal enemy of big government. As an unreconstructed Southerner, I believe rights are vested first with the individual, then the state, the the Union.

For anyone to say the Confederate flag is offensive because of its misuse is tantamount to saying the cross is offensive because it is used by Satan worshippers in the black mass. My ancestors fought, were wounded and imprisoned on Ship Island. Some died in the Civil War, and they never wore sheets over their heads.

The Stars and Stripes flow over America for 263 years of slavery. It flew over many years of ethnic cleansing of Indians under "Honest" Abe. I am tired of the Lincoln myths. He was so unpopular in his own day that of 14 personal invitations sent to "friends" to attend Ford Theater on the night he was assassinated, only two people showed up. Notably absent was his bodyguard and Gen. and Mrs. Grant. Only five days after the war ended.

JOHN C. MOZINGO JR.
Gulfport

We still have a little 'civilizing' left to do

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that we all are descendants of slaves and serfs. Some of our ancestors were held as slaves for generations. These same ancestors also placed others in slavery for generations.

For centuries, the victor of war determined who would be the slave and who the slaveowner. This tragic fact of worldwide incivility was acceptable practice even as late as our inhabitance of this country, when we placed the aboriginal Indians in serfdom and eventually drove them to reservations, where many reside in squalor to this day, an embarrassing remnant of our lingering incivility that should be addressed.

It's hard for us in this day to fathom man's past incivility to man, but that was of different times and of different values acted upon on the slow path to civility or "civilization."

The reasons we progressed toward civility are probably a conglomeration. Some might credit a gradual and subtle religious awakening. Others may believe it a continuing positive mutation of our collective mentality. In any case, thank God that we were one of the first countries to abolish slavery, an act for which we of all races should be proud and acknowledge with gratitude.

Let's count our blessings, as human life is still cheap in much of West Africa, where chattel slavery is still practiced. We've come a long way, but let's understand that there's still a little more "civilizing" to do. Let's work toward abolishing within ourselves those still-lingering bouts of historically induced prejudices. Hey, I think we're almost there!

ARMOND 'SI' SIMMONS
Pell City, Ala.

Action will help save the magnificent marlin

The Billfish Foundation congratulates the Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo for their decision to join the effort to conserve billfish populations. We also would like to express our appreciation to The Sun Herald editorial staff for recognizing the importance of the rodeo's action.

It is through such enlightened leadership as exhibited by the Deep Sea Rodeo and The Sun Herald that the magnificent marlin will survive for future generations.

ELLEN PEEL
Executive director
The Billfish Foundation
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Misguided outrage has often led us into war

In my last letter I made a prediction and it looks like I'm right about NATO and the India and Pakistan dispute over what should be known as $$$Cashmere. Will our nation never cease this crass phony moralist behavior - the kind that Jesus spoke of, referring to Pharisees parading around in their white robes.

Before this Kosovo thing, Serbs said that what they were being accused of the Ethnic Albanians had been doing to them and that 50 years ago Kosovo was populated 70 percent Christian, now it's 70 percent Muslim. Already NATO troops have exchanged gunfire with the Kosovo Liberation Army; have we merely inherited the Serbs' problem?

Historically, this is nothing new for our good old U.S.A. Gunboat diplomacy officially began when we sent an armed armada to Japan prior to the Civil War, demanding they enter the 19th century and trade with us. And about a century later, there was Pearl Harbor.

Prior to our Civil War, tabloid-type journalism championed the crusading sociopath John Brown and our North, many of whom had never known a Negro, hastily put on their robes in ardent outrage, sharing this madman's bloody ideals.

Today, most historians agree that slavery was on its way out, and they also agree that prior to our Civil War there were more free blacks in the South than in the North, and that there were more blacks fighting alongside whites against the North than the reverse. Did Gen. Sherman and good old Abe really do our black citizens this huge favor they never cease to remind them of?

JESS KENNEDY
Biloxi

Why expose residents to out-of-state garbage?

Four members of the Solid Waste Authority Board have voted to make Hancock County the home of the largest garbage dump in the state of Mississippi, despite the wishes of a very large portion of the voting public, as evidenced by the petition.

Waste Management has offered to take all of Hancock County's garbage for the next 20 years for no more than Hancock County is paying now. The free garbage promise to Hancock County is only for those persons willing to fill their cars with their household garbage and haul it to the dump themselves. The existing transportation fees will still be charged.

The $2 million promised to the county each year is miniscule when compared with the $2 million of taxpayers' money Trent Lott attempted to secure to pave Texas Flat Road. If the cost of paving a single county road used to haul the 1,795 tons of garbage a day is $2 million, what will the cost be for all the county roads subjected to huge garbage trucks carrying tons of out-of-state garbage every day?

The talk of establishing a radius is misleading. A landfill could establish a radius of 75 miles and still accept garbage from as far away as New York through strategically placed transfer stations within the 75-mile radius. Even with a contract, the radius would depend on how the landfill operator interprets the contract, as Pearl River County discovered earlier this year.

We must question the motives of the four members who voted to expose Hancock County to tons of out-of-state garbage. If this is such a great thing, why doesn't Mr. York put one in his county?

PATRICK F. THOMPSON
Picayune

Wish that 'America' could be our anthem

I recently heard a rendition of the song "America." It's such a beautiful piece of music, and it contains words and phrases that pertain to our country, its principles, morals and ideals.

I then thought this should be our national anthem, but it wouldn't have a chance of being selected. You know why? Because it contains the phrase "God shed His grace on thee." The present "Star-Spangled Banner" connotates a belligerent attitude!

RAYMOND J. FOLEY JR.
Pass Christian

Inherited wealth would disqualify a lot of folks

A recent letter to the editor expressed dismay over the appointment of "openly gay, anti-Catholic" James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg.

This has me concerned, as I rarely give much thought to homosexuals, even those who are "open." Perhaps I should, as conservative Republicans seem to spend a great deal of time worrying about them.

Although the Luxembourg government doesn't seem concerned about Mr. Hormel's sexual practices, what do they know? They are, after all, 98 percent Catholic and probably have other interests.

Mr. Hormel's sexual leanings aside, it seems the fact that he's extremely wealthy and inherited the wealth disqualifies him for an ambassadorship. If inherited wealth disqualified someone for public office, that would be the end of all the Bush kids and Steve Forbes, for starters, and most appointed ambassadors since the beginning of this country's history.

SCOTT MOCK
Biloxi