Tuesday, March 17, 1998

Budget priorities

It does seem a bit askew for the fire department to be out in fund-raising efforts to purchase equipment that has the potential to save lives and is not superfluous.

The city has close to $1 million budget surplus. What better way to spend a small portion of this surplus than to purchase at least one thermal imaging RescueCam?

The fund-raising to purchase this equipment is great community bonding and a rewarding way to achieve the goal of equipping the fire department. Thank you, KTAB, for sponsoring this effort. We will be one family participating to obtain the RescueCams, but I also think the city of Abilene might see this as a priority at budget spending time.

As a recent participant in the Citizens Fire Academy, I have been exposed to the impossibility of effectively functioning in a smoke-filled room. Lives depend on firefighters quickly locating victims in a building filled with smoke.

After witnessing the dramatic and amazing capabilities the RescueCam will perform for the firefighters in locating objects in a fire- and smoke-filled structure, I know everyone in Abilene should be concerned that the Abilene Fire Department have these high-tech pieces of equipment.

J.V. JOHNSON

Abilene

Via e-mail

INS persecution

Despicable! That’s the only word to describe the INS’s recent inhumane treatment (Dallas Morning News, March 12) of a 16-year-old Mexican immigrant who was legally in our country.

Did the INS get a cheap thrill in humiliating this girl by "abducting" her from her mother, placing her in shackles and threatening her with a 10-year jail sentence? Our country’s scum-of-the-earth convicted felons don’t serve that much time and are treated with more dignity.

How many other innocent children has the INS abused that went unreported? How would this country like it if an American child was shackled, then spotlighted in a Mexican newspaper?

If our citizens are to learn moral behavior from our government, what kind of example is set when the INS is allowed to treat a human being (regardless of nationality) like a "piece of garbage"? Does that mean Americans can treat foreigners from third-world countries any way they like, as long as our government has no interest in that country (e.g. Mexico, Philippines, Iran, Iraq, etc.)?

I hope the INS’s haughty attitude doesn’t reflect upon the rest of our government. If so, no wonder most third-world countries hate us, thus making it dangerous for common Americans to set foot off our soil.

The INS’s behavior was a disgrace and embarrassment to our country. This situation demands the INS to make a public apology to the young girl, her family and the Mexican government.

RODNEY VOSHELL

Abilene

Plight of Serbs

I am extremely distressed by the suffering of the Albanians in Kosovo and also by the suffering of the Serbian people. These have been mentioned as almost whispered footnotes: "The Serbians were fighting Albanian terrorism." "The Albanians had killed 50 Serbs over the past 19 months." The rest was the horrific description of what the Serbs had done.

I wish they had longer fuses, and I wish they didn’t get so carried away once they start fighting. But everyone seems to ignore that the Kosovo region the Albanians want to take away was part of Serbia for hundreds of years -- the heart of Serbian pride and patriotism. It was there the Serbs fought the greatest battle against overwhelming odds, when they were taken over by the Ottoman Turks in 1389.

For the Albanians to think they have a right to Kosovo would be like the Cubans thinking they have a right to take Florida away from the United States because they have settled there. But it is worse for the Serbs. Kosovo, to them, is the equivalent of Jerusalem to the Jews.

The Serbs were our allies in both world wars -- have always been our friends. Is it too much for the American news media to at least tell their side of the story?

RUTH APPLIN

Cross Plains