Delivered-To:  Wed, 29 Apr 1998 07:25:25 -0700
From:   #O# PUB LTE: Cryptic comments
Sender:  Source: Calgary Sun (Canada)
Contact:  http://www.canoe.ca/CalgarySun/
Pubdate: Wed, 29 Apr 1998
Comment: Parenthetical remarks are the Sun editor's : headline by hawk

LETTER OF THE DAY

THE CRYPTIC comments at the end of the letters published mostly reveal
ignorance, rather than contribute to readers' understanding.

One comment demonstrates it's your reading comprehension that is not up to
par. The effort to critique G. Anutooshkin's letter, pointing out,
correctly, that changes in the law proposed by Solicitor-General Andy Scott
will not affect biker gangs (April 27) was: "Bikers have adapted and
prospered because they make fortunes from criminal activity".

But was this not Anutooshkin's point?

I'll spell it out for you. The letter's point was the law will not curb
bikers because they operate outside the law. That said, I must confess I
would have preferred it if the letter had spelled out the obvious
conclusion rather than simply implied it: That organized crime will never
be beaten until the various profitable businesses it operates, such as
drugs, prostitution and gambling, are brought within the law.

How strange that, in a city where socialism supposedly has few friends,
your publication favors the big government approach that supports the
U.S.-led campaign to persecute innocent, mostly non-white drug users around
the world -- and yet, alas, survives.

Alan Randell

(Exactly. Currently our laws shackle police. We need to rewrite the laws on
organized crime.)