EDITORIAL: Escaping a mental cage

"Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an extraordinary autobiography of a women's journey from a childhood and youth in Somalia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia as a devout fundamentalist Muslim (which included genital mutilation) to an escape to Holland to avoid a forced marriage where over a number of years her entire perspective on life gradually evolved. The New York Time's described Ali as "...an unflinching advocate of women's rights and an unflinching critic of Islamic extremism."

Relevant to the Lancaster situation is the following comment: "As I myself know too well, it takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage."

The bulk of the Lancaster public remains unreceptive to the accurate and alarming information provided by local political activists and former commissioners about shocking abuses of a greedy Power Elite. This is a result of many years of receiving distorted and biased information from the monopoly newspapers and the quisling WGAL.

Recent revelations of improprieties are not enough to "dissolves the bars of a mental cage." Rather it will take years of providing an alternate source of reliable information and local understanding for local perceptions to gradually evolve.

Let's recognize that progress will be incremental and efforts must be never ending. Already the rays of light that many of us have shone are having a constraining effect upon business management interference with news and editorial coverage at the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. and may be deterring additional greedy schemes by the Power Elite.

Let us welcome all efforts to accurately inform the public. The job is too big and will take too long for any one of us.