Letters to the Editor
Silenced
Published Letters: 1359 Editor's Choice: 75
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Cosmology is the study of how the universe was cooked
[Read the article: The modern kitchen]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once upon a time, the universe was cooked to a very high temperature. Now it's cooling off.
It's interesting how Western culture has turned the kitchen into a confining space that keeps women away from things like cosmology.
When cosmology is really just the study of a fancy kind of cooking. Just a hotter oven, really.
The traditions surrounding Mary the Jewess shows that there didn't used to be such a gap between the kitchen and the lab.
Mary is credited with two inventions: the three-armed distillery used in the alchemical experiments that evolved into the field of chemistry, and the double boiler that the French call the "bain marie," used by cooks in the kitchen for heating custards and sauces.
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But where does he stand on the latest actual real decisions about cocaine that you chose not to cover in Salon?
[Read the article: Baptists, Mormons, atheists and cocaine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey there is real drug news. The Sentencing Commission ended the crack/powder cocaine disparity and the Supreme Court said that mandatory minimum sentences are just guidelines for judges and the judges can make their own decisions about sentencing.
I want to know how Huckabee feels about THAT.
But you're not allowed to tell me anything about drug policy in the real world, are you?
Because Salon has decided that the voters aren't allowed to vote on that issue in this election, right?
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greyarea do you really believe that old Soviet propaganda?
[Read the article: "Charlie Wilson's War"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're listing all the things the Soviet government told the Soviet people the soldiers were doing in Afghanistan.
They never accomplished any of that!! Not a single bit of it!!!
They did bomb villages, they razed them into the ground. They committed mass murder from the air.
And afterwards -- some of the Soviet pilots who followed those orders committed suicide by drinking helicopter fuel.
And the Soviet government tried pretend all those deaths didn't happen.
The funerals were held in secret because they didn't want the Soviet people to know that they weren't building schools -- they were blowing them up and bombing the children into little pieces.
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Why did this invasion happen? There is a lot of blame to share
[Read the article: "Charlie Wilson's War"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why did the Soviets invade?
If you look at the Afghan economy prior to the invasion, you see an enormous amount of that could be called foreign aid hustling.
They got their military aid from the Soviet Union and their agricultural aid from America.
They played the Cold War pretty well up until 1973, when the 10% of the country that was educated and Marxist decided they could point a few guns and force the 90% of the country that lived according to patriarchal tribalism to change their ways.
Of course there was opposition. The Afghan Marxists arrested the mullahs who opposed them and had them tortured in prison -- not because there was any ticking terrorist time bomb, but just because Afghans torture prisoners as part of their punishment. It's just how they operate over there.
Imprisoning and torturing extremist mullahs failed to calm the growing anti-Marxist rebellion in the rural areas, and so the Afghan Marxists turned on each other in despair. They started imprisoning and torturing their own internal opposition.
Then there was a coup. One Marxist dictator fell. Then another Marxist dictator fell.
But no matter which Marxist faction led the government, they were not able to force the tribal people to reject tribalism and embrace state socialism. They failed completely at this task.
Instead they started a civil war -- one that the Marxists had no hope of winning, since they only made up 10% of the population!!!
And then a bunch of Soviet military advisors and their families were brutally slaughtered.
The Politburo finally lost their patience with this country whose military they'd been financing for over 20 years.
They decided -- since we paid for their military, and Afghan Marxists are too incompetent to win their own civil war, then we'll go in and win it for them.
That's how the invasion happened.
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There were no good guys in that war
[Read the article: "Charlie Wilson's War"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every side in that war either committed war crimes, or stood by and watched them being committed.
Raping your POWs -- that's a war crime.
Shame on the CIA for standing by and watching that happen.
That was act of deep political cynicism and we are paying for it now.
And the Soviets committed war crimes too -- that's why so many of their pilots attempted suicide by drinking gasoline after bombing missions.
It was an ugly war that we're still paying for today.
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Recommended supplementary reading
[Read the article: "Charlie Wilson's War"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The Tragedy of Afghanistan" -- Pakistan socialist Raja Anwar gives a detailed account of how and why the Afghan Marxists bungled their chance to reform the country in the seventies and practically invited the Red Army in.
"Afghanistan -- A Russian Soldier's Story" -- accounts of the war from Soviet soldiers who had no real idea what they were fighting for or how it all fit in with what they'd learned about international socialist brotherhood in Pioneer Camp when they were children.
"The Hidden War" -- Soviet journalist Artyom Borovik's articles about Afghanistan, before and after Glasnost.
His post-Glasnost section talks about the Soviet pilots who attempted suicide by drinking jet fuel after carrying out orders to wipe out inhabited villages.
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Exactly WHEN did this happen, @candypants?
[Read the article: "Charlie Wilson's War"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why is this propagandistic? Because it supports the idea that Afghans are just too tribal to get along. They've always fought each other. As Wilson once said to me, "You put two Afghans in a room, you end up with seven factions." The trouble with this idea is that Afghanistan has been a cohesive nation for several hundred years.
Really? During exactly which centuries?
They've only been a nation since 1919.
I want to know exactly which centuries you're talking about when they were a cohesive nation.
Are we talking Tamerlane? The Mughals? The Mongols? The Greeks?
When were they ever cohesive?
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Paper towels and cold water work fine
[Read the article: Kitchen gadgets: Put away those onion goggles, please]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I cut onions, I keep a thin stream of cold water coming from the faucet and I keep a double layer of dampened paper towels at the ready.
I cover the onions I've already cut with the damp paper towels, and I wash the knife and my hands in cold running water periodically during the cutting process.
Most of the tearing up chemical actually gets released from the knife blade.
Washing the knife every few minutes make a huge difference.