Letters to the Editor
Nequals1
Published Letters: 295 Editor's Choice: 6
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@ RPM: Faith-based torture
[Read the article: The parade of "shrill, unserious extremists" on display at today's impeachment hearings]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I echoed your sentiment at Dan Froomkin's column today about Bush and his torture policies:
"A defendant acts in good faith when he has an honest belief that his actions will not result in severe pain and suffering. . . . Although an honest belief need not be reasonable, such a belief is easier to establish where there is a reasonable basis for it."
Faith-Based Torture: it's the Republican fascist way.
If this doesn't sicken everyone who is able to comprehend its meaning, then the US is doomed, as is its civilized society - or what's left of it.
When Republicans breast beat about their values, what exactly are those? torture, the infliction of pain, suffering and oppression on everyone with whom they disagree on religious dogma?
Values in action consitute morality, and all I see is immorality in extremis.
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Some history about the origins of constitutional limits and executive power
[Read the article: The parade of "shrill, unserious extremists" on display at today's impeachment hearings]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did some digging into the wonderful Avalon Project's collection of documents about the Constitution.
For your reading pleasure, please see the compendium of relevant Federalist Papers and Madison Debates excerpts. If only Madison and Hamilton were testifying today - those enlightened elitest men of reason! They'd be considered left wing loonies, traitors and unpatriotic (no flag lapel pins, doncha know). Link at my name.
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Thank you, Glenn
[Read the article: Salon Radio: Tim Shorrock]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]These interviews are superb, and between these and Scott Horton's Six Questions written interviews series, I feel as though my horizons are being widened immeasurably.
I also appreciate the transcripts, but I'm still reeling from Daniel Ellsberg's comments. We really do have domestic enemies of the Constitution, and I wonder if you will begin to use that term. That might change the media narrative.
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Timelines
[Read the article: Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tangentially, the timeline around torture is germane. Valtin, a clinical psychologist who has been investigating and reporting psychologists' role in government torture, has just posted the most comprehensive time line to date of government and psychologist torture involvement, and that activity takes off from where the point in time that the anthrax story trails off. Link at my name.
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Torture Timeline Link Correction
[Read the article: Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My bad. Sorry. Corrected link at my name to Valtin's post about the details of the torture time line and disturbing discrepancies.
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Social Contract (Public Interest)
[Read the article: Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll preface this with an apology: I haven't read the comments on this or the previous post, so any redundancy or duncery is totally mine.
"Many other reporters were mad at me but some commentators rightly pointed out that some values -- the obligation of reporters to their readers -- superseded the reporter-source relationship, and that if you used that relationship as a cover for lying, you broke the implicit contract."
The social contract is being broken at so many points in the chain by the Bush administration that I don't know if it can be repaired. I have no reason to think that the anthrax attacks were perpetrated by an entity OTHER than the Bush administration, given the lengthy and ever-growing list of egregious acts its members have wrought upon the Constitution and country.
In th case of the broken social contract, I'll just note that psychologists, physicians and nurses are being used by the US government as agents of abuse and torture, which undermines the patient relationship. Patients by virtue of the public trust and social contract, place life and death decisions into the hands of licensed professionals, who are in turn, charged with keeping the interest and duty to the patient paramount. This is acontextual and is supposed to occur universally, without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, religion, beliefs, culture - without regard to anything except the inherent worth and dignity of the individual and the duty to protect and help the patient, or more larger, society, in the case of public health and welfare.
HHS is actively undermining this with proposed rules to treat contraception as abortion and with mandates that force employers to employ without sanction licensed healthcare providers who refuse to provide treatment based on religious or other personal beliefs (as in the case of refusing to provide an emergency abortion in any circumstance, refusing to provide timely and alternative providers who will provide the appropriate service, refusing to fill prescriptions for contraceptives or emergecy contraception, refusing to vaccinate for HPV, refusing to provide education about and treatment alternatives for contraception other than abstinence only (scientifically unsound) advice, failing to provide adequate HIV/AIDS prevention, etc.
Other examples of the US government breaking the social contract include failing to adequately protect the water, air, ground and food supplies from harmful substances, undermining and distorting science and reporting at the CDC, FDA and OSHA, failing to deal in good faith with air traffic controllers, thus chasing over one third from the FAA workforce and directly endangering the flying public and national security, etc.
I find that the common underlying concept in this story of national security, the failure of journalism and worrisome propaganda being used to manipulate the actions and opinions of the public (and just before a critical national election - no coinicidence on the timing of this "suicide" which I will only refer to as a death since suicide has not been irrefutably determined and migrated from "apparent" to statement of fact in the media reportage without concomitant verification, in my view), is just another example of ripping apart the societal contract in one more place.
Break the chain throughout, and eventually, there is nothing left to put back together. Civil society is irreparably broken and no amount of soldering will ever restore it.
I believe the US is at that point.
Another investigative reporter's take of the antrhax investigation is found on the at-largely blog written by Larisa Alexandrovna. Read the posts around this url:
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/08/a-suggestion-to.html