Letters to the Editor
shaunnarine
Published Letters: 109 Editor's Choice: 20
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apologies on "blacks and jews" website
[Read the article: Inside America's powerful Israel lobby]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear David (and other readers),
I must apologize for posting the link to the "Blacks and Jews" website. As I indicated in my earlier letter, I had not checked out the website - I got the particular essay dealing with the authenticity of King's quote when I did a google search with the terms "Martin Luther King" and "letter to an anti-zionist friend". I should certainly have been more careful - I was in a rush, I read the essay, it looked reasonable, and I went no farther. In actually checking out the website, it is apparent that it is a site dedicated to attacking Jews. Obviously, that fact calls into question the veracity of the essay to which I linked my earlier letter. It is possible that what the essay says is accurate, but I would certainly prefer to get that information from a more reputable source.
Clearly, I need to be more careful in posting these kind of links in the future. I did not mean to offend anyone, and for that I am sorry.
(I have not looked at this letter string for the past day, so I did not realize that my earlier posting had evoked such a strong reaction from Mr. Sugarman. If I had checked earlier, I would have apologized sooner).
This being said, I certainly stand by my earlier comments that King's comments - assuming that he made them - are most interesting for what they say about his lack of awareness of the Palestinians and their concerns - something that would not have been uncommon in the 1960s.
Sincerely,
Shaun Narine
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good article
[Read the article: Can American Jews unplug the Israel lobby?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Editor,
Another excellent article by Gary Kamiya. Many people have known for a long time that AIPAC and the policies it espouses have dangerously distorted American foreign policy in the Middle East. This has been going on for a long time - the current Bush Administration is just the worst in that it has been populated by people who did not need to be convinced by the AIPAC line. The big difference today, as Mr. Kamiya points out, is that the distortion of US policy in the Middle East is having fundamentally important consequences for the US now, and threatens to have even greater ramifications if the US ends up attacking Iran. If that does happen, I suspect that Zbigniew Brezinski is correct - it will spell the end of American dominance in the world and engage the US in a decades-long war across much of the Middle East and Central Asia.
Sincerely,
Shaun Narine
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skepticism about government claims
[Read the article: Iran-Britain conflict shows the dangers of our ongoing presence in Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Glenn,
Another excellent post. I agree with everything that you have said, with one important caveat: I would argue that a healthy skepticism about government claims was required long before the present Bush Administration. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin? For decades, people like Noam Chomsky have argued that the mainstream Western media are basically an arm of the government. What makes the present situation really different is that this reality has now become absolutely obvious. The Bush Administration has lied so much and been caught in so many lies that it is impossible for any reasonable person to ignore. At the same time, the fact that the mainstream media has largely facilitated this process of deception has also become impossible to overlook. The mutually-reinforcing relationship of the media and the government has become part of the awareness of any moderately-informed person.
Re: the issue of Britain and Iran: I actually suspect that there are many elements in the British press that have printed the Iranian side of the story and are regarding their government's statements with a sufficiently critical eye. The British media embodies a considerable range of political opinion and a genuine commitment to journalistic ethics - qualities that are sorely lacking in the US and, sad to say, increasingly hard to find in Canada, too.
Sincerely,
Shaun Narine