Letters to the Editor
bloomsbury
Published Letters: 361 Editor's Choice: 5
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the other lost war
[Read the article: Why Cory Booker is mad as hell]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The war on drugs has been a disaster-and not only for the poor.
It has absolutely failed. There are more people addicted to all drugs, including alcohol than ever before and there are more people using drugs than ever before. It brings to mind the saying that there's no point flogging a dead horse. Then there are the diseases caused by dirty needles. The needless deaths from overdose and hepatitis and aids. The kids in jail who do break and enters to get money to pay the dealer who will beat you to death with a baseball bat and not give it a second thought.All the ruined lives. I've seen it all. Only lawmakers suffering from some form of psychosis would want to continue with the status quo but there's always some moralizing old fart who wants to turn it into a crime against humanity to take a drag on a joint which skews the whole debate towards criminalizing behaviour that is basically a medical problem if it has become an addiction and isn't even a medical problem if it hasn't. In Switzerland they brought in injecting rooms for a 'drug trial' where drug addicts could go and get heroin from trained medical staff in a clean safe environment and with clean needles and tests and treatment for health problems and with drug counselling available. When it was to be made permanent by holding a referendum, the conservatives(yes, they even have them in Switzerland,but I think they're a protected species)ran around frothing at the mouth and the church got on board (of course) but the Swiss are nothing if not pragmatic and when they saw the figures showing that since the advent of the injecting rooms, crime had dropped to levels lower than it was in the SIXTIES they voted to keep the drug trial and make it permanent.Result: no more dead junkies lying in the park, no more syringes lying around, no more of Mutti's silver cutlery disappearing in a break and enter. Drug dealers then became a protected species because they had pretty much lost their livelihood. As Brian Wilson said, "Wouldn't it be nice?'if the moralizing mental midgets who insist on keeping the ridiculous and ineffective drug laws could take off their blinkers and see the possibilities instead of the impossibilities.
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lies, dammed lies and statistics
[Read the article: That's How You Got Killed Before]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They did it in the Vietnam War and they're doing it again. They can't help themselves. The whole war in Iraq, war on Terror is a sham, put together by sociopaths with the same kind of mindset as the politicians who started the massacres in Rwanda. They needed a war, you see. How else could they justify their existence and the obscene amounts of money America spends on developing, producing and selling 'weapons of mass destruction'? With the Soviet Union gone they needed a global enemy, so they all got together around a computer and found one. We will all live with the consequences for generations. This lie about killing the same man twice is nothing compared with the Really Big Lie they're all hiding.
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It's all physiological
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Americans shouldn't be quite so hard on themselves. The smokescreen that Bush and Cheney and their friends have used to bamboozle the voters was 9/11. Fear is generated in the oldest part of the brain, the reptilian part of the brain. Fear literally drives out thought as the front lobe shuts down and fight or flight takes over. That's what they counted on and it worked beautifully. The truth about what happened on 9/11 is far more shocking than the story of a terrorist attack which makes up the official story. The real story is a humdinger and more terrifying than the official one -which only generates more fear- but I think the truth is usually better than a lie and if you know the truth you can do something about it. The people Americans should really fear are running their army, their secret service and their government. Americans are kept in a state of ignorance and fear as a matter of official policy and that's even truer since 9/11. For obvious reasons. Look at your education system: was there ever a system more calculated to keep knowledge from the public? Was there ever a system more calculated to concentrate power in a small group of people forever and ever amen? As long as knowledge and the power that goes with it remains a privilege of the few instead of a right
of all citizens the present disastrous system will continue. Or perhaps not. Maybe the internet will change all that and a completely new and democratic system of exchanging knowledge will develop. I hope so, for all our sakes. It's clear the media has become a tool of the elites and is basically useless for anyone who really wants to know what's going on. Most news anchors are just hammy actors with bad toupees, bad plastic surgery and very little education. Is the truth really as frightening as they are? Not in my world.