Letters to the Editor
bloomsbury
Published Letters: 406 Editor's Choice: 5
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Unexpectedly?
[Read the article: The Padilla verdict]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How can anyone say that Major Esterhazy was 'unexpectedly' acquitted? After what had gone before, his acquittal must have been completely expected. Especially by the army officers who framed Dreyfus and would do anything to save Esterhazy. A decision was made in 'respectable' circles to frame an innocent man, that was my point and the point of the eminent lawyer I referred to. He's a Queen's Counsel actually-which is the highest distinction a lawyer can achieve under the British legal system. I'll take his interpretation over frankly my dear's any time. The point he was making is that strippping away protections from an accused does nothing to stop terrorism and a lot to destroy our way of life and our protections under the law. Whether Dreyfus' trial was a military trial or not doesn't change the facts of a conspiracy at the highest levels to frame an innocent man. And now it's going on in America, Britain and Australia all the time and is being done for purely political purposes. I repeat: Padilla is innocent of any crime-he simply has the misfortune to be a Muslim as Dreyfus had the misfortune in his time to be a Jew. That's what happens when we allow the law to be hijacked by bigots, fanatics and corrupt politicians.
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obfuscation
[Read the article: The Padilla verdict]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obfuscation FMD. I don't need a history lesson so stop patronising me. All this bumpf is just a netfull of red herrings. The crucial point is the plot by people in very high places to frame an innocent man for their own nefarious purposes because of amorality, religious bias and sheer elitist bastardry. I believe this is what has happened to Padilla and many others in the United States,arrested under the dangerous 'terror' laws you, Britain and Australia have introduced. It should scare you enough to stop you reeling out historical pedantry so that you don't have to see the forest and can go on examining the bark of one tree and pondering if a single tree might be diseased. The forest is diseased, that's the problem. There is even less evidence of wrong doing against Padilla than there was against David Hicks who spent nearly six years in Guantanamo Bay uncharged and mostly in solitary confinement before the Australian government was shamed into action to obtain a trial (a shameful farce of a proceeding) and his transferral to an Australian prison. Unlike Padilla, he'll be out by Christmas. In fact the evidence against Padilla is so thin it's a scandal he was convicted. That's what should be pre-occupying you and all Americans.If they can do it to one they can do it to all. It remains to be seen what the next, Democatic, President will do on these matters but I'm not optimistic. Once laws like the 'terror' laws come in they're damn hard to get rid of which is why most lawyers oppose such laws in the first place.
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Rampant democracy
[Read the article: Warner, Levin: "Not optimistic" on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ha,ha. So this is what the US means by democracy. Do as we say, not as we do. Why don't you just get the hell out of Iraq and let them have their country back? Or is that one in the too hard basket? If you really believed in democracy you would never have gone in there in the first place. The Iraq war is a colonial war. The first colonial war of the 21st century and an announcement of America's intention to make the 21st century just like the 20th. An era of bloodthirsty monsters.
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Roosevelt was also lame
[Read the article: Are Democrats really so lame?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]FDR served America extremely well from a wheelchair, so being lame is not the point. Even if the Democrats were legless, the entire raft of Democrat Presidential hopefuls would have to collectively fall under a bus for a Republican to be elected in 2008. Bush and Cheney are in la la land. They don't believe they can lose because God's supposed to be on their side;they think they're on a divine mission. But even God won't put up with idiocy on the scale they've displayed and if they were running a business they would have been bankrupt or fired long ago. The only money these morons have belongs to the American taxpayer and they are the 'deciders'.
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error?
[Read the article: The Padilla verdict]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The error is not mine FMD! For God's sake concentrate. I have no power to lock innocent people up. I am complaining about an abuse of power by an elected government. What I am or think doesn't matter but if you want to obsess on about flaws in my character go ahead. It's the flaws in your President's character and his hideous monster of a Vice President's character that you should worry about. You should worry about the future of your nation. If you'd rather win some Brownie points over Dreyfus that's fine but it won't address the real problem which is not simply an American problem even though it started there. It has now contaminated the world and that should worry any thinking person. Fortunately the Republican party will get what it deserves at the ballot box but these dangerous laws will remain and that's what you should be using electricity on.
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a slip of the tongue
[Read the article: Fantasy island]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rove thinks he's Moby Dick? No, he's just a dick.