Letters to the Editor
bloomsbury
Published Letters: 405 Editor's Choice: 5
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what do they want?
[Read the article: Ron Paul is a baby elephant]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What they want is Utopia. Don't we all? But I'm a pragmatist and I believe any system that takes no account of human fallibility and imperfection won't work. In Ron Paul's world, if you get sick you have to go to your enormous bank account and pay for your treatment yourself. Fine. And if you don't have an enormous bank account? Too bad. You're on your own.
In his world the government is the enemy: not poverty and injustice which his system would set in stone for all time. The proof that his ideas don't work is all around him but of course 'there is none so blind as he who will not see'. He's a process man: get the perfect process and you get the perfect product (the Soviets thought exactly the same) but God doesn't like to be bored watching us ants crawling around, so that don't gonna work! Perfection is inhuman so I always have a healthy fear of an allegedly perfect system that does away with the human need for community and community support and and isolates each of us in our own little hell of individualism and competition. I can only imagine what all those enthusiasts running around campaigning for Paul think he stands for but having had one of those nasty 'humanist' educations I think I can see where he's heading - free market, libertarian crapola. These people are all the same. Margaret Thatcher claimed there was no such thing as society but that didn't stop her having her accomodation, transport, health insurance and income all provided by the society she claimed din't exist. If she really believed what she said she should have dissolved her government and given back all the money. She should have admitted she was a fascist with anarchist overtones on a mission to punish human beings for being -well, human. Ron Paul is firmly in the Thatcher camp. You've been warned. Just remember the story he tells about how doctors used to be paid with chickens when their patients couldn't pay. A great system that worked according to Mr Paul.
He's not even in the 20th century yet.
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fake news
[Read the article: An Iran bombshell for Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]McNeil Lehrer might have been a good news show once. I only started watching it a couple of years ago but it's certainly a travesty of a news show now. You sit there wanting to scream as opportunity after opportunity to skewer the bad guys slips away. No one ever puts any of these charlatans on the spot and how they deserve to be put on the spot! Well, actually they deserve to be put in jail but that's another story and no one has the guts to do it. But really, if you're going to go to all the trouble of putting a show to air why not do your job? Why pussyfoot around? I admire the old school of journalism where the motto was that when you interviewed someone the question that should be going through your head was: Why is this bastard lying to me? The media will never recover its honour and the populace has moved on to the internet for most of its news now - a trend that will only grow, hastened by the continual lying and self-censorship of journalists. The latest big lie about Iran has caused barely a ripple and it's because no one expects Bush and Co. to tell the truth about anything
anymore. I suspect most Americans are just biding their time to take their revenge in '08. The Republican party is going to be gutted and they've got no one but themselves to blame.
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Heil
[Read the article: For the CIA's eyes only]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The CIA is the most successful branch of the Nazi party the world has ever seen. How the hell do they get away with it? Undoubtedly because they have information on so many politicians that no one can touch them.
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what for?
[Read the article: "We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I simply cannot believe that anyone still thinks Al Gore would go to all this trouble to carry out a fraud! What for? How could he possibly benefit? He could be living a nice quiet life. He's certainly not doing it for the money. I'm simply baffled when people take this line. I think people who deny the fact of climate catastrophe are afraid to face reality and some of them have a deep seated belief that God not we humans is in charge and won't let the worst happen. They're in the minority now so perhaps they can have that luxury but if governments and the majority of citizens don't take it seriously and act then we won't survive and we won't deserve to survive. It's quite simple: we need another way to power this planet. It's not impossible (in fact there's a lot of money to be made out of fixing the problem) but it will take a huge collective effort. If people can band together to make war then they can band together to solve this problem and I believe they will because it's the only sensible thing to do and in the end self-interest rules us all.