Letters to the Editor
tempus
Published Letters: 469 Editor's Choice: 8
-
Friedman...what a pantload
[Read the article: The Tom Friedman of 2002 has not gone anywhere]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He believes, quite contrary to objective fact, that 9/11 happened because the US had lost its deterrent power? HOGWASH. The reason 9/11 happened is multifaceted but to boil it down to the bone, it happened because of decades of US policy in the Middle East (for OUR own "good") at the expense of any concern for the best interests of the local populace, failing to see that keeping the people there happy would actually serve the US good. Instead, we imposed tyrants simply because they were completely pliable to "US interests", meaning corporate interests for the most part - and willing to let us garrison troops in their territories. The happiness and tranquility of the local populace was not even seen as irrelevant - it was not considered at all.
We can also simply take OBL at his word. He helped mastermind the 9/11 attack because of the continuing garrisoning of US troops in his native Saudi Arabia (infidel invaders in the Muslim holy land). It really is that simple. Deterrent had nothing to do with it...what do you call many thousands of nuclear warheads and thousands of ICBMs and MRBMs? Or a military funded continuously on a war footing since shortly after WWII? A military that enjoys greater funding than ALL the other developed nations militaries (China and Russia included) combined?
Friedman is a nutbag or a plain idiot. Or both.
Dowd too, by the way.
-
Ugh. LOTS more to environment than pollution
[Read the article: Ron Paul's free, green market ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not a single word about biodiversity. Not a peep about endangered species.
I suppose, being Ron Paul, that he thinks people actually OWN Bald Eagles or wolves or Grizzly Bears or Condors or frogs or...the list is huge and growing...and that the OWNERS of these unownable creatures will be responsible for keeping them from being wiped out by greedy libertarians out for a buck by paving their land for a housing development.
Tip to the author of this piece: the environment is MUCH bigger than pollution.
-
Total nonsense
[Read the article: "Love and Sex With Robots"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First of all, people will have sex, ultimately, with robots just like they have "sex" with vibrators and other toys but a robot that PRETENDS to be a human is not a human. It is an empty shell programmed by some pasty, unwashed, jacked-on-caffeine programmer to carry out "If-then-else" statements. Second, the comparison between a robot and a dog or cat is way off base. Cats and dogs are not robotons simply following a set of "if-then-else" rules but with absolutely nothing really going on inside. They have thoughts, intentions, feelings (actual organic feelings) that, though they may not be human in all respects, are certainly much more similar to those of humans than what any robot could be "If-then-elsed" to do. PRETENDING to have feelings is not the same as actually HAVING them. Dogs and cats (and birds and horses and goats) actually HAVE them.
This Levy character needs to be kept away from children, pets, wildlife, and even women. He seems suspiciously lacking in humanity and empathy. A dog is an empty sack of skin that merely programmatically takes advantage of human emotions? Bullcrap. The people that think along these lines have no problems torturing animals (since they are just empty bags of skin operating on "if-then-else" programs). Such people tend to be sociopaths and apply the same lack of empathy to ALL living things around them, human or no.
-
Glenn...reason for Dems allowing this to slip
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The other day someone at DKos had a posting up about the bunch of Congressmen and women who were briefed on the CIA detention and interrogation system. Among the Democrats who were briefed was Pelosi, Harman, and Rockefeller (I do recall his name being among those briefed in), plus a couple of other Dems and a handful of GOPers. In any case, out of the bunch of Dems who were briefed, ONLY HARMAN objected to waterboarding. Rockefeller and Pelosi were dead silent on the matter. Apparently, some of those briefed even worried that the interrogation tactics used weren't harsh enough! I would like to believe that anyone who worried thus was a GOPer but I would no longer be surprised if it was Pelosi or Rockefeller.
What is particularly disturbing about this is that it presents a reason that Pelosi is so against impeachment AND why no real investigation is likely on this latest matter (which may be more about who the victim of CIA torture implicated - a host of Saudi Royals - rather than "merely" torture itself). Pelosi is against impeachment because she is complicit in at least one aspect of the impeachable offenses committed by Bush and Cheney: torture. Rockefeller is also complicit. Silence in the face of torture being conducted by the US government IS complicity. Only Jane Harman can claim to be clean on this matter because only she objected.
Since Pelosi and Rockefeller are so big on waterboarding, I demand that they both introduce bills into their respective chambers that fully exonerates the Japanese men we prosecuted after WWII specifically because they waterboarded prisoners. If it is OK now, and OK for the US to do it, then it most assuredly was legal back then and perfectly OK for ANY other country to use it too, including on US military personnel AND civilians arrested for suspicion of criminal activity. Torture for us means torture for all.
Pelosi and Rockefeller (at least) are complicit and are, de facto, pro-torture. They need to be impeached before anyone else in the government can be brought to justice.