Reading the critics of Salon printing the pictures -

The critics

1) Are trying to deprive other people of seeing data they might want

for making up their own mind.

2) There are female prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the Iraq's claim some where raped, after seeing the photo graphs - what do you think? Could the men who did this do the same to the women? Would have ever thought that if you hadn't seen the photos?

3) Numbers of US service women are saying they have been assaulted by fellow soldiers in Iraq - to the point of a strange article - claiming deaths of a couple of service women was due to dehydration, because they were afraid of having to go to the bathroom at night, because they would be raped by fellow soldiers.

4) We know that a couple of 14 year olds were in the Cuban prison, of course we didn't find out until after they were released. After looking at the pictures, are you sure that every naked male is not a minor? After seeing these pictures would you believe our troops capable of hurting minors in custody?

Books like Susan Brownmiller's - Against are will , document pretty graphically what our troops have done in Vietnam, with a president who didn't want to say he would use torture, do you think our troops are purer now then they were in past engagements?

Yes these acts are done in our name, yes as Americans we are responsible for every act ---- or we are no better than the enemy we are fighting.

This wasn't about sex, the old man gets off on showing he has power

over a woman, he did it by embrassing her sexually in public.

The best way to handle these people(since they are so common) is to turn the

tables, instead of getting flustered or embrassed(which is an automatic win for you because that is what he wanted) turn around calmly - look them in the eye, and say "I am out of your league"

Normally they get hysterical, name calling, and so over the line, that they end up embrassing themselves. To the point the even the lame women in his office couldn't have defended.

From a previous letter:

"I'm so sick of reading all these articles where people are upset about dropping birth rates. In a world with a serious overpopulation problem, we should be celebrating a decrease in birth rates. With the high rates of unemployment in the western world, a decrease in birth rate among the most prosperous should be heralded as good news."

Actually dropping birthrates increases unemployeement for youth - because of the increasing burden of support the elderly becomes a serious drag on the economy. Hence the high unemployeement among the young in Western Eurupe and Japan who are already living the predictions of several books and articles on this subject that were much better then this article, my favorite is - Phillip Longman's book The Empty Cradle

"The Empty Cradle reveals that 59 nations representing 44% of the world's population are headed for population contraction and that this is hastening the aging of societies worldwide, many of which have virtually no infrastructure in place to meet the needs of coming vast waves of elderly, and others whose infrastructures are woefully inadequate.

The upshot is, the health and well being of the world economy stands to be challenged as never before by the first population contraction in modern times."

If all the weathly nations decline due to population drops, it doesn't benefit the 3rd world with its still growing populations, because the first world will not be able to spare resources to the 3rd world anymore.

In the 3rd world you will continue to see the average age decline, and the standard of living decline, in the first world the number of elderly will over whelm the rest of the populations ablitity to support them. Anyway it is a great book - I'd highly recommend it.

Anyway folks, say after me our economy is a big pyramid scheme! and what happens when the bottom of the pyramid stops growing?