Letters to the Editor
futhark
Published Letters: 270 Editor's Choice: 22
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Unthinkable As It Is For Some, It's Time To Apply Occam's Razor to 9/11
[Read the article: Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We are naturally inclined to believe and follow our leaders, especially those of a nation like ours in which they are supposed to be selected by and responsible to the majority of voting citizens. We don't like to think of those in the highest, most responsible offices of the land as lying traitors, willing to sacrifice American lives as a means to arrogate wealth and power to an elite oligarchy. It's simply unthinkable that the corny guy from Texas who constantly muffs his lines in a comical way, but loves to ride his bike and eat barbecue, the guy that I've been told by females is kind of cute could be the chief agent in effecting a silent coup, making the United States a defacto dictatorship.
Yet all the evidence, going back to his initial appointment to the office of the Presidency in 2000 indicates this is true. He's been caught flat-footed lying to the American People on numerous occasions, perhaps most notably when he assured a group of citizens in New York that there never had been, was not now, nor would there be in his Administration, any unwarrented surveillance of domestic phone and email communications. At the time, his Administration had been doing this for over a year and it would be another 2 years before they were caught.
From my very first archived letter to Salon, April 9, 2007:
"If you consider the targets of the attacks were the two Democratic Senators (Leahy and Daschle) most likely to oppose or at least delay the passage of the ironically named "Patriot Act" and that the Bacillus anthracis used was a strain unique to the American biological weapons stock, it becomes clear that this was a tool to intimidate Congress into passing the bill quickly without reading it or considering its consequences. And it worked! These attacks were calculated to further panic the public into surrendering their rights and control of the government to the Executive Branch. They were launched by the same group of traitors who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and have been allowed to run roughshod over all constraints of law and decency for the further empowerment and enrichment of the few at the great expense of the many."
It's time we cast aside our natural trust in our leaders and critique the events of 9/11 in the cold light of reason, with no object other than discovering what REALLY happened. The Kean Commission was hamstrung from the first, given its marching orders to find out HOW 19 box-cutter wielding Arab fanatics had perpetrated these crimes, not WHO was responsible for the attacks. It didn't help the Commission's objectivity to have a mole from the White House, Philip Zelikow, as the Commission's Chief-of-Staff.
We really do need a new 9/11 Commission, not composed as the first one was of members of the financial and political elite, but ordinary citizens willing to ask ALL the tough questions and demand REAL ANSWERS. Until this is done, our Republic and our heritage of liberty under constitutional law are in dire jeopardy.
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Futhark's Law of Weddings and Marriages
[Read the article: Bridesmaid revisited]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In general, the duration of a marriage and the satisfaction each partner derives from it is inversely proportional to the expense and complexity of the wedding ceremony.
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These Allegation Will Be Best Investigated
[Read the article: Forging the missing case for war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]by the Congressional Special Committee on Impeachment of Bush/Cheney. Seriously, if only a tiny fraction of the allegations generated in response to the actions of Bush and Cheney could be made to stick, the case for impeachment and conviction would be a slam-dunk. The only thing that seems to be lacking is a Congress with the courage to execute its Constitutional mandate to hold members of the Executive Branch accountable through the impeachment process. Now we must ask who is intimidating or blackmailing members of Congress to keep them from performing this necessary task.
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I'm Looking For A Disciple Of Jefferson, Not Jesus
[Read the article: Barack Obama's purpose-driven gamble]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Except for the admonition to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" Jesus had little to say about how secular governments ought to be managed. I really don't care if the President is a Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist, or Atheist, as long as he or she promotes the kind of popular representative government with guarantees of individual rights that was initiated by the Founders and advanced so nobly by our society until the past few decades. The obeisances of Senators McCain and Obama before the idol of evangelical approval does nothing toward securing thrifty, responsible government with equal protection under the law. Both aforementioned Senators have revealed their underlying corruption by voting for telecom amnesty in the recent FISA Amendments Act. Neither has come out strongly against the Real ID Act, the misnamed Patriot Act, or other legislative infringements of our inherent rights.
I suspect I am expecting too much to have a candidate who is plain spoken, calls the flim-flam apologists for military aggression for what they are, and is honest about the terrible trouble we are in from extravagant government borrowing and spending and a monetary system controlled by a power elite, inaccessible to the popular will.
So whether McCain or Obama "praises Jesus" is their own private business, as far as I am concerned. I just hope that neither of them turns out to be a bought and sold flunky for transnational corporations in their bloodthirsty stop-at-nothing bid for world hegemony.