Letters to the Editor
Susan Wood
Published Letters: 379 Editor's Choice: 27
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If I hear one more friggin comment about how the detainees are well off because they're getting three meals a day,
[Read the article: Is waterboarding more like swimming or eating rice pilaf?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]whoever says it should be condemned to spend a month living on the actual diet that they served at Abu Ghraib, and the recipes should be as true to historical fact as possible, using the evidence of camp guards who repeatedly reported finding rat parts in the food.
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Joan Walsh, if you won't stop wasting space on this self-promoting emptyhead,
[Read the article: Dogma days ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]please at least charge her standard advertising rates every time she hawks her wretched volume "Break wind, blow me, burn this book."
What's the idea of printing her content-free assertion that man made global warming is a myth on the same day as a serious article about the real and imminent danger that it poses? Is this your idea of "balance" -- serious scientists "balanced" by a tenth-rate phoney academic in some vague branch of the humanities?
of the day, like Michelle Obama's stylish clothes.
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Anonymous 10?37 a.m., get your facts straight.
[Read the article: Girl murdered over hijab?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you're American, you probably suffer from selective memory loss of everything up until 9/11/01, but make an effort, and try to remember who it was that raised the loudest alarms about the tyrannical Taliban regime in Afghanistan before 9/11. Was it Republicans who claimed to be staunch defenders of American security? Was it Norman Podhoretz, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Paul Wolfowitz or any of that crowd? No, it was feminists who were trying to alert the world to the brutal repression of women in Afghanistan, under a system so irrationally misogynistic that it even denied them medical care, because it was indecent for a male doctor to look at a female patient, and illegal for a woman to be a doctor. What was the response of the Wise, Serious, Mainstream, Rational politicians (to borrow Glen Greenwald's typograpy?) It could basically be summed up as "Don't bother your pretty little heads about it, girls, Afghanistan is not important in world politics, and we have Very Serious Important things to think about like building a Star Wars missile defense against the real enemies that are likely to attack us." Art historians who were appalled by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas got essentially the same response.
When the "real enemies" turned out to be an organization based in Afghanistan, supported by the Taliban, and using low-tech tactics that "Star Wars" couldn't have prevented, THEN George Bush et al suddenly decided that they were shocked, SHOCKED by the treatment of women in Afghanistan, and overjoyed by the demonstration of human freedom that permitted Afghani women to take off their burkas after the American invasion. Things in Afghanistan now are pretty much the way they were before, by the way -- see yesterday's Times on the horrific medical conditions in Taliban-controlled areas. But that doesn't bother any of the Very Serious Mainstream politicans and pundits who are now saying "shut up, and oh, look, Iranian nukes!"
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To the latest Anonymous
[Read the article: Girl murdered over hijab?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]About twenty years ago, there were some news stories about a fundamentalist Christian cult (I use the word cult advisedly, since they lived in a very closed community) that advocated beating children for as long as it took to make them obey, even if the beatings lasted for hours, which they sometimes did. At least one or two children went into shock and died, but it's hard to be certain how many, because this group did not believe in reporting deaths to outside authorities. So please don't try to tell me that this kind of brutal behavior is unique to Islam or any religious group. As several letter writers have already pointed out, religion is the excuse that sadistic, controlling people in every society use to try to dominate others by force.
And if you outlaw the hijab in public schools, then the "chastity ring" has to go too. Fair's fair. Do I hear you condemning the family that's making a big hoohaw about a school forbidding their daughter to wear her ring because their policy specifies "no jewelry of any kind?"
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Roooth, I'm pretty sure that was St. Paul, not Peter.
[Read the article: Girl murdered over hijab?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But you're right about honor killing being as much a part of the western European tradition as of Arab culture. Roman history is full of honor-killings and honor-suicides, two of the better known being Lucretia (who killed herself after being raped, on the grounds that the body that sinned must be punished whether the mind consented or not) and Verginia, whose father killed her to prevent her being claimed as a slave and concubine by Appius Claudius.
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How's this for a radical concept?
[Read the article: Why is Clinton struggling? Insert answer here]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with her campaign organization, advisers, husband, hair color or preference for coffee with cream.
Maybe the voters LIKE OBAMA'S POLICIES AND HIS STANDS ON THE ISSUES BETTER!
Wow, can the media chatterers wrap what passes for their minds around that notion? No, forget it. It has to be all about haircuts, clothes, tongue-studs and speaking voices.
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Anonymous
[Read the article: Contempt for Rove, Bolten]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Didn't take you long, did it? But you left out "and Clinton got a b.j., nyah nyah nyah."
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Thatboy, it might make sense IF
[Read the article: Administration lawyers were in on discussion of CIA tapes' destruction]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that valuable information they claim to have extracted from Abu Zubaydah turned out to consist of confessions that he was an operative from the planet Zort who had been sent here to destroy the U.S. by levitating our nukyoolar missiles out of their silos with anti-gravity devices, while creating pod people to substitute for previously patriotic Americans, and diabolically programming these replicants to say things like "I wish I hadn't voted for George Bush, this war he sold us is turning out to be a disaster." Of course all this is tremendously valuable top-secret information, but the great unwashed might have a little trouble understanding its true significance.
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Judging a candidate by his appearance
[Read the article: Campaigning while female]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]was what put Warren Harding in office. He was tall, broad shouldered, had a handsome head of hair with a little distinguished gray, and had a wonderful baritone speaking voice. And we all know how well that predicted his success as President.