Letters to the Editor
Holly McLachlan
Published Letters: 559 Editor's Choice: 3
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Oceanfront property in Arizona......
[Read the article: Interviews with AP executives on the Bilal Hussein travesty]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...Right-wing snoops and would-be Lex Luthors, when they exhibit any imagination at all, are far less agile.
This one is clever, far too clever. My money says he's a fake. (Or a performance artist, if you prefer.)-- William TimbermanIt looks to be a cut above "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", but it also looks like performance art. A con -- but maybe a fun con if it doesn't cost too much. (Anything over twelve bucks is probably too much.)
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Consumer's Union...Habitat for Humanity....Global Witness.... never heard of 'em, eh?
[Read the article: Joe Klein: Both factually false and stuck in the 1980s]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At the bottom of it all is the desperate need, growing worse, for a business entity for which money is not the ultimate bottom line, which keeps its place on influencing government....
It's a ways upthread by now, but in regards to news on the web, and the idea of organizing an entity to get the level of information we want for a change -- the best model that I know of is Consumer's Union. They've been producing high quality analyses of goods & services since Jesus made corporal. They take no advertising and no shit. Given the excessive proliferation of brands, and shortening of product cycles in recent years it's become hard for them to keep up-to-date with product analyses, but I still can rely on them for service contracts. i.e. I don't do business with Sprint cellular and, if I can, I time my purchases of appliances & electronics to coincide with their reports.
News is just another service; it can be analyzed for quality, amount of real data, degree of slant, currency, etc.
All you need are people that will work untold hours for no money, no status, and no respect. Would you be willing to live like that? I doubt it, yet for some reason you think it possible that others would be willing to endure poverty for the wonderfulness of your ideals. -- shooter242
There are a myriad of effective organizations comprised of people who do just that. NGOs are growing by leaps and bounds, active in all facets of life -- including what we think of as strictly economic life. How, especially at this time of year, could you fail to notice them?
The only people who don't respect them are fools and idiots. These kinds of organizations make and break industries. The thing is, if they let up, things go to hell quickly. Timberman is right about eternal vigilance. However, functional models for effecting change are out there in the world, succeeding right now.
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Why so long in power then?
[Read the article: Good riddance to John Howard ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...Australians are generally low key about religion and in fact are wary of anyone mixing religion and politics. In the eyes of the Australian public a sporting hero is much more likely to be admired, and forgiven many a moral trespass, than someone thumping a bible.
Is this still as true as you might like it to be? I've watched American-style politicized fundamentalism gaining strength in Canada for +12 years. Each time I visit my in-laws I see more of their surreptitious encroachments into sane, secular mainstream life. The radio channels, the ads, the charismatic churches in suburban Toronto.... and Harper, of course. The Reform Party had some pretty hard-core religious rightists at its center; they are as willing to use "stealth" methods to gain power as their brethren in the U.S. Yet, my in-laws tend to believe that Christianism is a mental disease unique to the U.S. -- that their calm, equitable WASP-based culture is immune to it. I'm less sanguine about the matter.
Howard was [...] well on his way to socially and economically “cleansing” Australia in a way which could have eventually lead to perpetual rule by an ever extreme right.-- Damien Morris
This is what makes his defeat so encouraging. But, it also makes blithe statements like yours about the unchangingly secular rationality of Australians seem...... shaky. Murdoch may be a unique aberration as Australians go -- but ultra-rightist "Christian" zealots are not confined to Alabama. (They aren't even confined to Alberta nowadays.)
Was it just simple xenophobia that kept him power?
Or just his good luck that his tenure coincided with Asia's growing need for nearby raw materials?
Did the drought do him in?
What was the nature of his power base?
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Good Riddance and Good Luck
[Read the article: Good riddance to John Howard ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...Holly McLachlan asks, I guess rhetorically, why Howard lost the election. Well you can’t fool “..all the people all the time”, not in Australia anyway. Other Australian contributors have eloquently provided more detail. -- damien morris
It was far from rhetorical; I had no idea what local views were with respect to the dominant issues that took him down. Two other Australian posters have indicated that 1) retrograde labor laws and 2) the drought were critical factors.
If "social conservatives" with stealth fundamentalist agendas were not part of the mix that kept him in power -- then you are fortunate. I believe their impact is underplayed by the status quo mainstream press in Canada, which is why I'm quick to pick at the issue.
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Who used to read the newsweeklies......... who reads them now?
[Read the article: Joe Klein digs Time's hole deeper still]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perhaps one of their competitors would be interested in giving this story the coverage it deserves? -- Joel_Grant
That would be lovely, wouldn't it? A true slagfest between America's bigger newsweeklies would probably boost circulation -- at least get people talking and providing a little free word-of-mouth advertising. But, they never seem to do it, except in passing and online. If the matter gets aired in the paper glossies it will be in some dry, arch paragraph in the likes of The Atlantic or some other commentary-upon-the-commentaries. Far from the mad crowd.
They just can't bring themselves to respect their audience -- to the point that they are probably turning their backs on circulation-boosting, money making opportunities. All so that they can still be cordial when they bump into one another in line at Dean & DeLuca's.