Letters to the Editor
Xrandadu Hutman
Published Letters: 2714 Editor's Choice: 52
-
Wow, they're circumsized....and they're running around throwing balls!
[Read the article: The 18 best Jewish ballplayers of all time]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree -- what's the point? Who gives a flying fuck? When is Salon going to post an article about the world's greatest Buddhist puppeteers? Hindu graphic designers? Islamic entomologists? Rosicrucian jugglers?
-
Sorry, mom
[Read the article: The 18 best Jewish ballplayers of all time]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay Joan, you shamed me. I've been in a pretty foul mood lately anyway. I shouldn't be so rough. I apologize.
I do think this article's a little weird though. Give it a little more thought, would you? Just think of some parallel examples:
-- "The top 24 Italian-Catholic ballplayers of all time"
-- "The top 15 Muslim hockey players of all time"
-- "The top 12 Scientologist crossword solvers of all time"
Do any of those sound weird to you as a feature story?
To the guy who said "You can ignore it," sure. But it's the featured story. Even as a weekend puff/fluff piece, it's pretty niche-oriented for the top slot. Not that it's my decision. Not that it matters much in the grand scheme.
Come to think of it, I also recall Salon posting a story about Jewish rock stars a few months ago.
Anyway.....sorry for being a butt.
-
Where can we get reliable information?
[Read the article: Is violence in Iraq really down?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obviously the White House has an agenda and will not give reliable data. So can anybody point to sources that are relatively un-biased and can give clear and useful data about the violence in Iraq? There are so many conflicting reports and sources.
Among considerations:
-- Any assessment that shows progress in the summer months must compare not to previous months, but to last year's summer months. This is because summer months are apt to show less violence by simple virtue of less people being outside.
-- Levels of violence should reflect how many people are actually still in a region. Saying that "violence in Fallujah is down" is easy enough, but you have to take into account that 70% of the city was destroyed in 2004, with most of its population fleeing. So it would be natural for its violence level to be down since 2003 with or without a troop surge.
-- We rarely get much information about the number of refugees from Iraq who have fled to neighboring countries. What percentage of the Iraq population has left? How many are admitted to other countries as refugees? How many Iraq refugees are admitted into the United States? (From what I hear, almost none are admitted.)
-- Often the Bush administration will tell us that violence is down in Baghdad, without bothering to tell us that it's simultaneously up in other regions.
What we need is unvarnished information that provides a real context for the future decisions on maintaining troop levels and whether staying has a chance of success. We aren't going to get that from the White House, so what are the best sources?
I would be for maintaining troop levels if it actually appeared that Iraq was moving toward stability in all of its regions, and would continue to do so at a steady pace. But the idea that we need to stay in Iraq until 2015 or whatever is untenable.
We also get almost NO information on the amount of private troops who are in Iraq, the private companies working there, how much they're spending, etc. There's an excellent article in this month's Rolling Stone that summarizes the whole problem of private companies (KBR, Halliburton, etc.) looting government contract money. Levels of fraud, overbilling, shoddy work, sloppy record keeping, etc. are so high that if they occurred in the U.S. they would be considered among the worst scandals ever committed. But the Bush administration covers them up and refuses to pursue cases against them.
Other information we don't get from the major media involves the Pentagon's intentions for maintaining military bases in Iraq. Though we keep talking about withdrawing troops, the impression I get is that there is absolutely NO intention to ever shut down and move our forces out of the country. That's because we've invested hundreds of billions of dollars in building over a dozen "superbases" in Iraq that were built at the very time we were demolishing the bases in Saudi Arabia (appeasing the royalty, since our proximity to Mecca was a catalyst for extremism threatening their power). Our military presence in the Middle East is almost entirely invested in Iraq, and we're not going to give up having a presence there. So politicians are going to do everything they can to delay any withdrawal.
I wish news organizations would spend more time examining these issues.
-
I think I lost a few brain cells watching that
[Read the article: Pat Buchanan's faulty diagnosis]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Though I love to see Joan Walsh (whose politics are similar to many of my own) debate people on TV, I wish it would happen in more intelligent (and intelligible) forums. The way these political shows are set up does not encourage thoughtful debate; it encourages the rhetorical equivalent of pro wrestling.
I am glad Joan is going into the ring in her funny costume to beat up the "gladiators" in their even funnier costumes. But man, I wish there were better pundit shows that demanded people really back up what they're saying, speak calmly, not talk over each other, not interrupt or insult, and so on.