Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 1107 Editor's Choice: 5
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When I think about America now
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]these words from Shelley's poem resonate with me -
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!".
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Living so far away from America and in an entirely different time zone, all I can get is a partial, possibly occluded, view of the US but it is not an attractive sight. Your media pundits seem to have crawled out of a cesspit and there are, apparently, no boundaries to their sheer nastiness - Schuster and his "pimping" comment. Although it would be hypocrital of me to deny that many people enjoy gossip, many of the 'posts' on the Democratic nomination consist of little other than tittle-tattle, voyeurism, and an extraordinary reliance on the anus to dismiss the humanity of others. Without wishing to give the nether regions of the body undue emphasis, don't Americans realise that the anus performs an important function and it would be agonising not to have one? The Iraq war has been an abject lesson in arrogance and folly and it now seems to have been reduced to which of the candidates realised this first. Within six months of the invasion of Iraq, everybody in the world knew it was a fiasco but, in the Spring of 2003, there were protest marches of thousands of people in Western Europe who, quite frankly, did not believe the words of General Colin Powell in his address to the UN on 5th February 2003. I don't know the attitude of the American public at that time but believe that the vast majority was in favour of an illegal (by international standards) act. Naturally, it is easy to be wise after the event and the Democrats seem to want to skedaddle out of Iraq as quickly as possible, leaving chaos behind. Yesterday the Court of Appeal in London dealt with the case of Lofti Raissi, the Algerian commercial pilot wrongly accused of training the men involved in the terrorist attacks on 9/ll. He spent 4-5 months in Belmarsh Prison on the flimsiest evidence, with the FBI importuning the British authorities to extradite him to the US. Raissi is innocne and the Court of Appeal has given him permission to sue the British government. Will this story receive any coverage in programs like "Hardball" and the likes? This man's life has been ruined but I suppose he was lucky to escape "waterboarding" and the other treatments that await terrorist suspects in US custody. Yes, education is important if it encourages creativity and analysis but it, in itself, is not a substitute for keeping oneself informed on the world outside one's own bailiwick.
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"A thousan points of light"
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Long before I had access to the Internet, I happened to see George Bush snr. (papa to your current President). George the Elder was on the campaign trail at the time and he was going on about "a thousand points of light". I had no idea what he was talking about, although it sounded nice. Having read some of the letters on Mars and aliens just now, it seems clear that Bush senior had something like that on his mind. He also spoke of his intention to make America "a kinder, gentler nation", if elected. Those wise old people who probably never went to school were able to sum up this sweet-talking with the saying "Soft words butter no parsnips". You elected George Walker Bush and that, in a funny kind of way, led to the elevation of his son to the Presidency. I cannot explain the mysterious ways of humankind but believe that a questioning, challenging mind is more important than an "educated" one which is stagnant. Shakespeare was uneducated by the standards of his time, knowing little Latin and less Greek, but he understoo human motivation very well indeed and human needs have changed little over the centuries.
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Hippetyhop, you need to read to understand the history of Australia.
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The history of Australia is complex and it cannot be told in a short space of time. Robert Hughes, an art critic and writer, has written "The Fatal Shore", which details the founding of Australia as a penal colony and the vexed question about the treatment of the aborigines. Last week the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a public apology to the aboriginal people of Australia for what amounted to the virtual abduction of their children. Perhaps you know all this but I still think "The Fatal Shore" would extend your knowledge. The same author has also written about the student riots in Paris in either l968 or l969 but perhaps you're not interested in anything that happened in those antediluvian days.
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Is it considered effete to like poetry?
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I read Robert Lowell's "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" for the first time. It's about whales and the people who hunted whales. It's wonderfully descriptive and I did not think I was "effete" in reading it. WB Yeats lamented "Nobody told me that the heart grows old" but it will grow old, even in a young body, if you immure it in hubris and fear of what others might think of the vice involved in reading poetry,
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Mom in Maine, there's no need to worry.
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems that l8 year old daughters are having an inordinate effect on the Democratic nomination. First there was Maria Shriver-Schwarznegger telling all and sundry that she had been persuaded to support Obama by her l8 year old daughter, named Catherine I think. The latest highly-publicised l8 year old daughter to exert pressure on her mother (a Senator!) is the daughter of Claire McCaskill. That a US Senator would unblushingly admit that her teenage daughter could dictate to her is amazing to me, especially in the serious matter of electing a President of the United States. Senator McCaskill has also quite unabashedly stated that her daughter called her "a slug" if she wouldn't support Barack Obama. Maybe Senator McCaskill should teach her daughter some manners before she does anything else and ask her to consider the impropriety of using such ugly language, especially about her own mother.