Letters to the Editor
SMac
Published Letters: 34 Editor's Choice: 5
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This story is about small arms...
[Read the article: Guns, not roses, for Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]which is significant, but arguably more significant is the shape of the Iraqi Army as a whole as it's now conceived. Essentially, the full-up Iraqi Army is going to be an infantry-heavy force configured for counter-insurgency operations, with exactly one armoured division distinctly light on tanks, no artillery and no indigenous air support.
The design of this army is such that Iraq will not survive in this area without continuous American intervention: its army will easily be defeated in a conventional war by the armies of Iran, Syria... probably even Jordan. I suppose that that's the point of the whole exercise.
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So let me get this straight...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're totally screwed up by the pair of ceramic insulators that you stole from Birkenau, but the only issue that seems to bother you after having stolen a human jawbone from the Cemetery of Chauchilla is how close you came to getting caught with it at Customs in Peru?
Man, it's pretty easy to tell where you think that the humans lived....
That is _really_ fucked up.
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Sure...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]but he's totally disturbed about those Birkenau pieces. What I can't figure out is how/why he treats the human remains from Peru so lightly. He's not even laughing about them. I went to Quebec last week and brought back some unpasteurised cheese: my apprehension coming across the border seems to be more or less what he's feeling.
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Header fields
[Read the article: A bizarre, unsolicited e-mail from Gen. Petraeus' spokesman ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It might be useful to post the full header fields (all of them, especially the Received: lines) from this message. Unless someone is really good at spoofing, that might well indicate whether or not the email was faked. (Judging from this guy's latest weaseling, I doubt it....)
Even more useful would be to post the headers from a very recent email message from Boylan, for example perhaps one of the ones that Glenn Greenwald received today, for comparison.
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The content of the messages
[Read the article: A bizarre, unsolicited e-mail from Gen. Petraeus' spokesman ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's nothing in those headers that indicates that the message did not come from Boylan. It may well be possible for a determined fraudster to spoof those Received: headers, but arguably just as informative is the actual content of the emails. What, for example, is this bizarre reference to identity theft in Vermont, and what would that have to do with a faked email to Glenn Greenwald? This is a guy who posted an angry email to Glenn Greenwald and now regrets it: he's simultaneously denying he sent it and engaging in a little social hacking to try and explain where the message came from.
Occam's Razor: Boylan probably sent that message, and is now lying about it.
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vermont_2020 - At least that was accurate
[Read the article: A bizarre, unsolicited e-mail from Gen. Petraeus' spokesman ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only post I could find on this was at http://scammo.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
"...Guilford resident Fred Humphrey was suspicious when he received an inquiry on the vacation rental Web site Home Away from someone claiming to be Lt. Col. Steve Boylan. The e-mails were "worded in rather stilted language" and were missing words, Humphrey, a retired professor, said. "It didn't seem like someone who had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel would write like that."
Heh.
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"I detest sanctimony in any form..."
[Read the article: Dogma days ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is, arguably, the funniest thing that Camille Paglia has ever said.
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American citizens and non-citizens
[Read the article: The Noxious Fruits of Hate Speech laws]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"When is the last time an American citizens was prosecuted for a political opinion they've expressed?"
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, three years ago. Not an American citizen - and that's significant, 'cause us non-citizens living in the USA are in pretty fundamental legal ways second-class inhabitants of this place. But the same principle applies.
In America, the way you get around free-speech provisions these days, if you're an ambitious DA, is to argue that that speech provides 'material support for terrorism'.
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Mona
[Read the article: The Noxious Fruits of Hate Speech laws]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"You have no right to stop Mr. Levant from expressing and propounding his political opinions..."
But the question is whether institutions in Canada think that they might do so.... A fair number of Western countries, including Canada, have come down on this issue at somewhat different points than the USA, along a continuum between absolute acceptance of all speech and total censorship. _In practise_ I don't see evidence that that's contributed to significant differences in the expression of free speech in the two countries.
Two other things to note as well: (1) people get investigated across the political spectrum in Canada, with some regularity, and (2) it might be a good idea to keep in mind that both Levant and (especially) Steyn have invested their careers in keeping Muslims in a nice, subservient place. Acceptance of Muslims in the USA apparently requires that, politically, but that's not true in Canada, the USA, France et al. There's something to be said for dissuading the most vicious of assaults on such people while they are becoming part of the fabric of the country.
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tina schreier
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"In either case the only real answer is to see a lot more undressed women in a nonsexual context."
And, as a corollary, to see a lot more women dressed in hijab - and even burqa - in a non-political context.
That may help get around the assumption, made in a couple of letters, that a Muslim woman covered is automatically mere property, of a husband/father or of her religion. That's not simply the case for Islam, either, given that covering rules also exist in particular strains of Judaism and Christianity.
Quite right on the overall point, though: sexist treatment of women in Western societies doesn't excuse sexist treatment of women in Islamic societies. Still more so for abuse, in both cases.