Weapons Sales to Iraq Move Ahead Despite U.S. Worries

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/middleeast/us-military-sales-to-iraq-raise-concerns.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 10:40 AM
Subject: re: Weapons Sales to Iraq Move Ahead Despite U.S. Worries
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   It is natural that domestic arms manufacturers want to sell their wares to Iraq. It is even natural that the U.S. department of State takes an interest in increasing U.S. exports in a year of economic stress. But the U.S. has already done more than enough to stoke Iraq's civil war. We purged Sunnis from the Iraqi army and armed Sunni sectarian militias.

   If al-Maliki is going to be the leader of a strong free Iraq, he needs schoolteachers not tanks. If he is to be a new tyrant oppressing Iraq's minorities we don't need his business.

Barry Haskell Levine

Rumors Buzz, but Pakistan’s Military Denies Talk of Coup

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/world/asia/pakistan-military-seeking-to-quash-rumors-denies-conspiracy-to-seize-power.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 7:10 AM
Subject: re: Rumors Buzz, but Pakistan’s Military Denies Talk of Coup
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   General Parvaz Musharref ruled Pakistan from two desks, as both President and Chief of the Military.  On the day those offices were split the civilian side got an empty promise of control. Power in Pakistan has long flowed through the military which Ashfaq Kayani now heads, rather than the Zardari's Presidential office.  Talk of a coup in Pakistan is too late. Scarcely anyone noticed when President Zardari left the country. His microphone hasn't been plugged in in years.

Barry Haskell Levine

As New Gingrich Takes Center Stage, Old Reputation Lurks in Wings

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/us/politics/new-newts-biggest-rival-may-be-old-newt.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 8:46 AM
Subject: re: As New Gingrich Takes Center Stage, Old Reputation Lurks in Wings
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    We have seen how Newt Gingrich behaves when in high elected office, and when out. If we have learned anything, we will no more give that man power than we would give a bottle to a recovering alcoholic.

Barry Haskell Levine

Iraq’s Latest Battle

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/opinion/iraqs-latest-battle.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 9:50 AM
Subject: re: Iraq’s Latest Battle
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   When the U.S. ratified the charter of the United Nations, we pledged to support National self-determination of peoples. As a ratified treaty, that's the "supreme law of the land". Maintaining the current, arbitrary boundaries of Iraq might be convenient to our allies, but it is certainly not the responsibility of the U.S. The Kurds deserve a national homeland no less than do any other people.  Jake Garner might have gained the U.S. a staunch ally if he had been permitted to create a free, strong Kurdistan. If we are to go on spending American dollars in Iraq, it should be for better reasons than for a nostalgic attachment to a map drawn in haste by the conquering powers of the first World War. Surely we should not spend a dime to suppress the Kurds' legitimate bid for a national homeland.

Barry Haskell Levine

The End, for Now

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/opinion/friedman-the-end-for-now.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:11 AM
Subject: re:The End, for Now
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Thomas Friedman's messianic hopes have clouded his political vision, again. Some of us remember Yugoslavia.  Tito's iron fist held Yugoslavia together for seventy years.  In his crucible, all talk of sectarian strife was suppressed. Jew married Serb, Serb married Croat, Croat married Bosnian...three times twenty-one years passed and a generation started thinking that this was the post-sectarian model for modernity.  But all of this dissolved in blood and tears in the nineties.   Yugoslavia had always  been an arbitrary chunk hewed from the corpse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, just as Iraq was a fragment hacked from the Ottoman empire.  

   When we ratified the charter of the United Nations, the U.S. pledged to support the National self-determination of peoples. That can't be served by yoking the Kurds to the Arabs for twenty-one years, or for seventy years.  Now that the U.S. troops are out of the way, Iraq will try to explode as surely as Yugoslavia did, and as messily.

Barry Haskell Levine

Politics Over Principle

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/opinion/politics-over-principle.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 11:56 AM
Subject: re: Politics Over Principle
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  For fifty years, I've been a citizen of the United States, endowed by my Creator with certain inalienable Rights. With the signing of the new Defense Appropriation, that will be over. I'll  suddenly be a potential suspect terrorist, enjoying the mere appearance of Rights only until and unless our military decide to detain me indefinitely.  Surely such a change in our form of government deserves a bill of its own, to be debated (and rejected) on its own merits. President Obama doesn't have a line-item veto to reject this provision alone. So he'll have to veto the entire Defense Appropriation Bill. Maybe when Boeing, Ratheon and Northrup don't get paid for the weapons we don't need, their lobbyists will knock some sense into our Congress.

Barry Haskell Levine

U.S. Marks End to 9-Year War, Leaving an Uncertain Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/world/middleeast/end-for-us-begins-period-of-uncertainty-for-iraqis.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Arango&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 9:23 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Marks End to 9-Year War, Leaving an Uncertain Iraq
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    The president who promised us more transparency in government is now enmeshed in a dangerous double game. He must convince the American people that pulling American troops out of Iraq means that we're out of there. Simultaneously, he must convince the Iraqi people that it's not yet safe to resume their sectarian civil war.  The domestic side of that is easy; The few Americans who read foreign news get it through a small number of controllable corporate media sources. The Iraqi side is harder; people there know well that most of America's forces in Iraq have been "contractors","advisers" or "embassy staff", rather that "troops" for more than a year already.  To maintain the illusion that we have extricated ourselves from a new stable Iraq through our elections in November 2012 will cost tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, if it can be done at all.

Barry Haskell Levine

Premier’s Actions in Iraq Raise U.S. Concerns

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/world/middleeast/arrests-in-iraq-raise-concerns-about-maliki.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 10:31 AM
Subject: re: Premier’s Actions in Iraq Raise U.S. Concerns
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   It is normal and praiseworthy that premier al-Maliki has worked to rein in Shiite militias in Iraq. As head of state, he has an interest in asserting a monopoly on force in the country.  There are two blocks in his path. One is Moqtada al-Sadr, who feels that his Mahdi army protects him  from prosecution for the murder of Abdul Majid al-Khoei.  The other is the Sunni Awakening, whom the U.S. armed and who now fear persecution from the Shiite majority.   Once they see that the Yankees have gone home and there's no one to keep the lid on, all hell is likely to break out in Iraq.

Barry Haskell Levine

re: Detainee in Iraq Poses a Dilemma as U.S. Exit Nears

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/world/middleeast/militarys-last-detainee-in-iraq-poses-dilemma-for-obama.html

To the Editor:

   If the U.S. has helped establish a free a sovereign government in Iraq as we so proudly claim, surely mr. Daqduq is their problem. If the government in Baghdad is a U.S. puppet regime, surely we can take him.  A problem only arises when we try to claim that the regime in Baghdad is sovereign, but treat it like our puppet. It's not easy being an empire.

Barry Haskell Levine

For 29 Dead Miners, No Justice

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/opinion/for-29-dead-miners-no-justice.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 7:32 AM
Subject: re: For 29 Dead Miners, No Justice
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  Through president George W. Bush's years, SEC prosecutions fell drastically. In that climate of non-enforcement, bankers ran amok and our economy crashed. Now this culture of non-prosecution has infected the entire Department of Justice.  We know that men were tortured while in U.S. custody and that torture is a crime, but no one has been shown to have committed the crime. We know that citizens' phonelines were tapped in violation of the FISA statute and their constitutional guarantees against unreasonable search, but no one has been shown to have committed the crime. We learn that men go on dying because coal executives violated safety laws, but we don't finger those executives.  It is not enough that we--through our elected representatives--pass laws. If our executive doesn't deign to enforce them, we don't enjoy the Rule of Law that our forefathers fought for.

Barry Haskell Levine

Lead From Old U.S. Batteries Sent to Mexico Raises Risks

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/science/earth/recycled-battery-lead-puts-mexicans-in-danger.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 9:06 AM
Subject: re: Lead From Old U.S. Batteries Sent to Mexico Raises Risks
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    When Adam Smith made the case for globalization of trade, it was a work of genius. Over the last 235 years his ideas have made the world vastly richer, on average. But Smith wrote at a time when the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man were all in the future. In his day, slavery was still legal in Britain.  To divorce international trade policy from labor law in the twenty-first century is no longer acceptable.  We are not innocent when we import a lead battery from a foreign factory that poisons its workers and neighbors. Economics were simpler in the eighteenth century, when one could externalize risks and environmental damages. The world is smaller since then and we have to grow up.

Barry Haskell Levine

A Banker Speaks, With Regret

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/opinion/kristof-a-banker-speaks-with-regret.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 9:22 AM
Subject: re: A Banker Speaks, With Regret
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    Lending money at interest is usually a profitable undertaking for those who control the money. It remains to be explained why the Federal Reserve--wielding Congress' power to create money--handed $13billion in profits to private banks.  If that interest were earned on the banks' own principal, they wouldn't have needed the Fed's intervention. If that interest was earned on the People's principal, surely it should have accrued to the People? Three times the U.S. has handed our monetary policy to a quasi-governmental central bank. In each case, it has enriched the few powerful bankers who controlled it. That seems a priority that rather less than 1% of Americans could endorse.

Barry Haskell Levine