A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/us/drone-pilots-waiting-for-a-kill-shot-7000-miles-away.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 9:45 AM
Subject: re: A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     To the law, it is irrelevant that in our AirForce, "only pilots, all of them officers, employ [drones] for strikes".  Within the law of war, any uniformed member of our armed forces can be expected to use deadly force. Missile strikes from drones become problematic when they are used by our CIA. Since agents and officers of our CIA are not members of our uniformed military, their use of deadly force is either murder or a war crime.

Barry Haskell Levine

israels-settlers-are-here-to-stay

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/opinion/israels-settlers-are-here-to-stay.html

Although Israel's relationship to the United Nations has been fraught, she remains signatory to the U.N. charter. That charter asserts that "all people have the right of self-determination". That applies to Palestinians as surely as to Jews. If a few Jews want to stay and apply for citizenship in the new Palestinian state just as Palestinians Arabs stay as citizens in Israel, that should be satisfactory to everyone. I expect that most of the settlers will prefer to move into Israel.

The Public Is Left in the Dark When Courts Allow Electronic Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/politics/sidebar-public-in-the-dark-about-surveillance-orders.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:55 AM
Subject: re: The Public Is Left in the Dark When Courts Allow Electronic Surveillance
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   The American experiment in self-governance began with the assertion that "We the People" are sovereign here.  If that sovereignty is to mean anything, we must know what is done in our name. There have always been tactical exceptions; e.g. troop movements must be held secret by our military for the duration of a conflict. But a broad policy of spying on our fellow citizens in secret is an assertion that our police agencies don't answer to us.  Any court that would allow this has set itself to undo the Revolution of 1776.

Barry Haskell Levine

A Week in the Life of Libor

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/opinion/a-week-in-the-life-of-libor.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 9:26 AM
Subject: re; A Week in the Life of Libor
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   If we really mean "to reform the banks themselves" we must start by sealing Washington's revolving door.  The power to make a former Secretary of Treasury rich after he/she has left the cabinet is the power to block any meaningful regulation.  Let's start with a twenty year block on working in the banking sector after leaving office. Parallels to other regulatory offices will suggest themselves to any reader who gives it a moment's thought.

Barry Haskell Levine

Where Obama Shines

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/brooks-where-obama-shines.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 7:06 AM
Subject: re: Where Obama Shines
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor;

  The Arab Spring is a "problem" only to those who value autocratic stability over Human Rights.

Barry Haskell Levine

Russia’s Summer of Idealism

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/opinion/russias-summer-of-idealism.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 7:05 AM
Subject: re: Russia’s Summer of Idealism
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Marx  and Engels dreamed of a world in which the People were empowered and enlightened and the State would shrivel into irrelevancy. Lenin and Stalin took many of Marx's words, but elevated the State to center of a destructive cult in which the citizen was infantilized.  Modern Russians are heirs to all their legacies.  No one can see today whether this is the beginning of a revolution or just a blip. But it affirms that Lysenko was wrong. The grandchildren of the Russians whom Stalin pounded flat are standing upright, helping their fellows without appeal to the State. That's a long way from a triumph for Marx's vision, but it is a repudiation of Stalin's, and Putin's.

Barry Haskell Levine

More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 4:55 PM
Subject: re: More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   For two hundred years, Americans' freedom from unreasonable search and seizure was guaranteed by our courts. That was amplified in the wake of Nixon's crimes by the FISA act of 1979. Additionally, that act provided for retroactive court warrants in cases of unusual urgency. That was the state of our law when the Bush administration invited several telecomm companies to participate in a program of illegal (indeed, unconstitutional) wiretaps on American citizens.  Qwest, to its credit told the federal agents to go away unless they could provide a valid warrant. Other companies showed no such character.  Candidate Obama in 2008 announced that he "opposed[d] any form of immunity" for the telecomm companies who committed these crimes. Half a year later, he voted in the Senate to immunize these companies from civil suits, then failed to direct his attorney general to pursue the criminal violations. Should we be shocked that our police state is becoming ever more intrusive when it operates under such a shield of impunity? What's the news here?

Barry Haskell Levine

In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/health/in-gene-sequencing-treatment-for-leukemia-glimpses-of-the-future.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 6:05 AM
Subject: re: In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    While whole-genome sequencing may be a routine part of healthcare in the future, we should note that it is not what lead to Dr. Wartman's breakthrough. In 2012, there are approved drugs against only a handful of the gene products (mostly kinases, like Dr. Wartman's Flt3) that are known to drive cancers. Screening cancer patients for mutations in (or over-expression of) these drug targets is still vastly cheaper than whole genome sequencing, and could lead to better, cheaper more effective treatment of cancers today.

Barry Haskell Levine