Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/health/new-drugs-aim-to-make-cells-destroy-cancer.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 9:31 AM
Subject: re: Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     p53 is mutated or deleted in a majority of human tumors.  A therapy that could restore p53 function to--or just kill--such cells would be revolutionary.  That therapy however is still  just an aspiration.  A far smaller class of tumors are driven by MDM2 inhibition of wild-type p53.  A therapy that relieves this inhibition is an exciting prospect. But to bill that as solving "half" the p53 problem is to misrepresent a great piece of work. 

Barry Haskell Levine

Kerry Suggests Military Role in Diplomats’ Security

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/world/africa/kerry-calls-on-military-to-help-protect-diplomats.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 10:07 AM
Subject: re: Kerry Suggests Military Role in Diplomats’ Security
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  If the U.S. is to be a world leader rather than just a military power, we must redress how we deploy our finite resources. That means not just cutting back our bloated military--we spend as much as the next fifteen nations combined!--but also how we spend money within our State Department budget. Sixteen thousand staffers at our Baghdad embassy aren't typing. They're just more soldiers by another name, on another budget.

    There's enough proper work for our diplomats in the world without asking them to fight, too. Protecting them may be the best thing our military can do.

Barry Haskell Levine

Obama and Boehner Diverge Sharply on Fiscal Plan

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/us/politics/obama-says-republicans-given-fair-deal.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 8:25 AM
Subject: re: Obama and Boehner Diverge Sharply on Fiscal Plan
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    The U.S. has survived as many as forty-seven recessions over our history. Many of them were spurred by financial crises. What is novel in the recession of 2008 is that Wall Street has been propped up without fixing the problem.  Behind secretary Geithner's Potempkin economy, federal aid programs are still straining to keep many Americans from starvation.

     Until he discards the Geithner narrative that we have recovered, president Obama can't fully answer speaker Boehner's calls for austerity.  It is overdue that president Obama use his pulpit to explain to the American people that our economy is still weak and will remain weak until there is a surge is spending. Barring a war, or supernatural intervention, that spending must come from Federal stimulus. Between a policy of stimulus and a policy of austerity, compromise isn't a virtue. It is continued paralysis.

Barry Haskell Levine

Rubble and Despair of War Redefine Syria Jewel

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/world/middleeast/aleppo-residents-battered-by-war-struggle-to-survive.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 9:22 AM
Subject: re: Rubble and Despair of War Redefine Syria Jewel
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
   The fear of chaos underlies most political philosophy. A thousand years before Hobbes' "Leviathan", the Talmud warned "Pray for the welfare of your government, were it not for the fear of the rulers, every man would devour his fellow alive." A dozen centuries before that the book of Judges warned "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."
    So now Syrian schoolhouses are stripped for firewood and the sick and wounded are uncared for.  Will we marvel that Syrians embrace a new strongman who promises order? American foreign aid--for healthcare, for education, for the necessities of life--are needed now.  Syrians must be able to see that their choice is not between al-Assad and chaos, but between al-Assad and a freer future. 

Barry Haskell Levine

Portrayal of C.I.A. Torture in Bin Laden Film Reopens a Debate

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/zero-dark-thirty-torture-scenes-reopen-debate.html?ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 10:16 AM
Subject: re: Portrayal of C.I.A. Torture in Bin Laden Film Reopens a Debate
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    As Scott Shane notes, our CIA's use of torture under president George W. Bush was "morally and politically treacherous".  As much as anything else, the American electorate rejected this in voting for change and for president Obama. But the CIA's actions were also illegal, and it is to "take care that these laws be faithfully executed" that we elected a new Executive. Law enforcement necessarily looks backwards, not forwards, because that's were the evidence of crimes is. 

   Even as we go forward in setting policies for our future, we must be investigating and prosecuting our crimes of the past.

Barry Haskell Levine

In a Farewell Speech, Lieberman Reflects on His Political Journey

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/nyregion/lieberman-in-senate-farewell-speech-reflects-on-his-political-journey.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 9:53 AM
Subject: re: In a Farewell Speech, Lieberman Reflects on His Political Journey
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Save the schmaltz for his obit; Joe Lieberman ain't dead yet.  On this occasion of his departure from the U.S. Senate, we need to take account of his signature achievement. This is the man who defeated the Public Option, preferring to keep the big Insurance Companies in charge of our health care.    

   And so in the twenty-first century, insurance companies control ever more of America's wealth and political influence, while Americans pay more than any ever has since the invention of money for health care, while achieving less than nations that pay a fraction as much.

Barry Haskell Levine

Spy Chief’s Attacker Hid Bomb in Groin, Afghanistan Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/world/asia/afghan-spy-chiefs-attacker-hid-bomb-by-his-groin.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 7:49 AM
Subject: re: Spy Chief’s Attacker Hid Bomb in Groin, Afghanistan Says
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     Any government too prissy to detect weapons in an assailant's underwear or under a burqa cannot effectually safeguard the people's rights.  It follows that individuals will turn to vigilanteism and both security and liberty will be diminished.  

   Privacy is a great right; the U.S. Supreme court has found it implicit in our Constitution. But this means that our police and courts must demonstrate a compelling state interest before invading privacy, not that the State is impotent here.

Barry Haskell Levine

High-Speed Trades Hurt Investors, a Study Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/business/high-speed-trades-hurt-investors-a-study-says.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 7:58 AM
Subject: re: High-Speed Trades Hurt Investors, a Study Says
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor: 

   In the normal course of events, potential profits on stock sales motivate investors to underwrite growth and innovation in industry.  Recently, high-speed trading has broken this system. A few computer-driven traders have found ways to realize profits on the stock market as if it were a casino, while doing nothing to drive industry. Now it emerges that--in doing so--they are undercutting the stock market's founding purpose.

    There are two ways to redress this. One is to make the capital gains tax much more sensitive to time. Let any profit on an asset held less than one hour be taxed at 95% and let that taper to the long-term capital gains rate over a year. The other is to impose a transaction fee.  Over time, the two approaches aren't very different. If the "fee" has a better chance in Congress because it's not called a "tax", let's go with that.

Barry Haskell Levine

Marine Life on a Warming Planet

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/opinion/marine-life-on-a-warming-planet.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 7:07 AM
Subject: re: Marine Life on a Warming Planet
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     While it is urgent that the world "reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide", that cannot be enough. Even if we were miraculously to reduce worldwide industrial emissions to zero there would still remain the burden of carbon dioxide that we have pumped into our atmosphere and oceans since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  If Earth is to remain inhabitable, we have to capture and sequester that carbon.  The only technology at hand that can do this is photosynthesis. Worldwide, minute by minute and year by year, photosynthetic plants strip twenty times as much carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and oceans as ALL human activities contribute. In time, of course, this carbon is reliberated when that plant material is burned or digested. What we have to do is take some of that plant material out of the carbon cycle as biochar.

   It is in our power today to start repairing our atmosphere and oceans. If we don't, there may be no future generation to blame us for our failure. 

Barry Haskell Levine

Letter From Syria

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/opinion/sunday/friedman-letter-from-syria.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 9:09 AM
Subject: re: Letter From Syria
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   If it is Mr. Friedman's intent to extol the multiculturalism of Syria, why does he offer us the example of Antakya? Antakya is in Turkey.  We all know that--despite the expulsion of the Greeks and persecutions of Armenians and Kurds--Turkey is a multiethnic nation. But what is this supposed to teach us about Syria? That the modern national borders are arbitrary? Has Thomas L. Friedman achieved such august stature as a pundit that no editor dares tell him that he's making no sense?

Barry Haskell Levine

To Save Congo, Let It Fall Apart

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/to-save-congo-let-it-fall-apart.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 7:35 AM
Subject: re; To Save Congo, Let It Fall Apart
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   In 1980 Josip Tito died; by 1991 Yugoslavia--which had been arbitrarily hacked from the Austro-Hungarian empire by the victors after WWI--had fallen apart. Forty-six years after the U.N. charter, the several Peoples finally were free to pursue  their rights to "national self-determination".  Bizarrely, the UN security council still pledges to preserve the "sovereignty, independence unity and territorial integrity" of equally unnatural countries elsewhere. It is an indefensible policy. Instead of the Beacon of Liberty, the U.S. has signed on as the guarantor of imperial caprice. 

   Of course the Spanish are afraid of Basque separatists, and the Chinese fear the aspirations of Tibetans and the Turks want to pretend that the Kurds have no legitimate national aspirations and Joseph Kabila wants to claim all the wealth of the Congo. But if the United States has any role in those conflicts, it must be on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressors.  

   No sane person would advocate jamming the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians back into Yugoslavia and expect them to play nicely together. We should grant the various Peoples of the Congo the same dignity.

Barry Haskell Levine