With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 7:25 AM
Subject: re: With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   In  1947, president Truman created the C.I.A. ostensibly to gather intelligence and--tacitly--to set bounds on J. Edgar Hoover's monstrous influence. Now in the 21st century, J. Edgar Hoover is dead and our C.I.A. is itself the monster.  It trespasses on our Department of Defense by waging war in Pakistan, it trespasses on our Department of State by corrupting officials in Afghanistan and it trespasses on our Department of Justice by denying due process of law to citizens, some of whom haven't even been charged with a crime. 

     What president Truman made, president Obama should unmake.  We need to shut the C.I.A. down and establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the South African model. Amnesty for officers, agents and contractors of the C.I.A. willing to testify to its crimes and prison for those who are unwilling.

   A C.I.A. above the law corrodes not only each American's liberties, but corrodes the legitimacy of our national government itself.

Barry Haskell Levine

G.O.P. Claims Victory as Bill to Curb Flight Delays Passes

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/us/politics/congress-passes-bill-to-end-flight-delays.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 7:49 AM
Subject: re: G.O.P. Claims Victory as Bill to Curb Flight Delays Passes
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    It is widely agreed that across-the-board budget cuts are stupid. They have however the merit of being equitable. When the single federal service that members of congress and their donors personally rely on is spared--while the rest of the nation suffers this stupidity--our public servants express their contempt for us. The feeling is mutual.

Barry Haskell Levine

U.S. Sees No Conclusive Evidence of Chemical Arms Use by Syria

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/middleeast/us-unsure-of-chemical-arms-use-by-syria.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 8:32 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Sees No Conclusive Evidence of Chemical Arms Use by Syria
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   If al-Assad's forces have been killing Syrians with "riot control gas" rather than with "chemical weapons", these agents have been wrongly classed as "non-lethal".  

   President Obama is rightly reluctant to commit U.S. forces to someone else's agenda. He  constrained himself needlessly in drawing a "red line" at chemical weapons. The Syrian government has forfeited any claim to legitimacy in making war on its own people . How it kills each one mustn't obscure that.

Barry Haskell Levine

The Excel Depression

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 9:14 AM
Subject: re: The Excel Depression
To: "letters@nytimes.com"


To the Editor:
  It is a lifetime struggle to "Never attribute to malice that which
is adequately explained by stupidity". But in the context of excluding
years of data that don't fit their thesis and over-weighting small
nations that fit it, Reinhart's and Rogoff's coding error doesn't look
so innocent. It is consistent with a determined effort to shore up
austerian politicians despite the data.
   Of course that correlation doesn't prove causality. But hey, I'm
just laying out the facts here.
Barry Haskell Levine

Egypt: Officer Is Sentenced to 15 Years for Torturing Suspect to Death

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/world/middleeast/egypt-officer-is-sentenced-to-15-years-for-torturing-suspect-to-death.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:37 AM
Subject: re: Egypt: Officer Is Sentenced to 15 Years for Torturing Suspect to Death
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   Even as American pundits scoff that the Arab Spring didn't accomplish anything, I note that Egyptian torturers face prosecution under the law while torturers here are held above the law.   After the ethical Winter of Dick Cheney's "dark side", this country needs--if not a revolution--more than a breath of that Spring.

Barry Haskell Levine

U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/us-practiced-torture-after-9-11-nonpartisan-review-concludes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 9:20 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

    On the 21st October, 1994 the Congress of the United States ratified the UN Convention Against Torture, requiring us to prosecute or extradite torturers. On that day, that convention became what our Constitution calls  "the Supreme Law of the land". Yet four years after Barack Obama swore an oath to uphold that constitution, he has not "take[n] care that these Laws be faithfully executed".  Indeed his (then) Director of the CIA Leon Panetta promised that no one in the CIA would be prosecuted for these crimes.  

   President Obama ran on a promise of "change". I think that would be a very good idea.

Barry Haskell Levine

Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/opinion/margaret-thatcher-prime-minister.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 8:52 AM
Subject: re: Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor;

  Margaret Thatcher's influence stretched far beyond the strikes of the 1980s. By shuttering industry and deregulating banks, she poised Britain for a maximal crash in 2008.

Barry Haskell Levine

The Trouble With Drones

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/the-trouble-with-drones.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 9:03 AM
Subject: re: The Trouble With Drones
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the  Editor:

   The troubles with drones are  many; it may take years to learn how to use this technology wisely. But what is already established is who can use deadly force in a theater of war.  When the U.S. signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions, we agreed that anyone outside a nation's uniformed military using deadly force was an "unlawful combatant" and as such, potentially a war criminal.

     If our Executive branch is hellbent on operating outside established law, in no wise should our Judiciary extend a figleaf of respectability. A FISA-like court would only taint our Judiciary. It could not make legal what is not.

Barry Haskell Levine

How We’ve Wasted Our Timeout

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/friedman-weve-wasted-our-timeout.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 8:01 PM
Subject: re: How We’ve Wasted Our Timeout
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

  To sustain his argument for a "geopolitical timeout", Thomas L. Friedman has to dismiss (at least) the Arab Spring. One wonders if the people marching, fighting and dying for their freedom from Tunisia to Aleppo would have registered with him if they looked more like him. If Mohamed Bouazizi had been whiter, would mr. Friedman find that the crises in Egypt and Syria were part of an historical process, and not surprises?

Barry Haskell Levine

Military Sees Broader Role for Special Operations Forces, in Peace and War

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/world/military-plans-broader-role-for-special-operations.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:04 AM
Subject: re: Military Sees Broader Role for Special Operations Forces, in Peace and War
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Our history of using special forces outside of declared warzones goes back way before Iraq and Afghanistan. When president Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961, he found that "we" had plans for an invasion of Cuba well advanced and soldiers already in Vietnam. We didn't yet call them "special forces; in the language of the day they were "military advisers".  In each case, what Ike had started as a low-budget exploratory sideshow exploded into a bloody debacle with the change of administrations.  

   No doubt there are other examples that remain classified. But what we know of the history argues strongly that these peacetime deployments of Special Forces lead us not toward stability but into war.

Barry Haskell Levine