: re: Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 6:33 PM
Subject: re: Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     The hydrogen economy in general and the hydrogen car in particular are huge boondoggles, designed mostly to reap government subsidies. While it is true that hydrogen as a fuel has a terrific energy density, that ignores the weight of the container needed for a pressurized gas with a propensity for leaking through steel.

    Add to that hydrogen's role as a potent greenhouse gas and the much greater cost of a hydrogen fueling station relative to the charging station for an electric car. There is  no and should be no market for this thing.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/hydrogen-cars-coming-down-the-pike.html

: re: Graft Hobbles Iraq’s Military in Fighting ISIS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 2:01 PM
Subject: re: Graft Hobbles Iraq’s Military in Fighting ISIS
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the editor:

     Syria and Iraq were invented in 1916 by Mark Sykes and George Picot without regard to cultural cohesion. They were held together by repressive governments and--like Yugoslavia--fell apart when the fist was relaxed. If the Iraqi military is the only avenue through which the U.S. will send arms we shouldn't send a single bullet. We wasted years and lives propping up an illegitimate puppet government in  South Vietnam. If we are to play any role in the war there, let it be as arsenal and ally to free Kurdistan, not as an ineffectual puppet master in Baghdad.
Barry Haskell Levine

1142 Brown Ave
Lafayette, CA 94549
510 447 0126

: re: N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 10:33 PM
Subject: re: N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The three branches of our Federal government have each their own powers which can be neither delegated to, nor usurped by the others. But the Surveillance State is a hydra that can be productively hacked by many swords at once. Thus, even as the Congress has failed to pass the Freedom Act, the POTUS must press forward with prosecution of millions of violations of the FISA statute. Regardless of how Congress has gutted that law in the interim, it was the controlling law when citizens suffered warrantless wiretaps between 2001-2008 and each of those was a crime.  

    These prosecutions can't be enough to secure our privacy; the cost of Liberty is eternal Vigilance. But those who would foist a Police State on us will have suffered a serious setback when they can no longer rely on the cooperation of our own 'phone companies.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/us/politics/nsa-phone-data-collection-could-go-on-even-if-a-law-expires.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

: re: A Response to President Xi Jinping

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 8:29 AM
Subject: re: A Response to President Xi Jinping
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   This newspaper's breast-beating would evoke more sympathy if it were honest; it is not.  President Xi knows as well as we do that the New York Times suppressed the scoop on warrantless wiretaps for over a year rather than risking loss of a seat in tomorrow's White House press conference.  How much more might Xi extort on threat of keeping its reporters out of China entirely?
   We look to the New York Times for investigative reporting around the globe. But it should start by shining the light of honest inquiry onto its own past sins.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/opinion/a-response-to-president-xi-jinping.html?ref=opinion

: re: Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 10:10 AM
Subject: re: Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Critics who whine that "Removing carbon dioxide from the air might be useful for some limited purposes [but close to impossible on a global scale]" ignore the fact that photosynthesis takes several times as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere hour by hour, year by year than all of man's activities add. Most of that is then turned into cellulose, to return to the atmosphere when it burns or rots or it broken down by an ungulate's gut fauna.
   There is no instant fix to the damage we have done in the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. But we can begin that repair today by sequestering some of that cellulose (straw, newsprint, bagasse, sawdust...) from the agents  of decay. Call it "anthropogenic peat" or "biochar". But it is within our technology today, and it is urgent.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/science/earth/climate-tools-seek-to-bend-natures-path.html

: re: A Promising Approach to Internet Rules

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 7:55 AM
Subject: re: A Promising Approach to Internet Rules
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    The precedent is stark. The internet is as key to business and innovation in the early 21st century as the railroads were in the early 20th century.  Again, a handful of the wealthy propose to hold us by the throat. Again the solution is the same. The internet must be designated a public utility and subject to the Common Carrier regulations that were hammered out and enacted under the Roosevelt and Taft administrations.  The hard work has been done. Chairman Wheeler just has to reclassify the internet as a Communication Service and let the Law work for all of us, not just for the Telecomm giants.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/opinion/sunday/a-promising-approach-to-internet-rules.html?_r=0

: re: For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 12:50 PM
Subject: re: For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Naftali Bennett is correct in observing that the Israeli status quo is untenable and is not leading to--or even towards--a solution.  But he goes wrong in making progress continent on peace. Israel has made peace with the Egyptian state and Israel has made peace with the Jordanian state. But know one even knows what it could mean for Israel to make peace with a non-state entity.  That which can exert a monopoly on the use of force is a state. Nothing less than that can make a peace.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/opinion/naftali-bennett-for-israel-two-state-is-no-solution.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

: re: British Intelligence Official Says U.S. Tech Companies Offer Terrorists ‘Networks of Choice’

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 2:55 PM
Subject: re: British Intelligence Official Says U.S. Tech Companies Offer Terrorists ‘Networks of Choice’
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

 
   Be afraid! we're told give up your rights temporarily so that we can keep you safe. This time, it's from the director of GCHQ. Next time, it may be our FBI, or our CIA or our NSA. But there's always a threat or the threat of a threat, and temporarily never ends. It's been so ever since the United States was founded. Benjamin Franklin warned us before our Bill of Rights was even written:"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/world/europe/GCHQ-director-tech-companies-militants.html

: re: Flying Blind in Iraq and Syria

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 3:48 PM
Subject: re: Flying Blind in Iraq and Syria
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Ever since the 1970s, when a free press brought our Vietnam "war into your living-room", our Pentagon has spared no effort to control what our electorate knows about what's done in our name. Throughout our latest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, embedded reporters would have jeopardized their access to our own forces had they made contact with our enemies. So what is new with the new campaign against ISIS is only that the U.S. has no boots (and therefore no embedded reporters) on the ground.
   I'm willing to believe all sorts of horrible things about iSIS. But to blame them for the ignorance of the American voter is too much.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-flying-blind-in-iraq-and-syria.html

: re: The Guantánamo Tapes

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Nov 1, 2014 at 8:02 AM
Subject: re: The Guantánamo Tapes
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   No State anywhere, ever has been as profligate in incarcerating citizens and non-citizens as the U.S. It is therefore worth considering that John Locke finds the States power to incarcerate rests on the individual's right to die. We need to consider not only whether forced feeding is conducted in a cruel manner, but also whether it should be done at all. I submit that it should not. Choosing death is the ultimate protest against unlawful detention. It is not for us to preclude that.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/opinion/joe-nocera-the-guantanamo-tapes.html?_r=0