: re: Peace Without Partners

Peace Without Partners

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/opinion/peace-without-partners.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 10:22 AM
Subject: re: Peace Without Partners
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
     Sometime around the end of the first century c.e, Rabbi Tarfon
said: "It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither
are you free to absolve yourself from it" His words are as apt today
as they were then.  For too long, Israeli governments have been
content to cling to power by blaming Palestinians for intransigence.
The status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable.Those who claim to be
political "leaders" must not be content with finger-pointing and
whining.
Barry Haskell Levine

: re: The Cost of the U.S. Ban on Paying for Hostages

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 8:47 AM
Subject: re: The Cost of the U.S. Ban on Paying for Hostages
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    The U.S. department of States policy of paying no ransom is "hotly debated" for the same reason that the role of smoking in cancer was hotly debated. The role of ransom in funding terrorists is well established. It is because a loud minority puts its interests ahead of those of society.  Heartbreakingly, in the case of hostages, that minority comprised innocent hostages and their families, rather than cynical tobacco companies. But a democracy must function for the good of society, not for the good of the loudest.  Last year, this paper reported that ransoms for hostages (mostly French and Spanish journalists and tourists) dominated al-Qaeda's operating budget.  However gratifying it is to get a loved one back, it is not worth funding the destruction of civilization. 

   Hostages are taken because people are willing to pay. However lonely it is in the task, the U.S. department of State is leading in the right direction on this, and deserves support and credit.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/middleeast/the-cost-of-the-us-ban-on-paying-for-hostages.html?_r=0

: re: E.P.A. Wrestles With Role of Nuclear Plants in Carbon Emission Rules

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 5:43 AM
Subject: re: E.P.A. Wrestles With Role of Nuclear Plants in Carbon Emission Rules
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    To formulate a rational energy policy, we must start with honest accounting. The costs and benefits of each technology must be tallied before we can compare the role each may play in generating our energy. Bizarrely, until now, this has been done only for solar and for wind generation. For all other contributors, important costs have been "externalized" i.e. pushed off the ledger, charged to the public rather than to the generator. In the case of fossil fuels , these externalities include "depletion allowances" and mercury contamination of the atmosphere and oceans and of course carbon dioxide (with consequent global climate effects and ocean acidification.

     To treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant and therefore regulate it under the FDA is forty years overdue. But the hang an entire energy policy on the carbon rule will break it. What we need is honest accounting. For fossil fuels, the carbon rule (and ending depletion allowances) will get us there. For fission plants, we need to assess what it will cost to store the radioactive waste safely for 100,000 years or more. Put a number to that and we'll know whether nuclear power is "cheap" or not. Likewise, when you've told us what the interruption of a river's fish life is worth, we can weigh hydropower's role in our energy policy.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/business/energy-environment/epa-wrestles-with-role-of-nuclear-plants-in-carbon-emission-rules-.html?_r=0

: re: In Struggle for National Identity, Iraqis Rally Around Many Flags

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 8:34 AM
Subject: re: In Struggle for National Identity, Iraqis Rally Around Many Flags
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
     What one thinks about the prospects for Iraq's future is tinted inevitably by whom one trust to tell it's past. For a dozen years now, the U.S. has been beguiled by the vision of Mark Sykes and George Picot, who found it convenient to invent Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire they were dismantling. Before investing in holding together peoples who share no national identity, we would do well to at least consider the opinion of Faisal  bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi who wrote “With my heart filled with sadness, I have to say that it is my belief that there is no Iraqi people inside Iraq. There are only diverse groups with no national sentiments. They are filled with superstitious and false religious traditions with no common grounds between them.” He was, after all, the king of Iraq.
Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/world/middleeast/iraqis-rally-around-many-flags-as-a-national-identity-falters.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

: re: When the Government Says, “Shhh!”

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 6:40 AM
Subject: re: When the Government Says, “Shhh!”
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Shall we sing their praises that--ten years later--the editors of this newspaper acknowledge that Bill Keller did wrong when he quashed the story of warrantless wiretaps? To champion Free Press--but only when there is no national emergency--is like championing Free Speech--but only when it offends no one. 

   In bowing to White House pressure, Bill Keller betrayed the shareholders who deserved the scoop of they year, betrayed his profession that claims an important role in making democracy work, and betrayed our republic. Because democracy is a sham if the voters go to vote in a presidential election while their newspaper denies them knowledge that one of the candidates is operating a vast criminal.operation.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/public-editor/when-the-government-says-shhh.html?_r=1

: re: The Embattled Dream of Palestine

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 6:46 PM
Subject: re: The Embattled Dream of Palestine
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Theorists of democracy have long acknowledged that if democracy is ever to be legitimate, it must be in a group enjoying what Rousseau called a "large measure of equality". Not only must there be no wealthy elite holding disproportionate power, but those who find themselves in the minority today on one issue must look forward to being in the majority tomorrow on another. That is, a democracy must be comprised of one polity. Attempts at binational states in which two immiscible groups oppose each other issue after issue, year after year, haven't worked. Czechoslovakia broke up peacefully, Burundi and Rwanda haven't broken up yet but have fought dreadful civil wars, Belgium is struggling towards a divorce.

    It takes no prophetic insight to dismiss Bennett's "one state solution". What is needed is not prophecy but the guts to implement what the U.N. Charter promised: Self-determination of peoples. It's as right for the Palestinians (and the Kurds, and the Tibetans and the Chechens...) as it is for the Jews. ben Gurion signed on to the Two State plan in 1948. It's still the shape of the future.

Barry  Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/opinion/the-embattled-dream-of-palestine.html

: re: Egypt’s Latest Outrage

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 8:16 AM
Subject: re: Egypt’s Latest Outrage
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
     General el-Sisi goes on imprisoning, shooting and torturing dissidents secure in the knowledge that the U.S. government approves. If we did not, we would long ago have cut off aid as our law (22 U.S. Code § 8422 - Authorization of assistance) requires.

   All that is required is that our department of State call his coup a "coup". That would immediately trigger the cut-off of $billions that we continue to meekly pump into his illegitimate repressive government. Find out who promised him that we would wink at his coup and you'll find the underwriter of his crimes.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/opinion/egypts-latest-outrage.html

: re: Pope Francis Declines to Meet Dalai Lama, Reports Say

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 3:05 PM
Subject: re: Pope Francis Declines to Meet Dalai Lama, Reports Say
To: "letters@nytimes.com" 

To the Editor:

     No surviving accounts suggest that Jesus of Nazareth ever held his tongue for fear that it "might create inconveniences" with the Roman emperors that help power of life and death over him and his followers. It therefore comes a a surprise that this Pope of all people is so easily cowed by a tyrant, in Beijing or anywhere else. Is his message to the world contingent on the good will of the mighty?
Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/world/europe/pope-declines-to-meet-dalai-lama-reports-say.html?_r=0

: re: Brennan Draws on Bond With Obama in Backing C.I.A.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 11:54 AM
Subject: re: Brennan Draws on Bond With Obama in Backing C.I.A.
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    The official noise machine keeps braying that John Brennan is "personally opposed to what went on and deeply troubled by what went on and agree[s with president Obama] that it should never happen again. "

    But what the C.I.A. director says in the Oval Office and what he does at Langley are secret. What is tangible is that he continues to run the cover-up of crimes. And even a voter who thinks torturers should not be prosecuted should be upset by the cover-up. Because once a capability is built, it will be used. The machine that is covering up the torture of Afghans and Canadians today could cover up the murder of inconvenient journalists and oppositional voters tomorrow.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/us/politics/cia-chief-and-president-walk-fine-line-.html?_r=0

: re: U.S. Tells Court That Documents From Torture Investigation Should Remain Secret

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 7:59 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Tells Court That Documents From Torture Investigation Should Remain Secret
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
   John Durham has been drinking his own Kool-Aid.  He was charged to investigate violation of the Department of Justice internal guidelines, not to investigate violations of the law. "... [T]he type and nature of criminal charges that could be brought against suspected wrongdoers, along with various defenses that could be raised in opposition to any such charges” have not yet been investigated. There'll never be a better time than the present.
Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/politics/us-tells-court-that-documents-from-torture-investigation-should-remain-secret.html?_r=0

: re: Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 5:30 PM
Subject: re: Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

to the Editor:

   On the spectrum of possible responses from prosecuting torturers (as our statutes and treaty obligations require) to congratulating them (as Dick Cheney prefers), Anthony Romero has settled on one that's neither here nor there. A pardon for un-enumerated crimes as Ford gave Nixon resolved nothing. Nixon went to his grave insisting that he had admitted no crimes. Better the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission model. The precedent is all in place. John Dean invented "use immunity" and then lead a parade of Watergate malefactors in divulging the crimes in exchange for immunity from prosecution. 

    We have established that "some guys were tortured" while in our custody. Now it has been revealed  that some died in the process. That cannot be swept under the rug. If the U.S. is not to be a moral leper among nations, we have to  lance this boil.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/opinion/pardon-bush-and-those-who-tortured.html

: re: For Dianne Feinstein, Torture Report’s Release Is a Signal Moment

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 4:33 PM
Subject: re: For Dianne Feinstein, Torture Report’s Release Is a Signal Moment
To: "letters@nytimes.com"




To the Editor:

How long had Feinstein played James Clapper's whore
enabling spies she's paid to oversee?
to serve her voters seemed a dreadful bore
for one of such exalted dignity

But now they've spied on her! should we feign shock?
their files hold dirt on all, both low and high
who might by law have put them in the dock
to pass sentence on their numerous crimes

who watches over the custodians
when oversight's struck blind, and sov'reigns kneel
when Rights refract through Orwellian lens
and PATRIOT's just code for "tyranny"

don't despair yet, let's fight for what we sang
at least until we've seen torturers hang

Barry Haskell Levine


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/us/politics/for-dianne-feinstein-cia-torture-reports-release-is-a-signal-moment.html

: re: White House and Republicans Clash Over C.I.A. Torture Report

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 8:37 AM
Subject: re: White House and Republicans Clash Over C.I.A. Torture Report
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    In 1948, a fire in an engine was mishandled by the B29's flight crew. The plane crashed, killing three civilians aboard. It was a stupid, avoidable accident but--rather than pay the widows' claims for damages--the government lied, asserting that to make public the crash's details would compromise National Security. The Supreme Court upheld this, inventing the "State Secrets" doctrine. Only fifty-two years later were details of the crash and of the lie made public.

      But we are left with this destructive State Secrets doctrine, and it continues to serve to shelter the government from embarrassment more than to safeguard any real national security concerns. Of course Dick Cheney and his unindicted oo-conspirators argue against release of the Torture Report. It would embarrass them. But we cannot protect him from embarrassment and protect our republic at the same time. We need to choose openness. Because without it, our democracy is a sham.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/politics/white-house-and-gop-clash-over-torture-report.html

: re: Israel Struggles With Its Identity

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 8:21 AM
Subject: re: Israel Struggles With Its Identity
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Seven decades later, ambiguities left unresolved at the United States' founding erupted into Civil War; Israel is right on schedule. The details are not the same, of course. Bizarrely, the bid to split Israel comes from within the government itself.

     Of course, there are differences. Israel has no written constitution. If it had, the details of the bill Netanyahu proposes would probably violate it. If fit passes, Israel will no longer be democratic, ruled by the People, but by the Jews. Just as important, it will no longer have "one law for the stranger and for the homeborn" as is commanded of all Jews. I.e. it will not be Jewish, either. 

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/middleeast/israels-nationality-bill-stirs-debate-over-religious-and-democratic-identity.html?_r=0

: re: Bush and C.I.A. Ex-Officials Rebut Torture Report

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 11:01 AM
Subject: re: Bush and C.I.A. Ex-Officials Rebut Torture Report
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     It is long established that, in the president's words "some guys were tortured" while in U.S. custody and that torture is a crime. We are now told that "This was not a rogue program". It follows that we must now prosecute not just the agents, officers and contractors of the C.I.A. who committed these outrages, but also everyone all the way up the chain of command to Dick Cheney. Because although "I was just following orders" is no defense in U.S. law, "too dumb to form criminal intent" is, in the U.S., even if not in Texas.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/us/politics/bush-and-cia-ex-officials-rebut-torture-report.html?_r=0

: re: Cyrus Vance Jr.’s ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Crime

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 6:22 AM
Subject: re: Cyrus Vance Jr.’s ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Crime
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Justice in America has a structural defect. Because of district attorneys' "extreme collaboration...working hand in glove with the investigators from the police", those D.A.s cannot be trusted to prosecute allegations of police malfeasance. The D.A. who relies on close relations with the police department for her/his daily work will hide behind a Grand Jury when an officer shoots, kills, chokes or sodomizes a citizen but make no case for indictment or conviction rather than risk souring those relations.

   We therefore need structural change. The appearance of police malfeasance must be enough to automatically create a special prosecutor, with no ties to the police force. That will not be without problems, of course. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? But the current system risks repeated miscarriages of justice as in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island at least, and armed revolution in the streets at worst.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/cyrus-vance-jrs-moneyball-approach-to-crime.html

: re: Putin, Amid Stark Challenges, Says Russia’s Destiny Is in Hand

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 8:58 AM
Subject: re: Putin, Amid Stark Challenges, Says Russia’s Destiny Is in Hand
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
    Vladimir Putin can "not convincingly explain how the Kremlin would contend with the economic damage from Western sanctions — and a simultaneous plunge in oil prices and the ruble", but that is not his focus. Putin is concerned with status, not with substance.  If you count tanks, subs, nuclear war-heads, Russia is a great power and Putin demands the due respect. If you peer through any other lens, Russia is just one more petro-state in a falling economy. Its oil and gas reserves are worth less month by month as renewables become cheaper and cheaper. So  while Moscow wants this to be a matter of counting tanks, Washington prefers to make this a matter of clashing economies.

   Russia today is  in the position of Sparta in the 5th century b.c.e. It had a formidable infantry, but no one would come out and fight it. Rather, it was bled endlessly by harrying raids by more mobile enemies. Nobody won, of course.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/world/europe/putin-russia-state-of-nation-speech.html

: re: Missing Its Own Goals, Germany Renews Effort to Cut Carbon Emissions

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 8:50 AM
Subject: re: Missing Its Own Goals, Germany Renews Effort to Cut Carbon Emissions
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Germany has set a high bar for herself in the 21st century, leading the world away from the carbon-based economy of the 19th century and forgoing the fission power that seemed so promising in the 20th.   Faced with the prospect of Putin using natural gas exports as a weapon, however, she has fallen back on some coal-fired capacity that might otherwise have been shut down. That's an exigency of history, not a failure of vision. The rest of the world--much of which has more solar and more wind potential than Germany--would do well to follow where she leads into the future.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/europe/germany-carbon-emissions-environment.html?_r=0

: re: Grand Jury in Chokehold Death of Eric Garner Could Vote This Week on Charges

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:56 AM
Subject: re: Grand Jury in Chokehold Death of Eric Garner Could Vote This Week on Charges
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    It is the job of prosecutor Daniel M. Donovan Jr to prosecute; says so right on his office door. But when he says "“I will go wherever the evidence takes me, without fear or favor,” he announces that he won't do his job. Rather than make a case for indictment, he prefers to throw the unstructured evidence at a Grand Jury and wash his hands.

    The American legal system is built on the assumption that justice emerges when two sides are vigorously advocated in open court. In the killing of Eric Garner, there will be vigorous advocates for neither side, no open court, and no justice.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/nyregion/grand-jury-in-eric-garner-case-could-vote-on-charges-this-week.html?_r=0

: re: Why Our Memory Fails Us

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 8:12 AM
Subject: re: Why Our Memory Fails Us
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    If professors Chabris and Simons have evidence that "Dr. Tyson, Mr. Bush and Mrs. Clinton are all intelligent, educated people", they should cite it here. That's not how we remember George W. Bush, at least.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/why-our-memory-fails-us.html?_r=0

: re: Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 12:28 PM
Subject: re: Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     California's four great fortunes (Crocker, Hopkins, Huntington, Stanford) were founded on the transcontinental railroad. But it is too rarely remembered that none of the four ever earned a dime providing rail service. Their fortunes were made in no market, but in the lobby of Congress. Their agent Theodore Judah pushed federal subsidies to build the rail line through Congress, where he served simultaneously as secretary to the relevant committees in both the House and the Senate.  It was a boondoggle of historic proportion, redeemed only partially by later entrepreneurs who put the rail to such good use.

    So now Honda, Hyundai and Toyota propose to claim federal subsidies for hydrogen cars. Are they likewise unconvinced that the Market wants these things?

Barry Haskell Levine



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/hydrogen-cars-coming-down-the-pike.html?_r=0