: re: Sofía Vergara’s Ex-Fiancé: Our Frozen Embryos Have a Right to Live

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 9:01 AM
Subject: re: Sofía Vergara’s Ex-Fiancé: Our Frozen Embryos Have a Right to Live
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Few people who haven't yet digested the "first mammal paradox" would argue with the statement that "every mammal has a mammal for a mother". Yet it would follow logically from that statement that mammals must have existed forever. Given that the Earth hasn't existed forever, we have a problem. The problem is that mind and language make bright line distinctions between one thing and another. But reality is subtler than that.  One species shades imperceptibly into another, just as the molecules at a solid-liquid interface may be neither fully one nor the other.

     And so it is with life. Few would argue that at e.g. 21, one is a moral agent with rights and responsibilities. But there is no bright-line moment when that happened. Not the 21st birthday, not the first word, not birth, not implantation, not fertilization, not when the ovum's component atoms were transformed from food to nucleic acids and proteins. If one is uncomfortable in so fuzzy a world, so be it. Welcome to reality.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/opinion/sofiavergaras-ex-fiance-our-frozen-embryos-have-a-right-to-live.html?_r=0

: re: Deep Support in Washington for C.I.A.’s Drone Missions

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 1:10 PM
Subject: re: Deep Support in Washington for C.I.A.’s Drone Missions
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   While "the recent accidental deaths of the hostages are only the latest example of how difficult it is for the C.I.A. to know exactly whom it is killing ", this is only half the problem. Since the CIA is not part of the U.S.'s uniformed military service, its officers, agents and contractors are unlawful combatants. Every CIA killing is presumably a war crime.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/us/politics/deep-support-in-washington-for-cias-drone-missions.html?ref=todayspaper

: re: President Vladimir Putin’s Dangerous Moves

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 9:02 AM
Subject: re: President Vladimir Putin’s Dangerous Moves
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  If one counts tanks, or subs, or missiles, Russia is a great world power; by any other metric, mr. Putin is running an economy the size of Brazil's and is running it into the ground.  So of  course, he wants to militarize any disagreement. And it is in the world's interest to marginalize him.

    Mikhail Gorbachev famously acknowledged that the Soviet Union couldn't afford to spend endlessly in a stupid arms-race. We must take that lesson to heart, even if Mr. Putin does not.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/opinion/president-vladimir-putins-dangerous-moves.html?_r=0

: re: Iraq’s Cycles of Revenge

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 9:05 AM
Subject: re: Iraq’s Cycles of Revenge
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   Iraq was invented in 1916 by Mark Sykes and George Picot, drawing lines on a map. Iraq was doomed by L. Paul Bremer when he purged the army of Shiite officers. Iraq was destroyed by David Petraeus when he armed and empowered sectarian militias. Whether it was ever a good idea or not, whether president Abadi is a good man or not, Iraq is dead. The Sykes-PIcot-Rumsfeld project is not in America's interest. No amount of duct tape and no further tally of American casualties will fix it.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/opinion/iraqs-cycles-of-revenge.html

: re: Hillary Clinton Announces 2016 Presidential Bid

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 1:41 PM
Subject: re: Hillary Clinton Announces 2016 Presidential Bid
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
    Even before she has enunciated any positions, senator Clinton is checking out the dog-whistle rhetoric. When she says "the deck is stacked", historians hear echoes of Teddy Roosevelt's "Square Deal" and of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal". But no one believes that she means to remake the relationship of wealth to power in this country as the two Roosevelts did, each in his generation.

   So credit her speech-writer with a nice historical flourish. But I'm waiting for a leader.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us/politics/hillary-clinton-2016-presidential-campaign.html

: re: It Takes a Party

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 1:22 PM
Subject: re: It Takes a Party
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    No one who isn't brain-dead should be surprised that Hillary Clinton is running for the White House, nor that professor Krugman means to vote for whomever the Democratic Party nominates in that race. But we should not leap to his conclusion that it doesn't matter who heads the ticket. Some will remember Ralph Nader's supporter arguing in all sincerity that it made no difference whether we had one wealthy son of privilege (George W. Bush) or another (Al Gore) in the White House. In retrospect, that was foolishness. While neither of them was the class warrior the Naderites wanted, only one of them squandered $trillions in a pointless war in Iraq while ignoring the collapse of Wall Street. And a president Gore would not have name John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

   Nominees do matter. It is far, far too early to resign ourselves to vote for the choice of the pundits. It is time to demand that candidates stand for something.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/opinion/it-takes-a-party.html?_r=0

: re: Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 8:56 AM
Subject: re: Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Damningly, the video shows not only a cop killing an unarmed man, but also shows him planting evidence on the body. And damningly, the Manjoo/Isaac article elides this second crime. That smells less of reportage than of complicity.
Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/phone-cameras-and-apps-help-speed-calls-for-police-reform.html?_r=0

: re: Battling Crime and Calories at F.B.I. (Fit Bureau of Investigation)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 8:06 AM
Subject: re: Battling Crime and Calories at F.B.I. (Fit Bureau of Investigation)
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The lengths to which J. Edgar Hoover went to surround himself with slim young men are a matter of record. Agents of the Bureau relied on cigarettes and amphetamines to meet his criteria for weight and waistline. The legacy is twofold;  the burden of lung cancer falls on agents and former agents of the Bureau. But FBI policy concocted in an atmosphere of amphetamine-fueled paranoia still falls on us all.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/us/battling-crime-and-calories-at-fbi-fit-bureau-of-investigation.html