: re: Stepping on a Slippery Slope

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 8:34 AM
Subject: re: Stepping on a Slippery Slope
To: "letters@nytimes.com"


To the Editor:
   No one can accept Martin Baron's claim that journalists need to
"abandon the idea that the news room can labor in isolation from the
business operations" and still work as a journalist.  Giving
advertisers what they want is the business of entertainers. But the
functioning of our republic requires an informed electorate, and that
in turn requires journalism, especially when it covers material
advertisers don't want to endorse.
   It is sad to see that Bezos' Washington Post has abandoned even the
pretense of pursuing journalism. It is outrageous that a columnist in
this paper should cite Baron approvingly.
Barry Haskell Levine



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/opinion/joe-nocera-stepping-on-a-slippery-slope.html?_r=0

: re: Strikes on Kurd Militias Elevate Tensions in Turkey

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 5:12 PM
Subject: re: Strikes on Kurd Militias Elevate Tensions in Turkey
To: "letters@nytimes.com"


To the Editor:
   Throughout the ColdWar, Turkey was a key U.S. ally, hosting our
airbases, peering into the Soviet Caucasus, sharing our peril through
the Missile Crisis. But this is the 21st century; the Soviet Union is
no more. If president Obama really believes as he has said that " it's
important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves
that we do have very real security threats out there" then he needs to
embrace and recognize and arm Kurdistan. It is the Kurds who are our
key allies in the fight against ISIS. If the Turks oppose them, they
oppose us.
Barry Haskell Levine


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/europe/heightened-tensions-in-turkey-after-strikes-on-kurdish-militants-in-iraq.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

: re: With Washington’s Complicity, Egypt Cracks Down on Critics

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 9:02 AM
Subject: re: With Washington’s Complicity, Egypt Cracks Down on Critics
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It cannot be enough that the United States "support[s] the protection of individual rights for Egyptians".  By our own statute, the coup that toppled Mohamed Morsi in 2013 should have triggered the immediate end of military aid to Egypt. 

     As long as we demur to enforce our own law, the world sees that we underwrite the repression and violations of Egyptians' rights. Rather than the beacon of liberty, we have made ourselves the ally of convenient strongmen and the target of revolutionaries around the world.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/opinion/with-washingtons-complicity-egypt-cracks-down-on-critics.html?_r=0

: re: A Good Bad Deal?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 12:57 PM
Subject: re: A Good Bad Deal?
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    In all the world, Iran stands out alone for having the idle natural gas capacity to replace what Germany, Ukraine and Poland currently rely on buying from Russia. So let's play the whole game here. Bring Iran back into the global market, cut off the revenue that props up Putin and stop obsessing over what can't be done. Nuclear weapons can't be uninvented. Politics, they say, is the art of the possible.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/opinion/thomas-friedman-a-good-bad-deal.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0