: re: When Turmoil Strikes, Turks See Conspiracy at Work

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 10:43 AM
Subject: re: When Turmoil Strikes, Turks See Conspiracy at Work
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:  

    That Turks see the hand of their own government in the peace rally bombing doesn't require a "penchant for conspiracy theory". Where it's established that "there is a long record of violence that turned out afterward to be the work of agents for the state", this is evidence that the Turks are resistant to their own government's efforts to frame their Kurdish neighbors for the government's own terror tactics.
  It is a key characteristic of the DeepState that is persists even as the heads of government come and go.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/world/europe/in-times-of-chaos-turks-point-to-a-deep-conspiracy.html

: re: Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 10:13 AM
Subject: re: Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The Syrian people rose up against Bashar al-Assad in 2011 because his regime was illegitimate and intolerable. It has not gained legitimacy by killing tens of thousands of his own citizens in the interim.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/opinion/jimmy-carter-a-five-nation-plan-to-end-the-syrian-crisis.html?ref=opinion

: re: Big-Name Plan B’s for Democrats Concerned About Hillary Clinton

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 2:43 PM
Subject: re: Big-Name Plan B’s for Democrats Concerned About Hillary Clinton
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It is fascinating and repugnant to glimpse the DNC's dark machinations.  Garnet Coleman assures us--while Americans align on issue by issue with sen. Bernie Sanders--that the DNC will pick for us someone whom the donors like.

   That's exactly the pre-selection that the people of HongKong so bravely rejected when Beijing offered them a sham democracy.  I hope Democrats here show as much spine.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/us/politics/big-name-plan-bs-for-democrats-concerned-about-hillary-clinton.html

: re: Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 7:21 PM
Subject: re: Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   For two generations, America has told Palestinians that their national aspiration to self-determination is legitimate--but peace first, then statehood. Yet when they are peaceful we ignore them--what doesn't bleed doesn't hold our attention. And when they militate, we wave a censorious finger and say "peace first".  So let's not pretend shock that "Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank will not indefinitely extend to Israel a period of calm while no corresponding reduction of the occupation takes place."
Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/opinion/mismanaging-the-conflict-in-jerusalem.html

ephemera

ephemeral art
wrought by Andrew Goldsworthy
memento mori

rapt

gesticulating
freed by a BlueTooth device
no hands on the wheel

missing mass

neutrinos add up
infinitesimally
to outweigh the stars

unconstrained

flouting all constraints
not haiku nor senryu
self-indulgent crap

dumbshow

spectator culture
millionaires playing kids' games
vicarious "sport"

out!

Francis exorcised
the House OrangeJohn haunted
yet to go: Legion

pestilence walking

Andrew Wakefield's fraud
propagates like a virus
for which there's no cure

contagion

were al-Assad hanged
Putin would fear for his neck
peons get ideas

: re: A Road to Damascus, via Moscow

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 8:11 AM
Subject: re: A Road to Damascus, via Moscow
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    There have long been voices in America who favor the stability a strongman promises over the messiness of legitimate democracy. The U.S. armed Josef Stalin as he murdered millions of his own Russians, and we backed or installed the Shah in Iran, and Marcos in the Philippines and Pinochet in Chile...This week, the face of the tyrant is al-Assad and the short-term goal of reducing mayhem in Syria is appealing. But al-Assad never had any legitimacy, and he has gained none in recent years by imprisoning, torturing and killing thousands of Syrians.

   Let's join with our allies in eradicating the blight of ISIS from the region. But that does not require embracing al-Assad, his murderous regime, or his lies.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/opinion/a-road-to-damascus-via-moscow.html

: re: For Afghans in Kunduz, Taliban Assault Is Just the Latest Affront

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 9:50 AM
Subject: re: For Afghans in Kunduz, Taliban Assault Is Just the Latest Affront
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
   Despite the paeans of his PR flacks, general David Petraeus' policy of arming and empowering sectarian militias rather than building multi-ethnic national institutions in Iraq fueled and fuels the civil war that continues to rage there.  Disastrously, the U.S. has reproduced that policy in Afghanistan, with predictable results. Many Pashtuns in Kunduz, feeling excluded and aggrieved welcomed and abetted the latest Taliban campaign there.

    It is not for the U.S. to build an Afghan nation that doesn't exist in Afghans' own minds. A confederation of tribal states may be the best solution in the end. But we must stop stoking their civil wars.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/world/asia/for-afghans-in-kunduz-taliban-assault-is-just-the-latest-affront.html?_r=0

\: re: Mr. Putin’s Motives in Syria

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 8:45 AM
Subject: re: Mr. Putin’s Motives in Syria
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
   "Never" Napoleon advised "interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself." In propping up Bashar al-Assad, Putin is getting into a commitment with no good exit. al-Assad has killed far more innocent people than ISIS has, and is as hated by the world's Muslims--16 million of whom live in Russia.  As recession wracks Russia, there will be some willing to sign on to his irresponsible military adventurism. But as years drag on, Russian mothers will resent sending their sons to die in Syria as surely as they  resented sending their sons to Afghanistan. And if Putin doesn't fear them, he's a fool.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/vladimir-putin-motives-in-syria.html?_r=0

: re: President Obama and the Power of Mercy

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 10:42 AM
Subject: re: President Obama and the Power of Mercy
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
  Our constitution provides the President of the United States broad power to pardon. Too often--too my eye--it has been used to reward partisans (e.g. Caspar Weinberger, Marc Rich). But it remains on the books, and can be a tool for patching democracy's shortcomings.
     It is time that President Obama pardon Edward Snowden.  What Edward Snowden leaked, he leaked to the American people. To prosecute that as an act hostile to the American government is more an indictment of that government than of the leaker.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/president-obama-and-the-power-of-mercy.html?ref=opinion&_r=0