: re: As Egyptians Grasp for Stability, Sisi Fortifies His Presidency

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 7:19 AM
Subject: re: As Egyptians Grasp for Stability, Sisi Fortifies His Presidency
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    To write that "the only real inconvenience during Mr. Sisi’s consolidation of power had appeared to be Western censure" is to mistake el-Sisi for Egypt. el-Sisi has consolidated his coup by arresting, torturing, executing and gunning political dissidents down in the street.  This paper should blush to give him the applause that even the U.N. General Assembly did not.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/world/as-egyptians-grasp-for-stability-sisi-fortifies-his-presidency.html?_r=0

: re: A Practice Goes on Trial: Force-Feeding a Detainee

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:11 PM
Subject: re: A Practice Goes on Trial: Force-Feeding a Detainee
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    More than any man, John Locke shaped the government of the U.S. It should therefore be of more than passing interest that he found a right to die to be a fundamental, inalienable right. It was precisely because a prisoner could opt to die (and because the State has the legitimate power to execute a convict) that internment was--in his analysis--a legitimate power of the State. Force feeding violates this fundamental right, that the prisoner--much less the detainee who has been convicted of nothing--has not given up.

   To detain these men in Guantanamo without charges or trial is criminal. To prolong it even past the will to live itself is abomination.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/us/a-practice-goes-on-trial-force-feeding-a-detainee.html?_r=0

: re:Israel Protests a Move to Recognize Palestinian State

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 7:00 PM
Subject: re:Israel Protests a Move to Recognize Palestinian State
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It must be hard to be Benjamin Netanyahu. He's not the beloved war-hero (that was his brother) and he's not the respected historian (that was his father). He's the guy who can't even remember that when ben Gurion accepted the UN plan in 1948, Israel accepted the Two State Solution. Or does he propose to tell us that ben Gurion was un-Israeli as he has called the president of the United States un-American? A man who seems to have such a tenuous grasp of its past inspires scant confidence into the future.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/world/middleeast/israel-protests-swedens-intention-to-recognize-palestinian-state.html

: re: Mr. Netanyahu’s Strange Course

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 8:42 AM
Subject: re: Mr. Netanyahu’s Strange Course
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   To ask why Mr. Netanyahu thinks that building ever more housing for Jews on the land of Arab East Jerusalem could be in Israel's interest is to ask the wrong question. Mr. Netanyahu does what's best for Mr. Netanyahu. Pandering to land-grabbing Settlers has been very good to him, boosting him to the Prime Minister's office. It is for the Israeli electorate to do what is best for Israel. And that has nothing to do with expanding settlements, or with Mr. Netanyahu.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/another-israeli-housing-project-threatens-a-peace-deal.html?_r=0

: re: Mr. Obama’s Pacific Monument

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 11:08 AM
Subject: re: Mr. Obama’s Pacific Monument
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Expanding our Marine Preserve is not small thing. It will enrich Americans and the World for generations hereafter. But Teddy Roosevelt did much more than establish our National Parks. In busting the Trusts that proposed to deliver all of America into the hands of the wealthy elite, he saved capitalism in America and spared us a Workers Revolution like the one that Shattered Russia.

   President Obama has three more years in office and many opportunities to secure his legacy. He can still be the president who prosecuted torture. He can be the president who finally recognized the Kurds' right to self-determination. He can still be the president who enforced our Fourth Amendment guarantees against an ever more intrusive NSA. But until he takes back power to the people from a new generation of "malefactors of great wealth", he doesn't deserve mention in the same breath with Teddy Roosevelt.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/opinion/mr-obamas-pacific-monument.html?ref=opinion

: re: California Law on Sexual Consent Pleases Many but Leaves Some Doubters

 re: California Law on Sexual Consent Pleases Many but Leaves Some Doubters

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 9:14 AM
Subject: re: California Law on Sexual Consent Pleases Many but Leaves Some Doubters
To: "letters@nytimes.com" 

To the Editor:

   What happens between consenting adults requires consent. It seems so clear; who could object? But the plain words misrepresent the complicated reality. What is consent? Who can consent? We posit that minors can't consent, so we have "statutory rape" laws. But we have also the "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions to those laws. One can't give meaningful consent under the influence of alcohol.But how about the influence of pot? Or the influence of the prescription drugs so many college kids take for years at a time for ADHD? Or the influence of the hormones in which they're awash? Worse yet, we have established in law that what is rape in the dorm is rape within a marriage. If my partner and I have wine with dinner, is whatever happens afterward non-consensual? Is it rape?

   "For every complex problem" Mencken warned us "there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong". We should not enact it as law until it is right.

Barry Haskell Levine

: re: Putin Supports Project to ‘Secure’ Russia Internet

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 8:03 AM
Subject: re: Putin Supports Project to ‘Secure’ Russia Internet
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   NSA over-reach is eroding America's standing in the world. Already, its pattern of privacy violation has revealed us as hypocrites to the world preaching civil liberties that we don't respect ourselves.  Already the NSA has made this the worst place in the developed world to innovate; NSA-mandated backdoors mean that neither your Intellectual Property nor your clients' data are safe. Now, rather than sitting at the crossroads of the world's data, the U.S. will be increasingly marginalized as a fragmented internet tries to secure itself from our spying.

     It has been reported that the U.S. budgets between $10billion and $11billion annually for NSA spying. But the cost to us is much much more than that.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/europe/russia-vladimir-putin-internet.html?_r=0