Letters to the Editor, September 19, 2004

Famous Quotes about War&Peace #43

"The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life,
make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can."

John Gardner

Sent by Charles A Beers

Dual Citizenship and US Foreign Policy

Hi~ I'm looking for information on US/Israeli dual citizenship. I have only become aware of the issue recently, and I am trying to find out who among the American neo-cons that exert influence over US foreign policy (Perle, Feith, ect...) have dual citizenship. Do you know if any such information is available?

David Elliott

Editor: I don't know. Readers answers are welcome.

Debased Language

I admire developing a glossary of terms. I will try to send a few but most of the time I despair. The settlers have said that moving them is "a crime against humanity"!!! It sometimes seems like a losing battle when you live in a world where 40 per cent of U.S. citizens still think that Saddam did it (plus some who aren't sure) and that you can put a tin box on a sand dune in Florida and think it will suvive a hurricane.

Ron Wilkinson

Editor: It's an interactive document that I hope editors, authors, journalists, and readers participate in.

Conflict of Terminology

To the Editor:

In your excellent article, September 15, on the conflict of terminology, you asked for further suggestions to amplify your list. How about, “bush-whacking?" Webster’s dictionary defines this as “to fight in or attack from a bush,” with the added synonym of “ambush.” Seems like this is the technique used by the Bush campaign to refute any and all allusions to the many horrific mistakes and miscalculations they have made during the past four years.

Don Speakman,

Israel Stole Our Land, Our Country, Our Lives, Palestine

By Genevieve Cora Fraser

Israeli Commandoes

Raided the Mother

Theresa Society

A five AM wake

Up shot fear

Into frail elders

Orphaned children

Terrified nuns

An elderly priest

Held by snarling

Dogs and IDF

Gunpoint near

Old Najah Street

In the Nablus

Christian community

Shots were fired

People rounded up

Footage on Nablus

TV showed

A lifeless corpse

A child, a girl

Blood rained

Down her face

Instead of tears

Her fears dispelled

By an IDF sniper

Bullet to the head

Dead as helicopter

Gunships terrorized

The traumatized

Citizens of the ancient

City ripe with corpses

Executed Nazi style

Boot prints

On chests

Gapping holes

In skulls

Fired at close

Range for resisting

The dictates

Of Israeli

Supremacy

Western and Eastern civilizations to be frozen in place

Western and Eastern civilizations need to be frozen in place now. This is an abstraction, of course. I think of the chaos in Iraq, and the concept came from Raed Jarrar's web diary - Raed in the Middle - "Lost between East and West"

Iraq is caught between the two massive tectonic plates of world history - Western and Eastern Civilizations - and is being crushed in a molten magma of bombings, chaos, unemployment, etc, that has become volcanic. It is exactly like what happens as the earth's geologic plates move along earthquake zones, only it is the conflict, the colliding of East and West that is destroying life in Iraq.

The remark by the head of the Arab League, Mr. Mesa, that the gates of hell have opened in Iraq, is quite symbolic, but has an eerie sense of reality to it. Exactly like the volcanic heat between two tectonic plates.

My suggestion, which I believe is consistent with some of the goals of the anti-globalization movement (afterall, Halliburton and others are making fortunes in Iraq, much of that through corruption and graft) is that those two massive forces - Western and Eastern civilizations (again, speaking abstractly) be frozen in place.

David Lawrence Cade

Candlelight Vigils...

Sent by Charles A Beers

. . . organized in partnership with the Win Without War coalition.

More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers have now been killed in Iraq along with at least 15,000 Iraqi civilians.

1,000 of our brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, moms, dads, sons, and daughters have given their lives in service to our country. To honor them and reflect on the loss of their lives, Americans everywhere organized candlelight vigils on the evening of September 9th, 2004. I attended the one in Dayton, OH, along the river at the Vietnam Memorial.

Here are a few pictures from vigils around the country...

The photo below features a picture of Bush made up of small pictures of the faces of the 1,000 + Americans killed in Iraq...
and the whole thing is only getting worse with no end in sight!