Web Letters | The Nation

A Response to Controversial 'Time' Cover: What ALSO Happens If We Leave Afghanistan

Saddam Hussein was not a nice man. He killed a large number of people. Those of us who opposed the Iraq war knew that he was guilty of many crimes, but we opposed the war because it was not legal, and Iraq was not a real threat to the United States. If we had not gone to war, Saddam Hussein would probably still be leading Iraq, and, no doubt, he would have killed more people. These would have been the consequences of successfully opposing the Iraq War, which we would have had to accept.

Call me old-fashioned, but we were attacked on 9/11, and I support the war in Afghanistan. If I had my way, we would have gone into Afghanistan full-bore, as we did when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

However, before the Afghan war, the Taliban were executing women in soccer stadiums. The picture on the magazine is one way they treat women who offend them. They are not going to stop these practices. If you successfully oppose the Afghan war, you will have to live with the consequences of your actions. You have every right to oppose the war, but don't drape your opposition in a lie to other people or yourself.

Regardless of those pictures and the stadium, I would probably have opposed the Afghan war, if it had not been for 9/11, and I would have had to live with it.

Baby Baiting

Citizenship is a basic civil right for all people born in America. If an amendment is passed limiting that right for one segment of the population, it could threaten every American's right to citizenship. If one group of citizens are denied their birthright, another group can be denied their birthright. The purpose of the Bill of Rights and subsequent civil rights amendments was to protect individual rights from governmental abuses. Government is not allowed to abridge these rights.

For example, with regard to religion, the First Amendment protects religion as an individual right that government cannot touch. It does not protect government from religion. A secular government is a secondary effect of protecting religious freedom.

People need to read and understand the Constitution, before they seek to amend away their civil rights!

Key Provisions of Arizona Immigration Law Blocked by Federal Judge

The Statue of Liberty says "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Arizona says "Give me your White Europeans with college degrees." The people that are coming here from Mexico are cleaning toilets, emptying bedpans at hospitals and working outside in one hundred degree temperatures doing landscape work. They are willing to do anything to survive and be part of the American dream.

The criminals who come here should be jailed or deported, but the immigrants paying taxes and obeying our laws should be given a path to citizenship.

Medicare is deep in the red and Social Security will soon be as well, with cuts in both programs being talked about, as well as a raise in the age of eligibility for Social Security. Why? Because there are not enough tax revenues to pay for these programs. If the illegals here are working hard and not engaging in any criminal conduct, their work and their taxes are badly needed. People criticize illegals, and it may very well be their taxes that help prop up our services for the elderly and retired. I know of no industry during this deep recession that has been devastated because of the influx of foreign workers. They are doing the work no one else wants to do. At the same time, we can and we must secure our borders and stop future millions from illegally entering our country. If we cannot control the entry of millions of people trying to enter our country illegally, then we cannot stop the entry of terrorists meant to do us harm.

We have every right to insist that people come here legally, but let's stop making those who are already here now and who are doing the most menial jobs the enemy. They want what our grandparents wanted—a chance to better their lives and have the lives of their children better than the lives they led. Make them go through the process of registering and becoming citizens. Ninety-nine percent of them are not evil people and only want what our grandparents wanted when they crossed our shores and saw the Statue of Liberty. America stands for freedom, not exclusion, not expulsion and not intolerance, and that is why so many people want to come here.

Deficits of Mass Destruction

Please let us know when you have collaborated with friends at JournoList in writing your columns. You know, sort of "Check the Box." It will save all of us a great deal of time and effort by not having to read or consider alternative viewpoints. That, in turn, will save a bunch of trees—undoubtedly your hidden agenda. Keep up the good work! You are making us so proud of your profession.

No To Oligarchy

Oligarchs are constructing an empire, and it is starting to look like a keiretsu. This behemoth structure encompasses governments of nation-states and exercises control over them through the banking and financial industry. The techniques used may have been borrowed from China, which has been controlling over 1.3 billion people by using its central bank and currency system. Additionally, Japan Inc., a small country, successfully used the keiretsu model to become an global powerhouse in world trade while operating like a single company domestically.

"He who controls the currency controls the country." —Keynes

In the early 1970s the international monetary system was privatized and put under the majority control of the "too big to fail” banks. These are the same mega institutions that have earned the majority of the blame for originating calls for banking deregulation, inventing derivatives and instituting changes to mortgage lending, all of which have caused the current collapse of the real estate industry and the world economic meltdown.

These private global banks are effectively controlling nation states by controlling their currencies. A good example is the recent financial collapse in Greece, where Goldman, one of the key banks that control the international monetary system, secretly enabled Greece to borrow money well beyond the European Union's collective guidelines for debt. Greece could no longer solve its own financial collapse by printing its own currency because it had joined the EU and accepted the euro as currency instead. As a result, the problem was solved by refinancing the debt using euros and pledging to drastically cut social programs as part of the fix.

The irony about the Greece example is that the trouble-instigating bank that enabled Greece to over-extend was able to watch the "free market" ideology that they push stuffed down the throats of the EU countries while they made money from both ends of the crisis.

The shadowy derivative transactions associated with currency exchange in the international monetary system required the Fed to be involved, and through a few stealth moves the US taxpayer ended up guaranteeing risky derivative investments that were outside the jurisdiction and laws of the United States.

Some of these investments in their simplest form are nothing more than naked short sales, which were banned years ago in our stock markets because they could be used to manipulate the markets. Murphy’s Law says that we should not be using them for currency exchange either.

The five US mega banks are promoting the economic ideology of Milton Freedman, which favors the super-rich and encourages monopoly, and is on a head-on collision course with the economics of Maynard Keynes and the people's democratically elected government of the United States.

The oligarchs and the banksters are trying to make an end-run around the government "of the people” by using "globalism." This order of things is twisted, as our democracy should always be sovereign to unelected G-20 consultants who operate in secrecy.

The concept of kieretsu has been gradually putting the US democracy at risk by tying America down in a manner similar to Gulliver in Lilliput. Hundreds of ties with entities outside the country are gradually restraining US power and usurping its sovereignty. International trade agreements readily surrender US control over valuable assets by selling seaports, airports, highways, subways and parking lots to foreign investors to satisfy debt. International debt grew by $9 trillion during the Bush administration, giving foreign debt holders a say in how we run the government of the people.

Additionally large numbers of "joint economic cooperative agreements” and military agreements are tethering countries, including the USA, together and limiting their independence. Even the allegiance of our military is increasingly becoming attached to others via private contracts.

The recent financial re-regulation falls far short of stopping empire. At the last minute the following was slipped into the financial legislation fix:

<em>the proposal would allow banks to hold onto certain derivatives trading related to interest rates, currency rates, gold and silver. They also would be allowed to continue trading in derivatives in order to hedge against their own risks.</em>

It is clear from the above that the control is meant to be complete. In order to reinstate democracy, we can do nothing short of dismantling the keiretsu control center by reinstituting Glass-Steagall, stopping naked short-selling (derivatives), getting rid of hedge funds (stock pools), breaking up monopolies and untying the chains that limit our independence.

Our current democracy is one in name only and can be compared to a sports event where the referee controls the game but can make bets on the outcome to make money for himself.

Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths In Mexico?

Mr. Bowden knows his subject well and has personal experience with this part of Mexico. Yet to say that most of these 25,000 deaths are of innocent people is wholly inaccurate if not pure demagoguery. I am a little dismayed by this because he is a responsible journalist. First of all, Mr. Bowden presents absolutely no proof to back his statement. Secondly, if one were to take that statement to its logical conclusion, the obvious question would be, You mean the majority of these 25,000 were people were innocent bystanders caught in crossfires? Hardly. The cartels do not commit murders in a vacuum. It is fallacious to think so.

Could WikiLeaks Offer a Way Out of War?

According to various news reports, the first demand of the Taliban is the complete ending of any scholling for girls and women. Meanwhile, they're still attacking schoolgirls with battery acid into the eyes. How much of this are The Nation's readers willing to endorse by withdrawing our help? Today's shameful Congressional vote is another with stupid incentive for the Taliban to hold on hoping that the Americans will be insane enough to abandon the progressive forces.

The Shame of the Fourth Estate

No one can fire a federal employee except a supervisor of her/him. The lady was hastily "removed," and just as hastily re-hired, and even more hastily deified. She is more famous, more powerful, more widely known and very likely wealthier than she was a month ago. No one thinks badly of her: naming her politics is not an insult, just as calling anyone anywhere a "socialist" is not an insult.

There was much sloppiness here, and plenty of blame to assign. Even the very organization to whom she spoke condemned her. How is that for stupidity?

Your focus on one media organization is perhaps the major reason why a responsible left in the US remains a fiction.

Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths In Mexico?

I saw Mr. Bowden on C-Span a couple of weeks ago talking about his book Murder City. I downloaded the book, and it certainly put a human face on the violence along the border. CNNI and the BBC have reported on the problem, but they didn't have the depth of Mr. Bowden's book. He covered the drug aspect of the Mexican "economy" very well, but I would be interested in hearing more detail about Mexican workers in the "American" industries that have to the Mexican side of the border.

I do think some of the violence has spilled over the border, though more related to the drug trade and not migrant workers. Besides the rancher in Arizona, we recently had a young girl kidnapped and murdered in Riverside, which was somewhat similar to incidents in Mexico reported in Mr. Bowden's book. A green SUV was involved. The Arizona law is I think, in part, related to the narco violence along the border.

There is a proposition in the next election that may legalize marijuana in California, which might take the profit out of the illegal importation of that drug. Regulation, along with education, and not prohibition is the only way to deal with the illegal drug trade.

The Shame of the Fourth Estate

It is no longer surprising that barely eight months into Obama's presidency Charles Pierce wondered aloud if, in fact, he wasn't a political coward. That certainly doesn't seem a matter of conjecture any more. With the able assistance of Rahm, he can't seem to make a right move. This was not the guy I voted for, the man with the Roosevelt mandate. He had the country in the palm of his hand and all he could offer was "bipartisanship." He's a real "centrist," all right, he doesn't know which direction he should go.