Caldwell Nails the Condit Affair; Tama's Ruined It for One Reader; A Nun Cusses Us Out; Mad Props for Top Drawer; Windy Diatribes on AIDS and Global Warming; Once Again, MUGGER...; More

Just a quick note to say that all the "winning" comic strips (6/20) sucked moose cock.

Mark Duffy, Manhattan

 

There Are No Simple Pleasures

I read Ms. Tama Janowitz's recent food column ("Food," 6/20). Please relay to her my thanks for ruining what I imagined was a simple pleasure, namely, the consumption of honey. Thanks a lot.

Myron A. James, Taft, CA

 

Got Some Good Presents, Too

I just finished Christopher Caldwell's "Don Juan in Hell" ("Hill of Beans," 6/27) about Gary Condit and Chandra Levy. He concludes the following: "It's a case in which we can be fairly confident that one of three things happened: either (a) Condit had an affair with Levy and killed her, (b) Condit had an affair with Levy and she killed herself, or (c) Condit had an affair with Levy and some bizarre subsequent mishap has turned him into the unluckiest adulterer who ever lived."

I must say that's the clearest and most succinct summation of the whole thing I've heard yet. It also occurs to me that if Condit is the unluckiest adulterer who ever lived, then Bill Clinton must be the luckiest. He kept his job, his wife and got out of there with his skin. My hero.

Andrew Toomey, Danbury, CT

 

No Pussyfooting

Christopher Caldwell: Your last paragraph on Gary Condit's aphasia summed it all up concisely and clearly. I kept waiting for some journalist to do it. All they have done to date is repeat the same meager tidings and tiptoe through the tulips when it comes to analyzing the bottom line. Thank you.

Liz Caldwell, Westlake Village, CA

 

Exemplary Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell's article on Congressman Gary Condit should be used in courses on journalism, writing skills, law, sociology, government and more. Every sentence carries the story forward in an interesting way, with no useless conjectures or two-bit theorizing, and not one word is wasted.

Peter Lushing, Far Hills, NJ

 

He Is Shelby Lynne

Never again can I trust a George Tabb music review ("Music," 6/27). Come to think of it, I never know what or who the hell he's talking about anyway. I'm probably as far from the NYC music scene as you can get in the lower 48. I cannot imagine having a negative opinion of anything that would allow George to escape his front stoop philosophers. Front stoop philosophy was always high on my list of positives, how wrong we can be. Having no understanding of where music is heading, I will continue listening to Lisa Stansfield, Leona Naess, Shelby Lynne, Derailers and Ben Folds Five. Not to mention my all time favorite for no social message, just old-fashioned r&r, Dion's 1989 release "Yo Frankie."

Mike Daley, San Andreas, CA

 

And to Dame Norman

MUGGER: a couple of journalist colleagues pointed out the extraordinary resemblances between Claude La Badarian and Sir Norman, so I checked it out and they do indeed seem very similar. The major difference being that Sir Norman is a lot funnier and more contemporary. Credit where credit is due and all that. Since we are all gentlemen, how about a duel of the columns? You print one of Sir Norman's columns across from this impostor and let the readership decide?I mean the 10 of them who actually read what's in this rag apart from the whipping ads. Love to Mrs. M and the kids.

Sir Norman, via Internet

 

But Who Speaks for Scrapple?

Speaking of errors in The New York Times ("MUGGER," 6/13), baseball has returned to Coney Island. The Times did a story about baseball and hotdogs. The information was incorrect. They cited the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, the industry-flak organization that sends out the wrong info to every media outlet in the country for July (National Hot Dog Month).

I'm a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary and a scholar on the "hot dog," as well as other foods from around the world. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Times. It wasn't published. Not only that, but no one even contacted me to ask if my correction was accurate. This is not an isolated incident, as you know. Journalism in New York City sucks.

Barry Popik, Manhattan

 

Mea Maxima Culpa

Hey MUGGER, that's some "correction" Dowd offers up at the end of her 6/27 column: "A column last week said that Representative Gary Condit was one of the few Democrats to vote for the impeachment of Bill Clinton..." Using Dowd's idea of mea culpa, Andrea Yates has confessed to Houston police that it was a bathtub full of water that unfortunately drowned her five children.

Name Withheld, via Internet

 

Devil in the Details

"(George Clooney's dimwit Ulysses defining the devil: 'Well, of course, there are all manner of lesser imps and demons, Pete?but the great Satan himself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tale and carries a hay fork')" (Matt Zoller Seitz, "Film," 6/20). That's probably a bifurcated tail, unless you're suggesting that Satan speaks with forked tongue. Homonyms are hell on spellcheckers, you know?

David Bakin, Seattle

 

Yeah, But He'd Never Collect

Re "Wild Justice" (6/27). If Hitchens can't sue Kissinger, can Putin sue Alex?

Helen Weber, Oklahoma City

 

Mad Props for "Top Drawer"

New York Press, brilliant as always. Much respect to a periodical that has Taki and Szamuely.

Thomas Murray, Bronx

 

 

 

Glutton for Punishment

 

I am constantly amazed at the vulgarity, hyperbole and outrageous shows of contempt for women and others as expectorated by the boring, self-indulgent Taki. I don't know why I bother to read him, idiot that I am, or that silly MUGGER, either. I guess I just want to see how far meanness and filth will take them.

Mildred P. Miller, Chattanooga

 

Mount Holy Smokes

Taki: I am more than willing to accept Prof. Joseph Ellis' tale-spinning as just that ("Top Drawer," 6/27). Some people are just prevaricators. He's not the first person to create grand war stories where the teller plays a central role. Such people range from entertaining to rather pathetic. But Mount Holyoke is setting a really bad example of scholarly integrity by not immediately disciplining Prof. Ellis. This was not just tale-spinning at the bar; it was fabrication of facts in academia. If they do not discipline him, where will they stand the next time a student fabricates research on a term paper?

Martin Shoemaker, Hopkins, MI

 

Race Rats

In his 6/27 "Wild Justice," Alexander Cockburn describes Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "racist, death-penalty-loving Missourian." He's from Missouri and he supports the death penalty, but there's never been any convincing evidence that Ashcroft is a racist.

Jeremy Lott, senior editor, Spintech magazine

 

Human Frogger

I just read your cellphone piece (John Strausbaugh, "Daily Billboard," 6/26). Just wanted to tell you that you forgot to mention something in your rant against cellphone users and the fascists who want to make them felons.

Twenty years ago, "we" didn't have cellphones or computers. A guy with a radio phone was a chief legal officer or COO for one of the few billion-dollar corporations extant at the time, the apparatus needed a backpack and a car battery to work, and calls he had coming in were of global financial or political consequence. They were calls that really just couldn't wait, and generally they were incoming. Computers were either Cray supercomputers that cost $100 million and were being used to calculate the mass of the universe or coordinate international missile defense, or $200 Commodore VIC-20s that played bad versions of bowling-alley classics like Space Invaders and Frogger.

At either end, these were idiosyncratic luxuries that the average Joe didn't need or want?because the high end could probably replace him at his job, and the low end was too much trouble to figure out. Today, we have (as you astutely pointed out) Vinnie the Mook getting calls on his cellphone (which fits in his shirt pocket) from his Jersey girlfriend that begin with "Where the fuck are you?" and end with "Gethefuckaddahea," and people are uploading amateur porn videos using computers that make the original Cray look like an abacus. If you want to bitch about mediocrity, this is the time to do it. The annoyance factor of seeing some jackass who can't drive in the first place swearing into his cellphone as he cuts you off isn't half as culturally tragic as the fact that he's stroking his own ego with billion-dollar technology.

I'd go into a rant on the techno-self-idolatry of our society, but I'm typing this on my Palm V as I drive to work and some shit on a cellphone just missed the left-turn signal. I'm going over there to kick his ass.

Frank Turk, Pittsburgh, PA

 

Nice Mouth, Sister

Of course Peter Lener ("The Mail," 6/20) is right: You are anti-Roman Catholic and your filthy rag is not fit to wrap dog shit in. You need to do penance with a novena to our Most Gracious Lady Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God Immaculate. We will pray for you at all masses and novenas to the Most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary for the salvation of your miserable souls. You are beneath contempt.

Sister Veronica McRooney OHD BVM Mary Repatrix

 

Christian Charity

To my Christian brother Peter Lener of the Bronx ("The Mail," 6/20): Rather than take the position of being professional offense-takers?a vocation practiced by far too many, sometimes for pay, in this country of ours?why don't we instead use the opportunity provided by attacks on or mockings of Christianity to pray for our opponents, pray to God for guidance and then engage the attackers and mockers in debate?

New York Press is a non-Christian paper that's sometimes filled with things that we can waste time getting angry about. But it also provides one of the most open mail sections known to man and in it we can meet our opponents face-to-face, as the editors have allowed me and other Christian radicals to do on countless occasions.

As to the issue of people deliberately offending Christians with their ads or what have you: these people are simply engaging in juvenile tactics because they're afraid to debate the issues with articulate Christians, or even not especially articulate ones (I recall my grandmother's ability to win a debate with an atheist intellectual simply with the line: "I don't care what you say, what God says is what matters").

Also, their spirits want worldly "freedom" (i.e., they feel safe in their slavery and don't want to face their ultimate doom) and they fear the possibility of being reached by Christ's message and finding a true freedom that will require a meaningful spiritual journey. I know this because it was my own experience before I surrendered to Christ, and I urge these people to stop resisting and open up to Him. So let us develop thicker skins, Christian friends, and let us pray that these people turn to God through Christ to be saved.

Jack Seney, Queens

 

Aren't They Always

So is "fucks up," as in "Sprey: 'Water fucks up everything...'" ("Wild Justice," 6/20) a technical term? If so, why can't other scientists use technical terms I can understand? And can I say, with a high degree of statistical confidence, that global warming is bullshit? Sounds like these English cocksuckers are trying to put one over on us.

Loren Peters, Atlanta

 

Pleasing Sparrow

Pardon my slow pace, but I just read Colin Raff's essay "Raymond Roussel" ("Books," 5/9). What a precise, square-in-the-face assessment of this auteur-pioneer. Thank you for financing this educative monologue.

Sparrow, Phoenicia, NY

 

Those Darn Swedes

God bless Taki and your paper for carrying him. By the way, the neutral Swedes ("Top Drawer," 6/20) in World War II allowed German troops to cross Sweden en route to Norway.

Ted Villalon, San Antonio, TX

 

The Shame of Being Swedish

Leave it to Taki to ruthlessly point out that the Swedes are a tiresomely supercilious, arrogant, socialistic and soulless bunch, who've managed to turn Minnesota (where so many of them settled around the turn of the 20th century) into a virtual duplicate of the mother country ("Top Drawer," 6/20). I've had to spend the better part of my life concealing the dismal fact that my mother was Swedish, God rest her otherwise good soul. Instead, I've always told people I was Italian, despite my suspiciously Scandinavian looks.

Imagine, going through life calling yourself a lowlife dago rather than owning up to the awful truth. In any event, the story had just the right measure of self-deprecation to lend it credibility. "Yeah, they call me the Golden Guinea," I'd say to chuckles, whereupon the topic mercifully would be dropped. Taki has said for me what I lacked the courage to say for myself. God bless him.

John T. Morzenti, Devon, PA

 

Brothers and Sisters Under the Skin

Carol Iannone's article "Getting Beyond Race" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 6/20) reminded me of what happened at my high school, University High in Tucson, in the mid-80s.

Forced by a lawsuit to lower admissions standards to allow more "minorities" to get in (ignoring the large "non-minority" population of Jews and Asians already attending), freshman class size nearly doubled. Unfortunately, academic standards remained the same, with the result that nearly half the class was unable to graduate from University High four years later. What a great boost for those "minorities" to be allowed to flunk out of our high school.

If the elite colleges are forced down the same path, they will face the same choice between flunking out huge numbers of students or lowering standards for everyone. Lowering standards for our best and brightest would cost us greatly down the road.

The simple solution to the whole affirmative action mess is for everyone to claim "minority" status. There is no scientific basis for race, so they can't prove you aren't, say, African-American. Since all of our ancestors started out in Africa, you won't even be lying. Then maybe we can develop national preference standards taking economic levels, parents' educational background and other factors into account.

Carol Turichick, Long Island City

 

White-Collar Livin'

MUGGER: I am amazed whenever I check in here to read your column and find you are on vacation again. I know you've written before that your daddy was a blue-collar hero, but you sure ain't. I guess the sickening upshot of it all is that your column has all the insipid name-dropping details of how you and your brood misspent your time off. Freaking dilettante, Soho living, name-dropping, too many vacation-taking disappointment.

John Smith, via Internet

 

Agape at Slackjaw

I was thoroughly baffled by the incoherent mishmash of half-theories strung together in Jim Knipfel's recent article, "The UN-WHO-AIDS Connection"("New York City," 6/20). If you're going to subject us to yet another (yawn) half-baked theory about HIV being spawned by evil scientists (or the CIA, or aliens, or God or whatever), please at least pick one and follow it through to some sort of coherence, preferably with a bit of research. The following is an attempt to sort out the various garbled threads contained within this piece:

1. No one anywhere in the world is recommending a mandatory HIV vaccine. Where the heck did this wacko concern come from?!? Mr. Kincaid is jousting with windmills.

2. Hep B vaccinations are actually a good idea for children, at least in most professionals' opinions. Getting vaccinated as a child prevents you from ever contracting Hep B, and that's a good thing. Nevertheless, parents like Mr. Kincaid may of course choose not to have their child vaccinated, as Mr. Kincaid did. Another red herring.

3. Mr. Kincaid's assertion that UN peacekeepers should be tested for HIV before being sent out into the field hardly qualifies as an earth-shattering conspiracy theory. And it seems highly unlikely that the use of UN peacekeepers has had a truly significant effect on the spread of HIV worldwide. Where would this have taken place? In the Caribbean and South America, where HIV is rampant? In India? While there have certainly been peacekeeping missions in sub-Saharan Africa, the virus has been present there for so long that it's hard to blame UN peacekeepers. A much more significant concern is the huge sex industry in sub-Saharan Africa, which is frequented by migrant laborers and truckers, who bring HIV to their respective home towns.

4. During the Clinton administration, U.S. spending on development-oriented UN activities (like UNDP and WHO) actually dropped significantly. That is, unless you include Ted Turner as "the U.S." The only funding increase was for peacekeeping, and it is a bit disingenuous to claim that the Clinton administration radically enhanced the UN's influence and scope.

5. A minuscule amount of actual research would enable any journalist to find actual living HIV-vaccine trial participants. I recall that a recent New York Times article personally interviewed a half-dozen of them, complete with photographs. It's unfortunate that Messrs. Knipfel and Kincaid were too lazy to do likewise. By the way, the current HIV-vaccine trials do not use live or attenuated virus, and thus do not pose the risk of giving recipients HIV. The only serious risk to participants is that?if the vaccine is effective?they may get false positives on HIV tests in the future, since the antibodies will be armed and ready to attack.

6. The recent polio vaccine theory has been exposed as a crackpot fantasy by four different studies. So please, do us all a favor and do some research before spreading some half-assed right-wing nutbag's kooky theories about HIV as if they were gospel. There's enough misinformation in the air without "journalists" trying to create a stir for no apparent reason other than to make themselves seem interesting. What this country's teenagers need right now is AIDS education, not harebrained miseducation that distracts from the current reality.

Sean Harvey, via Internet

 

Oh, for Cryin' Out Loud...

I am writing this letter about the article in a recent issue of New York Press, "The UN-WHO-AIDS Connection" ("New York City," 6/20). Several things you wrote were right on target but the overall article was not in the least.

AIDS may in fact be a government-sponsored polio vaccine injected in gay men. The whole truth of the matter is that not only did the U.S. government produce that vaccine, but it actually was injected into the gay community in the United States and then transported to Africa, where millions of Africans were injected and came down with this so-called AIDS. To add insult to injury, they then developed a pill called AZT that, instead of curing the disease, prolonged the illness. All this is being done to rid the world of what the government calls unwanted populations.

It was and is being done in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South and Central America. Their latest target is the so-called gay black male in America. This is indeed a big joke because there are very few openly gay black men either in Africa or in the United States. This is a clear case of mass murder via medical means. And in the long run it will backfire on those white people and their relatives.

In all of the hospitals clear across America many of the doctors are of foreign stock; they cannot even speak or understand English, yet they are placed in hospitals and jails where they are deliberately giving wrong treatment to unprotected people. All of this is by design of the government of this country.

You bring in foreigners and give them important jobs over blacks here who are more than qualified, you set them up with businesses in black neighborhoods. And your cops shoot us at will and your judges pack the prisons with black youth and men and women. Yet the United States points its finger at other countries about their lack of human rights, thinking that these countries are blind to what they are doing to black people here in this country and all over the world. The New York Times sets aside large sections of their paper for news stories and editorial pages solely for downgrading black America. There are times when they will devote a long series solely to the subject of African-Americans, and it's always negative.

Their latest slander of the African-American is this false news about AIDS among black gay men. Not only are these false numbers, but the few cases of AIDS among blacks were transmitted from their white partners. Even New York Press is playing into this lie by printing a front-page illustration about gay rights and sticking a black man right out in front.

The rest of the world is not buying into this madness in America. And because of what is happening in America to the African-Americans at the hand of white America, the hatred for Americans by the rest of the world is staggering. Sooner rather than later their wrath will come on the smug white Americans. The enemy is within America. All of these foreigners you brought here to replace us, they will turn on you, especially these people from nonwhite countries. The African-Americans will not have to riot anymore, because the uprising will come from other races brought to this country for cheap labor.

Name Withheld, Manhattan

 

Fog

The recent National Academy of Sciences' Climate Change report, from which Alexander Cockburn carefully extracts a quote ("The Mail," 6/27), begins with this sentence: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." Uh, Professor Cockburn, do the IPCC AND the NAS "fudge numbers and probabilities to a scandalous degree"? I eagerly await your next provocative essay on the subject.

John Cantilli, Cranford NJ

 

Alexander Cockburn replies: Last week I quoted a categorical statement from the NAS report to the effect that the relationship between climate change and anthropogenic greenhouses gases was emphatically non-proven and here's Cantilli quoting from the same report to exactly the oppposite effect. Cantilli doesn't draw the obvious inference, which is that these reports, whether from IPCC or NAS, are written by committees, driven by political as well as scientific considerations and, as in this case, often self-contradictory. So yes, they do fudge numbers and probabilities to a scandalous degree. In which case the best thing to do is to take the course I've tried to adopt, and carefully scrutinize the scientific premises of the whole issue with the help of a disinterested party.

 

Enough with the Global Warming

Regarding Alexander Cockburn's article on global warming, let us look at the record. Is global warming a figment of the imagination? Or will the planet indeed warm between 5 to l0 degrees centigrade by the end of the century, as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has suggested?

Prof. Wallace Broecker of Columbia observes that a member of the UN Committee is "off his rocker." There will be no temperature increment of 10 degrees, or even 5 degrees. But, nonetheless, global warming really is occurring.

Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT recently published a paper demonstrating there is a huge tropical "thermostat" that regulates planetary warming. This reduces the likely warming to about 1.4 degrees C at most. Strangely, the United Nations report neglects to mention the Lindzen paper.

Practically all our climate models predict that once warming starts, it takes place at a constant rate?not an exponential one. Thus, the warming of recent decades should be the one we will continue to observe in the future. This works out to about 1.4 degrees C for the next century.

Cockburn has continuously attempted to give the impression that global warming is a total fraud. It isn't, but it has been drastically exaggerated by hysteria-mongers.

Clifton Wellman, Manhattan

 

Alexander Cockburn replies: One more time, I think the world is on a warming trend. What I don't believe is the view that this warming is caused by greenhouse gases generated by humans. And yes, the whole topic is saturated by silly exaggerations.

 

Real Heroes

Taki: I agree completely with your comments on the Joseph Ellis case ("Top Drawer," 6/27), up to the point where you decline to "throw the book" at him. I would throw the book, the bookcase and the entire New York Public Library. I don't know if you are aware of the extent of this "Larry Lawrence" epidemic in America. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ersatz "war heroes" who never got past basic training, or never even served at all.

I moved to a small town (500 people) in central Alaska about 10 years ago, and the local drunk/psycho was claiming to have "flashbacks" from his very difficult Vietnam service, where he (as a Special Forces Recon Team leader) made night raids into North Vietnam and assassinated many Communist leaders. This was his excuse for wife-beating, child-beating, drunkenness and a variety of other social problems. As I myself am a Special Forces veteran, it took me only a few phone calls to determine that not only had this moron never served in Special Forces, he had never been outside of the continental United States. He had, however, spent a fair amount of time drinking in Fayetteville, NC, bars with real Special Forces soldiers, and he had his "war stories" down well enough that the Veteran's Administration was (and still is, so far as I know) "treating" him for his imaginary "post-traumatic stress disorder."

I have seen these fakers show up at meetings of the Special Forces Association, with their "classified" pasts and phony decorations, and attempt to join. Anyway, thank you for the column?I just wish that more people were outraged about the "Larry Lawrences" of this world. I know I am?not for myself, particularly, but for the men whose names are on that black wall in Washington.

On another note, just read Andrey Slivka's heartfelt lament that we are sending Black Hawk helicopters and about three dozen Army Rangers to Morocco to assist in the making of Black Hawk Down ("Daily Billboard, 6/25"). I am not entirely sure that this is the best use of defense money, but I am quite sure that it is not the worst. Hell, we waste more money than this putting on dog-and-pony shows for visiting Pakistani colonels. At least this movie (if it is done well) will tell a story that the American people would be well advised to think about?an ill-advised deployment, a tangled chain of command, tremendously counterproductive political influences and, finally, the deaths of a lot of people who didn't have to die.

As a former member of the Rangers (Second Battalion, 75th Infantry), I am touched by Mr. Slivka's expressed concern for the lives of American soldiers who are in Morocco to help make this movie. I just do not recall any particular concern on his part when our pilots, Delta operators and Rangers were really dying in 1993. Better late than never, I guess.

Jack Gold, Anchorage, AK

 

Andrey Slivka replies: What an amazing coincidence. I don't recall any particular concern on Jack Gold of Anchorage, AK's part back in 1993, either.

 

Uncle!

As always, Taki has written a pungent column about somebody who deserves it. Prof. Joseph Ellis represents his profession only too well in his duplicity and cowardice. Yet even Taki can be taken by some of the Hollywood propaganda. The saga of dangerous convoys to Murmansk has long been accepted as proof of Allied courage and perseverance. Yet the truth is much more startling and edifying.

As of Jan. 1, 1945, the United States had supplied Russia with more than four times as many planes as we had given Gen. MacArthur in the Pacific, and Russia had not volunteered to give us one base with which to attack Japan and save American lives. The great supply route to the Soviet Union was the North Pacific from the American West Coast to Vladivostok. The supply ships were reflagged American freighters. The Germans protested mightily to the Japanese that this resupply effort was hurting the German war effort on their eastern front, but the Japanese blithely replied that the tonnage was much smaller than what the Germans claimed and was not war materiel. Japan was simply observing its neutrality pact with Russia.

Col. Saburo Hayashi, writing for the Japanese public in 1951, outlined the course of the war for Japan. As a former military attache in Moscow and chief of the Russian section of the Imperial General Headquarters, Hayashi understood his neighbor. In June 1944 he assumed charge of the Organization and Mobilization Section when the war became very critical for Japan. In April 1945 he became military secretary to the minister of War, Gen. Anami, who later committed seppuku after Japan's surrender. Hayashi's vantage point was at the highest level. He wrote of aid from America to the Soviet Union growing quickly in 1943 and estimated that more than 200 planes per month crossed the Bering Strait from America to the Soviet Union. Hayashi thought that about 500,000 tons a month of machinery and fuel were unloaded in the harbor of Vladivostok from America every month.

In the summer of 1939 the Red Army had skirmished with the Japanese Manchurian Army in increasingly bitter confrontations. On Aug. 20, 1939, the forces of the Red Army commanded by Marshal Zhukov jumped off, and by Aug. 31 the Japanese had been driven completely across the Mongolian border by classic double envelopment. The Japanese army had been routed and had lost most of its men. Col. Hayashi wrote of the Japanese army's desire to witness the fighting ability of the Red Army. They found the Red Army to have artillery and armor in firepower and mechanized equipment far superior to their own. The Reds had lost the inflexibility characteristic of the Czar's forces. The Japanese were "exceedingly" surprised by Soviet ability to transport and store war materiel at a battlefront some 600 kilometers from a railroad terminal. In the fighting, some 11,124 Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded. "Seeing was believing," and the Japanese never did forget.

The psychological victory was perhaps the most important as even when Hitler's Wehrmacht had the Soviets at their most desperate, the Japanese were not tempted to intervene. They remembered their easy victories over the British at Singapore and Americans at Corregidor when the Japanese prevailed despite being outnumbered two to one. Former Gestapo attache to the German embassy in Tokyo, Joseph Albert Meisinger, accused Yosuke Matsuoka, the foreign minister of Japan in the fateful year of 1941, of informing Stalin of the German plans for attacking Russia. This was the culminating factor for the agreement by the Soviets for the Japanese-Russian neutrality pact, which was scrupulously observed by the Russians for more than five years, for their benefit, as it protected their eastern flank, but certainly not for their alleged ally, the United States, which could have used Soviet territory for bombing bases or shipping ports. One might ask if the Chinese would have appreciated a quicker end to the war in their part of the world. Almost incredible to believe was the other assertion by Meisinger that until Pearl Harbor the German embassy was not sure if the Japanese would fight on the side of the Axis or the Allies.

Richard Earley, Springfield, PA

 

If Drafted, I Will Run

Just who is in charge of America today? This is a most distressing question, since the answer keeps flashing: NO ONE! George W. Bush is five months into his mangled, mismanaged administration and its purpose and direction have yet to materialize. Somebody has to gather the courage to ask: Just what is this butt-naked president trying to do?

None of his supporters can say, with any degree of honesty, that a single one of his initial decisions and policies holds the slightest positive value for the American people. His most significant victory, a massive tax cut, holds nothing but the gravest fiscal consequences as the baby boomer generation begins to retire. So, why are we celebrating and sanctioning this absolutely insane tax scheme? The President relentlessly justified this tax cut bill by saying it's the people's money. He fails to understand the people do not send their taxes to Washington to engage in big-buck, political pingpong. Most citizens are painfully aware of our nation's deficiencies, from rotting schools, bridges and roads to weakening healthcare, education and retirement funds. Most Americans must wonder how the President can support a tax-rebate boondoggle while at the same time stating there is no money to finance necessary public projects. The ringing disconnection is worrisome.

Just who is in charge of America today? Energy lackey George Bush has done nothing to deal with the biggest cash rape of the American people since the S&L ripoff. Only a handful of criminals, such as Chuck Keating in California, and a few speculators in Texas, actually went to jail for robbing depositors and taxpayers of about half a trillion dollars over a 30-year cleanup period. So far, no one in a position to do anything about it has mustered the moxie to slap a criminal conspiracy charge on the energy price-gougers running rampant in America today. Instead, the President went to California and waved a big "Olé!" at the problem. He appears completely oblivious to the severity and blatant criminality of the situation. To a certain degree, one would expect his energy donors to engage in some price improprieties in order to recoup their campaign expenses. Without proper campaign finance reform, Americans have grown accustomed to these kinds of semi-illicit operations. Nevertheless, you would think the thieves would temper their recoupment activities in order not to trigger a federal investigation. No such fears are in evidence, as their ace, George W. Bush, rides high in his Washington saddle. In fact, it appears that the energy outlaws are expanding their scam around the world, loudly touting an energy crisis where none exists.

Just who is in charge of America today? Virtually every decision by the Bush administration has been either to roll back or reverse recent legislation to protect the environment and our citizens. Mr. Bush has promised to veto the Patients' Bill of Rights, if it doesn't come across his desk badly attenuated and corporate friendly. The President has done nothing to address our failed voting system, exposed in the last election, although he is our executive in large part because of its glaring unfairness. George Bush supports the building of Star Wars, which has yet to be proven feasible; for an enemy that does not exist; at a cost we cannot afford, in the context of so many more pressing priorities. George Bush has disregarded the advice of our allies; unnecessarily threatened China; yanked us out of the important Kyoto protocol; encouraged the revival of smokestack energy production and the nuclear power industry, while denouncing the vibrant green revolution. He has done all of this and more without once explaining to the American people and the planet why any of these actions is in the best interest of anyone.

Just who is in charge of America today? The defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords from the Republican Party has thrown a rather large wrench into the runaway Bush Retro-revolution. With the Democrats in control of the Senate, it will be more difficult for the Bushmen to ram through their poorly articulated and destructive legislation. The American electorate will remember George Bush's flagrant disregard for their suffering at the hands of the energy Vandals. It'll be difficult for Republican congressmen and -women to duck responsibility for their failure to address the criminal confabulation of a nonexistent energy crisis. California scalps will be flying. President Bush and his party seem to be unconcerned as the storm clouds gather. The political backlash at the polls next year may be the greatest ever recorded in political history. No amount of campaign finance finagling will save them.

Just who is in charge of America today? The ugly, vicious political environment in America over the last half century has completely depleted this nation of responsible and intellectually stimulating leadership. From the butchery of the Kennedys, Dr. King and Malcolm X; the savagery of the Nixon/Vietnam years; the insecurity of the Carter years; the silly extravagance of the Reagan years; the "Read My Lips" illiteracy of the Big Bush years; the political violence of the Clinton/Gingrich years to the present utter ignorance of the Baby Bush years, Americans have suffered mightily. No amount of manufactured prosperity will fill the emptiness in our hearts and souls. The lack of a stable, beneficial vision for our people and humanity daily grinds our hopes to dust. The last president to ask the American people to fully participate in the creation of the American Dream was Jack Kennedy. That was 50 years and more than two generations ago. The lack of leadership in politics, industry, even religion, is overwhelming us and the signs of our inner destruction are everywhere.

Just who is in charge of America today? We refuse to transition our nation out of the war, death and destruction businesses into life-enhancing businesses. We refuse to give up the irrational, immoral and racist death penalty. We refuse to educate the poor and prefer to lock them up. We refuse to admit to our massive dependencies on both legal and illegal drugs. We refuse to establish a national healthcare system even though we can afford it. We refuse to acknowledge that the mindless rebellion of our children is a direct indictment of parental absence in their lives. We refuse to accept that the last presidential election was a coup d'etat, despite the mounting evidence. We refuse to concede to the incontrovertible fact that continued pollution of our air, water and food is directly related to out-of-control illness, cancer and health costs.

Just who is in charge of America today? The picture could not be more clear. Electing leaders who haven't a clue or who mask the reality of our obvious suffering is not in the best interest of our nation. Leaders who claim to be uniters, but act as dividers, must be voted out of office. More important, the best and brightest of our people should be encouraged to participate in restoring and directing our great experiment in democratic principle. In short, Americans must rise maturely to the task of an insistent future. We possess every conceivable resource with which to succeed. All we need is to set our hand to the wheel. Currently, America is careening insanely through the perilous valleys of self-doubt and disillusionment. We can set our ship of state right to the wind and confidently sail to a bright and rewarding future. This will occur only if we step forward and show ourselves the way. Just who is in charge of America today? Ultimately, we know we all must be.

Franklin L. Johnson, Manhattan