Letters to the Editor, September 9, 2003

L.E. Miller

Editor: The above letter was a reply to the following letter the Editor of Aljazeerah.info sent to Mr. Miller.

Dear L E Miller,

Thanks for submitting your second article for publication at Aljazeerah.info. It'll be published in the tomorrow's issue (9/7). It's as informative and as analytic as the first one. Some readers asked about your full name and about publishing your email to interact with you. Of course, it's up to you to decide one way or the other.

Hi,

I'm from the Latin country of El Salvador which recently sent troops to "patrol" Iraq. I just want you to know that most Latin Americans support the Muslim cause, especially the Iraqi cause (even though our governments are slaves of the United States government). As a Catholic Christian I feel ashamed that my co-religionists have such a warped view of Islam, don't think that all Christians are anti-Muslim, there are LOTS of us who support the Muslim cause. This website might interest you, it's an American-based Latin American forum where you can see how many of us Latin Christians support the Muslim cause and are opposed to Zionist terrorism in Palestine (the forum is in Spanish-language).

http://infopop.univision.com/2/OpenTopic?a=frm&s=864094322&f=36659750641

Maikol Alexis

A great reporter detained in Spain.

Bombing the messenger amounts to news suppression .I remember that is what happened after Al Jazeera Qatari TV reporter Tayseer Alouni scooped the interview with Osama Bin Laden.

Murder and harassment of unbiased media personnel is "par for the course" of this war and that points to the reason Tayseer Alouni is being targeted again at this time .

It was reported that his work at this time is setting up a Spanish language Al Jazeera TV. Against whose interests is that ? Latin America receiving unbiased uncensored news.? Having freedom of expression.? From where did the pressure to detain Mr. Alouni come ?

Viva english aljazeera .net. Viva Aljazeerah.info.

Ken Weston

Editor: Viva smart people like you. We together will make a difference. Readers all over the world can help by exerting pressure over the Spanish government to release Tayseer Alouni, who works for Aljazeerah TV, which is not related to this publication, Aljazeerah.info.

Ariel Sharon, Man of Peace!

Ariel Sharon's destruction of the Palestinian apartment building is just the most recent example of the ham fisted brutality that is meted out with increasing regularity under the rubric of "defensive measures". "Defensive measures", like the War on terrorism, is a misleading euphemism that tacitly justifies any level of barbarity used against Moslems in general, and Palestinians in particular.
It's easy to wonder, however, how the 50 innocent Palestinians, whose homes and dreams are now a pile of smoldering rubble, feel about their contribution to the ongoing campaign against the "infrastructure of terrorism." Perhaps, they had the audacity to believe that they should be afforded some basic human rights, like safety from arbitrary state violence. Are we to assume that those privileges are reserved for those within the Green Line alone?
Most of us who have followed the situation over the years know the answer to that question.

We also understand the very transparent objectives of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon is a man for whom there is only one answer to every question, overwhelming force. He now shares center stage with his counterpart in Crawford, Texas, whose world view is a mirror image of his own. The recent bombings of civilian areas in the West Bank and Gaza indicate that Sharon now feels that he can act with even greater impunity then before.

It's always valuable to have friends in high places who will look away while you perform your crimes.

We are probably witnessing what Sharon anticipates will be the "Final Solution" to the Israeli conflict, a brutish campaign to assure that the hopes and aspirations of seven million Palestinians are ground into dust.

Mike Whitney, Snohomish Wa

Why Bush endangers America: It's like hiring Godzilla to protect the cancer ward

Everyone knows that America has more missiles, more bombs, more troops and more F-16s than Russia, China, Britain, Israel, Japan and Hollywood combined. America is armed to the teeth.

Yet George Bush and the Department of Defense have made all that hardware worthless and useless against our enemies by making America itself vulnerable. Bush's trade policy, invasion of Iraq, partisan politics, assault on the working class and failure to keep up our infrastructure have made America vulnerable from within. Our treasury is bankrupt, our once-great economy is shattered, our access to healthcare is a joke, our housing costs an arm and a leg and our grid could go at any moment.

Are America's vast armies keeping us safe? No no no. It's like hiring the biggest toughest bodyguard in the world -- to guard the cancer ward.

Best regards,

Jane Stillwater, Berkeley, CA

Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?

United States has "no apologies" for launching the invasion of Iraq without the full backing of the United Nations, and believes Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction and programs to develop weapons of mass destruction ... at the time we took the action that we took." “- Collin Powell

Is this finally an official admission by the US that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq now. US vehemently told the world there are WMD in Iraq and that only time will be on their side. But the above statement by Collin Powell could be the final answer to everyone who waited patiently (or impatiently) for any signs of WMD. Wait no longer, the answer is there – NO WMD.

At the time the US took the action that they took, US sophisticated intelligence networks would have given them facts. But alas! the Bush administration went to war, killing over 7,000 innocent Iraqis, because they BELIEVED Iraq has WMD. You don’t hang a man because you BELIEVED he was a murderer. Then what are lawyers there for?

I believe the US citizens should vote Bush out of the Office. And they should have “no apologies” for doing that.

Fauzi Shahab

I enjoyed your article "American English: The biggest casualty in the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq" a great deal. However, I found it ironic, given the subject, that in some cases the english used was stilted or even incorrect. I would like to point out these and make some positive suggestions regarding alternative language. It is not my intention to be negative or contentious, and I hope this friendly critique can be accepted in that light.

> This is why press > conferences and press secretaries exist. One voice must convey the > interested of the party that backs it.

The word you wanted to use here is "interests", the plural of the noun form of "interest". "Interested" is the past tense of the verb form of "interest", eg: "Many clients were interested in his new wares." "The interests of a nation capture newspaper headlines."

> endeavors. Take a moment to think about what would entail if all of a > sudden, we could not longer communicate due to a meaningless language.

The term "entail" usually refers to consequences or requirements of an item or event which are observed after that item or event has come to pass. To refer to a hypothetical future event, "think about the consequences" or "what would happen" would be more appropriate.

"A meaningless language" is a little awkward, but I do not have a good alternative to offer. I am sorry.

> The word "terrorist" is now defined as > any person who is objective of the United States. An "anti-Semite" is > defined as anyone who is objective of the Jewish or Israeli community.

If english were logical, your use of the term "objective" would make good sense. Unfortunately, "objective" has two idiomatic meanings which mean something completely different ("objective" as a noun means goal or achievement, and "objective" as an adjective refers to having an impartial and logical attitude). These idiomatic meanings occlude the literal meaning you have attempted to use here. "Are critical of" would have been a better term than "is objective of", or perhaps "objects to" instead of "objective of".

This will be my only comment on style: "sometimes change too" uses two semantic emphases, "sometimes" and "too", which taken alone can be used to focus the readers' attentions. Used together in the same sentence, they cancel each other out and become awkward. Much better would have been "The meaning can sometimes change based on repetition", or "The meaning can change, too, based on repetition". I am sorry if this comes across as presumptive; I recognize that writing style is a personal affair (especially among journalists), and I respect your need to develop your style as you see fit.

Again, I enjoyed your article. Thank you for writing it. I hope I do not convey the impression that my only response was an obsessive nattering on your grammatical form; while some aspects of your message have been long-time debate material among my peers, others are quite novel. How *are* CNN, Fox News, and "mainstream media" perceived outside of the United States? I know that within our own country, liberals tend to see CNN as overly conservative, while conservatives call it "Clinton's News Network" (implying a liberal bias). Fox News is either "fair and balanced" or a rediculous mash of right-wing propaganda, depending on who you ask, and the "mainstream media" might be the staple of a citizen's intellectual diet, or a hopeless dinosaur ridden with over-formulaic hype, or the very instruments of the masonic illuminati overlords, again depending on who you ask. But what of outside America? I read several foreign news sources, including RFE/RL, Xinhua, and the Hindustan Times, but the only articles I have read which even touched on this topic have been from the UK (which appears very much like contemporary American treatment). Can you expound on this?