Emails from the past.

I worked for an hour or so on a giant post to show off some the hundreds of emails I have sent to newspapers over the years -- my backstory, you might say. Then I realized doing that right would be a huge job. Here are a few that I picked out before I decided to skip the past.
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Editor,
"Exploration" has such a high falutin ring to it, it is easy to overlook that "exploration" of the Earth has annihilated civilizations, killed millions upon millions of people, extincted thousands of species, and just about destroyed this planet.

Here on Earth today psychopaths dominate our governments and run our most powerful businesses, so billions live in terror, poverty or worse, and our world becomes more of a sewer daily.

Maybe in another 4.5 million years humanity will have become emotionally and spiritually healthy enough to explore the heavens, but for now thank God we are trapped here on our lovely little island in the sky.
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Editor,
The problem with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is not his war plan. It is his authoritarian manner, his dictatorial style, and his refusal to listen to anyone but himself. These traits are common throughout the Bush administration. It is ironic that these people represent themselves as champions of democracy.
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Editor,
I'm getting tired of being told that "Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people" and that "Iraqi oil will benefit the Iraqi people." Since when do the Republicans believe in public ownership of anything, let alone sharing this or any other nation's wealth with its citizens?

Private oil companies will pay rent of some sort for access to Iraqi oil, and, if the way business is done in the United States is any measure, they will find a way to screw the public out of that rent, in addition to any taxes that are due.

Also, even if there do turn out to be WMD in Iraq, that doesn't prove that eradicating them was the New American Century's reason to invade. There are many ways to deal with WMD, and invasion only works if it suits the invader's plans.
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Editor,
George Bush having drunk his way through Yale, it is no surprise he understands nothing that might check his insolence.

The Magna Carta of 1215, for example: "No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land."

Or the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States: "No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . ."

That Americans are not storming Washington pitch-fork in hand to depose this trifling tyrant is a testament to the nearness at hand of the demise of the American democratic experiment. Do the Taliban and al Qaeda exemplify "medieval" social theory? Yes. Does the government of this . . . individual . . . George Bush?
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Editor,
I'm tired of reading that a government official spoke to you on condition his name not be used because he hadn't shined his shoes.

Would the NYT please start using the following: "Our informant refused to give us his name because he is afraid George Bush will fire him and chain him naked to the floor if he finds out Mr. X disagrees with him."
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Editor,
Parading the sadists George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld hired to do their torturing for them increases the urgency that Bush and Rumsfeld be chained naked to the floor.
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Editor,
If those damned Arabs stop making atom bombs to attack the U.S.A., maybe it will be safe to stop torturing them.

May I suggest defunding food stamps for lazy bums and using the money saved to build more torture facilities.
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Editor,
Here's an idea for you. When U.S. governments partner with dictators, autocrats, murderers, torturers, drug lords, and various other criminals to advance their interests, why don't the American press hold them to account.

This would go a long way toward bursting the bubble of complacency spun to obscure American complicity in -- and American perpetration of -- crimes against humanity.
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Editor,
Iraqi elections being such a grand success, freedom and the rule of law on everybody's lips, now is the time for the U.S.A. to stop torturing its captives.