Public Comment

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; Lack of Free Speech at KPFA; Bob Burnett and "Real Men" 

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" The Chiefs of the Army, Air Force, and Marines -- old fogies all -- want to keep the "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy in spite of the Pentagon study showing negligible harm to U.S. military effectiveness if DADT is banned. Consider about 30 countries in the world, including nearly all of the NATO members, as well as South Africa, Brazil, and the Philippines that allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military. And on May 16, 2010, representatives from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel, and the Netherlands met at the Brookings Institute to discuss how the militaries in those countries handled allowing gays and lesbians to serve in their militaries. The consensus was that, in spite of concerns before the change, when gays and lesbians were allowed to serve, it was a non-issue. Are our troops so undisciplined, ill-trained, and fragile that combat effectiveness will be harmed if DADT is banned? Let's give our military personnel more credit than that. 

Ralph E. Stone 

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Lack of Free Speech at KPFA 

Frankly called it's hard to make much sense of your editorial on KPFA. It reads sort of like you think the main problem at KPFA is that some of the folks there are out of lockstep with the standard Democratic Party "progressive" PC line. I guess those would be the "paranoids" you refer to. It's okay in America for the government to charge you with conspiracy as they do all the time in criminal cases, but, God Forbid, that you would charge them with same ! 

I was particularly appalled to hear of the protests against Dr. Gary Null, who has long been a voice of sanity on the Pharma-Psychiatry Complex as well as nutrition in general. I'm no AIDS expert but I have read two massive dissenting tomes, one by Duesberg of UCB. If he's really just a crackpot then debate him and expose him but he has long been blacklisted by the PC Stalinists at KPFA as they have with many other subjects including what has come to be called since the late 60s, the holocaust, Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, Austrian Economics, Murray Rothbard's Anarcho-Capitalism, questioning the rationale for WW 1 and WW2, not just the safe and popular Vietnam critique and the list goes on and on. 

KPFA like so much of the American Left (and Right) has become predictable, boring, tired and stale. The old New Deal and Popular Front paradigms don't cut it anymore if they ever really did. The essence of stupidity is to keep doing the same things over and over again while hoping for a different result. 

Michael Hardesty 

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Bob Burnett and "Real Men" 

Columnist Bob Burnet,t writing in your 11/30 issue, urged President Obama not to "move to the right", as that would be a "wimp"y action not for "real men". Perhaps "real men", looking at the election's nationwide repudiation of the Obama regime's accumulation of debt, unemployment, big government, and loss of health insurance, might be able to open their eyes and minds to what would actually benefit the voters and taxpayers. 

David Altschul