AlterNet Readers' 10 Best Comments of the Week

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted August 4, 2007.

As part of our ongoing efforts to give AlterNet readers a voice, we're introducing a new feature: your Comments of the Week.

This first collection was chosen by AlterNet's editors, but in the future, it'll be up to you to nominate the most insightful comments by your fellow readers every week. You can either send an e-mail to your friendly neighborhood AlterNet Community Moderator (moderator@alternet.org), or you can use the "report this comment" button featured on each reader's contributions. Yes, until now that's been for reporting bad behavior, but now you can use it to highlight your fellow readers' best contributions.

It's web 2.0, baby! And we've got a lot more of it in the pipeline.

And without further ado, here are this week's best comments …

On Monday, we ran a piece by Julie Johnson titled, "Californians Are Willing to Pay for Cleaner Air". Reader wonkywriter responded that "The solution is national":

Good for Californians for being the first to really see the need for drastic steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, buying a Prius or Civic hybrid is not the answer. People think Toyota and Honda are "green" companies. Have you noticed that both are offering larger and larger trucks to their customers? Why do you think this is, other than profits? It's because for every hybrid they sell, they can sell another gas-guzzling truck or SUV and still maintain their Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers. The only way to realize a net savings on carbon emissions is to cut back on our driving, flying, and home energy consumption. If we don't do it voluntarily, the government will have to apportion energy credits per capita (rationing). There's no other fair way.

Paul Harris' piece asking, "Is the US Heading for 'Developing Nations' Inequality Levels?"drew lots of passionate comments, including this anecdote by ALANHESTER:

Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to have to explain to people from Canada and Europe about the homeless people in the US? I met an immigrant who put the issue succinctly: "In the UK, there is debate on healthcare, public transportation, the war in Iraq, how to integrate Muslims into society, and other quality of life issues. In America, we dabate about abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research. In short, the British debate over issues that are important to the quality of their lives, while Americans rarely debate about ANYTHING that will improve the quality of life for the populace as a whole. Katrina is instructive on this issue. Most of the debate by Americans is centered on who to blame, rather than how to rebuild New Orleans or how to prevent a recurrence. Meanwhile, the refugees from Katrina sit in armed trailer camps on top of toxic dumps…………….

In response to Chalmers Johnson's article, "The True -- and Shocking -- History of the CIA", Hugh Scott, a former Air force pilot and Vietnam vet, wrote:

In the late 1950s, I served as an Air Force intelligence officer in Washington, DC. My job: collecting radar-targeting information for SAC bombers penetrating Russia at the outbreak of WWIII. The best data came from the CIA, before it moved to Virginia.

One Agency shop I visited contained all U.S. ground intelligence photography…. One day while searching for USSR data, I noticed a single filing cabinet labeled "USA." Mystified, wondering what kind of classified pictures the CIA had collected about America, I finger-walked through the drawers.

Several 5x7 cards showed a Soviet submarine surfaced near Catalina Island, photographed by an undoubtedly awestruck boater. Moments later, it was my turn to be astonished. Incredibly, I had stumbled across two B&W photographs of a UFO. Seriously.

I can still see the startling images in my brain now, 50 years later -- like stills from a Hollywood sci-fi flick. Stamped "Confidential NO FORN," both pictures were captioned "Unidentified flying object sighted over Kansas, circa 1952."

The photos showed a metallic disk hovering several hundred feet above a cornfield. From a telephone pole in the foreground of one pic, I estimated the saucer's diameter at 300 feet. It was flat on the bottom and had a curved upper surface with a small dome on top I figured was the cockpit.

Since this was before the advent of computer graphics and digital manipulations, I had no reason to believe the flying saucer pictures were fakes. Eventually, however, after months of off-duty UFO research, I decided the photos were indeed frauds. […]

Here's the point of my UFO story as it applies to Iraq and the excuses Bush used to start Gulf War 2. From my experiences working with CIA personnel I don't believe they would ever fabricate or distort critical intelligence data. That kind of dishonest behavior simply would not happen, no matter how much pressure came from the White House…

In sum, like all federal agencies, the CIA employs thousands of decent, patriotic Americans who are serving our country with honor. It‚s sad that they have been tarred by the reprehensible actions of a small minority of Agency loose cannons that don't understand what the U.S. Constitution is all about.

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