Letters.

Keeping The Peace

I read with interest and approval Jonathan Rowe's article entitled "Reach Out And Annoy Someone" (November 2000) via Guardian Unlimited's weblog. Cell phones--or mobiles as they are known in the UK--are an equally large problem here.

I have to admit to owning a mobile for security reasons, as I often travel late at night, but I leave it switched off. I have vowed never to become one of those sad individuals who measures his or her self-worth by the number of calls received during a train journey.

The "quiet coach" idea has been put into practice on some trains here in response to consumer demand. I commute to London on Virgin trains, which feature one quiet coach, where mobiles, and sometimes personal stereos, are banned. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. Usually businessmen bring their phones in and lay them on the table, oblivious to the numerous "quiet coach" signs and dirty looks from the anti-mobile brigade. It is usually dependent on the determination and boldness of this group to ensure that anyone whose phone is rung is swiftly asked to leave, with varying degrees of politeness.

I have sat in a quiet coach filled with trilling mobiles, or, as happened last night, a silent carriage. This was prompted by one brave soul who shouted at some boorish businessman yapping into his mobile, which had the superb effect of putting the fear of God into all potential mobile users. When I am forced to get on a train without a quiet coach, my only satisfaction is watching people get disconnected from their caller as the train passes into a tunnel.

JANE PERRONE United Kingdom

Lest We Forget 

Re: "The Ghost of Tom Joad," November 2000. I would like to thank the author for a very insightful analysis into what is happening with attitudes today toward the poor and less fortunate. Memories of poverty also fade with success. How few of us admit to the role of luck because we sound so much superior by saying it was the result of hard work and greater talent! The article was excellent. It will be my Christmas mailer.

JOHN BALOG Goose Creek, S.C.

Re: "The Ghost of Tom Joad," November 2000. I am raising a young child, and he knows about recycling and helping others. He knows why he should give away a Pokemon card every now and then when trading with our neighbors who don't have as much as him. He knows what Goodwill sells and why the Salvation Army exists. Sadly, lots of kids don't--and their parents seem to pretend they don't either. Maybe we live in a society that has turned toward "ME" instead of community.

Look at money for example: The more you have, the more you want, the less you give others. This was cited in the article with the state of Massachusetts versus the state of Mississippi. Here, we are gearing up for a Hunger Awareness Banquet, where your number will decide your financial status at the door. One high-school student even slept in a box on the side of the road to raise donations of food, etc. I don't think these activities truly impress upon people what it's really like to be in poverty. Of course moral judgments cloud the picture too.

Keep up the good work! The article was great and I'm forwarding it to friends!

JENNIFER GRENTZER, BSW Paducah, Ky.

Enforcing The Court

"Contempt of Court" by Jonathan Tepperman in the November 2000 issue of The Washington Monthly is certainly an eloquent argument for the establishment of a strong international court of justice. However, a question which it does not seem to address is whether such a court can be made truly effective if there is no international code of law. Tepperman does seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Except for certain brief periods of history when one sovereign power dominated most of the known world, there has never been universal agreement on such a code of law. One such period was just after World War II, when the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union more or less ruled the world, and clearly defined, for example, what a war criminal was. In other words, unless some form of world government much stronger than our present United Nations is established, I cannot see that an international court of justice could be very effective.

GEORGE SEIFERT Ames, Iowa 

Get With The Programs

Your article "Finding The Civil Service's Hidden Sex Appeal" (November 2000) has a major flaw. The current government organization is obsolete. Jobs that ought to be done mechanically are done by hand. The few automated processes are hindered by islands of automation that cannot talk to each other. People must bridge these gaps by taking information from one process and entering it into another. The United States government ought to be well down the road to electronic government. This would allow people to conduct government business at their convenience, not the convenience of some bureaucrat. Implementation of electronic government would allow a civil service no more than half the size of the current establishment to provide a much higher level of service to the American people.

JACK HALEY Warner Robins, Ga.

The Political Bind

Your "West Wing" article ("Tilting At Windmills," November 2000) assumes that if people realize that there are a lot of "good" people in politics, they may not be so cynical or apathetic towards it. I don't think you see the real problem.

A politician can be "good," a decent person, and so on (for example, I think Ronald Reagan was) and still advocate things that are not good for our country. Also, good people often have the tendency to believe in the things that seem to bring them financial prosperity, power, and success. For example, notice how George Bush Sr. changed his position on a woman's right to choose in order to become Reagan's vice president. (Ronnie also changed when running for president instead of governor.)

The problem is the people that tell things as they are without partisanship--the people with ideas to make things better from the bottom up and the people who won't give up their idealism to take money from the powerful--get filtered out by the Democrats and the GOP the higher they seek to go. This is because they threaten the status quo and, therefore, the party machine. Those who do seem to rise above the party rhetoric are attacked by both sides of the aisle till they get with the program. Witness the change in Clinton from when he first came into office and now. In other words, the people that make it to the top don't command or deserve much admiration.

CARL GRANADOS Boca Raton, Fla.

Rights & Religions

Ben Soskis, in his review of Prof. Stephen L. Carter's latest book, God's Name In Vain, was far too gentle in his criticisms. Anyone like Prof. Carter who argues that he has a system of knowing other than by the customary modes of logic and evidence is making an absurd statement.

Since humankind began, it is estimated that those strange creatures known as homo sapiens have invented over 100,000 different religions. What reasonable grounds can Carter make that he has chosen the right one from all the others?

Carter postulates the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God if he accepts the standard Christian version. By what means did he arrive at this "truth"? Would he have come to the same conclusion if he had been born in a non-Christian culture?

Most of humanity has in its 10,000 years or so of civilization lived in non-Christian cultures. Can Carter even make a defensible case that Christian beliefs, true or not, have really meant a genuine improvement in the human condition?

The Christian religion as currently practiced in America has a very mixed history in terms of supporting evils such as slavery and segregation, suppression of labor's and women's rights, and neglecting to support many other parts of a social agenda that most intellectuals would label as necessary for the good society. Ben Soskis missed an opportunity.

ROBERT PRIMACK Gainesville, Fla.

Misplaced Blame

Contrary to the popular view in the media ("Tilting at Windmills," December 2000), Ariel Sharon did not provoke the riots that exploded into a mini-war with now nearly 300 deaths. His visit to the Temple Mount was prearranged with the knowledge of the Palestinian Authority leaders. Instead of what should have been a peaceful trip by Sharon to the holiest site in Judaism, Palestinian Arabs, with the full backing of Yasser Arafat, had stockpiled rocks and boulders on the Temple Mount to be used the next day to attack Israeli worshippers on the Sabbath at the Western Wall.

Israeli police attempted to protect Jewish worshippers, but to no avail, as Jews were driven from their Sabbath services by a hail of rocks. Casualties were sustained on both sides, but Arafat, seeking political gain, fed the fire of the riots with inflammatory statements that led to violence with the resultant terrible toll as his military raised the stakes by firing at Israeli police and civilians. Who instigated the riots? The answer is clear: Yasser Arafat, who was willing and anxious to sacrifice Palestinian lives for his own personal agenda.

NELSON MARANS Silver Spring, Md.