Letters, 11/29: The dangers of MySpace

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I read on Nov. 18 the article called “MySpace hoax ends with teen’s suicide.”

In the article I was extremely shocked by the behavior that was going on over the computer site MySpace. I personally do not have a MySpace page specifically for that reason.

This article is just one of the many horror stories I have heard about the site. Not only are there people — adults and children — making “false pages,” there are predators, and without truly knowing the person you don’t know who it might be.

Something I found extremely shocking was that the mother even allowed her 13-year-old daughter, Megan, to have a MySpace. Even if the mother is monitoring the activity, accidents still happen, which we saw when she left her daughter alone.

Although they say no charges can be pressed on the mother who made the false page, I believe that she should be punished for the way she acted. What kind of adult would do such a thing as tell a 13-year-old girl that life would be better without her?

I feel that MySpace is very unsafe and not monitored closely enough. I don’t think parents are informed enough about the site or that their children are even on the site.

Not only is it the parents’ fault, it’s the child’s as well. Children think that they can talk to anyone on the computer because they will never have to meet or see that person. That is not true.

Overall, I thought the article told a good story, getting the point across, as well as being informational. MySpace is no longer a social activity; it’s a dangerous activity, if one is not careful.

Ashley Lantz, Lincoln

Attacking Iran a bad idea

Regarding the recent letter from Mohammed H. Siddiq concerning U.S. foreign policy in Iran, I fully support his argument.

As a veteran of the U.S. Navy only recently returned to the civilian side, I find it amazing how eager the Bush administration has been to portray Iran as a possible military target.

With how stretched the U.S. military currently is, any attack on Iran would be pure folly. The Army and Marines have 168,000 boots on the ground in Iraq, leaving almost no ground personnel for an invasion of Iran. Thus the attack would be limited to air strikes carried out by the Air Force and Navy.

While the intelligence community may state that they know the location of Iranian nuclear sites, the supposed reason for an attack, we have learned from the Iraq disaster that the intelligence community can be wrong.

Finally, approval of the U.S. military action has fallen to all-time lows, 33 percent, according to yougov.com polls.

For the administration to begin another pre-emptive strike in the Middle East could crush any chance for the next president to rebuild relationships with the rest of the world.

Let us hope that someone level-headed will step up and put a stop to the idea of attacking Iran.

Joseph Hanseling, Lincoln

Some people shouldn’t vote

We received another profound statement from Wes Hager (letter, Nov. 24).

Here are his reasons to not vote for a Democratic candidate for president: “Hillary Clinton’s experience is that she sleeps with an ex-president on occasion and has her own private police.” We shouldn’t vote for Barack Obama because “Barack Obama lived in a foreign country as a child.” And we shouldn’t vote for John Edwards because he sued doctors for malpractice.

If this is the criteria that Hager or anyone else uses to choose a candidate, he shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Hager completes this by saying the other side — Republicans — offer safety and lower taxes.

After slaughtering a half million Iraqis, sending almost 4,000 American men and women to their deaths in Iraq and destroying every international alliance that has taken generations to build, how can anyone say we feel safe. This is the type of logic we come to expect from a Hager piece.

Jack Wood, Lincoln

Conservative propaganda

Looks like whoever laid out the opinion pages of the Journal Star on Nov. 26 needed to fill a hole and found a ridiculous piece of propaganda from the Heritage Foundation to be the right length.

Once more we get to hear how those founts of conservative wisdom like Rush Limbaugh are threatened by the “liberal” media.

On the contrary, if we had an inquiring media at all in this country, President Bush’s lies that started the U.S. occupation of Iraq would have been challenged. The media has overwhelmingly been a lapdog of the administration and the conservatives that seek a perpetual “War on Terror” (a meaningless phrase).

If you have any doubt that the media abdicated its role, look up as an example the coverage of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” aircraft carrier landing back on May 1, 2003. Among other fawning comments, you will find several mentions of how “presidential” Bush looks in his flight suit. Embarrassing.

The least the Journal Star could have done was to identify the Heritage Foundation as “an influential conservative think tank,” even though propaganda, not thinking, is their expertise.

Or perhaps this, from writer Russ Bellant, would be an even more accurate attribution: The Heritage Foundation is “a key element in the phalanx of rightist groups with an agenda of austerity for the poor, hostility to minorities and women, upward distribution of wealth for the rich, economic domination of the Third World, with repression and bloodletting for those who rebel.”

Thomas Hancock, Lincoln