Letters

Bush allows dangerous mercury emission levels

Personal health issues such as weight loss are a growing concern. Whether it's Dr. Atkins or the South Beach Diet, many diet programs recommend fish as a good source of protein. However, the consumer is unaware that this formerly healthy dish is too often seasoned with a very unhealthy dose of poisonous mercury.

That's because the Bush administration allows coal-fired power plants in Nevada and around the country to emit mercury into the environment. Power plants in Nevada alone emitted more than 500 pounds of mercury in 2001, contaminating many of the state's waterways.

A recent EPA analysis indicates that one in six women of childbearing age has a level of mercury in her blood that is unsafe for a developing fetus. This yields 630,000 children born each year with a heightened risk of developmental problems.

The Bush administration has proposed allowing seven times more mercury into the air every year for the next decade. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., should stand up to the Bush administration and fight to get this toxic chemical out of our food and environment.

--Heather Liberman,

Nevada campaign coordinator,

U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Reality TV deadens our senses to abuse

I appreciate Randall Shelden's analysis, "Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: Business as Usual?" in the May 20 issue. When I first saw the photos of the abuses, torture and humiliation in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, I thought of three things: the television show "Jackass," Philip Zimbardo's experiment with the "prisoners and guards" and Stanley Milgram's experiment on obedience.

My only exposure to "Jackass" was clips attached to a program I was watching that showed something about some young men striking each other on the genitals with large plastic bats and a young man jumping into a pool of something disgusting, perhaps feces, I don't know. What I do know is that the older teenagers I used to work with thought "Jackass" was quite simply the funniest show they'd ever seen. Of course, in the case of this television program, the people on it are willing to humiliate themselves with the behaviors they exhibit. I realize this; however, the millions of people who tune in to watch the show do so to watch this humiliation, and they find it both entertaining and funny without any sense of the loss of the deep sacred core of humanity that these acts depict. In "Reality TV Goes to War," Anthony Sacramone acknowledges that what we have seen from Iraq could simply be another form of entertainment in the reality vein. He says that "our culture...serves up degradation as a form of daily entertainment...which can only skew the mental grid (that) our twentysomething soldiers work from, thereby stunting their moral options." So when I first saw the photos, I knew that many people would, in fact, find them funny, not only because they are Iraqis, and as such the enemies of the United States, who are humiliated, but just because they find this kind of "entertainment" funny.

As for the experiment Philip Zimbardo conducted in 1971, the reality of the guard vs. prisoner mentality is true in Iraq and in the United States. Much has been made about how the prisoners in Iraq were forced to wear hoods. In prisons in the United States today when prisoners are moved from one place to another, hoods are often used. Part of the reason is that spitting is one form of resistance a prisoner can use against guards. In defense of the guards, I understand that HIV as well as hepatitis infection are real concerns. But an imbalance of power can create abusive situations, both for guards and for prisoners.

In the case of the Milgram experiment, subjects were asked to administer electric shocks to "learners" who responded with incorrect answers. Many of the "teachers" continued to give shocks even after the "learners" would have been dead from the amount of electricity given to them. This experiment documents people's ability to be compliant to authority. Many of us in the United States believe that being individuals who makes all of our own decisions is of paramount importance. In a military situation, even with "An Army of One," following orders, following the demands of the hierarchy, is crucial. While we believe, especially since Nuremberg and My Lai, that a soldier will follow his or her conscience, we must remember that the chain of command, as well as an environment that either directly or tacitly condones behaviors, continues to have a strong grasp on personal behavior. I believe the behavior in Abu Graib prison, and the prisons in the rest of Iraq, in Afghanistan and in the United States, support this belief.

Many of us sitting in our living rooms find it hard to believe people can succumb to distorted uses of power, and yet, I think we all have that capacity. When I taught about the Holocaust either as an event in history or with Elie Weisel's autobiography Night in English, the students would always say they would not have behaved as the Nazis did. This is simply not true. Whatever we are exposed to is what is normal for us. Today, it is considered normal to find the antics of "Jackass" acceptable for a certain segment of our population.

--Stevi Carroll