Regarding “50 Best Meals Under 10 Bucks," I hate to be picky, but why no restaurants in Dorchester or East Boston or any of the “burgeoning” neighborhoods folks seem to be talking about? I live in Dot and can name at least five places where you can get a good meal under $10 (the Twelve Bens, Donovan’s, Shanti, Pho 2000, and the ribs truck with the name that is escaping me). Heck, you even went out to Arlington for the number-one offering! I guess that neighborhood must be safe enough to venture into. Is this list meant only for tourists?
Shannon Altimari
Dorchester
Tug of war
Your editorial on Hezbollah (“The Face of War”) is vintage “war on terror” rhetoric. The editorial offers a laughably one-sided recent history of the conflict — really more fable than history — that leaves out the little matter of American-Israeli withdrawal from diplomatic brokering of regional conflicts in favor of unilateralism. When you simply refuse to deal with legitimate regional actors that are not to your liking, while maintaining bloody and bitterly resented military occupations, as the US and Israel have done over the last several years, you contribute mightily to the polarization upon which a vanguard organization like Hezbollah feeds. No amount of breathless fulminating about “forces of darkness” or “Islamofascists” from either you or Donald Rumsfeld is going to change the reality that there is a regional political conflict at the heart of this deteriorating situation, not a moral or civilization one. Until the US can return to engaging that as a credible intermediary, I fear we’re going to be left over here on the margins with our empty bluster.
Patrick Young
Jamaica Plain
What an editorial! Lucid, informative, and with none of the equivocation (i.e., “they run soup kitchens too”) I expected. With other news organizations — the New York Times, Reuters, AP, and Agence France-Presse — doing everything but running guns for Hezbollah, it was incredibly refreshing to read, in the Phoenix, of all places, a dead-on, cold, hard objective assessment of the situation. So what’s up? Did you guys, like, run out of drugs and have to write straight for deadline or something? Ha! Just kidding. This is not a backhanded compliment. Great work!
Johnny Simpson
Nashua, NH
Crimmins’s cred
I am aware that as a political commentator, Barry Crimmins is granted a certain latitude to twist the facts. But when he completely disregards facts to take up the line of terrorists who would certainly censor him or worse, if given the chance, it’s time to call him on it. In “What Smell?” Crimmins refers to the attack on and “kidnapping” (his quotes) of Israeli soldiers in Northern Israel as taking place in a war zone. While it is true that Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorists consider Israel a war zone, since they don’t believe it has a right to exist, most of the civilized world does not see it that way. The Phoenix has done an excellent job the last few weeks reminding readers why the current Mideast fighting is occurring (a terrorist attack on a sovereign nation, no different than 9/11, except for the size of the tragedy). If Crimmins wants to maintain his credibility to make his often valid criticisms of Bush and the right wing, he will be better served by not taking on the mantle of Islamic terrorists.
Robert Schaeffer
Brookline
