LA burns? Barely
Re: "Rationing 'truth'", (PostBag, June 16).
I see Mr Setter has swallowed the Trump Kool-Aid again. He claims that "the... AFP says the five days of rioting in Los Angeles, which included looting, firebombing, attacks upon immigration officers, graffiti tagging and beatings, were "largely peaceful demonstrations".
The "riots" of which he speaks are contained within a single square mile block of the largely uninhabited downtown area, out of the 469 square miles LA city covers. One comedian even joked that "residents were told to stay in their tents", a reference to the homeless who live there.
As usual, Mr Trump has seen fit to declare in his usual nonsensical fashion that he is "stopping the whole of LA from burning" and illegally ordered the National Guard to wade in when local law enforcement were easily containing the demonstrations, violent or otherwise.
Of course, many may conclude this was a tactic by Mr Trump to hijack the news cycle and push out the many stories Elon Musk generated when he pointed out that Mr Trump is blocking the release of the Epstein files because of alleged references to him contained therein. Try harder, Mr Setter.
Tarquin Chufflebottom
America joins in
Re: "Trump flexes military might at US parade", (World, June 16).
I have seen numerous giant military parades on TV.
They have involved a number of components, including thousands of soldiers, weapons, bombs and flybys, but all were viewed by a dictator or supreme leader.
The most obvious examples are Russia, China, and North Korea. Now America joins the team, although the official reason is to celebrate the 250th anniversary of their military, and coincidentally, Donald Trump's birthday.
One of the few differences is that the first three have leaders who are basically lifelong occupants with absolute power, whereas Mr Trump only has three and a half years to go.
Dennis Fitzgerald
Time to move on
Re: "More serious, please", (PostBag, June 15).
PostBag contributor Jason A Jellison couldn't resist an irrelevant reply to my letter about his obsessions relating to Covid and mask wearing. Move on, Mr Jellison!
He is obviously smarting up by choosing to raise serious issues about the Thai economy and asking if they are funny.
Quite clearly, Mr Jellison, they are not; they are no laughing matter, and nor did I suggest that they were.
Mr Jellison has written amusing articles, which used to appear in PostBag, about amusing topics. As a teacher, I thought he might understand that patently obvious point.
However, Mr Jellison seems to be devoid of a normal sense of humour or reason recently.
As usual, he missed the point of my letter completely and responded with a letter in which he goes off at a tangent on a series of topics that require serious debate.
And PostBag is hardly the right forum for such serious and pressing discourse and discussion.
Writing to the government with some serious and helpful solutions might be a better course of action.
SOS
