Judge Richard A. Posner on Our Media (NY Times Books, 7/31/05)

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-r-cnbc.html

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/posner-r/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner

[Richard A. Posner (see links above) is a 'pragmatist' in his judicial dispositions and were we to have serious intellectuals appointed to the Supreme Court, would have been one high on the list rather than our current earnest managing editor of the Harvard Law Review who will most likely be a bit lost at being asked to decide the law of the land all on his own. Posner (I have heard in person once) is nobody's man. His diversion here into reflection on our media is thought provoking, if not definitive -- worth a read as most of his stuff is. Ed Kent}

........................................................................

By RICHARD A. POSNER

The conventional news media are embattled. Attacked by both
left and right in book after book, rocked by scandals,
challenged by upstart bloggers, they have become a focus of
controversy and concern. Their audience is in decline, their
credibility with the public in shreds.

The current tendency to political polarization in news
reporting is a consequence of changes not in underlying
political opinions but in costs, specifically the falling
costs of new entrants. Being profit-driven, the media respond
to the actual demands of their audience rather than to the
idealized "thirst for knowledge" demand posited by public
intellectuals and deans of journalism schools. The public's
interest in factual accuracy is less an interest in truth
than a delight in the unmasking of the opposition's errors.
The limited consumer interest in the truth is the key to
understanding why both left and right can plausibly denounce
the same media for being biased in favor of the other.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/books/review/31POSNER.html?8bu&emc=bu

--
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The Poor Die Younger in America

The Saint Petersburg Times | The Wrong Rx
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072505HB.shtml

Despite all the time and effort lawmakers have spent trying to fix our health care system, it is still the costliest in the world.

......................................................................

One of our dirty little American secrets is that one gets in health care what one is able to pay for. If one checks the 16 categories of cancer death risk -- four with a subdivision each of four categories (A, B, C. D) -- one discovers that one's odds of survival really depend upon catching things early on. Needless to say far too many people wait too long until there is no hope of survival. The game varies, I gather, from type of cancer to type. Colon cancer can be spotted and treated early on with a colonoscopy -- a simple procedure which still costs some hundreds of dollars that many cannot afford. I am aware of such things because we have excellent medicine in NYC and I take advantage of the free research study-based checkups -- I was cleared for prostate, discovered that I have some smokers polyps in my lungs that are checked yearly in a free study, am on various medications that keep my blood pressure controlled and my brain functional -- we have an excellent primary doctor who checks things regularly.

This is not to say that despite supposedly good medical insurance coverage through CUNY we do not have to battle endlessly to get our medical insurance companies to pay up -- we lost $10,000 last year in medical expenses that should have been covered, but battled back another $10,000 that had been initially denied.

The upshot is that with the most expensive per capita medical system in the world, ours is still based upon class divisions and capacity to pay.

How very cruel! And now all those returning wounded veterans are apparently being ripped off as well. That seems to be the lowest blow of all in this corrupted system of divisions of spoils to those who have the power and control over the allocations of such things. I gather than our Congress has the best of all medical care and and that it is totally free? That says something about American politics and our politicians.

I recall Dave Rogers, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and before that dean of two medical schools and following thereafter University Professor of Cornell University cursing out the A.M.A. greedies for having defeated universal medical coverage back when our European neighbors were introducing it post WW2. He suggested that the fault lay with the greed of the doctors -- certainly not all -- who funded that organization. And so it goes. The poor die younger in America.
--
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--
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Unions Selling Out?

NEWS ANALYSIS
Ambitions Are Fueling a Division of Labor
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The conflicting ambitions of two titans of labor are at the
center of the split in the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/national/26labor.html?th&emc=th

..................

Needless to say two of our local union leaders sold their souls to the devil prior to the last NY gubernatorial election -- Randi Weingarten of the teachers union (UFT) and Dennis Rivera (District 37). Both supported Pataki against a fine (but African American) Democratic candidate, Carl McCall -- and got stiffed for their efforts.

I am looking to figure out the latest break from the AFT-CIO. Who is doing what to whom? If this in another self-serving move, these union leaders will deserve what they get -- but their members will not! Unhappily our unions seem unable to educate their members and families as to how to vote to preserve their own interests. Perhaps the same smarts are not there with most able children of blue collar families now getting college educations? Nick Kisberg of the Teamsters back when was a marvel of a self-educated guy who got the message out. But there are union leaders today who are simply feathering their personal nests and who are a menace to captive workers.

Frankly Dennis Rivera, presumably again breaking away as one of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) unions, as well as Hoffa raise doubts in my mind. Let us not forget that Hoffa's daddy as Teamster head supported Nixon in 1972 before he got planted by the mob:

http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_127.html

Are we seeing another right wing sellout effort here? Maybe a 'race card' game? I hope not. But we shall see. Anyone have any hard data?

I should add that as a union member myself, who worked to open up CUNY back when so that we could bring in our blue collar family kids, I am very much an interested party.
--
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--
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The Decline and Fall of Our Mass Media

One can find the basic facts -- if one searches them out here and there in various of our newspapers, npr, internet communications, whatnot. But for the most part the last place to look now is to our main TV and radio media outlets. News, if it gets through, is all too often delayed and distorted with self-serving spins. One must become an independent researcher to find out what is really happening wherever. I shall try to use this medium as much as I can to cull from these sources what looks to be reality and to pass it along. Please feel free to contribute. Ordinarily I don't pass on single postings, but try to reconfirm whatever from several sources. So please do not be offended if I do not immediately pass along whatever. Needless to say there are some responsible reporters on this and that, but they tend to be drowned out by the shouters down. Needless to say no democracy can function without access to basic facts.

Here is a sample report on our media from a New Hampshire newspaper sent on by one of my Yale classmates:

Appeared in our Keene Sentinel tonight. This is at a time when the Bush administration has launched an ideological attack on PBS. Are there implications for the "free press" any democracy needs?

Monday, July 25, 2005

Do you know where your ‘mainstream’ news comes from?

Peter Phillips

Monday, July 25, 2005

Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population — the majority of people living in the United States. Mainstream media include a number of communication organizations that carry almost all the news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources.

However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream population — nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead, it is more accurate to speak of big media in the United States today as the corporate media and to use the term in the singular — as it refers to the singular monolithic top-down power structure of self-interested news giants.

A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the 10 big media organizations in the United States. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of directors of the 10 big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate-sized university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations.

In fact, eight out of 10 big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and The Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca-Cola and J.P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
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How to Afford Wars

* Graduate debt 'is underestimated' *
Students and their parents are severely underestimating the level of debts they will incur while at university, a survey suggests.
Full story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/business/4717239.stm

................................

Tony Blair has also discovered that back loading debt on to the backs of coming generations is the way to fund wars. Pardon my cynicism here, but one of my classmates is practicing bankruptcy law and I refer students to him who have found themselves too much in debt to swim their way out. Needless to say for students particularly in our U.S. private colleges and their families, the debt level is far higher than that of British graduates now. What a crime to so burden our futures! Academic administrators, are you listening?
--
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to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Unwinnable War in Iraq?

[In addition to Patrick Cockburn's comments below, a new report this morning (per npr) apparently indicates that the Iraqi police force that we are developing there ranges from incompetent (illiterates) to a menace (includes criminals and insurgents). One would hope for better things for the Iraqi people, but it looks as though hell is breaking out over there. Ed Kent]


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9558.htm

Iraq: This is now an unwinnable conflict

As he completes another tour of duty in the chaos of Iraq, award-winning reporter Patrick Cockburn charts how Bush and Blair's 'winnable war' turned into a mess that is inspiring a worldwide insurgency

By Patrick Cockburn

07/24/05 "The Independent

The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do not have small wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about. [snip]
--
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to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
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Iraq as Terror Training Ground

[A friend sends along this all too plausible report on the increased sophistication and motivation that Iraq has lent to terrorist attacks. Frankly, following upon Madrid and London, I fully expect an attack on our NYC subways/busses, etc. in the not too far future. Already it has been announced that our NYPD can't afford the costs in overtime past next week to keep on policing our subways. And our Congress is reallocating security monies to airline passengers at the rate of $9.00 per head in contrast to 1 cent per subway rider. Need one mutter here about classism? Yes, Bush, Iraq may mean the end of quite a few of us before it has run its course. So much for our armchair warriors' sophistication about the real hazards besetting us! FBI, it is all on you now. Ed Kent, a subway rider]

.................................................................

As a semi-professional in the area, I agree that Bush and Co.'s venture into Iraq has made things very messy. They claim Iraq is a lure for would-be terrorists and, thus, we are fighting them in Iraq rather than in NYC or Houston. But this is developing more attackers around the world and encouraging rapid evolution of lethal techniques.

A recent NY Times article "HUMAN ARSENAL; Blowing Up in the West" (July 17, 200) examined the mindset of suicide bombers. It mentioned how one terrorism researcher found that many of extremists nowadays are self-radicalising themselves as they watch all kinds real and perceived abuses against Muslims and Arabs. (The Iraq campaign, along with US military presence in Saudi Arabia is a big part of that picture.) Then the newly radicalized people seek teachers supporting radicalism. It is not the older model of extremists teachers radicalizing the people first and they become extremists second.

Another recent item of note is an interview with Prof. David Pape by The American Conservative concerning his recent book, "Dying to Win", a book about suicide bombers. The interview is titled "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism: It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism" which summarized Prof. Pape's analysis of suicide bomber trend's key factor.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

Meanwhile, the attack/counter-measure/adapted attack cycles in Iraq is generating some clever bombing technicians. This is a very dangerous thing for the world. Besides taking the skills to conduct attacks upon the USA and allied countries, the skills can be quite salable. (Some IRA munitions specialists have marketed their deadly trade in the Middle East and In Latin America. Their customers, alas, do not have the bit of mercy that the IRA did in some of its attacks. The IRA often would try to give some warning, albeit not always in time.)

To give an idea of the bomb making evolution, here's a quick outline of what's reported to have happened:

1. Initial bombs were set off by wires.
Counter-measure spot the operator and kill him.

2. Eliminate the wires and use radio communications, such as cell phone.
Counter-measure: jam the frequencies so the trigger call won't get through.

3. Use a radio equivalent of a deadman's switch; broken signal is the trigger.
Counter-measure: Detect signals going to the IEDs and duplicate the signals.

4. Use encrypted signals.
Counter-measure: not disclosed.

There are some exotic anti-bomb tools, such as Jin (See

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-06-08-iraq-car-bomb_x.htm

and http://www.ionatron.net/files/Jin.jpg

The USA Today article gives a stat of 150 bombs made per month in Iraq. While I am cautious with the statistic, it points to a development of munitions making skills.)

Each step is making it more difficult for defenders. While some peg their hopes on detecting and stopping the bombers, a bigger key is reducing the factors that encourage the spread of support for bombings.
--
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to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
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As We Treat Them . . . .

Dresden bombing survivor to speak in St. Albans

http://www.thecountycourier.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1942&Itemid=>

Franklin County Courier - Enosburg,Vermont,USA

... At that moment my heart truly sank, for I could see a line of US
prisoners... ... Thousands of US prisoners were trudging into Germany.

......................................................

I still run into patriotic types who boast our brutal bombing of Dresden towards the end of WW2, not realizing that it put at risk captured American soldiers, including Kurt Vonnegut who based his novel, Slaughterhouse Five, on that horrendous experience.

For the record Dresden was a non-military target, a beautiful city of mainly wooden structures readily vulnerable to fire. As WW1 had pioneered poison gas attacks on trenches, we during WW2 similarly developed the art of splattering structures (and people) with phosphorus, which burns out of water (people so splattered could dunk, say, into a pond or river, only to be reignited when they stuck their heads up to breath -- as any student of chemistry has probably observed of this peculiar phenomenon with phosphorous). The attack on Dresden sent in waves of bombers with high concussion bombs that converted much of the city to kindling wood that was ignited by incendiary bombs thereafter, creating a fire storm that swept any and all things and people into the conflagration with winds of hundreds of miles per hour.

Each war tends to create its own horrors of which Dresden was only one example of retaliation for wrongs done.

The modern lesson here is that as one treats others, so they may treat you -- torture, bombing, whatever.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli in The Prince)
--
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Why the Bombers Failed

I spent one summer during my college years mainly learning how to cut down trees for a construction firm with a power saw. However, during one slack period my boss loaned me out to be the assistant to a blaster clearing wetlands by blasting ditches for runoff. I learned how very simple it is to blow up things.

Without specifying details, one merely needs 3 things: 1) some device (usually electrical) to set off 2) a detonator which in turn explodes 3) whatever blasting materials that will get the job done. On my first day at work we had a problem. A blast that we had set up did not go off when my boss cranked a generator designed to send the electrical charge to the detonator. My boss instructed me to go and check the connections. I said, "no way!" My boss said, "smart kid" and went to get his car battery, which properly attached to the wires, set off our explosion, blasting a long line of dynamite sticks and a trench many feet deep and long that began to drain off the waste water as intended.

The moral of this tale is that any one of the 3 ingredients for setting off a bomb can fail. Most likely the materials prepared for the London bombing today were somehow faulty and were not -- thank G-d -- set off by the detonators. May we get so lucky again!
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John G. Roberts on Balance?

Court Nominee's Life Is Rooted in Faith and Respect for Law
By TODD S. PURDUM, JODI WILGOREN and PAM BELLUCK
John G. Roberts is a Harvard-trained, Republican
lawyer-turned-judge, with a punctilious, pragmatic view of
the law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/politics/21nominee.html?th&emc=th
.........................................................

As a legal philosopher who values our grand American jurisprudential traditions and as a pragmatist by philosophic disposition, I am somewhat relieved by the Bush nomination of John G. Roberts to our Supreme Court. Per the NY Times exploration of his biography, Roberts is portrayed as a decent person who will presumably honor John Paul II's commitment to respect for persons, and particularly those in need. I would hope that his Catholic faith would dispose him to end off the American abomination of the death penalty. His stance on abortion is an open question. And I am worried a bit that he may relegate women to subordinate positions, but hopefully not.

However, it is a blessed relief to have a jurist (I imagine that he will be confirmed without stress) who honors our _legal_ traditions and does not float mythic pieties about our founding fathers -- too many of whom were into raping their slaves or exploiting their indentured servants. Our American traditions had quite some developing to do since the time when slaves were incorporated in our Constitution as three fifths of a person! To hear, thus, that Roberts respects Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurter, and Marshall is entirely encouraging.

I am sure that I will disagree with some of Roberts' decisions, quite likely defending corporations in disputes with labor -- his father was comfortably a manager by occupation. FDR is not mentioned in his canon of great Americans. There is no particular mention of civil rights gains here in the late 20th century, but perhaps a disposition -- like that of Gandhi -- to stress the 'self-help' efforts of the individual to achieve success in life in contrast to strong state support for education, medicine, affordable housing -- the "benign neglect" thesis floated by fellow Catholic, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while he was working for the Nixon administration. We all tend to be products of the cultures within which we have been raised -- unless we undergo a radical conversion somewhere along the line.

We shall have to see -- decision by decision. With Bush in office, it could have been a disastrous appointment. I don't think this one is.
--
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to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
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The Value of a Man Is His Price?

"The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power, and therefore is not absolute, but a thing dependent on the need and judgement of another." Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan

One of my students in NYPD police training mailed me a paper this week to complete his last course for graduation. He noted happily in a note that he was one of the lucky ones. He would be starting at $40,000 a year rather than at $25,000 -- the new starting salary for beginning cops just negotiated with our police union.

I thought of Hobbes' sardonic comment above -- and also of another of my students who was then a NYPD officer trying to complete his degree in preparation for law school. He had asked me to become his program advisor for his CUNY B.A. degree, a special subdivision within CUNY that allows students to fit schedules and programs of study to their interests. No sooner had he gotten started with this program than he was severely injured when a perp rammed his police car into a telephone pole, badly damaging his back. The next year or so involved attempted healing and then the determination that he would be permanently disabled with considerable pain. He tried to keep on with his studies, but eventually dropped out, deeply depressed. In effect his hoped for career had been wiped out with this terrible accident and a lifetime of suffering substituted in its place.

I am hearing of too many individuals and their families being stranded and left with lives either lost or horribly mangled by our war ventures now in the Middle East. Earlier I had recommended to some of my students that they might wish to get their future professional training with the military. No longer, however, can one with a straight face make such recommendations. One senses that there are separate tracks now for our kids to pursue. Some guarantee a life of comfort and security. Others are highly hazardous and may end one up either dead or disabled.

I don't like this modern American equation. One is worth now what one is forced to sell one's body for? This is no way to determine human worth -- or at least we have regressed terribly back towards the times when Hobbes could set his equation along these lines. Not good. Not good at all!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Rehabilitating Ex-Cons?

Cutting College Aid, and Fostering Crime
One of the most irrational initiatives in the war on crime
was a decision by Congress in the 1990's to cut off some
ex-offenders from federal education aid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/opinion/20wed4.html?th&emc=th

........................................................

One of the more retrograde moves by our pols appealing for votes has been to attack prisoners by denying them the resources to rehabilitate themselves. We have ended off the option of college courses in our NY state prisons while increasing the percentages of solitary confinement cells -- largest in the nation -- which virtually guarantee either driving those so incarcerated crazy or generating hostility towards a society that so abuses them.

I will never forget observing our court employment classes back in the early 1970s at Brooklyn College. These were made up of students in halfway houses -- being gradually released from prison with the opportunity to get some college credits. One of our noted Brooklyn judges of that time had nearly managed to inspire a first offender amnesty bill for non-violent criminals which had passed in both houses of the NY state legislature only to be vetoed by an unknown upstater who had replaced Rockefeller as governor on short notice when he was appointed Vice President to replace a discredited Spiro Agnew. What particularly struck me about these classes was that they were indistinguishable in appearance from our ordinary ones -- these were students who had done something stupid and had gotten caught!

Needless to say other national penal systems are wiser than we in their responses to crime. If a felon can be restored to constructive citizenship, he will contribute positively to his society. If he is de facto banned, he will remain a costly economic burden and a hazard when he is released from prison. There is no better investment than an education for such individuals that enables them to reenter the work force.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Where the Jobs Are Not?

Where recruiting runs strongest
Indiana is among the states that rank highest, a trend driven by
economic opportunity. By Mark Sappenfield
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0719/p01s03-usmi.html?s=hns

.........................................................

One of the cruel realities these days is that jobs are really in pretty short supply in this country. We count as the 'unemployed' only those who are still looking. We count as employed also those who are struggling along with part-time, temporary jobs. In our co-op in the Upper West Side of Manhattan we technically have 6 full time employees. Our super is a college grad in music who would rather be working in that field. He is good at what he does, but his body is suffering the strain as he approaches ever closer to retirement. One of our doormen is a former factory worker who would rather have stayed with that employment.

We also have two part-timers -- one who fills in when others are on vacation or out sick. Another mops our floors weekends. Neither of these receive the standard benefits of vacations, medical coverage, or retirement contributions.

It need not be pointed out that we are living in a two track America -- with those doing well in selected professions -- but not always. I know of a lawyer in CA now working in a coffee shop. And I worry about my computer trained students who are being displaced by internet connections with Delhi. And I have watched a series of our bank managers get the heave ho with silver parachutes as their banks have been gobbled up by larger competitors. I would not want to be starting out on a work career myself these days.

And then there are those who are facing Iraq versus unemployment. . . .
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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Fudging the Unemployment Figures

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Dropout Puzzle
By PAUL KRUGMAN
If four years of extremely loose fiscal and monetary policy
weren't enough to give us a full economic recovery, what
will?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/opinion/18krugman.html?th&emc=th

..................

We in NYC are intensely aware of the real unemployment situation -- nearly half of African Americans out of work, other New Yorkers working part-time or picking up jobs far down the income scale from where they were dropped. Elsewhere around the country I hear of a lawyer in CA now working in a coffee house post the bust in that state. I know of the North East Kingdom (northern Vermont) where kids smash windshields in the night out of unemployment boredom, workers in the Ethan Allen furniture plant in Orleans on 4 day schedules, if not laid off, and scared stiff that the plant may be relocated where wages are lower still.

And so it goes in an America on the brink! Good luck all!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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Ripping Off Our Students

Helping Students Instead of Banks
Some higher education groups have placed their own
financial interests above the interests of their neediest
students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/opinion/18mon3.html?th&emc=th

..................

What one sees in area after area is the passing forward of debts to the next generation. Whereas most university systems see students as future contributors to their societies, ours sees its students as debtors to be loaded down not only with tuition debts, but all sorts of other future economic obligations that of course put even their retirement incomes in jeopardy.

What this NY Times editorial hits is merely the tip of a massive iceberg of the terrible depredations of banks and credit card operations on most hard-pressed Americans!

Enough already!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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Blaming the Victims -- Again?

For the benefit of those not trained in American history, the British Puritan settlers saw themselves as the "New Israel"

http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/joshua/manifest.html

-- i.e. entering the promised land (recommended by John Locke to those left out of the property grabs in Britain of his times) to claim it as their own, as the ancient Israelites were supposed to have claimed Canaan by G-d given right. Needless to say the existing inhabitants were not consulted on this plan ---> wars and genocide here and there.

Presumably some of my own ancestors who arrived for this happening were involved. My grandfather, Charles Foster Kent, a Biblical theologian, was born in Palmyra, Western New York as a farm boy -- where the family had presumably migrated. A classmate interested in such things suggests that his predecessor arrived in 1633 to marry a wife who had arrived in 1627. My oldest and dearest friend, Dan Huden, was part native American. His father, John Huden, also an academic and a college president, was an expert in Indian Affairs as well as education.

Note the Satanic traits ascribed to our native Americans:

http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/joshua/nativeam.html

Sound at all familiar? Seems that the tendency to blame the victims has been around for some time -- rape to the Holocaust.

You will notice that a Yale College or two are named after some of the leading lights of this migration mentality.

..............................................................

Exiting Gaza, Israel fights on two fronts
Palestinian militants and Jewish protesters stand in the way of a
landmark withdrawal. By Joshua Mitnick
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0718/p01s03-wome.html?s=hns
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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British Teachers Union Wrestles with Tolerance in the Face of Terrorism

EDUCATION

* Teaching tolerance amid tension *
The BBC's Mike Baker asks how schools can handle ethnic tensions when a bomber was a learning mentor.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/education/4687417.stm

..........................................................

Are our teachers and their unions going to remain silent in the face of this issue? One of our great losses at Brooklyn College was of a student from Bangladesh whose family was denied refugee status after 9/11 who was forced to flee to Canada where she is now getting on board. She is an advisor to my student list -- Neemarie Alam, cited as one of those (then a student at Stuyvesant High School overlooking the World Trade Center) who was horrified by the destruction of lives there:

http://www.youthcomm.org/NYC%20Features/Nov2001/NYC-2001-11-15.htm

Nee is one of the advisors to our Student Concerns Yahoo group who is available to assist others in this terrible predicament.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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Lori Berenson Update - July 15, 2005

[Mark and Rhoda Berenson are NYC academics who retired from their positions early to focus on rescuing their daughter, Lori, from the clutches of the corrupt Peruvian political/penal system where a secret military tribunal charged her with assisting one of the 'terrorist' labor union based now destroyed groups there, the Tupac Amaru:

http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/shiningpath.html

There is no evidence that Lori, a poverty worker in Latin America, had any direct involvement with this organization:

http://www.freelori.org/whoislori.html


but she has been trapped in the cruel Peruvian penal system now for nearly a decade. President Clinton and a number of our Congressmen appealed for the release of Lori, but the Bush administration has washed its hands of Lori's case. Ed Kent]

Friday, July 15, 2005

To Friends and Supporters of Lori Berenson:

VISIT WITH LORI

July began with a visit by Lori's uncle Ken who accompanied Mark to Cajamarca. It was Ken's first visit to Peru since Lori's trial in April 2001. Lori celebrated the occasion by baking a belated father's day all-chocolate cake in a heart shape which she decorated with the words "Yo amo Tio Ken y Dad." The visit with Lori was wonderful - she was in very good spirits and really excited to see her uncle after all these years. Mark and Ken spent time with Lori in the bakery where she works daily and also in the yard. Winter has arrived in Peru and, despite a very sunny day, it became quite cold in the late afternoon. They spent many hours reminiscing.

LORI SENDS GREETINGS FROM PERU Lori gave Mark and Ken the following letter to update you on what is going on in Peru and neighboring countries. She refers to corruption in Peru that has been front-page news for several weeks. To put her comments in context, it must be mentioned that the Peruvian Congress had passed a law, now rescinded, enabling those awaiting trials of sentencing for other than terrorism-related charges to serve their time under house arrest instead of spending that time under harsh prison conditions. In addition, despite Peru joining the US in the global war on terrorism and on narco-trafficking and despite Peru recently being authorized to receive over $100 million dollars from the US Congress to fight drugs, President Toledo recently decided to commute the six-year eight-month sentence of a young woman after she had served only one year following her conviction for drug trafficking - trying to leave Peru with 10 pounds of cocaine. President Toledo then gave this young woman a humanitarian release. She happens to be the daughter of an ambassador from a country allied with Peru.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

July 1, 2005

Dear friends,

Thank you so much for your continued interest in my situation here in Peru.

Since the years are most certainly passing by, the certain monotony of prison life is ot really that fundamental an issue, albeit everything you can see in jails and the judicial system (abuses, injustices) is a mere reflection of how the society is doing in general.

These have been times of turmoil - massive protests in neighboring Latin-American countries Ecuador and Bolivia. The ruling classes of each of these countries found a way to temporarily calm the situations through the calling of new elections, putting in transitional governments. However, the real social demands, which had more to do with social and economic policies, weren't touched at all; thus the time-bomb keeps ticking away.

In Peru, although there have continued to be a lot of protests by certain sectors (including important mobilizations against foreign-owned mining companies), there has been no national movement to oust the present government, perhaps since no one thinks its replacement would do anything differently. However, things are not going well. The economic and political crisis is quite serious; the percentage of Peruvians that don't have stable, formal employment is well over 50% of the economically active population. Corruption scandals of this and former governments continue to come to light. Polls show that people have little or no faith in the political class.

As I said earlier, jails mirror society. Constructed and constricted with a limited budget, they've been converted into warehouses that house humans. The judicial system does not treat equally. There's a huge backlog and the courts are overwhelmed with cases. That is reflected in jails which are filled with people who are "unsentenced." The laws that govern the processes are established by political conveniences; thus there are those who are practically denied prison benefits while new laws are equalizing house arrest with time served in jail, which only benefit the corrupt. There are apparently special considerations given in the reducing of sentences through presidential "humanitarian" decrees. However, I doubt they are truly humanitarian, they appear to be mere and pure politics. Where was "humanity" when the government doesn't pardon the terminally ill? Or when it refuses to look at completely disproportionate sentences? It's not "humanity," it's political interests.

This is reality here and in many places. I much doubt it will change for the better if society doesn't change in a big way, but these are all part of social processes that move on their own time lines. I am again grateful for your continued interest in this situation over the years. It's a big help for me and my family.

Sincerely,

Lori Berenson
Huacariz Prison
Cajamarca, Peru



--------------------------------------------------------------------

Rhoda and Mark Berenson
English Website: www.freelori.org
Spanish Website: www.lorilibre.org

PS If you no longer wish to receive the Lori Updates and want to unsubscribe, please send email to announcements-list-request@freelori.org with a subject line of
"unsubscribe."
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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Cheating the Kids?

Students Say High Schools Let Them Down
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
A large majority of high school students say they would
work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting,
according to an online nationwide survey of teenagers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/education/16STUDENTS.html?th&emc=th

........................................................

Certainly this report accords with what I find as the mind states of my students newly arrived from high school. It is a struggle at the beginning of each class to persuade them that learning can be fun and rewarding -- not simply a routine in which I crank out facts for them to parrot back later to be forgotten as soon as a class final exam has been completed.

This teaching to the test mentality also breeds with it figuring how to cheat on the tests and papers at which students have become quite adept in this era of high technology. I take this up directly with my students who admit to their own cheating and try to get them to realize that cheating now and later is simply going to be self-defeating -- "Do you want to marry someone who cheats?" I design my courses so that cheating is nearly impossible. I still receive some papers that are plagiarized so that a percentage of my students never receive grades in my courses -- in our system grades for uncompleted courses are converted eventually to Fs -- or the students are sometimes allowed to withdraw from a course after the fact and only lose the tuition that they have paid for it.

One of the first courses that I was assigned to teach was philosophy of education. Having no background in this field, I ran to the best philosopher of education that I knew, Phil Phoenix at Columbia Teachers College, for a course suggestions. I had my students (two of whom became teachers of my own children) read the classics such as Dewey and Whitehead. Each has profound, if obvious, things to say about teaching and learning -- particularly that it should be a fun and interesting process that unlocks the natural talents of the student as well as an exposure to disciplines.

I then went on variously to serve on as a philosophy of education advisor to the James Conant (former President of Harvard) Five College Committee of Teacher Education (which focused on both my then teaching college, Vassar, and my future one, Brooklyn College, CUNY) and later for a year with an NEH grant as a philosophy of education advisor to our School of Education at Brooklyn College. That first teaching course along with my own children's early education in the Bank St. School for Children (very Dewey and Whitehead oriented then) reaffirmed the lessons that I had learned myself as a teacher. The point of it all is to teach students how to educate themselves -- not simply to cram into their heads disembodied trivia.

It is ironic that here in the U.S., where we have pioneered such ways of learning, we now do not employ them in our school systems which have been captured by the 'teaching to the test' animal psychology techniques of learning and teaching that superseded our own best philosophies -- but that is another story. See how Thorndike converted our kids to rats!

http://www.answers.com/topic/edward-thorndike

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thorndike
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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Remember Masada?

* Children die in Baghdad car bomb *
At least 26 Iraqis, mainly children, are killed by a car bomb in Baghdad as US troops were handing out sweets.
Full story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/4678207.stm

* Israel reoccupies West Bank town *
Israeli forces retake control of Tulkarm and seal off the occupied territories after a Palestinian suicide bombing.
Full story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/4677695.stm

Actions such as these are the height of madness. Some think that insanity is merely an individual psychological phenomenon? But group cult psychoses are not uncommon in human history:

http://www.rickross.com/reference/heavensgate/gate8.html

This is why the prohibitions against suicide had to be so stringent:

http://www.cmf.org.uk/ethics/content.asp?context=article&id=1365

What we are seeing today is scarcely a new phenomenon. We will be on much stronger grounds condemning it as insanity rather than demonic evil. Depression is most likely an ingredient in this formula. It is the sick responses to this depression -- here and there -- that are now threatening us all.

Remember Masada? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide
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Marching Off to War?

Evangelicals Dominate Military Chaplain Corps
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071205M.shtml

.................................................

Once upon a time I was on the cusp of facing possible service as a military chaplain -- I had started college with NROTC training (which I had departed with the end of the Korean war) and ended with admission to theological training in which I completed a degree at Union Theological Seminary in NYC with an exchange year at Mansfield College, Oxford, the 'free church' (i.e. non Anglican Protestant) college there.

I had enough time during this transitional period in my life before I returned to philosophy to contemplate the inherent conflict between the Christian Gospel of 'peace on earth and good will towards men' with the 'onward Christian soldiers' mindset of the military chaplaincy. Also I was bothered by the inherent establishment of religion that this institution entailed -- most chaplains were mainline Christians. I later served for several decades on the Church-State advisory committee of the ACLU where we deliberated at length over such things.

With the current decline and faltering of contemporary Christianity in the U.S. -- the co-option of a religion of peace by a 'born again' warrior mentality -- one has no reason to be surprised by the reports of abusive behaviors on the part of military chaplains who would see their role as aggressive recruitment of their charges into their narrowly hate-ridden, moralistic cadres. Among other things chaplains play key roles in determining whether soldiers are sincere when they decide that they have become "conscientious objectors" to military endeavors -- a not unlikely occurrence for very young men and women who wake up from all the patriotic hoopla with the discovery of its underlying patriot gore.

It ancient times there was no separation between morality, state, and religion. Athena led the troops of Athens to war as did Yahweh those of Israel. I hope we are not seeing a return to such horrors with our current thinly veiled call for a crusade against our barbarian (Muslim) enemies. What Bush and Blair manifestly share is a disposition towards such jingoistic pietism. Beware such preachers -- in or out of uniform!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Another Mad Bombing In Israel

An explosion near a shopping centre in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya has caused at least 10 casualties, Israeli emergency workers say.

For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

...................................................................

I post this not as news, but as a basis for a conceptual point. The bombings of innocent civilians wherever are criminal acts. To glorify them with romanticized language (i.e. 'terrorist bombing') inflates the action as though it were an heroic gesture.

'Suicide bombing' is just plain sick and those who induce young men (and women) to carry out such acts should be put away for life -- how callously cruel.

The Fox News flip to 'homicide bomber', which was originated by one of my Yale classmates visiting Israel who passed it to Israeli information officers there from which it was picked up the next day by the White House with Fox News as usual in its wake, does not do it either.

My son suggested the other day a term that really fits -- 'mad bomber' with its explicit indications of insanity, which I think is the appropriate way to characterize such actions. I shall use this term from now on and recommend it to others. Needless to say group madness (folie a deux writ large) is not an uncommon phenomenon. The Jim Jones massacre was an American cult offshoot among many that we Americans have spawned. The current Muslim deviation should be placed in the same category of insanity as all the rest -- wherever and whatever their rationales.

And lest we are tempted to play holier than thou, our Western nations have done far worse with murderous mass bombings ranging from the London Blitz to the retaliatory fire and nuclear bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki -- and our daisy cutters in Afghanistan and Shock and Awe inflicted upon Iraq.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
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http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp

The Ultimate Reward?

Robert Fisk: The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/070905Z.shtm

I don't think Fisk has got it entirely right here. Having worked as assistant to a blaster two summers before I wrote short stories of enterprise for Fortune Magazine as a college student, I am well aware that it takes about as much sophistication as being able to maintain and run a vacuum cleaner to construct a crude bomb, carry it into a subway through an unguarded station entrance (as hundreds of ours are in NYC), and set it to go off down the line at the station where one departs the train in the middle of rush hour (no one is really sure what belongs to whom amidst the crush of a crowded subway car). I suspect that any number of amateurs -- Timothy McVeigh type malcontents -- are plotting their hours of glory now. We had several who were turned in by a roommate in Brooklyn with bombs being constructed to blow our Franklin St. transfer station just prior to 9/11. It does not take a bin Laden to unleash such horrors. Any amateur or small cabal of associates can do it on their own so long as they are inspired by all that attention their action is likely to generate along the lines we have seen this past week. Can you imagine being condemned by the major world leaders for something you have (secretively) done? Looks to be the ultimate in psychological rewards for mad bombers!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

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A Plague on All Our Ideological Culture Warriors

The coining of the concept of 'ideology' apparently dates back to the late 18th or early 19th century and originally meant simply a system of ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

However, since at least the critique of capitalism by Marx-Engels in The German Ideology of 1845 (of which any and all should read at least Part I), 'ideology' has taken on the overtones of a false or distorted interpretation of historical events.

I recall getting a persuasive book back during the all too brief Kennedy presidency that suggested that the U.S. was almost unique in not having a national ideology.

Whatever -- one is bothered by the current uses of the term as though the truth depended upon proving that one's own ideology -- right wing neocon to radical Islamist -- is the only correct view of reality and that advocates must do battle to overwhelm their 'evil' competitors. In such a no holds barred war of ideologies any reinterpretation of the facts or their interconnections is to be accepted -- whether true or false -- so long as it supports one's own vision of things. Any sort of lying or vilification of one's enemies is fully justified by a slick modern version of 'all things are fair in (love) and war'.

One must be particularly bothered by crude sloganeering such as Bush's "axis of evil," which designated whole nations as enemies and which has been used to justify brutally destructive measures directed against too many innocent people, e.g. the "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq, which directly echoed Hitler's Blitzkrieg!

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/blitzkrieg.htm

Anything goes against one's "evil" enemies and, thus, the deaths of innocents has been excused away as merely "collateral damage." The London (which I love as a former resident there) has lost as many as 100 cruelly killed by an ideology. But how many of us recall that as many were killed in Fallujah (50 to 300?) when a single British guided missile strayed into a crowded market place during the first Gulf war?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah

When I hear a Bush or a Blair sounding the rallying cry for a war against 'terrorists', I cringe because such a 'war' is likely going to be directed blindly against people assumed to be 'terrorists', assumed to be friends of 'terrorists', assumed to be hosts of 'terrorists', or simply living in the vicinity of 'terrorists' -- any of whom may be be killed, maimed, imprisoned without legal or moral or restraints.

This anti terrorist mind set is an ideological mirror image of the terrorist mentality that it opposes -- and roughly 3 to 10 times as deadly to judge by the relative body counts engendered by our "Coalition of the Willing." The Biblical injunction in Matthew warns: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but don't consider the beam that is in your own eye?". We must at least take cognizance of what we are doing and what others whom we have designated as our enemies are experiencing us doing to them!

What each side forgets is that we are all frail human beings trying to survive in an all too hazardous world. Today the Brits (God save the Queen!) are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of WW2 in which a goodly number of the 200 million humans died who were slaughtered during our 20th century parade of brutal massacres and wars. I well remember WW2 as a scared young kid -- nevertheless enthusiastically doing my part for the war effort from manning our backyard aircraft warning station to collecting scrap paper and even milkweed pods to be used for life jackets.

I view our arm chair culture warriors as ideological 'mass murderers' -- my preferred term to the inflated one of 'terrorist', which carries with it romanticized overtones of heroism. And liberal democracies do not torture, kill, and maim in kind. They respect the standards hard won over the centuries of the Rule of Law and the rights formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and also the conventions providing standards for the treatment of civilians and captives in wartime. Those who are determined to live by the sword are destined in these days of WMD to risk not only their own lives, but all of us facing the threats posed by modern weapons and hazardous substances and sites. Anyone who has read the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) reports on NYC is all too aware where the dangers lie and how terribly vulnerable we are. The London atrocities were minor in consequence as to what might have happened there -- or in Birmingham or in whatever city lies down wind from a nuclear or chemical plant.

More dangerous, then, than 'terrorists' are those on both sides who would use inflated language to justify their own murderous acts while piously condemning those of their enemies. A plague on all our ideological culture warriors!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp

"Solidarity Forever!"

[The report below portending a possible fall semester strike of grad student teachers at NYU could be repeated at virtually every college and university campus across North America. We are exploiting, discouraging, and thereby diverting to other fields the best of our younger scholars by the corporatizing mentality of our university boards who have appointed academic administrators all too often ready and willing to impose 'bottom line' corporate practices upon an academic world that cannot bear such exploitation of its talented younger people.

I see this phenomenon at Brooklyn College where we do our best to make life as bearable as possible for our graduate students and other 'part-time' teachers. In fact most of these are part-time only formally with us as they are obliged to teach elsewhere to make ends meet -- Yale, Rutgers, other CUNY colleges -- and are only part-time to meet the terms of our contracts which would oblige CUNY to pay full-time salaries with full benefits, should an extra course be allowed. Needless to say the pressures on our young scholars are far too great. I see the grim impact upon personal lives -- divorces, illnesses, whatever that people under terrible stresses endure.

We at CUNY and SUNY are labeled public employees so that we face the draconian punishments of the ancient Taylor Law:

http://www.goer.state.ny.us/cna/bucenter/taylor.html

enacted in 1967 principally to keep emergency workers -- police and firemen -- on the job during labor disputes. Those of us who elect to go on strike can at worst lose our jobs and at best are docked two days pay for each day's work lost. Our faculty (and thereby our students) have been exploited terribly to allow both the conditions for teaching -- more and larger classes (and higher tuitions for our students) -- combined with massively decreased faculty pay scales in the face of inflation (about 40%) which is making it ever harder for us to attract and keep first rate scholar/teachers.

What we need is what we do not have -- effective boards of trustees committed to public higher education. Instead our institutions have been burdened with politicized appointees who do little or nothing on behalf of our universities -- but pride themselves on how they have improved the quality of our educational standards. Such is pure unadulterated hog wash! Ever more burdened junior faculty and adjuncts cannot do the same level of teaching that once was done by us mainly full-timers in the late 1960s and 1970s when open enrollment at CUNY was finally achieved to permit the admission of previously excluded blue collar, new immigrant, and minority students -- many first generation in college -- to our expanded numbers of colleges. I know this history first hand, as I have have taught continuously in CUNY since 1966 in 3 of its senior colleges (Hunter, CCNY, as well as Brooklyn).

However, our gains of that period are now being sabotaged by the cuts in our budgets which used to offer education to the baby boomer generation free of tuition, but which now require their generational heirs to pay ever increasing percentages of our expenses through tuition increases -- now more than 2/3 of our budget at Brooklyn College is pried out of incomes of students hard pressed by the living expenses here in NYC. I literally have students falling asleep in classes, having worked 12 hour
night shifts! I opened up a student internet list so that I could at least pass along to such students and others whose jobs force them to miss classes the basics of our course discussions.

We, indeed, need a new deal in American higher education. The question to be answered is how to get it. Perhaps strikes will be necessary despite the hardships that they will impose on all. One is inclined to call upon all the slogans of the 1930s when the Great Depression was similarly oppressing the 'working classes ' - 'Solidarity forever!',

http://home.earthlink.net/~solidarity/

whatever.

Incidentally, both of the institutions that educated me -- Yale and Columbia where administrators receive compensation as much as 40 times annually (e.g. $650,000 annually plus free housing and perks) that of the typical adjunct -- are participating in this pattern of exploitation. Shame!

We shall see. Ed Kent]

.......................................................................

Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 10:19 AM Subject: [cgeu] Villager 7/6: NYU preparing for grad student strike in fall


http://www.thevillager.com/villager_114/nyupreparing.html

The Villager
Volume 75, Number 7 | July 6 - 12, 2005

N.Y.U. preparing for grad students walkout in fall

By Johanna Petersson

After the New York University administration announced a preliminary decision on June 15 not to recognize the school's graduate teaching assistants union, it seems both sides are willing to take the fight to the fall semester.

[snip]

Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions
cgeu-list@cgeu.org / admin@cgeu.org
join/unsubscribe at www.cgeu.org
________________________________________

--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp

Not 'Terror'

It is a grave error to label those who brutally attack civilians 'terrorists' or to describe such actions with this most ambiguous term -- which connotes 'liberation' for those who support it and ascribes 'evil' to it by those who are victimized. The hatred on both sides engendered by such mischaracterization risks dehumanizing any and all held to be in league with one's 'evil enemies'. We have had enough in our lifetimes of Muslims hating Christians and Christians hating Muslims -- and both hating Jews!

Far better is the use of our standard legal language: 'criminal act', 'mass murder', whatever will clearly indicate that such actions are morally and _legally_ wrong -- even 'crimes against humanity':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity

It is high time that we stopped using inflated language that allows even the slightest justification for our crimes. There are rules to our human games designed to set limits on criminal activities -- in peacetime and in war. But it is all too easy to slip into extremes of revenge and over reaction when we conceptually exaggerate things -- calling them 'evil' with all those archetypal emotive overtones that set religious against religious -- whatever disclaimers to the contrary by those who would defend what is really a drive for retaliatory revenge!

We desperately need to halt our horrendously dangerous clash between (religious) cultures and get back to the rule of law!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp

London Is Not Burning

One tends to adopt major cities, if one lives in them -- or perhaps better said, they adopt you. London is one of mine. I worked and lived there parts of one year and passed through variously another. And Britain obviously is my 'roots' nation. So I can feel the loss, possibly of someone I knew or connected with one just as we felt the pain of 9/11 here in NYC. I can empathize with those who worried about their loved ones with whom they could not communicate by cell phone, just as I could not reach my wife who had headed down 'there' for a meeting 9/11.

But what I do know from my time living in London not so long after the Blitz of WW2 when the Nazis intentionally struck at civilians there -- the planes were ordered to look for the bend in the Thames and then to drop their bombs just thereafter, which was the East End of London or its poorest district where I worked with teens as a teen myself in the Bethnal Green Community Center -- is that London is not burning.

What bugs me following the terrorist attack yesterday with reports of the deaths now passing 50 is the bloody calls for revenge from some of those not at all affected directly by London's loss. We are not watching a war now -- unless one's eyes are on Iraq or Afghanistan where we did launch wars. Terrorism directed intentionally against civilians is criminality -- not war. When the Nazis did it, it was criminality. And when we Allies retaliated in kind -- Dresden and Nagasaki -- this was equally criminality. And when we assaulted Fallujah in brutal disregard of the civilians left there, this, too, was criminality. There are just wars and just ways to fight wars. Let us not beg off from justice whatever criminality we may be facing. To do so is to reduce ourselves to the same level of criminality as those whom we are charging with crimes against innocent civilians. I personally have had it with our armchair war-makers who would justify their own abominations in such cheap and despicable ways.

There are right ways to wage wars when such are absolutely necessary and a right way to peace which is not through criminality and tit for tat attacks on civilians.

London is not burning and will recover its equilibrium by tomorrow. Let us mourn with those who have lost their loved ones as we do with our own here.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp

Response to Comments on London Bombing

It has occurred to me since doing some reading on contemporary Islam that bin Laden is more a symbol than the central director. I could be wrong, but it looks to me as though we are seeing the work of a more diffuse group of radical Islamists -- it doesn't take many to carry out any of the major attacks -- 9/11, Madrid, and now London -- which will make things much harder to control. Organized crime has been just as hardy, elusive, and enduring with less of a 'message'.

I strongly recommend the collection of essays by British and American experts, Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century:

http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1850437513

And in response to the Muslim haters, a gentle reminder -- our London/Madrid/NYC is their Fallujah:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/fallujah.htm

in all of which innocents were blown away. The point is to make peace where we can.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp