Class Warfare?

The subject phrase here is a no-no in our public discourse, but 'class warfare' is precisely what we are seeing in the rapid escalation in the growing gaps in wealth and income in this country between the bulk of us -- 80% or more struggling to make it -- and the CEOs granting themselves huge outlays of funds, shaping corporate policies to maximize their returns or stock benefits rather than socially beneficial products and services. One does not need a Paul Krugman article -- almost any of them now in the NY Times -- to follow this outrage into area after area -- student tuitions and loan burdens, cuts in medical benefits and destruction of pension systems, sabotage of all sorts of social support systems ranging from Medicaid, heating and housing supports -- even to food stamps! Rip off is the name of the game, as one corporate scandal after another erupts. And we are persuading an entire generation coming along that the only way to make it is to cheat the system, as they watch others doing the same.

I happened to have done my dissertation in philosophy of law under one of our most noted scholars, Ernest Nagel, back in the early 1960s. My subject was property theory -- rights and duties -- which got me into various economic and resource allocation areas of that time. What I discovered then and what is true now is that those who control the political system divide the resources as they will. Work -- as even our founding father, Ben Franklin, acknowledged -- has little to do with economic success. One needs to know the rules of the game to make it big time. Those who do not are most likely to fall by the wayside -- how many are going to win the big lottery in comparison with those fiddling stock prices and/or real estate values?

Woe to those who fall by the wayside now! Marx suggested that when a sufficiently small number of capitalists owned nearly all of the wealth, a revolution would be inevitable.

See Krugman's words of today ("Graduates Versus Oligarchs") on this subject excerpted from today's column:

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/opinion/27krugman.html?th&emc=th

(unfortunately not accessible by non subscribers to the Times)

"That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

"I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

"The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

"So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

"A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

"But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

"Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year."

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

If Marx is not your man, try Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: "Property is theft!" Now we may need to add the qualifier that our corporate leaders are increasingly the thieves?
--
"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/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Times Report on Islamic Split in Middle East on Cartoons

Furor Over Cartoons Pits Muslim Against Muslim
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and HASSAN M. FATTAH
There is a rift in the Middle East between those who want
to engage in direct dialogue and those who focus on outside
enemies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/international/middleeast/22cartoons.html?th&emc=th

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Those not familiar with Islam may not be aware that it is not a monolithic, unified religion. There is no Pope in Islam. Currently we are witnessing the divisions both by country and within Islam over such an issue as the cartoons that have offended many. Islam, as the other two major Western religions, Christianity and Judaism, is divided between those with secular concerns -- universal human rights, the rule of law, etc. -- versus the particular religious codes and taboos unique to subdivisions of each of our religions. What we are seeing with globalization is a mutual exposure of each culture's values that are sometimes challenging to others. The cartoon matter manifests one of these collision areas -- within Islam, as this article reports, as well, as Islamists (purists who wish a return to fundamentals) clash with secularists who defend such values as free speech, democratic elections, personal liberties, etc.
--
"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/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Bush 's and Cheney's Personal Tax Breaks?

Unfortunately we have a sleeping giant of a population that seems unready to awaken at this point. I find some of my students quite caring, but this is the quietest generation I have encountered since my own which was known as the "silent generation." I don't think much that we can do will awaken them. They are stressed out, running scared, and not about to become active in any demonstrable way. We are the 'elite' that is under constant attack by the greedies -- as 'liberals', cowards, traitors -- a constant barrage of personal attacks beamed through the visual media which stun and halt action.

In the paragraph above I was responding to a CUNY colleague's concern that with a contract 3 and 1/2 years in abeyance, we ought to be mobilizing our constituencies on behalf of our students facing ever larger tuition increases and ourselves as faculty coping with declining real salaries and reduced protective benefits (medical and retirement). I saw an awakening unlikely from the experience of my own classrooms and many of my colleagues, seemingly overwhelmed by the battering by misinformation combined with personal attacks on us as the paragraph suggested.

Then it hit me that we had spent another few days with more Cheney spin, his hunting accident distracting attention from the real issues relating to him -- his authorizing an attack on Valerie Plame by his chief of staff, Libby, also announced this week to which he countered that he could disclose any classified information that he wished and also the Pillar report that the Bush administration had manipulated classified information to launch its attack on Iraq -- plotted out long before 9/11.

It then struck me that NO ONE has pointed to the personal gains of both Cheney and Bush embedded in their tax reductions for super wealthy investors, which both are. How do we awaken our fellow Americans to how badly they are being had by this horrendous program? Perhaps it is time that we started yelling about the personal gains and losses involved in the Bush-Cheney programs -- personal gains by them as individuals and losses by the rest of us in public services and mostly by those killed and badly wounded by the Bush-Cheney wars? We occasionally hear of the numbers of dead and wounded -- what precisely are the benefits this year for them of Bush's and Cheney's tax reduction programs?
--
"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://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Cheney's War by Whim

The major disclosures this week smoke screened out by the Cheney shooting incident make it pretty clear that our war on Iraq was carried out at the whim of the administration. Libby apparently testified that Cheney ordered him to disclose the Valerie Plame CIA identity to discredit or distract from her husband's report that Hussein had not acquired nuclear materials. Cheney has now claimed that he can declassify whatever he wishes:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m20699&l=i&size=1&hd=0

Paul Pillar, a key CIA operative, has reported in Foreign Affairs:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html

that the administration manufactured a connection between 9/11 and Hussein -- thus allowing them to use this national tragedy to carry out their pre-planned attack in 2003, despite massive objections at home and abroad and massive chaos created in the aftermath -- the mobilization of the culture war that we see being manifested around the Muslim world in response both to our brutal torture of Muslims in Guantanamo based on reports of those now released therefrom and those of Abu Ghraib graphically displayed in living color.

My two personal observations here are that as a New Yorker I deeply resent the use of our tragedy for such perverse purposes. And I have not seen such vicious abuses of political power since those of our enemies during WW2.

And one might add some questions about the personal profiting from Cheney's operations -- Halliburton and Co. in 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/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

We Were Tortured by the CIA?!

I just happened to hear a Democracy Now (Amy Goodman) report (2/17/06) on the CIA development in the late 1959s of torture techniques now apparently being applied in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and once again publicized by the display of tapes of same on Australian TV.

To my horror I realized that I and a number of unwitting grad students of my generation had been the guinea pigs for these torture techniques. Back then, as now, we graduate students would do most anything to earn monies to supplement limited budgets. I had had the good fortune to have one of the national fellowships in a program that also set up week long summer conferences for us.

In the summer of 1957 I had participated in a 48 hour test experiment that was supposed to be for potential space astronauts and which was actually held in an airfield of a private aircraft operation in Long Island (I was a Columbia grad student at the time). We were offered $1.00 per hour for this stint which consisted of being locked in a simulated space capsule, blind-folded, with earphones with a heavy roar (which injured my hearing I learned later), gloves keeping us from physical contact, food through a straw and unimaginable elimination of wastes arrangements (messy). I prepared myself for this stint by staying up all night before the entry so that I would be sleeping through the first portion of it. I discovered a small hole in one of the gloves that allowed me to feel my beard growth to figure how long I had been at it and emerged after two days relatively intact to be subjected to pain tests -- hand held in freezing water, an electrical gadget hooked up to my arm with water that eventually began to boil on my bare skin, as I pointed out to the one administrating it. I had apparently been watched throughout by psychologists who asked why I kept touching my jaw with my gloved finger and told me that most of the guys had come tearing out of their capsules with wires dangling in psychotic states. Such is the effect of sensory deprivation.

When I met with my fellow grad student fellowship winners that summer I found that others had had similar experiences -- CIA LSD experiments in D.C. that had left some of the students in psychotic states.

Low and behold, Amy Goodman's expert on same reports that this was the starting point of the CIA torture techniques that have been operating ever since and which have manifested themselves in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

I think I survived this stuff intact, but I wonder how many of my fellow grad students suffered post-traumatic stress. Certainly no one followed up to find out.
--
"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://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

NY AJ Discloses Hospital/Insurance Billing Fraud!

Probably a number of us have paid a medical bill only to find that we are being stiffed by both the medical supplier and our medical insurance company that was supposed to pay our bill.

I happened to catch a re-run last night of an interview with a representative of our NY Attorney General's Office which has exposed two of our major NYC hospitals which have been playing a game of extracting payments from patients for medical bills that are covered by their medical insurance.

The way that this game works is that the medical insurance companies either do not make payments required to the medical suppliers or else delay in making these payments. The suppliers -- mainly hospitals, but in our experience, doctors' offices as well -- demand payment from the patient -- sometimes with the threat of a collection agency. Nervous patients pay these bills and then are left holding the bag. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office has disclosed this fraud and required two of our major NYC hospital complexes to pay back patients so defrauded. His representative indicated that other hospitals are doing similar things either by carelessness or intent.

The number to call if one suspects that this game is being played with one's bills is 800-771-7755 for New Yorkers. I suspect others outside of NY are being victimized as well.

The U.S. medical system is now a disaster area costing twice as much as our nearest competitor for delivering medicine only to _some_ U.S. residents -- and then all too often in limited forms. The Spitzer's rep cited figures to the effect that we could cover all Americans with a single payer system (some 45 million are now left out) and actually SAVE money doing so. Our only equivalent which gives the best medical care for the lowest costs is our U.S. Veterans medical system. It should be the model for us 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]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Near Sewage Plant Blast in West Harlem

Sewage fireball threat in blackout
A sewage treatment plant in Harlem nearly exploded into a "catastrophic"
fireball during the 2003 blackout - a disaster only averted by a city worker
armed with an old broomstick, new records show.

FULL STORY http://www.nydailynews.com/front/v-echo/story/389932p-330641c.html

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

The North River Sewage Plant on the Hudson between 137 and 145 Sts in West Harlem has been a bit of an on-going disaster ever since it was mislocated there rather than further down the West Side where proper sewage treatment could have been instituted. An 'innovative' vertical system of treatment tanks there squeezed in to the inadequate space available do not work, resulting in the dumping of only partially screened sewage in the best of times and nearly full sewage when heavy rains flood storm drains connected with the sewage system overwhelming its capacity to strain out anything but large chunks of sewage. The Hudson River in no place to fish, despite the lack of prohibitions of same there.

After the plant was first completed the stench from it with the prevailing winds from the west made life for residents to the east almost unbearable. Then it was enclosed to prevent escaping ugly vapors -- exposing employees there all the more to hazardous unhealthy conditions.

Now we learn that a massive explosion from methane gas build up was barely averted during the 2003 black out? One wonders what next. It has a nice park on top as a sop to endangered nearby residents. Most who use it bus in from the Bronx.

And so it goes near where Columbia hopes to build its new Manhattanville campus -- with its extra sewage load burdens. Ed Kent
--
"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/440neighborhood
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

The REAL Threat to Future Generations

I have just been listening to an interview with Joseph Cirincione, the Nuclear proliferation expert of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/

on npr who summarized there the nuclear threats facing us down the line -- probably more Pakistan than Iran if an assassin's bullet or bomb takes out our ally, Pervez Musharraf, there and releases Pakistan's know-how and build up of nuclear bombs even further than may already have been the case to the terrorists who would presumably use them against the continental U.S. without the threat of territorial retaliation that holds in check most nations -- eight(?) -- now in possession of nuclear weapons or the increasing numbers that could produce them if the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty begins to break down:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/

No wonder we Americans are increasing the use of sleeping pills to get a night's sleep. If it is not a threat to our jobs, it is to our very existence if we live in a major American city where a shipping crate containing a stray nuclear bomb could be delivered -- we are not moving rapidly enough in picking up those bombs and nuclear materials scattered around the former Soviet Union states and relatively unprotected there from sale or theft.

I well recall the letters to the editor some years back in the Ithaca Journal following a report that 100,000 NYC refugees from a nuclear attack would be assigned to Ithaca -- the next day a host of gun owning letter writers indicated that any such radioactive refugees would be met by them en route and politely told to go back where they had come from.

The good news is that it would take some time for Iran to develop nuclear weapons -- Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Co. had supported the Shah back when with the development of a nuclear program there. We can hopefully negotiate some solution now and Iran would know that a nuclear attack on Israel would be suicide, given Israel's extensive supply of weapons itself. The problem is the other nations of the world breaking with the treaty and area conflicts erupting that would spread nuclear contamination world wide.

Let us hope that we can head off the culture war that so many seem bent on stimulating rather than seeking world peace for their children and grand children. I was a child of WW2 and supported fighting our enemies with all my childhood vigor -- I trained in aircraft observers in our front yard air raid warning center as to how to identify enemy planes and call in reports to Washington as an eight-year-old. I suffered nightmares about enemy attacks and watched our pilots practicing dog fights overhead -- one plane crashed and kids brought the pieces of the plane to school the next day to distribute. I went through officers training for the Korean War which Eisenhower ended just before I would have had to enter the Navy.

But any idiot can see now that all of our efforts must be directed to making world peace work while we still have time to avert global catastrophe -- the weapons of mass destruction are here and we must persuade any and all not to use them.

P.S. As I write this I hear that there is a news report of a nerve gas sensor sounding in a Senate building? Interesting that they are so protected. Wonder how well set up they are with nuclear bomb shelters? Or maybe they are too busy with Iraq for such things?
--
"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/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

How to Bankrupt the U.S. with only Two Terms in Office

As a college teacher, parent, and grand parent, I am appalled at what we are currently doing to our national economy. Many a wannabe empire has similarly bankrupted itself with such overreaching into military expenditures -- Spain in 1588, Hitler and Japan during WW2, Britain Post WW2, the Soviet Union last decade, and now the U.S.? I see no good outcome for the American generations after my own -- the baby boomers onwards. The Crash of 1929 will be a mere dull thud in comparison with current projections for the U.S. economic future -- either a mighty crash of the dollar that will bring the global economy with it or, hopefully for the rest of the world, merely a gradual withering away of it with a bang and whimper. Either way Bush and Co. will be remembered with contempt and hatred. Ed Kent

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

2007 Budget Favors Defense: 141 Programs to Be Cut or Halted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401179.html

President Bush plans to propose a $2.7 trillion budget tomorrow that would shrink most parts of the government unrelated to the nation's security while slowing spending on Medicare by $36 billion during the next five years, according to White House documents.
----------------
President to send Congress
$439.3 billion defense budget

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20060203-0013-defensebudget.html

February 3, 2006
WASHINGTON – President Bush's 2007 budget seeks a nearly 5 percent increase in Defense Department spending, to $439.3 billion, with significantly more money for weapons programs, according to senior Pentagon officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press.
------------------
Some Key Facts Concerning The President’s Budget Priorities For 2007

http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0203-12.htm

WASHINGTON - February 3 - In this week’s State of the Union, President Bush outlined the priorities of the Administration’s forthcoming budget. Several key facts necessary to understanding the impact of the President’s proposals, however, were not mentioned in the speech.
--
"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/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

The Down-sizing of Rural America

The Bush administration has just announced a drop in unemployment figures for this past month, coupled with a not terribly impressive increase in jobs:

http://news.google.com/news?q=January+Unemployment+Figures&hl=en&hs=ElF&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&sa=N&tab=nn&oi=newsr

The dirty little American secret is that in contrast to European countries, we do not really count the unemployed -- only those still looking. Also part-time and temporary jobs are counted as employment. The fact of the matter is that we have no real idea how many are desperate for jobs that can support them and their families. Certainly the figures for many trying to start jobs are pretty horrible and many others are being down sized in the middle of careers, leaving them and their families up against the wall -- all those bankruptcies when the credit cards run out.

I am particularly in touch with the situation of a small town in the North East Kingdom of Vermont not far from the Canadian line. When my parents retired they lived half the year in a family lake cottage where they had spent their first year of marriage as the Depression hit, living on my father's savings. In retirement they would rent a house for the colder half of the year. We inherited, thus, a two family house which we have kept up for the benefit of residents who would otherwise not have an affordable place to live.

The town is bit by bit dying -- many of the local stores have closed. The principal employer, Ethan Allen Furniture, is working reduced days and locals are terrified that they will either close entirely or ship their construction elsewhere.

The really sad item, however, is that the local teens in large numbers -- without incentives to finish school and with no jobs available (not counted presumably, as are the reduced income factory workers in our unemployment figures) -- are running wild. Many are now into drugs as well as alcohol and possibly selling the former to earn some monies. Last summer they terrorized the town by vandalizing many of its cars -- smashing windows down entire streets. Last night they threatened an ill friend -- struggling with MS, the recent deaths of both her husband and father. She is 54 and warmly known in the town where she clerked in the local pharmacy until her illness overtook her -- a mild and warm person. She has been threatened by these teens, as have many others -- they ran their cars over her lawn last night leaving it a mess and threatened to destroy her wheelchair to which she is confined. The local sheriff and his deputy (my friend's husband was the predecessor of the latter) are apparently powerless to control this threat to life and property and no available resources for teens seem to be available there -- or hopes for their futures.

One wonders in how many American towns such is the situation of those who no longer have resources to make a life. This community used to be quite prosperous with farming, local businesses, and winter and summer tourism jobs available to make one's living. Now only the retirees from more prosperous parts of the country -- Southern New England, New York and New Jersey are prospering there. The cost of living is up. We literally subsidize the two families living in our house at about half the going rents for comparable accommodations. Getting governmental subsidies for medicine, medical care, housing are a struggle, even in the state where Howard Dean as governor did much to assist the less well off with such things as reallocation of funds from wealthier to poorer school districts.

I fear that this is the new wave. I can remember when people were leaving the farms for jobs in industry. Now industry is departing and not much is left to replace it. We are being drastically down-sized as a nation, judging from what I am seeing of Orleans, Vermont.
--
"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/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

The Offensive Cartoons?

To put things a bit in perspective some 50+ languages are spoken among our students at Brooklyn College, representing all continents but Antarctica and our students getting along fine with each other despite conflicts in their home countries.

This anecdote comes from last spring or the one before. I was heading home after a heavy teaching day when I heard the chatter of young women's voices. A group of about half a dozen passed me by -- obviously all young Muslim women students. What was so typical and lovely was that they exemplified the full range of dress from traditional long skirts and scarves to typical American teen jeans and T-shirts with some mixed versions in between -- scarves with jeans.

As has always been the American tradition, we have had the transition by generations from the old ways to the new. What has been so sad since 9/11 has been the brutal oppression even in Brooklyn of our Muslims. I do in effect paralegal immigration and naturalization advising with our leading figure in this field, Allan Wernick. We fought like mad to keep with us one of our students whose family had been denied refugee status post 9/11. A 4'11" 'terrorist' from Bangledesh who loves pizza and rock and who was one of our super star pre-med. students. Her parents were both doctors (mother had just passed her U.S. boards) and the two younger kids Americans by birth. We won the battle to extend her studies with the help of our two Senators, two Congressmen (Rangel included) about 25 letters of support from out CUNY chancellor, president of Brooklyn College, faculty friends from her college and school years at our super school, Stuyvesant, which overlooked the World Trade Center, the attack upon which had horrified her.

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

However, Nee realized that her family was still at risk -- another comparable CCNY student family had been picked up and separated in different jails incommunicado and we have since learned that we had a Brooklyn Gulag where hundreds had been similarly dumped and brutalized by the guards -- one of whom went on the Abu Graib where he did similar for which he was prosecuted. I can give sources for two news reports on this -- one a year and a half ago by one of our Pulizer Prize winning faculty, Paul Moses, and one a couple of weeks ago in the NY Times:

http://www.bloggernews.net/2006/01/brooklyn-gulag-vicims-return-to-sue.html

http://www.bloggernews.net/showstory.asp?page=blognews/stories/UP0000624.txt

All across Amerika at $70.00 a day such people have been secretely dumped and held in county jails -- mainly in the South where they need the money. You will find a few articles here and there reporting this travesty. These people are dismissed as 'illegal aliens'. In fact many are quite legitimate people who have been singled out when visas to work or study have lapsed -- often because of delays by our underfunded agencies which must renew same each year -- we have periodic battles to save both our students and faculty, so I know whereof I speak from personal experience. See Allan Wernick with whom I work on such cases:

http://www.nydailynews.com/city_life/advice/wernick/

Such is a typical problem situation that is exploited by the Bush incompetents.

We no longer honor the First and Fourth Amendments in the U.S. The news that should be reported such as I have cited here is blocked by our corporate media. We are brutally killing Muslims over there (Fallusha et al) and abusing them here in the U.S. Insulting their prophet in violation of the long standing rule against "graven images" deriving from the matrix of the Ten Commandments is a last straw.
--
"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://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Imposing Democracy?

Oil Graft Fuels the Insurgency, Iraq and U.S. Say
By ROBERT F. WORTH and JAMES GLANZ
Officials see a pattern of corruption enabling the flow of
oil money to the insurgency that threatens to undermine
Iraq's economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/international/middleeast/05corrupt.html?th&emc=th

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

The U.S. and its allies occupied Germany and Japan with our troops for many years to impose democracy upon our former enemies. We had really a majority of Germans on our side in this effort and no threats of violence and the same was largely true of Japan as well.

The Iraq venture looks to be precisely the disaster against which Machiavelli warned in his The Prince -- occupying a hostile nation with one's troops can only result in resistance and a losing situation over the long run.

Probably the best for which we can hope in Iraq is some sort of Shia Islamic republic which will not be friendly to us and most likely will ally itself with Iran, also now made hostile by our past history of interventions there and insulting characterization as a "evil" nation by the accident of a speech writer's elaborations for one of Bush's key speeches.

What a g-d awful mess!

P.S. The Livy quote in my signature below also comes from Machiavelli's citation of it in The Prince -- the archetypal handbook on how and when to fight wars!
--
"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/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Fighting the Last War -- Again!

FOCUS | Pentagon Lays Out 'Long War' Strategy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406Z.shtml

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions US troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.

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

Strictly one should point out that the Pentagon seems to be preparing for some 19th century war involving colonial domination of the world -- the U.S. as the new British Empire? I hate to point this out, but that effort ended in failure -- the Brits bankrupted themselves out of funds for maintaining the troops to keep it up. I well recall the food rationing still going on in Britain when I was a teen student there in the 1950s.

What our Pentagon planners are setting out to do is:

1) cripple our nation by dumping monies into military hardware (the "military industrial" complex against which Eisenhower inveighed during his last weeks as president. I also recall a summer job with a major scrap mental company while I was in college at which one of my jobs for several weeks was destroying expensive bomb fuses ($100.00 each even in those days) at the rate of about 6 per minute with the whack of a mallet -- two of us at work destroying many thousands of leftovers. Check out the increasing numbers of military transports (still functional) being warehoused in deserts while new are constructed and the incredible prices of some of the newest equipment. Even supplying the rest of the world with military stuff won't allow us to break even -- and we do more than half of that, too!

2) make us hated throughout the globe. We have blown Latin America and are ending any supports for us in the Middle East among the secular Muslims by undermining their authority with a combination of killing them and preaching free enterprise democracy which looks to be bringing in the Islamists.

My military training taught us that idiot generals tend to fight the last war, thus, losing the present one. The Maginot Line was the archetypal example. The French thought it would deter any attacks from the East -- HA!

And so it goes with Rumsfeld and Co. -- about 125,000 Iraqis now dead; 2,500 American troops ditto and thousands more with major disabilities, both physical and mental. To cite Cindy Sheehan: "How many more must die?"

P.S. The trick now is making and keeping the peace!!!!
--
"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/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Big Brother Has Arrived and Is Watching -- YOU!

Increasingly, Internet's Data Trail Leads to Court
By SAUL HANSELL
Just as Internet companies collect more information,
prosecutors and civil lawyers are more readily using that
information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/technology/04privacy.html?th&emc=th

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

Routinely when I open my morning email I must delete 50-100 spams -- offering monies and various types of enticing bodies for instant perusal. I can't trust the usual spam detecting services because they are likely to screen out all sorts of legitimate communications -- family, students, even the blind copy from myself that accompanies my own postings!

This jolly NY Times report on internet screening by legal authorities and others would seem to indicate that any who slip up and hit the wrong button may well find him/herself caught up in, say, a child porn prosecution? And then there are my computers that are open to use by others -- all of them. I have offered my personal office computer for the use of those deprived of computer access in our college -- our adjunct teachers particularly -- and make it available to any and all others, e.g. our students.

I can't help but imagine that many an office computer is similarly unprotected or readily available for use by others than those to whom they are formally assigned.

If this is not 1984, I don't know what is:

http://www.shire.net/big.brother/

Big Brother has arrived and is now out there gathering g-d knows what garbage from us 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]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Killing Off the Old Folks as Well as the Poor?

Bush to Propose Curbing Growth in Medicare Cost
By ROBERT PEAR
President Bush intends to seek further increases in
premiums for high income people and reduce payments to
hospitals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/politics/04budget.html?th&emc=th

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

It looks as though Bush is on to killing off the old folks -- here as well as in Iraq -- with this latest budget game plan (increase funding of war on Iraq, cut taxes for the rich, cut essential coverage of medical needs for the seniors). Next thing one knows anyone who cannot jog a mile (and cut his swatch of sage brush) will be denied medical care automatically.

And so it goes in Bush's America.
--
"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/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Bigotry -- Not Free Speech

Temperatures Rise Over Cartoons Mocking Muhammad
By CRAIG S. SMITH and IAN FISHER
Meanwhile, the furor continued to spread in Europe, as the
French-Egyptian owner of a French newspaper apologized to
Muslims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/international/europe/03cartoons.html?th&emc=th

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

Were one to publish a cartoon version of:

* the 14-year-old African American boy portrayed in a widely distributed post card republished in Langston Hughes' History of the NAACP -- about to be fried well done in an American electric chair -- with cartoonist exaggerated lips and other caricatured features?

* an ugly hook-nosed cartoon caricature of an Auschwitz Jew about to be gassed?

* a cartoon version of a Catholic priest raping a small child?

One would have 'harmed' no one -- only 'offended' a good portion of the human race.

Anyone who has studied art history and come to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of Muslim abstract art -- which does NOT engage in "graven images" -- must cringe at the obscene insult to all Muslims perpetrated in the name of free speech?

One wonders how such idiots -- here, there, and elsewhere -- can be so stupid as to have so offended 1.2 billion Muslims. Such offensive behavior is manifestly culturally arrogant and bigoted.

Boycott Danish blue cheese!
--
"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://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

GOP Now Killing Off the Poor?

I happened to mention in one of my classes yesterday some advances in medicine such as the simple procedures now for heading off blindness due to glaucoma, the pressure build up in eyes that insidiously decreases peripheral vision and then blinds totally. I know of this personally as it caused my grandfather's blindness in his fifties, tragically blinded my mother in a time when medications had been developed to treat it, and I now take a drop a day in one eye where my pressure otherwise rises.

One of our pre-med students happens to be working in our local hospital, St. Luke's near Columbia, and reported that many of their patients cannot afford the $70.00 per tiny bottle of drops that would prevent such blindness. They might be prescribed to use a larger quantity than me and I get mine through our medical plan for a far smaller price. I cringe anytime I have to stand in line to pick up a prescription at Sally's Town Drug across the street from the hospital at the inevitable person ahead of me who exclaims that she (ordinarily an older woman) cannot pay for her prescribed medicine:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-23-hca-frist_x.htm

Given the fees on Medicaid patients now imposed by the 216-214 vote this past Wednesday in Congress and the previous one vote margin in the Senate (cast by Cheney as Vice President) in December:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060202-0014-budgetcuts.html

we must expect that an increasing number of Americans will needlessly go blind -- and, of course, others will die from other treatable conditions for which they do not receive basic medical care -- high blood pressure, colon cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer. I cannot believe that Senate Majority leader, Frist, himself a doctor under the cloud of having profited from selling off his stock in a medical operation just in time, did not fully know the implications here for which he organized a vote:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-23-hca-frist_x.htm

I recall Dave Rogers, among other things Cornell's University Professor in medicine, former dean of two medical schools, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, before his death, inveighing against greedy doctors. Now we seem to have an entire greedy party ready to kill to maximize its personal gains? And how disgusting is their sloganeering -- they are opposed to "big government" -- or the rest of us Americans who stand in the way of their greed?
--
"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/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Gila Svirsky: Hamas and Us

[Gila Svirsky is a prominent Israeli peace worker:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/middle_east/2002/voices/gila.stm

Ed Kent]

Subject: Hamas and Us
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:44:34 +0200
From: Gila Svirsky
To: Gila Svirsky

Hamas and Us

Gila Svirsky



1) Who's to blame?



Listening to the reactions of passersby at the recent Jerusalem vigil of Women in Black, you would think it was our peaceful little group that put the Hamas into power. This stems from Israeli right-wing politicians who are asserting that Hamas won because of the Gaza withdrawal and other conciliatory overtures, i.e., "rewarding terrorism". Indeed, Bibi Netanyahu & co. are delighted with the Hamas victory, on which they can now build a fear-saturated election campaign, and return voters to the fold who lately had slipped into something more moderate.



But here's my take on what made Hamas victorious in the recent elections: Israel's failure to sit down and negotiate an end to the occupation. This is often phrased as "the failure of Fatah to make progress on peace", but they amount to the same thing: the Fatah failed because Israel refused to offer any reward for moderation, refusing to sit down and negotiate with them.



And what about the corruption claim - that voting for Hamas was also a vote against the corruption of the Fatah politicians? This may have played a role for some voters, but since when does corruption bring down a politician? Certainly not in Israel, where Sharon's corruption has
been an open book, but forgiven by those who support his politics. Corruption is tolerated when approval ratings are high in other respects. The corruption of the previous Palestinian government would have been overlooked, had the politicians only managed to show some
progress on ending the occupation.



2) When terrorists become politicians



I remember standing on the balcony of my home in Jerusalem on a lovely May morning of 1977 and gasping when I heard who had won the Israeli election: Menahem Begin, former head of a Jewish terrorist organization that had killed 91 civilians by bombing the King David Hotel in 1946. And then it was Begin who returned the Sinai Peninsula and negotiated peace with Egypt. In 2001, Israel elected Ariel Sharon, responsible for blood-soaked episodes in Qibiya, Beirut, Gaza, Sabra and Shatila, and more. And then it was Sharon who returned Gaza - imperfect, but a singularly important precedent.



I condemn terrorism, whether 'rogue' or state sanctioned, and I would never have voted for Hamas (or Begin or Sharon). But who is better positioned than Hamas to reach a compromise peace agreement? We have the mirror image of Israel in the Palestinian election: Just as the
Israeli right (Begin and Sharon) could more easily make concessions than Yitzhak Rabin, who had to fight our right wing all the way, so too the Hamas can mobilize more support for concessions than the more moderate Fatah could now undertake.



3) About creeping fundamentalism



Yes, I am worried about Hamas rule, particularly its domestic agenda in Palestine: I worry about women, non-Muslims, journalists, gays, people in the arts, and all those who benefit from the open society. To what extent will the Hamas increase the role of Shari'a (Muslim) law in
civilian life? Or religious education in the schools? On the other hand, it's quite evident that Palestinians have experienced democracy and will not easily tolerate a closing of their society.



I take heart from this week's survey of the Palestinian population, published in the Palestinian Authority's Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda and reported in the Jerusalem Post*:

84% of Palestinians support a peace deal with Israel. In case you wondered if this includes the Hamas, 75% of Hamas voters are opposed to calls for the destruction of Israel. The Hamas knows that seculars comprise a large portion of their constituency.



4) And who benefits from ending foreign aid?


So along come American and Israeli politicians advocating for a policy that would isolate and punish the Palestinians by withholding financial aid. Everyone knows this would destabilize the fragile economy, harm the innocent (but not the politicians), and foster increasing bitterness
against the secular west. A much more reasonable approach would be to extend support and see how responsibly Hamas uses it. Or does someone have an interest in sowing chaos in the Palestinian territories?



Yes, I too would like to demand a renunciation of terrorism and violence as a precondition for talking ...I'd like to demand it from both sides. But realistically this has to be done as part of the negotiations.



Gila Svirsky

Jerusalem



http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622512446
&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull



___________________

Gila Svirsky

Coalition of Women for Peace

http://coalitionofwomen.org/home
--
"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/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Lori Berenson Update - 1/31/06

[Lori Berenson is the daughter of a CUNY faculty member cruelly imprisoned in Peru after being charged with associating with terrorists by a masked military tribunal under the corrupt Fujimori admininistation. Many members of Congress and the Clinton administration sought her release; she has more or less been abandoned by the Bush administration. Ed Kent]

Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 07:06:38 -0500
From: FreeLori.org Webmaster
Reply-To: lmfurst@freelori.org
To: announcements-list@freelori.org

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

To Friends and Supporters of Lori Berenson:

LORI SENDS NEW YEAR MESSAGE

Last month Lori sent the following end-of-year holiday message:

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Cajamarca in northern Peru. Thank you for your continue interest and support.

As another year comes to a close, one starts reflecting upon all tha has happened and what's to come the following year. Reaching my tent year anniversary in jail, I am happy to say that I've been able to witness the release of many prisoners, absolutions and the fulfilling of sentences. However, I've seen several disturbing cases in which th judges have not regarded things in a humane way, and politics hav played quite a role in this, much more than innocence or guilt.

Peru is entering into an electoral year. The April 2006 presidentia elections could mean certain changes in my existence - the possibl harshening of jail regulations or even the removal of prison benefits as it may not. What will continue, sadly enough, whoever gets elected is the increasing amount of dire poverty, lack of opportunities for th young, and a lot of unemployment. These things are inherent to th economic model that exists, whoever the head of state may be.

Yet I continue to be optimistic about the future of our world and tha is because I know we can, and will, make it different.

My best to you in this holiday season and coming year.

Lori Berenson
December 2005


PERU GOVERNMENT ALLOWS FILMING OF LORI WORKING IN BAKERY

Lori spent the majority of December working long shifts in the priso bakery. The Peruvian government permitted a TV news camera crew to fil Lori working in the bakery as she was busy preparing panetones, th traditional holiday fruitcake. The 37-second film begins with Lori
being interviewed as she is working and shows her rolling the dough.

This film can be seen on high-speed Internet systems by clicking on th URL
http://www.peru.com/noticias/idocs/2005/12/2/DetalleDocumento_264368.asp
and then clicking on Video. This won't work without a high speed
Internet system.

LORI'S ARTICLE "DEFENDING OUR 'WAY-OF-LIFE" BROADCAST ON RADIO

This morning Lori's article "Defending Our "Way-of-Life" was broadcas on public radio stations throughout the United States. Written in lat December, the article was read on the day President Bush was to delive his "State of the Union Address." Lori takes a critical view of the
failure of the Bush administration to properly handle the aftermath o Hurricane Katrina and questions what our values are and ought to be The article can be accessed from the homepage of the www.freelori.or website.

WE MOURN THE DEATH OF SISTER EILEEN STOREY

The year 2005 ended with the passing of yet another extraordinar individual who actively supported Lori among many other human right causes. Sister Eileen Storey died at age 80. Although she had been i failing physical health for the past several years, Sister Eileen
remained mentally strong until the last moment of her life and she neve ceased to be an inspiration to us and to all who knew her. Her lov and respect for all people and her deep commitments to humanity neve wavered and she championed the poor, the meek and the oppressed he whole life.

Sister Eileen was part of an ecumenical delegation that visited Lori i May 1999. Lori was fascinated by this short, thin, frail woman who having a pacemaker, still managed to visit her and also visit childre in Iraq and, in the bitter winter, stand in protest against the war and
bombing of Baghdad. Lori's last letter to Sister Eileen was read to he the morning of her death.

Our hearts go out to Sister Eileen's brother Brendan and her family, an to all those who were fortunate to have known her.

The year 2006 began without the presence of four great champions o human rights who meant so much to us - Joe Straley, Rabbi Balfou Brickner, Maurice Paprin, and Sister Eileen Storey. Each cared deepl about justice and each sought peace. In their memory, may this be the
year peace finally begins around the globe.

Rhoda and Mark Berenson
---------------------------------------------------------------------
English Website: www.freelori.org
Spanish Website: www.lorilibre.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://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net