Never Again!

[I have just posted the latest blog of Zena from Beirut:

http://beirutupdate.blogspot.com/

Zena is a talented young artist who exhibits both in Beirut and NYC, as one can discover from her website and reading through her blogs which recount the growing horrors of events in Lebanon. The similar on-going aftermath in Gaza is reported (below) by Gideon Levy.

I am particularly aware of the the effects of extreme heat on people, having ourselves just made it through a rough stretch of same here in NYC -- but with the aid of air conditioners and well-stocked refrigerators. I can imagine what people in Lebanon and Gaza are enduring -- and particularly their worries about the welfare of their children -- heat exhaustion to the virus currently raging through Lebanon as reported by Zena.

My children are now grown, but, as we are doing a stint of emergency baby-sitting for a young -- nearly two-years-old -- grandson this morning, I am all too conscious of the needs of the young. Had to rush out to find a bottle and baby food to cope until my daughter returns from an appointment.

The wars in the Middle East are manifestly the games of males -- macho in their eyes -- cowards in mine -- who are willing to attack defenseless women and children to further ego games of their own devising. May the gods -- or their own demons -- repay the Hasrallahs, the Olmerts and Peretz's, the Bushes and all others who wage war for no good ends with deadly weapons. Most of these characters have spent not a minute in the military. They do not realize the horrors involved in killing and being killed. For many, the former is the worse evil, as it will haunt one for the rest of a lifetime -- I have known some of those and how they suffered from the guilt of their actions -- the baby killer in the dock now is their true confrere. When I hear bush playing Jesus returned -- the stupid jerk -- I have to restrain myself from calling on the gods to punish him. Needless to say he is too ignorant and psychopathic to know the implications of what he is doing -- stay the course? What, yet another serving of child murders?

Pardon the rage here. But it is time for all of us who care about the welfare of young would-be mothers such as Zena, the children killed and terrified by random rockets in Israel, those killed and terrified in Lebanon, those who lost loved ones on 9/11, to say NEVER AGAIN! Yes, I know the origin of the expression and I hope those who have known the suffering of the Holocaust will join in stopping the scorched earth approach from on high launched by Israel's incompetent military leadership -- perhaps the growing protests of the Israeli reservists called upon to do this dirty work will be a starting point?

Let us hope. Ed Kent]

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

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/753203.html

Gaza swelters through summer without power
By Gideon Levy

It's hot, very hot, in the Gaza Strip. But over the last two months, ever since Israel bombed the new power station in the center of the Strip, the heat has become unbearable. The bombing has disrupted the supply of electricity to some 1.5 million residents; food in refrigerators goes bad, the patients in the hospitals groan, industry and work are paralyzed, traffic is gridlocked and there is a severe water shortage.

On the night of June 28, the Israel Air Force bombed the power station as part of Operation Summer Rains, destroying its six transformers. The assault was approved by the security cabinet, and was intended to pressure the Palestinians into releasing Gilad Shalit, the captured soldier.

The modern power station, financed by Enron in partnership with a Palestinian company, was completely paralyzed, and the Gaza Strip lost some 60 percent of its supply of electricity. Gaza buys the remaining 40 percent from the Israel Electricity Corporation.

On Sunday this week, the burned out and destroyed transformers were still lying near the power station's fence. Two were made by Israeli company Elco Industries, and four by the German ABB. The station, located between Gaza and Dir al Balah, was inaugurated at the end of 2001. It was to provide power not only to Gaza but to the West Bank too, after being linked in the future to the Israeli network.

Israel knew exactly what it was bombing, says station manager Dr. Drar Abu-Sisi. It's impossible to operate the station without the transformers. Replacing them would take at least a year - either by ordering new transformers or by hooking up to the Egyptian power network.

With a capacity of 140 megawatts, the power station was the most advanced in the Arab world. Israel could have paralyzed the station by simply stopping its fuel supply, without putting it out of action for months.

"Had they told us on the phone to cut the power off, we'd have done so right away," says Abu-Sisi, who is convinced that the bombing was politically motivated.

"It was a foolish attack, which only sows more and more hatred for Israel," he says.

Each transformer costs around $2 million, but the main damage is indirect - the loss of income to the power station, grave damage to all its systems that could rust, and the huge blow to the Gaza Strip's miserable economy.

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office told Haaretz yesterday that "the bombing was intended to disrupt the activity of the terror networks directly and indirectly associated with Gilad Shalit's kidnapping."

Meanwhile, the station's 160 workers are out of work and Gaza has electrical power for only a few hours a day. Those who can afford it buy generators, and everyone goes up on the rooftops at night to escape the burdensome heat inside.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

We Deported Our Best Defenders Against Terrorism

[After the Bush administration woke up to the fact that it had been asleep at the stick (vacationing in Crawford) when it should have been on the alert for the terrorist attack 9/11, it proceeded to shoot itself and us in the foot by brutalizing our best resources for fighting terrorism.

One of our CCNY Muslim students and her parents were picked up suddenly then and stuck in separate prisons. We protested and they were released. But I recall a brother-in-law picketing a prison in Brooklyn where we had incarcerated a number of Muslims who had not yet established green card status in this country -- many had applied as refugees which is a right for any fleeing persecution in a home country and which we freely granted to Cubans and to Russians during the Cold War. Only years later did we learn that we had created a brutal Brooklyn gulag where Muslims held incommunicado were being beaten prior to eventual deportation.

We fought to keep one of our finest students with us at Brooklyn College -- her family, too, had been denied refugee status from a repressive Muslim country after 9/11. We won the battle for her, but she realized that her parents (both doctors) were at risk, as were her American siblings born in this country, so as a 20-year-old she got on the web and discovered that her family could be reestablished safely in Canada where she sadly took them -- she loved pizza and rock and NYC. Now she is back in college there -- and not available with her family to provide support for our efforts to engage the Muslim world with more than randomly fired rockets, bombs, and bullets.

I well recall the Muslim who turned in two bomb-building Brooklyn roommates who were planning a terrorist attack on a subway transfer station through which I pass en route to Brooklyn College (Franklin Avenue) back in the late 1990's -- before one put oneself at risk for admitting any knowledge of or connection with wannabe terrorists.

All across our country we 'farmed out' to county jails on a per diem basis as 'material witnesses' or 'illegal aliens' thousands of Muslims who should have been our best resources in dealing with terrorism. Now, as the Bob Herbert Column implies below, anyone foolish enough to report danger may find him/herself either in prison or shipped back where he/she fled from. And Terence Daly's Op-Ed Times security report on our abysmal failures in Iraq indicates precisely what we did not have available to assist us there -- people who knew the languages and cultures.

I never did see the film which portrayed an American president as a jerk, but we obviously have a C student glad-handing frat president in the the White House where we need someone with smarts enough not to be run by our crazy neocons who can come up with nothing better than launching wars and bombing the hell out of presumed enemies.

We certainly miss our fine student who was studying in Stuyvesant High School on 9/11 across the way from the World Trade Center and who was as horrified as we all were by that event. Our deep loss is Canada's gain.

Ed Kent]

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Op-Ed Columnist
The Truth Puts You in Jail

By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 21, 2006

The problem with the way the United States government dealt with Abdallah Higazy had nothing to do with the fact that he was investigated as a possible participant in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

He was caught in a set of circumstances that was highly suspicious, to say the least. It would have been criminal not to have investigated him.

On the morning of the attack, Mr. Higazy, the son of a former Egyptian diplomat, was in his room on the 51st floor of the Millenium Hilton Hotel, which was across the street from the twin towers. He fled the hotel, along with all the other guests, after the attack. But a Hilton security guard said he found an aviation radio, which could be used to communicate with airborne pilots, in the safe in Mr. Higazy’s room.

When Mr. Higazy returned to the hotel three months later to pick up his belongings, he was arrested by the F.B.I. as a material witness and thrown into solitary confinement. Federal investigators were understandably suspicious, but they had no evidence at all that Mr. Higazy was involved in the terror attack.

And that’s where the government went wrong. In the United States, a free and open society committed to the rule of law, you are not supposed to lock people up — deprive them of their liberty — on mere suspicion.

The government could not link Mr. Higazy to the attack, and yet there he was, trembling in a jail cell, with no reasonable chance of proving that he was innocent.

This was cruel. It was unusual. And it was a blatant abuse of the material witness statute. People arrested as material witnesses are supposed to be just that — witnesses — not criminal suspects. (The witnesses are taken into custody when there is some doubt as to whether their testimony can otherwise be secured.)

When a person is actually arrested for a crime, the government has certain important obligations, including the obligation to provide a prompt arraignment and to demonstrate that there is probable cause that the suspect had committed the offense.

Mr. Higazy was held as a material witness while investigators searched for something to pin on him.

Court records show that eventually Mr. Higazy was coerced into saying that the radio was his by an F.B.I. agent who knew that if he didn’t elicit some kind of admission from the suspect, a judge would most likely set him free. Mr. Higazy said the agent made threats regarding his relatives back in Cairo, saying they would be put at the mercy of Egyptian security, which has a reputation for engaging in torture.

Mr. Higazy’s admission was not truthful, but that didn’t matter. The feds were happy to finally be able to accuse him of a crime. They charged him with lying to federal agents when he said the radio wasn’t his.

The case against Mr. Higazy fell completely apart when a pilot, an American, walked serendipitously into the Millenium Hilton, looking for the aviation radio he had left behind on Sept. 11. (It also turned out that the security guard had lied.) Mr. Higazy’s original story, which he had clung to as long as he felt he could, had been truthful. He was set free.

It’s scary to think about what might have happened to Mr. Higazy if the pilot hadn’t shown up to claim his radio.

What the government ignored in Mr. Higazy’s case and in so many other cases linked to the so-called war on terror, is that when it comes to throwing people in jail, a hunch is not enough. As Jonathan Abady, a lawyer for Mr. Higazy, said:

“The criminal justice system recognizes that before you deprive somebody of liberty in any significant way, you have to have some quantum of proof that they committed a crime, and the government didn’t have it in this case. What they had was a suspicion.”

Once we had voodoo economics. Now, in the age of terror, we have voodoo law enforcement. Mr. Higazy’s case is far from the most egregious. People have disappeared. People have been sent off to foreign lands to be tortured. People have been condemned to secret dungeons run by the C.I.A. People have been put away at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with no hope of being allowed to prove their innocence.

For five years now Americans have been chasing ghosts and shadows, and demanding that they confess to terrorizing us. Who’s terrorizing whom here?

We need to ask ourselves: Do we want a just society? Or are we willing to trade that revolutionary idea for a repressive government that gives us nothing more than the illusion of safety?

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

Killing Won’t Win This War
By TERENCE J. DALY

Published: August 21, 2006

San Francisco

THREE years into the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, everyone from slicksleeved privates fighting for survival in Ramadi to the echelons above reality at the Pentagon still believes that eliminating insurgents will eliminate the insurgency. They are wrong.

There is a difference between killing insurgents and fighting an insurgency. In three years, the Sunni insurgency has grown from nothing into a force that threatens our national objective of establishing and maintaining a free, independent and united Iraq. During that time, we have fought insurgents with airstrikes, artillery, the courage and tactical excellence of our forces, and new technology worth billions of dollars. We are further from our goal than we were when we started.

Counterinsurgency is about gaining control of the population, not killing or detaining enemy fighters. A properly planned counterinsurgency campaign moves the population, by stages, from reluctant acceptance of the counterinsurgent force to, ideally, full support.

American soldiers deride “winning hearts and minds” as the equivalent of sitting around a campfire singing “Kumbaya.” But in fact it is a sophisticated, multifaceted, even ruthless struggle to wrest control of a population from cunning and often brutal foes. The counterinsurgent must be ready and able to kill insurgents — lots of them — but as a means, not an end.

Counterinsurgency is work better suited to a police force than a military one. Military forces — by tradition, organization, equipment and training — are best at killing people and breaking things. Police organizations, on the other hand, operate with minimum force. They know their job can’t be done from miles away by technology. They are accustomed to face-to-face contact with their adversaries, and they know how to draw street-level information and support from the populace. The police don’t threaten the governments they work under, because they don’t have the firepower to stage coups.

The United States needs a professional police organization specifically for creating and keeping public order in cooperation with American or foreign troops during international peacekeeping operations. It must be able to help the military control indigenous populations in failing states like Haiti or during insurgencies like the one in Falluja.

The force should include light armored cavalry and air cavalry paramilitary patrol units to deal with armed guerillas, as well as linguistically trained and culturally attuned experts for developing and running informants. It should be skilled and professional at screening and debriefing detainees, and at conducting public information and psychological operations. It must be completely transportable by air and accustomed to working effectively with American and local military forces.

Bureaucratic ownership of this force will doubtless be controversial. Because the mission of international peacekeeping entails dealing mostly with civilians, the force would ideally be a civilian organization. But no civilian department is currently structured in a way that seems suitable.

At least initially, the force would most likely fall under the Department of Defense. The establishing legislation should include a fire wall, however, to guard against the tendency of paramilitary units to evolve into pure warriors with berets, boots and bangles.

Crucial to the success of this force is that the American people thoroughly discuss and understand the organization and its mission. Only by having this discussion can we avoid the example of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, which combined the Vietnamese National Police with American advisers to root the Viet Cong shadow government out of rural villages. The Phoenix Program was highly effective; because it was supposed to be secret, however, the program was not explained to the American people, and it became impossible to refute charges of torture and assassination. Without the support of the American people, the program lost momentum and died.

The legislation establishing the police force should firmly anchor it in respect for human rights. Its mission will be to advance American ideals of justice and freedom under the law, and it must do so by example as well as word. That will be both difficult and critical in a place like Iraq, where it would have to wrest control of the population from insurgents who regard beheading hostages with chain saws as acceptable.

Stringent population control measures like curfews, random searches, mandatory presentation of identity documents, searches of businesses and residences without warrants and preventive detention would be standing operating procedure. For such measures to be acceptable to the public, they must be based on solid legal ground and enforced fairly, transparently and impartially.

The police are used to functioning within legal restraints. Our armed forces, however, are used to obeying only the laws of war and the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice. Soldiers and marines are trained to respond to force with massive force. To expect them to switch overnight to using force only as permitted by a foreign legal code, enforced and reviewed by foreign magistrates and judges, is quite unrealistic. It could also threaten their survival the next time they have to fight a conventional enemy.

Forcing the round peg of our military, which has no equal in speed, firepower, maneuver and shock action, into the square hole of international law enforcement and population control isn’t working. We need a peacekeeping force to complement our war-fighters, and we need to start building it now.

Terence J. Daly is a retired military intelligence officer and counterinsurgency specialist who served in Vietnam as a province-level adviser.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Iran 'will not halt enrichment'

[If a military attack is launched on Iran, it would be in a position to:

1) disrupt the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia as well as Iran, itself.

2) retaliate against our nearest vulnerable ally, Israel.

3) disrupt our Iraq and Afghani 'operations'. See map for the strategic location of Iran between Iraq and Afghanistan and on sea route for oil out of Saudi Arabia:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/asie/images/iran-map.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/asie/irancarte.htm&h=689&w=706&sz=66&tbnid=6Dw_M5hnL5Bj-M:&tbnh=134&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Diran%2Bmap&start=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=image&cd=1

If you have trouble with a broken website here, just enter "Iran map"
into Google.

It looks as though we are entering a most dangerous period in world history. And sell your car and house while you still can. Ed Kent]

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

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5268380.stm

Iran 'will not halt enrichment'

Iran has launched a series of wargames to test its military
Iran has said it will not suspend uranium enrichment, a key demand of an international proposal aimed at resolving the nuclear programme row.

It comes two days before Iran was due to respond to a proposal by Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the US aimed at resolving the nuclear row.

Iran's foreign ministry said a final decision would be based on negotiations.

But he warned that a halt to uranium enrichment was "not on the agenda".

Enrichment halt 'illogical'

Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said suspending enrichment - a key step in the nuclear fuel making process - would be a return to the past.

His comments come a few days after Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said the country was ready to discuss the issue, but would explain in any talks that a halt to enrichment would be "illogical".

The international proposal to Iran calls for a suspension of uranium enrichment in return for the partial lifting of economic sanctions and assistance with nuclear technology.

Mr Asefi said Iran's response - expected by Tuesday - would be "multi-faceted", though he did not elaborate.

Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful

In July, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling on Iran to suspend enrichment by 31 August or face unspecified economic and diplomatic sanctions.

Iran has said that it would respond to any possible sanctions with a painful response - which may involve a cut in its oil production.

Missile tests

On Saturday, Iran launched a series of major military exercises, with 10 short-range surface-to-surface missiles being launched in a test on Sunday.

According to Iranian state television, the tests included a launch of a Saegheh (Lightning) missile, which reportedly has a range of 80 to 250 kilometres (50 to 155 miles).

The missile is not thought to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, news agency AP reported.

The Iranian military has said its wargames are a reaction to what it sees as a heightening of tension in the Middle East.

A military training plane caught fire and crashed after trying to make an emergency landing on a highway outside of Tehran. The pilot managed to eject safely.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Effective Teen Sex Policies

[Unwanted pregnancies and the spread of venereal diseases of which AIDS is the most deadly are presumably the outcome of our natural biological proclivity to engage in sexual relations at an early age, programmed into us genetically by millions of years of evolution -- short human lifetimes of earlier times warranted early sex and pregnancy to allow young parents to raise children before they, themselves, died or were killed. The upshot, however, is that more than 50% of our teens now have had sexual experience. The abstinence approach advocated by conservative religious/moral systems is the least efficient in protecting teens both from pregnancy and deadly infections.

I was particularly alerted to the specifics by a graduate medical research paper that one of my daughters submitted last week on this topic based on 4 major studies which concurred with the data supporting 'safer sex' (i.e. proper education and provision of protections such as condoms against pregnancy and disease) as by far the best and, thus, only way to go. Abstinence apparently is the least effective and only increases male aggression and risks! What follows are the abstract from my daughter's paper and a report of Bill and Melinda Gates' response along similar lines. Ed Kent]

Abstract: "Early Interventions Protecting Adolescent Children"

Due to biological imperatives and hormonal changes which begin in early adolescence, adolescents are at risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases and becoming pregnant. Policy-makers and health care practitioners must be guided by best evidence when choosing interventions to keep adolescents and potential unborn children safe from these risks. In a comparison of four studies, it was found that abstinence-only interventions actually increased the sexual activity of participating males. An “abstinence plus” approach was somewhat effective when applied to younger students who were still sexually naïve. A “safer sex” approach advocating condom use decreased the likelihood that teens would engage in unprotected sex. Therefore, in conclusion, “abstinence plus” interventions may be the best approach for educating younger teens, and “safer sex” may have the highest efficacy for older teens, 50% of whom are probably sexually active already.

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,,1844772,00.html

Gates breaks ranks with attack on US Aids policy

· Billionaire says focus on abstinence has failed
· Call for more rights for women and sex workers

Sarah Boseley in Toronto
Tuesday August 15, 2006
The Guardian

Bill and Melinda Gates came off the political fence yesterday and backed key causes of Aids campaigners, criticising the abstinence policies advocated by the US government and calling for more rights for women and help for sex workers.

Making the keynote speech of the opening session of the 16th International Aids conference in Toronto, Canada, the Microsoft billionaire and his wife spoke with passion and commitment about the social changes necessary to stop the spread of HIV/Aids.

The so-called ABC programme - abstain, be faithful and use a condom - has saved many lives, Mr Gates told the conference of more than 20,000 delegates. But he said that for many at the highest risk of infection, ABC had its limits. "Abstinence is often not an option for poor women and girls who have no choice but to marry at an early age. Being faithful will not protect a woman whose partner is not faithful. And using condoms is not a decision that a woman can make by herself; it depends on a man.

"We need to put the power to prevent HIV in the hands of women. This is true whether the woman is a faithful married mother of small children or a sex worker trying to scrape out a living in a slum. No matter where she lives or what she does, a woman should never need her partner's permission to save her own life."

The Gates Foundation is funding research into microbicides - gels or barrier creams that a woman can use before sex and that could destroy the virus.

Mrs Gates called for an end to the stigma that affects those with HIV. "Stigma makes it easier for political leaders to stand in the way of saving lives," she said, in an attack on some African leaders influenced by the pro-abstinence agenda of the Bush government and the Christian fundamentalist right in the US. "In some countries with widespread Aids epidemics, leaders have declared the distribution of condoms immoral, ineffective or both. Some have argued that condoms do not protect against HIV, but in fact help spread it. This is a serious obstacle to ending Aids ... If you oppose the distribution of condoms, something is more important to you than saving lives," she said.

The promotion of abstinence is a key policy of George Bush's $15bn (£7.9bn) five-year President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar). By law, 33% of funding must be spent on policies that promote abstinence outside of marriage.

The UN special envoy for HIV/Aids to Africa, Stephen Lewis, accused the Bush government of neo-colonialism. He has given his backing to US Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who has introduced legislation to get the abstinence-first rule overturned. "No government in the western world has the right to dictate policy to African governments around the way in which they structure their response to the pandemic," he said.

Ms Lee, one of the chief authors of the Pepfar legislation, said she had the backing of 80 members of Congress and 70 non-governmental Aids organisations.

"For women, the abstinence-until-marriage policies make no sense when they face gender discrimination, violence and rape and can't control their own bodies," she said.

Jodi Jacobson, executive director of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity in the US, said that in some African countries abstinence policies were absorbing much more than 33% of Pepfar's prevention funding. "In Nigeria nearly 70% went to abstinence-until-marriage policies. In Tanzania, the newest grant is 95% on abstinence and be faithful programmes for youth aged 15-24," she said.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Cult Groups Know Just When to Pounce

[Cults pouncing on the unwary young are scarcely a new phenomenon -- nor restricted to Islam. I have had any number of students who have had to disentangle themselves from such groups as the Moonies, the Eastern Farm Workers, and others -- a family member in fact caught and estranged from the rest of us. In many cases such victims -- for that is what they are ordinarily of individuals bent on extracting monies or on power trips -- can be rescued or may see the light themselves. The tactic, however, is to wear down and wear out such uncertain young people until they are willing the do the bidding of their controllers -- up to and including suicide missions.

The bottom line here is that we must distinguish between the cultist versions and the real thing of religions which are ordinarily benign unless stirred up to engage in religious wars. The necons here in the U.S. look to be an extremely dangerous cult group which has already committed the U.S. to one disastrous war -- Iraq -- and is striving apparently for another with Syria and Iran. Yes, there are political as well as religious cults that can brain wash whole nations, lest we forget Hitler and Stalin. Ed Kent]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/europe/17converts.html

Fundamentalists
Hungry for Fresh Recruits, Cult-Like Islamic Groups Know Just When to Pounce
James Hill for The New York Times

By SARAH LYALL
Published: August 17, 2006

LONDON, Aug. 16 — When he converted to Islam six years ago, Nicholas Lock said, he faced two immediate difficulties. One was the aggressive skepticism of his father, an English professor and Oxford graduate who mockingly asked, “Do we have a convert on our hands?” and then proceeded to cook pork for dinner — bacon, sausages, chops — every night for a week.

The other, potentially more troubling in its way, was the greedily opportunistic reaction of various Muslim groups to Mr. Lock when he arrived at the University of Leeds to begin his studies that fall. They fell upon him as if he were a prodigal son.

“As a new convert, when you first become a Muslim, a lot of people try things out on you,” said Mr. Lock, 24, who also uses the Muslim given name Mahdi and runs a support network for Muslim converts in Nottingham. “They want you to come to this meeting, this talk. Certain radical groups want you because you’re impressionable, and it looks good to get white guys.”

Mr. Lock likened some of the organizations that approached him to cults, like Hizb ut-Tahrir, which says it is nonviolent but preaches the establishment of a caliphate, or pan-Islamic government, and has been banned from some Middle Eastern countries. “They think you don’t know anything, and they pounce.”

The potential vulnerability of converts to extremism — especially young men —is of particular concern now, considering that 3 of the 24 people arrested last week on suspicion of plotting to use explosives to blow up trans-Atlantic airplanes were converts. Neighbors and friends of the three have said that at least from the outside, it appeared that their transformations from aimless Western youths to highly observant Muslims were bewilderingly thorough.

One of the suspects, Abdul Waheed, whose late father was a local Conservative Party official, is said to have converted within the last six months, changing his appearance, behavior and friends, and marrying a Muslim woman believed to be from Morocco.

In addition, Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, was a British-born convert to Islam who discovered religion while serving a prison sentence for a string of petty street crimes and muggings. He is currently serving a life sentence in the United States after being convicted of trying to blow up an airplane over the Atlantic by igniting explosives in his shoe.

There are no official statistics on how many converts to Islam live in Britain. Yahya Birt, a convert who is a research fellow at the Islamic Center in rural Leicestershire, puts the number at slightly more than 14,000, an extrapolation based on the number of people who described themselves as Islamic converts in the Scottish 2001 census (the census for England and Wales did not ask about conversion).

Clearly, only a minuscule percentage of converts turn to active radicalism, and there are many reasons for converting: an admiration of Islamic texts and practices; a desire by women to remove themselves from what they perceive as the aggressive sexualization of Western life; the countercultural rebellion of the younger generation against their parents’ liberalism; a sense of outrage at Western policy in places like Iraq and Lebanon.

But among young people in Britain, a common theme seems to be adolescent anomie, a longing for answers in a world full of intractable questions.

“It’s not a physical thing — it’s a passionate approach,” said Khalad Walaad, a spokesman for the Bradford Islamic Center, in the north of England. “When someone is looking for something, it’s us who can lead him as a human being.”

Myfanwy Franks, a researcher who has studied converts to Islam and is the author of “Women and Revivalism in the West: Choosing Fundamentalism in a Liberal Democracy,” said, “Being troubled does not necessarily lead people to conversion — people who aren’t troubled convert — but it could lead to extreme radicalization.”

Mentioning reports in the news media that Mr. Waheed was a heavy drinker and drug user before turning to Islam, Ms. Franks added: “I think there’s a tendency for some people, when they stop using some kind of addictive substance, to be left with a big hole in their lives. To do something extreme is the easiest way to go, because it fills that big hole.”

Britain has a number of well-known converts, including Mr. Birt, 38, who is the son of John Birt, the former director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation and who changed his name from Jonathan when he converted, 16 years ago; Joe Ahmed-Dobson, 30, the son of Frank Dobson, a former Labor health secretary; and the singer and Muslim campaigner Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens.

Perhaps the highest-profile female convert is Yvonne Ridley, a former correspondent for The Sunday Express who began studying Islam after she was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. Now the host of a daily current affairs talk program on the Islamic Channel, Ms. Ridley, who wears a hijab that covers her hair and neck, said that Islam for her is a welcome antidote to Western libertinism. “What’s more liberating — being judged on the size of your I.Q., or on the size of your bust?” Divorced, with a 13-year-old daughter, she has stopped drinking and having flings. “I never sit in, waiting for the telephone to ring,” she said, “and I’m never dragged in to immaterial rows by inconsiderate, useless men.”

Many converts are apolitical, but for people like Ms. Ridley, who says that “this war on terror is a war on Islam,” religion is inextricably bound with politics. Increasingly, that seems to be the case, among Muslims in general, and among converts.

“It’s become much more political since 9/11,” Ms. Franks, the researcher, said.

Before Sept. 11, converts tended to discuss spiritualism and personal choice, she said, “but now they’re not talking like that.” She added: “I think there’s this polarization now. It’s like the middle ground has disappeared.” Where women once tended to wear head scarves — even in her hometown of Bradford, in West Yorkshire — she says that she sees many more in garments that cover their entire bodies, including their eyes. “It’s a political statement,” she said.

For young white men in economically blighted sections of the north, where jobs are scarce and disaffection is high, she said, Islam speaks to their masculinity, offering a place of refuge and a solid political base from which to reject their heritage. “The greater Muslim community is transnational and supranational,” she said. “It gives them an identify and a togetherness which is inevitably going to be against the West, because of their identity with other Muslims.”

Since the government began cracking down on imams who preach violent jihad against the West, many mosques have posted signs that expressly forbid political discussion inside. So recruiters who single out converts or the newly pious tend to do it on the streets outside the mosque or in universities and prisons, with their captive and impressionable populations.

“A lot of conversion happens at life changes, and there’s no doubt that you have radical recruiters who see new converts who come in to the faith as really good targets for their perverted ideologies,” Mr. Birt said. “The crucial thing is getting them near the time of their conversion, when they’re not settled in, where there’s a lot of feelings and emotions.”
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Another Wave of Homeless Vets?

[I recall all too well arguing the case (successfully) before the ACLU board that we should press for amnesty for the 300,000 Viet Nam vets who had been given dishonorable discharges, meaning that they would be ineligible for any veterans benefits -- medical care or whatever. Most of these cases had either gotten involved with drugs -- a common recourse out there to stress -- or had disobeyed an order or slugged a superior. The ACLU took this line, but the nation did not. And so we saw the era of the homeless -- mainly Viet Nam vets destroyed by their experience, jailed, dumped on the streets.

We have just seen Britain amnesty the 300+ shot during WW1 for desertion -- now assumed to have been suffering what was called '"shell shock." We now hear that our veterans' benefits are being shaved back at precisely the time when thousands need them most. Ed Kent]

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0633,murphy,74181,5.html

Waiting for Reinforcements
The fighting won't end: Gearing up for another wave of homeless vets
by Jarrett Murphy
August 15th, 2006 10:43 AM

On the first Tuesday in August, Thomas Mullifield, who fought with the Army in Vietnam from 1964 to 1967 and struggled with alcoholism in the 1990s, was engaged in another battle—against the overheated, leaden air filling the residence that he and 149 other vets call home on Commonwealth Avenue in the Bronx. It was the first day of the big heat wave, and Mullifield, with a donation check freshly deposited, was trying to track down air conditioners for the New Era shelter. He found some at a Home Depot in Mount Vernon. Victory.

The rest of the $62,000 (a gift from the New York State Association of Electrical Contractors and IBEW Local 3) was already earmarked for new furniture. But who knows where the cash would come from for a new paint job on the New Era Veterans residence or for the other projects that Mullifield, who works as veterans services director there, wants to tackle at the 13-year-old shelter? "It's unending," he says. So is demand. The waiting list to get into the facility usual holds 30 to 35 names of men and women (there are eight ladies in the residence now) who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and periods in between. The logjam is a fact of life, Mullifield knows.

But what bothers him are the phone calls he's been getting lately—four or five a week—about Iraq or Afghanistan vets who have no place to stay. None live at New Era yet; they have to go through the city shelter system first. But the fact that they are out there, just as he once was, pisses him off. "I can't see a young kid going through what I went through," he says.

A fulcrum question this political season is whether to set a firm timetable on when to bring the troops home from Iraq. But one way or another, sooner or later, they will come. According to one estimate there will be a million of them. As in the past, some will be fine when they return to civilian life, and some won't.

This summer several area veterans groups are claiming that New York City, for its part, is failing to prepare for the returning warriors—ignoring the lesson lived by thousands of earlier vets who've ended up on the city's streets, in state prisons, or just generally lost. They're upset that the City Council failed to move on a bill drafted by Hiram Monserrate to place Veterans Resource Centers in every borough. They're peeved that Mayor Bloomberg's office of veterans services has a budget of merely $202,000 and a staff of only three. And they're furious that the city is now trying to collect back salary from reservists and guardsmen who stayed on the city payroll when they went overseas years ago.

The Bloomberg administration has responded that it offers veterans lots of benefits, like property tax breaks and preference in hiring for jobs. The city also spends millions indirectly on veterans through the departments of Homeless Services and Health and Mental Hygiene; together those agencies are providing more than $2 million to the New Era residence under current contracts. And when the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said it was considering consolidating VA hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Bloomberg told a federal panel that they ought to keep them all open. "It goes without saying that these are all top-priority services, and they all must be maintained," he testified last year. (The VA announced last week that it will keep both facilities open.)

To local vets groups, the city's efforts don't pass muster. "Supporting the troops is more than a slogan. Supporting the troops is putting words into action," says Joe Bello, a Navy vet from the Gulf War era. A property tax break only helps if you can afford to buy a house, Bello points out. Job preferences only assist those in a position to seek such jobs. And a little outreach to returning veterans now, the critics say, could save this generation of vets from having to use city-funded shelters later.

Bello organized an angry rally on the City Hall steps last month featuring a panoply of vets groups: Vietnam Veterans of America, Black Veterans for Social Justice, Incarcerated Veterans Consortium, Veterans for Peace, American Veterans for Equal Rights, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). There were calls for state as well as city action, especially regarding testing vets for exposure to depleted uranium. And there was an undercurrent of political threat, with references to the 300,000 vets in the city and the power they could wield at the ballot box. Local pols had better listen, Bello warned. "If you do not," he said, "like the Bonus Marchers of the 1930s, we will return."

IAVA is already laying the foundation for a political movement with its VoteVets PAC, which funds only candidates who are veterans of the current wars. They're backing candidates in six House races this year, so the value of VoteVets' efforts won't be known until November.

At places like New Era, in the Bronx, vets are fighting more private battles. Many struggle with alcoholism, physical problems like amputations stemming from diabetes, or mental woes like post-traumatic stress disorder. Most residents get veterans benefits of about $600 a month, and many work outside the center. All pay 30 percent of their income to live in one of the single rooms at New Era, one of two shelter facilities in the city that cater exclusively to veterans. It's a permanent residence, so while some residents eventually move on, others stay indefinitely. There are movie nights, poetry groups, music sessions, a gym, counseling. Although residents are supposed to take care of themselves, sometimes there's food on hand for guys who can't afford their own, obtained at a local pantry or through Feed the Children or City Harvest. Mostly, there's company. "They find living here comfortable because they're with veterans and they can relate," Mullifield says. And they're candid about how much they blame their time in uniform for what's happened since.

Pedro Arteaga, for example, says as he waits for the elevator that his life really turned for the worse after he had knee surgery in 1994, when he started drinking to kill the pain. There might be some connection, though, to his time in the Navy in the '80s when he went on an assignment "where the shit hit the fan," he says. He was 24 and on the backup team for an extraction mission in El Salvador. As his squad moved in, Arteaga was about to say something to his lieutenant when a bullet popped a huge hole in the officer's chest. "I just started shooting anything that moved," Arteaga says. The problem was, the guys he was exchanging fire with were the other U.S. team. "I killed our own guys. I was the only one who survived. All I knew was, they were shooting at me, so I shot at them. That evening I got a bottle of tequila. That killed the pain." He's been at New Era for three years, and is suing for benefits after being turned down for a disability.

Keith Jones, who on a recent day was cleaning the floors in the lobby, never saw combat. An antiwar activist when he was drafted, he avoided Vietnam because his typing skills made him a valuable headquarters clerk. When he was discharged he moved around jobs in construction, warehousing, printing, steel mills, and shipbuilding. "Then came on computers and those jobs disappeared. In fact, every job I've had is obsolete," he jokes. When the shipbuilding company went to Maine, Jones went to care for his ailing dad in D.C. Gigs painting houses soon dried up, so he started drinking; he ended up at New Era about six years ago. "Everybody under 60 is still looking for work," Jones says of his fellow tenants. The trick for him is that when he goes to get a job, background checks show a criminal record he swears he doesn't have.

Down the hall is a computer room that Aldis Hodges built for the residents. He fixes and sells PCs to raise money for the facility and a little cash for himself, using a skill he picked up during his time in the Marines. Hodges's problems started when that stint ended. "I'm one of the many who was caught up in the first downsizing in the military," he says. "One day I'm in the military, the next day they tell me they don't need me any more. It was a traumatic experience for me. I was never prepared to deal with not being in the military after almost nine years of not having another care in the world." Hodges says the jolt of his discharge killed his marriage (from which he has two children) and left him with no place to go. He entered New Era seven years back. He says he's in no rush to leave.

But Dorcedious Davis is. She's trying to move out so she can take in her niece, whose mother, Davis's sister, died a couple years back. Davis was an Army medic in the Gulf War who was injured in a vehicle accident during Desert Storm. The damage derailed her return to civilian life. "I was working for the post office," she says. "The seizures got worse and I couldn't continue to perform my duties." A year later—five years ago—she entered New Era. Since then she's obtained her college degree and built New Era's fairly large library of books and videos. She's lost some memory because of her injuries and has battled depression, but in New Era, "I've found myself," she says, surrounded by books ranging from pulp to fine literature and movies that, yes, include war films. She says she's careful about when to screen those flicks, because there are residents at New Era who have flashbacks.

Mullifield himself didn't bottom out until 1999, when he got divorced and ended up homeless. He entered a rehab center for vets and found sobriety, God, and a mission. "I seen what's going on with the vets," says Mullifield, a steady smoker who sports a couple of mean- looking tattoos. "I kind of carried that." He remembers too well what it was like to return from war. "When I came home I was off the hook, a gunslinger," he says. "You couldn't tell me anything."

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans believes one out of every three men who live on the street is a vet. But whether Iraq and Afghanistan vets emerge as a sizable homeless population in New York depends not only on how many troops have trouble, but also how large their woes appear amid wider struggles. A spokesperson for Homeless Services says veterans are only a small part of the population in city facilities, and that Iraq and Afghanistan vets haven't shown up in shelters yet.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Suicide Cults?

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

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

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

http://www.rickross.com/reference/waco/waco159.html

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

http://islam.about.com/cs/currentevents/a/suicide_bomb.htm

Unfortunately suicide cults are not all that rare phenomena. We have had at least two or three American ones do their mass suicide things in recent years -- Jim Jones, the Waco nut, and one other, as I recall, which inspired hundreds of their followers to hasten to eternal oblivion.

During WW2 we Americans were appalled by the Kamikaze attacks on our warships -- young Japanese flyers bolted into 'flying bombs' with no hope of escape other than to crash themselves into an American warship -- few succeeded. We Americans were ok with killing, even mass killing of innocent civilians, but we blocked at not at least giving our bomber pilots some small chance to survive, even if a small one (they would bomb Tokyo without sufficient fuel to return to base and then fly on to China with hopes of survival there).

All of these cult things share one phenomenon in common -- a god tells them to do it -- some divinity!

Needless to say our major world religions do not sanction suicide -- if anything just the reverse. Those who have committed suicide were in the old days condemned to hell, their properties expropriated from their heirs.

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

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Religious%20Prohibition%20of%20Suicide&hl=en&hs=1Aj&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&oi=scholart

The evidence of religious opposition to suicide is manifest in the nearly universal opposition even to mercy killing or euthanasia where allowing a suffering person to die would seem most reasonable -- or the Terri Schiavo case which caused such a stir:

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

The bottom line, then, so far as the Islamic or any other suicide/homicide bombings are concerned is that they should be condemned by all -- both outside and within their host religions as deviant anti-religious acts -- sins against mankind and any notion of a benevolent deity. Suicide bombers are either mad or they have been seduced into acts which lead them straight to the hell from whence their actions spring -- perhaps there is a Satan down there after all?
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Alternative Peace Plan to Armageddon Now

Obviously the mad neocon tampering with the Mid East is expanding the chaos there in no one's interest. Here is an alternative approach to consider:

1) that Israel reach out to the Lebanese whose lives it has devastated and offer to redirect about 1/3 of the aid that it receives annually from the U.S. to rebuilding the destruction that it has wrought.

2) that the Israel negotiate a settlement of its holdings of Iraq in return for a guarantee that Iraq discontinue sending military supplies to Lebanon -- with the fail safe that Israel could do to Iraq what it has done to Lebanon.

3) that the U.S. negotiate a program of supervision of the nuclear plant development in Iran in return for not seeking economic sanctions on Iraq for continuing the possible construction of a nuclear weapon -- with the fail safe that the U.S. and Israel could do to Iran what Israel has done to Lebanon and the possibility eventually of an all out nuclear war down the line which would make most of the Middle East and much of the rest of the world uninhabitable.

4) that the U.S. and Britain work towards removing their troops from Afghanistan and Iraq -- with the promise of on-going financial aid to rebuild the destruction with which they have afflicted the two countries -- based on the condition that each achieves and maintains peace among its warring factions.

All should recall that both Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons already and each could presumably devastate the other and, again, make much of the world uninhabitable. Possible outbreaks of hostilities there are what we should all be worrying about.

Not a few of my students who have migrated from the Ukraine have suffered from the after effects of the nuclear dusting there -- serious life-threatening cancers at an early age. A carelessly provoked outbreak of war down the line (such as the Lebanon one seems to be) with such weapons of human destruction is what we all ultimately have to fear. And lest we forget, Pat Roberson, a major Bush supporter, is slavering for Armageddon Now.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Our On-Going American Holocaust of Young African American Men

The recent reports on the situations of NYC young African American men -- fewer that half finding employment and the rest tending to end up with long prison sentences -- are totally depressing -- particularly for those of us who hoped for much better many decades ago. I am one of those.

When I was a young teen I had several years of experience with young kids as a camp counselor in Vermont and NY State -- working often with my lifetime best friend, Dan Huden, who went on also to become an academic. I also briefly as an exchange student to a British public school spent a school break working with comparable teens in the East End of London in a community center. Many of the latter were partial or full orphans from the war.

During my first year of studies at Union Theological Seminary in 1956-7 I opted to do as field work what I knew well -- working with teens in West Harlem at the Manhattanville Community Center. That experience was a shock in comparison with U.S. summer camp kids and British teens from the poorest of London communities. Our West Harlem kids were growing up in nightmare conditions. They were deprived of decent medical care, decent housing, and even enough support for decent meals. Many of their families had been broken up by the "No man in the house" rule which applied to those receiving welfare -- the returning veterans had displaced both minority men and women generally from their factory jobs which they had been encouraged to take during the manpower shortages of of WW2.

I soon acquired a little gang of about 12 whom I tried my best to assist. Rather than sports I soon learned that the best activity that we could take up was cooking -- I would bring a cake mix. They were all hungry 12-13-year-olds. The were also scared most of the time by the violence in the 'hood. I persuaded them at one point to leave all their improvised weapons in a bottom drawer in my UTS dorm room. I came home one night and found them all gone -- a special threat to them had come up.

In one case two of them had their lives totally disrupted by a literally insane social worker -- grad of Vassar. I saw her madness first hand -- she was terrified and kept insisting that every male she saw was a communist. I saw her threaten the mother of two of my kids in front of them that she would take them away if she had another child. When she attempted an abortion with a coat hanger a bit later I got to take Brother Boy to the Orangeburg State Mental hospital -- the only place for African American kids who had been orphaned.

The upshot was that I became big brother/father figure for about 12 kids. The only other positive role model was the sole African American cop in the 26th Precinct. All the other men were doing things that led to prison sooner or later where nearly all of my little gang were to end up eventually. Nearly all had died violently by their forties -- I met one of the survivors, Odell Terry, the most violent then who got into the Marines without a prison record and then went on to a career as a hero NYC cop. He told me that of the rest 9 were dead, one was homeless on the West coast, one had made it and was living on Long Island, and he had just retired from his 20 years as a cop. I will spare the details of some of them for reasons of space -- armed robbery, male prostitution, etc.

I felt terrible abandoning these kids after my year with them to get married and pursue my next year of studies at Oxford. I only ran into the rest occasionally here and there to hear the generally latest bad news. The one thing I could do was to fight for higher education for these kids which I did briefly working as Aid to J. Raymond Jones, Harlem political leader as he was working with blue collar union leaders and Kenneth R. Clark:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Clark_(psychologist)

to open up CUNY (The City University of NY) to all. And as soon as I could I started teaching in CUNY colleges -- Hunter, CCNY, and finally Brooklyn where I have been since open enrollment formally started in 1970. My classes now have students from all backgrounds, but there is about a 3/2 ratio of African American women to men at CUNY. And I am not sure that even that figure is not blurred by the mixing in of those better educated in Africa and the Caribbean. I see little kids who come to special events at Brooklyn College with obviously harassed and over pressured teachers -- the turn over rate is immense for them and many either switch careers or move out the 'burbs where the teaching life is better paid and less stressful.

The bottom line is that SOME of my kids' generation of children and grand children are making it into our CUNY classes. But NY has lost its blue collar jobs and there is obviously a terrible class divide that is still killing off our young African Americans. This is our on-going American Holocaust!
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Why the Neocons Want to Go to War with Iran?

http://www.alamut.com/subj/ideologies/alamut/hitti_Ass.html

http://www.worldhistoryplus.com/i/ismailites.html

http://www.amaana.org/heroes/note010.htm

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations#Huntington.27s_The_Clash_of_Civilizations

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

If one follows the sequence of websites above, one will discover a history of a sub sect of medieval Islamic terrorism which has fascinated such contemporaries as Bernard Lewis and Samuel P. Huntington and encouraged the wars that we have been drawn into by the neocons against Afghanistan and Iraq. Francis Fukuyama, once a neocon himself, has broken with this compulsion to replay the ancient crusades and has become a critic of the Iraq folly. Presumably if recent reports are to be believed, a May 23 directive from Bush to Olmert was to attack both Syria and Lebanon in preparation for a war on Iran. Olmert apparently demurred from the Syrian half of this deal. What will follow? A new drive by Bush while in office to carry out this program -- or a restoration of peace?

Comments?
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Reparations for the Innocent Victims?

Callous disregard for the innocent victims of modern warfare seems to be increasing -- or is it that vivid TV images force us to face up to what in previous wars were merely written reports of the effects of Dresden, Nagasaki, My Lai?

I first became really conscious of deliberate violations of the rule of law by democratic governments at one of our Columbia University Faculty Seminars back about the time Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant under development:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm

Many of our seminar members were distressed by this preemptive strike -- as a violation of international law. I defended it as an exception which justified preemption for self-defense -- perhaps had I known what we would do to Iraq under the same rubric, I might have had second thoughts. However, to the point here, Israel had struck the plant late at night during a weekend so that no lives were lost.

What, however, did distress me about that time was a visiting Israeli scholar's defense of Israel's then newly instituted practice of 'preventive' detention of suspected terrorists (previously introduced by Apartheid South Africa) -- without the right to charges, legal defense, or contact with others. He maintained that only a handful of such detentions would be instituted and those ended off generally after a six month maximum authorization. I asked a direct question -- should not such individuals or at least their families be compensated for this violation of their due process rights? He was outraged and responded that terrorists deserved no compensation.

That moment has stuck in my mind as I have watched Israel extend not only the practice of preventive detention to hundreds if not thousands, but also its further violations of fundamental human rights in the name of its national security -- assassinations, bombings of captive populations from on high -- Gaza and Lebanon most recently.

Needless to say Israel is not the only violator in this regard and has endured innumerable provocations ranging from the suicide bombings of innocents to the present madness of the Hezbollah rocketing of northern Israel. Always there lurks for Israel, as for us, the threat of an ultimate attack by a WMD -- say, an atomic weapon smuggled in via one of those billions of shipping crates constantly circling the globe.

However, granting the anxieties and provocations that terrorism induce in all of us -- my beloved wife was heading for an appointment down there 9/11, but fortunately never gets anywhere early -- still there remain the innocent victims and their families who have been cruelly harmed by our wars. I join Kofi Annan in his disgust with the UN (read the U.S.'s and Israel's) failure to move rapidly towards a cessation of hostilities which are, I assume, as I write these words, still killing off good people on both sides.

It occurs to me that the leaders who carry out such mindless, brutal, and inhumane practices -- all too often to enhance their own prestige -- should be held accountable for their actions. One way that we have discovered to achieve this aim is through "truth and reconciliation" testimony after egregious violations of human rights. I hope such will be instituted down the line at the very least to expose the Bush administration's and neocons' (particularly Rumsfeld's) criminal war on Iraq and its people. Nasralleh looks to be a candidate for such condemnation -- and Olmert and Peretz as pitiful incompetents in the face of their national crisis.

Having condemned these incompetents/criminals why not further hold their nations and/or supporters accountable financially for the lives that they have destroyed.? Their victims deserve compensation. There is a certain irony here in that such compensation would be the opposite of that for which some condemned Saddam Hussein to be a terrorist -- his rewards to the families of suicide bombers in Israel.

I for one believe that the U.S. owes Iraq compensation for the killing and destruction that we have done there -- Afghanis and Afghanistan as well -- destruction in the latter dating back to the Bush I era at least. And Israel owes much to the Lebanese whom it has so cruelly attacked. A positive here is that voluntary assistance by us and by Israel would be a mark of our acknowledgment that we have harmed innocent people while pursuing our own national interests. And this charge for compensation might well be directed to Syria and Iran as well for their provision of weapons to their indiscriminate proxy killer -- Nasrallah.

If nations and their leaders were forced to pay reparations for the damages that their wars have done, they might think twice before launching them?

Lest someone cite the excessive reparations imposed on Germany following WW1 which facilitated the rise of Hitler, remember our Marshall Plan for Germany and assistance in rebuilding the Japan that we had destroyed, which healed wounds that had been inflicted by WW2 that might otherwise have generated lasting hatred. The smartest move that Israel could make now would be to offer assistance in cleaning up the mess that it has made of Lebanon to help heal the wounds that it has inflicted there. Will Olmert and Peretz be so wise. Probably not. Bibi lurks with another message.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Minority Students Excluded from CUNY -- Again

[Bill Crain (letter below) is a highly respected psychologist and chair of the CCNY faculty senate. He has been a voice in the wilderness versus our right wing CUNY board's determination to cut back remediation for and thereby exclude precisely those students who have been previously cheated in their NYC public school educations. He has documented the fact that such students, given the chance to catch up in our senior colleges, do nearly as well as those not needing remediation. When rerouted to our community colleges such students are set on an entirely different career track -- if they don't get discouraged and drop out.

I know a bit about educational theory as a philosopher. We have been aware for more than 60 years in this country that SAT type tests do not determine academic potential -- only how good a prep one has had for them. Even in my day in the 1950s at Yale we would watch the preppies slide behind as those with lesser preparations in public schools pulled ahead after a year of adjustment.

We faculty at CUNY are disgusted with this state of affairs, but our board was co-oped by the equivalent of academic neocons appointed by Giuliani and Pataki -- virtually none having either academic experience or interest in higher education. It is difficult even to get quorums in their subcommittees, but as a major urban university we do our best and it is a shame to have our minority students being cut off at the pass once again.

I watched first hand the difference between the before and after of open enrollment at CUNY -- in the 1960s I could not get students into CUNY who were being accepted at Yale where I was urging them to apply. We had a heavy bar against both minorities and blue collar family students (Irish, Italian, etc.). It was a coalition of both of these constituencies that forced the doors open. I was an aide then to J. Raymond Jones, the "Harlem Fox," who had had his own higher education aborted when the U.S. took over the Virgin Islands, canceling his all island scholarship to study in Denmark. With Kenneth Clark, and the blue collar union heads, Ray pushed CUNY to expand its colleges and open the doors in 1970. At Hunter where I had taught full-time for 3 years in the late sixties I had one African American student (two brothers with Ph.D.s) and two upper middle income Latinos. At Brooklyn where I started in 1970 we welcomed in all of the excluded who have done remarkable things -- one of mine a Rhodes Scholar.

I fear we have battles on our hands across the country now against those who would restore their special privileges and exclude others. Ed Kent]

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August 10, 2006
Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
To the Editor:

Re “CUNY Reports Fewer Blacks at Top Schools” (news article, August 10).

Since 2000, The City University of New York has disproportionately rejected African Americans and other people of color from its senior colleges solely on the basis of standardized test cutoff scores. All the evidence indicates that the tests are weak or worthless predictors of success at CUNY, making this test-dominated policy very unjust.
CUNY should develop a more holistic admissions process based on students’ overall records, including letters of recommendation. And because even the best sets of admissions criteria are imperfect predictors of college achievement, the theme of CUNY’s admissions policy should be to give students a chance. As data from the open admission era showed, the students will frequently achieve stunning success.

William Crain
Professor
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"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)
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
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Honor and Shame?

Perhaps it is beginning to dawn on some of our NEOs and others claiming to be bringing democracy to the Middle East that we are dealing with a culture there with a different history and set of values than our own?

Certainly we should remember our abuses of the colonies that we set up and maintained there in our European/American interests -- the assaults on any and all who attempted to create their own democratic governments not dominated by us. Mossadeq of Iran is, of course, the archetype:

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

How dare he claim Iranian oil for the Iranians! We showed him (and them) by installing the brutal Shah who was replaced by the Islamic Republic (with a bit of help from Reagan?) in 1980.

Apart from our exploitative colonialism of centuries and on-going expropriation of resources under brutal autocratic regimes kept in place by us (e.g. Saudi Arabia today), there are some basic cultural features that we are simply missing -- especially the systems of family (we call them "tribal") links and ties that eluded the understanding of our military/political wannabe bringers of regime change and free enterprise 'democracy'.

One of the recent items that I picked up from an interview with two of our guys knowledgeable both about the language and culture of Iraq is that "honor" and "shame" are key elements in the relationships among the Arabs (and us) over there. To shame someone is to take away his honor -- and there is not much more in the way of insult and trouble-making that one can do there. Will we never learn that RESPECT for others -- not only in the Middle East but in our own cultures as well -- is supposed to be a primary democratic value? I guess our U.S. 'death tax' guys don't worry about such things when they range beyond their immdiate families writ small?

I am no expert on such things, but I am open to learning how to do things right -- by listening and finding out where others are coming from. I don't see much of that going on these days and with all those WMD floating around, let alone small packages that can blow up means of transportation and other vulnerable targets, I get worried.

Anyone else out there feel the same way? There is more to making peace than blasting away as many of 'them' as possible. Talking can't hurt and it sure is preferable to being blown away.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Are We Losing It?

One of the things that my military training drilled into my head back when is that generals (and politicians) are always making the mistake of fighting the LAST war rather than the present one. The classic example put forth then was of the line of fortresses, the Maginot Line, which the French had erected after WW1 to keep German troops at bay in any future encounter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line The Nazis simply zipped around these fixed fortifications through the low countries to conquer Paris.

One sees comparable fiascoes at work in our recent 'wars on terrorism', if you want to call them that. In response to 9/11 -- a horror carried out by a loose group of 19 disaffected young men (15 from our ally, Saudi Arabia, 1 from Egypt, etc.) -- the U.S. launched two Nazi type Blitzkrieg wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg on Afghanistan and Iraq. Needless to say these wars have not been won -- but the two nations have been devastated. Their peoples have now had it with our "coalition of the willing" and are bent on settling internal scores -- and driving us out.

The Israelis, too, seem to have bought into the old Nazi model -- blow them away from the air (Gaza and Lebanon), make the people suffer for the wrong-doing of the terrorists embedded among them -- collective punishment -- to make Israel loved around the globe?

Needless to say neither of these war scenarios is doing more than turning the flagellated populations against us and providing vivid recruiting images for yet more disaffected young men (and women) with no greater hopes and aspirations than making a grand entrance into the afterlife.

So now a murky collection of individuals has been arrested with the suspicion that their hand luggage had been intended to carry bombs to blow away a clutch of planes crossing the Atlantic? Nice final trip for our tourists returning from visits over there.

At this writing the national origins of the persons suspected have not been disclosed. However, I doubt that 'shock and awe' bombings of their home countries will do much in the way of deterring future terrorists. Nor will Israel's crude destruction of the infrastructures of Gaza and Lebanon win Israelis peace in their lifetimes. They have missed a critical opportunity. They might rather have made a direct appeal for assistance and peace to those also trapped by the mad bombers embedded among them.

Back to reality -- several years prior to 9/11 in Brooklyn a roommate of two guys planning to bomb a major subway transfer station at Franklin Avenue turned them in. What might have been a deadly attack was averted by a fellow human being who also happened to be a Muslim, but one who cared. The only way to defeat terrorists is to persuade our fellow humans that such is not the way to go. By lashing out blindly at innocent victims, we defeat our only effective tool for defeating terrorism.

When 9/11 occurred we gained nearly universal sympathetic global responses which created an opportunity for humanity to join together to halt brutal terrorist aberrations in the future. Instead, both we and Israel and have blown it. We allowed our incompetent pols and our own crazies to launch mad state terrorist attacks against precisely those who would otherwise have been our friends and allies in a real war on terror. We have let these incompetents promote their private wars for dubious reasons -- is it really oil, a revival of the tired old British Empire, more American marauding though the lives of others in our imperial self interest, colonies in occupied territories? We have been fighting the wrong war in the wrong places at the wrong times -- Britain, Israel, and the U.S. -- and we are losing it!
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

A Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -- Again?

As a child of WW2 and one who tried to make sense out of that madness with its destruction of perhaps 50 million lives, I read into the details, contemplated a career in the foreign service focused on never letting such things happen again. Needless to say my generation's lives have been haunted by wars. As children we had school drills -- one type of sounding meant flee the burning building in good order, and the other sent us huddling under our desks in anticipation of a bombing raid. I watch and listen with some horror to the pronouncements emerging from the Middle East. I assume that the current generation of leaders did not experience and, thus, cannot remember the graphic details of the horrors of past wars? Or do they not give a damn about the huddling children? Lest we forget . . . .

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Many Jews in ghettos across eastern Europe tried to organize resistance against the Germans and to arm themselves with smuggled and homemade weapons. Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements formed in about 100 Jewish groups. The most famous attempt by Jews to resist the Germans in armed fighting occurred in the Warsaw ghetto.

In the summer of 1942, about 300,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When reports of mass murder in the killing center leaked back to the Warsaw ghetto, a surviving group of mostly young people formed an organization called the Z.O.B. (for the Polish name, Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, which means Jewish Fighting Organization). The Z.O.B., led by 23-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, issued a proclamation calling for the Jewish people to resist going to the railroad cars. In January 1943, Warsaw ghetto fighters fired upon German troops as they tried to round up another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation. Fighters used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto. After a few days, the troops retreated. This small victory inspired the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance.

On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. The ghetto fighters were able to hold out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. The Germans had slowly crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the remainder were deported to killing centers or concentration camps.

For more information, see "Warsaw" in the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/wgupris.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

No Man's Land

It is hard to believe that WW1 and WW2 were only separated by two decades, spanning a major global economic disaster. Such was what I grew up into when vicariously experiencing WW1, the conclusion of which had barely spared my father from being shipped over to the trenches as a junior officer.

My own encounter with the brutal former war followed from a job as a teen aide and driver to the chaplain to the two princes -- the Rev. P.B. ("Tubby") Clayton who had formed an on-going organization, Toc H -

http://www.worldwar1.com/sftoch.htm

from the site of the behind the lines religious sanctuary during the grim extended trench warfare in Belgium which had seen the slaughter of what came to be denominated the "lost generation" -

http://www.aftermathww1.com/lostgen.asp

Tubby was quite a character by the time I encountered him in 1952. Had I not been a teen ready to adjust to any and all driving conditions -- left side of the road in Britain and right on the Continent, we might not have survived. Tubby would characteristically shout suddenly "turn left" while pointing to the right across my driver's line of vision. I learned to follow his pointing rather than verbal commands.

The most graphic part of our trips together was a return to Belgium and the remnants of the trenches where many thousands of young men had pointlessly lost their lives trying to drive through the no man's land separating the embedded trenches with massive loss of lives at each ventured attack. What I remember most vividly are the miles that we traversed through gently rolling fields posted with endless rows of white crosses designating the graves of the young who had lost their lives there.

The term, triage, was invented to explain the practices carried out with each pointless assault by one side or another -

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

A barrage of shells would be directed at the enemy trenches. Then at a selected moment thousands (led by junior officers who were prime targets for their enemies) would burst out of their trenches into no man's land -- a sea of mud and deadly bacteria. At a critical moment the attacking force would be obliged to halt its barrage to avoid hitting its own and the opposite side would open up with its own barrage of deadly machine gun and canon fire. Thousands would be wounded in a few moments. Those able to walk would march back to field hospitals. Those hit only in legs would be carried back on stretchers. Those gut shot would be given a canister of water and left to die -- few would have survived the infections anyway.

A few of the trenches had been maintained for tourists' edification and one could virtually hear the canon fire in one's imagination -- with the endless waves of graves to punctuate the imagination.

The tour with Tubby did not deter me from the sense of duty that carried me later into officer's training, but it graphically made me aware how pointless such games of war actually are. The end result of WW1 was the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese in the Far East. What a waste of courageous lives.

Needless to say the madness now in the Middle East rings the same bells. Only those who have not experienced wars -- a generation spared its evils -- can engage in such pointless horrors yet once again. And the supposed spaces dividing enemies there hark back to deadly precedents.
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

May the 'force' be with them - or not

[A new Israeli friend suggested that I pass along the report below my comment.

Needless to say when rockets are dropping indiscriminately on 1/4 of one's country, it is hard not to join in a military response. The problems for Israel are several:

1) The head of its military happens to be air force and presumably has put too much faith in it as a military counter weapon. We have all learned that bombs and rockets sent from on high do not discriminate between military and civilian targets. Thus, they a priori lend themselves to committing war crimes against innocent persons whether well intended or not.

2) Israel has been heavy handed with the Palestinian population over which it exercises military control. Injustices done are bound to generate resentments and Israel does not have clean hands so far as its occupation is concerned. IMHO it should have worked with the duly elected Hamas government to steer it away from terrorist tactics towards legitimate negotiations. It was with this hope that I initiated the Israel/Palestine List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine

3) Those not showing support for the war are presumably Israeli non-Jews, thus, further and, perhaps, dangerously dividing Israel on the home front. Personally I am dubious about religious states. They tend towards bigotry in times of stress. We have this problem with our own Christian wannabe warriors in the U.S. Needless to say Israel's nut case settlers are an extremely dangerous front for generating hostilities and one has the sense of an Israel these days also dividing by poverty and wealth as is the U.S. Such divisions will only further exacerbate internal tensions.

4) It does not look to me as though Israel has won any support for its counter attack on Hezbollah from any but Bush -- and he is on vacation now plucking sage brush in Crawford. I am extremely dubious about any resolving plan emerging with an international force replacing Israeli troops in Lebanon -- Bush made it clear before he departed that Americans would not be included. Were I the sane head of any government I would respectfully say 'no thanks'. I gather that Malaysia is willing to provide? Lotsaluck, guys.

One wishes all the peoples of the Middle East well. But we do them no good by stifling obvious criticisms when they get things wrong.
Ed Kent]

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746268.html

Pen Ultimate / May the 'force' be with them - or not
By Michael Handelzalts

Hassan Nasrallah may be putting up quite a fight against the mighty Israel Defense Forces, but he should know that his days are numbered. The staunchest stalwarts of the Israeli left - those who were against the first war in Lebanon and in favor of a full withdrawal from both that country and Gaza - are coming around. The playwright Yehoshua Sobol (Yedioth Ahronoth, July 27) and the poet Ilan Sheinfeld (in an e-mail to his contact list, with a request to pass it on) have declared a full-scale war on Hezbollah. To paraphrase Menachem Begin's comment during the first Lebanon war: "Nasrallah beware! Sobol and Sheinfeld are after you!"

Both Sobol and Sheinfeld stress the fact that they were the first to oppose the previous Lebanon War - as if they were Coriolanus, forced to show his wounds in order to be appointed consul. How frail human memory is: The first war was waged by Israel precisely for the same reasons as the second one - the shelling of Israel's northern cities. It was only when that first war turned out to be a facade for more grandiose plans to "change" Lebanon without notifying the Israeli government, and after certain ugly things happened and we hung around there for 18 years - only then did we realize that things had gone awry.

The same is true now: It is a given that a "proportionate response" to the initial Hezbollah kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers could have been only kidnapping two Hezbollah fighters and killing eight others, and it is also a given that firing on Israeli civilians with rockets is unacceptable. And yet, creating a "humanitarian disaster" in Lebanon makes this war less than just. And that was the case even before the Qana disaster.

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Not for Sobol. He expected the Lebanese to let bygones be bygones once we had withdrawn from their country, and thought that the Palestinians would start rebuilding Gaza once we were out of there. When they didn't act according to his expectations (possibly because they bear some sort of grudge for things we did there), he began to have second, profound thoughts. He thinks this war is not only just, but a "must," and chastises those from the left who oppose it. He also thinks that Israelis insist too often on quick solutions to crises and believes that is "infantile" - barely noticing that he exhibited the same trait in harboring illusions before that he now regrets.

Barbaric poetry

Sheinfeld - who says he was one of the first to write poems against the first war in Lebanon - paraphrases a poem by Haim Nahman Bialik, who cheered on the pioneers who were building the foundations of the Jewish state-to-be. His version of the poem is addressed to the soldiers fighting in Lebanon, and is one of the most bloodthirsty, barbaric texts I have ever read. A quote or two (in my translation, which does not convey the brutally raw hatred of the original) should suffice:

"Demolish not only the roof, but the foundations as well, you have come far indeed, your toil has not been in vain / Storm on Lebanon and Gaza, and plow it and sow it with salt, raze it down, let no human being remain / Turn them into a desert, rubble, a valley of mess, unpopulated / As we did want peace, we did yearn for peace, and our own houses we had desecrated ... Save your nation and drop bombs / On villages and cities, their collapsing houses do shell / Kill them, shed their blood, turn their lives into living hell / Till they will never try again to destroy us, until we will hear mountains explode / Bulldozed by your heels, and their wails and shrieks, and their graves corrode."

This poem goes on in the same vein, and I quote from it only in the hope that those lines will haunt the poet whenever he writes something else.

There is a Jewish saying that people who are truly righteous cannot share the same space that is occupied by those who recant their heretical views. The reason for this probably is that the stench would be unbearable. Sheinfeld asks his readers to spare him the righteous words; Sobol thinks those of the left who do not share his view are stupid, and that they give the left a bad name. Poor Israeli left. After it lost Eyal Megged some years ago, it seems now it will have to close up shop soon.

If I follow Sobol and Sheinfeld and other representatives of the self-defined "new Israeli sanity" movement, it seems that we are reverting to the age-old adage that declares, "The Arabs understand only force."

This reminds me of a play by Slawomir Mrozek, in which a servant is sent by his master to retrieve something from a crowd of demonstrators, at all cost. When he comes back empty-handed, the master asks him, "Did you use force?" And he answers, pointing to his wounds: "I did. They did not understand."

Which makes me wonder: Maybe "force" is the only language the Arabs do not understand? We speak various dialects of force around here, and yet they don't get it. Maybe we should try some other language, like Arabic?

Meanwhile, during this war-with-no-name (although President Bush had one for it, a great one, "this shit"), I am reminded of the story about a soccer game between a team of elephants and a team of mice. At halftime, when the scoreboard showed a tie, the coach of the elephants (that's us, according to Sobol & Co.) gathers his team and instructs them: "Guys, tactics are of no use here. Now kick ass!"
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net