Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest

[This would be comic, were there not substantial reasons to hold Rumsfeld and the Bush administration generally responsible for criminal acts that we fought WW2 against the Axis powers to end for all times. As one who all too well remembers those days as a child -- two uncles survived but were really post traumatic stress victims who never really recovered the lives they might have had -- I am constantly appalled at the casual way that torture and killing of civilians have been taken by Americans -- even presidential candidates and an attorney general candidate feel they can waffle on torture? Perhaps all the media violence and porn have really corrupted our national soul? I don't agree with the madness of the fundamentalist extremists who seem bent on punishing and killing, but as a humanist I find such things appalling. I gather one of our chief Marine legal representatives has just resigned to protest the violations being practiced in that domain. There still seem to be some good and caring people doing what they can to halt America's playing fascist games! Ed Kent]

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

http://wor.ldne.ws/node/8596

Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest
Sat. 10/27/2007 - 08:45

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

US embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld shouting "murderer" and "war criminal" at the breakfast meeting venue, US embassy officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary's whereabouts citing "security reasons".

Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activist point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.

"Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when US forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn't pay."

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights (LDH) filed the complaint on Thursday after learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris.
--
"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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Is Morningside Heights Next in Line for Super Gentrification?

[None of us need more worries in this already over stressed world. However, all renters in Morningside Heights must be aware that the next phase in our gentrification may well be fighting off super rents -- those in the neighborhood of $5,000 - $6,500 per MONTH!!!!! I am already hearing tales of legal battles along these lines here in Morningside Heights. The turf being taken over from the Cathedral is already there and residents nearby are seeing the pattern emerging in their buildings. I gather that 3333 B'way to the north of Columbia's proposed Manhattanville expansion is rejecting Section 8 vouchers as noted by the Times article below?

To give some personal history, we as a couple never would have survived as Columbia grad students -- even living on a national fellowship -- had Grant Houses not been available to us for rents at 30% of our income. We lived happily there until we moved out of the city for teaching. When we returned the neighborhood buildings were renting at most reasonable prices and we moved into our present address at 440 Riverside Drive at $200.00 a month and sublet a room to a Barnard student to make ends meet our first year. Then in 1979 the co-op boom started and at the beginning it was affordable for renters to convert. Those of us who did are paying a small fraction of rents in maintenance costs. Now, however, the purchase price of a co-op apartment has escalated. A six room one in our building is being offered for $2.8 million.

As a recently retired academic aware of students graduating with large loans to pay off, I can't imagine how the next generation is going to make it? Certainly the academic world has become a nightmare with jobs going to part-timers with Ph.D.s with no benefits or futures. These part-time jobs are replacing fulltime ones. I gather one can do well in nursing these days with the shortage there? But even double family nurses would be hard pressed to find housing here.

Needless to say we need to make some drastic changes in the way incomes and wealth are being divided in this country. Would you believe that taxes used to take 90% of the income of the most wealthy not so many decades ago. Now the same folks can hide their real income in innumerable ways and, thus, are able to live in several spots here and there. Out of our building each spring, fall, and summer weekend our prosperous ones depart Friday afternoons for their second homes from which they return Sunday nights to start their week's work and study.
They are generally nice people. But all the rest are no longer welcomed into Morningside Heights. And if Columbia gets its way, the dead zones will merge and expand to expel the folks living to the north -- that process has already begun in West Harlem.

And so it went. Ed Kent]

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

Doors Close on Subsidized Tenants, Advocates Say
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Apartment listings in New York City now routinely exclude
Section 8 voucher holders, marking a significant shift in
the way many landlords have come to view the program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/nyregion/30section.html?th&emc=th
--
"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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America's Most Dangerous President!

[IMHO the Times is understating how dangerous this guy is -- and the Republican candidates that seem to want to follow in his wake as well. They are not playing with toys in the sandbox. We are living in a most dangerous world that does not need to explode with the destruction of life and peace on earth.

And our nuclear sites are not adequately guarded? We have one just north of NYC where even the security guards have complained that they are not prepared for a terrorist hit:

http://www.nci.org/02NCI/12/Security-Doubts.htm

I saw a FEMA report on it that was downright scary. Ed Kent]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29mon1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Trash Talking World War III

Published: October 29, 2007

America’s allies and increasingly the American public are playing a ghoulish guessing game: Will President Bush manage to leave office without starting a war with Iran? Mr. Bush is eagerly feeding those anxieties. This month he raised the threat of “World War III” if Iran even figures out how to make a nuclear weapon.

With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing — or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd.

Four years after his pointless invasion of Iraq, President Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy. He refuses to do the hard work of diplomacy — or even acknowledge the disastrous costs of his actions. The Republican presidential candidates have apparently decided that the real commander in chief test is to see who can out-trash talk the White House on Iran.

The world should not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but there is no easy fix here, no daring surgical strike. Consider Natanz, the underground site where Iran is defying the Security Council by spinning a few thousand centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel. American bombers could take it out, but what about the even more sophisticated centrifuges the administration accuses Iran of hiding? Beyond the disastrous diplomatic and economic costs, a bombing campaign is unlikely to set back Iran’s efforts for more than a few years.

The neocons pushing an attack on Iran admit that a prolonged bombing campaign would be necessary and would likely only delay Iran’s program. But it is still worth it, they say, and if everybody gets lucky maybe the attacks will unleash that popular uprising against the mullahs they’ve been promising for years.

That is the same kind of rose-petal thinking that was used to sell Americans a fantasy about the invasion of Iraq. Large numbers of Iranians are fed up with their government’s corruption and repression and with being branded a pariah state. Rain down American bombs, however, and the mullahs and Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are more likely to be turned into national heroes than hung from lampposts. And that’s not even calculating the international fury or the additional mayhem Tehran could wreak in Iraq or what would happen to world oil prices.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the other great hope (after Defense Secretary Robert Gates) for holding off a war. She still wants to give sanctions and diplomacy a chance. But, as with everything else she does, there’s nowhere near enough follow-through. If the stakes are really that high — and they are — then Ms. Rice and her boss must tell Moscow, Beijing and the Europeans that relations will be judged on whether they are willing to place a lot more pressure on Iran.

They also need to offer Iran a credible way back in from the cold — and clear rewards and security guarantees if it is willing to give up its nuclear ambitions. If it’s really that important — and we believe it is — then it’s time to send somebody higher ranking than the American ambassador in Baghdad to deliver the message.

For this to have any chance, Mr. Bush will have to tone down the rhetoric. Sure, a lot of these countries are letting greed cloud their judgment, when they balk at restricting trade with Iran. But it’s a lot easier to justify when they say they’re not giving the crazy American government an excuse for another war.

Maybe the country will get lucky and Mr. Bush will listen to the exhausted generals. But this isn’t just about surviving the rest of his presidency. Fifteen more months of diplomatic drift will bring Iran 15 months closer to figuring out how to make a nuclear weapon.

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

Security Upgrades at Several Nuclear Sites Are Lagging,
Auditors Find
By MATTHEW L. WALD
At least 5 of the nation's 11 nuclear bomb factories and
laboratories are certain to miss deadlines to be hardened
against terrorist raids, some by many years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/washington/29nuke.html?th&emc=th
--
"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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Lynching Is No Joke!

[Lest we forget, the Klu Klux Klan had spread to nearly every state in the union by the mid 1920s -- with 300,000 women auxiliaries wearing special white Klan outfits. Then, happily, a major scandal among its leaders led to its rapid demise in all but core Southern locations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries 3,000+ people were brutally lynched by the Klan -- about 2/3 African Americans and the remainder new immigrants -- Jews and Catholics, for instance, living in Southern states. Emmett Till's lynching was one of the most publicized -- a teen from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi:

"In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention."

http://books.google.com/books?id=1Hv8HQAACAAJ&dq=Emmett+Till

My own grandfather for whom I am named, the owner of the Allen Drug Store in Hanover, NH, publicly fought the Klan there and was honored for his integrity and public sense of justice on the occasion of his death in 1963 by the town's closing down for a day with flags at half mast.

The fear and horrors of the noose are too much still with us, however. A NYC museum a few years ago posted hundreds of pictures of lynchings. I recall the first picture which I saw of a burned and tormented body in Langston Hughes' History of the NAACP which I had received to review. It had little children being held up on their parents' shoulders so that they could take in the horror around which all were laughingly rejoicing.

Yes, lest we forget. Ed Kent]

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This Halloween, Man in Noose Wins a Reprieve
By PAUL VITELLO
A series of race-baiting incidents have left some wondering
about the display of Halloween ghouls in nooses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/nyregion/27noose.html?th&emc=th
--
"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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The Times vs. Feminism

[About 4 decades ago I happened to meet most of the then leading feminists at a party held in Caroline Bird's (Born Female) apartment on Gramercy Square. The star attraction was our toddler son whom we had brought along. They were marvelously real people who cared about the rights of women. I saw the vast difference that they had been making during my brief 3 years teaching at Vassar. They very quickly implemented the women's revolution that had been started way back in the 19th century. Ed Kent]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=22&media_view_id=9433

In These Times: The Times vs. Feminism (10/09/07) by Susan J. Douglas

Yet again, the New York Times Book Review has upheld its “robust tradition...to stereotype feminists as single-minded, humorless ideologues,” writes Douglas. Responding to Toni Bentley’s review of Nation writer Katha Pollitt’s book Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories, Douglas states:

Stereotypes of feminists such as those proffered by the Times misrepresent and demonize women of all ages who continue to push for equality of opportunity for all, which has yet to be achieved.

Bentley’s review, which referred to feminists as “shrill,” “enraged, educated women,” and “vagina dentate intellectuals,” used her column inches to “trash feminists and to trash Pollitt for both being one and not being one who is stereotypical enough.” Perhaps the Times Book Review should live up to its name, and stick to assessing the qualities of a written work rather than belittling and admonishing the worldview of feminist writers. And, just to clarify, when a feminist is angry it is likely due to continued systemic inequality and discrimination, not because “she is still not as likely to be seduced into bed as the bombshell bimbo.”
--
"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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Scaring Off Our Best Security Resources

Now that the Bush administration is broadening its attack mode to include Iran, Iranian Americans may be facing intimidation -- real or imagined. Lest we forget, many Iranians fled to this country where they were welcomed with the fall of the Shah following the revolution there. We had the pleasure at our port of entry college of having such students as our majors -- one young Iranian woman was the president of our student philosophy club.

It is disconcerting, then, to hear of the worries about persecution here in the U.S. of any and all deriving from the Middle East -- particularly in light of the horrendous rendering actions, leading to secret deportations to nations where they have been tortured/killed or again of those incarcerated in our southern county jails where Muslims were being held incommunicado as "material witnesses" shortly after 9/11. We had a gulag in Brooklyn where many Muslims were secretly held and brutalized, including by a guard who later did his thing at Abu Graib for which he was convicted. The mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas of all places should offer an object lesson as to how NOT to fight terrorism:

http://makeheadline.blogspot.com/2007/10/wvns-after-holy-land-foundation-found.html

Needless to say our best resources against terrorism are those who have fled from oppressive regimes. To intimidate them from speaking out is worse than outrageous -- it is a massive show of incompetence.

Some of our Republican candidates seem determined to launch our next mad war on Iran -- using terrorism as their primary campaign plank in want of better credentials.

Particularly those of us here in NYC would be horrified to have Rudy Giuliani as the 'Decider'. Despite his claims he was a disaster area 9/11. His command head quarters went down with the World Trade Center. His police commissioner whom he recommended to be our national security head is a crook facing indictment (more recently Rudy's business partner). His claim to have ended off crime here is a joke -- he drove out the Police Commissioner, William Bratton, who did the real thing so that he could take the credit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Bratton

He replaced Bratton with the crook, Bernard Kerik

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

Rudy also left the city deeply in debt when he finally left office, despite his claims to have saved us monies.

It does not take much imagination to figure out what a major security hazard NYC's ex-mayor would be if given access to any federal office or command position. On his recommendation Kerik was sent to Iraq to set up security there from which he was shortly returned -- some success. Let us pray for a peace-maker president to come, not yet another war monger!
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Islamo-Fascism Week Kicks Off at Columbia

[Contrary to the mentions below, Edward Said, a Palestinian American and passionate defender of Palestinian rights, was scarcely an intimidating force. I well recall his warm links to and discussions with such as Sidney Morgenbesser, highly regarded Columbia philosopher, on the sidewalks of Broadway over the latest events in Israel/Palestine. He was fully respected by all of us who agonized with his long final battle with cancer:

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

Ed Kent]

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

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/27692

Islamo-Fascism Week Kicks Off
By Joy Resmovits
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 25, 2007

Armed with pre-written questions, activists and students gathered last night at a panel held under the auspices of “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week” in a crowded Mathematics building classroom.

The panelists, Ibn Warraq, Christina Sommers, and Phyllis Chesler, were invited to speak by the College Republicans as part of David Horowitz’s week-long teach-in. Upon entrance, audience members walked between security guards from Public Safety. As expressed in their questions following the panel, spectators expected the panelists to project Horowitz’s views, and were surprised to see they had diverging views of their own, referencing Edward Said, celebrated former English professor at Columbia.

“Said encouraged self-pity among the Arabs, making self-criticism of Arab society impossible,” Warraq, scholar and founder of the Center for Inquiry for the Secularization of Islamic Society, said. “He intimidated Westerners, Said, who were afraid to say anything critical ... People were terrified of being called ‘Orientalist.’” Warraq also questioned Said’s status as a scholar of Muslim studies.

Chesler, author of Women and Madness and professor emeritus at the College of Staten Island, noted that Warraq’s critiquing Said at Columbia University, where Said used to teach, is significant. “Said perpetrated this massive ... world-class hoax funded by Columbia.”

She added that the Middle Eastern Languages and Studies Department would never host such a panel because Columbia is a “university that has been hijacked: Palestinianized, Stalinized, Edward Said-ized ... so that the rights of free speech and academic freedom does not apply to those who tell the truth about Islam.”

Chesler, citing a speech at Barnard during which her comments sparked a “near-riot,” said that her views about the oppression of women in Muslim countries are not embraced by academics because human rights activists turn a blind eye to injustices committed by people of color. She cited genital mutilations, honor killings, dress codes, and rape as injustices occurring in Muslim countries.

Sommers, former professor at Clark University, spoke about conservative feminist reforms in the Muslim world. The movement “celebrates womanliness as a virtue, is faith-based.”

When an audience member asked about President George W. Bush’s Iraqi constitution and as to why it lists Islam as the official religion, Chesler pointed out that she never had a say. “Being on the left in America, you have to ... conform to the total party line. ... If I’m going to be making common cause with people who have different views, that’s great.”

After a spectator asked about the use of the term “fascism,” Warraq explained that while the term is often misused to represent anything evil, scholars analyzed the Koran and agreed that if the letter of the law is imposed, it is considered fascist. “We’re talking about the use of force ... to suppress other people,” Sommers clarified.

Chris Kulawik, CC ’08 and president of the College Republicans, said he was pleased by the “incredibly civil debate.”

“People came here expecting ... tiny Horowitzes,” he said. “What they saw were diverging ideas.”

Other students disagreed with the panelists and the premise of the event and Awareness Week. “It’s terrifying that ‘Islamo-fascism Week’ is going on across the country,” Lucero James, a student at Medgar Evers said. “We need to expose the truth of the program and reveal the lying.”

Mark Goret of the New York City Office of the Comptroller said he was surprised by the civility of the discussion: “I guess people here learned a lesson. You know, from the minutemen.”

Joy Resmovits can be reached at joy.resmovits@co-lumbiaspectator.com.
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Bush Has Lost It in Latin America

[For nearly two centuries now the U.S. has dominated Latin America by fair means and foul:

http://www.johnperkins.org/

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/US-Interventions-1823.htm

It is difficult to keep track of the scores of times that we intervened in this or that Latin American nation to put in place leaders -- often brutal ones such as Batista in Cuba -- who did our bidding and brutalized their own peoples. Batista was driven out by Castro who, despite his violations of the rights of many thousands who fled the country -- mainly to the U.S. where they influenced Florida and more widely Republican politics -- did two incredibly positive things for the Cubans for which they hold him in esteem. He introduced 1) universal literacy and 2) universal medical care. Some Americans now go to Cuba for medical training and Cuba sends its medical teams out variously.

The experience of American interventions has left virtually all Latin American countries both suspicious of and resentful towards our political administrations which threaten their independence. Bush's comments reported below fall on deaf ears not only in Cuba, but virtually all the rest of the Latin American nations. The one good thing to come out of the Iraq fiasco is that the Bush administration -- and our military forces -- have been tied up and tied down in the Middle East. Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Evo Morales (Bolivia) are but the tip of the iceberg of resistance to us down there. The former president of Mexico and no radical, Vincente Fox, publicly expressed his contempt for Bush's arrogance on his recent visit here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/17/vicente-fox-on-bush-the_n_64712.html

Brazil and Argentina, the two largest nations, have made it clear that they well remember the military juntas trained by our School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia:

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

which 'disappeared' thousands of their citizens in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Democracy of various forms is operating in Latin America. Some may get it wrong and tip towards Cuba's authoritarianism, but at least they are doing things on their own now. Ed Kent]

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Bush to Warn Cuba on Plan for Transition
By GINGER THOMPSON
President Bush will warn Wednesday that the U.S. will not
accept a political transition in Cuba in which power
changes from one Castro brother to another.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/washington/24cuba.html?th&emc=th
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Credo ut Intellelego -- I Believe in Order to Understand

Saint Augustine

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

Avicenna

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

Averroes

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

Maimonides

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

Thomas Aquinas

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

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

What seems to be totally lacking in the awareness contemporary fundamentalists and their stunted latter day versions of our great Western religious traditions -- Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- is the profound history of great minds who have put our primitive religious texts in humane and comprehensive intellectual settings. I have listed 5 of the greats above who lived between the 5th. century (Augustine) and during what is generally denominated the Middle Ages -- the great theologian/scientists of Islam -- Avicenna and Averroes -- the commanding Jewish scholar, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas.

For the record, science did not come into existence with Darwin's theory of evolution -- it developed over many centuries stemming back to the ancient Greek philosophers -- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others preceding and following them who pondered the ultimate nature of reality -- and a whole line of less well known figures who added to and corrected out human understanding of things down through the ages. Comparable explorations were going on very early on in the Middle and Far East. Human understanding evolved in time. Our world's religions did not start and end with the primitive and often brutal texts scribbled by priestly minds of yore.

We must understand that our fundamentalists of today are rejecting the human intellect as our only true guide to humane morals and a viable understanding of things. One small illustration is the crude attack on stem cell research (a presidential veto no less!) which may offer us -- G-d given -- scientific breakthroughs for healing some of our major human illnesses?

St. Augustine's words cited in the subject heading above give reasonable guidelines for religious faith. We believe whatever we do in order to understand the nature of things and what we should be doing. If our beliefs lead us to do hateful things --- killings, wars, torture -- then something is drastically wrong with our beliefs. We must start again and correct them with common sense and the best understanding of things that we can achieve.

I watched yesterday a group of Christian fundamentalists cheering at hate inducing things. I also saw another of Christiane Amanpour's insightful series on "God's Warriors." As I have watched them, it has been apparent that those who would launch culture wars against others who disagree with their credos are extremely dangerous. Their hate crimes writ large can produce genocidal catastrophes! Beware! The road to hell is paved with pseudo religious intentions. "Ye shall judge them by their acts!"
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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The Sacrifices of Our National Guard -- For What?

[The notices below about calling up National Guard Troops sends chills down my spine. My family is the only one that I know personally that has had a member recently in the Guard. That was my daughter who, following her graduation from Cornell, planned to pursue her medical education through the military. Her experience was actually excellent and she received a second degree qualifying her for a medical specialty. I met a number of her military buddies from diverse backgrounds and on the basis of her experience even recommended to an occasional student that he/she might follow this route. However, this was all back during the Clinton years when our military was a force for peace-keeping. And fortunately after her marriage and the arrival of children my daughter decided not to re-up and to do her medical training privately which she is now doing.

However, she is a lucky one. Most of those in the National Guard are older. They saw their service as part-time -- a stint of retraining during two weeks of the summer, a day out of a weekend once a month, and preparation for any emergencies that might afflict their state. These men and women are now putting at risk not only themselves but the parenting of their young children whom they are leaving behind for hazardous 15 month tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. If they do not return in a coffin, far too many of them are wounded physically or psychologically. This morning I watched with horror the report of the death this past week of a mom of 3 young children who was scheduled to return home this weekend!

Need I point out the obvious. The Bush administration has clumsily engaged us in at least one unnecessary war and now intimates that it might just engage in what Bush calls WW3? To quote from my signature below: "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)

What can one say? We are a nation cruelly divided between those who are sacrificing their lives and those of their loved ones for the benefit of greedy military industrial complex profiteers who are running our country off the edge of the most dangerous of cliffs! Ed Kent]

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

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102107Z.shtml

National Guard Faces Call-Ups for 2008, '09
By Ann Scott Tyson
The Washington Post

Thursday 18 October 2007

The Pentagon this week plans to alert at least seven National Guard units to be ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009 as the military's reserve forces are increasingly called upon to relieve the strain on active-duty troops, officials said yesterday.

The call-ups are aimed at preparing forces to replace the approximately 13,000 Army National Guard troops in four brigades that will begin flowing into Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan over the next two months. In addition, they will help ease the burden on active- duty troops that has grown with the increase of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, the officials said. Currently, there are about 170,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 26,000 in Afghanistan.

“All the active component brigades have been used as part of the surge, and the requirements are not going away,” a National Guard official said. “You create holes when you surge units forward, and someone has to fill them,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Pentagon had not yet alerted the units.

If Guard units are not called up as replacements, the Army will lengthen deployment times for active-duty soldiers beyond 15 months, or cut back their time at home to less than a year, the official said.

Officials declined to specify which National Guard combat brigades and other units would be called up, saying they want to notify families before an announcement. The plans to alert the Guard units were first reported by the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, a U.S. commander in Iraq said that the first of five Army brigades to be withdrawn would result from a shift in Northern Iraq where a brigade would expand its territory to cover a portion of Diyala province when another brigade leaves in December.

The National Guard troops will perform combat patrols, secure convoys and guard detainees, among other missions, officials said.

In January, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced that the Pentagon would lift some restrictions on Guard and reserve call-ups and allow some reserve units to be remobilized sooner than planned - meaning more involuntary call-ups for individuals. Meanwhile, he reduced the length of the mobilizations for reservists to a maximum of a year at a time, in contrast to the 16 to 24 months that had become standard.

National Guard leaders welcomed the change, because it allows them to remobilize entire units, rather than calling up individuals from a variety of units in a piecemeal fashion.

Nevertheless, the 12-month cap on Guard deployments means that the Army can expect to have those units in Iraq or Afghanistan for about nine months, as they need time to train. That, in addition to other factors, makes it difficult for National Guard combat brigades to serve interchangeably with active-duty Army brigades, and has created new frustrations for Guard leaders.

Guard combat brigades heading to Iraq in coming months, for example, have not been assigned as single unit to patrol large areas but, instead, have been parceled out to perform many smaller missions under the command of active-duty units.

For example, the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Indiana National Guard was asked to break up into 21 security companies rather than to deploy as a unified force, a decision that hurts the unit's cohesion, said Maj. Gen R. Martin Umbarger, adjutant general of the Indiana National Guard. The Army has worked to keep the brigade leadership intact, even if the missions remain dispersed, Guard officials said.


Guard Names Brigades Tapped for Deployments
By Michelle Tan
Army Times

Saturday 20 October 2007

The Defense Department announced Friday that eight Army National Guard brigades have been alerted for deployment, seven to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.

More than 21,000 soldiers are affected by this call-up. They are scheduled to begin deploying in the summer in rotations that will continue into early 2009.

Two of the eight brigades recently alerted will replace two active Army brigades currently in Iraq. They are:

• 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 28th Infantry Division of Philadelphia. The unit is projected to deploy in February, 2009.

• 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team from Clinton, N.C. The 30th HBCT last deployed February 2004 to February 2005. The 30th BCT is expected to deploy in April, 2009.

Four brigades, ranging in size from 1,100 soldiers to about 3,000, will have a security force mission, and they will replace a capability currently being provided by more than 160 smaller, separate units in theater. Deploying these units as brigades will simplify the command and control for these missions. Security force missions include base defense and route security in Iraq and Kuwait.

All are projected to deploy in fall, 2008:

• 56th BCT, 36th Infantry Division, Camp Mabry, Texas. The brigade last deployed December 2004 to December 2005.

• 29th BCT, Fort Ruger, Hawaii. Its last deployment was December 2004 to January 2006.

• 81st BCT, Seattle, Wash. The brigade’s last deployment was February 2004 to March 2005.

• 45th Fires Brigade, Enid, Okla.

Another brigade alerted for duty, the 50th BCT of Fort Dix, N.J., will run detention operations in Iraq. About 4,000 soldiers with the 45th are projected to deploy in fall, 2008.

The 2,700 members of the 33rd BCT from Decatur, Ill., are slated to deploy to Afghanistan, where they will train the Afghan National Army. Some of the 33rd BCT soldiers are to deploy this summer; the majority are to head over later in the year.

These most recently alerted units will join more than 12,000 soldiers from four Guard brigade combat teams that were alerted for duty in April. They were to begin deploying in December and continuing through 2008.

The units alerted in April are the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team from Little Rock, Ark., the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team from Oklahoma City, the 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Columbus, Ohio, and the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of Indianapolis.

Two of those brigades, the 39th IBCT and the 76th IBCT, have previous deployments. The 39th was deployed March 2004 to March 2005; the 76th was deployed April 2003 to May 2004.

A DoD announcement in January calls for Guard and Reserve troops to be mobilized for no more than 12 months at a time, which means soldiers must complete as much individual and small-unit training as possible before they leave for their mobilization stations.

Guard and Reserve leaders have said they want their soldiers to serve at least 10 months boots on the ground in order to maximize on mobilizations and give other units as much time at home as possible, pushing for units to be alerted for possible duty as early as 12 months before their potential deployments in order to make it easier to plan and conduct pre-deployment training.
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Religious Right Divides Its Presidential Preference Vote

[The presidential preference poll results at the D.C. Family Research Council meeting this weekend were inclusive. Romney and Huckabee nearly tied at 27+% and McCain and Giuliani ran last with single digits. Paul came third with 15% and Thompson fourth at 9.8%. The poll was conducted partially on line beginning in August and so was not really a dependable index of the current views of those in attendance. If none of the above wins the nod, a third party candidate is nevertheless probably out, as Hillary is public enemy #1 and a divided right wing vote would ensure her victory. There are very real tensions here. Right wing evangelicals and Mormons are intense competitors despite Romney's appeals for alliance. Huckabee most nearly fits their ideal as a Baptist minister as well as pol, but probably can not get nominated. Giuliani is in their face with his abortion and gay tolerance and does not exactly reassure them with his promise to appoint another Roberts or Scalia to the Supreme Court to settle Abortion and other issues dear to the hearts of conservative evangelicals. And so it went. Ed Kent]

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

Religious Right Divides Its Vote at Summit
By MICHAEL LUO

Christian conservatives were divided over which of the Republican presidential candidates to support.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21values.html?ref=washington
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Rugby explained properely by a former captain of the sport

[Some corrections of my faulty account of Rugby sent on by a former Rugby captain via a friend. South Africa beat England yesterday, 15-6:

http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2007/10/20/sports/21rugbycup.html?ref=sports

Ed Kent}

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Understanding Rugby
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:34:21 -0700
From: Laura X -G4-
To: Ekent@brooklyn.cuny.edu

(hi there Ed, here is former rugby captain from England to help you out)

===============================

You can if you want, but I didn't wish to disappoint his obvious fond
memories of his rugger days.

I am reminded of the anonymous quotation:

Soccer is a game for gentlemen, played by hooligans.
Whereas rugby is a game for hooligans, played by gentlemen

jgf

>are you sending this to Ed, or am i ,, or none of the above
>?
>
>>The final of the Rugby World Cup will be fought out in Paris this
>>Saturday between Britain and South Africa. For those who don't
>>know the game, it is a sort of hybrid between soccer and football
>>(American expressions) that was invented by the British Public
>>(really private) School of that name back when. Our American
>>football evolved from it and is now a very different species.
>>
>>For the uninitiated Rugby is played by teams that lock horns at
>>various points in what are called scrums when the two sides line up
>>two deep
>
>actually three deep
>
>>to shove each other as the ball is tossed down the line between
>>them by a referee
>
>wrong, "shoved in" by the scrum half of the team that DIDN'T inflict
>the error.
>
>>. One team has a central figure who tries to kick the ball to the
>>back fielders who then start running towards the goal lines.
>
>Wrong, the eight forwards (who also form the scrum when an
>infringement occurs) attempt to get the ball who then back-kick it
>out of the scrum, or pass it out of a line-out to the scrum half,
>who determines the flow of the game and where the team to should aim
>to run to score a touch-down. He then passes it to the fly-half, who
>then can pass it out to the four three-quarters, who are the actual
>flee-footed chaps who attempt to score. Behind the three-quarters is
>the full back who follows behind and defends the goal.
>
>> These back fielders, as tacklers approach them, can lateral the
>>ball to fellow back fielders -- but only backwards. A forward
>>lateral brings a penalty.
>>
>>The teams are not shielded as in American football with padded
>>equipment, so that tackling is generally softer than the American
>>version -- around the ankles rather than mid body which can be a
>>real jolt for both tackler and tacked (I learned the hard way when
>>playing the game at Rugby's principal competitor school, Uppingham,
>>where I was an exchange student) -- reinjured an old wrist thing
>>from having played American football the year before in high school.
>>
>>The principal injury that one can receive in Rugby is what is
>>called the Rugby ear -- one's ears get jammed against the butts of
>>fellow players when one is shoving in the scrum. I acquired one. I
>>think they wear a protective something now to prevent that -- does
>>not affect hearing.
>>
>>One can kick the ball under certain circumstances for a goal, but I
>>forget the details -- I think it is a sort of drop kick.
>
>Basically the ball has to bounce first when it is dropped and then
>one kicks it. Hence the term drop-kick.
>
>> One can obviously pick up the ball which one cannot do in soccer.
>
>But one CANNOT pass forward which is the main difference between the
>royal game of Rugby and the colonists poor imitation.
>
>By the way, it is NOT Britain who is in the finals but ENGLAND.
>
>jgf
>from a former Rugby team school captain who hasn't touched the
>leather in nearly forty years.
>
>>Enjoy the finals. Rugby has not spread widely in this country, but
>>there is a group trying to get it going in Manhattan, if they can
>>find a proper playing field.
>>--
>>"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]

--
Laura X, founder/director of the former
National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape
Women's History Library
(510) 524-1582 Berkeley, Ca.
WEB SITE: http://ncmdr.org
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
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Iran: barrage of rockets waits invaders

[Help! While Turkey threatens invasion of Iraq, oil goes sky-high, the market crashes, Bush threatens Burmese military, we have to face the threat of Iranian rockets and presumably a cutoff of oil from the Middle East? All is not well here, Mr. Bush. Ed Kent]

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

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=27898§ionid=351020101

Iran: barrage of rockets waits invaders
Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:13:42
Iran's surface-to-surface missiles
Iran warns that it would fire as many as 11,000 missiles at 'the enemy's bases' within the first minutes after any possible attack.

Brigadier General Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), warned Saturday Iran will immediately respond to possible attacks.

He emphasized that Iran is capable of maintaining its fire power, in case of any invasion.

The commander of the missile force of the IRGC revealed Iran is one of the few countries with the capability of destroying the enemy's mobile targets as it possesses smart munitions and the equipments to pinpoint the enemy's targets.

"Now the enemies should ask themselves how many forces they would be ready to sacrifice to pay the price of their folly,” Chaharbaghi added.

"If a war breaks out in the future, it will not last long because we will rub their (the enemies') noses in the dirt," he concluded.

Chaharbaghi's remarks come after US President George W. Bush said Tehran's nuclear activities would lead to World War III.
Bush's remarks have drawn criticism at home and around the world with US presidential hopeful Barack Obama terming them as “cowboy diplomacy”.

MD/RE
--
"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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The Family Research Council: "Hey, I Need Some Amens Here!"

I was curious to know who constitutes the Family Research Council and what it stands for, so I spent several hours yesterday afternoon watching its presentations on C-SPAN. So far as I could tell from the camera surveys of the audience the membership -- at least at the current conference in Washington -- consists almost exclusively of white, middle aged, well fed Christians. According to an Orthodox Rabbi who addressed the group, there were about 3,000 Christians in attendance. They are being given the opportunity to cast straw poll votes for their preferred presidential candidate -- presumably Republicans who are appearing to invite their votes. The latest reports suggest that they will not opt for a third party as rumored, out of fear of splitting the right wing evangelical vote.

When I say that the group is virtually all white folks, I did not see a single African American in the audience. Interestingly enough, however, almost half of those presenting or introducing people on stage were African Americans. Star Parker had converted from bad times after she had had four abortions (her stress) to head a coalition on urban reforms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Parker

Rabbi David Lapin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lapin
spoke of the Hebrew ties of founding father era Americans, former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum, regretted the Democratic takeover of the Congress, and Newt Gingrich concluded the session with numerous stats indicating overwhelming American support for such things as crosses. menorahs, and the ten commandments being posting on public properties, prayers being featured in public schools along with the teaching of religion there, etc. It is only a matter of time, he suggested, before the people will prevail over the intellectuals, pols, and judges.

One certainly learned from the assorted speeches what the group hates -- the ACLU, "secular humanists," "secular socialists," Hillary, abortion supporters, gays, Muslims (or at least those who are not Judaeo-Christians), Hillary, Washington politicians, big government, welfare, taxes, academics, judges who defend abortion, etc. Rousing stand up cheers signified these hates as they were mentioned by this or that speaker -- the moderator reassured the assembly on breaking for dinner that their many rousing stand ups would have produced a 1,200 calorie weight loss by his count so that they could go eat heartily.

I gather that the various Republican candidates for the presidency are scheduled to speak. The moderator corrected his earlier report that only one Democrat had declined to speak, but adding that several had.

I was a bit hard pressed to figure exactly what this group is for. They say that they are Christians, but they are the oddest disposed Christians since the Inquisition and religious wars of past centuries. Hate obviously predominates over brotherly or any other kind of love.

One speaker, the Bishop of the New Hope Church in the D.C. area in a town in Maryland, Harry Jackson:

http://www.thehopeconnection.org/bishop.htm

did not entirely please the group. While he shared their views on abortion, he said he was still a Democrat on the books. He is the founder of HILC (the High Impact Leadership Coalition). He has appeared widely on talk shows and is a talk show host himself, heard on some 400 stations nationally. He made the switch from the Harvard Business School to a religious ministry somewhere along the line. He was the only speaker who did not seem to please his audience entirely -- a Democrat still?

And while he got a cheer speaking about protecting the lives of unborn children, the silence was stony when he added caring for children after they are born. That was what produced his comment in the subject line above. "Hey, I need some Amens here!" He did not get them.
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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The Demise of Our School Yard Bully

The recent escalating setbacks for the Bush administration's foreign policies brought to mind one of those childhood incidents that remains as an object lesson as to how things happen in the world.

In what must have been the fifth or six grade in our small Connecticut town public school when all but one of us boys in the class had not undergone our imminent growth spurt, we had one big guy whose name I have happily forgotten who was the terror of our school yard. In retrospect I realize that he had probably been held back a year or so and deeply resented us little guys who were the bright ones in a class in which he was the dummy.

His revenge was to terrorize us variously during our recesses and lunch hour on our large school yard. He would sneak up behind someone when no supervising teacher was watching and either push us to the ground or fire a sharp jab to the kidney region of the back which really hurts. One day when a group of us were standing together -- Pete, Johnny, Bobbie, the twins, Ronald and Russell, Freddie, and others whose names I have forgotten -- he pulled his bit with one of us. Spontaneously without planning or deliberation all of us pulled him to the ground and sat on him. I remember going for his legs to get him down. With this response to bullying, we had at last achieved victory. When we finally let him up, he slunk away and never bothered any of us again.

The above is sketched as an emblem of what we seem to see happening to Bush, Condi, and our Secretary of Defense as they try to rally the troops for peace in Iraq and Israel/Palestine.

The latest reports have Brown pulling out his troops from Afghanistan, a German governmental official condemning U.S. bullying actions in the Middle East, Putin visiting with Ahmadinejad in Iran and inviting him to Moscow, Olmert rushing off to Moscow to visit with Putin, Bush's French ally coming unglued with a national transit strike and a divorce following upon his war talk that parallels Bush's "third world war" comment, Egypt and Burma receiving verbal threats from Bush. Is Gaddafi still in the bottle? Pakistan has got its problems with the violence of Bhutto's return home. Australia looks like it will be undergoing a regime change not friendly to Bush with its forthcoming election.

The ultimate insult is the Iraqis now contracting with China and Iran to build major power plants (one of our costly efforts never became operative). There goes the oil and leadership of the Middle East! Bush has managed to turn us from a world leader to a global bully on the run!
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Race, Class -- and the Whtie Man's Burden?

I guess that I should not have been surprised that my posting on the Watson slur on the intelligence of Africans versus Europeans to various lists would produce a flurry of debates regarding the relative effects on intelligence of nurture versus nature. There seem to be a good many out there who consider their own genes to be the best!

However, what I am reminded of more than racial biases are the class and cultural attitudes that I discovered as a teen exchange student in Britain. The Brits operated with a complex mix of myths about their various sub-groups. The English were certain that they were inherently superior to the penurious Scots, the drunken Irish, and the song happy Welsh. The various classes ran parallel to these rankings with the middle class glad that it was superior in all ways to the lower classes -- and subservient and worshipful towards the upper classes. I found this on all levels among those whom I encountered, ranging from the bottom of the heap in the East End of London to members of the House of Lords. At least one was more likely to find free spirits at either extreme -- from one of which came the Beatles.

One of the 'saints' of my childhood days often cited for us was the medical missionary, Albert Schweitzer, who did his thing in Africa. I happened to bring up his name with my brilliant Nigerian college roommate once and discovered that he despised Schweitzer for his patronizing attitudes towards Africans. Perhaps Watson suffers from a characteristic British hubris -- remember all that Kipling stuff about the white Man's burden?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden

What goes around, comes around?
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Understanding Rugby

The final of the Rugby World Cup will be fought out in Paris this Saturday between Britain and South Africa. For those who don't know the game, it is a sort of hybrid between soccer and football (American expressions) that was invented by the British Public (really private) School of that name back when. Our American football evolved from it and is now a very different species.

For the uninitiated Rugby is played by teams that lock horns at various points in what are called scrums when the two sides line up two deep to shove each other as the ball is tossed down the line between them by a referee. One team has a central figure who tries to kick the ball to the back fielders who then start running towards the goal lines. These back fielders, as tacklers approach them, can lateral the ball to fellow back fielders -- but only backwards. A forward lateral brings a penalty.

The teams are not shielded as in American football with padded equipment, so that tackling is generally softer than the American version -- around the ankles rather than mid body which can be a real jolt for both tackler and tacked (I learned the hard way when playing the game at Rugby's principal competitor school, Uppingham, where I was an exchange student) -- reinjured an old wrist thing from having played American football the year before in high school.

The principal injury that one can receive in Rugby is what is called the Rugby ear -- one's ears get jammed against the butts of fellow players when one is shoving in the scrum. I acquired one -- one thickened ear. I think they wear a protective something now to prevent that now -- does not affect hearing.

One can kick the ball under certain circumstances for a goal, but I forget the details -- I think it is a sort of drop kick. One can obviously pick up the ball which one cannot do in soccer.

Enjoy the finals. Rugby has not spread widely in this country, but there is a group trying to get it going in Manhattan, if they can find a proper playing field.
--
"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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Bush Brings Us Good News?

Iraq Awards Contracts to Iran and China
By JAMES GLANZ
The contracts, awarded to build a pair of power plants,
prompted concerns among American military officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/middleeast/18grid.html?th&emc=th

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


Overhaul of Afghan Police Is New Priority
By DAVID ROHDE
The latest attempt to bolster Afghanistan's feeble police
force involves retraining the country's entire
72,000-member force.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/asia/18afghan.html?th&emc=th

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


Nuclear-Armed Iran Risks World War, Bush Says
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
President Bush suggested that if Iran obtained nuclear
arms, it could lead to "World War III."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/washington/18prexy.html?th&emc=th

..................
--
"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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Intelligence of Africans?

[Two of the most brilliant medical researchers that I have known were immigrants from Nigeria -- my college roommate and my most brilliant student who went on simultaneously to NYU Medical and Columbia Public Health. Both moved on to distinguished teaching and research careers, as indicated by numerous Google hits. Watson must be getting senile. Ed Kent]

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

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners

Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really

By Cahal Milmo

Published: 17 October 2007

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

[snip]
--
"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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Cloning the "Icebox"?

In the early 1970s our Morningside Heights neighborhood was startled to learn that a plan was afoot to double the size of the "icebox" (the nickname given for its architectural ugliness to the Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive between Riverside Drive and Claremont). This plan entailed replacing the buildings on the north end of Riverside and Claremont running into the short segment of 119th St. and overarching it.

We became involved directly because very dear friends lived in 468 Riverside, a Rockefeller owned building, that would have been destroyed. A small committee spanning all political perspectives was formed and started exploring the why's and how's such a plan had come into existence. We eventually discovered that what was at work was the pipe dream of an Interchurch Center vice president with the aim of expanding what he conceived to be America's Protestant Vatican, centering all the major national administrations of Protestant denominations therein.

Ranging about to the various area institutions and with public meeting efforts, we were eventually able to defeat this silly plan -- helped by departures of national headquarters of denominations out of the Interchurch Center to other parts of the country. The liberal impulses of the civil rights efforts of Protestants were at that point beginning to fade and denominations wanted to be located nearer to their major conservative constituents in the center of the country.

The upshot has been that the Interchurch Center is no longer that -- rather it is largely a commercial rental space. I have not checked its directory, but presumably some Columbia as well as commercial offices are located there -- in what proportions, I do not know. The Center has a cafeteria in its basement that welcomes all comers and cash machines at its Claremont entrance. It has a chapel on the ground floor that might make a nice place for small weddings. Most of its religious offices such as NYC's Protestant Council have drastically shrunken in work force and space used.

Of course there is a lesson here for the proposed Columbia Manhattanville biotech expansion. Columbia cannot or will not specify what it plans for its 16 proposed high rise buildings in its coveted 17 acres in Manhattanville. One suspects that that space may well go largely commercial as well -- Columbia as well as the U.S. in general -- has been falling behind the biological research curve globally, thanks to the Bush veto of stem cell research and his Republican confreres cutbacks in scientific research funding in a host of areas. I doubt that NY could afford to follow California in going it alone with funding.

But what is increasingly clear is that Columbia is winging it with its dreams of glory in Manhattanville. It does not know and, thus, cannot tell anyone what it will really use the space for -- the story changes with each telling. Certainly there is absolutely NO JUSTIFICATION FOR EMINENT DOMAIN grabs on the basis of such vague stuff. Hopefully the various legal actions in process or the better judgment of city and state agencies down the line will halt this economic disaster for Columbia in the making.
--
"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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British Versus American Social Service Workers

One of my family members just left a job working with kids in one of those places where they are sent by families who want to get rid of them. From start to finish she was horrified by the abuses of the children for whom she had medical responsibilities -- fractures caused to them by rough treatment by staff who had more or less been hired off the street without credentials for such employment. She has duly reported the abuses to the appropriate authorities and hopefully follow up investigations will follow.

Her experience reminded me of my own radically contrasting experiences at her age working first in a community center in a poor community in London (Bethnal Green) when a teen exchange student and later in one in lower Harlem as a graduate student. I had taken on these jobs with background experience as a teen myself working as a summer camp counselor post WW2 when manpower was in short supply.

Let me sketch the differences which I fear still exist:

The Bethnal Green Community Center was run by a director (and his wife) who lived in an apartment in the building. They were residents of the community, knew many outside their building walls, would solicit stuff from local merchants when we had a party. My experiences with the British kids more or less paralleled those from my summer camp days. They were well fed, had excellent medical care. Some were partial or full war orphans, but had good social work assistance from caring people.

Manhattanville Community Center was an entirely different world five years later. Most of the kids with whom I was working were also partial orphans. Welfare provisions in those days excluded a "man in the house" as a bar to welfare support. As most fathers had lost their jobs with the return of our veterans who reclaimed them, my little gang of kids was not offered the advantage of fathering. Further welfare benefits were none too great. The kids were hungry, so we did cooking as our primary activity -- cakes from mixes that I brought in mainly. They also did not have access to decent medical care. One little guy had infectious impetigo sores all over his legs which he covered in shame as best he could.

But the big difference was the attitudes of the 'professionals' working with the kids. Most lived far from Harlem. Most were white and did not relate to African Americans in any direct way. We had a supervising psychiatrist who was a member of one of those psychiatric cult groupings which I think has now disappeared. In a heavy German accent he would insist that 9/10 of the kids were borderline schizophrenics. Needless to say many of the social workers treated them as such.

One horror story stands out in memory. Two of my little gang were brothers. One day a social worker -- a Vassar grad -- came looking for them. She was their official case worker, but afraid to go to their home. I offered to go with her and we set out in her car. It soon became apparent that she was nuts!!! When she saw African American men standing on street corners, she would exclaim" "There's another Communist!!!" We reached the family in a now torn down tenement. The apartment had two rooms. Cardboard filling replaced the broken glass in one which had two battered stuffed chairs. The other had a large bed. In the latter apparently the 2 youngest children slept with the mother. Two other little ones got to go to sleep in the armchairs. When asleep the two oldest with whom I was working could lift them on to the floor so that they could go to sleep in the chairs. The social worker had some harsh words to say to the mother, concluding with the threat that if she had any more children, she would take all of her kids away. As we were leaving a little girl slammed the door, catching the woman's coat at which she screamed and screamed and fled. Later the mother was hospitalized after having nearly killed herself with an attempted abortion with a coat hanger. "Brother Boy" came to me looking for help to get back to a grandmother in the Southland. Instead I was obliged to take him to the Orangeburg State Mental Hospital, which I discovered to be the only refuge for abandoned African American boys -- there was a riot in the men's violent ward as we arrived.

When I got back to the center, I told my boss, the center director, that this woman was a nut. He told me that I just did not understand how things work. Six weeks later he called me in and told me that I had been absolutely right about this Vassar grad social worker -- she had apparently nearly destroyed 30 families that had been assigned to her as case worker!

I am not saying that all American social workers or others working with poor families treat them brutally. From the reports that I get now and again from students and others, about one in ten is a really caring person. Most are pretty incompetent and perhaps two are really brutal.

If one is poor and dependent on the system, one is likely to encounter the worst of things. And we wonder why kids do not finish school or why so many end up in prison?

When I was teaching at Brooklyn College where we have some large auditoriums, we would occasionally find a traffic jam of school buses with Little kids being herded to some event or other. Some of the teachers would seem caring, but the majority by far would look angry and depressed with their jobs. Such was my observation of education majors. The weakest students were all too often entering this field -- with the occasional superstar and caring one. NYC notoriously pays its teachers far less than do the competing nearby suburban schools. So where to you think our best teachers migrate when they can. Teaching is an incredibly demanding occupation and burn out is all too common -- we lose about half of ours after a few years, if I recall the stats accurately.

So why do you suppose that so many of our kids never graduate from high school -- the minimum education that one needs for any sort of decent job?

P.S. When I visited my French pen pal as a teen I found that his father was a public school teacher -- and a short visit made it clear that teachers were respected by the French at a level only slightly lower than doctors and political officials. Think about the slams directed at our teachers with their low salaries based on a bygone era when teaching was one of the few jobs available to women apart from secretarial and household things.
--
"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 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Missing Fathers

I missed the 60 Minutes Cosby/Poussaint program which my wife did see and praised greatly. Below is Bob Herbert's follow up in which he laments the abandonment by African American men of their children, leaving boys particularly angry and in deep trouble.

One of the advantages (or disadvantages) of being a bit older than the crowd is that one remembers things all too often forgotten. Many years ago as an intern from Union Theological Seminary in NYC I worked with kids in lower West Harlem (at the Manhattanville Community Center (no longer in existence). My particular little gang of about a dozen boys in their early teens did not have fathers. But there was an explanation as to where the fathers had gone. After WW2 when the veterans returned from the wars, they were given back their jobs (and also G.I. Bill access to college). Those who had filled their jobs while they were away at war had ben women and African Americans who had migrated from the rural south to take advantage of the suddenly available paychecks working in our abundant NYC area factories.

When the veterans returned, both the women and these African American men were laid off and suddenly in the latter case found themselves unemployed. Discrimination against African Americans had returned full force. The only support for the families of the unemployed was welfare. BUT the rules of welfare in those days were that there could be NO MAN IN THE HOUSE. Men were forced to leave their families or else have them cut off from any sources of support. Raids were regularly made in the middle of the night here in NYC and elsewhere to enforce this rule.

The little guys with whom I was working desperately wanted to be included in American society. They were hungry, so rather than the regular boys activities that I would have scheduled with them, we baked cakes from mixes that I bought for them. I became something of a big brother to them in the absence of real fathers or big brothers (most of the latter were being shipped off to our jails). I lost immediate contact with them when my wife and I went to Oxford to study for a year. By the time I returned the bitter ends of their lives were beginning. They started small, grabbing food from the market stalls in the 'hood, then grabbing purses, then robberies and dealing drugs. One survived and became a hero cop who filled me in on the rest when I met him near his retirement -- all but 3 had died violently by then -- one was homeless on the west coast.

American culture has not been friendly to the African American family. Some have made it -- often with great rage incorporated such as that o of Justice Clarence Thomas' to judge by his 60 Minute interview. There is a good deal of post traumatic stress out there and many an African American man -- guilty or not -- has been locked up in our prisons which hold 1/4 of the world's prison population -- the largest proportion of any nation in the world.

It is good to see Cosby and Poussaint doing their best, but racism is incredibly deeply embedded in American culture and cannot be resolved by minimal assistance to kids who are still the victims of many centuries of oppression -- worse perhaps now in NYC than in any place in the South -- where many are now returning to remake their lives.

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/opinion/16herbert.html?ref=opinion

BOB HERBERT
Tough, Sad and Smart

They are a longtime odd couple, Bill Cosby and Harvard’s Dr. Alvin Poussaint, and their latest campaign is nothing less than an effort to save the soul of black America.
--
"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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Whacking Away at Hillary?

Now that the leading Democrats and Republicans are whacking away at Hillary, I wonder whether Bill will be able to restrain the impulse to whack back that all of us feel when our loved ones are attacked?

There is a certain irony in these attacks, incidentally, in that the Republicans are accusing Hillary of being too soft on our 'Muslim enemies' and the Democrats are hitting her for being too hawkish. I don't see that this is going to work on either flank -- as they are more or less canceling each other out. As a Democrat I am sorry to see Obama and Edwards lashing out. Their attacks are only going to disenchant a public that has had it with all too many personal smears, made fashionable by the right wing operations that can only answer obvious facts with personal attacks -- downright un-Christian, it looks like to me. Thought they were claiming that we are a Christian nation? I hope our historians will correct that misconception:

Amendment I

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."

Our founding fathers were a mixed lot on the subject of religion ranging from atheists to agnostics to deists (a ordered universe, but not by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) to traditional theists (who nevertheless had had it with the sectarian brawls that had brought many so many as religious refugees to our shores.

It has been disconcerting to witness "God's Warriors" (to use CNN's Christiane Amanpour's phrase) promoting brutal wars against their religious enemies.

I imagine Hillary (with Bill at her side) will be well qualified to steer us out of the horrendous pitfalls that we have stumbled into under the Bushies. There is quite a mess to be cleaned up -- not to be exacerbated by more sneaky killing and torture stuff. Will be good to have an experienced former president as first spouse by Hillary's side. Should prepare her to cope the nonsense spawned by the Republicans both at home and abroad.

As I read things coming in from around the world, she looks to be the one being taken most seriously -- and not just because she happens to be in the lead at the moment. She and her husband are pretty well known and it is clear that they both care for the well-being of their fellow human beings and will do their best to restore the peace and hold in check the wannabe killers and other assorted criminals both here and there.
--
"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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Are You a 'Good German'?

[Those of us who have direct memories of the horrors of WW2 are wondering how the U.S. could have adopted the most vicious tactics of our enemies then -- an illegal attack on a nation, torture, violations of basic Constitutional and international standards, murders unpunished -- in sum what Frank Rich calls here Gestapo tactics. For the benefit of those who weren't around then, the Gestapo was Hitler's brutal secret state police force that tortured and murdered without check:

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

If one reads through the other articles below, one finds that some of our best military are so distressed by such misconduct that they are discussing the pros and cons on a military rebellion. And the Guantanamo piece gives us more of the horrors -- not quite matched by the Nazi death camps -- but perhaps hinting of such operations carried out upon those rendered by us to countries that do our torturing and killing?

Are you a 'good German? Or are you doing something to stop these outrages? Ed Kent]

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

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The 'Good Germans' Among Us
By FRANK RICH
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo
tactics in the Iraq war. The longer we stand idly by, the
more we resemble the "good Germans."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?th&emc=th

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

At an Army School for Officers, Blunt Talk About Iraq
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the intellectual center of the U.S.
Army, has become a front line in the military's
soul-searching over Iraq.

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/us/14army.html?th&emc=th

Portable Halls of Justice Rise in Guantánamo
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
In the long-running limbo that is Guantánamo, a portable
complex to try detainees may be the perfect architecture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/us/14gitmo.html?th&emc=th
--
"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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