Thursday, February 28, 2008

Bill Buckley

I never met Bill Buckley face to face, although our paths crossed here and there and we had several direct and indirect exchanges.

I first became aware of Buckley when I heeled the Yale Daily News of which Buckley had been chair, as I eventually became in 1955. Buckley was a legend there -- particularly with several permanent staff members who adored him. His senior society, Skull and Bones, was just down the street from the News building.

What was apparent of Buckley then was that he was a full fledged racist and bigot. His attack on Sid Lovett, our beloved Protestant Chaplain at Yale, in his notorious God and Man at Yale was as much a Catholic screed as an attack on Sid who had been imprisoned during WW1 as a conscientious objector.

We soon became aware of Buckley's bigotries from the tales told by our adoring staff members. Buckley was particularly anti-Semitic (as well as anti minority, I gather, which I did not learn until he fought desegregation some years later). Our principal staff member told us how Buckley had personally smashed the News presses to halt the publication of his board's final issue. The tradition then was that the managing editor would write the last editorial and that managing editor had been Jewish and far worse had struck up a warm relationship with Buckley's sister.

I only saw Buckley (from a distance) in 1954, shortly before I was elected chair of the paper when my then fiancee and I as college editors attended the last gasp rally for Senator Joe McCarthy at Madison Square Garden (One Million Americans for McCarthy) which had assembled an unholy body of haters (Lisa Larson, noted life photographer was dragged out down the main aisle with the crowd chanting "Kill the Communist" which Ms. Larsen scarcely was). Buckley was seated uncomfortably on the platform with an assemblage of ex-generals, elderly ladies in white tennis shoes and such and not looking particularly happy. My wife now of 50 years, then editor of her student paper at Sarah Lawrence, and I wrote up the event, warts and all, which elicited for me an enraged letter from Buckley to the editor filled with large words for unmentionable things. Later after I had been elected to the chair Buckley invited me to visit him at his home which I declined -- he was always cruising for acolytes and picked up many a young Yalie with his charm as a person.

My indirect contact with Buckley came a bit later when I studied with his intellectual mentor, Willmore Kendall, in a political theory course that was something else. He wrote for a time for the National Review and then broke with Buckley and moved to Texas. Kendall was brilliant and engaging. He had been doing psychological warfare in Korea, had been a mid Westerner who had gone to Oxford as a Rhodes in his teens, then had fallen in love with an older Communist lady, but had flipped to the far right after experiencing Franco's Spain (may have made contact with the Buckley family there where they spent much of their vacation time and where Buckley presumably refined his near fascist personal political philosophy. He was apparently involved with Opus Dei, the lay Catholic organization founded by an admirer of Hitler, who is now being considered for sainthood by our Hitler youth pope -- so history goes. I mention these latter elements because the Catholic world of those days was radically divided between social democrats and rabid anti-Communists. See the latter day conclusions of the First Vatican Council which shaped this deep divide within the Church which endures to the present day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vatican_Council

The reactionary tendencies have driven many of my good friends out of the Church. I was trained in theology and particularly here in NYC we all shared -- Protestant, Catholic, Jewish -- many of the same concerns upon which we worked together. The anomaly was the growing right wing movement that was either non religious or making its appeal to the long standing anti-intellectual elements among the evangelicals who were more determined to make war and make out big time than what we liberal religious workers saw as the humane heart and purposes of our religions.

In fairness, having launched the right wing movement, Buckley apparently moderated his early racism and bigotry mentioned above. Having initially supported the war on Iraq, I gather that he was towards the end opposed to it as a massive error and failure.

May the gods take mercy on his soul. It must be terribly difficult to overcome an upbringing by a greedy south Texas oil man on the make and most likely nurturing mainly by hired servants.

I hope I have not done Buckley an injustice -- some of the early observation are based on adoring hearsay. I see him as having been the principal author of terrible trends which have now placed our nation in deep jeopardy -- straight out of Franco's fascist Spain. May we beat them back into their cages and get back to being Americans once again.
--
"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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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Helping the Homeless --- Jean?

[Last night a kindly restaurant owner called at Jean's request to ask whether she could stay with us. I told him no and explained that we had known Jean since a daughter as a teen nearly two decades ago had met her while working at a summer job in Central Park. Jean is, we believe, a college grad, who has been diagnosed as being mentally ill. She wanders the streets of NYC from Manhattan to Brooklyn where she will drop in occasionally where she has met people and ask for help. We tried but finally gave up as we found Jean to be an angry person who harassed those who tried to help her. Catholic priests in Brooklyn finally brought charges against her and had her arrested. We tried to figure a way to get her into some sort of permanent shelter, but were told that her anger would defeat that effort. She is a social outcast who may find occasional refuge in a shelter when the weather is cold as it is now. She had a mother who is probably deceased now and some other relatives in the city.

We used to put such people in mental hospitals. Now prisons are the only alternative and a good percentage of those in prison are mentally ill and terribly vulnerable there. Possibly with the new medications Jean might be able to function well enough to have a positive assignment, but she resists the notion that she is mentally ill -- or did when she first came to us for help. To my knowledge Jean is not dangerous. She can be a nuisance -- waking those Catholic priests up in the wee hours and demanding a ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes and mayo or sending us innumerable magazine subscriptions, using mail in forms with prepaid postage.

I think of Jean and feel badly each time we turn her away. She is a survivor so far and always on the move. Would that the gods would care for her. The kindly restaurant owner said he gives her meals. Ed Kent]

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

Counting the Homeless to Help End Their Plight
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
New Haven is one of about 325 cities and counties around
the nation that have recently devised ambitious 10-year
plans not just to reduce homelessness, but to end it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/nyregion/26homeless.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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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

100+ Women Murdered in Basra Last Year

[Contrary to the self-congratulations of the Bush administration as to
its suppression of violence in Iraq, it remains the most dangerous
nation in the world. The status of women -- which was on a parity with
men under Hussein -- is becoming extremely reduced and even dangerous.
It looks as though we have created an irreparable mess there. Ed Kent]

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

Ominous Signs Remain in City Run by Iraqis
By SOLOMON MOORE
An experiment with self-rule in Basra, Iraq's second
largest city, suggests to many that the country's future
remains dark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/world/middleeast/23basra.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]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Suffering?

With fading vision, I am no longer able to read whatever I wish -- what has been my lifetime pleasure. Fortunately in this computer age I can enlarge type and access a wide and increasing number of sources. However, until a computer system is invented that allows one to lie in bed and read projections on the ceiling, I am restricted to the time -- a few hours a day -- that allows me to sit in front of my screen. The rest of the time I am forced to seek out other sources. Our TV media are now horrors obsessed with porn and killing -- both news and entertainment.

npr is a useful source with its wide ranging exploration of topics. It is also a depressing one with its reports of the widespread suffering of so many of our fellow humans out there -- as many as a quarter at least of the human race that is being abused, suffers lack of medical care and basic stuffs for life and survival. One particularly cringes at the reports of the suffering of little children -- those that must have concerned Jesus of Nazareth so far as we can trust the reports of his life, suffering, and death.

The traditional answers to suffering have been various -- it makes one a better person or there will be a happy ending in the afterlife for the good folks. However, such answers really do not do it for some of us as a resolution of the theodicy problem -- the inherent conflict between the three basic religious claims in the face of evil: 1) that G-d is all powerful, 2) that G-d is all good, 3) that real evil exists. Why should an all good and all powerful god not intervene to prevent real evil -- particularly suffering? That 'It' can or will not cope with evil, causes many of us who have plumbed this question to back away and become agnostics (doubters) about the possibility of a god who works in mysterious ways and, thus, skeptical that such a unifying force exists in our vast universe.

I was intrigued to hear a Distinguished Professor of Religion discussing on npr his most recent book on this subject. He, himself, has evolved from a believing born again evangelical to an agnostic Distinguished Profession of Religion at the University of North Carolina -- Bart D. Ehrman: God's Problem: "How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer."

The reason that I much prefer his and my own disposition not to believe in a rescuing deity is that he and I then bear the responsibility to do whatever we can ourselves to alleviate human suffering. Too many believers, I fear, leave such things to their imagined on call rescue deity. We might not have less greed and cruelty in our world with a loss of religious belief -- probably as much or more -- but at least we can direct our own lives on behalf of those who need our help. Our time here is limited. Make the best of it. We need to help each other while we can.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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Monday, February 18, 2008

". . . remaining stuck if they’re black.'

[One of the nightmare experiences that has haunted me since my graduate student days has been the suffering and early deaths of a little gang of a dozen kids from Manhattanville (lower West Harlem) with whom I worked as an intern from Union Theological Seminary in 1956-57. I had chosen an internship working with children because I had had much experience as a camp counselor and had also worked with British kids in a poor community in East London as a teen exchange student.

What I discovered with my little Harlem gang was a shock. Middle class American children as well as British poor ones post WW2 were living with adequate food, medical care, housing provided where necessary in Britain by the state. My kids at the Manhattanville Community Center on W. 126th St. were constantly hungry, so we ended up doing cooking two evenings a week rather than a sport (I would bring in a cake mix). Their slum housing was a nightmare. They were at grave health risk. All of the kids were desperate to make it in America. They were very sweet and kind when treated well -- we had a party to which none of the invited girls came except my then fiancee and some of her Sarah Lawrence classmates. They were treated with extreme courtesy by the kids. The kids were scared most of the time -- they faced crime and violence routinely. Their role models were the drug dealers and the lone African American cop in the precinct. They were sick with preventable things (skin infections) for which there was no treatment available to them. I persuaded them at one point to bring their weapons to my dorm room where we stored them in a bottom drawer. One day I came home and found them all missing and knew there was trouble out there. I could go on with the horrors -- a Vassar grad family social worker who was crazy -- I witnessed her threaten a mother of five with removal of her kids if she had another -- so the mother tried to abort herself with a coat hanger. Aa a consequence I got to take her son, one of my gang, to the Orangeburg State Mental Hospital -- the only place then available for Protestant kids without homes. This 'incarceration' kept him out of the military later when I learned that he had been rejected and then reclassified as a draft dodger (per an FBI letter to me indicating he had given me as his contact).

Guiltily I left my little gang behind when I married and we went to Oxford for an exchange year. I met a couple of the kids the next few years. One had become a gay male prostitute. One of 3 to survive had joined the Marines and gone on to become a hero cop. Still later nearing retirement from the NYPD Odell Terry told me what had happened to the rest. One was homeless on the West coast. Another had made it and was living on Long Island. All the rest had died early violent deaths -- the most recent, our comic, Shorty, who made the guys laugh, by suicide out of a window. All the deceased had been in prison.

Were this a tale of half a century ago only, I would not be commenting here. I still live near Harlem and see the lost ones -- 50% of our young African American men are unemployed here in NYC. I was bothered by the Obama suggestion that we had 90% solved our racism problem. The sea of invisible sufferers is still with us. They die earlier from lack of adequate medical care -- cancers discovered when it it too late to help. African Americans poor are nearly half our prison population of 2+ millions. They are killed on the streets with virtually no public notice.

When I worked with poor kids in London in 1952 the chances of their thriving were great -- one from that community became a philosophy professor who visited us in a CUNY college. But today poverty is still killing many millions of America's children prematurely, as Krugman reports below. Ed Kent]

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

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Poverty Is Poison
By PAUL KRUGMAN
To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is
to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the
neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child's brain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.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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Sunday, February 17, 2008

Assassinations Again?

I don't like to trust my intuitions in such matters, but I am finding discomforting parallels between our current election cycle and earlier periods of political change when our leaders were either blown away by assassins or nearly so with near misses. Particularly painful were the deaths of JFK and Bobby Kennedy. They were killed so far as we can tell by nut cases. Reagan's near miss was also by a nut case.

Our media are not helping things by over publicizing every conceivable dramatic mass murder -- particularly ones committed by depressed young people. I have this morning been posting reports on the Israeli assassinations and criticisms of same:

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/49858


I am deeply worried that we may see such with the election of either of our Democratic candidates who will be threatening deeply entrenched interests of embittered persons (and/or brutal institutions). Assassination has been one of our corporate and national instruments for displacing leaders and their governments that have challenged American interests:

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


There is no reason not to fear a domestic application of this 'security' tactic. These types can justify torture and murder in its name. Why not their political opponents here?
--
"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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Obama's International Appeal to Supressed Youth?

I am a Clinton supporter, but I can see a special role for Barack Obama either as president or vice president in reviving our appeal to the younger (and all too often oppressed) generation around the globe. Any who follow such things know that these are often on the verge of those in rebellion against oppression and the store that feeds the ranks of terrorists. The following article in today's NY Times illustrates such:

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

GENERATION FAITHFUL
Dreams Stifled, Egypt's Young Turn to Islamic Fervor
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Across the Middle East, many people are forced to put off
marriage, the gateway to independence. In their frustration
they turn to religion for solace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/world/middleeast/17youth.html?th&emc=th

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

It was the Muslim Brotherhood who assassinated the last great Egyptian peace maker, Anwar Sadat. One cannot count on a youth revolution not turning violent in itself. But giving youth a positive role in their societies in more instances than not pulls them away from extremist violence.

I happened to hear on npr a young (anonymous college student) blogger in English from Saudi Arabia. He can speak out relatively freely in that repressive country because he blogs in English rather than Arabic. But he reported that his fellow students are extremely excited about Obama.

One can imagine the impact that Obama would have on the younger generation of Iran where they constitute the bulk of its population wearing jeans and being held in check by the mullahs.

Certainly he would have a powerful impact in much of Africa.

We shall see. I would prefer that he become vice president for the present, but his appeal to future generations may be the hidden asset that will make him a most valuable figure in our future.
--
"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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More Worriy About Israeli Aggression -- and American Implication in Same

A critic of my earlier pieces on the Israeli lobby's implication in our war on Iraq produced the following response: "Well actually peace is sometimes made by killing people . . . ." In fairness the author was referring to our response to the Nazis. But that is precisely my worry about Israel and its supporters. All too often they are reliving WW2 and applying the logic of that war to situations in which we and they should be working to achieve peace. I have just posted the latest column by Uri Avnery, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Avnery
in which he deplores the Israeli glorification of assassination ("liquidation") which only stimulates a tit for tat response:

"This week this was proven once again. The Hebrew verb "lekhassel" - liquidate - in all its grammatical forms, currently dominates our public discourse. Respected professors debate with academic solemnity when to "liquidate" and whom. Used generals discuss with professional zeal the technicalities of "liquidation", its rules and methods. Shrewd politicians compete with each other about the number and status of the candidates for "liquidation"." [from Blood and Champagne}

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/49858


One may debate the involvement of Israel in our war on Iraq, but one cannot dispute its massive destruction of the infrastructure of all Lebanon and not just the areas in the south where Nasrallah's followers were based -- and those millions of cluster bombs now regularly killing off Lebanese kids and farmers. One cannot dispute the recent Israeli raid on a supposed Syrian nuclear facility. And one cannot dispute the inclination of Israeli pols to attack Iran or to send the U.S. to do so. Such an attack would be an immediate disaster, as it would throw the Middle East into chaos. And most importantly all of the above aggressions are defeating any hope for lasting peace in the Middle East.

It is almost as if the Israelis were trying to convince the Arab and Muslim world in general that they are the new Reich set to dominate all who stand in their way.

This attitude is both paranoid and ultimately will destroy Israel itself when some renegade and outraged nation or terrorist group launches the all too readily available WMDs on it. Only serious peace making can abort this nightmare end game. Let there be no more "Blood and Champagne" -- celebration of the killings of enemies.
--
"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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Saturday, February 16, 2008

Did AIPAC Support Our Invasion of Iraq?

An intelligent critic has challenged my suggestion that the Israeli lobby supported our invasion of Iraq and maintains that Israel warned against it. However, there are more subtleties here -- as to what the Israeli lobby is and represents. A Google search turned up a number of items supporting my suggestion, but noting the AIPAC certainly does not represent the majority of American Jews or the rest of us -- it has a right wing orientation and works in devious ways to achieve its ends. See Juan Coles' 2004 piece, "AIPAC's Overt and Convert Ops"

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

Here is a quote from same:

"Likud could not make U.S. policy on its own. Its members had to make convincing arguments to Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush himself. But they were able to make those arguments, by distorting intelligence, channeling Ahmed Chalabi junk, and presenting Big Ideas to men above them that signally lacked such ideas. (Like the idea that the road to peace in Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. Ha!)"

My revised comment would be that Israel, as we, has a sharp division between its war and peace makers. The former tend to be the more devious in pursuing their aims.

There are a number of other pieces along these lines such as this from the Washington Post in 2003: "For Israel Lobby Group, War Is Topic A, Quietly"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63578-2003Mar31?language=printer

I see no long term gain for Israel and real hazards ahead in our sponsoring such stuff either directly or indirectly. Peace is not made by killing people. It comes these days through truth and reconciliation!!
--
"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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Saving Our Economy with Decent Pay

[Let us hope we can elect sufficient Democrats (or sane Republicans) to keep our economy going with such things as a living minimum wage, decent unemployment protection, revision of the draconian bankruptcy law, etc. Ed Kent]

Totally Spent
By ROBERT B. REICH
The only way to keep the economy going over the long run is
to increase the wages of the bottom two-thirds of Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/opinion/13reich.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]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
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Friday, February 15, 2008

The Two Interest Groups ----> Iraq War

The U.S. war on Iraq was simple madness on the part of those who organized and launched it. Two interest groups set this attack in motion -- the Israeli lobby and the oil interests represented by Richard Cheney.

It is understandable why Israel wanted the U.S. to take out Saddam Hussein. During the first Gulf war he had launched rockets at Israel. Interceptors failed to block these rockets. Hussein was manifesting his on-going hostility to Israel by offering monetary rewards to the families of suicide bombers (not often delivered). Hussein's terrorism was directed primarily at the Israelis. And they have reason to fear their hostile neighbors -- the most recent bombing of a supposed Syrian nuclear site, support now of a preemptive attack on Iran. The active figures in promoting the Iraq war have now moved out of stage center -- Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others who were key advisers to Rumsfeld who ran this private little war. Perle still urges the U.S. to attack Iran. Personally I can understand the Israeli fears of WMD attacks that could devastate Israel. But one wishes that we had resisted their call to attack. It was not the way to bring them or us peace.

Unforgivable, however, were the oil interests -- Halliburton particularly -- which have benefited immensely from our move to dominate Middle Eastern oil at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, the loss of many thousands of lives, the stimulus to terrorism, and the manifest destruction of global trust in the integrity of the United States. Some day Americans will read of the vast profits that Cheney has presumably made as former CEO and major stock holder in Halliburton -- what a horror for future generations to assimilate!

Why are our politicians and media not telling this grim tale as it is? The Israeli lobby still has both our parties' politicians as well as our media thoroughly intimidated. Criticisms of Israel produce charges that one is either an anti-Semite of a self-hating Jew.

The oil lobby presumably has bought our media entire. Look at the vast profits announced this past year by Exxon (and others) -- the largest ever of ANY corporation. In America today such monies can blot out any opposition or criticism. Check out the oil money contributions to ALL of our presidential candidates now in the running -- Obama, Clinton, McCain.

And so the U.S. was sold down the river while its bridges continued to tumble.
--
"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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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Latest Bush Obscenity

[Apart from the fact that civilized countries have abolished the death penalty, the desire to execute on the basis of confessions obtained through torture is the latest quite astounding Bush obscenity.

Figure that Bush wants to leave the next president with the most global outrage against the U.S. that he can muster along with yet another mobilization poster for recruiting terrorists? It looks like these guys are really losing it. Ed Kent]

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

Trial's Focus to Suit Bush
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The cases of those accused with roles in 9/11 represent a
major part of President Bush's "unfinished business."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/washington/12assess.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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Obscene Anomaly

I happened to catch an npr interview with Philip Lambardo, the recently retired psychologist who carried out the grim experiment with college students simulating prison guards and prisoners at Stanford in 1968 which had to be abruptly aborted because of the brutality of the make-believe guards towards their 'prisoners'. Lambardo's latest book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,

http://www.lucifereffect.com/


details how the Stanford horrors were almost exactly duplicated by our military at Abu Ghraib up to including the forced nakedness and scorn for prisoners. Lambardo was an expert witness for the defense of the non-commissioned officer in charge there who is now serving 8 years with loss of all military benefits -- a punishment that Lombardo considers excessive and also not targeted at the higher ups who were in charge and the CIA who encouraged our soldiers to 'loosen up' the prisoners for interrogation.

Lambardo's central point is that situations can turn good people towards doing evil things -- from an Eichman to those at Abu Ghraib -- and I would add if he does not -- any occupation force that seeks to control resistant populations. He did not mention such in the interview, but it looks to me as though the occupiers in the Middle East -- the Israelis over the Palestinians and the Europeans and Americans -- Christians by culture -- trying to suppress Muslims -- are at risk of being well -intentioned (not all good by any means) people doing evil to those whom they seek to dominate.

I read the reports of the Christian Peacemakers on the occupation of the Palestinians. They note that there are brutal settlers and members of the IDF as well as the occasional decent person or 'hero' noted also as part of the pattern of evil situations by Lambardo -- the heroes being those who do not go along with the brutalities.

How do those feel who are being brutalized? One of my email friends, Khalid Amayreh, is a Palestinian journalist trained in the U.S. He is a man of peace, but I have been watching his outrage grow by leaps and bounds. Below is his latest post. Let me introduce him thus:

"Three years before I was born, three of my four paternal uncles, Hussein 27, Mahmoud 25, and Yosef 23, were killed by Israeli soldiers. They were simple shepherds who were grazing their herds near the village of Al-burj near the so-called armistice line, 20 km south West of the West Bank town of Hebron. With my three uncles, three other relatives, including a woman, were also shot dead."

http://www.p4pd.org/lifestories1.html


Obscene Anomaly





By Khalid Amayreh

2 February, 2008



The Israeli embassy in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, came under attack by anonymous gunmen this week. The attack, in which no people were killed, showed that the Mauritanian people don't like the presence of Israelis and Zionists on their national soil.



Terrorism, of course, should be condemned in the strongest terms. However, the presence of an Israeli diplomatic mission in the heart of Nouakchott is a brazen provocation to the sensibilities and feelings of Mauritanian citizens



After all, like the rest of mankind, Mauritanians watch on a daily basis what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, namely the genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing the Zionist military-political establishment has been effecting against helpless Palestinians.



In fact, the presence of Israeli embassies, consulates, charge d'affaires , "trade offices" in Arab and Muslim capitals should be viewed as a monumental disgrace for concerned states and their governments and rulers. This is very much like maintaining normal relations with Nazi Germany while the Third Reich was busy classifying people into Ubermensch and Untermensch and exterminating numerous multitudes of people in order to fulfill German nationalism.just as Israel has been, more or less, doing to the Palestinians since its misbegotten birth sixty years ago.



Again, no one should seek to justify or encourage any acts of terror. But the presence of the representatives of a Nazi-like regime, that flies in the face of human rights and international law, in Arab and Muslim capitals is a crime that is even worse, I would say much worse, than the crime of terror.



Needless to say, the presence of Israeli embassies and "diplomats" in Arab and Muslim capitals implies legitimization of ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation, colonialism and the systematic dispossession and attempted obliteration of the Palestinian people.



In fact, Israeli embassies throughout the world perform several functions, all of them evil and immoral. The premier function of any given Israeli embassy is to justify, defend, extenuate and explain the criminal acts carried out, nearly on a daily basis, against helpless men, women and children, who simply want to be free and refuse to be annihilated quietly.



These criminal acts include the deliberate murder of innocent civilians, destruction of their homes, bulldozing of their farms and decimation of their ability to live a normal life. In other words, Israeli ambassadors and consuls and charge d'affaires effectively act as public relations officer for the Israeli occupation army, a Jewish Wehrmacht by every standard of morality.



Their lies are incalculable as they are obscene. They claim that the harsh blockade on the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants, now in effect for the eighth consecutive month, is not meant to harm civilians and is only in response to "rockets" fired by Palestinian freedom fighters onto Israeli settlements.





Of course, these lies are pornographic just as Israeli atrocities are also pornographic because anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of the situation in Palestine-Israel knows quite well that the "rockets" are only a pretext, and that the real motive behind the slow-motion genocide in Gaza is to simply kill as many Palestinians as the world public opinion allows, under existing circumstances, and possibly destroy the democratically elected Hamas government in order to enable America's Palestinian lackeys in Ramallah to sell out the Palestinian cause and inalienable rights unopposed.



Israeli embassies and diplomatic missions have the habit of giving a rosy picture of the "democratic" Israeli society and how Jews and non-Jews are treated equally.



I don't know if the Mauritanian ambassador in Israel conveys to his government back in Nouakchott the "real" reality, not the virtual reality, created by Zionist propaganda.



>From example, does he inform his government that Israeli cabinet ministers, Knesset members, and even rabbis routinely call for the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, who are actually Israeli citizens?


Does His Excellency inform his government that the Israeli occupation army often murders 50 or 70 or even a hundred Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli settler killed by Palestinians?



Does His Excellency inform his superiors that some rabbis, even high-ranking ones, constantly call for the "relocation" and deportation of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland to Arabian deserts.from Sinai, to Saudi Arabia to even the sub-Sahara desert in North Africa?



Does he inform his government that an important Israeli rabbi by the name of David Batsri routinely teaches in his synagogue that Arabs are actually donkeys, not human beings, and that the Almighty created them in a human shape only in order to work and serve the Jews?



If Arab ambassadors in Israel don't communicate Israeli crimes and racism to their respective governments, then what are they doing in Tel Aviv? Frequenting casinos and nightclubs? Socializing with Mossad and Shin Beth agents? Or probably conspiring against their own countries and their own peoples, probably in return for some money?



And if they do relay reality to their capitals as they indeed should, then why don't these respective Arab governments keep silent about these crimes? Are they and their Israeli colleagues members in the same Mason lodge?



When a number of Arab states decided to normalize relations with Israel, especially following the hapless Oslo Agreement, mainly to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the US, Israel's guardian-ally, the rulers of these states argued then that relations with Israel would serve the Palestinian cause and encourage the Jewish state to walk in the path of peace and come to terms with Palestinian rights.



However, nearly 15 years after the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, it is crystal clear that normalization between certain Arab states and Israel has emboldened the latter as its criminality and ferocity have reached unprecedented level.



Paradoxically, normalization with Israel, which the stupid Arab regimes had hoped would be a political asset, has turned out to be a disastrous liability for the Palestinians and their enduring struggle for freedom, and an asset for Israel which has been able to endear itself to Arab regimes and at the same time keep murdering the Palestinians in the hundreds and in the thousands.



Today, Israel has more or less normal if not cordial relations with Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Mauritania, Tunisia and Morocco. There is also a lot of flirting going between Israel and a number of other Arab and Muslim states such as Pakistan and Indonesia and to a lesser extent Algeria and Yemen.





This is happening while the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli machine of death continues unabated and the construction of Jewish colonies in occupied Arab land goes on unhindered. Israel is even effectively destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque.step by step and stone by stone.





In conclusion, normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim states, especially before ending Israel's Nazi-like occupation and colonization of the Palestinian homeland, is an obscene anomaly that must come to an end sooner rather than later.



Until then, all these embassies and representative offices will remain despised by the masses whether in Egypt, Jordan or Mauritania. And rightly so.



(end)
--
"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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Thursday, February 07, 2008

Our Hate Religions

If one studies the origins of our major religions, one generally discovers that they were spun our the fears, hatreds, wars, diseases of quite primitive times. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho which entailed ethnic cleansing (genocide) of his enemies -- possibly an exaggerated story to thrill subsequent religious followers. Tales originally told orally were eventually written down, edited and reedited by subsequent generations of priests and scribes.

The version of Christianity that got to us through the matrix of Saint Paul was Romanized with brutal hatreds far removed from the sermons of Jesus -- the victim of Roman brutality against suspect terrorists (zealots). Paul hated gays, Jews, young widows, probably women in general to judge by his comments on them. He was a synchophantic towards Roman authority -- even in its most brutal manifestations which he declared to be the will of G-d. Obey! Obey! Obey!

I could provide religious texts for all of the above -- I studied theology for 3 years back when with thoughts of a possible career in theology. I thought religious people were the good ones. Then I discovered that there were good and bad who were religious or not religious. My philosophy dissertation adviser, Ernest Nagel, the University Professor at Columbia, had written a piece entitled "Why I am an Atheist." He was a philosopher of science and law and one of the finest persons I have had the pleasure of knowing. Some of my theology teachers were the best, too, e.g. Reinhold Niebuhr who warned us against the born agains such as Billy Graham who, he feared, would launch a mindless hate version of Christianity. He was dead right and they are out there right now fighting for control of the Republican party leadership. They are all for war. They have a long list of hated ones -- gays, women, Jews who do not convert (an ugly little secret), Muslims, and any who threaten their acquisition of wealth or who suggest that they should follow Jesus and care for the poor and hungry -- particularly our millions of American kids who are likely to be hungry at night or to be fed the unhealthy dregs of our diets.

I could go on. But this is enough for now. Whenever you find religious ones calling for hatred or war, you can spot them as the disciples of the devil. I don't believe in him, but he is a good symbol that has crept into our Western religions from a religion that did not believe in an ultimate, all powerful, all good creator and sustainer deity -- the Zoroastrians (Persians/Iranians) if you want to look them up.
--
"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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Meanwhile Afghanistan . . . ?

[Last night on npr I happened to catch a report on the conflict between Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the army general in charge of our troops in Afghanistan. Mullen says we are in big trouble and failing there. The general claims we are doing fine.

The Nato chief in the BBC report below suggests that failure there will be disastrous, but says we are not failing yet. Mullen maintains that we would need 400,000 troops there to do the job. We have about half that number there now and no one wants to send more -- particularly to the dangerous areas. We will be sending 3,550 marines. Lucky guys!

It need not be pointed out again that the diversion to Iraq has blown it with Afghanistan, fueled alQaeda with new troops, allowed bin Laden to find shelter between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and possibly also blown our efforts to keep Pakistan with us.

And so it goes when one's leaders are incompetent! Ed Kent]

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

* West warned over Afghan failure *
Nato's chief says failure in Afghanistan could fuel attacks in the West, as top UK and US diplomats visit the country.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/7231959.stm
--
"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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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

"Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison . , . ."

When I was a child, one of our playtime slogans was "the only good Indian is a dead one!" Now the unspoken equivalent is the only good young African American male is in prison. The Sentencing Project from which the grim subject quote is taken works actively to redress the imbalance in our sentencing of people for the same crimes along ethnic and racial lines. But prejudice dies hard and the second citation from today's New York Times on the life sentences given to our juveniles (in violation of international law) tells the story vividly of our legal system's treatment of THEM.

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

Racial Disparity

More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/IssueAreaHome.aspx?IssueID=3

A Shameful Record
Locking up juveniles for life without parole is unfair and
a poor use of criminal justice resources.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06wed5.html?th&emc=th

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

Personally I am supporting Hillary Clinton as our Democratic candidate for president as the one more prepared to take on the things that must be changed, but I am entirely sympathetic with those who prefer Barack Obama as someone who has been freed from the impact of American prejudice and who hopes that he can make a difference as Jack Kennedy did for Roman Catholics just then emerging from the prejudices against the most recently arrived immigrant groups of his day. My main worry about Obama is that in tipping towards Republican standards as a way to broaden his electoral base, he may further lock us into such discrepancies as the biased incarcerations reported above. We desperately need to fight poverty on all fronts -- equal educational and employment opportunities being essential as entry points to viable lives.

As one who has worked with the 'discrepancies' as a social/political/legal philosopher throughout my professional career, I hope we Democrats can get it together and focus our attention on the things that need to be changed rather than our preferred candidate. If we weaken our party and its broad based appeal for elected representatives and honest judicial figures at all levels, we will have betrayed those millions who have suffered from our selective national prejudices against persons -- particularly children who deserve far better. I want us once again to be living in a nation of which we can be proud. Think of it -- an attorney general who cannot comprehend that water boarding should be outlawed!

So we will go in this next election -- where will depend on us Democrats. Ironically the major sources of cocaine and heroine are nations where we are currently dumping (wasting?) billions of our dollars -- respectively Columbia and Afghanistan. These are our ghetto anti depressives which send so many to our jails. Tony Papa (Fifteen Years to Life) who served 12 years for a drug sale until he was pardoned, has pointed out that we target specific minorities in our cities from which we draw our prisoners to be incarcerated:

http://www.15yearstolife.com/

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

Tony now lobbies actively for sane reform of our draconian and cruelly unjustly applied drug laws. May we elect Democrats who will concur!
--
"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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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Road Kill? Hillary or Barack?

I should probably not guestimate the outcome of the first big primary round for the Democrats while the voting is in process. However, there is a certain freedom in doing so that one may not have after some sort of definitive outcome. I expect that we shall not have one when the votes are tallied. Both will do well with delegates. The polls are at this writing all over the place -- most likely because Democrats are.

Starting with OBAMA -- he is one impressive guy -- obviously brilliant and with a road map to guide his campaign that he adjusts rapidly with each new development. Today Reagan is out and poverty is in. My qualms follow from the feeling that he is an outsider to the suffering of African Americans who are still struggling to escape the on-going outrages of American racism. Believe me it is still there. In Mobile they have separate sets of reigning Mardi Gras kings and queens -- black and white -- who generally don't meet up in their separate parades -- so I learned only last night from an npr interview. Much of my life has been spent working with African Americans in Harlem and as a CUNY teacher of philosophy. I know all too well that racism still runs hard. Columbia University of all institutions is moving in on 17 acres of lower West Harlem (Manhattanville) which it will grab by fair means or foul (eminent domain). Some folks are ready to go along with Columbia; others are aware that the impact of super gentrification will fall on the heads of Harlem's people generally who will be driven out -- residents, businesses, and jobs. They are being offered in return a few crumbs off the table -- with no legally binding guarantees.

What I fear, then, about Obama, is that he may be another of the get-along-go-alongs -- on a high level -- who will leave the vast numbers of Africans Americans where they are -- in our jails, homeless, leading criminal lives to survive, struggling -- while the fortunate 10 to 20%(?) -- such as Obama -- thrive. Ray Jones, the "Harlem Fox" for whom I worked briefly as an administrative assistant, made me forever a skeptic about those profiting from the high side of the plantation.

CLINTON? I have watched Hillary Clinton at work since she first tried to get into place a universal American health care system -- and got whacked by the Harry and Louise routine which is what the drug companies and uncaring among our doctors still feature as their ultimate weapon and with which they sabotaged universal medical care back in the Truman years. The Clinton plan (in contrast to the more Republican oriented one of Obama) makes the move again that our nation (alone among the developed ones not to have single payer) desperately needs to avoid spending twice as much for half the services -- all those profit-making medical insurance outfits with their bureaucracies set up to deny pay outs to those promised them by 'contract'.

I have watched Clinton survive on-going false, but ugly attacks from the right wing that have half convinced too many good people that there must be something there with all that noise. What a shock to have her husband make a damned fool of himself precisely when his integrity was critically needed to block the theft of services plotted out by the Republicans (some of them at least)! She rode that out and, as many a good wife, forgave her wayward husband. I have known far too many divorces and rarely are they anything but destructive of all -- mates -- and particularly their children. Chelsea is obviously a proud and happy young woman who loves her mom.

CONCLUSION ---- There is going to be much more voting to be done before we have chosen our Democratic candidate. I hope my fellow Democrats will do their homework on both Barack and Hillary and not simply commit to 'born again' like feelings. Barack is very impressive at charismatic things, but he, too, has a record to be examined. And parts of it that have been brought to my attention are disconcerting. See who his supporters are -- from where monies have been coming to him. I go with the doubts of Andrew Young and some of the former Black Panthers. Watch closely and don't be blinded by the headlights. We can't afford having our party and with it our nation end up as road kill!
--
"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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Monday, February 04, 2008

Who Is the Real Barack Obama?

I am becoming increasingly worried about the authenticity of Barack Obama. My first source of doubts was a report on npr by his friend and journalist who had followed him closely in Chicago who indicated that Obama was quite an operator and good at collecting monies from wealthy sources.

More recently I discovered that Obama's claim to have authored the bill that tamed the nuclear industry was false -- the various revisions of his bill directed to obliging the industry to reveal nuclear leaks immediately was so watered down in the end as to give carte blanche to the industry at large and to the company out there that had been a major leak offender, now a donor with an adviser to Obama's campaign:

"And Obama's sixth largest contributor is Exelon, the proud Chicago-based owner and operator of more nuclear power plants than any entity on earth (Center for Responsive Politics 2007a)."

There are other doubtful things raised in this article by Paul Street entitled: "Barack Obama and The Audacity of Deception: The Manufacture of Progressive Illusion."

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=463&Itemid=1

I am puzzled that our media have not followed up on any of the issues raised about Obama and fear that we may be being set up for a win by Obama of the Democratic nomination followed by a full scale attack on him in the general election. I do not want to do him injustice, but something does not ring right here with his claim that he can be in effect our next Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the original source of our current national economic, medical, and other disasters through his push to deregulate and sabotage our protective governmental agencies. We don't need some sort of egomaniacal repeat.
--
"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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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Iraq on Disaster Course?

Yesterday I heard a knowledgeable British professor summarizing the degenerating situation in Iraq. He suggested that Maliki -- representing a minority faction of the Shiites -- has no control over the country or even fellow Shiites. The Shiite factions are erupting in the south. The Sunnis are happily taking our money handouts, but have no allegiance to Maliki and vice versa. The Kurds are going their own way.
One should not be surprised to see a Kenya type breakout once again with our troops caught in the cross-fire. No wonder Bush is suggesting no serious decrease in our troops and a plan to keep them there indefinitely -- to what good end? Everyone knows that one cannot control a seriously resistant occupied territory -- without massive force and brutality. I pity those taking over after Bush -- from whatever party. This mission is impossible -- as I gather is so becoming that in Afghanistan. Ed Kent

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

Voice of America
Death Toll Nears 100 from Bombings in 2 Baghdad Markets
Voice of America - 2 hours ago
By VOA News Iraqi authorities have raised the death toll from Friday's suicide bombings in two popular Baghdad pet markets to 99, making it the deadliest day in the capital in several months.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-02-02-voa6.cfm
--
"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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HEBRON: Tragedy in Beit Ummar pt II: Rest in peace?

[I assume that this Christian Peacemaker account is accurate. Not a very friendly place, Hebron. Doubt that peace can seriously be achieved under these brutal conditions. Ed Kent]

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

CPTNET

HEBRON: Tragedy in Beit Ummar pt II: Rest in peace?

by Doug Pritchard

2 Feb. 2008

On 1 Feb. 2008, Israeli authorities finally released the bodies of Mahmoud and Muhammed Sabarnah to the Palestine Red Crescent Society for burial in their home community of Beit Ummar in the Hebron District. Israelis from the nearby settlement of Gush Etzion had killed the two young cousins during a violent confrontation (see CPTnet article, Tragedy in Beit Ummar pt I: A closer look, 1 Feb. 2008.) Residents of Beit Ummar now worried that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) would disrupt the men's funeral, just as they had repeatedly harassed and attacked members of the community in recent months.

After noon prayers at the mosque, in memory of the two men, now called "martyrs," a funeral procession of 3,000 mourners began carrying the bodies towards the cemetery. Six internationals, including CPTers Tarek Abuata and Doug Pritchard and four members of the International Solidarity Movement, positioned themselves almost at the front of the procession. As the procession came within sight of Route 60 and the final approach to the cemetery, the IDF had closed a gate across the street. Before anyone reached the gate, and without any provocation or warning, the IDF began firing on the procession, first with live ammunition, and then with plastic bullets, tear gas, and concussion grenades. Three Palestinians were immediately injured near the internationals and taken away by ambulance as the outraged procession retreated.

Some mourners hurriedly carried the bodies of the Sabarnah men along a back route to the cemetery, while others threw stones at the cement IDF watchtower from which the firing had emerged. Another Palestinian fell and friends carried him away. In the cemetery, IDF soldiers arrived and ordered the mourners to leave immediately. After a hasty burial prayer, the family and remaining mourners returned to the street. IDF jeeps then began moving up the street, firing as they came. Palestinians fled into side streets. For the next three hours, IDF patrols spread through the town, continuing to fire on small groups of retreating Palestinians, some of whom threw stones in return.

By the end of the afternoon 14 Palestinians had been wounded.

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