Week 7-Foreign language Paper

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-02-15_843604.html


"Panther panic hits Italy again`
Rome 'big game hunt' ends in frustration "

Black panthers in Italy? Well, I had not realized that there even was a panther population in Italy, much less in Rome. Being such a large city, it is surprising that such an animal could be within the city of Rome area and not leave evidence ( missing small pets for example) of its presence. If there is indeed a black panther nearby, the citizens are fortunate that no small children were attacked. Perhaps it is living off of the food that modern civilization discards everyday. Certainly many smaller animals seem to be able to live in close proximity with civilization yet still remain virtually unseen.

It is interesting also that no one was believed when last December people in Turin said they had seen a black panther, that is, until a police officer spotted the animal. I would think that a black panther and big black dog would not be mistaken one for the other by most people.

Now about the lion some people claimed to have seen, was that during the season when wine making is in full swing?

Week 6 Utica OD comments- Oh Yeah?

http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060212/NEWS/602120307/1001

"SUNYIT Promises Safety"
Sunday, Feb 12, 2006

Hmmm, in the headline it says Mr. Spina, the interim president of SUNYIT, "promises safety", but nowhere in the article do I read that he actually promised safety. Good thing, because no one can promise safety in a situation like this. There is an expression, " stuff happens", and stuff can certainly happen when you have 300 violent sex offenders incarcerated nearby . Although certainly the prison takes many precautions, prisoners can, and do, escape from even the best prisons. This may not be a likely event, but all it takes is for that unlikely event to occur and involve a friend or loved one, and the tragedy is brought home to you.

I wonder how Mr. Spina will reassure prospective students and their parents ( who are no doubt more difficult to reassure than the prospective students) about the safety of the SUNYIT campus with 300 violent sex offenders residing" just down the road". There are many SUNY campuses, why would people choose to come to a campus with 300 violent sex offenders incarcerated nearby? How many of these families would buy a home in the proximity of such a facility? And equally as important, or it should be, once these people are released from prison, how many of them will remain in the local area? Sexual offenders have some of the highest rates of recidivism in the penal system, and it is disturbing to consider that an unknown number of them may stay in this area after release. The number of young women attending SUNYIT might make it an irresistable "hunting ground" for some of these released men.

SUNYIT already is perceived by some people to have a recruiting problem. I can hardly believe that Mr. Spina does not understand that the incarceration of 300 violent sexual offenders in the general neighborhood of the college will not enhance SUNYIT's recruitment possibilites.

Week 6 Personal Post-Sit Down and Be Quiet.

Submission is all in your dhimmitude
By Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude.

"I've written about dhimmitude periodically, lo, these many years since Sept. 11, but it takes time to sink in. Dhimmitude is the coinage of a brilliant historian, Bat Ye'or, whose pioneering studies of the dhimmi, populations of Jews and Christians vanquished by Islamic jihad, have led her to conclude that a common culture has existed through the centuries among the varied dhimmi populations. From Egypt and Palestine to Iraq and Syria, from Morocco and Algeria to Spain, Sicily and Greece, from Armenia and the Balkans to the Caucasus: Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as "people of the book (the Bible)," were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost.
There were literal taxes (jizya) to be paid; these bought the dhimmi the right to remain non-Muslim, the price not of religious freedom, but of religious identity. Freedom was lost, sorely circumscribed by a body of Islamic law (sharia) designed to subjugate, denigrate and humiliate the dhimmi. The resulting culture of self-abnegation, self-censorship and fear shared by far-flung dhimmi is the basis of dhimmitude. The extremely distressing, but highly significant fact is, dhimmitude doesn't only exist in lands where Islamic law rules.
This is the lesson of Cartoon Rage 2006, a cultural nuke set off by an Islamic chain reaction to those 12 cartoons of Mohammed appearing in a Danish newspaper. We have watched the Muslim meltdown with shocked attention, but there is little recognition that its poisonous fallout is fear. Fear in the State Department, which, like Islam, called the cartoons unacceptable. Fear in Whitehall (where British government offices reside), which did the same. Fear in the Vatican, which did the same. And fear in the media, which have failed, with few, few exceptions, to reprint or show the images. With only a small roll of brave journals, mainly in Europe, to salute, we have seen the proud Western tradition of a free press bow its head and submit to an Islamic law against depictions of Mohammed. That's dhimmitude.
Not that we admit it: We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of "tolerance," "responsibility" and "sensitivity." We even congratulate ourselves for having the "editorial judgment" to make "pluralism" possible. "Readers were well-served ... without publishing the cartoons," said a Wall Street Journal spokesman. "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam," reported the cable network. On behalf of the BBC, which did show some of the cartoons on the air, a news editor subsequently apologized, adding: "We've taken a decision not to go further ... in order not to gratuitously offend the significant number" of Muslim viewers worldwide. Left unmentioned is the understanding (editorial judgment?) that "gratuitous offense" leads to gratuitous violence. Hence, fear — not the inspiration of tolerance but of capitulation — and a condition of dhimmitude.
How far does it go? Worth noting, for example, is that on the BBC Web site, a religion page about Islam presents the angels and revelations of Islamic belief as historical fact, rather than spiritual conjecture (as is the case with its Christianity Web page); plus, it follows every mention of Mohammed with "(pbuh)," which means "peace be upon him" — "as if," writes Will Wyatt, former BBC chief executive, in a letter to the Times of London, "the corporation itself were Muslim."
Is it? Are we? These questions may not seem so outlandish if we assess the extent to which encroaching sharia has already changed the Western way. Calling these cartoons "unacceptable," and censoring ourselves "in respect" to Islam brings the West into compliance with a central statute of sharia. As Jyllands Posten's Flemming Rose has noted, that's not respect, that's submission. And if that's not dhimmitude, what is?
The publication of the Mohammed cartoons solicited by Denmark's Jyllands Posten was an act of anti-dhimmitude. Since no Danish artist would dare illustrate a PC children's book about Mohammed for fear of Islamic law (and Islamic violence), the newspaper boldly set out to reassert the rule of (non-Islamic) Danish law. It's as simple as that. And as vital. The cartoons ran to establish — or re-establish — Denmark as bastion of Western-style liberty. But in trying to set up a force field against encroaching sharia, Jyllands Posten and the Danes have showed us that no single bastion of Western liberty can stand alone.
So, how do you say solidarity in Danish? If we don't find out now, our future is more dhimmitude.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. "


I think it is noteworthy that many of the media have said that they won't reprint the cartoons out of respect for Muslim sensitivities, but they seldom, if ever, feel such compulsions to show respect to Christian or Jewish sensitivities (possibly because not many Christians and Jews illustrate their degree of offendedness by rioting in the streets and threatening to kill the people who have offended them) . The media, when confronted by people unhappy about the way media have treated issues or the issues themselves, usually assert that they have a "right" to free speech, and a "right" not to allow any group to censor what the media wants to say. However, they certainly appear to be self censoring on things touching on Muslim sensitivites in a way I have not seen them do on any other topic. Free speech is not free if you have to "sit down and be quiet" to get along. I find it astonishing that so few in the media seem to be asserting the idea of free speech on the topic of the cartoons, nor are they supporting their fellow journalists who have asserted the right of a free press and published the cartoons. Their new found "sensitivity" ( or squeamishness) may have less to do with not gratuitously offending Muslim sensitivities than with deciding that they would rather be dhimmi than dead.

Week 6 - Saying of the Week

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. --John Stewart Mill--

This is such a truism. There are things more important than our own little lives. I have always thought that that John Lennon song "Imagine" was a glimpse into a horrifying future, it must be a terrible place where apathy reigns supreme. In case you can't recall the words to that vapid paean to nothingness:

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,
No hell below us, above us only sky,
Imagine all the people living for today...
Imagine there's no countries, it isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for, no religion too,
Imagine all the people living life in peace...Written by: John Lennon

It is hard to “imagine” a more terrible, depressing place than that.

Week 5 UticaOD comments- (using the word "Accrue" )Will Eternal Benefits Accrue from Confession?

http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060211/NEWS/602110311/1001/NEWS01


For some reason this article caught my eye. It deals with the assertion by an accused murderer that the police coerced her confession from her. Yes, that is a pretty standard claim from most defendants, that the police did something wrong to get a suspect to confess and that for that reason the confession should be thrown out. The new wrinkle here is what the defendant claims was done by the police to get her to confess.

The accused, Ms. Torchia, had a 19 year old grandson who was killed in car accident a few years ago. Since the murder, Ms. Torchia had a minor stroke and while in a nursing home recovering, police visited her to discuss the murder. She maintains they improperly coerced her into confessing to the crime by using her religious beliefs against her. How did they do this, one might wonder? At various times the investigators told her that she would die, go to hell, and never see her grandson again, that her grandson was with Jesus and wouldn't she want to be there with them, and that she wouldn't see her grandson for all eternity and did she understand how long that meant? Wow! What a coercion that must have been! No beatings, no electric shocks, no 'Chinese water torture', no bamboo shoots under the fingernails, just reminding someone who professed to have some degree of religious feeling the ramifications of what they were accused of doing. Well, evidently it worked. Ms. Torchia, whether from a love and desire to be with her deceased grandson, or from a fear of the judgement of God, confessed to using a hammer to beat to death the victim after the victim made insulting comments about the dead grandson. Ms. Torchia also confessed to burying the victim next to her boarding house, where the victim had resided. That would probably be the end of things as far as my interest goes, accept that I noted
her attorney has done what I suppose attorneys must do, try to get their client off however they can. Certainly one way to do that in this case, since the accused has confessed, would be to negate the confession. Her attorney is saying that she was on medications for the stroke and depression, and that, along with the "upsetting talk about religion and her grandson" , caused her "apparent confession". The judge in the case will rule on the admissability of the confession on the basis of whether Ms. Torchia was advised of her rights properly before the police spoke with her. My thought on the subject is, how can a lawyer, in good conscience, attempt to free someone who, because of the accused's own words, they know has done a terrible deed? And, if the accused has a professed religious belief, and her confession is ruled inadmissable to the court, where will that leave her when she someday stands before that greater Court?

Week 5 Foreign Language Paper-(using the word 'Osmosis") Chinese Culture by Osmosis

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-02/11/content_4164940.htm
Taken from the Chinese paper, Xinhua.
(I am gaining some knowledge of Chinese holiday customs by osmosis, just reading this article made me feel as if I was watching the celebrations. )

This Sunday, February 12 is the day of the traditional celebration of "Lantern Day" this year in China.

Lantern Day is the last day of the 15 day celebration of Chinese New Year. The two weeks have been marked by parties, feasting, gatherings with family, and dragon parades. Lantern Day is a time for being with one's family, and the traditional food consumed for the day is "tangyuan dumplings". People stock up on these as we might stock up on snack foods before the Superbowl. Lantern Day is big business in China. Tangyuan dumplings are small, half moon shaped sticky rice flour pastries. They can be sweet or savory, and can be filled with walnuts, minced meats, vegetables, dried tangerine peel, sesame, edible flowers, or jujube paste, among many other fillings. One market said they carry over 80 kinds of tangyuan, and a shopkeeper assistant said they will sell over 200 bags of them a day.

In addition to the tangyuan dumplings, the day is marked by using colored lanterns. These lanterns are lit after dark, providing a brilliantly colored fairy tale atmosphere to be out and about in Chinese cities. Some people make their own lanterns, but others prefer to purchase them from vendors. Many lanterns carry slips of paper with riddles on them, which the people have fun trying to decipher. The small town of Lingbao, in Henan province, has been making lanterns for 70 years and has a good reputation for making a style called the "Gandian Flower Lantern", which is sold throughout the country ( see photo).

Lantern Day also has a wisp of the "Sadie Hawkins Day"idea in that in the old days it was a time when a chaperoned woman could be out alone so as to be seen by eligible bachelors. Additionally, Lantern Day is something of a Chinese Valentine's Day, a day for lovers to enjoy too.

I am sure it is a lovely, colorful way to end the New Year season.

Week 5 Personal Post -Political Funeral

From "The Drudge Report"http://drudgereport.com/flash8.htm
KING FUNERAL TURNS POLITICAL: BUSH BASHED BY FORMER PRESIDENT, REVEREND Tue Feb 07 2006 15:49:48



Did you see the funeral this past week of Corretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King? Disgraceful would be a word I would choose to describe it.From what little I know about Mrs. King, she was interested not so much in advancing politics as in advancing her cause. That makes it all the more apalling that her funeral was not an occasion to celebrate the life and works of an accomplished, dignified woman, but as an occasion for bashing President Bush. Mr. Bush, who attended the funeral along with his wife, was forced to sit through several speakers who seemed determined to use him as a sort of political pinata, whom they each managed to whack several times during the supposed eulogies of Mrs. King.

We had Joseph Lowery, an "activist-pastor", whack Mr. Bush, by saying, " ' We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Lowery said. The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation.A closed-circuit television in the mega-church outside Atlanta showed the president smiling uncomfortably."But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!' " He is entitled to his opinion ( some call him outspoken, often a polite term for a loudmouth), but it is sad that a pastor had no sense of decorum for the occasion and could not restrain himself from launching into political remarks when he might better have been mindful of the reason he was there.

Even worse though, was former President Carter, who also felt an irresistable urge to dump his political opinions at the funeral to a "captive" guest such as Mr. Bush. Mr. Carter, having been president himself, certainly should have known better, saying;" ' It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." The crowd cheered as Bush, under fire for a secret wiretapping program he ordered after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, again smiled weakly. Later, Carter said Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America. "This commerative cermony this morning, this afternoon, is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over. We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi," Carter said, the rest of his sentence drowned out by loud applause. "Those who were most devastated by [Hurricane] Katrina know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans. It is our responsibility to continue their crusade.' " Mr. Carter should have remembered the occasion, as well as the dignity of the office of President of the United States, and made more appropriate remarks, saving his opinions on Mr.Bush's job performance for a more appropriate venue.

I save my harshest criticism though, for the family of Mrs. King. Rev. Lowery and former President Carter are, after all, what they are, both political "animals" and opponents of Mr. Bush. Therefore possibly they could not, despite the tastelessness of doing so at the occasion of Mrs. King's funeral, forego the opportunity to attempt to discomfit, embarass, and verbally humiliate with impugnity the President of the United States before an audience of millions . What does surprise me is that the family of Mrs. King did not object to the solemn occasion of their mother's funeral being turned into a political sniping mission to humiliate one of their guests who attended out of respect for their mother. Shame on them.

Saying of the Week

To paraphrase Malcolm X:

You're not supposed to be so blind with partisanship that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

Saying of the Week

" There is a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker."- Charles Schultz

Week 4 Foreign paper-

This week's comments deal with an article I discovered in the Capetown Dispatch. The link is:

http://www.dispatch.co.za/2006/02/03/Easterncape/cpos.html
DA poster not hate speech says human rights body
By MAYIBONGWE MAQHINA

This article just goes to show us that 'political correctness" is everywhere; certainly it is alive and well in South Africa. The poster in question merely said "End ANC Racism", hardly an incendiary statement. Regardless of whether the ANC is racist or not, the question actually is, is what was said really "hate speech"? Is it truly hateful to say ‘end racism’? What is "hate speech" anyway? It seems that the definition of it, much like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Obviously some types of speech can incite people to commit crimes, but is that what is going on here? No one is being urged to do anything illegal, just to end racism, surely a lofty goal. This seems to fall more into the category of banning unpopular speech, at least to the ANC, who seem to resent being mentioned in the same sentence as ending racism. But if speech that is just unpopular can be eliminated, it endangers the very idea of free speech. The ANC in this case just wants to muzzle their political opponent. In much the same way many groups here desire to muzzle their political opponents by throwing the verbal hand grenade of calling something “hate speech”. We should be very careful what we call “hate speech”, sooner or later we all may espouse something that is unpopular, and we will be just as surely silenced.

Week 3 Re: Political Correctness

This post is in response to an assignment to read the following article on political correctness:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,181015,00.html

This article shows us that political correctness is not only "alive and well" in America, but probably spreading like a bad case of poison ivy. The surprising thing is that the general public has not starting calling for the political heads of the fools who continue to push for this idiotic waste of time and money.

I agree with Anthony Browne, who says in the article "It [political correctness] has now become a hindrance to social progress and a threat to society," Browne said. "By closing down debates, it restricts the ability of society to tackle the problems that face it." We are no longer able to freely debate and comment on issues without the fear of being labelled a racist, a sexist, or a homophobe. If you don't believe me, try talking about some of these issues and you will find yourself silenced by the people who equate just discussing certain topics to be "hate speech". Care to ponder why native born black Americans are economically far behind the income level of immigrant blacks? Don't do it unless you want to be called a racist. Want to discuss the Bible's teachings on homosexuality? Better not, that is "hate speech" against gays and you'll be called a homophobe. Want to explore the issue of why there are so few women studying math and engineering in America ? Be careful, not only is that hate speech too, you'll probably be labelled a sexist, just as the President of Harvard College was when he ventured to say perhaps it was not so much that women were under the subjection of a male dominated society as possibly that women were not as interested in studying math and science as men. The poor man had to rephrase his statement to "toe the party line" that it must be because women were being downtrodden,virtually guaranteeing that the idea would never be seriously examined since no one else would make the same mistake of questioning the politically correct mantra and becoming the center of a firestorm of controversy.

The political correctness article continued on, telling about a polictical correctness problem in Costa Mesa, California. The City Council there permitted the police to question serious crime suspects about their immigration status. It is illegal to be here illegally, if people are here illegally, they are breaking our law. But the reward the City Council received for this was to be picketed by a "pro-immigrant group" who labelled them as "racist" and the mayor, who supported the council, as a "bigot". So much for trying to uphold the law, anyone who sees what happened in Costa Mesa will think twice about bringing up the subject of illegal immigration unless they intend to bow to the politically correct view of the subject.

The politically correct crowd has not been voted into power by the people, they just holler loud and insult long enough to intimdate any thoughtful dissent.

Week 3 UticaOD Their Hands in Our Pockets, Again!

This posting is in response to an article in the Utica OD today by Patrick Corbett entitled " Parents: Don't Close Any Rome Schools"
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060202/NEWS/602020335/1001/NEWS01

A group of people turned out at a Rome School Board meeting to protest the possible closing of two elementary schools. Not surprisingly, the parents did not want their neighborhood school closed. The meeting was all too predictable. One person said that closing the school would scatter a close knit school family and end valuable programs for students. Another person said that closing these schools would be"driving people out of Rome and not offering a warm welcome to the hundreds of people who will be taking new jobs at Grifiss Business and Technology Park.". I had not been aware that there were many, if any, people who decided they just had to move to Rome because of the dream of their children attending one of these schools, much less that the hundreds of workers arriving for those new jobs would take it as a sign of a lack of hospitality on our part that two elementary schools had been shuttered. Why do people seem to feel that they are entitled to keep their little neighborhood schools open for social/ charitable reasons and that the taxpayers should pick up the tab for it? The schools, according to the article, need millions of dollars in repairs, and with declining state aid and a shrinking tax base, some hard decisions must be made on how to economize. Frankly, I think many more people would be driven out of Rome by soaring tax rates than by the closing of two elementary schools. If these parents think that spending money on these two schools is worthwhile, that is fine, let them spend their own money, but I resent that the rest of us of us might be stuck paying for their foolish dreams.

Week 3 Opinion I Told You So........

In reference to my posting "In My Opinion" yesterday, it seems I was ahead of the curve with my opinion of the coverage the media has done on the injury to Mr. Woodruff. I am not the only person who felt that the media coverage was way overblown, and an insult to our service people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. This morning I found this article on UPI that discussed that a number of troops have already expressed dismay at the media feeding frenzy about this event. The writer of the article, Pamela Hess, in her own words, re-illustrated my contention that the media is out of touch not only with their coverage of Mr. Woodruff's injury and its aftermath, but with the fact that before his injury it wasn't even news that we had first rate trauma facilities in Iraq.

She writes:
"ABC News' national broadcast Monday ran coverage on the extremely well equipped field and manned hospital at Balad Air Base, a transportable emergency room with not one but two neurosurgeons on duty, better than most emergency rooms in the United States.
It was a story ABC News became aware of because that was where Woodruff and Vogt were treated. It was not a story ABC necessarily had reason to do before; there was no news hook. However, this was where hundreds of wounded soldiers and Marines had previously been stabilized before being moved to Landstuhl Air Base.
"As we are hearing the details of Bob Woodruff's medical care and how he was shipped to Germany, and we go inside the operating room, (we realize) it's a part of the war that the press has basically ignored," said Montgomery.
In the midst of a two-month reporting trip in Iraq in 2005, I stopped at the Balad emergency hospital, toured it for an hour and interviewed a dozen doctors and nurses. I couldn't find a news hook to write about it, so I didn't. "
( I used the red font to show the pertinent part of the quotation)

Excuse me, but what planet is Ms. Hess living on? Over 2200 American service people have died in Iraq, and more than 8000 have been wounded badly enough to need evacuation, meaning that more than ten thousand Americans have needed to use these facilities, and neither the media as a whole, nor Ms. Hess, could manage to find a "hook" to make a report about it? But then, as soon as two of their own people are injured they immediately found a "hook"? The self-centered, hypocritical elitist " let them eat cake!" type of arrogance of this is breathtaking! It reinforces my original premise that the only people the media really care about is their own, they can barely give lip service to anyone not in the media. In my posting yesterday I said I thought the families of people who had had loved ones injured or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan would be livid at seeing the difference in the way their loved ones had been ignored by the media, but Mr.Woodruff's injury was scrutinized endlessly. They should be storming the halls of the "big media" over the media's coverage of this incident compared to the media's ignoring the story previously. This clearly illustrates how "out of touch" the media is with mainstream America, and it may be one of the reasons why so many people have a dislike, distrust, and disdain of the media.

Ms. Hess' entire article can be found at:
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060131-041958-8164r