November 2010
Time for a National Dialogue on Crime?
No matter what we do, our prisons seem to get more and more crowded. Judges are often given no choice in the sentencing for certain crimes, and the crimes we list on the books keep growing. Just as we need to redo the nation’s infrastructure each half-century, we need to redo our justice system.
Definitions. Crimes are actions by a person to deliberately harm another or others: physical violence (assaults, rapes, murders), property harms (theft, holdups, home invasions more...
Laina At the Movies, November, 2010
Hereafter.
Waiting for a new Clint Eastwood movie to begin, I always know that he will “make my day.” This man just keeps getting better as he gets older.
Hereafter is a tender, civilized movie about something that has obsessed our human ancestors from the beginning of time: what happens after we die. Anthropologists were surprised to find a body buried carefully in a Neolithic cave, in fetal position and surrounded by flowers and herbs. They obviously cared a more...
Sometimes Important News Hides in the Back Pages.
Iran’s Problems.
The latest news from Iran: sanctions are really starting to bite. The government has suspended subsidies for food and fuel—which will not please the masses used to the largesse of bread and circuses (stoning women for adultery). People may put up with bad justice systems—but do not take kindly to losing subsidies considered entitlements.
In addition, the internal stresses in Iran’s government are difficult to confirm. Iran has such a lo more...
Let’s Round Up The Usual Suspects
Norgrove Rescue.
A young British woman, Linda Norgrove, who was working in Afghanistan as an aid worker, was kidnapped in September. Her Afghan colleagues taken with her had been released by the Taliban, but she was still being held. An American special operations force tried to rescue her—but during their attack, there was an explosion and she (and her kidnappers) were killed.
How was this covered in the press? There were headlines saying “U.S. rescue force m more...
Paul Berman: The Flight of the Intellectuals, Melville House, 2010.
One of the most amazing transformations of our time is that a large block of important intellectuals, who still think of themselves as liberals, are supporting some monstrous reactionaries. This phenomenon was taken up by Jonah Goldberg in his Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Doubleday, 2007. He made a case for noting that whether they consider themselves leftist or rightist, these groups all descend from the same source: the Fr more...
Is the West Really Islamophobic—Or Under Attack?
An AP article on October 5/6 ran with a headline: “5 Germans killed in Pakistan with Europe on Alert.” Had the Nazi party revived? Reading further, the article said: “An American missile strike killed five German militants Monday in the rugged Pakistan border area where a cell of Germans and Britons at the heart of the U.S. terror alert for Europe---a plot U.S. officials link to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—were believed in hiding.”
This long paragraph never mention more...
This long paragraph never mention more...