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Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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Thank you Louis. I hope you don't mind that I put your reply in
pnews-views to give others an opportunity to see your credentials and to
correspond with you either through the list or separately. You have a very
impressive background. There are many things that I would like to discuss
with you about things that are happening in Europe and how America is
shaping the world in a way that does not bode well for our future -- and
we share an interest in this government, even though you don't live here.
First let me say I believe I found the problem and you were right about it
not being your fault. I'm certain it was the configuration not being set
to compensate for those characters - which I have now done. I used
LISTSERV at ST Johns University for so long I forgot about some of the
adjustments I needed to make. It isn't like Yahoo since the list is
administered and managed off this server.
I would like to recommend an excellent NEW book. I realize the need for
religion also, even though I am not religious and cannot be but I realize
the need others have and don't want to belittle their ernest need to feel
complete through their faith. I may even be a good thing because if
practiced humanely Christianity and Judaism and other religions can help
to establish community and promote good will and humane treatment. I also
realize that we may have a strong genetic instinct to believe even in some
things which do not make scientific sense in order to preserve sanity and
endeavor to create a better planet.
Of course religion has been misused and I won't go into that now but it
has caused way too much anguish and that is the fault of those who use
religion to control and influence people the wrong way. But when it
provides a guide for morality and that morality is compassion and respect
then it serves a worthy purpose.
I think in today's world, many people are moving away from those ideas. I
was struck by a statistic I read in Scientific American Mag which listed
the main causes of death and in the top 4 (tied for number 3) was suicide.
I was shocked. Maybe I shouldn't have been. Depression is a terrible thing
and seems to be very prevalent in the current environment. Frustration
levels are way up. I know my frustration level is up and the despair index
is rising. I also heard a podcast today from SA (I'm quite a fan) and it
was about cosmic rays and how it really isn't very practical to travel in
space. My son keeps telling me we never went to the moon, but I disaggree
but I think he may be partially right about how impractical it is and how
we could not stay there very long because our molecular bodies could not
really withstand being away from earth very long -- and look what we are
doing to earth?
It is pretty ugly and sad (I think?) and a bit frightening too.
Anyway, nice hearing from you. I hope you will post more
because I'm certain you could say much that would interest us.
Hank
Oh, yes, the book I wanted to recomment is "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel
C. Dennett - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. I just started reading it
and I can't put it down. It has endorsements from Jared Diamond (who wrote
a very excellent book on how societies callapse -- and a lot of other
books and articles)
=================
Your Letter:
Dear Hank,
I answer and make the test at once!
Thank you very much for your extended comments (I share them at least
for 99% and I am alwaays understating ;-) ).
I hoped indeed you did not take my own comments personnaly - my worry
was rather to have other readers feeling it was actually a personnal
criticism!
I live in Belgium where I am mainly a free-lance consultant (usually
for Internqtional Organisations and for European Union); in the population
field (in a very broad sense), mainly in Africa. I am just on a short
break at home between two month-long missions in Democratic Republic of
Congo, where I lead a small team (actually, two near collaborators and
myself) evaluating the quality and fairness of the electoral census just
completed there, a very very very hot issue.... But I like that, working
often "on the field" since the early '70. Beside that;, I am also
delivering a fex lectures. My background is MD plud sociologist plus
graduating in System Dynamics from MIT.
I am quite politicized and, like yourself, not really a friend of
religious people (but I try to tolerate them as human beings as long as
they are not proselytes or, of course, fanatic) - as a sociolgist with a
good background in anthropology, I however have a quite good knowledge of
some features of a lot of religions.
And, of course, all that may explain that I highly appreciate your
endeavours, even when I do not fully share your opinions, of course.
Cordially
Louis.
PS regarding this issue of coding, the technical indications of the
ISO standard for Western Europe is :
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
I do not figure if it may be helpful to you...
----- Message d'origine ----- De : "Hank Roth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
À : "LLT" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc : <[email protected]> Envoyé :
jeudi 6 avril 2006 20:12 Objet : Sorry for the blocked mail and
configuration problem?
> Re: X-SBClass: Blocked ( Fw: [pnews-views] Re: [pnews-news] Priest
> Arrested for Speaking Against Islam)
>
> Sorry about the blockfile. I accidentally had you blocked but caught it
> in time to read your note. I whitelisted you.
>
> It is a tight filter because I get a lot of spam but it catches some I
> don't want blocked. I'm sorry.. I think I might be getting more spam
> than most right now and have been the target of a concerted attack ever
> since I started to include some postings which were critical of Islam. I
> listened to a recent podcast from Scientific American about the increase
> in Internet Russian mufia attacks and it is getting out of hand. I was
> surprised to hear how much extortion is going on and all the malware
> that is currently in circulation.
>
> Anyway, I'm sorry about the blockfolder filter catching your mail.
> Please try a test message to me so I can make sure it is working now.
>
> As for your comments I don't take anything like this personally. No
> misunderstanding at all. And of course it is very problematic knowing
> what to forward and what to reject and when someone sends me something
> and I don't post it I get reamed out over it too (grin). I have no idea
> who Father Samuel is. I will check into it though since now I'm curious.
>
> I don't like anything religious either from the Jews, the Christians,
> the Muslims or anyone else. I am an atheist, born a Jew - who supports
> the truth and I'm not unflexible when I think I have something wrong. I
> read a lot -- but unfortunately you can't trust even what you read ..
> Marx did say we should doubt everything. I think from a historical
> perspective that Israel is more right than the Arabs but some Israelis
> are very wrong and the religious Jews are no better than any other
> religious nut. The prevailing views are often the bourgeousie positions
> which also infect the left so we have to be careful.
>
> I do believe Chomsky has been wrong on a number of things. I happen to
> like his analysis on other things, no less so than many others on the
> left. I disagree with any position which supports a market-capitalist
> approach and my favorite author has always been Erich Fromm. He is long
> dead now but his words are no less true for me. I also admire Daniel
> Dennett and Richard Dawkins but the one who really changed my life -- at
> a time when I was apolitical but worked in the White House and in the
> War Room at the Pentagon was Michael Harrington and because of him/his
> work, I became a charter member of DSA and as a socialist never looked
> back.
>
> I wish there was a counter-movement among Arabs but after many years
> working for peace with PeaceNow US, and NJA as a representative (and
> board member) came to the conclusion that there was no one to talk to on
> the other side and no one on the other side who was progressive and
> didn't want to eventually kill the Jews. So my position changed 180
> degrees after that.
>
> Re coding, what standard do you use? It bothers me that hidden
> characters are getting through. It MUST then be a config problem here
> and it is up to me to fix it.
>
> Where do you live? What do you do? I lived in France for 3 years in the
> 60s. Now I reside in Central Florida.
>
> Hank
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Apr 2006, LLT wrote:
>
>> Dear Hank,
>>
>> Sorry for any misundestanding : I did of course NOT imply that YOU
>> endorse the news you forward, just that, maybe, your source is quite
>> biased. I am sorry to be unable to appreciate something apparently
>> supporting a character like Father Samuel, who represents, in my
>> opinion, the worst part of the right-wing of rhe Catholic Church. Next
>> week, he will again celebrate the old prayers - abolished a few decades
>> ago in the official Church - calling for God's curse againt the
>> infamous Jews, the God killers. That makes this guy not very
>> sympathetic to me, nor his ideas ans "causes".
>>
>> You may know that some leftist American people (like Chomsky) may be
>> poorly informed and so take the wrong way (remember Chomsky
>> "championning" Faurisson, one of the worse French negationists...)
>>
>>
>> Regarding the formatting problem, sorry, I use exclusively a
>> standard Microsoft Outlook Express (and a quite recent brand : 6.0.2900
>> sp2) in the standard "ISO Western European" coding. I send and receive
>> professional mails every day, between 70 ans 100 mails a day, actually,
>> and I have nearly never any problem, even when connecting to
>> yahoogroups (but, indeed, most of them are .fr and not .com, i.e.
>> conforming with the European standards). More probably, your settings
>> are just not really compatible with European standards, which include
>> extended character sets...
>>
>> Warm regards
>>
>
>
>
>
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