Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
To Futurework, Sally, Arthur, you can cut this if you wish but I have decided that a serious talk from the heart and from our lives about the future life and death issues that face us, all provide an opportunity that should not be missed. Michel's posts to me have convinced me that, for me, it would constitute fiddling while Rome burned, so to speak.His post is readily available on the net and if you need the address it is: On Kosovo: http://www.transnational.org/features/crimefinansed.html On the break-up of Yugoslavia: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html So Michel, This is a very old story. My people were much richer and obviously (from your description) smarter then these you describe and yet the same scam was worked on them in the 1830s by the European Americans. The same scam as run by the economist banker running Serbia. The same story with the Jews and Gypsies during Hitlers reign and when Hitler said that he was following a Western European script used in the U.S., everyone ignored him. And then there are the kulaks. So what is the answer? You keep mentioning Ponzi schemes but the market itself must continually expand or collapse, that is a type of Ponzi Scheme on a much grander scale. i.e. if no one bought stocks and bonds then the market would collapse and the last one to buy just before the stocks contract is always left holding the bag. Also your terming what seems to be a family type "crony" business structure as "organized crime" seems suspicious. How does this relate to their traditional societal structures?Crime is always a relative term. Think of England and America in the Boxer rebellion when the West was using. well you know the story. So you have to come up with a better script than "Describe the history", "list the atrocities" and everyone will "understand" and thus change! There is very little to suggest that this didactic approach has ever worked out side of the dictatorship of the guru or master teacher.And I don't think that the messiahs or master teachers can help much here.Too many adults. So what are you suggesting? How about the Albanians and Serbians make a decision to live together and support each other?Don't take any garbage from the outside and like France after W.W.II declare a moratorium on national debts and build their infrastructure so that they have the power to rule their own lives? Again like the French. This is not Rome, it is both less brutal and no one is going to take them to Hollywood to be fed to Arnold Swartzenegger's pet lion. One point in all of this is that as an immigrant New Yorker I am prone to cynicism around the ability of Europeans to live together, (one war every 25 years for the past 1000 years). e.g. From the usefulness of the window shutters in Geneva, with the guns and one month food supply required by law in the basement, to the doors on new apartments in Milan that are made of steel with steel rod bolts going in four directions to keep out marauding armies. You see I live in NYCity and we take a rather jaundiced look at people who gather together to kill their neighbors or steal their homes. We know that bankers and economists have been figuring out ways to do just that ever since those first banks in Portugal that funded opera off of the pillaging of the Hunter/Gatherer Spaniards and Italians financed by Lisbon bankers. Of course the English were later but worse. So what is new in all of this? Why are you surprised? I am shocked that you are surprised when you are European and this is your history. Don't you know all of those Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler songs dealing with the European people on the other side of those bankers? Wagner was thrown in debtors jail and barely escaped with his life. He thought the bankers were Jewish and wrote nasty things about Jews but the real power didn't stand in front of the tanks like the Jews, they hid and blended into the crowd with the other white faces. But Wagner too wrote plenty about the economists in his Ring of the Niebelungen, he was mistaken and simple minded in believing that this was cultural. So are the Serbs who use "culture" as proof of their correctness. As a matter of fact Wagner's music always fits uncomfortably with the kind of macho rape and pillage of all warfare. When the Narragansetts watched the Puritans (their allies) burn to death the Pequots, (their enemies) they turned away wondering out loud what the point of such carnage was even on enemies. Although pre-Wagner's Walkyries I can just hear their howls above the men, women, children and even dogs that burned to death in complete silence. A silence so intense that it was said that the killers cried. Goodness is not cultural and neither is greed or evil. (I wrote about the church in my last post so I don't consider it to be an answer either.) But the issue of living together is one that we must solve and doing it creatively must
The triumph of science
I intended to post the article about the movies running to Canada
but Arthur beat me to the punch, so how about this article about
how logical and scientific we are and how up to date out
blessed institutions happen to be. Several years ago it was
noted in the NYTimes that the head of major companies who
graduated from Ivy league schools had a very high rate
of racisim in their ranks.
REH
New York Times
May 11, 1999, Tuesday National Desk
A New Turn in Defense of Affirmative Action
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
All over the campus of the University of Michigan, the signs of a
racially
and ethnically eclectic student body abound.
The student union is home to the Asubuhi (''morning'' in Swahili)
Multicultural Lounge. The bulletin board outside lists 49 ethnic
organizations. In the cafeteria, Pedro Cox-Alomar, a black Hispanic
junior
from San Juan, P.R., shares breakfast with his buddy Karl Benkert,
white,
from rural Michigan.
The university's officials say it is no accident that racial and
ethnic
minorities account for more than 25 percent of its 36,000 students,
a
statistic that makes this the most diverse of any large institution
of
higher learning in the Midwest. The mix results from aggressive
recruitment
of minorities and, in some cases, advantages to black and Hispanic
applicants in the highly competitive admissions process.
Disproportionate advantages, contend some critics, who note that
for
example, the admissions point system gives more weight to being
black or
Hispanic than to getting a perfect score on the Scholastic
Assessment Test.
(The university points out that far greater weight is given to high
school
grades than to either of those factors.)
The institution's policy is now the target of two lawsuits by a
total of
three rejected white applicants, all turned down, they say, because
of
their race. So has the University of Michigan become yet another
front in
the war over affirmative action, following the rollback of
race-conscious
admissions policies at universities in California and Texas.
But what distinguishes the Michigan case is the university's
full-throated
counteroffensive: the marshaling of statistical evidence of the
benefits of
racial diversity.
Unlike California and Texas, which defended their policies with
only
anecdotal evidence, Michigan has compiled data, on its own students
and
others, showing that among other things, people who were exposed to
a
diverse student body while in college are more likely five years
after
graduation to work in integrated settings, live in integrated
neighborhoods
and have friends of another race.
Patricia Gurin, a professor of psychology and women's studies at
the
university, concluded in one report that five years after
graduation,
whites who had attended colleges with the most diverse student
bodies
experienced the greatest growth in active thinking processes, in
motivation
to achieve and in intellectual self-confidence.
''Our research confirms what we have experienced firsthand as
educators:
that diversity enhances learning,'' said Lee Bollinger, the
university's
president. ''Encountering those who are different allows our
students to
learn about each other's similarities and differences and to
destroy
stereotypes.''
The nature of Michigan's defense stems from an emerging strategy by
affirmative action's supporters to make an empirical case for it,
rather
than a purely anecdotal or intuitive one. The university's research
follows
a survey issued last fall by two former Ivy League presidents,
William G.
Bowen of Princeton and Derek Bok of Harvard, that was based on the
records
and experiences of 45,000 students over 20 years at 28 elite
colleges
around the country. The Bowen-Bok research concluded that
affirmative
action policies at those colleges had created the backbone of the
black
middle class and taught white classmates the value of integration.
Lawyers for the Michigan plaintiffs maintain that however noble the
idea of
creating a diverse university, Michigan is blatantly discriminating
against
whites to achieve it. They allege violation of the Constitution's
equal-protection guarantees, among other protections.
''I think that discrimination always hurts someone,'' said one
plaintiff,
Barbara Grutter, a 45-year-old mother of two who was rejected by
Michigan's
law school in 1997. ''I don't know how we can have a country that
says
discrimination is wrong and yet have all these exceptions.''
The suits -- one against the law school, the other against the
undergraduate college -- were filed in the Federal District Court
in
Detroit and will be argued in the fall. They have drawn the
attention of
civil rights groups, opponents of racial preferences, hundreds of
colleges
and universities, and the Clinton Administration, which has filed a
court
brief defending Michigan's admissions policies.
The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Individual Rights,
a
Washington law firm that got a Federal appeals court to overturn an
Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
On Fri, 14 May 1999 02:26:20 -0400, Ray E. Harrell wrote: One point in all of this is that as an immigrant New Yorker I am prone to cynicism around the ability of Europeans to live together, (one war every 25 years for the past 1000 years). e.g. From the usefulness of the window shutters in Geneva, with the guns and one month food supply required by law in the basement, to the doors on new apartments in Milan that are made of steel with steel rod bolts going in four directions to keep out marauding armies. Funny, but here in Europe we don't have an army that has bombed 21 countries during the last 50 years (without having been attacked once). We also don't have the high rates of murder and prisoners that your peaceful country has. Nor do we need metal detectors in our schools to protect the kids from each other, or security guards on our campus to prevent the kids from massacrating their peers on Hitler's birthday. We also don't have militia-men who kill dozens of civilians by blowing up a gov't building. Geez, we don't even have racial riots in large cities after some state officers have beaten up a citizen for his race. But I'm sure we'll have all that pretty soon if we follow the lead of your peace-loving and tolerant country, Ray. You see I live in NYCity and we take a rather jaundiced look at people who gather together to kill their neighbors or steal their homes. Jaundiced indeed for a city that was built on just that. Greetings from a multi-cultural European country that had _2_ short (defense) wars in the last 500 years (but I guess this can't be read in your informative NYT), Chris
Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
Chris you said: Greetings from a multi-cultural European country that had _2_ short (defense) wars in the last 500 years (but I guess this can't be read in your informative NYT), What country is that? Where does it get it's wealth? Do they immigrate people to America? If so, why? Does any of my tax money pay for their education or settlement? What are the various cultures? REH
