Blog #7:   Hark the Herald (Juba)

            The story in the Grand Forks Herald on 12/11/15 about the Juba Coffee Shop’s intention to rebuild starts, “A possible arson attack has triggered an FBI investigation.”  Four paragraphs later the story says, “The restaurant…was damaged in a fire police say was deliberately ignited.” 

            If police are willing to say this fire was deliberately set, the story’s lead paragraph might more accurately say it was arson rather than “possible” arson.  (We’ve also seen the video of a person breaking the window and throwing something into the store.  “Possible” arson doesn’t cover it.)

            This confusion is cleared up in the December 12 story in which police name the likely arsonist and clearly identify the fires are deliberately set.  But in neither of the two most recent articles are we told whether Juba owned or rented the building.  Nor do we know if it was insured.  The latest report (12/12/15) omits information on how much the community has raised in support of Juba and whether the community vigil at the burned coffee shop is ongoing. 

            The fire and the Grand Forks Police Department’s identification of the arsonist are, of course, sensational news, but we hope the Herald will provide us more important news we need to have about rebuilding community trust and safety for all. 

            Good news:  Yesterday police said they weren’t doing anything special to protect the mosque.  Today we learn that police were instructed to provide extra security by increasing drive-bys and parking in the mosque parking lot.  Somebody made the right decision. 

            In putting the Juba arson in context, the story refers to the Paris attack by “Islamic Extremists” and the San Bernardino killings by a “Muslin couple.”  This language in the press calls attention to religion and ethnicity and makes attacks like the Juba arson more likely. 

            In a different section of the paper, an article on U2’s performance in Paris earlier this week quotes Bono for the Herald and other media as saying “Isis and these kinds of extremists are a death cult.”  I wonder if it would be best to identify all terrorist acts as done by “death cult extremists.”

            By the way, by looking up the meaning of the word ‘Juba,’ I found that it is a state-like division in southwest Somalia.  It’s likely that the coffee shop was named after the refugee’s home; that makes it all the more sad that the reminder of home in their adopted country was torched.  

Blog Post #6
Republican Roller Coaster Ride
 
For at least the past three sessions, the Republican-controlled legislature has cut income and corporate tax rates. This was done to please the public who noticed that rapidly increasing oil revenues made it appear the state was awash in money.

To reduce the surplus in the General Fund, the Legislature could have (a) put some of it in the Legacy Fund; or (b) sent every North Dakotan a one-time check; or (c) spent some of it on economic development or programs that worked to keep people out of prison or off welfare; or (d) simply saved some of it for a rainy day.

But instead, the Republicans did absolutely the worst thing: they permanently lowered the tax rates on personal and corporate income. I say permanent because I don't believe they would ever have the courage to raise rates should revenues ever fall short. (In addition, most of the corporate rate cuts went to out of state corporations; most of the personal tax cut dollars went to higher income people.)

The Republicans made themselves look good by these cuts--as well as state subsidies to local property taxes--which they paid for with volatile oil revenues. I warned them then that basing permanent reductions on temporary income was irresponsible. 

Now that oil prices are plummeting, and with them state revenues, Republican candidates (as well as editorial writers) are calling for deep spending cuts to make up the budget shortfall. And of course they're blaming oil prices--which were out of their control--for the state's fiscal crisis rather than their own lack of foresight and wrong choices--which were within their control.

What a roller coaster ride they've taken us on.

Blog #5
Kurds/US Contain ISIS in Syria 
[Summarized from Jonathan Steele's article in the December 3, 2015 New York Review of Books.] 

The Syrian Kurds see ISIS (Islamic State in Syria) as their  number one enemy. They  are our boots on the ground in Syria. With help from US air strikes and increased supplies of weapons, the Syrian Kurds have retaken Kobani from ISIS and now control a long stretch along Syria's northern border with Turkey.

Joined by Turkish and Iraqui Kurds (and other minority groups including Sunnis terrified by ISIS's treatment) they have as many as 50,000 militia fighters, with 1/3rd to 1/2 being women.

The Kurds are the element that makes Obama's strategy successful. The US provides air power, aerial surveillance and  drone attacks on leadership, while local people provide the boots on the ground. With the Kurds taking territory from ISIS, Obama's claim that we have contained ISIS is justified.

(Incidentally, Republican presidential demagogues are praising the French president's strength because his planes have flown four to eight bombing raids in retaliation for the Paris murders. But Obama has presided over 2500 bombing raids to degrade ISIL (Isamic State in the Levant) over the past few years.)

For the Kurds, ISIS is the primary enemy. They have made an accommodation with Assad: he leaves them alone, they don't join the anti-Assad forces.

Turkey is a potential second enemy as Turkey has long feared an independent Kurdish state on their border. If Turkish, Syrian and Iraqui Kurds emerged with organized power from the current chaos, they might well challenge the Turks and try to carve out a Kurdish state.

According to Syrian Kurds, a No-Fly Zone over northern Syria enforced by Turkish and American planes is a ruse. It would allow Turkish planes to strike at Kurdish positions. (NOTE to Hillary Clinton: Beware backing a No-Fly Zone patrolled by Turkish planes.)

There are about 2.2 million Kurds in Syria, or about 10% of the Syrian population. Most Kurdish clerics are Suffis of the Sunni branch of Islam and, in contrast to the Syrian Arab opposition to Assad, none of the dozen Kurdish political parties in Syria is Islamist.

                                                                                               

BLOG #4

MIZOU

The situation at Missouri University is very fluid and, like the blind men circling the elephant, there are many sides to the story.

In general, liberals pay attention to the part of the story which allows them to say nice things about Black students and to criticize white administrators (and students). On the other hand, those on the right pay attention to events which allow them to mock Black students' demands for a "safe space" and bash administrators for giving in so quickly to minority students (Blacks are 7% of the University population).

 In arriving at any fair evaluation of events at Mizzou, I think we should pay attention to the following:

1.Black anger and demands did not start last week. Formal petitions and demands for racial inclusion were presented to administration in 1950 and 1969.

 2.It was not one student being called Nigger and threatened, or one student going on a hunger strike that caused the rebellion at Mizzou. Some (many??) white students at MU were raised in the pre-Civil War tradition of seeing Blacks as inferior--slaves, savages, unequal, permanently lesser beings. From those attitudes came permission to treat Black students as though they had no right to be at Mizzou.

3.Another piece of the elephant we need to pay attention to is the lingering existence of segregation on campus. There are Black fraternities and sororities. [Whether because minority Blacks felt more comfortable "with their own kind" or because they were excluded from white social organizations, or both, is not made clear in the reporting.] There are also The Legion of Black Collegians, a Black alternative to white student government, and a Black publication, The Blackout, founded  in 1969.

One place Blacks were certainly welcome was on the Missouri football team. However, because they were not included in many other aspects or campus life, they leveraged their power--$1 million penalty if MU didn't play in the upcoming game--to bring down the president of the system and the chancellor of the college.

[NOTE to Grand Forks City Council: a Diversity Commission might act as a canary in the mine before people reached a boiling point.]

4.A day or two after the campus upheaval, Fox News commentators were dismissive of the Black students because Fox analysts had no idea what the demonstrators wanted. A simple Google would have disclosed a list of demands which, to my mind, ranged from first stage emotional outpouring to reasonable requests that could be acted on partly or wholly.

Some of the demands I found reasonable:

*By 2017-2018 academic year, Mizzoyu to have 10% Black faculty and staff;

*By May 1, 2016, the University will write a 10-year strategic plan to: (a) increase retention rates for students; (b) sustain diversity curriculum and training; (c) promote a more safe and inclusive campus;

*Increase  funding to hire additional (mostly Black) mental health professionals in order to decrease wait times;

*Increase funding for social justice centers for the purpose of increasing programming, visibility an awareness.

These all seem to me either partly or completely doable. I hope this list will be useful to Fox News.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

 SQUIBS:

                                               The corporate model of education

*More than 50% of college faculty nationally are adjunct or part-time teachers

*Adjunct faculty receive no benefits

*25% of part-time faculty receive public assistance

*31% of part-time faculty live at or below the poverty line

*$22,500 is the average salary of adjunct faculty

*60% of part-time faculty have an additional job

Student debt high. . .donors giving millions. . .research contracts coming in. . .state funding increased. . .adjuncts shamefully underpaid. . .the tenure system under attack. . .students have become "customers". . .

Where does the money go?

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                                               Separate and Unequal

100 top CEOs have as much money in retirement accounts as 50 million families, or 41% of American families.

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                                                Mandatory gun insurance?

A friend of mine proposes an interesting idea. Why not treat guns just like cars and require insurance? Like cars, guns are dangerous machines; there are unintended accidents; sometimes they are used intentionally to kill and injure others. Insurance might be used to cover the cost of police work investigating and cleaning up gun violence, as well as health and funeral costs and loss of income due to a family member being injured or killed. Gun insurance will not stop gun violence, but it will make gun owners financially responsible for harm caused by misuse of guns. Is it workable?

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                                                   Diversity     

There's an ad in Oprah's magazine for diverse Barbie dolls. You can choose from eight skin tones, 18 eye colors, 20 hairstyles and 23 hair colors.

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The Southern poverty Law Center has created a simple Tolerance Pledge. It may help to clarify what we mean by welcoming diversity. It says that we should have "respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, cultures, race, sexual identity, or other characteristics are different from our own."

         ***    ***    ***

The Southern Poverty Law Center is tracking nearly 800 hate groups in the United States. Hate groups are defined as "any group with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people -- especially when the characteristics being maligned are immutable."

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Four Things Bjerke Got Wrong

About the Founding Fathers

 I attended the recent return of Usama Dakdok before a full house (about 500 people) at the Empire Theater.

He was here to let us know that the Koran gives all Muslims the right to lie and to kill non-believers; basically he was here to give us reasons to fear non-white or non-Christian newcomers.

But before Dakdok could give incomprehensible interpretations of incomprehensible excerpts from the Koran, Terry Bjerke came on stage to try to convince us that he and the Founding Fathers were on the same page.

But to my mind, Bjerke misunderstood the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution in at least four ways:

1."Your rights come from God, he declared, referring to the section in the

Declaration of Independence which says that men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

But the Deist Founders' Creator has very little in common with Bjerke's Bible-based, church-centered God.

2. Like many who mistakenly identify themselves with the Founding Fathers, Bjerke loves to disrespect government and to express fear and hatred of most government.

He is out of step with the Founding Fathers. Except for the first ten amendments, the Constitution is all about government--how to form one, what its rules are, how it works, what its powers are. The Founders were totally in favor of government. The whole point of the Constitution was to make a government which could last.

Why were they so passionately interested in building a sturdy government? The answer lies in a phrase in the Declaration of Independence. After asserting that we have unalienable rights, the Declaration goes on to say: "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."

The point is that the Founders believed that it was only government which could secure our natural rights. Those who disrespect government are disrespecting Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Adams.

3. At one point I thought I heard Bjerke refer to "property" as one of the unalienable rights, but after life and liberty, the third unalienable right is the "pursuit of happiness." Property rights are not mentioned in the Declaration. Property is not a basic right; it is created by human law.

4. But the most discouraging betrayal of everything the Founders worked for was exhibited by Bjerke at the end of the program. Holding up the Constitution and the Declaration (and the Bible), and with venom in his voice, Bjerke dramatically declared that his rights could only be ripped "from my cold, dead hands."

This exaggerated rhetoric which suggests storm troopers are outside your door would be funny if it weren't so sad. No one is coming to take away two or three hundred million guns. No one--except perhaps the Koch brothers--is coming to steal your elections. No one--except perhaps gerrymandering committees of state legislatures--is going to take away your right to vote for a representative.

This obsession with seeing your government as the enemy is absurd. Obama is not King George. He was elected--twice--and he will be out of office in one year. The notion that your duly elected government is about to take away your rights but will have to rip your rights from your cold, dead hands, implies a gun battle to overthrow the government so carefully established by the founding fathers.  It shows contempt for the Constitution.

This is the first post of Eagle and Owl. More to come . . .