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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
'Whiteness Studies' researchers at U look at racial identity
http://tinyurl.com/jro8p
Do white people consider their race important? Are they aware of how theirracial status gives them advantages in America? In an unusual study, mostwhites said "yes'' to both questions.
Jean Hopfensperger, Star Tribune
White people consider their race to be an important part of who they are,and most are aware that being white gives them advantages in America,according to an unusual survey released last week by the University ofMinnesota.
The findings emerged from what the university billed as the first nationaltelephone survey of white people discussing their concept of racialidentity. It's part of a growing -- and controversial -- field of scholarlyresearch called "Critical Whiteness Studies," which focuses the lens of racerelations on the white majority.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/ats-ap_top13sep12,0,471699.story?coll=sns-newsnation-headlines
Study: H.S. Dropouts Face Steeper Costs
By BEN FELLER
AP Education Writer
September 12, 2006, 5:03 AM EDT
WASHINGTON -- Dropping out of high school has its costs around the globe,but nowhere steeper than in the United States.
Adults who don't finish high school in the U.S. earn 65 percent of whatpeople who have high school degrees make, according to a new reportcomparing industrialized nations. No other country had such a severe incomegap.
Adults without a high school diploma typically make about 80 percent of thesalaries earned by high school graduates in nations across Asia, Europe andelsewhere. Countries such as Finland, Belgium, Germany and Sweden have thesmallest gaps in earnings between dropouts and graduates.
The figures come from "Education at a Glance," an annual study by theParis-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Thereport, released Tuesday, aims to help leaders see how their nations stackup.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/12/ap/politics/printableD8K31ODO0.shtml
Anti-Incumbent Sentiment Is Widespread
NEW CASTLE, Ky., Sep. 12, 2006
(AP) Dissatisfied with Congress, voters would probably hang a "Help Wanted"sign on the U.S. Capitol if given the chance.
"They're not doing their job," says Scott Newland, 39, an independent voterwho backed President Bush in 2004.
The factory worker had harsh words for congressional Republicans andDemocrats as he helped close his sister's New Castle deli one recentevening. "You need people that care. They don't care."
Such angry sentiments echo up and down the Ohio River Valley as it cutsthrough Republican-held congressional districts in Indiana, Kentucky, andOhio _ politically pivotal House seats in an election year in whichDemocrats hope to end 12 years in the minority.
At lunch counters, post offices, city parks and downtown streets, voters inthis region and nationally are quick to voice their frustration with theGOP-controlled Congress, and their desire for more responsive replacementsfor the current crop of lawmakers.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/09/12/sen_chafee_targeted_in_ris_gop_primary?mode=PF
Nine states hold primaries Tuesday
By Robert Tanner, AP National Writer | September 12, 2006
Rhode Island's independent-minded Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee confrontedstiff opposition Tuesday in his bid for a second term, the latest race witha moderate targeted by his own party's hard-line critics.
Nine states and Washington, D.C., were holding primary elections Tuesday,but Chafee's race has drawn the most attention as another test of the depthof anti-incumbent sentiment and the erosion of the political middle ground.
Chafee has a remarkable amount of support from national Republicans,especially for a senator who has often been at odds with the party, buckingthe administration on tax cuts, civil liberties and the Iraq war. He facesSteve Laffey, a former investment banker and mayor of Cranston, R.I.
In Maryland, Democrats were choosing a Senate candidate to go up againstRepublican Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor. An open House seat inArizona has drawn a contentious crowd of GOP candidates, as well as severalhopefuls on the Democratic side.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12tue2.html?pagewanted=print
September 12, 2006
Editorial
The Fictional Path to 9/11
Perhaps the entertainment industry will come up with a few lasting lessons from the outcry over ABC's "dramatization" of the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. One suggestion: when attempting to recreate real events on screen, you do not show real people doing things they never did.
The film, a fictionalized portrayal of the nation's failure to head off the attack on the World Trade Center, was shown Sunday and Monday. The second episode was wrapped around a live speech by President Bush, so it was especially unfortunate that the most questionable scenes all seemed to make the Clinton administration look worse, and Mr. Bush look better, than the record indicates.
Some of the most controversial scenes were cut at the last minute. But the first episode, for instance, showed C.I.A. agents and the charismatic leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance perched outside a bin Laden camp, ready to swoop in and capture him if only Washington approved. The authorization is not granted, and the Afghan leader rails, "Are there no men in Washington, or are they all cowards?" Yet neither C.I.A. operatives nor the Northern Alliance leader ever laid eyes on Osama bin Laden, terrorism experts say. The film may be referring to a proposed raid by other Afghan tribesmen that was vetoed by the C.I.A. because it had a low probability of success and was apt to harm civilians.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12tierney.html?pagewanted=print
September 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Osama's Spin Lessons
By JOHN TIERNEY
Somewhere, Osama bin Laden must be smiling. Or at least he will be whenever his couriers deliver the next batch of press clippings.
Once again he has beaten America at an American game: public relations. He may be sitting powerlessly in a cave, but his image is as scary as ever. He doesn't even have to cut a new video. He released an old one last week, the equivalent of a fading musician putting out a greatest-hits album, only this one's getting played every hour.
Last night, President Bush paid him homage by quoting his warning that America will face "defeat and disgrace forever" it if loses in Iraq. Bush himself called the war on terror a "struggle for civilization," and said it was essential to "maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations."
It was just the kind of apocalyptic language favored by bin Laden, except that, for all his delusions, he might realize that American civilization is not really in jeopardy. Americans can try to copy him, but they don't understand his rhetorical technique.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12kristof.html?pagewanted=print
September 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Starting Another War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
It is quite possible that President Bush will bomb Iran's nuclear installations over the next couple of years.
Let's hope he looks at how Israel shot itself in the foot in Lebanon this summer and resists the siren calls of neocons who claim that a few air raids would make the Iranian nuclear menace disappear.
The argument Mr. Bush is hearing in favor of an airstrike is pretty simple: Iran is a terrorist regime that has sponsored attacks on Americans and on Jews (as far away as Argentina). The president of Iran is a hard-liner who has used language that, while subject to debate among Farsi speakers, may mean that his aim is to wipe Israel off the map.
A nuclear Iran would also have a devastating ripple effect around the region: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey might go nuclear as well. And considering how reckless Iran's foreign policy has already been, imagine if it felt emboldened with a nuclear weapon.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/world/middleeast/12mideast.html?pagewanted=print
September 12, 2006
Palestinian Reports Unity Deal With Hamas
By STEVEN ERLANGER and GREG MYRE
GAZA, Sept. 11 - The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said Monday that he had reached a tentative agreement with Hamas to form a national unity government in an attempt to end the Palestinians' international isolation and the cutoff in Western assistance to their government.
In a speech on Palestinian television, Mr. Abbas said it would take several days to finish the deal, and provided no details of how his Fatah faction and the militant group Hamas, which leads the government, had resolved their considerable differences.
"We have finalized the elements of the political agenda of the national unity government," Mr. Abbas said in his speech. "Hopefully, in the coming days we will begin forming the government of national unity."
Details of the political agreement were believed to be limited to the unity government, rather than committing the Hamas movement more broadly to its terms. A national unity government will also have representatives of other Palestinian factions like Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas government.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100881_pf.html
Democrats Answer Cheney
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A23
Perhaps Vice President Cheney should quit his current job and work within a political system more to his liking, the kind in which those in charge can protect national security by telling everyone what not to say and what not to think.
Cheney seemed terribly impatient with democracy Sunday on "Meet the Press" when he suggested that those who oppose President Bush's Iraq policies are helping -- excuse me, validating -- the terrorists.
Our allies in the war on terror, Cheney said, "want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission."
Then the punch: "And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we've had in the United States. Suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists."
Meaning what, exactly? If Cheney doesn't like "the kind of debate that we've had in the United States," is there any other "kind," short of a lock-step endorsement of all of Bush's choices, he'd endorse?
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100685.html
In Baltimore, Staying Home for School
By Jabari Asim
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; 12:00 AM
"Write something positive about our school," my son's pre-kindergarten teacher urged me when we met for the first time last fall.As a veteran of the Baltimore public school system, she was accustomed to loads of negative publicity about her employer. As a concerned parent, so was I. For that reason, my wife approached our entry into that world with considerable trepidation. Our experiences soon justified our initial fears.
Not that my son's teacher had much to do with it. Indeed, I have nothing but good things to say about her and my other son's third-grade teacher. Both impressed me as optimistic hardworking educators occasionally driven to wit's end by a school system bogged down in administrative incompetence and a bureaucracy disturbingly obsessed with red tape. Watching them cope creatively with missing resources and unforeseen snafus -- such as school buses that fail to show up and take pupils on field trips, for instance -- I suspected there were other good teachers like them, equally challenged by the fog of cluelessness and despair that hovers in the hallways of many Baltimore schools.
Those teachers were real gems, and we were grateful to be working with them. Some other teachers seemed burned-out and disinterested, unable to muster even a smile or a greeting for visitors. We also encountered a phenomenon we'd often heard about but hadn't seen firsthand: The spectacle of white (usually young) female teachers totally ill-equipped to deal with preadolescent black boys who, we often discovered, were being raised by adults who had no detectable interest in their children's education.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Syria-Gunfire.html?ei=5094&en=551aa1cd60b09d2d&hp=&ex=1158120000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 12, 2006
Syrian Forces Repel Attack on U.S. Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:43 a.m. ET
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Islamic militants attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Tuesday using automatic rifles, hand grenades and at least one van rigged with explosives, the government said. Four people were killed in the brazen attack, including three of the assailants.
No Americans were hurt, and the attackers apparently did not breach the high walls surrounding the embassy's white compound in the city's diplomatic neighborhood.
But one of Syria's anti-terrorism forces was killed and at least 11 others were injured, the country's official news agency reported. The wounded including a police officer, two Iraqis and seven people employed at nearby technical workshop.
A Chinese diplomat also was hit in the face by shrapnel and slightly injured while standing on top of a garage at the Chinese Embassy, China's government news agency said.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12tue1.html?pagewanted=print
September 12, 2006
Editorial
President Bush's Reality
Last night, President Bush once again urged Americans to take terrorism seriously - a warning that hardly seems necessary. One aspect of that terrible day five years ago that seems immune to politicization or trivialization is the dread of another attack. When Mr. Bush warns that Al Qaeda means what it says, that there are Islamist fanatics around the world who wish us harm and that the next assault could be even worse than the last, he does not need to press the argument.
After that, paths diverge. Mr. Bush has been marking the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 with a series of speeches about terrorism that culminated with his televised address last night. He has described a world where Iraq is a young but hopeful democracy with a "unity government" that represents its diverse population. Al Qaeda-trained terrorists who are terrified by "the sight of an old man pulling the election lever" are trying to stop the march of progress. The United States and its friends are holding firm in a battle that will decide whether freedom or terror will rule the 21st century.
If that were actual reality, the president's call to "put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us" would be inspiring, instead of frustrating and depressing.
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The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091101180.html
Mich. Voters Focus on Economy
Democratic Incumbents Take Heat for State's Unemployment Rate
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A03
PONTIAC, Mich. -- Mike Bouchard was eager to make the sale as he bantered with Tracey Allen at a Labor Day street fair. Pitching his Republican candidacy for the U.S. Senate, the Oakland County sheriff heard her say she favored Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow.
"Tell me," Bouchard smiled, holding a plastic water bottle under Allen's chin as a mock microphone, "what has she accomplished to make your life better? Thirty seconds or less."
When Allen merely smiled, he persisted: "I'll get you results!"
The candidate's high-spirited determination charmed Allen, but after he had moved on, she said Stabenow was her choice."I just want my gas to go down and my cost of living to go down," Allen said. "Everybody has felt the wrath of Bush. Anybody who is attached to the Republicans, I want out of office."
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100880_pf.html
Bin Laden's Victory
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A23
NEW YORK -- I hear Osama bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday
and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and especially here, where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror." Bin Laden knows better. He has already won.
It is not merely that bin Laden has not been captured or killed and that videotapes keep coming out of his hideout like taunts. It is, rather, that his initial strategy has borne fruit. It was always his intention to draw the Americans into Afghanistan, where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the United States responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day.
From bin Laden's standpoint, this has been a glorious victory, made possible, it has to be said, by the totally unforeseen incompetence of the Bush administration. It was so intent on going to war in Iraq that it would not finish the job in Afghanistan. So, to bin Laden's absolute amazement -- I am guessing here -- the United States took on his enemy, the secular and ungodly Saddam Hussein, whom bin Laden himself would gladly have murdered. It has to be a wonderful thing when your enemy vanquishes your enemy.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100883.html
A War of Words
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A23
There was a time, not so long ago, when no one ever spoke of an American "homeland." During World War II there was a home front, and of course there has always been a heartland between the two heartless coasts, but no one thought of our big-shouldered cities, traffic-choked suburbs, purple mountains' majesties and amber waves of grain as anything called a homeland.
The United States was always a place for people who had left their homelands behind, a polyglot, rainbow-colored nation whose defining characteristics were vitality, mobility, dynamism and the restless urge to push toward the next frontier. But now we inhabit an official homeland, with an official Department of Homeland Security to protect it.
"Homeland" is one of the burdens left to us by the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. Words are all we have to give shape to reality, and because we had no words for what happened five years ago -- by definition, language falls short of the unimaginable -- a new lexicon had to be developed. I am convinced that much of this new language, by accident or design, has the effect of clouding our view of our enemies and ourselves. We need to begin choosing our words more carefully, and we need to discard the ones that do not serve us well.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100459_pf.html
Americans May Be More Religious Than They Realize
Many Without Denomination Have Congregation, Study Finds
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A12
A survey released yesterday posits the idea that the United States -- already one of the most religious nations in the developed world -- may be even less secular than previously suspected.
The Baylor University survey looked carefully at people who checked "none" when asked their religion in polls. Sociologists have watched this group closely since 1990, when their numbers doubled, from 7 percent of the population to 14 percent. Some sociologists said the jump reflects increasing secularization at the same time that American society is becoming more religious.
But the Baylor survey, considered one of the most detailed ever conducted about religion in the United States, found that one in 10 people who picked "no religion" out of 40 choices did something interesting when asked later where they worship: They named a place. Considering that, Baylor researchers say, the percentage of people who are truly unaffiliated is more like 10.8 percent. The difference between 10.8 percent and 14 percent is about 10 million Americans.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001133.html
An Inconvenient Truth About Youth
By Laura Wray and Constance Flanagan
Monday, September 11, 2006; A17
"An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's movie on global warming, is now the fourth-largest-grossing documentary of all time. But apparently it isn't young adults who are paying the price of the ticket -- or, more important, taking the truth about the environment to heart. In fact, the inconvenient truth today is that youths' willingness to conserve gas, heat and energy has taken a precipitous plunge since the 1980s.
According to data from Monitoring the Future, a federally funded national survey on trends in the attitudes, values and behavior of high school seniors since 1976, there has been a clear decline in conservation behavior among 18-year-olds over the past 27 years -- although we are not yet sure whether these attitudes follow youths into adulthood. This decline, interestingly, is coupled with a rise in materialistic values.
In fact, trends in materialism and conservation are highly related: At times when youths place higher value on material goods, they are also much less likely to say they would conserve resources. And when youths are more materially driven, they are also less likely to believe that natural resources will become scarce in the future.
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