[2699] in Central_America
New quotes for Wed Sep 5
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
Wed Sep 5 01:27:40 1990
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 90 01:27:03 EDT
From: root@charon.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
To: ca-mtg@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
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bjaspan (Barr3y Jaspan):
The number you have reached,
2 2 5 9 6 0 4
has been changed. The new number is
2 2 5 7 5 4 9
Please make a note of it.
<beeeeep>
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doughty (Francis Doughty):
PLAN/SCHEDULE: I work part-time, 3-days/week, at MIT.
During the Fall and Spring terms my schedule coincides with the days
6.111 is held, M-W-F. Aberrations, vacation days, etc. are posted on
the door to 36-677. Please feel free to call me at home
(508-544-5450). If you leave a message, I'll get back to you.
IDEAS:
"The strength of democracy has been its capacity to confront
difference and to cherish it, not just to think about it as an
impediment to rational decision-making. ...diversity is really what
makes democracy not just a choice but almost an urgency in the coming
future.
Reaganism is a combination of a very strong push toward high
technology and a strong state -- aggressive foreign policy, strong
defense, and the rest of it. But it's also been nostalgic in terms of
nineteenth-century, or even eighteenth-century, values about home,
church, family... It's that peculiar combination of technological
progressivism, in terms of the political state, and a regressive view
toward ethics, morality, piety, and family. It's that American
proclivity toward wanting to find yourself sanctified by some set of
values that you know very well cannot come from what you're actually
into. In other words, defense, high tech, and a strong corporate
system can't generate the kinds of values that really make us
comfortable and that really suggest that the power we have is good and
that we deserve it.
But if, on the other hand, we SAY we're the most moral people
on earth, we have more churches, we have stronger family values, and
we have more simple virtues than anybody who has ever lived, then the
power that we've accumulated in this other area suddenly appears to be
legitimate. The guilty conscience exists, and in its place comes now
the sense that we have a misssion and that our power is sanctified.
...This American longing for the past can be seen as a paradoxical
counterpoint to a people who also believe in the importance of
constant change. ...the progressivism to which the society is committed
doesn't generate values that make people feel good about what they've
done. They've got to find other modes of justification."
-Sheldon Wolin
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glassw (William B Glass):
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutated beyond hope of regeneration.
"How Do We Tell Truths that Might Hurt"
Edsger W. Dijkstra
November 18th, 1975
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horiuchi (Junjiro Horiuchi):
"Wagahai wa neko de aru"
Logged out last from m16-034-16 at Tue Sep 4 22:48:30 EDT 1990.
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jcbourne (Juliet C Bourne):
Nothing is so good it lasts eternally
Perfect situations must go wrong
But this has never yet prevented me
Wanting far too much for far too long
...
No-one in your life is with you constantly
No-one is completely on your side
And though I move my world to be with him
Still the gap between us is too wide
...
Didn't I know
How it would go?
If I knew from the start
Why am I falling apart?
--from "I Know Him So Well", _Chess_
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jik (Jonathan I. Kamens):
Everything you always wanted to know about Arab attitudes toward
Israel, but were afraid to ask....
Part 20:
``We cannot think of recognition [of Israel] because this would mean
conceding a part of our lands. Our intermediate goal is the creation
of an independent Palestinian state on all parts of our land that will
be liberated. There have been similar developments in the world. In
Vietnam for example, the Vietnamese decided on the creation of North
Vietnam, and after ten years they liberated South Vietnam.''
- Farouk Kaddoumi, Head of the PLO's political department, Quoted on
- //Voice of Palestine//, July 2, 1977
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jrrauen (James R. Rauen):
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jtkohl (John T Kohl):
"If My Marine Son Is Killed . . ."
By Alex Molnar, Professor of Education at UW Milwaukee
(NYT, 23 Aug 1990)
Dear President Bush:
I kissed my son goodbye today. He is a 21-year-old marine. You have
ordered him to Saudi Arabia.
The letter telling us he was going arrived at our vacation cottage in
northern Wisconsin by Express Mail on Aug. 13. We left immediately for
North Carolina to be with him. Our vacation was over.
Some commentators say you are continuing your own vacation to avoid
appearing trapped in the White House, as President Carter was during the
Iran hostage crisis. Perhaps that is your reason. However, as I sat in
my motel room watching you on television, looking through my son's
hastily written last will and testament and listening to military
equipment rumble past, you seemed to me to be both callous and
ridiculous chasing golf balls and zipping around in your boat in
Kennebunkport.
While visiting my son I had a chance to see him pack his chemical
weapons suit and try on his body armor. I don't know if you've ever had
this experience, Mr. President. I hope you never will.
I also met many of my son's fellow soldiers. They are fine young men.
A number told me that they were from poor families. They joined the
Marines as a way of earning enough money to go to college.
None of the young men I met are likely to be invited to serve on the
board of directors of a savings and loan association, as your son Neil
was. And none of them have parents well enough connected to call or
write a general to insure that heir child stays out of harm's way, as
Vice President Quayle's parents did for him during the Vietnam War.
I read in today's Raleigh News and Observer that, like you, Vice
President Quayle and Secretary of State Baker are on vacation.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Cheney is in the Persian Gulf. I think
this symbolizes a Government that no longer has a non-military foreign
policy vision, one that uses the military to conceal the fraud that
American diplomacy has become.
Yes, you have proved a relatively adept tactician in the last three
weeks. But if American diplomacy hadn't been on vacation for the better
part of a decade, we wouldn't be in the spot we are in today.
Where were you, Mr. President, when Iraq was killing its own people with
poison gas? Why, until the recent crisis, was it business as usual with
Saddam Hussein, the man you now call a Hitler?
You were elected Vice President in 1980 on the strength of the promise
of a better life for Americans, in a world where the U.S. would once
again "stand tall." The Reagan-Bush Administration rolled into
Washington talking about the magic of a "free market" in oil. You
diluted gas mileage requirements for cars and dismantled Federal energy
policy. And now you have ordered my son to the Middle East. For what?
Cheap gas?
Is the American "way of life" that you say my son is risking his life
for the continued "right" of Americans to consume 25 to 30 percent of
the world's oil? The "free market" to which you are so fervently
devoted has a very high price tag, at least for parents like me and
young men and women like my son.
Now that we face the prospect of war I intend to support my son and his
fellow soldiers by doing everything I can to oppose any offensive
American military action in the Persian Gulf. The troops I met deserve
far better than the politicians and policies that hold them hostage.
As my wife and I sat in a little cafe outside our son's base last week,
trying to eat, fighting back tears, a young marine struck up a
conversation with us. As we parted he wished us well and said, "May God
forgive us for what we are about to do."
President Bush, the policies you have advocated for the last decade have
set the stage for military conflict in the Middle East. Your response
to the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait has set in motion events that
increasingly will pressure you to use our troops not to defend Saudi
Arabia but to attack Iraq. And I'm afraid that, as pressure mounts, you
will wager my son's life in a gamble to save your political future.
In the past you have demonstrated no enduring commitment to any
principle other than the advancement of your political career. This
makes me doubt that you have either the courage or the character to meet
the challenge of finding a diplomatic solution to this crisis. If, as I
expect, you eventually order American soldiers to attack Iraq, then it
is God who will have to forgive you. I will not.
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klbrubak (Kaye L Brubaker):
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mbarlow (Mark S Barlow):
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paul (Paul Boutin):
Finally getting to do everything I was supposed to do in June! At
least I learned this summer how to extort money from debtors and
manage an apartment.
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tancredi (Christopher D Tancredi):
Chris Tancredi
111 Webster Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02141
(617) 864-6838
or
Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy
20D-219
MIT
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 253-4141
--- End of Central America ---
