“Tribune-Star Editorial: Success in Afghanistan must be measured in ... - Tribune-Star” plus 4 more |
- Tribune-Star Editorial: Success in Afghanistan must be measured in ... - Tribune-Star
- Op-Ed: Ouster harks back to 1992 - Traverse City Record-Eagle
- Tiger's troubles widen his distance from blacks - WTVF
- Toilet tempest - Daily Item
- A New Englander finds lots to love here: My Cleveland - Cleveland Plain Dealer
| Tribune-Star Editorial: Success in Afghanistan must be measured in ... - Tribune-Star Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:38 PM PST | Published: December 05, 2009 08:04 pm Tribune-Star Editorial: Success in Afghanistan must be measured in stability, trust The Tribune-StarThere is no clear, obvious answer to resolve the war in Afghanistan. It's complicated. The decision by President Obama to send 30,000 to 35,000 more troops — young American men and women — into that treacherous, poor and politically fractured nation is the least objectionable of America's unpleasant options. Success in Afghanistan, realistically, must now be measured by our ability to stabilize the region and rapidly prepare the Afghan people to defend their own country. The effort must somehow convince young Afghans to reject recruitment by the Taliban extremists. Each of those goals is a tall order, especially within the 18-month deadline set by the Obama administration. The speed at which U.S. troops begin withdrawing by July 2011 — the date targeted by the president — has not been defined. But the strategy suggests that U.S. and NATO forces will first partner with Afghan soldiers in their daily duties during the next year and a half, and then allow the Afghans to use that training to assume control of security and defense. Any military effort also needs the support of the American people. The president would be hard-pressed to send a surge of 30,000 soldiers into an open-ended conflict nearly nine years old, already. The public is trying to recover from the nastiest recession since the 1930s, and a war without end — on top of the economic strife — would be more than most Americans could accept. The recovery will take longer than most of us would like. So will the resolution to the Afghan war. Both situations have become Obama's responsibility, a job he understood while running for president. Still, like the recession, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were inherited messes. The potential to contain the terrorists based along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — those behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. civilians — got misdirected by the Bush-Cheney administration's fixation with Iraq and its ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein. The current emphasis on Afghanistan is strategically overdue, but its long delay complicates the task of stopping the resurgent Taliban and the insurgents. Some good news, relatively speaking, came Friday when NATO member countries committed 7,000 troops to serve alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan. Two larger NATO nations, France and Germany are waiting until January to reveal their commitments. The U.S. is not going this alone. The civilized world, such as it is, believes the plan is the better of two bad choices. Also, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, stated that what's ahead there cannot be merely about combat. Instead, it must also involve American troops living alongside the Afghans, being a part of their culture and promoting trust. The latter is an honorable, yet elusive objective. It's a best-case scenario in a highly uncertain predicament. Meanwhile, the reality that more American lives and treasure will be sacrificed makes the new course of action agonizingly hard to embrace.  
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| Op-Ed: Ouster harks back to 1992 - Traverse City Record-Eagle Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:31 PM PST For a day, it was the business sensation of the nation: Fritz Henderson ousted as CEO of General Motors, the company he led through bankruptcy reorganization. What was most shocking was that this came after he had served only eight turbulent months on the job. This meant that for the first time in history, GM will have had three chief executives in the course of a single calendar year: Rick Wagoner, fired by President Obama in March; Henderson; and now, Edward Whitacre, a hard-charging Texan who became board chairman in July. Ed Whitacre didn't have a day's experience in the car business before he took over General Motors. Once, that would have been unheard of. Succession to the chairmanship of what used to be the world's biggest corporation was a stately process that resembled a dynastic succession. Not anymore. In fact, you could argue that having three chairmen in one year was the least unusual thing to happen to the no-longer-so-big automaker in 2009. For one thing, it went bankrupt -- and got into and out of bankruptcy reorganization in record time. For another, the taxpayers have spent $50 billion to try to keep GM alive. As a result of that, we own General Motors. The United States government owns more than three-fifths of the automaker. The goal is to get rid of it. Washington wants GM to return to profitability, so the government can sell off our share and at least recoup some of the money we spent to keep GM alive. That's not going to happen for a while, if ever. In fact, there are indications that one of the areas of disagreement between Henderson and the board was over how long to wait before trying to take General Motors public again. Incidentally, though nobody's talking, it is clear that Henderson's sudden departure was anything but voluntary. Voluntary resignations are not announced at hastily called late-afternoon press conferences. The next day, Fritz Henderson was supposed to give a major speech to the Los Angeles auto show. But for those with long memories, what happened is anything but unique. Instead, it smacks uncannily of what baseball philosopher Yogi Berra called "dejà vu all over again." Think about this: General Motors was in financial crisis, losing billions, and clearly needed to do big things, quickly. The company had installed a chairman who was new at the top job, but who had spent his entire career at GM. Not surprisingly, he was having trouble making changes quickly. General Motors was, in some ways, like a large dysfunctional family. The new chairman was surrounded by men who had been hired around the same time he was. They had come up through the ranks together. It was tough for him to fire or demote men (they were virtually all men) with whom he'd worked for decades. He was eventually, painfully -- some said brutally -- ousted by a new board chairman, an outsider who knew a lot about business in general but virtually nothing about cars. You may think this describes what happened to Fritz Henderson, and it mostly does. But I was actually describing what happened nearly two decades ago, in 1992. Then, the CEO was Robert Stempel. The board chairman who ousted him was John Smale, of Cincinnati-based Procter and Gamble, now P&G. At the time, that was far more sensational than what went on this week. Back then, the drama in GM's boardroom was front-page news all over the nation. Prior to that crisis, it would have been almost as unthinkable to depose a head of General Motors as a Pope. Today, outside of the Midwest, the ouster of Fritz Henderson was just another business story. But there is another big difference between now and what happened in 1992. When Stempel was forced out, Smale didn't even think of trying to run the company. Instead, the board elevated Jack Smith, another GM lifer, to the top job. That isn't likely this time. Whitacre, who by all accounts is as tough as nails, is going to run GM himself for awhile. Then, he is likely to look for someone in his own image to change the insular and incestuous culture at General Motors, a culture that was too often both arrogant and complacent, and which has now delivered devastating failure. America's taxpayers better hope he succeeds. After all, the one indisputable fact about today's GM is that we own it. Sign of the Times: In November, for the first time in history, General Motors sold more cars in a foreign country than in the United States. GM sold 177,339 cars in China, and only 151,427 cars in America. Hard to say who'd be more shocked: Alfred Sloan or Chairman Mao. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | |
| Tiger's troubles widen his distance from blacks - WTVF Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:17 PM PST
By JESSE WASHINGTON AP National Writer Amid all the headlines generated by Tiger Woods' troubles - the puzzling car accident, the suggestions of marital turmoil and multiple mistresses - little attention has been given to the race of the women linked with the world's greatest golfer. Except in the black community. When three white women were said to be romantically involved with Woods in addition to his blonde, Swedish wife, blogs, airwaves and barbershops started humming, and Woods' already tenuous standing among many blacks took a beating. On the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner radio show, Woods was the butt of jokes all week. "Thankfully, Tiger, you didn't marry a black woman. Because if a sister caught you running around with a bunch of white hoochie-mamas," one parody suggests in song, she would have castrated him. "The Grinch's Theme Song" didn't stop there: "The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother waaant?" As one blogger, Robert Paul Reyes, wrote: "If Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous white wife with black women, the golfing great's accident would have been barely a blip in the blogosphere." The darts reflect blacks' resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America's whitest sports and assumed the mantle of the world's most famous athlete, once worn by Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. But Woods has declined to identify himself as black, and famously chose the term "Cablinasian" (Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian) to describe the racial mixture he inherited from his African-American father and Thai mother. This vexed some blacks, but it hasn't stopped them from claiming Woods as one of their own. Or from disapproving of his marriage to Elin Nordegren, despite blacks' historical fight against white racist opponents of mixed marriage. On the one hand, Ebonie Johnson Cooper doesn't care that Tiger Woods' wife and alleged mistresses are white because Woods is "quote-unquote not really black." "But at the same time we still see him as a black man with a white woman, and it makes a difference," said Johnson Cooper, a 26-year-old African-American from New York City. "There's just this preservation thing we have among one another. We like to see each other with each other." Black women have long felt slighted by the tendency of famous black men to pair with white women, and many have a list of current transgressors at the ready. "We've discussed this for years among black women," said Denene Millner, author of several books on black relationships. "Why is it when they get to this level ... they tend to go directly for the nearest blonde?" This tendency may be more prominent due to a relative lack of interracial marriages among average blacks. Although a recent Pew poll showed that 94 percent of blacks say it's all right for blacks and whites to date, a study published this year in Sociological Quarterly showed that blacks are less likely to actually date outside their race than are other groups. "There is a call for loyalty that is stronger in some ways than in other racial communities," said the author of the study, George Yancey, a sociology professor at the University of North Texas and author of the book "Just Don't Marry One." The color of one's companion has long been a major measure of "blackness" - which is a big reason why the biracial Barack Obama was able to fend off early questions about his black authenticity. "Had Barack had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him," Johnson Cooper said. So do Woods' women say something about the intensely private golfer's views on race? "I would like to say no, but I think it garners a bit of a yes," Johnson Cooper said. Carmen Van Kerckhove, founder of the race-meets-pop-culture blog Racialicious, said there have been frequent discussions on her site about the fine line between preference and fetish. "Is there any difference between a white guy with a thing for blondes, and a non-white guy with a thing for blondes?" asked Van Kerckhove, who has a Chinese mother, a Belgian father and a husband born in America to parents from Benin. She claims that Asians don't fully embrace Woods, either. "There are two layers of suspicion toward him," Van Kerkhove said. "One toward the apparent pattern in the race of his partners, and the second in the way he sees himself. ... People have been giving him the side-eye for a while." There's nothing wrong with wanting a mate who shares your culture, as long as it's for the right reasons, the comedienne Sheryl Underwood said after unleashing a withering Woods monologue on Tom Joyner's radio show. "Would we question when a Jewish person wants to marry other Jewish people?" she said in an interview. "It's not racist. It's not bigotry. It's cultural pride." "The issue comes in when you choose something white because you think it's better," Underwood said. "And then you never date a black woman or a woman of color or you never sample the greatness of the international buffet of human beings. If you never do that, we got a problem." ___ Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | |
| Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:02 PM PST Published December 05, 2009 11:42 pm - Students enrolled in the Transnational Queer Identities Class proposed a final project no less interesting than their course title. Toilet tempest By The Daily Item LEWISBURG — Students enrolled in the Transnational Queer Identities Class proposed a final project no less interesting than their course title. With support from their professor, Philippe Dubois, they handed out petitions across the campus to raise awareness of the rising controversy over gendered bathrooms and provide a more comprehensive understanding of how gendered bathrooms reinforce social norms that have been ingrained within our society. As a part of their final project, they are hoping to change two gender-specific restrooms on opposite ends of campus into gender-neutral restrooms in a safe and highly visible area. More than 600 people signed their petition. The students surveyed the campus to find out what students at Bucknell consider queer in an unusual way. Campus community members found a post card in their mailbox recently. The post card had a T-shirt reminiscent of the "Gay? Fine by me!" T-shirts that the Office of LGBT Awareness distributes every year, on which UNIV341 students asked Bucknell to replace the word gay with something else that is also fine by them. "We received more responses than we imagined we would. There are some very interesting entries, we will be displaying them so watch for it." says Amanda Kronquist, a student among six others taking the class. In addition to displaying these post cards, students taking Transnational Queer Identities will talk about the results in their lecture, in which they will have a dance show and a summary of their studies throughout the fall 2009 semester. Professor Dubois is inviting everyone to attend their final presentation on at 7 p.m. Monday in the Trout Auditorium. The UNIV 341 course on Transnational Queer: Genders, Sexualities, Identities is innovative in its design as well as its reach across campus. This course is the result of a collaborative project supported by the Provost Office and was designed collectively by faculty from five different institutions (Bucknell University, College of the Holy Cross, Union College, Vassar College and Williams College) and is offered simultaneously at Bucknell University and Vassar College. The lecture series attached to the course features speakers specializing in queer cultural production from fiction to cinema and performance. Topics include the body, sexual politics, citizenship, legal and aesthetic discourses. Through examination of these questions, the combination of course and lecture series aims to expose students, faculty, staff and members of the larger community to differing kinds of otherness and cross-cultural understandings of specific forms of identity constructions through a broad range of queer theoretical and cultural productions. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | |
| A New Englander finds lots to love here: My Cleveland - Cleveland Plain Dealer Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:31 PM PST By Sarah Crump, The Plain DealerDecember 05, 2009, 11:35PM Along with having a weakness for locally made products -- from Mitchell's mint chocolate chip ice cream to designer jewelry -- Harvey, 51, has three dogs and a cat she adores. "Ironi cally, I grew up in an apart ment where we were not al lowed to have pets, so I'd say I've made up for lost time!" What was your first impression of Cleveland? Honestly, I hated it. The only reason I came to Cleveland was for a job out of graduate school at the Cleveland Clinic in cardiac rehabilitation. When I interviewed, I was emphatic that I would only be here for five years and then would need to head back to New England and the ocean. That was in 1985 and I was at the Clinic for 18 years! How has your impression changed? I love Cleveland! Downtown is a little big city where everything is so accessible -- music, theater, museums, dining, professional sport -- you name it. I grew up in a suburb of Boston and I can say with certainty that enjoying downtown Boston was nowhere as easy. For starters, my sister refers to Cleveland rush hours as "cute!" But most of all, I love being able to work in this terrific city and then get in a car and in 30 minutes, be surrounded by rolling countryside and pastures full of horses. I feel like I have the best of all worlds. What is your favorite restaurant? I'm a veg-aquarian, so I love anywhere I can get fresh seafood, like the Blue Point Grille downtown. Oysters on the half shell are an obligatory part of any meal there or wherever I can find a raw bar. You can take the New Englander out of New England but not the New England out of the New Englander! What's a terrific night out for you? A terrific night out for me is doing anything that involves time with friends, lots of laughing, good music and dancing. If ABBA is involved, well then I've pretty much died and gone to heaven! I just saw "Mamma Mia" at Playhouse Square for the third time with my partner and 10 wonderful friends who either share or support my ABBA "habit." I also love stand-up comedy at The Improv or Hilarities. What do you like about Tremont? The Tremont area offers a great blend of culture and diversity and easy access to downtown. There's such a sense of community: people walking dogs everywhere, the farmer's market in Lincoln Park, the Art Walk, fabulous restaurants, and on and on. Besides, anywhere that has a place called Grumpy's Caf must be a fun place to go! Tell us about your dogs. There's Emmett, an 11-year-old Dalmatian who I got as a pup. He still thinks he's a puppy and has the attention span of one unless there's food in the picture. Arnold is a 7-year-old brown dog with an Eddie Munster widow's peak, probably a chow/husky mix. He was a cruelty case who I adopted. Arnold endured a lot so he has some quirks, but he's a sweet, sweet boy. Finally there's Roo, a 4-year-old Chihuahua/rat terrier mix who I also adopted from Rescue Village while working there. She was born without front paws but that doesn't slow her down much at all. She rules the house and the boys. I adopted Ozzy from the Cleveland APL about a year ago. I was there late one night and spotted him in a cage in the lobby. He called me over and pretty much demanded that I adopt him as an office cat. So now we're Ozzy and Sharon, and he definitely has an Ozzy Osbourne take on life. I, on the other hand, have resigned myself to being the sensible one! What do you like about living in Bainbridge Township/Chagrin Falls? It reminds me of home. I grew up in New England, so Chagrin Falls is a home away from home. I've made truly wonderful, wonderful friends there. My favorite haunts around town are Rick's Caf , Fireside Book Shop, Jekyll's Kitchen, and of course, the one-and-only Chagrin Hardware! Do you patronize any local jewelry designers? I have two favorites: Susan Scaparotti of red i jewelry (redijewelry.citymax.com) and Gai Russo of gai russo jewelry (gairusso.com.) I wear one of Susan's bracelets every day and Gai custom-designed a pair of cufflinks for a very fun blouse I wore to "Mamma Mia" that are inscribed with the words "Live," "Laugh," "Love," "ABBA." What's your favorite Cleveland scenic spot? I have two and they're so different, I can't decide. Besides, I'm a Libra so I shouldn't have to decide!!! The waterfront is one. That's where I go to get my water "fix" when I need it. My family laughs when I refer to it as the "North Coast," but it absolutely gives me that coastal feeling I love. Playhouse Square is the other. The theaters are beautiful and I just love a good show. What is the most unusual resident you've seen at the Cleveland APL? Hmmmm, that's a tough one. Most recently, it would be the 7-inch garter snake who slithered through our front doors into our lobby. Or perhaps the 7-foot alligator who was found guarding a warehouse full of marijuana in Cleveland, although he didn't actually end up at the APL as there is nowhere in our facility for a 7-foot alligator! Thankfully, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo was able to care for him until he could be transported to a sanctuary. Tell us a touching animal episode. There are so, so many. I think the moments that really touch all of us who work or volunteer at the APL the most are when our adopters bring animals we've rescued from unspeakable situations back to visit and we get to experience their happy endings and see the joy they've brought to their new families. For instance, seeing Chopper, a dog who had been abandoned, was suffering from heartworm, and was surviving by crawling out on a rooftop to drink water from the gutter, walk into our building surrounded by three little girls who love and adore him dearly, well, I still get choked up just thinking about him and all the others like him that we've helped and saved. Read previous My Cleveland columns to see what makes other Clevelanders proud at cleveland.com/mycleveland To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: scrump@plaind.com, 216-999-5478
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