text:
For Shame: Matt Lauer's Interview of Dottie Sandusky
Guest Contributor on March 13, 2014
FILED TO: Media and Entertainment
by Patrick Perion
Patrick Perion is a child abuse investigator in Illinois who wrote a great piece for us about the Woody Allen/Dylan Farrow case.
In what can only be described as the worst kind of sensationalism, NBC's Today Show host, Matt Lauer conducted an interview of Dottie Sandusky, the wife of convicted child rapist, Jerry Sandusky. As most people with a brain would surmise, Mrs. Sandusky thinks her husband is innocent despite being found guilty of 47 counts of child sexual abuse.
The interview was conducted at the Sandusky home. Sitting next to to a forlorn and tearful Sandusky was John Ziegler, noted grifter, scam artist and Joe Paterno apologist. While the interview as ostensibly about Sandusky, Ziegler was able to work in " the unjust firing of Joe Paterno" about halfway through.
The entire thing was distasteful for many reasons.
Dottie Sandusky said her husband is innocent of the chargers against him. They're not charges, he was convicted. Ziegler said he's met with Sandusky and now believes he's innocent. Even Matt Lauer got in on the fun, at one point outside the basement bedroom in which at least one boy was raped, Lauer said that "this is the bedroom in which some of the accusers say the abuse happened". Sorry Matt, they're not accusers, they're victims and they don't say things happened. They happened. Sandusky was convicted.
I have known many Dottie Sanduskys in 20 years of child abuse investigation. It may sound incredible to the average person, but there are spouses every day who don't believe their spouse sexually abused a child. The number of spouses/paramours who believe the adult over the child would truly shock most of you. I don't know if Dottie is naive, mentally ill, in denial or all of the above. What I do know is that her response wasn't a surprise to me.
What was a surprise was NBC's decision to green light the story. They gave a fringe element of truly horrible people led by the Snidely Whiplash of Paterno apologists, John Ziegler, a national platform. The entire interview ran for 51 minutes. 51 minutes of calling the victims liars, Dottie: "I didn't say they lied, I said I don't believe their story". 51 minutes of calling the victims grifters, again Dottie: "I think they were manipulated by the lawyers for money". 51 minutes of Ziegler saying things like "Its not PC to call a victim a liar".
My question for all involved is simple. Do you have any idea how hard it is for victims, especially male victims to disclose sexual abuse? I do. Hundreds of children have told me about their sexual abuse. Without exaggeration, boys who were abused as adolescents are almost impossible to get to disclose.
Current statistics indicate that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys have been or are being sexually abused. The numbers are skewed because of the lack of disclosure by boys. Boys often don't tell because the stigma that can be attached to their abuse. Unfortunately society teaches boys to be tough and being violated is the antithesis of being tough in their minds. Getting them to tell what happened takes patience and skill.
Now imagine that you've disclosed a horrible thing. You've survived a long and contentious trial. Your abuser was found guilty, and a major network calls into question your honesty, your motivation, and allows two people to continue peddling a narrative that is completely false. Imagine how you'd feel when Dottie Sandusky hinted at "evidence that can't be revealed yet".
Victims already feel shame because they were abused. Victims blame themselves without any help from the media. If you were a victim and hadn't disclosed, would the treatment of the Sandusky victims by Lauer and NBC make you more or less likely to tell?
What Lauer and NBC fail to realize, or maybe they realize it and don't care, child sexual abuse cases are almost always about child disclosure vs. perpetrator denial. There is seldom physical evidence or confessions. In the Sandusky case, a jury heard the testimony of the victims and found Sandusky guilty. This is not a case in which "both sides" are valid.
Jerry Sandusky is an evil man, his wife is either a naif, a patsy or a co-conspirator. John Ziegler is the lowest form of human sleeze, one step removed from the pedophile he supports. They don't get to argue their 'side' of the story because their side is a lie.
Unfortunately, for the victims of Sandusky and victims everywhere, NBC, The Today Show and Matt Lauer decided that lie needed 51 minutes.--------------
Issue 6 of the Banter Magazine is now out! Right now, you can get 50% off for 3 months, or 15% off a yearly membership!
Igor Namus
This site refused to post the following the first time around. What's wrong guys? Does it make you look like bandwagon-riding zombies, too lazy to even stumble around in search of your victims? Perhaps that's because you don't have a leg fit to stand upon.
The writer of this article is a fool. Louis Freeh, the worst person to have ever helmed the FBI (Can you say, "Thank you for your vigilance in the lead-up to 911 and for your diligence in bringing to justice those who bought massive put options on airline stocks in order to profit from the event, etc., etc.?) decided that it, "was reasonable to conclude," that Paterno knew of a coverup based upon three emails, none of which was ever sent by Paterno, sent to Paterno, or received by Paterno, and none of which contains any details that can be tied to the issue at hand.
Anyone here with any interest in seeing how the ignorant shape the news should check out the substance of those three emails, because it takes a loopy leap of an illogical brain to conclude that the ambiguous emails written by PSU's Athletic Director and sent to its VP and President are conclusive of anything.
To those who are a little slow on the uptake, it would be like concluding that Paterno knew about the molestations that took place at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, CA because:
1. Freeh found a letter from PSU's Athletic director, written to PSU's President and VP back in early 1979, a little over three years before the McMartin molestation allegations surfaced that stating that he and Paterno had had a conversation about the, "danger of a potential meltdown and whether it could be cleaned up properly";
2. Freeh found a second letter from PSU's Athletic director to its President that was written in late 1981, and which stated that in late 1981 he'd, "spoken to Joe about Southern California…";
3. Freeh found a third letter from that same Athletic director that was written a week later to PSU's VP which stated that, "coach was concerned about the outcome…";
Nah… Forget about the fact that:
1. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster occurred on March 28, 1979
2. Penn State met up with and routed the University of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (USC) 26-10 on January 1st 1982; and
3. PSU's Athletic Director oversees all of PSU's coaches, and that nobody ever called Paterno, "coach," as it was well known that he hated the moniker, and instructed all of his players upon arrival that his name was, "Joe," and that he was to be referred to as such.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot…
You can also forget about the fact that the McMartin Trial wound up exonerating the very people who every major news organization in the country had happily demonized in the name of garnering ratings for ratings sake, and that every, "expert," on the subject of child molestation also supported the initial findings for long enough to destroy the McMartin Family's reputation and business, despite the fact that any journalist and/or sociologist and/or psychologist who actually knew how to conduct himself would have seen right through the McMartin nonsense had he done his job instead of simply parroting back the shoddy work of others.
It was not a fair trial. What I don't get is how everyone has amnesia about the preschool sex abuse cases from the 80's and 90's that now look so bad. Those were out of control prosecutions based on accusations with no physical evidence and outrageous charges. Is this not an outrageous charge that Sandusky was anally raping children in showers and his own basement with his wife in the kitchen? One of the witnesses against Sandusky claimed that a janitor told him he (the janitor) saw something but the janitor could not testify because the janitor has dementia so the judge let this other guy testify for the janitor. ???? What happened to the Sixth Amendment right to confront your accuser? It goes out the window when someone is accused of a horrible crime and everyone goes along with it.
Actually, some psychiatrists are bringing this up now and have been working to get a professional conversation going. The Satanic Ritual Abuse witch hunt was extreme and should be revisited, but that doesn't mean that most sexual abuses cases are being handled like that moral panic was.
It's not unusual for girls to be sexually abused down the hall from a mother in denial and Sandusky saw plenty of his accusers at the trial. To treat every case of sexual abuse and rape as if it were normal for victims to lie, is far from being objective. During the Satanic panic it took a lot of coaxing, leading, and mind fucking by professionals to get those children to say that they had been abused; and they also said a lot of things like "she turned me into a mouse and took me up in an airplane".
Ah Patrick we meet again! Enjoyed our discussions re the Farrow/Allen case.
Now to the point in this one…I live here in PA., it is a disgusting situation where a college has such control over the mind of a state. How can people, worse, how can any human put the $$ of their college football team over the abuse that was committed here? Read the Harrisburg Patriot News. It's a real eye-opener, and not in a good way!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/26/1058599/-%E2%80%9CNo-One-Spoke-Up-for-Us:-For-The-Children-Who-Had-No-Voice-and-For-those-finally-finding-Theirs Roxine
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my grandfather, I
was appalled at the callous nature in which NBC viciously attacked the
brave young men who testified at the Jerry Sandusky trial. These men
faced their abuser and told their truth. I witnessed every single day
of their testimony the results of which resulted in Jerry Sandusky being
found guilty on 45 of 48 counts by a jury of his peers.
It was
salacious, opportunistic journalism and potentially dangerous to the
survivors. Often victims suffer from PTSD – (Dr. Judith Herman
discusses PTSD-Complex (C) as it relates to long term childhood sexual
abuse) and can be triggered by certain events. NBC choosing to show the
basement where young men were raped is one such trigger that could
affect many of these survivors. Additionally, Matt Lauer basically
called Victim 9 a liar by insinuating that anything that occurred in
that basement would have been heard in such a small house "we're only 12
feet from the stairwell"…
So what NBC and Matt Lauer are
saying to victims/survivors everywhere is it doesn't matter if you
tell. It doesn't matter if you tell under oath and your abuser is found
guilty of abusing you – we STILL don't believe you – so why bother?
NBC promotes the culture of silence.
Oh, and why did they do it? Check out his booking producer's twitter feed Katie Distler – it
was all about getting their #orangeroom and #DottieSandusky to "trend" –
so what if victims/survivors died a little bit more inside – look at
the ratings…
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your comments. Even though I deal with victims and survivors daily, I'm floored by your strength.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/26/1058599/-%E2%80%9CNo-One-Spoke-Up-for-Us:-For-The-Children-Who-Had-No-Voice-and-For-those-finally-finding-Theirs Roxine
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my grandfather, I was appalled at the callous nature in which NBC viciously attacked the brave young men who testified at the Jerry Sandusky trial. These men faced their abuser and told their truth. I witnessed every single day of their testimony the results of which resulted in Jerry Sandusky being found guilty on 45 of 48 counts by a jury of his peers.
It was salacious, opportunistic journalism and potentially dangerous to the survivors. Often victims suffer from PTSD – (Dr. Judith Herman discusses PTSD-Complex (C) as it relates to long term childhood sexual abuse) and can be triggered by certain events. NBC choosing to show the basement where young men were raped is one such trigger that could affect many of these survivors. Additionally, Matt Lauer basically called Victim 9 a liar by insinuating that anything that occurred in that basement would have been heard in such a small house "we're only 12 feet from the stairwell"…
So what NBC and Matt Lauer are saying to victims/survivors everywhere is it doesn't matter if you tell. It doesn't matter if you tell under oath and your abuser is found guilty of abusing you – we STILL don't believe you – so why bother?
NBC promotes the culture of silence.
Oh, and why did they do it? Check out his booking producer's twitter feed Katie Distler
@KatieDistler – it was all about getting their #orangeroom and #DottieSandusky to "trend" – so what if victims/survivors died a little bit more inside – look at the ratings…
"Dottie Sandusky said her husband is innocent of the chargers against him. They're not charges, he was convicted. "
Sorry, Mr Perion, but conviction status does NOT matter. How many INNOCENT men and women have been "convicted" of crimes they did NOT commit? Do those "convictions" make any difference in their fighting the original "charges" that landed them in prison?
I have no argument about Sandusky's conviction or any of the rest of the article but "charges" and "convicted" are NOT connected. Mrs Sandusky believes the charges against her husband are false. That's her right. He was convicted. That's what the court determined. It doesn't change Mrs Sandusky's opinion on the matter and YOU don't have the right to "correct" her.
I can believe–with all my heart and soul–that OJ Simpson killed Nicole and Ron but that doesn't change the fact he wasn't convicted of the crime. His not being convicted also doesn't change the fact that he was charged with the crime.
A valid point, when I wrote the charges/convicted line I was speaking in a strictly legal sense. Here at least, charges denote before the trial/conviction. After the person is convicted, we don't refer to them as charges.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. Have a pleasant evening.
Christopher Foxx
What Lauer and NBC fail to realize, or maybe they realize it and don't care,
I believe the don't realize and don't care.
They just want to get the ratings.
As someone who has spent 22 months investigating this case, I have no doubts that Jerry Sandusky is guilty and Dottie Sandusky is in denial. However, those of you who are not familiar with the case do not understand that the root cause of failures was not at Penn State. That would be impossible, given that Sandusky was a pedophile long before crimes were revealed to have occurred on the campus.
If you know the facts of this, you'll find that Sandusky was approved to adopt six children, foster over 20 children, and start a charity that catered to at risk youths — a charity that became a victim factory. The professionals in Pennsylvania's Child Protection System failed to identify this predator for DECADES. When they had an opportunity to take him off the streets in 1998, they determined he was not abusing children, despite an investigation that uncovered a DOZEN signs of possible sexual abuse in a case where he was found to be showering with a 10 year old by and an 11.5 year old boy. He was interviewed by an investigator from the PA Dept of Public Welfare, and told the investigator he had showered with OTHER BOYS. During that investigation, it was found that he was STALKING the 11.5 year old after he was told to stay away.
Sandusky is in jail. Penn State has been sanctioned by the NCAA. And PA's kids are not the least bit safer today than they were during the DECADES that Sandusky was on the streets.
Aaron Litz
Pennsylvania Child Protective Services and related institutions are a dark hole of graft and corruption. Child Support is regularly skimmed and the money never gets to the mothers, with the fathers taking the blame for not having paid it, despite it being taken directly from their paychecks. I have seen this numerous times with numerous people (not myself, I do not have children, but it happened with my father and several friends.)
Pennsylvania is just a shithole in general. I live 45 minutes away from State College, and it is one of the few places I can go to and feel actually human, go to a bookstore, a decent library, a comic book store, and halfway decent social scene.
EXCEPT when it is college football season. Then everything not related to football is shut down, and the entire place turns into a zoo. I once rode to down with my friend, a Penn State student, to go to Pattee on a Saturday to get some books he needed for a paper that was due on Monday. There was no parking available at the library, it was all reserved for the football goers. There was no parking available in town, as it was all taken by football fans. The entire academic apparatus of the university was shut down to cater to the football game. It was disgusting.
I told my mother about it and how disgusted it made me, but she just tried to excuse it with the gloss "it makes so much money for the school and goes toward the academic programs!" Bullshit. It all gets funneled back into the football program, and into administrators pockets.
Now, I have no illusions that this is any different from any other college town when the home team is playing a big game, and I am not trying to single out Penn State as being especially egregious about it, but I was shocked and disgusted. I had grown up learning to have reverence for the academic quality of Penn State, my mother and stepfather being alumni (and I should have been as well, except for a stupid decision to go to another college because I had friends attending… worst mistake in my LIFE.) But to discover that it all just flittered away when it came time for "the big game" no better than in a small town with pathetic high school football fanaticism, really hit me. The attitude and mentality of everyone I saw was akin to tribes going to war, all over a stupid, mindless game.
My friend was never able to get the books he needed to write that paper; the Pattee parking lot (not to mention the rest of the town) was full all day, after the game it was for drunken celebrations as if a war had just been won… all over a stupid game.
I am NOT a fan of football… or most sports in general, really. And the way college sports so often overshadow the academics… it just really fucking disgusts me.
I am interested in the first thing you said about graft and corruption. Care to expand?
Jim Singer
rmb297, Please note my comment on Aaron's post. Thank you
Aaron Litz
Yup, that about covers it, Mr. Singer. Thank you. Clearfield is a little cesspool of illiteracy in the larger redneck septic tank of Central PA. I love everything about this place, except for all the people. I have to take a 45 minute drive just to get to a bookstore.
I don't have documents or hard facts about all the BS that goes down around here, but it's pretty much an open secret that a lot of things are shady. I wouldn't imagine most is any different than any other small-town garbage; a few wealthier families (most of them now all old people) control all the town economic and educational boards, and keep out any new businesses or ideas that try to come in that might shake up the status quo and leave those families not the top dogs anymore. Simultaneously keeping the economy stagnant and the younger people here largely hopeless and desperate. Drinking and drugs are the primary outlet for these young people, and I was actually shocked when I eventually learned the extent of the drug use here (I've been a sheltered nerd most of my life and didn't realize how things worked around here until I got much older.)
There's nothing for anyone under 60 to do, and everyone is left feeling helpless, hopeless, and desperate. The few times businesses and/or events that interest younger people have come here, they have been quickly shut down by the geriatric families that run things (we had a great music club open in an old prison, they called it The Rock, and we got some GREAT punk bands in. It was closed done on some trumped-up BS or other and turned into some kind of "lodge" or another, just one more geriatric mortuary.)
And then Wal-Mart came, and destroyed every other store in the vicinity.
It's largely the same crap that goes on in every other small town across the country.
As far as the corruption goes, I only know the whispers I've heard for years, enough of it confirmed by people close to me who have to work in those businesses that I absolutely believe the rest.
Jim Singer
Aaron Litz's profile states he is from Clearfield, PA
Penn State & Sandusky may be the tip of the iceberg. State Police Lt.
Hoover (now retired) confirmed that ". . . . violations of the . . . . Crimes Code (by government) . . . . exist" [to cover up the child abuse that I reported], confirmed by the State Police summary.
3-7-14. Man faces 2,400 charges Suspect accused of raping 3 relatives hundreds of times[i]
The child abuse that I reported is still being covered up by the same government, who is prosecuting those involved in the Penn State child abuse case in spite of recent scandals! Many are outraged at the Penn State scandal, and assume, if they reported abuse to Child
Protection Services (CPS), children would have been protected. But the same law enforcement, which prosecuted those in the Penn State, scandal never, opened a case to investigate crimes and/or wrote letters contrary to the State's evidence.
Staff for Congressional leadership and Congressional Committees contacted me about these issues. Staff from a Legislative Committee confirmed that I was specifically maliciously targeted, as a result of my mandated report of suspected child abuse. Furthermore, Legislative Committee staff noted that government is putting more people in
that position (to be targeted, as a result of the Penn State scandal) (Congress HR 5884 and S.1877).[I] [ii]
Serious issues are related to a pattern of misusing government funds (by government) in Singer's specific case (I'm informed), to undermine child protection and torturing the law, to cripple mandated reporters (confirmed in writing).
State Police Lt. Hoover indicated, What they did to (Singer) was "killing" (policeman Hoover) . . . "Why didn't somebody stop this?" I ask you the same question.
These crimes by government include both state and federal
violations. State Violations confirmed by Police summary
i. Perjury
ii. Tampering with or Fabricating Physical Evidence
iii. Obstructing Administration of Law or other Governmental Functions
iv. Official Oppression
v. Unsworn Falsification to Authorities
2. Federal Civil rights violations (18 USC 1983) included in
Police summary
3. Federal violations confirmed by attorney
i. Fraudulent concealment of criminal violations (18 U.S.C.A 152)
ii. Federal Racketeering statutes (18 U.S.C.A. 1961 et seq.)
iii. Conspiracy (18 USC 1962) Civil rights violations (18 USC 1983)
v. Due Process Substantive and Procedural violations
vi. Mail Fraud (18 U.S.C.A. 63).
The statute of limitations is currently open,
based on fraudulent concealment by government
and new continuing violations.
How many children have to be abused by Sandusky , Edmonson[iv], Father Stephen Baker[v], Bradleyi ii, Kevin Ricks[vi], Clergy); murdered (T. Miscavish by police,[vii] B J Matthews[viii], N Wise, Brandi
Cleeves, Vincent Santucci and Rosemary Holma Threats were ignored, then 3murdered on 7-27-12vi murder
others (M Spotz vii, Kevin Cleevesviii ix, or commit suicide (N Grieco,x Sean Patrick McIlmail,xi A Swartz,xii C
Mackney[ix], T Kraus[x]) before you, and all branches of government, meet their obligation, to protect children, and prevent
another tragedy?
Was it corruption, incompetence, or
both that ruined this man's life?
Same agencies involved in Sandusky abuse cases stripped doctor of license for reporting abuse
PA psychologist says he reported child molestation, lost license
26-year-old case still awaits answers as Penn State scandal rocks state article by Mike Volpe 7-30-13
Please search for Jim Singer from
1986 in this link (http://www.savingdamon.com/tribute-to-advocates.html)
http://dailycaller.com/2012/ 07/30/former-pennsylvania- psychologist-says-he-reported-child-molestation-lost- license/
How will you prevent another tragedy?
[ii] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/boys-boys-mont-prosecutor-tells-5-year-old-rape-victim-mom-report-article-1.1616670#ixzz2tXs3xKCP
[iii] http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/February/14-crt-166.html
[iv] http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/579809/Man-faces-2-400-charges.html?nav=742
[vi][vi][vi] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/kevin-ricks-timeline/
[vii] http://www.centredaily.com/2013/03/28/3557676/injuries-reported-after-shooting.html
[viii] http://www.wjactv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/mother-slain-2yearold-speaks-out-killers-execution-warrant-signed-1711.shtml
[ix] http://www.scribd.com/doc/204260673/Suicide-note-of-Chris-Mackney-f
[x] http://www.examiner.com/article/detroit-film-community-mourns-the-loss-of-jet-trish-kraus, https://www.facebook.com/micfa
It is a well know fact among the various police agencies around Happy Valley that if an investigation REMOTELY involves the Penn State Football Program that one has a small time frame to investigate. The moment that the school finds out, and it doesn't matter if it involves theft, DUI, rape, ANYTHING, that the investigation will end as soon as the school gets involved.
This is NOT unique to Penn State. This is a culture somewhat unique in America where we attach athletics to sports for some insane reason, allowing institutions to have completely different objectives concurrently. Its practically bipolar.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=633285572 Ray Blehar
Care to explain the 61 arrests of FOOTBALL PLAYERS between 2002 and 2008? Obviously, you are wrong.
BTW, the 1998 incident involving Sandusky was investigated by the University Park police and they were the ONLY people to actually look into Sandusky's behavior. Detective Schreffler stated that he thought Sandusky should have been charged, but was OVERRULED by child protective services, who said the abuse allegation was unfounded.
Also, here is an op-ed by the local magistrate in State College, who disagrees with you.
"Hey asshole…Our players get arrested ALL THE TIME!!!"
I apologize. I was wrong. Its more important that young, unpaid, and barely compensated young men brutally destroy their bodies for our entertainment. Whether or not crimes are committed off the field involving players, coaches, backers, or administrators is pointless and serves no real purpose.
I've spent 22 months investigating the case, and I have no doubts that Sandusky is innocent. Unlike you, I don't care if PSU, Joe Pa, the other three, or Sandusky look good or bad in the end. I came to my conclusion as a definite outsider, nothing to lose, nothing to gain.
Here's a few things in response:
1.The only adopted child that turned against Sandusky is the one that was adopted after he turned 18, and he turned after he knew the ship was sinking and that he could get rich quick. Not one local was surprised when he did this.
You claim to seek the truth, yet, you base so many of your claims on someone who has so much to gain from this case. If you're going to bring up #6, let everyone know the entire story. There was no "black out" in 1998. He remembered everything and said he knew his mother would make a big deal out of the shower. Here's what #6 said happened in 1998 – Sandusky ASKED him if he wanted to take a shower and he said yes because he WAS sweaty. Sandusky went to a SEPARATE area to undress and went in the shower, the boy undressed and went in the shower. Bearhug, lift to rinse hair, done with shower. Sandusky goes back to his SEPARATE area – out of sight – dresses, while the boy dresses in his area. Then they leave.
The mother called Sandusky 2 times, pretending that he was picking her son up for an outing. The intention was to get him to say something incriminating while the police were hiding. We know that didn't happen the first time because part of the report was "leaked". The second time is questionable because we are told he said something that could be incriminating, but ironically, those pages of the report weren't "leaked" – we are supposed to take them on their word.
Stalking? Come on, Ray. The mother allowed her 11.5 year old child to continue a relationship with Sandusky at that time, and it lasted up until charges were filed against Sandusky. She delivered him on a silver platter! If there was any suspicion in her mind, she wouldn't have allowed her child to return to the very man she thought was sexually inappropriate with her 11 year old. She said in one of Ganim's reports "Sandusky admitted that he lathered my son up.." Really? And where was that? And, if that was the case, she was still okay sending her child off with this man at the age of 11.5? Logic. Use logic.
He sent Fathers' Day texts to Sandusky! Things "changed" when his mother was contacted by Sara Ganim and told to contact a certain investigator. An attorney was hired, and now we have "black" moments and a different perspective of the event. Because – surprise, surprise – how many of Shubin's clients ALL had the same excuses??
It really is too easy and it's almost funny that many local people KNOW. Mom 1 posted about Dottie's interview.. 1 like… 0 comments. What is wrong with those people from Central Mountain!? Do they know something the rest of us don't? Yes. Yes, they do.
The problem with you and Ziegler is you are both too smart for your own good. You both went into this looking for the biggest conspiracy against Joe Paterno. You were so busy looking for the conspiracy, you didn't take the time to look at for what it was. To look at transcripts and timelines and see that it is IMPOSSIBLE for many of these things to happen when they claimed they happened. I've said it before – the truth isn't hard to re – member.
I hear Ziegler sees it differently now. Sheesh. Took him long enough! He must have read the transcripts and did the basic math. My benefit over both of you is that I know these type of people. I was raised in a community full of these types of people, I'd say I'm from a better class of losers maybe.
As far the second shower, I'm going to guess that mom agreed with you when you told her. I'm going to call BS and say it never happened. There was a shower the next day – it was in the reports. The fact the Schultz scribbled it on the pad tells me that somewhere between mom, Chambers, Shreffler, Harmon, and Shultz, the 2nd shower got jotted down. Mom said about putting him to bed (to Chambers) – she certainly would have told Chambers about the 2nd shower that night. You really shouldn't believe everything someone tells you – especially if you have no inexperience with opportunists or this class of people. I'll bet YOU were the person who told her about the 2nd shower that night and she confirmed. You bought it – hook, line, and sinker.
You want this to be a big conspiracy among DPW, CYS, the governor, etc. It's not there. It's so much simpler. Look down this avenue – the investigator that got the ball rolling in early 2011, the media person who printed the slanted reports and gave some people a platform to lie. Start there. It's much easier for 2 or 3 to conspire than 50.
Look at the June 19th transcript – (around page 55) where the troopers were caught lying under oath. You know, where they were accidentally recorded telling victim 4 "..we interviewed about 9….it is a well-defined progression…. leads to more than just touching and feeling….that's been actual oral sex….and a rape occurred…"
When it comes out that these young men were manipulated by investigators, I hope the same people who are saying they deserve the money because of Sandusky will also say they deserve it because of the investigators. The truth ALWAYS comes out. These kids were raped. I believe it was by investigators, the media, and unfortunately, pimped out by their own freaking parents.
Look at the timeline – that is an absolute lie. You call it a "tactic" – it's a lie. He led this young man to believe that he would be helping by putting this child molester away. Much like they did to victims 3, 5, 6, & 7. They didn't have a case until your friend pointed them out in a book. They knew each other.
Yes, they were molested in a way. In my opinion, it was by their parent, investigators, and the media. I hope when the truth comes out, no one holds it against them about the money. It will be proven that they were led to believe that they were helping to put this monster away.
's when a certain investigator came on the case and started telling the people they interviewed that they KNEW Sandusky had oral sex with (what did he tell #4? 9 kids?) kids and even anally raped one. None of it was true, but out of 40, 50, 60 young men that they interviewed, 6 believed him and said Sandusky touched them (well, in the beginning, Sandusky didn't do anything appropriate, but after hiring attorney's, they all were abused… the fact that their stories changed to be oddly similar was attributed to the fact that Sandusky did the same with all of them. No one considered that they had the same attorney, and were coached (which many of them testified was the case).
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=633285572 Ray Blehar
Here's the bottom line of VIctim 6. The DPW investigator, Jerry Lauro, stated that if he had seen Dr. Chambers report in 1998, he would have made a finding of child abuse. 13 years later Sandusky was convicted of child abuse for that incident. VERDICT: SANDUSKY GUILTY of CHILD ABUSE FOR THE VICTIM 6 INCIDENT.
Sandusky would have been found guilty of 100s of counts had the prosecutors decided to pinpoint every incident where he abused a child. Instead they used a course of conduct approach and only charged him with 48 counts. And there were other victims who were not presented as witnesses at the trial and yet others who have not come forward due to threats to the livelihood or payments for their silence.
If you want to live in a fantasy world of Sandusky being innocent and railroaded, that fine. I'm not going along for the ride.
I'm going to sit back and watch your train wreck when the Federal investigation and Kane's investigation wraps up.
Lady Willpower
I guess if you spend enough time on the internet you'll see anything.
Up until today I never thought I'd see a person who believed Jerry Sandusky was innocent.
Igor Namus
PA's former treasurer, Bud Dwyer, blew his own brains out on live TV back in 1987 rather than serving time for a crime he didn't commit. Oh well… I guess that it's just too bad/so sad): that attorney William Smith, an indicted, "co-conspirator," who was given a deal in order to testify against Dwyer didn't admit that he had lied in his testimony against Dwyer until 2010…
Igor Namus
Most people will believe just about anything, as long as it comes out of the mouth of a good-looking, teleprompter-reading automaton.
Yep… Most people just aren;t very bright.
FROM examiner(dot)com/review/real-horror-pennsylvania-a-review-of-honest-man-the-life-of-r-budd-dwyer
"During the early '80s, employees of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania overpaid millions of dollars in FICA taxes. Therefor (sic), the state solicited bids from accounting firms to determine refunds for employees.
According to attorney William Smith, whose testimony ultimately convicted Dwyer, John Torquato, Jr., son of refuted mob boss John Torquato, Sr., sent his attorney, Smith himself, to Dwyer's office to pay Budd a visit. The purpose of this visit was to suggest the possibilty of a bribe. Smith claims he told Budd that Torquato would be willing to make a major donation to Dwyer's campaign if Torquato's Computer Technology Associates was to be awared the FICA repayment accounting contract. Smith claims that Dwyer shocked him by replying that such an offer sounded pretty good. He also states, in the film, that no monies ever actually exchanged hands between his client and Dwyer. Did Dwyer actually seem interested in the thought of the bribe? Or did Smith fabricate this in an attempt to try to take some of the responsibility off of his own shoulders, and conscience? It's hard to say, but after learning of how honest of a man Dwyer was, it's hard to believe.
Federal agents would later raid the offices of Torquato, seizing his computer, which they found to contain a detailed layout of Torquato's plan to bribe Dwyer. No proof that any bribery ever actually took place, only a personal electronic note from Torquato, basically to himself, explaining how he planned to go about the bribery. This note alone would be enough to satisfy state attorney James West, leading him to indict Dwyer, bringing bribery changes against him.
Think about that for a moment. If I took a piece of paper, and on it I wrote a note to myself, stating that I was planning on bribing my neighbor, Joe, that note would, according to West's logic, be enough to have the state bring bribery charges against my poor neighbor, even though Joe was totally unaware of my plan to bribe him. Does that sound right to you? Because it sure sounds ridiculous to me!"
Half of this country is plummeting backward. Football and rape culture is outrageous. Children and parents need to understand that the fine, upstanding, man of the community can be a child abuser. Personally, I think there should be two adults in situations like the ones the Sandusky victims were in— being alone with him for long stretches of time. It's galling that he was "helping" these children, and was specifically targeting children who were troubled, so that the parents were grateful that their children got to spend time with him and the children were supposed to feel the same way.
The lowest sort of predator can be the big man on campus, pedophiles are not cartoon characters that can be spotted from a distance. Penn State needs to made very sorry about this. Protecting children is one of the most basic duties of adults.
Aaron Litz
I agree, with one exception.. the Penn State FOOTBALL program needs to be made to feel sorry for this. The university as a whole, the academic programs, don't have anything to do with the atavistic football shenanigans. College sports programs in general need to be cut down about ten or twenty pegs, and made to realize that they are a far, far, FAR distant second (or even third) to the LEARNING that is the reason for the institutions in the first place. They are extracurricular activities for ENTERTAINMENT, and they should NOT be a major focus of a university's efforts or expenditures, the way they have become.
I'm not saying that they should be eliminated; just because I don't like them doesn't mean that no one should be allowed to enjoy them. And I understand that sports scholarships provide ways for some students to get into college when they wouldn't be able to any other way. But they need to be cut WAAAAAY back from where they are now, as they are swallowing up the academic center of many colleges. College football has become a machine to generate NFL players, totally unrelated to the actual academic institutions of the colleges. The classes so many of these NFL-bound or hopeful players attend are regarded by them as nothing but a nuisance, something they have to do for appearance and bylaws, and they have no respect for them, or for the other students who are actually there to learn.
Bah, I'm just babbling now. The whole situation just disgusts me. Just one more symptom of the anti-intellectualism of our country.
Penn State football has one of the highest graduation rates of all of the programs in the country. It is right up there with Stanford and Northwestern and a football players graduate at a higher percentage than the rest of the Penn State student body. Penn State's football graduation rate for African-American athletes is above 80% — again, a higher percentage than the rest of the student body.
So, Aaron, while you may be correct about the college football being used as a farm system for the NFL, that is not the case at Penn State. It has not been that way for the last 50 years.
Also, Penn State is the ONLY University in this country where the academic standing of the institution was RAISED by the efforts of the football coach. Coach Paterno, in 1983, challenged the Penn State Board to raise the levels of many of its lagging departments and to hire the best and brightest professors as a means of attracting the best students.
If you want to attack anti-intellectualism, perhaps you should have taken the time to educate yourself on the academic history of PSU before you lumped it in with other schools who are guilty of placing football above academics.
Aaron Litz
Quite a nice little Penn State apologia.
I need no further education about the university from which my mother, 2 aunts, 3 uncles, and step-father graduated, and upon which campus I spent the summers of 92, '93, and '94 living in Mifflin Hall and taking various classes, thank you.
I was not writing about Penn State specifically when I was talking about the NFL machine; did you see me mention Penn State once I started writing about that? I was writing about the appalling state of college athletics in general.
But as far as the rest goes, having grown up around here I have been in State College on big game night many, many times throughout my life; I love Penn State. I love State College. But I have seen what I have seen.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=633285572 Ray Blehar
Yes, your opening paragraph mentioned PSU. Most people would tend to believe paragraph 2 was an expansion on the theme of paragraph 1, but hey, I only have an advanced degree and haven't read a comic book since I was 10.
Aaron Litz
Oh, ho! Zing! I guess that makes you better than me, doesn't it? I read a comic book just this morning. What pride you must feel in enlightening me to the shallowness of my tastes!
Oh, the SHAME I feel!
Please, excuse me while I hang my head and hide my face in embarrassment for my plebian enjoyment of such cretinous and juvenile entertainment.
Oh, how shall I ever show my face again in public? Everyone worthy of respect knows that it is a shameful thing to read a comic book past the age of ten!
O.K. I can accept that the shame be limited to the football program.
I wouldn't mind seeing it eliminated altogether from colleges. There can be a minor league that can find some way of paying for itself.
I'd also like to see colleges stop treating the students like children and raise the standards for the liberal arts.


text:
Very passionate about digital art and music I often made series of posters just for the pleasure of creating. So, here is my new series called "Outsiderz" based on a 3D vectorized canvas. Enjoy ;)
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subset: commoncrawl


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There's an old joke that captures the dilemma confronting political scientists who studied the Middle East. One evening, a passer-by chances on a fellow searching for his lost house key under a streetlight. Hoping to be helpful, the spectator asks the searcher where he dropped the key. "Across the street," comes the reply. Then why is he searching on this side of the street? "The light is better over here."1
The books under review represent efforts to come to terms with the significance of the events that characterized the Arab Spring revolts of 2010/11. Nearly three years after the initial uprising in Tunisia, they can be evaluated both with respect to their explanations of the causes of the Arab Spring, the attempts of some authors to use theoretical paradigms, and with regard to their prognostications for future developments. Is the choice only between democracy and authoritarianism; or is it between the [Egyptian] army or anarchy, as posed in the title of this review, or are there other options?2 How prescient are some of their [End Page 633] predictions? How appropriate are their attempts to apply theoretical approaches that may reflect the search for the key where the light is better? This review will focus on Tunisia and Egypt while referring to other countries and regional issues.
These studies vary considerably in format and scope. Three are edited with numerous chapters of differing lengths. The Haas and Lesch coedited volume, The Arab Spring, devotes half the book to specific explanations of protests in Arab countries and the other half to analyses of their impact on countries either within the region or powers such as the United States and Russia. The Korany and El-Mahdi coedited volume deals only with Egypt, but includes numerous topics that could not be specifically addressed in other volumes such as chapters on workers' and youth movements, the role of women in the uprising, and the varieties of representations of Egyptian Islam. The Henry and Ji-Hyang coedited Arab Spring contains substantive chapters on Algeria, American policies in the Middle East, the economies of uprising-affected societies, but some chapters are extremely brief and could have been excluded.
Beyond the Arab Spring is multiauthored, but is written as a book. The most theoretically ambitious of the reviewed volumes, it offers separate, regionally-focused chapters on North Africa (including Egypt), the central Arab lands, and the Arabian Peninsula, combined with extensive discussion of political culture, Islamist movements, and economic and political liberalization. These chapters are examined within theoretical parameters whose goal is to examine the "trajectories of authoritarianism and reform in the Arab world," comparing experiences in various countries along with essays on political culture, electoral politics and Islamist movements. Beyond the Arab Spring's bibliography is the most sophisticated and extensive of the books under review.
Only Brownlee's Democracy Prevention can be considered the product of a long-term research project whose timing of publication was most opportune. Its focus on Egypt from the Sadat era onward in light of Egyptian-American relations and strategic concerns contrasts with the immediacy of Arab Spring in Egypt, and highlights aspects of American policies toward Egypt heretofore left unconsidered or isolated from each other when they were actually mutually reinforcing.
All contributors consider Tunisia the likeliest candidate for a smoother transition to parliamentary democracy. The best chapters specific to Tunisia are those of Julia Clancy-Smith (this reviewer's wife) in the Haas and Lesch volume and Mohamed Kerrou in the Henry and Ji-Hyang book. Both stress the discrepancies between the coastal economies and their relative wealth as opposed to the poverty of interior regions with Clancy-Smith noting tensions going back to the late 19th century. But Tunisia has been rocked by two political assassinations this year (the most recent on July 25, 2013) that that have left the government — led by the Islamist party, Ennahda, in coalition with secular groups — in turmoil. Prime Minister Rachid Ghannouchi, head of Ennahda, has appeared paralyzed by the boldness of a Salafii challenge that shut down the University of Manouba, for months when women wearing niqabs staged a sit-in in the office of the dean of the arts faculty and ransacked it. Now Ghannouchi and his government claim that the two assassinations were committed by the same person who has ties to al-Qa'ida and to the Tunisian Salafii party, Ansar al-Shari'a. [End Page 634]
Ghannouchi and his party face enormous challenges. Mohamed Brahmi, assassinated on July 25, was from Sidi Bou Zid, the home of Muhammad Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked the initial Tunisian uprising against the Ben 'Ali regime; Brahmi represented the region in parliament. When news of Brahmi's killing reached Sidi Bou Zid, residents torched the party headquarters of Ennahda.3
National history and its symbols are significant here. Brahmi was killed on Tunisian Independence Day, celebrating Tunisia's liberation from French rule on July 25, 1956. Similarly, in Egypt, as Ann Lesch notes in her excellent discussion of the background to Egypt's uprising (Korany and El-Mahdi), protests against Mubarak (and his neoliberal economic policies encouraged by the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the United States) included the March 9 Movement formed in 2004 to "call for university and academic independence" from government intrusiveness; the date commemorated the day in 1932 when Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, president of Fu'ad I University (now Cairo University), "resigned to protest the firing of the noted intellectual Taha Hussein as dean of arts."4
Ironically, the first major Tahrir Square demonstration in 2011 protested the brutalities of Mubarak's police force and was held on Police Day, January 25. The term and date originally commemorate an Egyptian police stand against British forces in the Suez Canal Zone in 1952 ordered by the then-Wafd government. Their deaths sparked the riots of January 26 that gutted many Western establishments in Cairo, including the Shepheard Hotel, and set in motion events that culminated in the military officers' revolt of July 23, 1952, which overthrew King Faruq. In 2011, the date of January 25 symbolized popular mistrust of the police.
To these discussions of Tunisia must be added the comparative analyses of Tunisian developments with those of Egypt, Libya, and the Gulf monarchies. In The Arab Spring: Will it Lead to Democratic Transitions?, the editors' introduction, along with Lisa Anderson's and, especially, Eva Beilin's trenchant comparisons of Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya note important similarities and distinctions. Egypt and Tunisia have functioning bureaucracies and state structures that, though not noted, predate imperial occupation, whereas Libyan leader Mu'ammar Qadhafi essentially undermined whatever fragile state structure existed in the country prior to his 1969 coup. Nor does Libya, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, have a national army.5
Anderson and Beilin are justifiably cautious in their predictions for democratic transformation in any of these three countries, but view the existence of long-standing bureaucracies in Tunisia and Egypt as a plus, however inefficient Egypt's might be. But recent events suggest otherwise. The apparently miraculous restoration of electricity and fuel supplies to the Egyptian public almost immediately after President Mohamed Morsi's ouster suggest that the Egyptian bureaucracy could have conspired with the military to withhold services to encourage public anger at the government. As several authors note, many retired military officers found sinecures in Egyptian ministries. In short, the existence [End Page 635] of a bureaucracy as such may not be as key a factor as who controls it, a measure of the authoritarian nature of the regime. This point, and the Egyptian military's control of the bureaucracy, is also stressed by Holger Albrecht who argues that:
Broader conceptual frameworks appear to be inapt to fully grasp the political earthquake that shook the authoritarian regimes in the MENA region. The 'authoritarian persistence' literature has … confused the longevity of some of the region's authoritarian regimes with the assumed stability of their political orders …6
Albrecht argues that a distinction must be made between authoritarian presidential republics and dynastic monarchies. In the former, such as Egypt, anger at plans for presidential succession counted more than economic despair. Indeed, Albrecht discounts economic hardships as a real factor in Egypt's uprising, disagreeing with Lesch's chapter in the same book and the analyses of contributors in other volumes. In light of events in Tunisia where anger was fueled by outrage over the president's family's exploitation of the economy, disregarding of economic factors is problematic. But Albrecht appears to hit the mark when he concludes that Egypt will likely not experience a transition from authoritarianism to broader participatory government, but rather a transformation to a different type of authoritarianism where the military will reinvent populism to avoid democracy" (p. 269).
Still, when Albrecht predicts that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) will engage in actions resembling Turkey's 1961 coup which resulted in the hanging of former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, he ignores the fact that Turkey had experienced ten years of democracy where Menderes and his Democrat Party, secularists by background, gained power by appealing to Islam, thus defying the basis of Kemalist secularism. But the comparison with Turkey has value if only to stress how long a road Turkey traveled, a half century from the first free elections, before an elected Islamist party was able to stay in power. Moreover, Turkish parties during this period were relatively cohesive, whereas, as Albrecht notes, Egyptian demonstrators had no specific political agenda other than Mubarak's removal and leading secular/ liberal figures became mired in their own disputes and rivalries rather than seeking to form political blocs. Their willingness to collaborate with the military in removing Morsi displayed a far greater commitment to have access to power than a desire to blunt authoritarian rule.
These and other factors lead Kemal Kirisci and Fawaz Gerges to conclude that Turkey should not be considered a "model" for Egyptian developments and that Egypt has a long road ahead of it before it approaches the Turkish level of democracy, in part because, in Gerges's view, Arab Islamists generally "subordinate the political to the moral." But Gerges's arguments have in part been overtaken by events, as when he argues that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, to their credit, were not eager to gain power because they were aware of the Algerian experience of the early 1990s: "if you go for broke, you risk antagonizing the military and provoking a response."7
Here, various treatments of economic issues stand out, with some key differences in interpretations. As the authors of Beyond the Arab Spring observe, economic decentralization was intended to encourage political decentralization: "it is on these assumptions that the neoliberal consensus of the 1980s and 1990s was built" (p. 214). This was envisioned as a process whereby wealth would be spread owing to the emergence of a capitalist economy, breaking the hold of an economy dominated by the state. As a result, a burgeoning middle class would form the basis of political liberalization and a transition to democracy. [End Page 636]
What occurred, especially in Egypt, but also to varying degrees in Tunisia, was the opposite: "crony capitalism," where the companies or businesses privatized were handed over to individuals either close to the ruling elite or, as in the case of Ben 'Ali's Tunisia, to members of his and his wife's family who were rumored to have acquired control of over 50% of the nation's economy. As Clement Henry's sophisticated discussion, "Political Economies of Transition" reveals, while the Tunisian economy and its middle class may have appeared to be relatively prosperous by statistical measurement, at least 50% of its university graduates were unemployed. This in itself highlights one of the anomalies of Tunisia's apparent economic success. It had been based on tourist and other industries that did not require educated workers. As a result, Tunisia's "bully regime," in Henry's words, aroused the fury of an aware, if economically desperate, educated class because of its blatant corruption, although the spark for the uprising came from the interior that had been exploited by international companies for its resources to the detriment of its inhabitants.8
But Henry and most observers of Egypt's neoliberal privatization focus on policies undertaken after Mubarak assumed office in 1981, when the process of crony capitalism began under Anwar Sadat. Here, several accounts lack context. Beyond the Arab Spring depicts Sadat's infitah (opening to foreign investment) policy "as much as a tactical effort to secure political support from the country's private sector as it was an effort to stimulate national economic development" (p. 219). In fact there was virtually no private sector in Egypt. One of Sadat's major goals was to involve the United States in the Arab-Israeli peace process in the mid-1970s and a way to do this was to encourage foreign companies to invest in Egypt, enhancing the image of Egypt in American eyes from its days as a socialist regime under Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser. James Gelvin is correct, in his conclusion to the Haas and Lesch book, that Sadat did agree to an IMF loan in 1976, supposedly setting in motion the elitist control of the economy, but he overlooks the January 1977 riots that resulted — riots that forced Sadat to rescind the steps he had supposedly accepted.
There is no doubt that IMF strictures were accepted by the Mubarak government and led to the vast imbalance in wealth seen in Egypt today. But the best discussion of this issue is Bassam Haddad's. Though focused on Syria, Haddad's introduction offers the best synopsis of what occurred in Egypt as well. Whereas
the political elite started … privileging capital long before business actors became prominent, … the sort of change … in recent years has a different character. Earlier stripping of labor rights was considered a function of problematic authoritarian arbitrariness, something that is frowned upon socially and viewed as a departure from a social (developmental) contract of sorts. More recently … the incremental stripping of labor rights was carried out in the name of 'investment' and 'growth.'9
This process was accompanied by the rise of new privileged elites and the gradual erosion of the middle class in such countries, where "the much heralded private sector is nearly everywhere in the region only picking up 'shares' of fixed capital formation from the embattled and bloated public sector, but is nowhere near compensating for job losses, [End Page 637] let alone accommodating new job seekers."10 But, as US National Security Council "staffers observed before Sadat's assassination, the balance had shifted long ago from 'what is good for Egypt' to 'what is good for the U.S.'"11
In this regard, while Ann Lesch traces similar processes in her chapter on the prelude to Egypt's 2011 uprising, Samer Soliman argues in the same book that Egypt under Mubarak saw the expansion of a middle class, a "bourgeoisification" of society that resulted in clear distinctions between a "wealthy middle class" and an increasingly impoverished lower middle class. If so, why, as Soliman then argues, did "the wealthy middle class play an important role" in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and what was that role?12 Soliman also argues that gross domestic product (GDP) in Egypt had been increasing before the revolt, indicating greater prosperity. Henry and others consider GDP to be a false indicator of general prosperity given that in Egypt 40% of the population lives at or below the poverty level while, as noted, half of Tunisia's university-educated youth were unemployed.
As for the Gulf monarchies, there is general agreement that oil wealth allows regimes to increase benefits and dampen public unrest. Where significant protests did erupt, as in Bahrain, the issue aroused regional concern drawing Saudi and UAE support to the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty against mass demands for greater political rights, with the majority but not all of the protesters drawn from the Shi'i majority. As the authors of Beyond the Arab Spring observe, "most Gulf politics can no longer be considered just a local affair" (p. 82).
This comment applies more broadly as well given Saudi and Qatari involvement in funding governments or opposition groups in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. The most extensive treatment is that of "The Politics of Monarchical Liberalization," in Beyond the Arab Spring (pp. 173–91). More generally, Islamist regimes, often rivals as in the case of Iran and Saudi Arabia, or Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are seeking to decide the fates of countries wracked by civil strife, often challenging or appearing to challenge the great power with whom they are supposedly allied, as is the case with Washington's ties to the Saudis and Qataris, as well as Bahrain where the US Fifth Fleet is based.13
Jason Brownlee addresses these matters in his impressive study of US-Egyptian relations where he concludes that the US has, since 1979 and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, opted for security and strategic interests over greater popular rights and representation: the US-Egyptian relationship is based on "values that presuppose the suppression of popular sovereignty" (p. 172), not the promotion of democracy, contrary to initiatives proclaimed during the George W. Bush Administration. Brownlee's analysis supports arguments posed by Sheila Carapico in her highly personal account of the demonstrations in The Arab Spring in Egypt.14 It also agrees with Albrecht's conclusion that the result of the Egyptian uprising will ultimately be the "reproducing of authoritarianism" in Brownlee's terms (p. 176). Brownlee, however, see this development as the deliberate consequence of US acquiescence for reasons pertaining to its own strategic concerns, whereas Albrecht attributes it to the failure of Egyptians opposed to the Mubarak regime, especially the liberal/secularists who lacked the will to unite in political parties.
For Brownlee, authoritarianism will be reproduced because American policy has and continues to be based on security issues perceived as related to the stability of Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in order to enable US power to secure its interests from the Suez Canal to [End Page 638] the Persian Gulf. In this light, the al-Qa'ida attacks on the US of September 11, 2001 provided Bush Administration appointees concerned with Israeli security to argue that Saddam Husayn should be ousted from power in Iraq. As Richard Armitage, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, put it:
The siren song of Iraq … that Ahmad Chalabi was singing was multidirectional; first of all we {the new Iraq] will be the Middle East pillar of democracy … We will allow you to use our bases to pressurize Iran … we will recognize Israel … was the song."15
That would not only serve US interests in the Gulf but, more importantly, it would guarantee Israel's security and enable a settlement of Palestinian issues suitable to Israeli interests: "if an American road to a calmer situation in Palestine exists, it runs through Baghdad."16
Brownlee notes that Bush's national security team had been concerned about Iraq before 9/11, and refers to the 1998 letter signed by many who would serve in the Bush Administration calling for regime change in Baghdad. These included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith who held the top three posts in the Defense Department under Bush. But Brownlee misses the fact that Feith and Richard Perle (Chair of the Defense Policy Advisory Committee, who recommended individuals for posts in the Bush defense team), had authored a policy paper addressed to newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in June 1996 titled "Clean Break." It advised Netanyahu to break with the Oslo peace process to preserve Israel's hold on the West Bank and Golan Heights; it also declared that Saddam Husayn's overthrow was essential to Israeli security. A similar strategy paper authored by David Wurmser called for the same developments a month later. Wurmser became the Middle East adviser to Vice President Richard Cheney.17
In short, the linkage of Saddam to Israeli security and rejecting, though not openly, progress in talks with the Palestinians existed prior to the 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton and led to the appointments of these individuals to key posts under Bush. As Brownlee shows, 9/11 meant that any concern about Mubarak's succession to Sadat, his lack of a vice president, and the crushing of dissent, including the imprisonment of activist and American citizen Saad Eddin Ibrahim took second place to assurances of Egyptian cooperation in facilitating military overflights, priority transit through the Suez Canal, and other services, especially once Turkey denied base rights to US forces. These same issues, military over-flights of Egyptian airspace and priority transit of US ships through the Suez Canal, play a role in the Obama Administration's muted response to the Egyptian military crackdown on Egyptian protests generally following its ouster of President Morsi.18
Brownlee addresses conceptual issues most specifically in his conclusion, especially studies of competitive authoritarianism. He argues at one point that the question is "not that Egypt would resist democratizing pressure were it applied by the United States" (his [End Page 639] italics), but rather that such efforts — on behalf of the public and against the government — have been absent. On this issue, Brownlee's own evidence in his book confirms that serious efforts by the US have been absent, but he has also shown at times that Mubarak did resist and resent any type of democratizing pressure. Nonetheless, Brownlee's call for political scientists to move beyond a framework that sets all countries on a path toward Western-style democracy has merit as does his backing for efforts "to ensure that professional subfield partitions do not obstruct rigorous analysis. In the case of the U.S.-Egyptian alliance, distinctions between 'international' and 'domestic' forces fragment processes that are better understood holistically."19
These interpretations lead to further consideration of Beyond the Arab Spring's format. Its early chapters on regions of the Middle East summarize recent political events, noting economic issues. These are followed by chapters that address matters such as political culture, Islamist movements, monarchical liberalization, rentierism, economic liberalization, the new Arab media, and finally, "The Impact of the Regional and International Environment." This selection of topics at times abstracts events from their historical context, such as separating rentierism from monarchical liberalization, the latter focusing mostly on Arab Gulf states. And although external factors are mentioned occasionally in these topical chapters, most lack any consideration of regional and international factors in favor of considering the validity of theoretical perspectives or topics such as democracy or economics, as seen in their discussion of Sadat's infitah policy, noted above. Their treatment of competing explanations of approaches to the Middle East or Islam will be more useful for fellow scholars than for explaining specific developments within the region.
For example, the three chapters on North Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula contain generally good coverage of recent events, including the 2006 Palestinian elections. Here, the authors place the Hamas victory in the context of Western encouragement of Palestinian reform without asking why the US in particular, with Israeli assistance, not only sought, in their view, to "reverse the outcome of the parliamentary elections … [and] weaken the notion of constitutional government," but to attempt to overthrow Hamas and restore Fatah control of Gaza.20 In fact, this American action links this discussion to supposed American concerns for democracy in Egypt.
Throughout the book, the authors cautiously challenge depictions of the Middle East that fall under the essentialist or exceptionalist label, i.e., that the region, Islam, and its inhabitants can be lumped together easily, and that the region is incapable of change, unlike other parts of the world. In their discussion of "Political Culture Revisited," the authors distinguish between three approaches to Middle Eastern political culture: the essentialist, the contextualist, and approaches critical of each. This reviewer wonders why the "essentialists" are deemed worthy of discussion in a scholarly analysis of political culture, given the racial and cultural biases inherent in that approach. The authors begin with Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind — a generalized portrait of all Arabs as being obsessed with sex, which they associate with shame. To humiliate Arabs will make them submit, as they only understand force, being unwilling to bow to institutional authority and incapable of accepting democracy. These characteristics explain the authoritarian nature of Arab society. Other essentialists include Elie Kedourie, Samuel Huntington, Daniel Pipes, and Bernard Lewis when considering violence and Arab culture; Ernest Gellner is labeled as such for his generalized view of Islam as eternal and never changing, based, though not noted, on research limited only to Morocco. [End Page 640]
Here again, politics enters the discussion. They cite the 2002 edition of The Arab Mind, which had a foreword by Colonel (ret.) Norvell B. De Atkine who declared that he had "briefed hundreds of military teams being deployed to the Middle East" and currently used the book in teaching military officers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where the book "forms the basis of my cultural instruction" for officers being deployed to the Middle East. Once the Abu Ghraib prison photos were released, many, this reviewer included, associated the nudity of the prisoners and its exploitation as reflecting ideas offered in Patai's book. Stereotypes have an impact.21
As for Bernard Lewis, his supposed shift to cautious optimism regarding Arab acceptance of democracy a decade ago was directly linked to Bush Administration justifications for the war in Iraq, which Lewis supported. To his and the authors' credit, they do quote him as backing the recent protests against authoritarian rule and declaring that Islam opposed autocracy, a major shift from previous views (pp. 98–99). And they note the debate that arose with the onset of 9/11 over the stress on and critique of political culture as a valid measure of analysis (pp. 103–104). Finally, they question the validity of the political culture perspective and conclude that the Arab uprisings expressed a desire for greater democracy without specifying any particular theoretical perspective as preferable. But there is no direct linkage between Patai's The Arab Mind and American military behavior in Iraq.
The best integration of historical perspective with theoretical concerns appears in Janine Clark's chapter on "Islamist Movements and Democratic Politics." And the volume's editors are surely correct in their excellent conclusion when they say that Tunisia may be the best candidate for a peaceful transition to democratic politics "because it is neither a regional pace setter nor a strategic actor" (p. 299).
Beyond the Arab Spring's chapter on the regional and international environment is well-done, but readers should consult other volumes listed here for specific topics rather than a broad overview. Half of Haas and Lesch's Arab Spring considers the regional and international environment with chapters on Iran, Turkey, Israel, Russia, and the United States. All have competent summaries and most contain illuminating analyses, marred only by Robert O. Freedman's chapter on Russia where he refers to Syria and Iran as "rogue regimes" (p. 214), a propaganda element unsuitable for a purported work of scholarship. Jeremy Pressman's excellent discussion of "Obama and the Arab Uprisings" cautions about "overplaying" or "overstating" US influence in the region, advice also offered in two incisive pieces in Henry and Ji-Hyang's Arab Spring by Michael Hudson and Uzi Rabi. Both state that US influence in the region has waned. Hudson offers the prescient warning that while the uprising against Bashar al-Asad offered an opportunity, it could also be a trap: "the possibility of al-Qa'ida finding sanctuary in a post-Assad regime … would hardly bode well for Israeli or American interests" (p. 236).
Yet, the Obama Administration has been egged on to attack Syria as of late August by Israel, as well as Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf states in what appears to be a tacit tactical alliance with little concern for long-term consequences. Was the timing of the poison gas attack in the Damascus suburbs on the one-year anniversary of Obama's "red line" speech about such weapons entirely coincidental? Though elements of the Syrian regime might have been responsible, so also could have been elements of the opposition, possibly infiltrated by persons linked to outside forces. Reports note that anti-Asad commando units have been trained in Jordan by US troops and the administration has now admitted it has no direct evidence of the Asad government ordering such an attack. Instead officials offered the ambiguous explanation that "communications between military commanders intercepted after Wednesday's [August 21] attack provided proof that the assault was not the result of a rogue [End Page 641] unit acting against orders."22 This double negative leaves as much doubt as certainty as to who issued what orders to whom? But the timing proved convenient for those countries and think tanks who have striven to justify an attack on Syria, if only to undermine its alliance with Iran.
At the time of writing, Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed forces (SCAF) has reasserted its authority. Security forces have now expanded their massive and bloody retaliations against Muslim Brotherhood protests and sit-ins to include any protesters who are labeled Islamists or terrorists. Elements of the Brotherhood have reacted by destroying Christian churches and schools. Husni Mubarak has been released from prison and placed under confinement for reasons of health. American and European efforts to defuse the situation failed to impress SCAF and its head, General 'Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. The Obama Administration refused to label the military's overthrow of Morsi as a "coup," which would lead to cutting off $1.3 billion in military aid in the face of open Egyptian military contempt for the efforts of American mediators. In his rejection of US pleas, General Sisi was encouraged by Washington's traditional allies in the region: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates. Indeed, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) urged the US Senate not to halt military aid on July 31. Senators obediently followed suit, reiterating AIPAC's points in their declarations.23
The irony that masses of Egyptians now back military rule, albeit with a promise of a new constitution whose formulation the military will oversee, should not be lost. Nor should observers be surprised at SCAF's assertion that they enjoy independence from parliamentary oversight, presumably to be enshrined in any new constitution. The US Defense Department has effectively been independent of congressional oversight since Congress passed a law in 1992 authorizing audits of all government agencies. Its excuse? It cannot accurately account for its finances because of complicated and conflicting computer systems, which, one might think, could be upgraded.24
For the moment at least, the US has chosen the army over what was seen as anarchy in Egypt, a choice encouraged by its regional allies. Whether Tunisia will face the same dilemma remains to be seen. Its army has until now remained removed from politics, but that may change since al-Qa'ida elements perhaps linked to recent events in Mali and armed with weapons smuggled from Libya have established themselves in mountainous areas of southwest Tunisia on the Algerian border, a region that, as Clancy-Smith observed, served as a base of resistance to Habib Bourguiba in 1955/56, led by resistance fighters based in Tunisia. Bourguiba, leader of the Néo-Destour Party but living in exile, had to enlist the aid of French forces to crush the resistance in the name of achieving national independence. And recent events have led some Tunisians to conclude that Ennahda is itself a threat to democratic norms as some of its parliamentary delegates, including women, have called for restrictions of women including segregation on public transport.25
As for the question of democracy versus authoritarianism, the issue is not specifically Middle Eastern. It can be found whenever a society traditionally ruled by autocracy, monarchical or otherwise, attempts to transform itself, willingly or unwillingly, into a democratic system. Consider the recent and current experiences of Russia and Ukraine. Spanish democracy is only thirty-five years old. The problem can also be addressed with respect to entrenched bureaucracies and military interests that reject accountability to elected officials in democracies such as the US. [End Page 642]
Is democracy always the answer? Sheila Carapico considers the Bush Administration's democracy promotion to have been intended to buttress autocratic governments. Robert Satloff, whose Washington Institute for Near East Policy backed the Iraq invasion and currently calls for an assault on Iran, in 2005 backed the push for democracy promotion in the Arab world as "Constructive Instability," aimed at undermining governments that might threaten Israel. His focus was on Lebanon and Syria, but he argued that the Bush Administration's push for democracy should also be aimed more forcefully at Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Bush Administration demands on these traditional allies was such that "the fear of the American elephant in the Arab china shop is so great that Arab leaders have dropped all pretense to 'hanging together' … if it buys them time and sufferance in Washington."26
The fear of the American elephant appears to have diminished as these contributions make clear. So also, for the moment, has any real hope of parliamentary life surviving in any Arab state in the region, save possibly Tunisia. Political scientists should join historians in taking the long view rather than looking for any immediate illumination from a theoretical street lamp. Democracy is not impossible to achieve, as the Turkish experience proves, but problems exist there as well, triggered in part by fallout from the US invasion of Iraq. And however "rogue" some may consider Iran to be, it does have a functioning electoral system, however flawed parliamentary impact on policy may be. That is more than can be said for America's Arab allies at the moment. [End Page 643]
Charles D. Smith is Professor Emeritus of Middle East History at the School of Middle East and North African Studies, University of Arizona, where he was former head of the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Among his publications are Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt (1983); Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988), now in its eighth edition; and The Modern Middle East and North Africa: A History in Documents (2013) coauthored with Julia Clancy-Smith.
1. Lisa Anderson, "Searching Where the Light Shines: Studying Democratization in the Middle East," Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 9 (2006), pp. 208–209, cited in Brynen et al., Beyond the Arab Spring, p. 7.
2. Raymond Hinnebusch poses the democracy/authoritarianism binary in his review essay of three books on Syria, "Documenting the Roots of the Syrian Uprising," Middle East Journal, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Summer 2013), pp. 467–74; he opts for a "weak state" paradigm posited by historical sociology as the best framework for analyzing events in the Levant. The army versus anarchy argument has been offered by Israeli policy-makers to their US counterparts as the best reason to back the Egyptian military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, not because of its implications for Egyptian society or politics but because Egyptian democracy could threaten Israel's security, Jodi Rudoren, "Israel Puts More Urgency into Shaping Allies' Actions," New York Times, August 19, 2013, p. A7. This suggests a Weberian "strong state" paradigm within Hinnebusch's analytical framework, but one desired as much by outside powers, including Saudi Arabia to protect their interests, as required by internal conditions. Does political science offer theories based on who owns the streetlight and controls where it shines? Is this an apt question considering how quickly electricity was restored in Egypt following Morsi's departure?
3. The Salafi action at the University of Manouba was virtually ignored in the American media when it occurred two years ago, in contrast to European coverage that included the Euronews channel showing a Salafi leader with a microphone openly mocking government officials. For discussion, see Joshua Hammer, "A New Turn in Tunisia?," New York Review of Books, July 11, 2013, pp. 13–14, where Ghannouchi condemned the Manouba faculty of letters dean, Habib Qazdaghli, as "a Marxist" who rejected all religious believers (referring to his former communist affiliation). A summary of the killings of Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi is in Carlotta Gal, "Tunisia Says Assassination Has Links to Al Qaeda," New York Times, July 27, 2013, p. A4.
4. Ann Lesch, "Concentrated Power Breeds Corruption, Repression, and Resistance," in Korany and El-Mahdi, eds., Arab Spring in Egypt, p. 33.
5. For Libya, see Diederik Vanderwalle, "Libya after the Civil War: The Legacy of the Past and Economic Reconstruction," in Henry and Ji-Hyang, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 185–210. Mary Jane Deeb has a much shorter summary, "The Arab Spring: Libya's Second Revolution," in Haas and Lesch, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 64–67.
6. Holger Albrecht, "Authoritarian Transformation or Transition from Authoritariansm? Insights on Regime Change in Egypt," in Korany and El-Mahdi, eds., Arab Spring in Egypt, pp. 251–52.
7. Kemal Kirisci, "Is the Turkish Model Relevant for the Middle East?" in Henry and Ji-Hyang, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 159–83; and Fawaz Gerges, "The Evolution of Islamist Movements," in Henry and Ji-Hyang, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 135–40. Gerges's quotes are on p. 139.
8. Clement Henry, "Political Economies in Transition," in Henry and Ji-Hyang, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 53–75.
9. Bassam Haddad, "Syria, the Arab Uprisings, and the Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience," in Henry and Ji-Hyang, eds., Arab Spring, p. 218. For Syria, see also David W. Lesch, "The Uprising that Wasn't Supposed to Happen: Syria and the Arab Spring," in Haas and Lesch, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 79–96, who discusses his own personal experiences with representatives of Bashar al-Asad's authoritarian state over which he had no control.
10. Haddad, "Syria, the Arab Uprisings, and the Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience," p. 219.
11. Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, p. 147.
12. Samer Soliman, "The Political Economy of Mubarak's Fall," in Korany and El-Mahdi, eds., Arab Spring in Egypt, pp. 58–59.
13. On Saudi Arabia and the rentier state thesis, see also Steve A. Yetiv, "Oil, Saudi Arabia, and the Spring That Has Not Come," in Haas and Lesch, eds., Arab Spring, pp. 97–115.
14. Sheila Carapico, "Egypt's Civic Revolution Turns 'Democracy Promotion' on Its Head," in Korany and El-Mahdi, eds., Arab Spring in Egypt, pp. 199–222.
15. Quoted in Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, p. 78.
16. Michael Scott Doran, "Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (January/February 2003), p. 22, quoted in Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, p. 208, fn. 64.
17. Richard Perle et al., "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000, June 1996, http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm; and David Wurmser, "Coping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli Balance of Power Strategy for the Levant," IASPS, December 1996, http://www.iasps.org/strat2.htm.
18. Eric Schmitt, "White House Response Muted to New Mass Killings of Egyptian Protesters," New York Times. July 29, 2013, p. A6; and Mark Landler, "For U.S., Balancing Act with Egypt Grows More Complicated," New York Times, July 30, 2013, p. A8. Landler notes that Israel backs SCAF's retention of authority to protect its own security interests, and that Egyptian generals "are paying little heed to American officials."
19. Democracy Prevention, pp. 174–75.
20. Beyond the Arab Spring, p. 59, quoting Yezid Sayigh. "Fixing Broken Windows: Security Sector Reform in Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen," Carnegie Papers, No. 17 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2009), p. 15.
21. Quotes taken from Norvell B. De Atkine, "The Arab Mind Revisited," Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer 2004), pp. 47–55, available at: http://www.meforum.org/636/the-arab-mind-revisited.
22. Mark Mazetti and Mark Landler, "U.S. Facing Test on Data to Back Action on Syria," New York Times, August 29, 2013, p. Al.
23. David Kirkpatrick, Peter Baker and Michael Gordon, "How a U.S. Push to Defuse Egypt Ended in Failure," New York Times, August 18, 2013, p. A1.
24. Scot J. Paltrow and Kelly Carr, "Special Report: How the Pentagon's Payroll Quagmire Traps American Soldiers," Reuters, July 9, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/us-usa-pentagon-payerrors-special-report-idUSBRE96818I20130709.
25. Karima Bennoune, "Killing the Arab Spring in Its Cradle," New York Times, July 30, 2013, p. A19.
26. Robert Satloff, "Assessing the Bush Administration's Policy of 'Constructive Instability' (Part I): Lebanon and Syria," Washington Institute for Near East Policy, PolicyWatch #974, March 15, 2005, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/assessing-the-bush-administrations-policy-of-constructive-instability-.


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Junior Auxiliary of Columbus revealed its 2013 Charity Ball king and queen Saturday at the 63rd annual Ball held at Trotter Convention Center.
Organizers are describing it as a "perfect storm" -- a mighty spring storm of creative art and festivities that will hit West Point Saturday when the West Point/Clay County Arts Council presents the first annual Historic Downtown Art Walk.
Amy remembers the day she picked up a razor to attack the seething anger she had bottled inside. At that drastic moment, life simply seemed too heavy to bear. The abrupt loss of her longtime job and the deaths of her father, mother and grandmother had propelled her toward crises.
Friends of the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library will host April's first Table Talk this Wednesday, April 3. Find out how some of our local political office holders will finish this sentence: "My favorite childhood book is ... "
Hinds Community College and Mississippi University for Women announced details Wednesday of a new agreement that will be a boon for students studying the culinary arts in the Jackson area.
Youth and families involved in Community Counseling's NFusion Program will host a talent show April 26 at the Starkville Sportsplex to raise funds to support their activities.
As a little girl, Gaines Gaskin twirled in front of mirrors in her hoop skirts and Pilgrimage finery before running lightly down the stairs of her family's antebellum home, Errolton, to welcome visitors. She and her mother, the late Chebie Gaines Bateman, were among dozens of hostesses throughout Columbus sharing some of the South's most beautiful architectural gems -- and interesting stories.
This summer Mississippi University for Women will launch its Master of Science in Global Commerce program, which will be delivered completely online. Its purpose is to prepare graduates to manage global business operations to the benefit and competitive advantage of companies across the region.
Nationally-known historian and family studies expert Stephanie Coontz will play a major role March 20 as part of Mississippi State's Women's History Month Celebration and the Gender Studies Lecture Series.
"Well, hello, it's about time you woke up, girl!" Michelle Cranford calls in a sing-song greeting to Cinderella, a female Bengal tiger lazily waking from a morning bask in the sun. Like the other 10 tigers, six lions, three bobcats, two cougars, two wolves, six horses, seven pot belly pigs, four exotic birds and almost 200 domestic cats who call Cedarhill Animal Sanctuary in Caledonia home, Cinderella has come to understand she is safe and cared for, so she is not startled.
William Furr believes in his work. The Columbus resident often spends his days, and many nights, writing. The most recent result is his fifth self-published book, "Mathematical Proof of Divine Creation and He Leads Me -- I Follow."
The 16th annual Magnolia Film Festival held in Starkville Feb. 21-23 at Hollywood Premier Cinema drew fans of independent films to see 15 entries ranging from comedies to documentaries.
Stephen Cunetto is right at home in the handsomely-appointed Templeton Museum on the fourth floor of Mississippi State's Mitchell Memorial Library. Surrounded by rare, vintage talking machines, music boxes, gramophones and graphophones, he moves easily from instrument to instrument, telling a little about each. Cunetto oversees the Charles H. Templeton Sr. Music Museum, one of the finest collections of its kind in the country.
« previous Page 39 of 61 next »
1. Make room, fellas: There's a new kid on the block to carry on at one of Columbus' oldest COMMUNITY
2. West Point arts council to present Imes' 'Juke Joint' photographs ENTERTAINMENT
3. Graphite drawings at Columbus library reflect nature's design ENTERTAINMENT
4. Crecink named new director of United Way of North Central Mississippi COMMUNITY
5. A Stone's Throw: First steps to liberty COLUMNS


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When it comes to premature death and disease, what we eat ranks as the single most important factor, according to a study in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Yet few doctors say they feel properly trained to dispense dietary advice. One group, at least, is trying to fill that knowledge gap.
In a bustling kitchen at one of Chicago's top cooking schools, a student cracks an egg into a wide, stainless steel bowl. But he's not an aspiring chef. His name is Emmanuel Quaidoo, and he's a first-year medical student. Quaidoo is working on a spinach and feta frittata, one of the healthy breakfast alternatives he has learned to make.
Quaidoo and about a dozen of his University of Chicago classmates are here on a stormy spring night taking a culinary nutrition class they won't even get credit for.
A Dose Of Culinary Medicine Sends Med Students To The Kitchen
Photo credit: Monica Eng/WBEZ


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Updated 08/30/2014
Occupying a restored courtyard home, and hiding a Cold War–era bomb shelter down below, the Red Capital Club oozes nostalgia for the early days of revolutionary China. Kitschy Cultural Revolution memorabilia and books dating from the Great Leap Forward era adorn every nook of the small bar. It's worth visiting just to browse the artifacts, having a drink in one of the old leather armchairs (supposedly lifted from the Great Hall of the People), and peek into the bomb shelter. The fancifully written menu still serves old favorites of Communist leaders, though this place fell off the restaurant radar some years ago.
66 Dongsi Jiutiao, Beijing, 100007, China
Restaurant Details:
Updated 08/30/2014
By OliverB
Feb 27, 2008
Our experience, with a group of eight people, was unanimously BAD. We resorted to being positive by Coffee time, saying AT LEAST we had the pleasure of meeting up. at almost 900Yuan for two (almost $65 per head) including 1 BEER (that's IT), the so so, stodgy and thouroughly unexciting food came across as a complete rip-off! The courtyard is ok (seen better) and the service did its best, sharing the competence of a trained waiter between the gaggle
of 5 or so, prowling aimlessly around the tables. We just moved here, but friend's who've lived here a year say it was waaay overpriced for what it was too
No Thanks