text:
Mob Violence and Kansas Mennonites in 1918
by James C. Juhnke
Autumn, 1977 (Vol. 43, No. 3), pages 334 to 350
Transcribed by Tod Roberts; digitized with permission of
the Kansas Historical Society.
NOTE: The numbers in brackets are links to footnotes for this text.
Those inclined to tantalize a community by holding out against the Red Cross, refusing to buy Liberty bonds and declining to sign Loyalty Pledge cards are advised that they are placing themselves on dangerous ground. . . . [I]ndignation will develop to such an extent that "due process of law" will not be a feature in the punishment handed out to them.
R. B. Quinn, Chairman
Harvey County Council
of Defense, 1918
IN ONE of his many perceptive essays on the American political and social tradition, Richard Hofstadter observed that we have "a history but not a tradition of domestic violence." Events of extralegal violence are commonplace, often initiated by conservative defenders of the status quo. But the events are quickly forgotten; they lack the cohesion and consistency necessary to become a tradition. [1]
A study of domestic violence in Kansas would tend to bear out Hofstadter's thesis. Despite our celebration of the frontier violence in Kansas cow towns, for example, Kansas citizens and historians have not linked the frontier vigilantes to the outbreaks of mob violence in the spring of 1918 or to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's. We lack a tradition of violence. The World War I epidemic of anti-German and antipacifist sentiment in Kansas, which was part of a broader national hysteria during the war against Germany, is an especially interesting case. For some reason, however, the 1918 mob violence has been largely blotted out of memory, both for the Kansas communities and for the historians. [2]
By the time the United States declared war on Germany in April, 1917, an irrational fear of internal subversion was beginning to rear its head. [3] The front page of the Newton Evening Kansan Republican which announced the war declaration on April 6, also carried a short article noting that "federal agents say they have evidence of a widespread movement on the part of agents of the imperial German government to incite Negroes to rise against the United States government." [4] Generalized anxieties found their focus in central Kansas not upon blacks but upon the Mennonite communities of Swiss, Dutch, and Prussian origin located in rural areas of Marion, McPherson, Harvey, Butler, and Reno counties. It was these Mennonites who bore the brunt of Kansas anti-German hostility during World War I.
The Kansas Mennonites were not a homogeneous group. They were divided into numerous splinter groups and congregations, each of which could be placed at a different point along the ladder of acculturation. The oldest Kansas Mennonite congregations had migrated from Eastern states and had given up the German language in church services before the great war, although they retained a strict doctrine of separation of church and state. The largest group had come from Russia in 1874-76 and retained the German language in church and home. Members of the General Conference churches were typically more open to political involvements such as voting and local office holding. [5]
Most Kansas Mennonites shared a common belief in nonresistance. They respected and obeyed the government as ordained by God, but when there was a conflict between the commandments of government and the scriptures, they were ready to disobey government. They were all relatively isolated from the national political debates over the approaching war and from the influences of organizations such as the National German-American Alliance. Mennonite newspaper editors, such as H. P. Krehbiel, who had served a term in the Kansas state legislature, were ahead of their constituency in political awareness. [6] Abraham Schellenberg, editor of the Hillsboro Vorwaerts, kept up a consistent pro-German bias and served as a collecting agent for funds for the German Red Cross when the war began in Europe in 1914. [7] But the Mennonites wanted to be good Americans as well as good Christians. They did not consider themselves slackers or disloyalists.
Henry Peter Krehbiel, former Kansas legislator and editor of Der Herold, Newton, whose office and press were smeared with yellow paint during the war. All photos in this article courtesy the author and the Mennonite Library and Archives, North Newton.
Potential violence against Mennonites early in the war was averted when the Mennonites agreed to have their young men accept registration procedures and go to military camps, after receiving a government promise that their convictions would be respected. That promise was only partially honored, but it did put the burden of drawing the line against military service upon the shoulders or young Mennonite draftees in military camps away from home. At home the Mennonites oriented themselves to community pressure to honor the flag, to buy liberty bonds, and to speak the English language.
One evening in the fall of 1917 a mob from Hesston, led by a local garage mechanic, put up an American flag on the Hesston College campus while the students and congregation were attending a revival meeting. When D. H. Bender, president of the college, had the flag removed, the local patriots called out the Harvey county sheriff from Newton to investigate the matter. The sheriff out-Americanized the Hesston patriots by reprimanding them for not having flags flying at the post office and the public school, and for violating flag etiquette by putting up the flag at the Mennonite school at night. A committee of Hesston citizens and college officials subsequently worked out a plan for the college to fly the flag on days not connected with war, but to refrain from flying the flag on national holidays such as Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Washington's birthday. [8]
The peaceful resolution of provocative incidents proved less and less possible as the war continued into the spring of 1918. The third Liberty loan drive, offered on April 6, provided the stimulus for a series of mob actions against Mennonites who were reluctant to buy bonds. The McPherson county patriots were the most zealous, that county having been the first in the state to publish their list of slackers in November, 1917. [9] On April 19, less than two weeks after the third liberty bond drive started, McPherson proudly announced it had gone "over the top" and oversubscribed its quota. [10] But McPherson wanted more than its quota.
On the night of April 22, a group of about 40 men drove from McPherson out to the Walter Cooprider farm in Groveland township, southwest of the county seat. They first cut the telephone wires. Then 20 donned masks and surrounded the house. Cooprider had refused to buy bonds. He was the son of a Civil War veteran who had been converted to the nonresistant faith after moving to Kansas and marrying a Mennonite widow in 1878. [11] One of Cooprider's sons had been drafted and was refusing military service at Camp Funston. Two other sons, George and Henry, were at home. They were members of the West Liberty (Old) Mennonite congregation. Germanism was not an issue, since the family spoke only English.
The mob called Cooprider out of the house and demanded that he buy war bonds or be tarred and feathered. The Mennonite farmer explained that it was against his religious convictions to buy war bonds, but before the mob could apply the punishment, George Cooprider stepped out and asked if he could substitute for his father who had not been in good health recently. The mob agreed to the substitution and applied a coat of warm roofing paint to George's head, neck, and shoulders. They had him lie down in a sheet of feathers and rolled him around in it. Then they suddenly left. [12]
From the Coopriders the mob drove 23 miles to the eastern edge of McPherson county to visit D. A. Diener, minister in the Spring Valley (Old) Mennonite congregation, and his married son Charles, who had been ordained to the ministry on November 29, 1917. Someone had been out earlier in the day (Monday, June 22, although by now it was 2:00 a. m. on the 23d) to nail a flag to the Spring Valley church. The mob arrived first at the Charles Diener home, got him out of bed, and asked what had happened to the flag. The young pastor admitted he had taken it down. He said he thought the flag was not supposed to be left out overnight. Unimpressed with his argument, the mob proceeded to give him the tar and feather treatment. Then they went to the Spring Valley church and smeared tar on the door and steps. From the church they went to the D. A. Diener farm and called the Mennonite preacher out of bed. In Diener's words,
Two men grabbed me and pulled me out. They demanded that I buy bonds and support the Red Cross and other war measures. I replied that I could not conscientiously do that but would give to war sufferers through channels not under military control. I was then tarred and feathered and left with threats of a repetition if I did not support war measures. [13]
McPherson county newspaper accounts of the Cooprider-Diener incidents did not endorse the mob violence, but emphasized the orderliness and good intentions of the mob. I. K. Fretz of the Canton Pilot, who was captain of the Canton Home Guards, wrote that "this is the wrong way to reach an objective," but he delicately reported the incident as a kind of "committee" action: "It is reported that the committee showed no disposition to destroy property or create disorder, but acted on the assumption that the course of the law was too slow...." [14] W. J. Krehbiel of the McPherson Daily Republican, himself of German Mennonite background, saw the mob as "vigilantes" who were using "strenuous methods to force some of these disloyalists to fall into line." These vigilantes were "orderly" citizens who were "from all sections of the county." [15]
The McPherson county chairman of the third Liberty loan drive, Robert Sohlberg, took a more critical position. Sohlberg said that "mob violence is never justifiable and such escapades as that of last night only tend to make matters worse." Sohlberg believed that Cooprider and Diener might agree to buy bonds if they knew the demands came from "high officials." [16] Despite his disapproval of "mob law," Sohlberg did not suggest the mob leaders should be identified and charged with breaking the law. The impunity with which the mob was able to act provided encouragement for subsequent mob actions in which the level of violence was escalated.
Who were the members of the mob? The cloak of anonymity under which they traveled on their Monday night missions cannot be penetrated now over half a century after the event. The newspaper reports were contradictory. Fretz of the Canton Pilot reported that "the work was done by non-residents, and no local talent participated." [17] An article on the event which appeared widely in the state news section of numerous Kansas papers reported that a "well known banker" who met the mob near the Cooprider home had been "promptly invited to 'move on'." The banker allegedly did not recognize anyone "because of the darkness." [18] The Cooprider and Diener families reported that there was not much difficulty in recognizing the mob leaders despite their masks. The mob was made up of substantial and highly respected neighbors and community people. Charles Diener said they included "the auctioneer, the produce man, and different business men in Canton." [19] Henry Cooprider reported that nearby neighbors had participated, people whom they had assumed were their good friends. [20]
Two days after the mob smeared his son, Walter Cooprider went to McPherson and invested in some Liberty bonds. [21] But the Dieners were more intransigent. They rejected the religious arguments of a Church of the Brethren minister who was brought out to help them change their minds. Instead they sought an alternative by giving to relieve war suffering through church channels. The Canton Pilot of May 23 carried a report that the Spring Valley congregation had sent $1,034.50 for war sufferers relief. [22] The McPherson county patriots were not appeased. On the night of June 3 the mob returned to the Daniel Diener home and once again "called me out and threatened to pound me to pieces, using most abusive and ungodly language." Because of the ill health of his wife, Diener agreed against his conscience to sign a check for $50 to the Red Cross, and the mob left. But Diener stopped payment on the check in the morning and sought a meeting with the county Liberty loan officials and his banker. It was agreed that Diener would write a check for $75 to the Friends Reconstruction Service. But the county officials did not have their zealous bond collectors under control, for the mob went out again on the night of June 10 and escalated the level of violence. They ransacked Diener's house "from cellar to garret," stole his watch and some money, smeared yellow paint over the house and automobile inside and out, stripped and whipped him with a large strap, and finally once again applied carboline roofing paint and feathers. [23] They then went over to Charles Diener's house and repeated the violent ritual upon person and property. [24]
The mob's threat that they would return and kill their victims was now fully credible. The father and son once again assessed the situation and decided that this was not the issue on which they would choose to die for their faith. They went to town and bought some liberty bonds in the cause to make the world safe for democracy.
The Butler county community of Whitewater proved in the third Liberty loan drive that it was no less patriotic than McPherson. Indeed, the Whitewater Independent announced on May 2, "we have six and a quarter times over subscribed," since they had sold $265,200 worth of bonds, more than six and a quarter times their quota. [25] The bond drive, stimulated by threats against members of the Emmaus Mennonite church (1-1/2 miles north and 2-1/2 miles east of Whitewater) and the placing of flags both inside and outside the church, culminated in a daytime mob visit to the homes of the church pastor, Bernhard W. Harder, and his uncle, Elder Gustav Harder. [26]
The Emmaus Mennonite congregation, unlike the (Old) Mennonite congregations of Cooprider (West Liberty) and the Dieners (Spring Valley), was distinctively German in language and culture. The church originated in the arrival of West Prussian immigrants in 1876. It maintained a parochial school for its elementary school children. All worship services were in the German language in 1918; one Sunday school class continues discussions in the German language in 1975. The brilliant and outspoken pastor, Bernhard Harder, expressed his identification with German culture in the middle names of his two sons, John Schiller and Bernhard Goethe. He considered himself a loyal citizen whose people had come to America to escape Prussian militarism.
The Emmaus congregation was divided on the matter of war bonds. Both leaders, uncle and nephew, did buy some bonds. In the heat of the third Liberty loan drive, Bernhard Harder even counseled his church members to buy bonds. But some members, including Henry H. Wiebe and John Regier did not. [27]
A patriotic rally in Whitewater, addressed by two men in uniform on furlough from Camp Funston, provided the trigger for mob action against the Emmaus Mennonite leaders. One of the furloughed soldiers, Frank Snorf, had stopped at the Bernhard Harder farm on his way to the rally and ascertained that the Mennonite leader neither displayed an American flag nor even owned one. Snorf apparently had had an earlier disagreement with Harder over an incident when Snorf had been hired on the Harder farm. Smelling trouble, Harder dispatched his oldest son, John Schiller, to town to purchase a flag.
Before John had returned, Harder and his second son, Bernhard Goethe, who were fixing the roof on the henhouse, noticed a row of cars coming out from Whitewater "like a funeral procession over the hill." [28] Snorf had told the rally about this pro-German who refused to fly the flag. The mob was now on its way out for a showdown.
During the third liberty bond drive members of the Emmaus Mennonite church, above, near Whitewater, received threats of violence. The pastor, Bernhard W. Harder, below, left, turned away a mob by singing four verses of "America." The pastor's uncle, Gustav Harder, below, right, was also visited by the mob.
Facing the mob in front of his farm house, Harder insisted that he never had anything against the American flag. The flag was nailed to the front porch entry without protest. Sensing that the mob's anger was still not appeased, Harder seized the initiative and proposed that they join in singing "America." With his loudest and most vigorous voice, he sang four full verses of the patriotic hymn. The abashed mob joined in on the first verse, but their voices trailed away and their feet shuffled as they didn't know the words of the other verses. The embarrassed Whitewater patriots had been out-Americanized by a Mennonite German-American. They returned to their cars and drove to the Elder Gustav Harder's farm home where they learned that he, too, had nothing against the American flag. And so the frustrated Whitewater mob dispersed, its cup of violence unfilled. [29]
The business community in Whitewater, deeply dependent upon the patronage of Mennonites, took measures to avoid a Mennonite boycott of their town. On April 27, 12 community notables, including two bankers, the Independent editor, the Methodist preacher, the butcher and others, signed a statement apologizing for the mob action, defending the loyalty of the Mennonites, and noting that "not infrequently the most disloyal persons make the most profuse display of flags." [30] They also planned another patriotic rally about a month later, with special invitations to the Mennonites, at which a speaker from Wichita explained about "who the true patriots were -- those who were building up the country, and so on." [31]
If the Whitewater community successfully achieved a postmob rapproachement with its beleaguered Mennonite citizens, the same cannot be said for the Burrton community in Harvey county. The Burrton patriotic campaign heated up after the fourth Liberty loan drive, which began in July, and climaxed at the armistice day celebration on November 11. The Burrton anger centered on a Schrag family who were from the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite group who had settled near Moundridge and founded the Hoffnungsfeld church congregation four miles west of Moundridge. Joseph Schrag had built a grain mill on the bank of the Little Arkansas river in Harvey county and was living in retirement in Burrton. His son, John, had taken over the home place and had earned the nickname "Krickehannes" because three creeks flowed together on his land. The Schrags were wealthy enterprising farmers who benefitted greatly from the war-induced agricultural boom. [32]
John Schrag who, when he refused to salute the flag and buy liberty bonds, was beaten, doused with yellow paint, and threatened with hanging. Photo ca. 1951.
When Joseph Schrag resisted the war bond salesmen in late 1918, the chairman of the Harvey County Council of Defense wrote to Gov. Arthur Capper for help. Capper wrote directly to Schrag asking him to buy bonds and avoid being put on the slacker list. "I am writing you," wrote Capper, "not in an official capacity, and with no intention of threatening or annoying you, but I address this letter as one friend writing to another." [33] Schrag, of course, knew when he was being annoyed and threatened, especially with the Cooprider, Diener, and Harder incidents to remind him of what happened to noncooperators. The retired Mennonite farmer invested $1,000 in liberty bonds.
Joseph's son, John, remained unintimidated out on his farm. He refused to buy. When the patriotic spirits of Burrton citizens were lifted by the November 11 celebration of the end of the war, John Schrag was made to pay for his stubbornness. A group drove out 11 miles from Burrton to the Schrag farm, ransacked the barn, sheds, and house before discovering their victim hiding upstairs under the bed. They took him to town where he and a number of other slackers were given opportunity to salute the flag and buy liberty bonds. Only John Schrag refused to cooperate. When they thrust a flag into his hand, it fell to the ground and someone shouted, "He stepped on the American flag." The crowd turned into an angry mob. They kicked and hit their victim, poured yellow paint on his hair and beard, and went for a rope to hang him. Tom Roberts, the head of the Burrton Anti-Horse Thief Association, intervened with drawn pistol to get Schrag into the Burrton jail where he was protected from the mob until the Harvey county sheriff could come from Newton and take him to the county jail. The mob satisfied its remaining lust for violence by burning some "buggies and things" belonging to the slackers. [34]
Schrag had offered no resistance to the mob. One repentant member of the mob later idealized his victim as a kind of Christ figure. "There was some kind of a glow come over his face and he just looked like Christ .... They'd slug him on the one side of the face and he'd turn his cheeks on the other. He exemplified the life of Christ more than any man I ever saw in my life." [35] But Schrag did hire a lawyer for his defense when the Burrton patriots attempted to prosecute him in Wichita district court for violation of the Espionage act. The case was heard on December 9 and a decision of "not guilty" handed down on December 24. The Newton Evening Kansan-Republican, frustrated by the acquittal of this "bull-headed" man, suggested that the case "should certainly make plain to any thinking person the viciousness that exists in the encouragement of the German language as a means of communication in America .... The melting pot cannot exercise its proper functions when such things are allowed." [36]
The Schrag incident took an economic as well as psychological toll on the town of Burrton in months and years following the war. The German-Americans in the vicinity took their money out of the banks and did their business elsewhere. Some establishments in town went out of business. Some businessmen moved out of state. The latent tension between Mennonites and non-Mennonites in the town is still observed by people in the 1970's.
A complete accounting of the acts of violence against German-American persons and property in central Kansas would need to go beyond the mob incidents related above from McPherson, Butler, and Harvey counties. The Herald Publishing Company in downtown Newton was broken into and smeared with yellow paint during the war. [37] The First Church of Christian in Moundridge received a measure of yellow paint. Threats of violence led the Bethel College administration to post all-night guards when tension was high in 1918. [38] In addition to acts of overt violence, there were innumerable ways in which informal pressure was brought to bear upon German-Americans in Kansas. At Aulne in Marion county the telephone company decreed that no German could be spoken over the telephones. [39] Signs appeared in businesses in many towns: "We Are Americans, Speak the American Language in this Place." The German Language Zoar Mennonite Academy at Inman was closed after patriotic citizens of that community remonstrated with school officials. [40]
Some historians have termed the widespread outbreaks of violence across the country in 1918 "The American Reign of Terror." [41] Such a label seems unwarranted for Kansas, especially compared to the bloodletting of the French Revolution or the slaughter on the European front in 1918. No German-Americans were actually killed in central Kansas. The local patriots whose brothers and sons were killing and dying in France could hardly be expected to generate kindness toward German-speaking neighbors who balked at military service and war bonds while they raked in profits from the war economy.
But it must be said that violent Kansans who took the law into their own hands effectively terrorized the Mennonite community into unwilling participation in the war effort. The patterns of this extralegal violence deserve to be noted as fitting into the broader history of American violence.
The Kansas mob violence in 1918 had a conservative bias. It was initiated, for the most part, by respectable citizens who were out to preserve the status quo. Irresponsible rabblerousers were undoubtedly involved in the mob actions, but the testimony from Mennonite mob victims uniformly records that substantial community citizens either led or accompanied the mobs.
The central Kansas communities also exhibited some mechanisms for control of mob violence. The law and order forces quickly asserted themselves after the Harder incident in Whitewater. The long arm of the Anti-Horse Thief Association prevented the lynching of John Schrag in Burrton. Some voices of genuine protest against mob violence were heard. E. D. Verink, chairman of the Red Cross fund in McPherson, announced that he would not accept money "secured by these night riders," and John H. Simonson of the Moundridge Journal wrote, "A mob does not think of justice. Its chief aim is revenge." [42] But newspaper commentary in McPherson, Canton, Newton, and Burrton treated the mob actions with a minimum of outrage, protesting the violence superficially but in reality praising with faint damns. The Marquette Tribune professed to oppose tar and feather punishment, but instead suggested that men like Cooprider and Diener should be "reported to the proper officers, taken to detention camps, their property confiscated, and then at the end of the war they and their families be banished forever from living under the flag they have denounced in war time." [43] In the face of such counsel, it is small wonder that the mechanisms of orderly democratic procedure were often ignored.
The Mennonite memory of war experiences interestingly records a number of cases where threatened anti-Mennonite violence was turned aside by threats of counter-violence. D. H. Bender of Hesston reported that a McPherson county mob approached one Robert McFarlane to join a gang to "get Bender." McFarlane not only refused to join in, but "he got out his gun and told them if they go to get Bender they will have to do it over his dead body." [44] Peter Schrag, son of John Schrag, said that when "the Rupp brothers in Moundridge" were informed that the mob was coming, they in turn leaked information that the mob would be met with bullets. "The mob never came." [45] Joseph N. Weaver of Harper told of a non- Mennonite named Harry Hershberger who allegedly countered threats of a tar and feather party by saying that the mob would "have to take my shotgun bullets first." Hershberger was said to have stayed up in the barnyard all night to defend Mennonites against a mob which didn't show up. [46] Weaver acclaimed this as "a wonderful example of power."
There are also hints of vicarious participation in violence by nonresistant Mennonites in their stories of evil which befell their persecutors. One Mennonite report observed that a member of the Whitewater mob died of a heart attack not long after the showdowns at the Harder homesteads. "Maybe he got a little too excited at the rally." [47] Charles Diener noted that on one occasion the mobbers had brought their wives along to observe what they could from the cars by the road. A number of these women later died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. In remembering such events, Mennonites do not go so far as to claim direct evidence of divine retribution. But the echoes of scripture are unmistakable, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord." Such stories belong in a broader class of "triumph tales" which enliven the Mennonite oral tradition of World War I, in which the Mennonites tell how they achieved moral victory in their time of persecution. [48]
The role of national, state, and community leaders surely had some influence on the course of mob violence in 1918. Pres. Woodrow Wilson's attacks on German domestic influence in America, and his prolonged silence in the face of widespread mob violence, contributed to the climate of opinion. [49] Governor Capper of Kansas professed the same high-minded altruism which characterized the benevolent war crusade against Germany, but his personal intervention in cases of conscientious objection to bond purchases and his vigorous opposition to the I. W. W. set a standard of high hostility toward war critics. Less than 10 days after Daniel and Charles Diener were smeared by the April night riders, they could read in the Canton Pilot of Capper's attitude toward disloyalists: "He said he had advised one man to either invest in Liberty bonds or leave the state, and that he would insist upon thorough loyality [sic] or removal from Kansas." [50] Capper never attacked Mennonites as a disloyal organization, but the Dieners knew that the signals from established authority indicated that local mobs would be able to wreak violence with impunity.
The notable fact that Marion county did not experience any incidents of mob violence in 1918, despite the large concentration of Mennonites in the western part of the county, may be attributable to more liberal and tolerant leadership in the Marion county seat. Early in the war, Homer Hoch, editor of the Marion Record, complained about "self-heralded patriots who are clamoring for the brand of disloyalty to be placed upon every man who presumes to think for himself." When Hoch was offended by an antigovernment letter from J. G. Ewert, a Mennonite editor from Hillsboro, his tactic was to isolate Ewert as exceptional and affirm the German-Americans as "patriotic, law abiding citizens." [51] Later when several state papers picked up and published a rumor that German-American schools in Marion county were teaching "Kaiserism," the county superintendent of schools, James A. Ray, published a spirited defense of the German schools and the people who operated them. It was important, he said, for these children to learn German because their worship services were in German. Besides, the Mennonites had left Germany and Russia to escape a militaristic system. They obviously "have no use whatever for the Kaiser." [52] An equivalent sympathetic word for the Mennonites by Americans in the county courthouses at McPherson and Newton could have been helpful in averting mob violence in those counties.
The Mennonites were noted for their strong family and communal ties, a reputation apparently borne out in the evidence that the four leading cases of mob action involved responses from fathers and sons (or nephew). But the Mennonites were sadly lacking in solidarity on the war bond question. Splintered into many groups, they had no common policy and some congregations shifted policy during the war. They would have preferred to have the government finance the war through taxation, because the biblical directive allowed them to pay taxes without question. But the government's decision to use the "voluntary" war bond drives as a means for mobilizing national energies in support of the war, meant that Mennonites either had to rationalize bond purchases as a kind of tax, to buy under protest and give the bonds away, or refuse and pay the consequences. [53]
Some Kansas Mennonites took the time-honored route of migration by escaping to Canada during the war. [54] But others apparently compensated for their unacceptability as German-Americans by an excessive display of patriotism, either through zealous participation in bond drives or through honoring the flag. The heavily Mennonite community of Moundridge made a patriotic name for itself in the tense days of June, 1918, at a Red Cross benefit auction where a little silk flag, two inches long, was bid up to $1,200. The top bid was submitted by "a group of farmers headed by John J. Goering." For a replay of the auction in the evening, the Wedel Drug Store donated a large beautiful flag to accompany the small one. Newspapers throughout the state acclaimed the patriotism of this small German- American town. [55] The need for Mennonites to prove that they were bona fide American citizens was never as great as in the spring of 1918.
Was the outbreak of domestic violence in Kansas an aberration or is it best understood as one event in a persistent tradition? Do the Butler county patriots of 1918 have anything in common with Butler County Vigilante Committee of 1870-1871, who allegedly had 798 members and killed eight men? [56] Additional studies of the varieties of Kansas violence are needed before such questions can be answered. The persistence of domestic turmoil in American history has been ignored too often. The experience of Kansas Mennonites in 1918, long repressed by both Mennonites and non-Mennonites in Kansas, is a reminder that the American mixture of democratic freedom and democratic tyranny is complex indeed.
Dr. James C. Juhnke, a native of Newton with degrees from Bethel College, North Newton, and Indiana University, Bloomington, is associate professor of history at Bethel. He is the author of A People of Two Kingdoms, the Political Acculturation of the Kansas Mennonites (Newton, Faith and Life Press, 1975).
1. Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace, eds., American Violence (New York, Knopf, 1970), pp. 3-11.
2. Domestic violence in Kansas in 1918 is unmentioned, for example, in William Frank Zornow, Kansas, A History of the Jayhawk State (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), and in Edgar Langsdorf, "The World War I Period," ch. 25 in v. 2 of Kansas, The First Century (New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1956), John D. Bright, ed., pp. 49-70. Homer E. Socolofsky says that in World War I, "Kansas was an island of calm in a sea of bigotry." -- Arthur Capper (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 1962), p. 102. Robert W. Richmond in Kansas: A Land of Contrasts (St. Charles, Mo., Forum Press, 1974), p. 213; reversed the trend by noting that anti-German activities in Kansas "took on ridiculous forms."
3. For general background to this topic, see H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917-1918 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1957); Donald Johnson, The Challenge to American Freedoms (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1963); Clifton J. Child, The German-Americans in Politics (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1939; and Frederick C. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty (De Kalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1974).
4. Newton Evening Kansan Republican, April 6, 1917.
5. For a survey of the varieties of Kansas Mennonites in 1917, see Arlyn John Parish, Kansas Mennonites During World War I (Fort Hays studies, history series no. 4, Hays, Fort Hays Kansas State College, 1968), pp. 3-15. See, also, James C. Juhnke, A People of Two Kingdoms (Newton; Faith and Life Press, 1975), pp. 22-25.
6. Ibid., pp. 65-95.
7. Gregory J. Stucky, "Fighting Against the War: The Mennonite Vorwaerts From 1914 to 1919," Kansas Historical Quarterly, v. 38 (Summer, 1972), pp. 169-186.
8. Notes on an interview dated "between 1936 and 1940" by Guy F. Hershberger with D. H. Bender. -- Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Ind., I-3-5.8, peace problems committee, Box 44. Unlike most Kansas Mennonites who could claim no direct connection with Germany, D. H. Bender's father had come from near Marburg, Germany, where he once supervised a reclamation project on one of the Kaiser's farms. The son still had in his possession a pair of silver spurs given to his father by the Kaiser in appreciation. -- See D. H. Bender, "Two Mementos Hold Interesting Place in Bender Family History," Mennonite Weekly Review, Newton, August 10, 1944, p. 8.
9. The Annals of Kansas (Topeka, Kansas Historical Society, 1956), v. 2, p. 197.
10. McPherson Democrat-Opinion, April 19, 1918. The phrase "going over the top" was borrowed from the trench warfare on the western front. Its widespread use in war bond drives suggested the parallel between the war in Europe and the war at home.
11. Gideon Yoder, "The Oldest Living American Mennonite Congregations of Central Kansas" (unpublished master's thesis, Phillips University, 1948), p. 13.
12. Letter from George Cooprider to D. H. Bender, February 15, 1938, Goshen archives I-3-5.8, peace problems committee, Box 47. Schowalter oral history interview with Henry Cooprider, October 1, 1969, Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Interview no. 37.
13. Quoted in J. S. Hartzler, Mennonites in the World War (Scottdale, Mennonite Publishing House, 1922), p. 154. See, also, Schowalter oral history interview with Charles Diener, April 29, 1969, Interview no. 48.
14. Canton Pilot, April 25, 1918.
15. McPherson Daily Republican, April 23, 1918.
16. Ibid.
17. Canton Pilot, April 25, 1918.
18. See Canton Pilot, May 2, 1918.
19. Charles Diener interview.
20. Henry Cooprider interview.
21. McPherson Freeman, April 26,1918, quoted in Margaret Entz, "Free to Buy: American World War I Financing and the Mennonite Response," Bethel College research paper, March, 1975.
22. Canton Pilot, May 23, 1918.
23. Daniel Diener's account of this event is remarkable for its lack of vindictive spirit. He may have been too reticent to tell the full extent of the sexual abuse involved. There is only a hint, "I was dragged to the barn and abused. " -- Hartzler, Mennonites in the World War, p. 124.
24. The mob visited other homes in McPherson county on the night of June 10, but the newspaper accounts are contradictory regarding the outcome. At the home of Dan A. Becker, a minister in the Church of God in Christ (Holdeman) Mennonite congregation, they apparently extorted $20 after the intervention of Becker's fearful wife. The McPherson Freeman reported that Henry B. Nightingale had been "covered with tar and feathers." -- McPherson Freeman, June 14, 1918. But the McPherson Daily Republican reported that E. J. Nightingale and H. J. Ratzlaff escaped punishment because they were not at home, having "evidently received warning." -- McPherson Daily Republican, June 11, 1918. Editor I. K. Fretz of the Canton Pilot, who had commented unfavorably on the April night riders, did not even mention the June mobbings as an item of news.
25. Whitewater Independent, May 2, 1918.
26. Schowalter oral history interview with Bernhard Goethe Harder, July 27, 1974, Interview no. 273.
27. Entz, "Free to Buy," pp. 26-27.
28. Schowalter oral history interview with B. G. Harder, July 27, 1974, Interview number 273, transcript, p. 3.
29. In addition to the eyewitness account of B. G. Harder, see the Schowalter oral history interview with Ernest Claassen, October 14, 1973, Interview no. 271.
30. Whitewater Independent, May 2, 1918.
31. Ernest Claassen interview.
32. James C. Juhnke, "John Schrag Espionage Case," Mennonite Life, North Newton, v. 22, no. 3 (July, 1967), pp. 121-122.
33. Capper to Schrag, October 15, 1918. -- Kansas Historical Society alphabetical file, counties, 1917-1919, Hamilton-Jackson folder. Note supplied to the author by Allan Teichroew.
34. This event is reconstructed substantially on the testimony of a non-Mennonite eyewitness member of the mob, Charles Gordon. -- Schowalter oral history interview, June 5, 1968, Interview no. 93.
35. Ibid., transcript, P. 8.
36. Newton Evening Kansan-Republican, December 27, 1918.
37. The same Mennonite publishing company was again smeared with yellow paint during World War II. -- Menno Schrag, interview with the author, April 2, 1975.
38. Peter J. Wedel, The Story of Bethel College (North Newton, Bethel College, 1954), p. 236.
39. The Annals of Kansas, v. 2, p. 217.
40. McPherson Freeman, June 14, 1918.
41. Peterson and Fite, Opponents of War, pp. 194-207.
42. McPherson Daily Republican, June 12, 1918. Moundridge Journal, April 25, 1918.
43. Marquette Tribune, May 2, 1918.
44. Archives of the Mennonite Church, 1-3-5.8, Box 44.
45. Interview with Peter Schrag, October 23, 1966.
46. Grant Stoltzfus interview with Joseph N. Weaver, May 25, 1972. Transcript copy in "Schowalter Oral History Collection."
47. Claassen interview, no. 271.
48. For a review of the "triumph tale" oral tradition, see James C. Juhnke, "The Victories of Nonresistance : Mennonite Oral Tradition and World War I, Fides et Historia, North Newton, v. 7, no. I (Fall, 1974), pp. 19-25.
49. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, pp. 13-14, 234-235.
50. Canton Pilot, May 2, 1918.
51. Marion Record, June 7, 21, 1917.
52. Ibid., September 13, 1917.
53. See Entz, "Free to Buy," pp. 2-4. Entz concludes that two kinds of Mennonites got into trouble on the war bond issue: church leaders who resisted purchasing bonds, and others who were unnecessarily vocal in their opposition to bonds. Average farmers who kept quiet were sometimes able to get by without buying bonds.
54. See Allan Teichroew, "World War I and the Mennonite Migration to Canada to Avoid the Draft," Mennonite Quarterly Review, Berne, Ind., v. 45 (July, 1971), pp. 219-249.
55. Moundridge Journal, June 20, 1918; McPherson Freeman, June 21, 1918.
56. Richard Maxwell Brown, "The American Vigilante Tradition," pp. 121-148, in Violence in America (Washington, D. C., Staff Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1969), ed. by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr.


text:
TD Jakes, Joel Osteen to Share Stage at 2012 Leadership Conference
Two of American's biggest megachurch pastors – Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House and Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church, both in Texas – will share the same stage at the 2012 International Pastors & Leadership Conference.
The three-day conference, scheduled to take place May 3-5 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., promises to address the most pressing needs of today's church and bring together some of the biggest Christian leaders in the world today. Besides Jakes and Osteen, Bishop Tudor Bismark from New Life Covenant Church in Harare, Zimbabwe, Bishop Noel Jones from the City of Refuge Church in Gardena, Calif., and Dr. Cynthia James, a Christian psychologist providing counseling to more than 140 pastors, will be some of the names present at the event.
The conference is aimed at both pastors and their wives, as well as church executives and their administrative support staffs, and will present strategies for how to balance the business of church with the spiritual needs of the congregation and community at large.
What is unique about the event is that it will allow some very prominent pastors, such as Jakes and Osteen, to network and work together, which they do not get to do too often throughout the year with their busy schedules and obligations to their own congregations. Although the conference will have a big focus on senior pastors and look at operational strategies for large churches, it will also have a forum to address the holistic needs of churches of any size.
"Leadership is not just the exclusive domain of the senior pastor. Rather, it is a responsibility shared among those who lay a solid foundation to ensure a structure's upward stability and proper functioning at every level," said Bishop T.D. Jakes in a press release.
The theme of this year, called "The Mission is Not Impossible," will address some of the biggest hardships facing pastors today and look at ways to overcome them. Some of the topics on hand will be the uncertain economy, which continues to pose questions for church finances, the moral failure among leaders, and how pastors can build up their congregation and bring their church up to the next level.
The official website for the event also says that this year there will be more space, more sessions and more empowerment. This year's conference also includes new workshops such as one featuring live demonstrations in the areas of dance ministry and praise & worship. It promises a more intimate/interactive setting for church leaders and professionals.
The conference, led by Bishop Jakes, has been gathering leaders from around the world since 1995, and is reportedly one of the most successful annual church conferences in the United States.
More than 6,000 church leaders from 25 different nations around the world attended the 2011 International Pastors & Leadership Conference last year, where they learned what to do when a crisis strikes and they need to keep their church together. Also staged in Orlando, the conference brought in around $6.5 million to the region, according to the visitors' bureau.
Bishop Jakes gives a short preview of the upcoming conference in the clip below, promising that it will be "amazing:"

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Was this rape?
Heather Corinna replies:So, I got my boyfriend really horny, and I told him we weren't going to have sex anymore today and that I didn't want to be fingered, but he put his hand down my pants anyways. I kept saying no because I didn't want it, but he's stronger than me and ended up fingering me anyways. Afterward, he said he was sorry, but this wasn't the first time, he always does it and he always says but you like it, like that's supposed to make it better. Is this rape or am I in a safe relationship? Because besides when it comes to sex, he's the best boyfriend I've ever had.
Rape is when someone forces, coerces or nags you to do ANY kind of sexual activity you don't want to engage in, or when someone has sex ON you or TO you, rather than 100% WITH you.
A partner forcing his hands into your pants and fingering you when you do not want that is a rape. Whether or not it feels good in some way physically, or even brings you to orgasm doesn't make it not rape. What makes it rape is that you said no -- or, more aptly, you did not say yes -- and he purposefully denied you to the right to that no by doing what he wanted to do -- and you did not -- anyway. You say he's stronger than you, which tells me that you feel that not only does he have the ability to overpower you, it also suggests to me that he has: that these instances have been the kind where you feel like if you pushed him away, he'd push back instead of backing off, or that is what has happened.
Saying sorry afterwards also doesn't mean it isn't rape, and if he has kept doing this, he isn't sorry. Someone earnestly sorry wouldn't keep doing the thing they're so sorry for doing.
If this is something that has happened more than once -- really, even if it happened the once -- then in my book this relationship is not safe sexually, it's a sexually abusive relationship. If this is still, even in being abusive, as good as things have gotten for you with a partner, know that because one relationship was sexually abusive and another seems less so, or less frequently so doesn't mean it's good. It just means that you've had an unfortunate history with partners when it comes to sex, so your grading curve is low.
It is NOT safe to be around ANYONE who does not allow you to say no to ANYTHING and respect that no. It is not safe to be around anyone who forces you into any kind of sex. The only smart advice I could give you in the interest of your well-being is to get away from this guy and stay away from this guy. He's not safe.
Now, it's hard for me to know what you mean when you say you "got him really horny." Obviously, if you mean you were playing a game with the intent to manipulate him into feeling a certain way, knowing from the start that you intended to make this some kind of non-negotiated powerplay, then that is something you need to stop doing with people. When someone does that, it still doesn't make it somehow okay for a person to force sex, but it may put you in situations more likely to be unsafe for you, and using sex as any sort of means to manipulate is never okay.
If you don't mean that, but mean that you two simply were fooling around, and he got aroused and then you just weren't feeling like having sex anymore, it isn't your responsibility to satiate him with whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. If he wants more sex any partner isn't up to, he always -- just like you, I or anyone else does -- has the options of using his own two hands for himself to masturbate.
It sounds to me like you do know that this isn't right, and that this is sexually abusive. If you're sticking around this guy because he is less abusive than boyfriends before, and you're feeling like this is as good as it's going to get, know that you're wrong. Real partners -- people who ACT like partners, treating the other person with just as much care and respect as they treat themselves with -- don't act like this, and don't rape. Real partners are very invested in being sure that everything they're doing sexually with their partner is something their partners very much wants to do, feels really good about -- physically and emotionally -- and back off from something very quickly when a partner says no. Bonafide partners ARE out there, you just have to be willing to accept nothing less, and kick anyone to the curb pronto who isn't being one.
If it seems like you're kind of trapped in a pattern of ending up with sexually abusive guys, it can be a good idea to take a substantial break from dating and sexual relationships for a while, to get your footing back, and to be able to really take a good look at those patterns. That can help you to see some warning signs a bit better from the onset, and to give you some breathing room to remember what it's like to not be involved in any sexual abuse.
Taking that time also lets you sort of recharge your own power so that if this sort of thing ever happens with someone again, you feel capable and powerful enough to walk away, the first time, without looking back or sticking around for more. When something like this happens with someone once, it'll almost always keep on happening: the only way to make it stop is to get away from the person doing it, full-stop. Often, too, when a woman comes into a relationship being very clear on her boundaries and very strong and unwavering when it comes to ONLY tolerating being treated with respect, guys like this stop coming around: they tend to want an easier mark.
Lastly? In a good relationship, and a safe relationship, no one aspect of it will seem like it doesn't fit with the others. In other words, with someone who treats you with care, kindness and respect in how you talk, in when you're out with friends and family, in how they talk ABOUT you, in the friendship you have with them overall, the sex, too, will usually be caring and mutually wanted and satisfying. In a healthy relationship, love and kindness are consistent, not limited to only some areas, and absent in others. Someone who isn't kind to you in how they talk to you, for instance, but seems great in every other way, isn't great at all.
It should also be said that in a good many abusive relationships, the sex is still "good" for some abused partners, even though often the reason it is good is because their abuser is getting off on ownership of them, or in how pleasing a partner makes THEM feel like a better person in some way. But if any one aspect of a relationship is not safe, then NO part of that relationship is safe: in safe relationships, it is ALL safe, not just in parts.
I hope that you can get away from this, Samy, and feel as good about it as you should. You say he's stronger than you, but this is a way you can be stronger than he is, by standing up for yourself and refusing to be mistreated by anyone. His muscles or size can't do a darn thing to you when you're nowhere near him anymore.


text:
Sets or drops the AUTOUPGRADE attribute for a database.
Embedded, Interactive, Module, ODBC, JDBC.
When a database is set to attribute AUTOUPGRADE, the database system will keep track of changes to tables, indexes and constraints in the database. The upgrade process is performed by the following steps:
1Initially a database (i.e. system databank and associated databank files) is copied from development environment to a production system.
2Changes are made to the original development database. Changes such as create table and alter table are kept track as the AUTOUPGRADE attribute has been set.
3When all changes are completed, the updated system databank is copied from the development system to the production system. (Note that only sysdb is copied.)
4The auto-upgrade is now performed as tables are accessed in the databanks that use the old table definition. Upgrades may, for example, add new columns to a table. When this is done the table is reloaded with the new column in place. During the upgrade new constraints are not validated. Instead, the constraints are applied when rows are modified in subsequent use of the table.
Note:When adding constraints to a table within a database applying AUTOUPGRADE, the WITHOUT CHECK option must be used. See ALTER TABLE to find out the consequences of this.
When creating a unique index within a database applying AUTOUPGRADE, the WITHOUT CHECK option must be used. See CREATE INDEX to find out the consequences of this.
When a table is found missing in a database with the AUTOUPGRADE attribute, the table will automatically be created. The table is initially empty. In addition, if a databank file is missing the databank is automatically created when AUTOUPGRADE is in effect.
SYSADM is the only ident allowed to execute the ALTER DATABASE statement.
The Mimer SQL shadowing functionality cannot be used together with the automatic upgrade feature. When setting the AUTOUPGRADE attribute on a database, following CREATE SHADOW statements will fail. And vice versa, when having databank shadows in the system it will not be possible to enable the AUTOUPGRADE attribute.
The AUTOUPGRADE attribute must be set when the database is set into production for the first time. This is essential for the upgrade functionality to work properly, otherwise automatic upgrade cannot be performed.
When dropping the AUTOUPGRADE attribute there is no way to come back to automatic upgrade for the database. All upgrade information gathered will be dropped. If restoring the AUTOUPGRADE attribute after dropping it, a new starting point for automatic upgrade is created. This means that upgrade information is gathered again, but upgrade cannot be performed from earlier system databank versions.
The AUTOUPGRADE attribute provides an advanced, but also restricted, method for automatic upgrade which is mainly aimed for mobile devices using remote upgrading. The functionality is not recommended for enterprise application environments.
Using the AUTOUPGRADE attribute gives certain implications when adding table constraints, see Adding a Table Constraint.
Set the database to AUTOUPGRADE.
Standard Compliance
Standard |
Compliance |
Comments |
Mimer SQL extension |
The ALTER DATABASE statement is a Mimer SQL extension. |


text:
Mayor Bloomberg is a wretched human being. He's an ultra-rich limousine liberal who wants to impose his views on ordinary people.
I've previously written about his statist efforts to ban bake sales, and I've noted with mixed feelings his proposal to tell food stamp recipients what they're allowed to buy.
Now he wants to criminalize large sodas. Holman Jenkins writes about this silly idea in the Wall Street Journal.
Mike Bloomberg's move to regulate the size of sodas sold in his city illustrates why it's a good thing he is a mayor of New York and not the czar of all the Russias. American big cities tend to be one-party states to begin with, but at least their totalitarian impulses end up being merely cute because they're so easy to evade. Under the Bloomberg plan, any cup or bottle of sugary drink larger than 16 ounces at a public venue would be verboten, beginning early next year. You'll still be able to buy as much Coke as you want in a supermarket. Go home and pour yourself a bucketful. As Mr. Bloomberg himself was the first to note, you'll also still be free to buy two medium drinks in place of today's Big Gulp at ballgames, theaters, delis and other venues where the ban would be in effect.
But Mr. Jenkins doesn't just mock Bloomberg for being a food nanny. He also makes an important point about public policy.
Here is the ultimate justification for the Bloomberg soft-drink ban, not to mention his smoking ban, his transfat ban, and his unsuccessful efforts to enact a soda tax and prohibit buying high-calorie drinks with food stamps: The taxpayer is picking up the bill. Call it the growing chattelization of the beneficiary class under government health-care programs. Bloombergism is a secular trend. Los Angeles has sought to ban new fast-food shops in neighborhoods disproportionately populated by Medicaid recipients, Utah to increase Medicaid copays for smokers, Arizona to impose a special tax on Medicaid recipients who smoke or are overweight. …So perhaps the famous "broccoli" hypothetical during the Supreme Court ObamaCare debate was not so fanciful after all. It flows naturally from the state's fiscal responsibility for your health that it will try to regulate your behavior, even mandating vegetable consumption.
Or, to summarize, the view of politicians is that the government can tell you how to live because it is paying for your healthcare. This is Mitchell's Law on steroids! One bad government policy leading to another awful government policy.
And it's not just Mayor Bloomberg pushing these policies. Other politicians have similar proposals, though it's quite likely that their main motive is to collect more tax revenue since they are focused on how to tax various "bad" foods.
But let's try not to be overly depressed. Here's an amusing cartoon on the topic.
I'm glad that people are mocking Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the Food Nazis. And it's good to see that the soft drink industry is fighting back, as seen by this Super Bowl commercial.
Maybe some day we'll get to the point where people have to smuggle food past government agents. This may sound absurd, but it's already happening in Norway.


text:
The lockstep movement of virtually everything in the market, be it up or down, is making it tough for investors to maintain diversified portfolios.
Correlation—or the tendency of various asset classes like stocks, currencies, commoditiesand bondsto move in the same direction—is at or near all-time highs by a variety of measures.
Whether it's sectors within the stock market, US equities compared to their foreign counterparts, or between stocks and commodities, the parallels are stunning. In some cases, correlation is at 80 percent or better, compared to an ideal that's closer to 40 percent.
Investors seek noncorrelated assets because they help balance a portfolio. If one industry—say food and beverage—is lagging, then it would be expected that an unrelated one—such as semiconductors—should be rising.
But in the past decade that reliability has slowly broken down, and it's pretty much collapsed since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007.
"What we find in equities is less an oscillation between risky markets and less risky ones, but rather a strong—and continuous—rise in correlations over the past 10 years," analysts at HSBC Global Research wrote in a recent study.
The firm cited "structural shifts" like the rapid growth of the $1 trillion exchange-traded funds industry over the past three years, as well as "geo-macro factors" that have made the global investing world more interdependent and thus pushing prices in the same direction.
The correlation phenomenon is finding its way increasingly into analyst discussions lately, with the primary goal of devising ways around the problem. Some suggestions include taking advantage of the few areas where correlation has broken down, such as emerging market debt against Treasurys; following gold's meteoric rise; and playing emerging and frontier markets that are differing from global trends.
There's even an increasingly popular index that allows investors to buy options on correlation—the CBOE Correlation Index, which is 2 years old and gauges correlation by looking at contracts on the entire S&P 500 index against those on individual contracts. HSBC says the index may soon overtake the CBOE's Volatility Index in popularity as a market indicator.
But the problem has no easy solution, while a multitude of factors makes putting together a truly diversified portfolio an arduous task and betrays the popular notion that this has become a stock-picker's market.
A Changing Marketplace
In a broad stocks vs. bonds sense, making a portfolio broadly diversified isn't that tricky: A 60-40 or so allocation of stocks to bonds at least cushions risk that way, so long as the two classes continue their traditional inverse relationship.
But investors also need diversification within stock categories. Should the broader market start tanking, other sectors within it should withstand the storm.
Standard & Poor's 500 stocks have been correlated, or moved in the same direction up or down, 75 percent of the time since January 2007. That compares to a historical average of 39 percent and makes traditional safety areas like consumer staples and health care harder to rely on.
"Investors are getting buffeted by so many headwinds. Every other week we go positive or negative," says Sam Stovall, S&P's chief equity strategist. "It's like pulling petals off a daisy—the market loves me, the market loves me not."
ETFs are but one cause cited for high correlations. They are composed like mutual funds but trade like stocks and either track indices or are composed of a basket of stocks that can be reliably expected to move like an index—either a broad one like the S&P, Dow or Nasdaq, or narrower ones like the Dow transports and other industry-specific indices.
High-frequency trading, with its computerized programs and rapid-fire movements, has taken over 56 percent of market volume so it also has exerted major influence as retail investors flee the equity markets.
And the globalization of markets also has played a role, hampering the ability of investors to use emerging markets as a hedge against the US.
"Volatility in the entire portfolio has just gone up because the correlations are much higher than they used to be," says Brian Nick, investment strategist at Barclays Wealth in New York. "As a matter of course, a 50-50 portfolio of stocks and bonds was more volatile in the last three years than it has been in the five years before that."
Looking Around the World
Looking for 'Decoupling'
In analyst parlance, "decoupling" means when investment classes that normally would move together—think stocks and yields on Treasurys—start to break apart.
In a world of high correlation, investors will take diversification any way they can get it, including through decoupling.
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch analysts have released a series of research notes lately examining both decoupling and correlations as the market looks for effective hedging techniques.
"One of the most interesting statistical themes in (emerging market) debt over the past year has been correlation breakdowns," firm analysts wrote recently. "These breakdowns are noteworthy to mention because they offer attractive diversification benefits."
The firm has found, for instance, that emerging market debt and US Treasurys have seen a correlation breakdown, providing a diversification opportunity. In addition, emerging market currencies have seen correlation slip compared to Latin American and Asian denominations.
At the same time, Nick says Barclays is moving investors into the long end of the Treasury curve—such as 10-year notes and 30-year bonds—to diversify.
He and others also say using various long-short strategies still can be effective, but the market remains at the mercy of months like May, when 70 percent of the trading days saw at least 85 percent of all stocks move in the same direction.
"There's value in being able to go longs and shorts, it's just as not as glaring as it was earlier," Nick says. "Because you're seeing these landslides, these are very tough days to be a stock-picker. You're at the mercy of whether we had good data."
Investors have also tried going global with their portfolios, but that also has proven to be problematic.
The HSBC study looked at the MSCI All Country World Indexand found its components to be correlated strongly among US, European and many emerging market nations.
It did find that Japan along with smaller markets like Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Jordan have lower correlation to other world markets.
Still, investors continue to look to foreign markets for diversification hopes.
"You can't just be in domestic stocks. You certainly have to have an international flavor or exposure in your portfolio," says Paul Simon, CIO at Tactical Allocation Group in Birmingham, Mich. "You truly want to look at asset classes that have the strongest fundamentals, that are in a secular trend. Even in the short term you may have some noise and they may become correlated, but as you move further out on the time scale ultimately fundamentals reassert themselves."
Simon also believes gold, which continues to scale to record highs and has done so regardless of equity market performance, is an effective diversification tool as much as it is a flight to safety and a hedge against inflation.
In the past year, according to the HSBC study, the lowest correlation among industries has been 65 percent (autos and household products) and 69 percent for pharma and retailers, while the unlikely pairing of food and beverage with semiconductors has provided a 79 percent correlation.
Autos and household products have manged to avoid high correlation ratios.
A Matter of Mindset
Ultimately, though, diversification may be hard to achieve simply because of market sentiment. Despite low VIX readings, market volume, sentiment surveys and fund flows show there remains plenty of fear—or at least uncertainty—in the market.
And with any dose of significant news, particularly when it comes to the economy, the few retail investors still in the market join with the dominance of high-frequency traders to pull the market strongly in one direction or the other.
"Investors are like fainting goats. If they get startled, their limbs freeze and they fall over."
"Investors are like fainting goats. If they get startled, their limbs freeze and they fall over," says S&P's Stovall. "Sneak up behind them and say 'bear market' and they freeze up and move into a more defensive area. If they feel danger is gone they move back into cyclical areas."
The main antidote to excessive correlation, Stovall says, is an economy that returns to normalcy which in turn will lead to a normalized market where defensive sectors can withstand market downturns.
"What it really shows is that despite having a large number of investments in your portfolio, unless you've got Treasurys in there typically you're not diversified," he says. "If you've got large-cap, mid-cap, small-cap, developed markets and even to some extent REITs (real estate investment trusts) and commodities, if the market is going up they're all going up.
"All would benefit from an improvement in economic growth, which translates into an improvement in corporate earnings which translates to a rise in asset prices."


text:
You can transfer any element selected in either the Layouts or Menus views into a number of different browsers for further examination. This is done using the standard actions commands that are available in the Object menu. See Performing operations on selected objects for details. These commands are a useful way of finding out more information about the CAPI objects you use in an interface.
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Unix version) - 12 Feb 2015


text:
Hawaii's cultural roots.
Although urban development, economic growth, and external influences have dramatically changed the way of life for many residents on Oahu, some traditional beliefs and cultural practices remain firmly entrenched. Taro—or kalo, as the root vegetable is locally known—has been a staple food for as long as Hawaiians have existed in Hawaii, and it is still revered as the giver of mana, or life force.


text:
No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.
Photo by Siddy Lam via flickr.
Why then, is writer's block endemic?
The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.
We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn't, and if we're insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker's block after all this practice?
Writer's block isn't hard to cure.
Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.
I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly — you don't need more criticism, you need more writing.
Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.
If you know you have to write something every single day, even a paragraph, you will improve your writing. If you're concerned with quality, of course, then not writing is not a problem, because zero is perfect and without defects. Shipping nothing is safe.
The second best thing to zero is something better than bad. So if you know you have write tomorrow, your brain will start working on something better than bad. And then you'll inevitably redefine bad and tomorrow will be better than that. And on and on.
Write like you talk. Often.
(Update: Ira Glass agrees.)
Talker's block [Seth's Blog]
Seth Godin has written 13 books that have been translated into more than 30 languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and most of all, changing everything.


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Last month I talked about the thought process behind pulling together my stage rig. This month, I'll take you through a more detailed description.
Last month I talked about the thought process behind pulling together my stage rig. This month, I'll take you through a more detailed description.
As you see from the rig diagram (Fig.1), I have a combined 80' of input cable from the guitar to the input of the rack, which will totally suck the life out of a signal. So we plug my initial 30' guitar lead into a Moollon Active D.I. pedal located on stage. The pedal's buffer circuit boosts the signal through the 50' run to the rack and amplifiers, usually placed off-stage next to my tech Andy Wolf's workstation.
The Line 6 Rack Modeler effects and the pedals in the drawer are all connected individually to the Bradshaw (C.A.E. – Custom Audio Electronics) switching system, a single-spaced rack unit at the bottom of the rack assembly. Each effect is switched in and out of the signal chain. Individual patches on my MIDI controller save any combination. The output is fed to any combo of amplifiers, also programmed as part of each patch. I'll have anywhere from one to five patches per song, depending how silly it gets.
I have two input lines to the 65-London head feeding into both channels, allowing for either or both and combined with other amps.
You'll notice the Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor pedals in pedal drawer (Fig.2). These are Roland's take on DBX-style noise reduction, and I have these placed after each of the potentially noisy pedals – fuzz, distortion and compressor. The pedals aren't always noisy, but in combination with others they can be. The NS-2s eliminate all noise so I can have all on and the sound is dead quiet – with the guitar volume rolled off. Plus, I like the way the NS-2 boosts the clarity of the signal.
You'll also notice the Supro Super in the rig diagram, a late '50s single-ended 6- watt amp, like a Fender Champ, with an 8" speaker. We throw a Sennheiser e609 in front (or earlier MD409 versions – used on all cabinets), feed it thru the monitors and it sounds as big as the rest of the amps.
The Fishman Acoustic amp allows for monitoring my acoustic sounds onstage as well as what I hear in the in-ear monitors. The D.I. output on the amp feeds to the console. My pedalboard has a CAE MIDI Controller, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal, Moollon Wah, and controller pedals for the three Line 6 units. Figure 3 shows my Variac AC power setup that I've discussed in detail in a previous column. My entire rig – rack and amps – is powered by this unit. This affords clean hum-free power regardless of how crappy the local AC power may be, which is easily 60% of the time. We set the Variac for an output of 120 volts AC.
See you next month!
Peter Stroud


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Save The Pyramids
ANNOUNCEMENT: IN RESPONSE TO A PLEA FROM THE PEOPLE OF PORTSMOUTH = PORTSMOUTH CITY COUNCIL (PCC)VOTED AND GAVE A 13 MONTH REPRIEVE TO THE PYRAMIDS CENTRE 9 MONTHS AGO. OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS PORTSMOUTH CITY COUNCIL WILL MAKE THE FINAL IRREVERSIBLE DECISION ON THE PYRAMIDS FUTURE. YOU SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THE COUNCIL IS ENDORSING AN ICE SKATING RINK INSTEAD OF THE EXISTING SWIMMING POOL AND MUSIC VENUE; NOT IN ADDITION. THE FRIENDS OF THE PYRAMIDS ACTIVELY CAMPAIGN TO RETAIN THE EXISTING LEISURE FACILITIES AS A FUN SWIMMING POOL AND ENTERTAINMENTS VENUE. THIS IS A PLEA TO THOSE PEOPLE THAT HAVEN'T ALREADY SIGNED THE PETITION TO DO SO AND EXPRESS YOUR WISHES IN FAVOUR OF RETAINING THIS FACILITY OR IT COULD BE LOST FOREVER. The Pyramids is a leisure complex in Southsea. This year is the 20th Anniversary since opening. Portsmouth City Council are proposing to close it and are in the process of draft planning for the potential of re-developing the site. It is the only Fun Pool for children in the local area as well as home to the Over 50's Aquafit club, Mother & Toddler, swimming classes, disabled sessions and many other events held in previous years. In addition to the swimming pool, The Pyramids Centre also currently houses the city's only mid-size (1150 capacity)music venue. Portsmouth-based promotions company,PVC, has staged a formidable line-up of acts since 1992 (including Radiohead, Muse, Lily Allen, Cold Play, Arctic Monkeys amongst many others) have performed to hundreds or thousands of people. It has greatly developed the cultural profile of Portsmouth and will leave a huge gap in the market, as well as depriving live music audiences. As a Leisure Complex it is the only pool in the area that caters for families and, more importantly, for children and adults with disabilities with gentle walk-in slope for access. Other pools do not have communal family changing rooms which is essential if you have a child with special needs. If both the Pyramids and Victoria pool close, as planned, that will leave only Eastney baths in the southern half of Portsea island . The closure will affect everyone in the local community. It is a place where people keep-fit, socialise and where children can express themselves in the Fun Pool without the constraints of other swimming pools. The government are concerned with children and obesity and society's carbon footprint. Portsmouth City Council are going against the fundamental policies that it should be following. We will be forced to drive out of the city and for the disadvantaged this will surely stop them going at all. Road conjestion in and out of the city is not good and it is known that when the new northern shopping quarter starts work the roads will be further impeeded. It is for Portsmouth City Council to address the management of the site and bring the facilities up-to-date. Society complains that children's behaviour has worsened then why take all the facilities away from them. It is proven that if you direct their energy then crime rate falls - proven locally by a sports project in Gosport presently run and organised by the police. Crime and nuisance in the area has dramatically fallen. Where will the children go to have FUN On the streets bored Please listen to the public and keep Southsea seafront alive - it should be a showcase for the City of Portsmouth, the jewel in the crown, to take pride and to advertise the wonderful facilities and open green common. Not close them down and make it a ghost town! PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION ASAP AS THERE IS LITTLE TIME TO VOICE OUR OPINIONS. Karen Winslade(Parent) & FRIENDS OF THE PYRAMIDS


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WPF Responds to FTC's Report on Privacy
WPF Comments on the FTC Privacy Report — The World Privacy Forum filed comments with the FTC in response to its preliminary staff report, Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers. In our comments, we urge the FTC to take affirmative steps to protect consumer privacy online and offline. Our comments include a brief history of privacy self regulation, and point out how privacy self regulation has consistently failed. The comments also discuss Do Not Track, and urge the FTC to take a broader look at tracking protections for consumers. WPF also specifically requested that the FTC identify credit reporting bureaus subject to Fair Credit Reporting Act regulations and assist consumers in locating those bureaus.


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A volcano on a New Zealand island erupted Monday with a towering blast of ash and scalding steam as tourists were exploring the moon-like surface, killing five people and leaving perhaps two dozen others missing.
Police said the site was still too dangerous hours later for rescuers to search for the missing.
"My god," Michael Schade tweeted as he posted video of the eruption. "My family and I had gotten off it 20 minutes before, were waiting at our boat about to leave when we saw it. Boat ride home tending to people our boat rescued was indescribable."
His video showed a wall of ash and steam around White Island and a helicopter badly damaged and covered in ash. He said one woman was badly injured but seemed "strong" by the end.
The terrifying disaster immediately raised questions of why people were allowed to visit the island some 30 miles (50 kilometres) off mainland New Zealand after scientists had noted an uptick in volcanic activity in recent weeks.
Police Deputy Commissioner John Tims said the number of missing was in the double digits but he couldn't confirm an exact number. Fewer than 50 people were on the island when it erupted, and 23 had been taken off, including the five dead, he said. Tims said there had been no contact with any of the missing.
He said New Zealanders and foreign tourists were among the dead, missing or injured. Most of the 18 who survived were injured, some suffering severe burns, he said.
Some of the visitors were passengers from the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Ovation of the Seas.
"We will offer all possible assistance to our guests and local authorities. Please keep all those affected in your prayers," the cruise line said.
The ship had left Sydney last week and had been scheduled to sail to the New Zealand capital of Wellington on Monday night, but Royal Caribbean said it would instead remain in port on neighbouring North Island until more was learned about the situation.
The eruption sent a plume of steam and ash about 12,000 feet (3,660 metres) into the air.
The GeoNet agency, which monitors volcanoes and earthquakes in New Zealand, had raised the alert level on White Island on Nov. 18 from 1 to 2, on a scale where 5 represents a major eruption, noting an increase in sulfur dioxide gas, which originates from magma deep in the volcano. It also said at the time that over the previous weeks, volcanic tremors had increased from weak to moderate strength.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who travelled to the region, said the focus remained on the search-and-rescue mission for now and questions about whether tourists should be visiting would be addressed later.
Brad Scott, a volcanologist with research group GNS Science, said the alert level was often raised and then later dropped again without any eruption. He said there hadn't been any major incidents with tourists visiting the island in the past, though there had been some close calls.
Scott said it was not for him to say whether the island was safe enough to host tourists immediately before Monday's eruption.
After the disaster, GeoNet raised its alert level to 4, later dropping it to 3.
"In the scheme of things, for volcanic eruptions, it is not large," said Ken Gledhill from GeoNet. "But if you were close to that, it is not good."
White Island is New Zealand's most active cone volcano. About 70% of the volcano lies under the sea.
Twelve people were killed on the island in 1914 when it was being mined for sulfur. Part of a crater wall collapsed and a landslide destroyed the miners' village and the mine itself.
The remains of buildings from another mining enterprise in the 1920s are now a tourist attraction. The island became a private scenic reserve in 1953, and daily tours allow more than 10,000 people to visit every year.
The island is also known by the indigenous Maori name Whakaari.
Perry reported from Wellington, New Zealand.
Mark Baker And Nick Perry, The Associated Press
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Architects: Atelier Riri
- Area: 98 m²
- Year: 2009
Photographs:Fernando Gomulya
Text description provided by the architects. In Indonesian, Kiri means left. An analogy to represent the shape of a house that give an impression as if it's leaning to the left. Kiri's House is an application of a design for a house that refers to the owner's personal character: compact rooms to create practical living style. With an area of land 6x15 meters, this house was designed to be functional. Shape no longer became our first priority. Building mass, in fact, took the simplest form, four side geometry.
Rooms were programmed to suit the owner's cultural life. It creates open space which was came from the result of rooms' integration and reduction of needs that was considered less important to be placed on ground level. Equipped with moveable furniture (wheeled), the area on ground level then provides space for complex activity. Meanwhile, private area on the second story was equipped with built-in furniture.
Both levels is bound with a corridor that taken a shape like a sidecourt on the right side of the building. That way, the building looks like it has only 4.65 meter width and leaning to the left. On the side of the sidecourt, there's an open space.


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responds to the storm of abuse leveled at her for challenging sexist language and attitudes in an article and promotions from the Counterpunch website.
ON MAY 15, I submitted an article to the Counterpunch website, objecting to its treatment of Angelina Jolie's public disclosure of her recent preventative double mastectomy. This article has since appeared at both SocialistWorker.org and ZNet under the title "Why Counterpunch owes women an apology."
I will restate here that I was repulsed by the Counterpunch promo that appeared in my e-mail inbox on May 14 announcing, "Ruth Fowler unsnaps Angelina Jolie's bra and exposes privilege, health care and tits," linking to the article "Angelina Jolie Under the Knife: Of Privilege, Health Care and Tits."
I have no principled objection to using the word "tits." But all words must be judged within the literary and social context in which they are used, usually in the form of a phrase or sentence. As it happens, the word "tits"--often conjoined with "ass"--is one way in which women's bodies are systematically objectified and degraded in this society. (A brief Google search of "tits and ass" transports the reader to a host of online porn sites, many of them misogynous, displaying this point graphically.)
Millions of women experience this type of sexist degradation on a daily basis while walking down the street, when their bodies are loudly rated according to the perceived desirability of their individual body parts by male gawkers. If the women targeted by this uninvited abuse object to this treatment, the conversation often turns ugly, and the words "bitch" and "cunt" frequently make an appearance.
Anger against this sexist degradation if anything is on the rise today, as the Everyday Sexism Project--started just one year ago on Twitter and since gone viral--reveals clearly.
In this context, I found Fowler's article and its promotion--containing imagery of unsnapping a woman's bra and exposing her "tits"--both gratuitous and insulting, especially in the context of the current breast cancer epidemic. I objected not only to the use of sexist imagery, but also to the content of Fowler's article.
As a socialist, I am well aware of the class divide in this society, and have written numerous articles documenting the gross inequality in the profit-driven health care system, some of which have appeared on the Counterpunch website. I normally welcome other authors' insights on this urgent issue.
My critique of Fowler's article, however, was directed at wondering why, as I wrote, "Jolie has been singled out for such scorn" since she "neither created nor can resolve the health care crisis. That responsibility lies squarely with the medical-industrial complex, including its government lackeys, who sustain the class disparities of the for-profit health care system. The conditions are ripe for a movement that demands health care for all, but it must take aim at the appropriate target to be effective."
While I am committed to a class analysis, I am also well aware that women's oppression, including the degrading sexual objectification of women's bodies, is endemic to the capitalist system. My article was about sexism and the responsibility of those on the left (including self-proclaimed "radical" critics) to oppose it. Sexism is a serious matter, and it warrants a serious response.
I WAS therefore taken aback to receive the following "rejection" letter from Counterpunch managing editor Joshua Frank, which implied that the editors use the word "tits" to increase web traffic:
On May 15, 2013, at 8:06 PM, Josh Frank wrote:
Thanks for reading. You are upset by the word tits in the title? We like to entice folks to click and read. Glad you did. If you can direct the argument of your piece more toward a critique of Fowler's piece, instead of hollow rhetoric, we will be happy to consider it.
JoshSent from my iPhone, please excuse typos.
Later that evening, I received this missive from Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair:
From: Jeffrey St Clair
Date: Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:45 PMSharon
Honestly, this is one of the most reactionary things I've ever read. Read it over again. If we printed this, next thing you know you'll be being interviewed on the 700 Club by Pat Robertson. Really. What would Simone De Beauvoir think of this? Such piety over words.
Nowhere in the e-mails above did the Counterpunch editors contradict the notion that they were responsible for the language choices in question. On the contrary, they appeared self-righteous about their editorial decisions.
I was not surprised at their decision to refuse my piece--which, of course, is their right. I was surprised by their glib dismissal, however, particularly since I had been a regular Counterpunch contributor for a number of years. Most recently, editors Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair saw fit to include an article written by me in their collection of essays, Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published in May 2012.
If St. Clair, Frank or Fowler engaged in a serious debate (that was, after all, what I attempted to provoke), I would have welcomed it. Instead, they resorted to the tiresome technique known as "bait and switch" so often employed by those backed into an indefensible political corner. They simply changed the subject from one about sexism to a new one about "censorship." This technique is also known as "grasping at straws."
They quickly pounced on a new claim: They accused me and my comrade Sherry Wolf (who voiced a similar objection to sexism at Counterpunch on her Facebook page) of having demanded that they "aggressively censor" Fowler--as if we had put through an emergency call for assistance from the Christian Right, with Al and Tipper Gore waiting in the wings, eager to pounce. Perhaps we would soon put through a call to the FCC and attempt a government crackdown?
[Fact check: It seems that, unless the Counterpunch editors have ceded their own editorial control, they remain responsible for the content that appears on the website that bears its name and its promotion. Indeed, Frank admitted, "We did talk about changing 'tits' to 'breasts'... We wouldn't have picked that word on our own," but deferred to the word choice of this woman writer. My own experience as a woman writer at Counterpunch was that the editors frequently and unceremoniously replaced my own titles with those they preferred.]
THE SMIRKING editors (egged on by their shrinking coterie of equally smug "admirers" at the Counterpunch Facebook page) thereby magically transformed the debate over sexism into a passionate defense of their own civil liberties. In this new context, my voiced opposition to sexism morphed into a "reactionary" stand.
Counterpunch's very right to use the word "tits" was apparently now in peril. Surely, they argued, those opposed to sexism must simply be opposed to sex! It must be simply the word "tits" their critics objected to, not its sexist usage in the context of breast cancer. We critics must be therefore aligned with all the forces of reaction aiming to quell the right to freedom of expression, which Counterpunch courageously champions on a daily basis!
While I am hardly one to keep smelling salts at my side lest someone let loose a profanity in my presence, it is absolutely ludicrous to associate Sherry Wolf with the 700 Club crowd. Anyone familiar with this anti-authoritarian, frequently potty-mouthed, proud lesbian would laugh heartily at this preposterous suggestion. Indeed, she mischievously proposed to the Counterpunch editors: "I suggest this nifty title for your post after Angelina Jolie has her ovaries removed: "Rich Cunt Mutilates Pussy"--that should get you lots more readers!" I'm guessing Pat Robertson would not be inspired by Sherry's clever turn of phrase, much less aim to sign her up for his cause.
As the Everyday Sexism Project notes on its website, "In this 'liberal,' 'modern' age, to complain about everyday sexism or suggest that you are unhappy about the way in which women are portrayed and perceived renders you likely to be labeled as 'uptight,' 'prudish,' a 'militant feminist,' or a 'bra burner.'" Indeed, there is a longstanding caricature of feminists as man-hating and/or sex-hating, bitter and humorless women who find sexism everywhere they look.
This odious caricature, while regularly employed by those on the right, also has an indefensible legacy among men on the left. It is an unfortunate fact that many men from the 1960s New Left ridiculed attempts by women to call attention to their own oppression within the larger movement.
As early as 1964, when women active in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) wrote a position paper called "The Position of Women in SNCC," leader Stokely Carmichael replied (allegedly in jest), "The only position for women in SNCC is prone." In a similar vein, a Berkeley underground newspaper stated in 1968, "Our line on the women's trip--LET THEM EAT COCK." Those women who failed to appreciate all this hilarity were informed that they must simply lack a sense of humor.
These were not isolated events but regular occurrences, leading to the steady exodus of women's liberationists from organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the late 1960s.
Counterpunch was not satisfied with employing the tiresome caricature described above. St. Clair added a strong dose of "slut shaming." Slut shaming is a form of "victim blaming" directed against women for behaviors that are deemed exceedingly sexual, implying that they are responsible for any harm that comes their way. This approach is summed up in the all-too-familiar phrase, "She got what she was asking for."
St. Clair wrote, "I will say that I don't think it would been have morally 'wrong' for me to substitute the word 'tit' for 'breast,' since Angelina has herself flaunted her 'tits,' that is sexualized them in films promoting the CIA, assassination and looting of indigenous cultures." In a separate comment, St. Clair remarked, "As for us 'sexualizing' Angelina Jolie, how is that even possible? Her self-sexualization has been totalizing & she made a lot of millions doing it."
LIKE SCHOOLYARD bullies, the Counterpunch gang then scrambled around and slung mud from a variety of directions in the hope that something would stick. They hurled a range of accusations in my and Sherry's general direction, which landed together in an incomprehensible mess.
On the one hand, Sherry and I were accused of promoting "identity politics" and "political correctness"--which are apparently stand-alone offenses now in some left quarters. St. Clair and Frank also advanced the fiction that we expected "Ruth Fowler to apologize to herself," as if women are not capable of promoting reactionary ideas that insult other women.
Continuing this ridiculous train of thought, St. Clair targeted my history as a smoker to ask, "shouldn't Sharon, applying her own logic, publicly apologize to all lung cancer and emphysema victims for giving financial support to the cancer industry? Surely this habit has caused more far more real harm, minute as the damage might be, to real lives than Ruth's provocative use of the word 'tit'?"
Other insults consisted of standard red-baiting fare, targeting my and Sherry's organizational affiliations. These included both denunciations as being "Stalin-like" and "Trots"; a "narrow 'left' worldview"; "underestimating the importance of Seattle in '99"; "follow[ing] the latest cause du jour;" "ignoring the genocidal acts and throwing support behind Libyan and Syrian 'rebels'"; and, of course, the alleged crimes of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Geez, all we did was object to sexism.
Finally, St. Clair boasted, "Fowler has written a response that will destroy her [me]...I almost feel sorry for her [me]." Even I found myself eagerly anticipating the appearance of this response that would result in my impending destruction. What a letdown when it arrived. (Consider me not "destroyed.")
Fowler's response recycled more attempts at "tits" shock and awe, this time also repeatedly referring to Jolie as "dumb," while asserting that those who objected to Fowler's contempt toward Jolie are "sad starfuckers."
Although St. Clair had publicly declared that Fowler's second article was a response to mine, Fowler's response did not even dignify my critique by linking to it or even acknowledging me by name. Instead, I was dismissed as "Sharon whatsit in The Socialist Worker," and my critique as written by a "paternalistic idiot." Once again, the issue of sexism went unaddressed.
I must say, however, that when Counterpunch puts someone in the doghouse, they mean business! Actually, it feels more like an outhouse in here.
Perhaps Counterpunch should just cut to the chase and henceforth refer to that potentially deadly disease as "tit cancer"? That should get them a few extra web hits from their disproportionately older and male readership.
Now, even more than before, Counterpunch owes women an apology. In the meantime, a visit to the Everyday Sexism Project might help to update their awareness of rising feminist anger among women--which, for the record, has no association with the 700 Club.


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This third edition of the classic "how-to" guide incorporates recent changes in policies and procedures of the NIH, with particular emphasis on the role of the Internet in the research proposal process. Completely revised and updated, it reveals the secrets of success used by seasoned investigators, and directs the reader through the maze of NIH bureaucracies. In addition to providing a detailed overview of the entire review process, the book also includes hundreds of tips on how to enhance proposals, excerpts from real proposals, and extensive Internet references. This book is essential to all scientists involved in the grant writing process.
Key Features:
* Considers the reviewer's perspective
* Detailed presentation of the review process
* All sections of the R01 proposal are reviewed
* Hundreds of tips to enhance proposals
* Includes the many recent changes in NIH policies
* Includes many excerpts from real proposals
* Provides extensive Internet references
* Increased competitiveness
* Better priority scores
* Less chance of triage
* Increased award rates
* Uses the system to advantage
* Reveals strategies used by the "old pros"