“It is important for the Archdiocese of Boston, in this moment, to again apologize for the crimes and harm perpetrated against children by priests who held the trust and esteem of families and the community… Survivors and families who bear the wounds of these shameful acts are held with great tenderness in our prayers.” — A statement issued by the Archdiocese of Boston in response to the conviction of Paul Shanley, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest, who was found guilty of raping a boy in Massachusetts in 1980. Shanley, 74, may face a sentence of life in prison.

The Archdiocese of Boston has already agreed to pay 85 million dollars in order to settle over 500 civil suits relating to sexual abuse in the priesthood and consequent cover up scandals.

Mimi Hanaoka

Lt. Gen. James Mattis? See: “Killing is fun.”

An absolute disgrace, rotten to the Corps, and totally unbecoming behavior as a representative of the entire United States military both past and present to the eyes of the rest of the world!

By the time the DOD’s Office of Misinformation is done spinning the what and the why this once fine, upstanding, gung-ho leatherneck said, he’ll come out looking like Audie Murphy … But the only problem with that is the fact that unlike a true, humble hero like Audie, the only shots this Gen. Mattis has taken in the last 10 years were shots in the martini mixer that his unfortuanate personal footstool of a Sgt. Major had to operate…

Give me the likes of a real straight-shooting Marine like double Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, who spoke the truest words ever uttered about war: “War is a Racket!”

In The Fray Contributor

Kristin Ohlsen writes in “Love Doctors” (Utne magazine, January/February 2005) that in many psychology textbooks, case studies on altruism are only discussed in “those chapters that concentrate on abnormal behavior.” Yet, as Ms. Ohlsen acknowledges, skeptical treatments of research on selflessness and love as natural phenomena are not dominating research as much as they once had.

The Institute of Research Into Unlmited Love (IRUL), a Cleveland-based organization, awards grants to researchers who examine the origins and effects of altruistic love. Among their first objectives is to raise the scientific credibility of scholarship on love and inspire new ways of thinking about selfless behavior.    

“Is being selfless as much a part of being human as selfishness?” asks Stephen Post, director of IRUL and a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University. “… Freud thought human nature was nothing but a seething, boiling cauldron of self-interest, and Skinner concluded from his rat studies that human motivation was based on pleasure stimulation. These viewpoints were based on bad science and jaded pedagogical speculation, but they created a tremendous burden of proof for anyone who wanted to say otherwise.”

The IRUL, which has awarded millions in grant awards since its formation in July 2001, appears unstopped by burdens of proof they may face.  Most recently, they hosted a three-day conference entitled “The Love That Does Justice” with the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Unit.

Says Stephanie Preston, a grant recipient and psychologist at the University of Iowa: “… the overarching goal of learning about how people can feel love for other people is new and could have great implications for society.”

Toyin

“Actually, it’s quite a lot of fun to fight; you know, it’s a hell of a hoot. I like brawling; it’s fun to shoot some people,” claimed Lt. Gen. James Mattis of the U.S. Marine Corps, speaking about shooting people in Iraq.

Mattis was speaking about his experiences in Iraq at a recent panel discussion at the San Diego Convention Center in California, attended by about 200 people. Mattis went even further to state: “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil … you know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”  

According to Gen. Mike Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, Mattis has been “counseled” about his statements, but it appears that he will face no disciplinary action.  

Mimi Hanaoka

It’s been said in the United States that celebrities shouldn’t be using the limelight to state political opinions. It looks as though the president of Harvard University is expected to submit to the same etiquette. According to James Traub of The New York Times, Harvard University President and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers’ “provocative yodel” at an economics conference held on January 14 has “set off a worldwide avalanche of commentary and condemnation.”

Two op-ed pieces appearing in The New York Times by Olivia Judson and Charles Murray, respectively, are mavericks in the tide of controversy which, while ever-present in our country, Summers has somehow whipped into a frenzy by opening his mouth. Both Judson and Murray suggest that Summers’ comment should be entertained rather than dismissed as “a radical idea backed only by personal anecdotes and a fringe of cranks.” Scientific research in the field of innate male-female differences is one of the hottest around, and it is gaining momentum, according to Murray.

Unfortunately, at least as far as media representation is concerned, whether Summers had the right to  make such a controversial statement overshadows what Murray and Traub intimate is truly at stake: what Murray refers to as a “wholesale denial that certain bodies of scientific knowledge exist.”

In Traub’s article, Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker expressed dismay that Summers’ suggestion, in which he states that “the low representation of women scientists at universities might stem from, among other causes, innate differences between the sexes,” might not be appropriate to academic discourse:

“Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some academic rigor?”

“The commission found that (Sudan’s) government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks,” including “killing of civilians, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur.” Although some individuals might have perpetrated “acts with genocidal intent,” the government of Sudan “has not pursued a policy of genocide.”

— The results of the recent United Nations report, begun in October of 2004 at the behest of the UN Security Council, on whether genocide is taking place in Sudan.

The conflict is occurring in the western region of Sudan, and the Sudanese government stands accused of providing support and arms to the Arab Janjaweed militias that are engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleaning against Sudan’s black African population. Since February of 2003, the conflict has resulted in over 70,000 deaths and two million refugees.

The recent UN report — which contradicts the American declaration that genocide is currently occurring in Darfur — recommends that the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in The Hague try any specific cases of genocide and war crimes that may have occurred in the Sudan. Had the UN report concluded that genocide is occurring in Darfur, the UN would have been legally obligated to intervene to help end the conflict.

Mimi Hanaoka