Lovingkindness and Compassion

It just happened ...

Bang ... and wait ...

(Inspired by Haitians jumping ship in Miami)

Of the 20,000-plus persons who are detained by the INS on any given day, about 3,000 are asylum seekers. They are not criminals; the most they could be accused of was having improper documentation or none. They are treated worse than persons incarcerated in US prisons for murder. They are not guaranteed access to a lawyer; they must find out by themselves how to get one. If they do not have a lawyer with them at the hearings, they are six times more likely to be denied asylum and "removed" that is, deported. Their access to telephones and visitors is strictly controlled; although there are federal regulations for minimum standards in this regard, they are not routinely kept.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has specific rules about treatment of refugees and asylees, and the INS has disregarded all of them.

In the past 5 or 6 years treatment of persons seeking entrance to this country has become more and more punitive under national regulations. Last December in Oregon, the district office of the INS was exposed by a reporting team of The Oregonian as going beyond national guidelines in refusing entrance to Asians. Their treatment became so egregious that travel agencies in Japan were advising customers to choose any other destination than Portland. The district director was finally forced to resign, although he swore he was only following the rules. (Enforcing the rules is a matter of wide interpretation by INS officials, at the best of times.)

Tuesday, October 22, 2002 Why did Rome Fall?

It seems clear, then, that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon's period of happiness and prosperity. Some of the symptoms, at least, can be recognized. To take one example, in the first century of the empire there had still been a vigorous literature. But in the second century AD from Hadrian onward, apart from Suetonius' Biographies of the Emperors, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Latin literature is overcome by a sort of indolent apathy. The same apathy began to exhibit itself in municipal life. Financial burdens which were imposed on the local magistrates and senators. By the second century many cities had spent themselves into debt.

But there was no escape from the relentless regimentation, which pervaded all aspects of life. For regimentation was the end-result of the abdication of political freedom and of the pursuit of materialism. The welfare state had become despotism. This new and dreary type of empire still possessed sufficient power to hold the frontiers against the barbarians for another century.

10/22/02 7:57 PM – CPCC(17) – Anthropology (The Origin of Religion?)
Albert Einstein: “The Cosmos looks more and more like a great thought"

Could its mighty Army have saved Rome?

When one thinks of the Roman Empire, the first thing that may come to mind is the strength and stability provided by its army. It is widely held that the fortunes of Rome were directly tied to the prowess of her military. Many scholars have maintained that in the later period of the Empire, Rome's military might steadily declined for a variety of reasons. In the end it was this lack of security that allowed the barbarian hordes to topple what had once been the mightiest empire in the world

In essence, the Roman Empire crumbled due to insufficient economic power, which came about for a variety of reasons. It lacked the resources necessary to keep such a vast empire intact. The empire reached such a point that it could no longer support itself, becoming top heavy, and crashed down like a tower that had grown too high for its own foundation.