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(05/04/07 4:00am)
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.– He’s 90, and every morning he works out at the gym. He’s published his book. He’s starred in more than 80 movies and wouldn’t mind making more.\n“Trouble is,” says Kirk Douglas, half in jest, “there aren’t many scripts for an old man with impaired speech.”\nThe speech problem is the result of his stroke in 1991. Otherwise, he shows little evidence of his age. He walks briskly, the result of his lifelong adherence to physical fitness. His face is smooth, his eyes clear, his white hair sweeps back to neck length.\nKirk and Anne Douglas live in the upper range of Beverly Hills homes. Every room is filled with modernist paintings, sculptures and artifacts collected on their worldwide travels.\nThe house extends back to a large swimming pool surrounded by a sculpture garden. Douglas is proudest of larger-than-life metal figures of himself as a young and mature man.\nDouglas took a seat in the plush living room and talked of many things, particularly his new book, “Let’s Face It.”\n“I call the book ‘Let’s Face It’ because the world is in a mess,” he remarked. “My generation hasn’t done much to cure it. The world has the lowest esteem of my country. I dedicated the book to the next generation and to my seven grandchildren. I want them to look at the problems we have and try to bring our country back to the position we had, when we were respected around the world.”\nDouglas said he likes to talk to students at Kirk Douglas High School, a facility for troubled children in suburban Northridge that he and Anne help support. He tells the students of his hungry childhood in Amsterdam, N.Y.\n“I started life as a crook,” he said in the interview. He stole tomatoes, his favorite vegetables, from a neighbor’s tomato patch until he was caught and reprimanded. He invaded a chicken farm and robbed eggs, which he ate raw. The farmer apprehended him. His final crime was taking a tomato from a corner produce stand. He told his captor that he would give up a life of crime, and he did.\nDouglas marked his 90th birthday last December, joining such show business nonagenarians as Olivia de Havilland, Art Linkletter and Ernest Borgnine. Asked for his thoughts about turning 90, he grew somber.\n“One thing about being 90, you lose too many friends,” he said. “Frank Sinatra ... Burt Lancaster. I wish I could have been more appreciative of my friends.”\nHe reminisced about working with Lancaster in a charity show at the Palladium in London. He said that Lancaster told the audience, “Kirk would be the first to admit that he’s a very difficult guy. And I would be the second.”\nBoth were decked out with bowler hats and canes and they sang and danced to an English ditty. “Then Burt gave me his knee,” Douglas said. “I stepped on it and climbed to his shoulders. I was still standing there and we were singing as we made our exit. We were both athletic in those days.”\nIn his acknowledgments, Douglas says that his editor, Walter Bode, had been “such a great help.” During a phone interview from his home on Long Island, N.Y., Bode described their modus operandi.\n“Kirk wrote it all the way through,” the editor said. “I made extensive notes, then I went out to his place for a long weekend, and we went over each one of the chapters.”\nIn the beginning Douglas said, “You will find me very responsive.” And he was very responsive, Bode said. He believes that Douglas had become very philosophical, mainly because of the physical trauma he had suffered in his late years. “I think he no longer had the intensity that made him kind of difficult in his prime,” Bode commented.\n“Let’s Face It” is filled with joy, but there are also times of sorrow. Eric, the youngest of Douglas’ four sons, was a problem during much of his life. Kirk writes of the boy’s “rapid mood changes” and outbreaks of violence. When Eric was 12, he was examined at an Eastern institute in an effort to assuage his anger. “This was the first of many places that we hoped would help Eric,” his father writes.\nAlthough Eric graduated from Claremont College and worked as an actor and standup comedian, his troubles lingered, furthered by drug and alcohol addiction. He died at 42 of an overdose in his New York apartment.\nKirk and Anne Douglas visit Eric’s grave twice a week. They talk to their son, much as George Burns had done at the graveside of his wife and partner, Gracie Allen.\nIn the interview, Douglas told of asking his oldest son, “Michael, was I a good father?”\n“Michael took the longest time to answer,” Kirk recalled. “Finally, he said, ‘Ultimately, you were a great father.’”\n“It’s difficult when you’re young (to be a good father). You’re making one picture after another, one woman after another. You’re pretty involved with yourself.” He added slyly, “I hope Anne doesn’t read this.”\nDouglas has suffered a series of calamities: an air collision between a helicopter and a light plane, surgery for a back injury caused by the accident, a stroke and a heart condition that required a pacemaker. Having survived, he turned to good works. He and his wife contribute to schools, playgrounds and parks, and they founded the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City, a training ground for actors, directors and playwrights.\nBut he has still other deeds he’d like to do.\n“I would like to do something for my country,” he said. “I appreciated so much that although I was born in abject poverty, I got a chance to work my way through college, through drama school, the Navy, then acting, which I loved.\n“Years ago I wanted to do something for the country, and I went to about 40 countries (for the State Department). I went to universities and I told them about my life; actually it is what America is. My theme was that in America you have a chance.”
(05/04/07 4:00am)
As the final season of the “The Sopranos” winds down, fans of the HBO drama are abuzz online about their last glimpses of the New Jersey mafia family and theories on the show’s upcoming finale.\n“The Sopranos,” created by David Chase, has only five episodes left of its short nine-episode swan song (or should we say duck song?). Speculation has been building on what might be the fate of mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini).\nEveryone has, as Paulie Walnuts might say, an “idear.”\nAmong the many online forums to discuss “The Sopranos” is a site done by NJ.com: http://www.nj.com/sopranos. The current dialogue there revolves around expectations for the demise of Tony’s son, A.J. (Robert Iler).\nSlate.com has long published an episode-by-episode review and discussion of “The Sopranos.” After Sunday’s show, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, wrote in a column exchange with Slate’s Timothy Noah that the final season of “The Sopranos” is dawdling.\nThe 4th episode’s lack of narrative urgency, Goldberg wrote, “seemed pointless given that this 86-hour story arc has only five hours to go. Let’s start murdering off the cast already, for goodness’ sake.”\nMany fan sites of “The Sopranos” are now dormant, which reflects not only the nature of fan sites, which generally come and go, but perhaps also a slight waning of enthusiasm for the program. The premiere of this final season of “The Sopranos” drew 7.7 million viewers, down from last year’s 9.4 million viewers.\nStill, whacking odds are being posted by online bookies. Just before this season’s first episode, BetUS.com posted 2-1 odds that Tony will die in the final episodes; Tony living was listed as 1-3.\nIt’s not hard to find amateur finale forecasts, among them the theory that Tony will spill his guts not by a bullet, but by talking to the Feds. Many think Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) is doomed after his unflattering fictionalization of Tony in his movie, “Cleaver.”\nThe official site of the show, http://www.hbo.com/sopranos, isn’t to be overlooked, either. The recently broadcast mock behind-the-scenes set visit on “Cleaver” can be watched there. But the site’s best use may be for tracking down music from the show, like John Cooper Clarke’s riveting, trance-inducing “Evidently Chickentown” that concluded this season’s second episode.
(05/04/07 4:00am)
Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell has joined the Jacobs School of Music faculty, University officials announced Thursday.\n“Josh is one of the most excellent performers on the stage today,” violinist Alex Kerr said in a press release. “For students to have access to a performer of his caliber is unbelievable and almost unprecedented. It’s very rare, in this day and age, for a musician of this magnitude to be giving back to students.” \nBell graduated from IU with an Artist Diploma in 1989 and will begin his work with the Jacobs School in the 2008-2009 school year, according to a press release. His job will involve participating in performances and coaching students and ensembles during two week-long residencies.\nIn the last three years many popular music professionals have based their teaching careers at IU, including National Symphony Orchestra maestro Leonard Slatkin; pianists Andre Watts and Arnaldo Cohen; violinists Mark Kaplan, Alex Kerr and Jaime Laredo; singers Carol Vaness, Sylvia McNair and Marietta Simpson; ballet master Michael Vernon; bassoonist William Ludwig and hornist Jeff Nelson.\nAfter being crowned winner of the Avery Fisher Prize and IU’s favorite son, Bell has decided to return to follow in the footsteps of his late mentor and Jacobs School professor Josef Gingold.\n“I can think of no greater place than the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Ind., to accept a faculty position,” Bell said in a press release.
(04/30/07 4:00am)
While students at IU are stressing about final exams, high school seniors around the country are stressing about where to go to college. \nThese indecisive students are considering several factors in choosing universities. Finances, location, a school suited to their chosen field of study – they’re all important criteria.\nUnfortunately, many students also place disproportionate importance on something that really shouldn’t matter at all: college rankings. \nFor years, students and educators alike have criticized college ranking systems like the ones published by US News & World Report and The Princeton Review.\nSo we’re pleased to see that a nonprofit group called the Education Conservancy has paired with a small group of college presidents to try to change the current system. \nThe group has sent a letter to 16 liberal-arts college presidents., citing multiple issues with conventional college rankings. Once 12 presidents sign it (11 already have), the letter will be sent to universities across the country. The group plans to hold meetings with presidents of various universities in an attempt to come up with alternatives to the college ranking system. \nAmong the issues the Education Conservancy raises about rankings is how they often negatively influence parents, students and colleges themselves. The group calls the effect “rank steering – driving under the influence.” A student might fall in love with a campus but ultimately be dissuaded by the school’s rank in relation to a different college or by a parent’s insistence that the school isn’t “good enough.”\nThe group says universities have begun to give more merit-based aid and less need-based aid to enhance their rankings. The Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy says schools send letters to potential students, making them think they will be accepted even if they don’t actually stand a good chance. This increases the number of applications to a school and the number of applicants the school can reject, thus influencing the school’s rankings.\nWhat do such rankings fail to mention? That no matter how highly or poorly ranked a school is, the quality of education you receive and what you choose to do with it is ultimately in your hands. You can scrape by, with C-minuses across the board in an Ivy League school and learn nothing. Conversely, someone can go to a so-called fourth-tier law school, work hard and ultimately run a successful law firm. The quality of your education and your career is in your hands – not in the glossy pages of US News.\nEven schools that are highly ranked know rankings have little to no value. New York University spokesman John Beckman said he hopes “students interested in NYU won’t buy into” the misleading rankings.\nWe hope the Education Conservancy’s initiative marks the beginning of an overhaul of the incredibly flawed ranking system.
(04/27/07 4:00am)
NEW DELHI – A court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Thursday, saying their kiss at a public function “transgressed all limits of vulgarity,” media reports said.\nJudge Dinesh Gupta issued the warrants in the northwestern city of Jaipur after a local citizen filed a complaint charging that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.\nGupta earlier viewed television footage of the event, which he called “highly sexually erotic,” saying the pair violated India’s strict public obscenity laws.\nGere and Shetty “transgressed all limits of vulgarity and have the tendency to corrupt the society,” PTI quoted the judge as saying.\nSuch cases against celebrities – often filed by publicity seekers – are common in conservative India. They add to a backlog of legal cases that has nearly crippled the country’s judicial system.\nGere left India shortly after the kissing incident, and it was not immediately clear how the warrant would affect him.\nGere is a frequent visitor to India, promoting health issues and the cause of Tibetan exiles. The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has his headquarters in the north Indian town of Dharmsala.\nUnder Indian law a person convicted of public obscenity faces up to three months in prison, a fine, or both.\nLast week, crowds in several Indian cities burned effigies of the 57-year-old star of “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “American Gigolo” and “Pretty Woman” after he embraced Shetty and kissed her several times on her cheeks during an HIV/AIDS awareness event in the Indian capital.\nPhotographs of the clinch were then splashed across front pages in India – where public displays of affection are largely taboo.\nThe judge lambasted Shetty for not resisting Gere’s kisses and ordered her to appear in his court May 5, PTI said.\nShetty, who is on a religious pilgrimage in southern India, was upset by the news, said her spokesman, Dale Bhagwagar.\n“She does hurt, she does feel low,” Bhagwagar told The Associated Press. “She feels she is being constantly targeted, but anyone who knows her well knows she can’t be put down.”\n“Shilpa wishes that people would focus on the real issue, AIDS awareness, and not three pecks on her cheek,” he said, adding that she had not yet received any court summons.\nShetty, 31, has said the embrace was not obscene and that the media should instead focus on HIV/AIDS awareness.\n“I understand this is his culture, not ours. But this was not such a big thing or so obscene for people to overreact in such manner,” she told PTI last week. “I understand people’s sentiments, but I don’t want a foreigner to take bad memories from here.”\nShetty, already well-known in India, became an international star after her appearance on the British reality show “Celebrity Big Brother” – another controversial public appearance. A fellow contestant, Jade Goody, sparked international headlines by making allegedly racist comments to Shetty. Mobs took to the streets of India to denounce Goody, and Shetty went on to win the competition.
(04/27/07 4:00am)
NEW YORK – Lawrence Brownlee looked at the list, and it was lengthy. More than 100 family and friends were in the audience Thursday night when the tenor made his Metropolitan Opera debut.\nMom and dad, who drove in from Ohio were there. Then there were four sisters and a brother and all their spouses. Add in an aunt, three cousins, two high school choir directors, three voice teachers, his first piano instructor, the dean of IU’s Jacobs School of Music and the former dean of Anderson University. The group could fill a small auditorium.\n“I know a lot of people are going to try and compare me to other people. ... I’m just going to be me. I just go and put my voice out there, put my own spin on it,” he said.\nBrownlee received a bachelor’s degree from Anderson and a master’s degree from IU in 2001.\nThe 34-year-old from Young-\nstown, Ohio, has been at or near the top of up-and-coming lists for several years. He was a winner of the 2001 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the 2006 Richard Tucker Award. He’s a black man in a business with few black singers, especially tenors. His management has tried to insulate him from any prejudice, but he thinks the color of his skin has cost him.\n“There are probably times that I didn’t get jobs because I’m short and black. I’m sure of it. Someone may say, ‘He’s not the type’ or ‘We have the soprano already and she’s like 5(-foot-)10, blond and blue eyes,’” he said Tuesday during a lunch interview at his publicist’s apartment.\nHow short?\n“Five-(foot)-6, in the morning, before I’ve stood up and let my feet sink down,” he said. “I’ve found this a lot – I’m the same height as the soprano until they put them in heels and a wig. I’m like Joe Pesci. He’s one of the most intimidating people I’ve ever seen on screen. You can command the stage. I don’t have a Napoleon complex, but you don’t have to be 6 feet tall to be commanding on stage.”\nHis Met debut will be as Almaviva in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” the same opera in which he made his debut for Milan’s Teatro alla Scala company in 2002. He’s in the second cast, following Juan Diego Florez, the most acclaimed Rossini tenor in the world. For now, Brownlee gets a lot of invitations to follow Florez in productions.\n“He’s not Florez, of course, because he’s very young,” said Thursday’s conductor, Maurizio Benini. “But the color of the voice is an incredible color. He can become a great singer. I’m sure of this.”\nWhen Brownlee was performing in a recital at Youngstown State, he was heard by a voice teacher, David Starkey, who suggested he pursue opera. Brownlee comes from a family with a musical background: his father directed a church choir and his mother was a soloist.\nHis biggest break came in 2001, after his manager, Robert Mirshak, sent tapes to La Scala and Brownlee was offered an audition. Brownlee, who was in Seattle when he received the news, quickly traveled to Italy and performed in the famed auditorium for conductor Corrado Rovaris and Luca Targetti, artistic administrator of La Scala’s opera division. A Russian tenor also sang that day.\n“My audition was not particularly great. At one point, I felt like my voice kind of shut off a couple times. At the end of it all, I stopped and went off stage maybe two or three times,” Brownlee recalled, detailing how the pair spoke to the other singer first when it was over.\n“They said thank you to him and they asked me if I could stay for a minute. Immediately I thought, ‘Why do you want me to stay here? You cannot possibly be interested in me after I didn’t give a fantastic audition.’” But they were, and he made his La Scala debut as part of the second cast in “Barbiere” the following year at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi, the company’s temporary home from 2002 to 2004. Since then, he’s returned and sung at the historic theater downtown.\nHe’s sung in Europe at London’s Royal Opera and the Vienna State Opera, and his Paris Opera debut is likely to come in Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri” in 2010. At the Met, he is scheduled to sing in the company’s new production of Rossini’s “Armida” alongside Renee Fleming in the 2009-10 season.\n“It’s absolutely a distinctive voice,” said mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, his Rosina, on Thursday. “It immediately grabs you because it’s so beautiful. He has such a passion for what he does. He has such a humility that it’s infuriating at times. I really haven’t come across anybody that works harder and wants to succeed as much to make the experience for the audience memorable.”
(04/27/07 4:00am)
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – The Queen of Soul is looking for a few good subjects.\nAuditions for singing and non-singing parts in a musical production based on Aretha Franklin’s autobiography will be held May 1-3 in suburban Detroit.\nThe musical based on the 1999 best-seller, “Aretha: From These Roots,” is tentatively set to premiere in Franklin’s hometown of Detroit next March.\nThe 65-year-old Grammy winner will help choose the performers who will portray her at various ages, as well as relatives, close friends, background singers and musical colleagues including Sam Cooke, Dinah Washington, Smokey Robinson and pianist Art Tatum.\nRoles to be cast include LaRue Mann, Franklin’s wardrobe mistress, whose surrogate should possess “sharp features, lots of personality and (be) bubbly,” a statement from Franklin’s publicists said Monday.\nThe actor portraying suitor Ken Cunningham should be, among other things, “slim, with a perfect set of teeth, cool and fun.”\nHits by Franklin include “Respect,” “Chain of Fools” and “Freeway of Love.”
(04/27/07 4:00am)
BEIJING – Organizers for the 2008 Beijing Olympics announced Thursday what will be the longest torch relay in the history of the games, tracing a route that covers five continents and makes politically sensitive stops in Taiwan and Tibet.\nThe head of Taiwan’s Olympic Committee, however, said it would not participate in the relay, because it “downgraded” the island’s sovereignty.\nAt a Beijing ceremony attended by senior members of China’s ruling Communist Party and the International Olympic Committee, organizers said the route would cover 85,000 miles, last 130 days and reach Mount Everest.\n“It will be a relay that will cover the longest distance and be most inclusive and involve the most people in Olympic history,” said Liu Qi, the head of Beijing’s Olympic organizing committee.\nThe relay is the latest grand plan associated with an Olympics that organizers and IOC officials have said should set a new standard for the games. But it also takes the games into politically tricky terrain.\nStops in Taiwan and Tibet, where Mount Everest towers, have generated controversy ever since Beijing telegraphed its intentions to include them on the route years ago. Taiwan has resisted Beijing’s overtures – and sometimes threats – to unify after splitting amid civil war while China’s often harsh 57-year rule over Tibet has been widely criticized.\nFour American activists were detained by Chinese authorities Wednesday on Mount Everest after they unfurled a banner calling for Tibet’s independence.\nBeijing is hoping that the torch relay will bolster its claims over both territories.\nIn a compromise, however, the torch will pass from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, and then to Chinese-controlled Hong Kong. The route allows Taiwan to say it is part of the international leg while allowing China to blur the distinction between the domestic and international parts.\nBut Tsai Chen-wei, chairman of Taiwan’s Olympic Committee, said less than two hours after the Beijing meeting that the island would not participate in the torch relay.\n“This route is a domestic route that constitutes an attempt to downgrade our sovereignty,” Tsai said. “It is something that the government and people cannot accept.”\nTsai’s comments contradicted an April 13 statement by another Taiwanese Olympic official, who said the island could accept a spot on the torch route that involved geographical contiguity with Hong Kong.\nTaiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party has long pushed for a torch route that would reflect Taiwan’s separateness from China, from which it split amid civil war in 1949.\nIn recent days, DPP officials said a route that linked Taiwan and Hong Kong would not be acceptable, because it would feed China’s desire to make it appear that the self-governing island was part of the mainland.\nThe disputes underscore the political agendas at work surrounding many Olympics, but especially in Beijing, whose Communist government hopes the event will raise its stature at home and abroad.\nForeign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said politics should be kept out of the games, and that Beijing has the support of the country and of people around the world.\n“Most of China’s citizens are looking forward and making preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Most people in the world are looking forward to a successful Olympic Games that can promote the friendship of people around the world,” he told a news conference.\nThe relay, which is supposed to embody the Olympic values of friendship through sports, is a popular public relations tool and the only contact most people have with the Olympics.\nNext year’s relay will begin in Greece and wind across the globe before it is used to ignite the cauldron at the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, 2008, in Beijing’s 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium.\nOther stops announced Thursday include Paris; San Francisco; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Pyongyang, the capital of politically isolated and belligerent North Korea.\n“The Beijing 2008 torch relay will, as its theme says, be a journey of harmony, bringing friendship and respect to people of different nationalities, races and creeds,” IOC President Jacques Rogge told the ceremony.\nThe relay’s signature moment is expected to be its ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, which straddles Chinese-ruled Tibet and Nepal.
(04/27/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – A defiant Democratic-controlled Senate passed legislation Thursday that would require the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq by Oct. 1, propelling Congress toward a historic veto showdown with President Bush on the war.\nThe 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president’s threatened veto. Nevertheless, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.\n“The president has failed in his mission to bring peace and stability to the people of Iraq,” said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He later added: “It’s time to bring our troops home from Iraq.”\nThe $124.2 billion bill requires troop withdrawals to begin Oct. 1, or sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. The House passed the measure Wednesday by a 218-208 vote.\nAcross the Potomac River at the Pentagon, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told reporters the war effort likely will “get harder before it gets easier.”\nRepublicans said the vote amounted to little more than political theater because the bill would be dead on arrival upon reaching the White House. Bush said he will veto the bill so long as it contains a timetable on Iraq, as well as $20 billion in spending added by Democrats.\n“The solution is simple: Take out the surrender date, take out the pork, and get the funds to our troops,” said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.\nRepublicans Gordon Smith of Oregon and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska sided with 48 Democrats and Independent Bernard Sanders in supporting the bill. No Democrats joined the 45 Republicans in voting against it. Missing from the vote were GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both staunch advocates of the president’s Iraq policy.\nSen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., sided with Republicans in opposing the bill.
(04/27/07 4:00am)
BAGHDAD – A senior U.S. officer has been charged with nine offenses, including aiding the enemy and fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee while he commanded a military police detachment at the American detention facility where Saddam Hussein had been held, the military said Thursday.\nArmy Lt. Col. William H. Steele was the commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper on the western outskirts of Baghdad when he was accused of giving “aid to the enemy” by providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees.\nSome of the charges, which spanned the time period from October 2005 until February of this year, also stemmed from his most recent position in a provincial transition team headquartered at Camp Victory, the main U.S. military base near the detention center, military spokesman Lt. Col. James Hutton said.\nSteele, who was detained in March, was being held in Kuwait pending an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing, military officials said.\nThe other charges included unauthorized possession of classified information, fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee, maintaining an inappropriate relationship with an interpreter, storing classified information in his quarters and possessing pornographic videos, the military said.\nSteele also was charged with improperly marking classified information, failing to obey an order and failing to fulfill his obligations in the expenditure of funds, the military said.\n“These are troublesome allegations but again they are just allegations at the moment,” U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told The Associated Press.\nSteele was at Camp Cropper from October 2005 through the end of October 2006, after which he transferred to Camp Victory with the 89th Military Police Brigade, the position he held when he was detained, Hutton said.\nAmong the charges, Steele was accused of providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees throughout his tenure at Camp Cropper, and of holding classified information without permission and of failing to obey an order in his subsequent position, according to the dates provided by Hutton.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
After the shootings at Virginia Tech University left 33 dead, including the shooter, a range of emotions rocked the nation – shock, sadness and anger among others. \nSome answers followed shortly after when it was revealed that the gunman sent photos, a letter and a video to NBC between the shootings. This “multimedia manifesto,” as it came to be known, was a mix of a confession, ranting and an explanation of his motives.\nClearly, he was a very disturbed young man. \nThe nation is now asking what, if anything, can be done to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.\nInevitably the gun lobby has claimed that everyone should be allowed to carry guns all the time, especially on college campuses. The logic behind this is that, should another incident such as Va. Tech occur, students and everyone else can pull out their glocks and take down the shooter.\nBut the last thing college campuses, or any other sphere of society, need is for every single citizen to be walking around packing heat, so paranoid at the thought of school shooters or disgruntled postal workers that they whip out their guns at every single motion in the corner of their eyes. \nAnother suggestion to prevent catastrophe involves a surveillance technology known as “smart TV.” It uses surveillance cameras hooked up to computer software that sends notifications to security personnel when the cameras detect unusual motion, such as a person driving suspiciously slow or holding their arms up in the air.\nSimilar cameras are already in use on and off campus at schools such as Johns Hopkins University, which are located in more crime-prone areas. The difficulty concerning such technology is that it raises serious issues about privacy, and would probably only prove effective at preventing crimes like theft in more crime-prone areas. \nThe identification and weeding-out of the types of students more likely to commit these types of crimes have also been suggested as solutions. We believe that it would be too daunting a task to pick out and evaluate every student who might be unusually quiet or who might write morbid pieces in English class. Instead, we advocate the approach taken by Texas A&M, which runs a training program for faculty and staff on how to identify and approach students with serious problems and how to subsequently convince them to seek professional help.\nOne incredibly productive, and admirable, suggestion has been made by a Chicago-based technology company known as Interactive Mediums. The company has devised a system that would allow universities to send out a mass text message alert in the event of a campus emergency like the one that happened at Virginia Tech. Furthermore, the company would provide this service entirely for free. Though this program is in the initial stages of development, we commend Interactive Mediums for having the initiative to undertake this worthy measure. \nSome ideas are viable solutions to the problem that we face in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. However, it is ultimately beyond any university’s capacity to completely protect against a crazy person with a gun.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
I am thrilled that Brian Stewart and I share literary heroes, namely Alexis De Tocqueville. But as Stewart was “leafing through” Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, he must have managed to skip this particular passage, “No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. ... All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it.” \nStewart continues by asking servicemen and women what support they have received from the “fainthearted ‘anti-war’ faction” and dutifully reports that they believe that “fundamental to supporting the troops” is that one support “the worthiness of the mission.” This is a fascinating claim given the December 2006 poll taken by “The Military Times,” which found that barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war.\nI am sick and tired of these tough, brave, keyboard warriors like Stewart calling my anti-war stance fainthearted and cowardly. But for argument, let us assume that the position I have chosen to take is indeed cowardly and unpatriotic (despite Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”). What does it say about people like Brian “Fighting Words” Stewart? What have you, Mr. Stewart, done to “advance the cause for which our embattled warriors stand sentry”? I can think of nothing more cowardly than to wax passionately and poetically in defending “America’s brand of international patriotism being played out on the ground in Iraq” yet at the same time refusing to enlist.\nAre the same servicemen and women who bemoan my failure to “support the mission” impressed by Stewart’s “support the troops” sticker on his car? Yeah, I thought so.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
Reading the article “IUSA Redistributes Rape Crisis Fund” made me wonder what the actual purpose of the IUSA was. I went to their Web site and found this: “IUSA is a congregation of Indiana University students that work to protect student rights, enrich student life, and improve Indiana University.” In keeping with this, you might assume they make decisions with the best interests of IU students in mind. This is not the case.\nIUSA’s decision to cut the funds donated to Middle Way House by 75%, instead giving that money to IU’s Office for Women’s Affairs, is one that will negatively impact IU students. Middle Way House has been providing essential services to the IU community for years. Their On-Scene Advocate Program provides around-the-clock assistance to rape victims immediately following a sexual assault, while their support groups provide long term support for those trying to deal with the aftermath. Their Legal Advocacy program provides legal assistance to survivors of sexual assault. Middle Way House also provides public education presentations throughout the community. Their Rape Prevention Program is exemplary, engaging participants in discussions on perceptions and attitudes of our society towards both sexual assault victims and perpetrators, consequences of sexual assault, and community resources available to survivors.\nThe Office for Women’s Affairs, although an important office, simply does not have the infrastructure to provide all of the services needed. Education is important, but much more is needed by the IU community. It makes no sense to take money away from an organization providing a full spectrum of services, simply to give that money to an organization providing only one facet of what is needed. Since the majority of rape victims Middle Way House assists are IU students, cutting funds to Middle Way House will have a harmful impact on the IU community.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
In response to Edward Delp’s Opinion page column on Duke in the April 19th issue of the IDS (“Endgame at Duke”). While it is unfortunate that anyone is wrongfully prosecuted or presumed guilty as Edward Delp points out his Opinion page article of April 19th, it’s hard to imagine that many minority readers – particularly Blacks, Hispanics, and more recently those of Middle Eastern descent were not thinking “welcome to my world.” Although I am a white male, we are a group that if now presumed guilty until proven innocent, has only recently joined that club. The Japanese during WWII certainly were presumed guilty, and many other minorities have received less than equal treatment before the law. Likewise, if the Duke players had been poor white males instead of wealthy white males, does Mr. Delp really believe they would have been better off? I would doubt it. While wrongful prosecution can ruin lives, wealthy white males are not its only victims.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
April 19, columnist Edward Delp wrote that the prosecution of the Duke Lacrosse Team was a sign of “reverse racism” (“Endgame at Duke”). And because of this racism, District Attorney Nifong would have to “eat crow” – weeks after the accuser dropped charges. Well, there is a food worse than crow. Silence. And there are millions of sexual assault survivors chewing that food right now. The column encourages them to swallow, and choke.\nDistrict Attorney Nifong followed procedure. He believed the complainant as long as she was still willing to prosecute, and kept the case together as long as was possible. How was he at fault?\nThe public climate to which the columnist referred was actually a secondary reaction to the initial response of the University. For months after the allegations, the lacrosse team was unsuspended and not investigated because the players were “good [read rich, white] boys.” Good [read rich, white] boys don’t rape. The public reacted to this blatant lie, not individual lacrosse players.\nProtestors criticized the American institution of racist sexual exploitation. Whether or not an assault took place, the lacrosse team specifically requested two African American strippers for their party. Perhaps they believed the seventeenth century propaganda that black women were inherently more licentious than white women, and subject to white men’s desires. The lacrosse team represented white male privilege, and that privilege over brown bodies was on trial in the public domain, as it should have been. \nLet me remind you that this public trial was not “reverse racism,” as there was no power structure to blindly enforce any hypothetical prejudice. The team members had a fair trial. In contrast, the trees of this state are fertilized by the blood of defendants in unfair trials. That’s racist. \nFinally, the columnist warns that, if we are not careful, this could happen here. How convenient that he encourages women not to speak in the middle of National Sexual Assault Awareness Month (Little Five Weekend, no less). For every person who steps forward, there are fourteen women who don’t. The real travesty is that the outcome of this very public trial encourages those fourteen to stay in the shadows, choking on silence to avoid “eating crow.”
(04/26/07 4:00am)
In case you don’t get the allusion to a very popular TV program about some big city on the East coast, you can stop reading right now. Trust me, you won’t enjoy this. But I hope that everyone else feels the same way as we two German exchange students do about the weekly fashion column by the great Teri a.k.a. “Carrie” Rosenbaum. Like watching the blond curly New York star editor on week nights, Teri’s weekly column became a ritual needing to be celebrated with an extra-large Café Latte and the proper devotion to secretive grinning and chuckling in the library on Mondays. It does not matter if it is sex, fashion, or hotdogs: her biting crispy writing always hits the mark. \nWe remember coming to IU and getting hooked on her columns in the last semester, being as annoyed as she is by the uniform image of American Urbancrombie-Style: we were not alone out there. Burned in our fashion-sensitive brains stays a great piece on the variety of Northface fleece coats that caused smile on the way to class from October to March.\nJust look at the last few weeks! Teri wrote with the same passion in defense of Gwen Stefani’s skimpy Lolita skirts as on the selling out of designers to the big red dot. Her talent to mix personal stories from intimate shower details to her favorite fashion items with hard-line facts is a pleasure for our foreign language feel. But Teri is more than just rhetoric and trash-talking fashion faux pas. It was really frustrating to see how students in the self-claimed birth cradle of individuality look exactly alike and that style seems to be translated as being bought at some store in the College Mall, where way-too-tanned girls lecture you on buy-one-get-one-free. Teri tells us every week that it is okay to be different, unique and to try out new things. And so to end in her own words: “more power to you, sister” – keep up the American spirit, you got the German support!
(04/26/07 4:00am)
As soon as I read the headline for Brian Stewart’s column (“Once more unto the breach,” April 24) and the quotation at the beginning (“I am going into the army. . . .”), I thought for sure he had decided to walk the walk he’s been talking all this time and enlist in the Army. But, no. He’s an all-talk chicken-hawk after all, and when his children ask “What did you do in the war on terrorism, Daddy?” he’ll have to tell them “I wrote a column in a college newspaper.”
(04/26/07 4:00am)
I write to express my concern that recent IDS articles and editorials do not accurately reflect the range of campus and community services in the areas of sexual assault prevention, education and treatment. \nTo my mind, the campus and community are lucky to have comprehensive services that address different elements of the problem and complement each other. The Sexual Assault Crisis Service (SACS) of the IU Health Center is the only service especially for students, staffed by professional counselors. They are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to work with students or members of the IU community who have sustained a recent sexual assault. All SACS services are free.\nSACS counselors assist students who have been assaulted with medical evaluation and care, crisis and follow up counseling and working with campus and community justice systems if they wish to pursue legal action.\nSpeaking with campus groups including men’s groups, about safety issues, about the kinds of communication and listening that can prevent sexual assault is an important part of the SACS mission. They assist with the design and delivery of summer orientation programs for freshmen as well as offering numerous other programs to our campus. \nThe counselors serve on campus committees, including the Commission on Personal Safety. They work closely with the staff of the Office of Women’s Affairs who have a range of educational programs themselves, some involving peer educators who talk with student groups. They also have shared committee work with staff of Middle Way House, a community service that offers 24 hour phone consultations by trained volunteers.\nI believe the students would be better served by more factual, inclusive stories in this important area.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
OMG, IDS, thanks big time!\nNo really, shut up, really! At first I was all like “what the hell” when I was reading Joanna Borns and her Facebook confession of the crush she has – I mean, whatever, right?\nThen I’m like, I totally get it. That was bitchin’ clever to write yet another column that’s supposed to be about something but is really all about you and how clever you are! I mean, who really wants facts, right? Duh, the world is centric and if you write opinions you are so obviously the center! Copernicus, uh, who’s that?\nAnyhoo, I’m just messed up about your cleverness. I totally wish I was just like that! Keep up the lack of work.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
With the aftermath of the Virgina Tech shooting being sorted out, no doubt everyone on campus is asking the same question as other college students around the country. Could something like this happen at my school? How can it be prevented or handled? Hindsight is 20/20, with the callings for various firings and resignations at Virgina Tech, when this is another example of the dangers that lurk in a free society. In order to maintain our way of life, we surrender a level of safety. More so when you have an individual willing to take their life in the process of harming other.\nTo the point, the question no one is asking is how might this situation have played out if Virgina Tech was not a gun-free zone? How far would this individual have gotten if a few legally packing students or professors managed to put this shooter down before he racked up 32 deaths and nearly as many wounded? \nGun-control laws such as prohibiting guns on campus only encourage gun violence because criminals know without a doubt that they will meet no resistance during a shooting and the only people with guns would be the police. Ask any criminal in prison and their No. 1 fear besides getting caught is getting shot during a crime. Laws are only followed by those who obey them. Criminals don’t follow gun laws, which is what makes them criminals. \nIf IU is serious about the safety of its students, they would be wise to institute a program that teaches individuals how to care for and use a firearm to protect themselves. Instituting regulations requiring training and certification as well as regular range qualification would arm a group of legally carrying adults, which would no doubt result in falling numbers of rapes, as well as robberies, muggings and random acts of violence. Each year over 1 million instances of self-defense occur in which legally carrying individuals use their firearms to defend themselves with only 5 percent resulting in shots being fired. \nWhile there is no guarantee that armed students could have prevented this evil act at Virgina Tech, giving students the option to take responsibility for their safety would ensure that anyone would think twice about assaulting someone on IU’s campus for fear of being shot. Furthermore, it would take the administration seeing the students as responsible adults old enough to vote, die for their country, and able to purchase and own a firearm. Keeping guns out of all hands but those of a criminal will do nothing except make helpless targets of us all.\n \nTodd Waugh\nAlumnus\nPhoenix, Az.