Lessons for Ferguson From Cincinnati's 2001 Riots

WSJ - Lessons for Ferguson From Cincinnati”s 2001 Riots

• Tell the public everything immediately
• Set the record straight
• Don’t crucify the cops
• The federal government can slow the healing
• Repudiate race-baiters

"Cincinnati went to work repairing race relations. After a year of meetings supervised by a federal judge, representatives of the city, the police department, the ACLU, the Black United Front and the police union imposed the Collaborative Agreement for police reforms. They included less aggressive pursuit guidelines, a citizen complaint board, and communiy-oriented policing."

"Before the riots there was simmering anger at police in the black community. The police were insular and authoritarian. Today they are proactive, transparent, a model of community-oriented policing."

WSJ - Thousands Protest in Staten Island Over Eric Garner's Death

NY Post - Three Cheers for the NYPD

Islamists Militants “kill reporter James Foley on Video”

• BBC -- James Foley: Islamic State militants 'behead reporter'

• Telegraph - James Foley's murder should only stiffen our resolve to destroy Islamic State

“And this, ultimately, is the most important point: terrorist groups have beheaded hostages and prisoners, Westerners and non-Westerners, for many years. What is shocking is not that they are extreme sadists, but that they are extreme sadists with a conventional army and nation-building aspirations. This is what makes them different. By their own admission, their aim is to “drown all of you in blood”. They are incapable of compromise, uninterested in moderation, and hell-bent on territorial expansion.”

Language counts. It is time to define the radical Islamic terrorists as just what they are, radical Islamic terrorists.

A major unacknowledged but obvious important conflict in international affairs is between moderate and radical Muslims, with the radical Muslims being defined as those who are willing to use lethal force based on religion as a means to their ends. This has included stoning women to death for infidelity, honor killings, assassinations for “blasphemy”, executions of farmers and journalists for political control, kidnapping and selling young women, suicide bombings, and terrorist attacks. As usual, the ends are used to justify the means. The means, however, define any group as much as the ends, and the means often come to distort the ends.

It is also time to better define, understand, and convey our own values and to contrast them with those of the radical Islamic terrorists. Have we learned nothing from the tragedies of the 20th Century. Our primary moral concept of equality, understood as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity, at least has the capacity for some accommodation in what is now a pluralist global community.

• Language Counts in Politics.
  “Language and Politics” -- George Orwell

• Ideas Also Count in Politics.
  “Equality as an Affirmation of Personal Dignity and our Common Humanity."

Iraq Isis Conflict in Maps, Photos, and Video

New York Times -- Iraq Isis Conflict in Maps, Photos, and Video

An Observation

Only when pushed to the brink, such as in Supreme Court Cases or in a world humanitarian crisis, do our leaders start to refer to and correctly describe our primary moral concept of equality as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity.

Equality as an Affirmation of Our Common Humanity

The Rapidly Changing Events in the Middle East

BBC -- Could Iraq becomes Obama’s War?

"President Obama once said the US should not be fighting a war in Iraq. Now he has approved air strikes, trying to protect Americans and help minorities under threat from Sunni militants. So will the president find himself entangled in Iraq?"

• Institute for the Study of War
  Situation Updates

• DailyMail
  Barbarians, Genocide, and the Terrifying Lack of Western Leadership

• Huffington Post
  The Final Solution of the Christian Arab Question in the Middle East

• New York Times
  Iraq Airstrikes Seen As Giving Putin Pretext in Ukraine

• New York Times
  Turkish Premier Tries To Keep Power As President

The Senate Races

• New Yorker -- Can the GOP Take the Senate?

  "Just in case you haven’t had enough bad news, here’s a bit more from the domestic-politics desk. With less than a hundred days until the midterm elections, the Republicans now have a very realistic chance of retaking the Senate, which would leave them in over-all control of Capitol Hill for the next two years..."

• RealClearPolitics -- Senate Races
  
  
  
  
  
• Politico -- 2014 Senate Predictions

  "The big change here is in Iowa, which goes from Leans Democratic to Toss-up: This open-seat contest could end up being the key race in the battle for the Senate, and it appears to be pretty much even. As Iowa appears to be getting more competitive, Democratic prospects are brightening in two other states that voted for Barack Obama twice..."