[lit-ideas] Re: Not a Transom Tale

I want to thank David for forwarding this piece to the list. Though I have no evidence to support it, I believe it. At long last I'm free to recount a story from my youth that has troubled me lo these many years. In the 11th grade at Catholic High School for Boys I took Solid Geometry under Father B. (I call him that since "Bettinger" would expose me to possible lawsuits). This Father B told me at the end of the year that he would pass me with a 'D' if I would promise never to take another math course again, ever. This couldn't possibly be ethical, I thought. This is an insidious assualt on the integrity of the grading system, it undermines the very foundation of the whole educational system, the future of this civilization is at stake here. But I realized that some things are worth sacrificing. Still what was in it for him? Well, for one thing, he would have me as a student again the next year if he failed me since Solid Geometry was a required course, and he knew that at every opportunity I'd question again why we had to learn this stuff -- when would I ever need to know this? "Well, Mike, would you rather be the person who tells the workers how many tiles they need to do the job or would you rather be the one having to lay the tiles?" The poor man stepped right into my snare. What's wrong with laying tiles, I'd start. Are you demeaning manual labor? Do you value class over contribution? Isn't the man who lays the tile as good and essential to human existence as the man who ciphers number? On and on, relentlessly. Thank you, Father B. Though I'd love to hassle you for another year, there are others who need hassling too. I took the D, but not without consciencial aggravation. And for good reason, it turns out. This said Father B (not Bettinger), I later discovered had worked on the A bomb at Oak Ridge before chucking the glamorous world of nuclear mathematics to become a priest and teach people like me Solid Geometry. When I read Ritchie's forward about the selling of nuclear secrets, it all made sense. Father B. -- a man of such easy ethics -- why, sure -- why not? I'll bet he gave it all over to the Russians.
David's clipping of the tribulations of Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist would have been much more interesting had there been a picture. Could have saved a thousand salacious words.
David's tale about trying to get into the dance studio strikes me as a personal problem. I don't know about you people, but I've got troubles of my own. I don't need his. Why, just yesterday I...ah, forget it. 

Mike Geary
Off to do a job.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Ritchie" <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 12:49 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Not a Transom Tale



Here's some follow up:


US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop on FBI nuclear scandal
January 22, 2008 9:50 AM http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece
Harry Shearer, one of the voices behind The Simpsons, has used his own blogging voice to ask a pertinent question. Why has a story broken by the Sunday Times over here about nefarious goings-on in the States failed to take off in the American media? He isn't alone in his concerns. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers some 35 years ago, is even more outraged.
He writes: "For the second time in two weeks, the entire US press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt US officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the US Congress and the courts."
The dynamite story, headlined FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft, was a follow-up to its January 6 revelation, For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets. It looks to me as though the Sunday Times has landed a genuine world exclusive that should surely have been broken ages ago by US-based reporters.
It revolves around accusations made by an FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, who - among other things - claims that the bureau was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high- ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
An American human rights group attempted to obtain further proof of this amazing tale by making a freedom of information request for a specific numbered document relating to the case. The FBI responded by claiming that it did not exist. But the Sunday Times countered that it had obtained another document, signed by an FBI official, showing the existence of the file.
That's why the Sunday Times's latest story, under its old Insight logo, began by accusing the FBI of a cover-up. This looks to me like a very hot story indeed that should surely have been taken up by mainstream newspapers in the United States.
Ellsberg is now appealing to readers to ask their papers why they have turned their backs on Edmonds's revelations. He writes: "For the last two weeks - one could say, for years - the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds... It is up to readers to demand that this culpable silent treatment end." 



David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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