Letters to the Editor: November 10

Regarding corrections research:

Dear Editors,

Attention Graduate Students who are doing research into Corrections/prisons that require experienced [current & retired provincial or federal] Correctional workers to respond to your questions and any given aspect of the prison subculture.

To help facilitate communication between the university and prison communities, I’m a former prison staff member who hosts the Facebook/Meta room, “Canadian Correctional staff = PTSD” where the 90% of the room are corrections workers from across Canada, there are university researchers from last year [students’ faculty & staff] from across Canada.

Last year, Queen’s University researchers had difficulty accessing Corrections Canada governmental agency and this Facebook room is a culmination invites on other correctional worker Facebook rooms.  All responded to the notion of participating in the research into the prison subculture, anonymously.

Sincerely,

Barry Dennison

On clean energy
Dear Editors,

“Fantastic!” That’s the word Laurence Ashworth, Associate Dean Research at the Smith School of Business, used to promote an open-to-the-public lecture on why Canada should produce more carbon-based energy. An interesting word choice. On the one hand, “fantastic” could mean “extraordinarily good”; on the other, it could mean “remote from reality.”

Whatever Associate Dean Ashworth’s intent, the October 24th lecture by Associate Professor David Detomasi clearly qualified for the latter definition. If his presentation is what passes for scholarly research in the business school, I feel sorry for the students who are paying $10,000 a year more in tuition than if they were enrolled in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Is the business school educating for the future, or simply training lobbyists whose objective is to perpetuate a highly-problematic status quo?
“Governments, companies and investors need to get behind clean-energy transitions rather than hindering them,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said recently, adding that nearly half the world’s electricity supply will come from renewable energy by 2030. The IEA works with countries around the world to shape energy policies for a secure and sustainable future. 
 
Does the business school not have anyone who can illuminate how the fossil-fuel industry might be acknowledging its need to adapt to today’s environmental reality, and still find a way to be profitable? Dr. Detomasi gave no indication that he has that capacity. In fact, he trivialized this crucial issue by showing a picture of environmental activist Greta Thunberg, and noting that she has 5 million followers on Instagram, then showing a picture of Kim Kardashian, who has 25 million — implying that a person’s worth and credibility is measured by social media “likes”.
 
Surely it’s an embarrassment to the university that the business school is providing a platform for “fossil” faculty — a dinosaur, shilling for what his ancestors have become.
 
Respectfully,
Pamela Cornell (Arts ’67) 
On Palestine

Curious about the way it began? With a cry for equality, plea for prayer.

Edwin Black, award winning NYT bestselling author, in an excerpt from his article for the History News Network summarizes the history.

“The year was 1929…The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine included the provision for a Jewish homeland… But the Arabs in Palestine refused to co-exist with Jews in any way except as second-class dhimmis.”

“…exterminated the Jews of Mecca and launched the Islamic conquest that subsumed Syria-Palestina. For centuries, Jews and Christians in Arab-lands were allowed to exist as dhimmis, second-class citizens with limited religious rights”

“…under sharia, maintained that Jews could pray at the Wailing Wall—the last remnant of the Temple—only quietly and never sit, even in the heat.  Nor were Jews allowed to separate men from women during prayer.  The Jews revered the Wailing Wall as their holiest…place and a direct connection to God.”

“In 1928, on Yom Kippur, Jews decided to bring… chairs to sit while they prayed…This provoked outrage among Arabs…The offense catapulted al-Hajj-Muhammad-Amin-al-Husseini, the Grand-Mufti of Jerusalem, to sudden international Islamic importance as Muslims everywhere—from India to London—objected to Jews sitting…”

“On August 15 1929, when Jews again marked the holiday Tisha B’av by sitting…the Arabs began yet another in a series of bloody massacres.  The massacres in several cities culminated in unspeakable atrocities at Hebron.

It began in Jerusalem.  “Itbach Al Yahood!..”  Slaughter the Jews…With knives and clubs, the mob attacked every Jew in sight, burned Torah scrolls, and yanked supplication notes to God from the cracks in the Wall and set them aflame.”

“Jews were stabbed, shot, beaten down with rocks, maimed, and killed in various Jewish towns and suburbs…”

“House to house, Arab mobs went…looking for hiding Jews…   The defenceless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases their eyes plucked from their sockets.  Infant or adult, man or woman—it mattered not.  The carnage went on for hours, with the Arab policemen standing down—or joining in.  Blood ran in streamlets down the narrow stone staircases outside the buildings…”(1)

Despite this history, in 1948 ever hopeful Israel invited the Arabs in the region to stay and live in peace with Israel. The 2 million descendants of those Arabs who chose to live in peace with the Jewish population are living in Israel as Israeli citizens.

Sincerely,

Irina Milman

 

Tags

Dialogue, Letter to the Editors, Letters

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