CNN Research: Major Need for Community Policing Programs

Two days ago, CNN disclosed their findings of a search for some programs to end racial-police conflicts.  To my amazement, they reported that the community policing programs--where community leaders and city police departments form teams of volunteer police persons in a community work together to end crime and violence as a working, local force.  The advantage to the community is that the city fathers then seek out and obtain a list of pressing gripes the citizenry of targeted neighborhoods have--grievances against the way the police do business in their areas.

CNN noted that these community groups have been essentially abandoned because of local government budgetary restraints and commitments, if their city ever had instituted the program.

Hilary's added to this the need that the police force be trained to lower tensions and tempers in the communities they serve by being trained intensively in dealing with their people of differing cultures. It is true, that not until recently, has the US come into contact with Muslims, but now its almost commonplace that cities have mosques within their city limits.  The police forces must know how particular members of their communities think and act, in contradistinction to the typical citizen!  (Personally, I think a policeman must have at least an AA degree, particularly majoring in the social sciences, e.g., sociology or psychology!)

Admittedly, being a policeman today, an individual must have people skills in addition to knowing how to use a lethal weapon.



  

                      

Ms. Key's Lectures on Italian Art

I'm enrolled in Ms. Key's Italian Art Class at OLLI-UTEP this summer.  What I've gotten from attending are visual delights in sculpture and painting and edifices dating from the Medieval and Renaissance periods.

But what is shocking to me, who has known the art works brought to mind in the class once again, is the role of these artistic masterpieces in creating a new and modern art--namely, the art of people- watching.  From the vantage point of some nearby cafe or restaurant, an onlooker is drawn to the manifold of people and things that make up a wholly new genre of artistic being: the passers-by! Look at their clothes and shoes, the packages and objects they carry along, the traffic moving about, and one enters the very artistic genre unfolding in that time and place wherein it is happening.  And the evolving work has purpose and import: it reflects the need of mankind to seek meaning for all that presently transpires around him--the eternity that each masterful work of art has earned.  So, gaze-watcher, enjoy another cup of coffee; next, take your place amid the others in motion, walking the promenade of an artful, useful existence!

Hooray for you, Ms. Key!

Mr. Huchton's Lectures on China: Summer Session

I've enrolled in the Summer Session of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at University of Texas-El Paso, although I've missed some classes due to scheduling priorities.

I noted in the two classes I've attended (having missed 2 others) the Chinese government's passion for emulating the United States as much as it finds practical in so doing. Where I find departures from the American way of making policy decisions is in certain profundities stressed in Mr. Huchton's two lectures I've attended.

For one thing, China does not seem interested in vying with the US for international world-power leadership.  Instead, it wants to build an Asian nexus of countries of which it is the dominate force.  For instance, while it trades with the United States, the EU countries and England; and Russia, its primary trading partners are India and Japan.  It is currently reaching out to S. Korea and to Vietnam, too.  And it seeks to control to some extent the South Seas, though its navy which is still relatively underdeveloped.

I also detected from Mr. Huchton's summer lectures that I've attended the reason for its copying American patents: it is doing nothing different in purpose than when the American colonists would mimic the English manufacturing of goods of the time--taking the English designs and virtually reduplicating them.  The obvious way to stop that practice is simply to find another country to manufacture American goods, as for instance, India (which is also a cheaper way to go than to resource out to China).  Nevertheless, in order to be even more like America, China continues to send its youth to America to be trained and skilled in the sciences and technological areas. They believe as a people that the American lifestyle holds promise in their bright future ahead.

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Given their propensity to pursue what they believe are the best habits of Americana, I now understand why it is China wants to control the South China Seas and wrest advantage from the Philippines.  China's Hainan Province is within its scope; and its presence amounts to establishing its sphere of influence in the region.

Nor does the United States strenuously object to Iran's controlling the Strait of Hormuuz and surrounding waterways.  That is to say, China's overstepping into the South China Seas is simply a physical sign of a political reality: China dominates the region, naturally, I contend.