Kunstler's Advice To Young Lawyers

In 1971, the now-deceased William Kunstler offered the following advice to young lawyers in the Radical Lawyers: Their Role In The Movement And In The Courts anthology:

“If you lose sight of the goal, or begin to think that you’re foolish when you see your friends driving expensive motorcars, or living in expensive apartments or homes, so foolish and such a misfit that you must start to re-enter the system, then you are in danger. That is what will destroy the young lawyer.”

In his 1994 autobiography, My Life As A Radical Lawyer, Kunstler also made the following reference to Harvard University Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz:

“I would also never represent an individual like Leona Helmsley, who, although she has the same civil rights as anyone, is a rather detestable character with few redeeming qualities. This mogul could well afford a hired gun and did, in fact, eventually hire Alan Dershowitz; a frequent critic of mine, he is not one of my favorite people. I find it reprehensible when a man presents himself as a civil rights attorney, then represents wealthy clients for huge fees…If I’m going to be sensitive about disapproval from…a lawyer like Alan Dershowitz, who once called me the David Duke of the legal profession, I should have been a real estate salesman. Actually, criticism makes me feel that I’m doing exactly the right thing.”

(Downtown 9/20/95)

Next: They Killed The Rosenbergs lyrics

Columbia University's MURI War Machine Connection

As a Defense Industry Daily web site posting of May 2, 2007 noted, the U.S. “Department of Defense Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative [MURI] is a multi-agency Department of Defense program” that supports university research teams, which is “especially interested in efforts” that “hasten the transition of basic research findings to practical applications.” In April 2007, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research awarded 10 MURI contracts, worth about $60 million, to research teams at 29 U.S. universities. Among the U.S. universities where research teams are working on these new MURI war research contracts are Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University, Brown University, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, Stanford University, Boston University, University of Colorado, University of Virginia, University of Minnesota, George Mason University and Columbia University.

Columbia University is a team member institution on University of Minnesota researcher Richard Kiehl’s “Biologically Assembled Quantum Electronic Arrays” MURI project. Columbia University is also a team member institution on George Mason University researcher Anup Ghosh’s “Autonomic Recovery of Enterprise-Wide Systems After Attack or Failure with Forward Correction” MURI project. In addition, Columbia University is a team member institution on University of Pennsylvania researcher Sampath Kannan’s “Foundational and Systems Support for Quantitative Trust Management” MURI project.

MIT is the lead institution for MURI’s “Cognitively Compatible and Collaboratively Balanced Human-Robot Teaming in Urban Military Domains” project on which Stanford University, Vanderbilt University, University of Washington and University of Massachusetts-Amherst are also team member institutions. Research teams at MIT, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University, University of Rochester, University of California-San Diego, Carnegie-Mellon University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are also working on MURI’s “Exploiting the Documented Plasticity of the Adult Brain to Create Superior Warfighters in Fast-Paced Close quarter Combat” war research projects.

Next: Kunstler’s Advice To Young Lawyers

IDA's 21st-Century Urban Warfare Research Work

The Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] has been developing the weapons technology that the U.S. war machine requires to wage urban warfare in places like Baghdad more effectively during this 21st-century “era of permanent war and blogging.” As the IDA notes on its www.ida.org site:

“U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) asked IDA to provide technical assistance as a follow-on to the Urban Resolve Phase I experiment conducted in 2004. This new work focused on improving current joint operations in an urban environment.

“Our researchers designed and conducted the 2005 experiment to identify and evaluate potential near-term improvements in command and control, sensors, and intelligence to support operations in Baghdad. In the process, IDA helped JFCOM develop an advanced synthetic experimentation environment to explore current issues in simulation.
In addition, JFCOM initiated the Urban Resolve 2015 Experiment, which will build on the 2005 environment to identify more effective concepts for future stability operations than those currently available for Iraq and Afghanistan. IDA participated in a series of workshops that defined the kinds of information needed to attack insurgent networks, the most effective means for obtaining that information, and the details needed to incorporate these concepts into supporting models used to execute the event.

“We developed a concept involving tags and unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with advanced sensors that blends both human and technical means for detecting insurgent activities, tracking their vehicles and personnel, and locating their facilities. Tag and sensor models were developed to take advantage of the existing JFCOM simulation suite in order to bring the concepts to life in the Urban Resolve 2015 human-in-the-loop simulation. The goal is to refine and quantify the battlefield utility of these and other concepts, providing a guide for the DoD science and technology community that will lead to advanced concept technology demonstrations and transition to field operations.”
University of South Carolina President Emeritus John Palms is the Chairperson of the IDA board of trustees. MIT Institute Professor Sheila Widnall, MIT and Harvard University Broad Institute Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Programs Director Jill Mesirov, Harvard University JFK School of Government Lecturer in Public Policy John White and University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs Professor Edwin Dorn also sit on the IDA board of trustees these days.

Next: Columbia University’s MURI War Machine Connection

Columbia University's RAND Corporation Connection

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger currently sits next to RAND Corporation Board of Trustees Chairperson Ronald Olson on the Washington Post Company media conglomerate’s corporate board. The RAND Corporation think-tank was recently given a $210.6 million “cost-reimbursement plus fee-for need contract” by the U.S. Air Force “to provide for RAND Project Air Force,” which produces studies and analyses for the U.S. war machine. Coincidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was a Trustee of the RAND Corporation from 1977-1987, 1988-1998, and 1999-2001, before serving as the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Defense between 2001 and 2006.

Although Columbia’s president is a member of a mainstream media conglomerate’s board of directors, Columbia trains mainstream journalists and Columbia doesn’t publish an alternative newsweekly, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism was allowed to join the “Association of Alternative Newsweeklies [AAN]” as “an associate member” in May 2007. According to a May 18, 2007 press release, “Columbia J-School” will also be “participating in” the June 2007 “annual AAN convention in Portland,” Oregon; and the Columbia journalism school’s Career Services Coordinator “will be on hand to talk about the school, its programs and how Columbia can better serve AAN and its members.”

So don’t expect your local alternative newsweekly to provide you with much critical alternative news coverage about Columbia’s 21st-century links to the U.S. war machine.

Next: IDA’s 21st-Century Urban Warfare Research Work

Columbia University's Joint Warfare Analysis Center Link

In 2006, Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies was awarded a $300,000 grant from the Pentagon's Joint Warfare Analysis Center [JWAC] to study Public Aspirations and Anti-Americanism in the Muslim World. The study is a pilot program that includes public opinion research in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan. Lincoln Mitchell is the primary investigator on the project. A leading polling firm, Charney Research, was contracted as a consultant on the project.

Today, the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) contributes to the U.S. war machine by recommending strategic technical solutions. These recommendations are based on analytical techniques that were first conceived, developed, and operationally introduced by the personnel of a program office at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) that responded to the Office of the Secretary of Defense's call for support during the Iranian hostage rescue efforts.

Over the subsequent quarter of a century, JWAC has evolved from a small program office into a joint command of more than 500 personnel. As it grew, it became part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1994 and then was spun-off as an independent joint command subordinate to Joint Forces Command (formerly Atlantic Command) in 1998. JWAC coordinates directly with the staffs of all Unified Commands, Department of Defense (DoD) elements, Combatant Commands, military services, and other government departments and agencies to respond to crises. JWAC has twice been awarded the Joint Meritorious Unit Award and twice awarded the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office's award for Outstanding Achievement in Modeling and Simulation Analysis.

Next: Columbia University’s RAND Corporation Connection

"Upton Sinclair"

(chorus)
He saw the injustice
He wrote without fear
He exposed all the lies
This man Upton Sinclair.

(verses)

If you follow the path of Walt Whitman
And hobo around this land
You will notice that professors
Try to tell you what’s “good” and “bad”
They will praise a T.S. Eliot
Or a Yeats and Ezra Pound
But they won’t mention Mammonart
It’s a book that’s underground. (chorus)

He studied the Civil War
And Harriet Beecher Stowe
He wrote a book Manassas
And then to Chicago, he did go
He observed closely the stockyards
And wrote about it all in prose
The Jungle described the world
And exposed the wage-slave’s foes. (chorus)

He saw the miners’ struggle
And wrote the book King Coal
His mind always kept working
He wrote the book Oil!
He exposed the schools and press
And religion and magazines
He wrote a book Money Writes
Which made the gentry scream. (chorus)

He went up to New England
For Sacco and Vanzetti
The book Boston, he wrote
Exposed the Brahmins’ greed
His characters were real
And not obsessed sexually
His books tell of the workers
And of their enemies. (chorus)

To listen to the "Upton Sinclair" folk song, you can go to following link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/More+Biographical+Folk+Songs/Upton+Sinclair


Upton Sinclair was written deep in the heart of Brooklyn in the early 1980s, after I read most of the books that Upon Sinclair wrote before 1932.

Next: Columbia University’s Joint Warfare Analysis Center Link

Kunstler Appealed To Hillary Clinton For Peltier's Freedom

When 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Rodham-Clinton was living in the White House during the 1990s with her husband, former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, she apparently wasn’t very eager to end human rights violations by the U.S. government in the United States. As the now-deceased William Kunstler noted in My Life As A Radical Lawyer, his 1994 autobiography:

“Leonard Peltier most recently appealed in Nov. 1992 with Ramsey Clark as his main attorney…

“In May 1993, I wrote to Hillary Rodham-Clinton in response to a rather terse letter she had sent to one of Leonard’s new lawyers, Eric Seitz, who had requested a presidential review of the case. She wrote to Seitz that her husband had no power to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. In my letter to Mrs. Clinton, I criticized her for her cold response to Seitz’s reasonable letter and informed her that she was quite incorrect about limits on presidential interference in criminal cases. She should have recalled former President Bush’s pardon of the indicted Caspar Weinberger…

“I only hope that I live long enough to see Leonard free…”

U.S. political prisoner Peltier was still imprisoned by the Rodham-Clinton Administration on the day Kunstler died; and, in 2007, Leonard Peltier, remains imprisoned by the U.S. Establishment’s government.

(Downtown 9/20/95)

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