I frequently listened with heightened interest as our Professor of sociology Sam Richards and his wife, Laurie Richards, discussed their face to face meetings and interactions with prisoners who are serving a life sentence. I believe that people who are in prison serving a life sentence do absolutely take on an interesting perspective on life as they know it. Frequently shows such as “Lockdown” on the cable news channel MSNBC, channel 67 in Philadelphia, portray prison life. These prison shows tend to portray the glamorous aspect of prison, so to speak. I do not mean glamorous as in that these prisoners are living the high life in these prisons as if it is summer camp. But I am referring to gang wars and affiliations and all of that malarkey. But for a lot of prisoners life is simply not like that. It is mundane day to day affair where they live indoors and cannot live out their dreams. Now, this may be necessary or good. A lot of these men are heinous criminals that have committed crimes that would make the hair stand on my back. I am not advocating their release or their death or anything else. I am simply stating how terribly mundane life must be for them. They may deserve it, they may not, but that’s the fact of life. In reading the prisoner’s letter I was shocked not so much as to what it said, but at how articulate, grammatical, and interesting it was to read. Professor Sam Richard mentioned how this prisoner, who wrote the letter, did not even graduate high school. The man must have taken up self-education while he was in prison. He must have taught himself how to write like this. This begs the question why? Why teach yourself while in prison if you are there for life? Why? It is not like he will ever get out to impart his knowledge on the world or use to make money in a job. He did it solely for himself. He did it solely to make himself feel good or perhaps to pass the time. I find this absolutely fascinating. The United States of America imprisons more people than any other Western nation. I find this interesting. We are a litigious country with many laws and punishments and we are a country of prisons. Why? Perhaps it would be best to find a way to rehabilitate our prisoners effectively. Naturally, some deserve death in my opinion, others deserve life sentences, but others may not necessarily deserve a second chance, but they can maybe earn one. It is important to meet and learn from current prisoners because it will be beneficial for our nation if one day we can come up with a system to rehabilitate prisoners and release them back into society in an effective manner. This of course does not warrant some cookie cutter solution. All people are different. So let us learn from this man and his letter!

With all due respect, I doubt that any secret police and government handlers would be out in the open controlling the visit with the delegation. For all Robin or any of the other members knew some of the families themselves may have been working for baathist police. Its not like they were going to announce their presence to Robin, that would kind of go against the point of the PR stunt. I just find it very hard to believe that the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein would let members of their population, some of them starving, would be allowed to meet with no control with western visitors. What if some of these families passed on immigration documents, visas, passports etc in an attempt to leave or defect.

It may be hard to imagine sometimes living in America, but there are very bad governments out there that real control the lives of their citizens.

Part 3: So naturally these Russians, whose lives were being ruined, oppressed, and destroyed by the Communist dictators, who wanted nothing more than to be flee to the United States of America, had to put on a smile and meet these American college students and to tell them that the communist model was working great for them, despite the fact that their pantries were empty. Now I would reckon that a very similar situation was going on in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, a cruel dictator. There are documented instances of his sons torturing Iraqi Olympic soccer players who lost tournaments. At the very least professor Sam Richards should have mentioned the possibility that these photos were the result of a careful Iraqi government orchestration. What a shame!

Part 2: However, I think there might be more to these pictures than what we got to see. I may be wrong, but it would not be surprising in the slightest bit that the dictatorship of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday Hussein and Qusay Hessein, had something to do with how the American delegation was handled. Of course there is no hard evidence for this. It would nearly be impossible to show, yet there is plenty of precedent for governments telling and forcing their citizens to interact with foreign delegations for public relation purposes. For instance, in the Soviet Union, where my parents lived until 1989 whenever foreign delegations arrived in Moscow, Leningrad, Electrostal, or other Russian cities, the government, the KGB, and their handlers would frequently instruct citizens how to act. They would train supposedly “average” families to meet the delegation from the West and to talk to them and to smile and to be happy. If they did not heed the KGB instructions they would be imprisoned, beaten, fined, or even killed.

Part 1 In Professor Sam Richard’s class today, Soc 119, he showed us some very interesting photos to get us thinking and to get us rethink the way we perceive the Middle East, Arabs, and Muslims. I would like to discuss some of those photographs. First Professor Sam Richards showed us pictures of Iraq and Afghanistan depicting scenes of war or post war scenes. He then showed us scenes of an American group coming to Iraq on an official peace mission to meet Iraqis right before the American invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. There were scenes of happy families, of weddings, of birthdays, of students, and so on. A number of things struck me as odd. One of them was that wedding rates in Iraq were higher in post-war Iraq than in pre-war Iraq. I thought it was a bit disingenuous to not mention that. But what struck me the most about Professor Sam Richards’ photos was that an official American delegation was greeted by Iraqi families who were under impeding attack by the Armed Forces of the United States of America. This indicated how kind and generous the Iraqi people are to impeding evil of the American army.

Part 3: I myself am an immigrant, my parents are immigrants, my grandparents are immigrants, my aunts and uncles are immigrants, from 4 different countries across the world, Canada, the Soviet Union, Russia, and Israel. I currently have a greencard, a permanent residency card, to stay in this country. The process has been long. The process has been arduous. I also do not believe illegal immigrants are right to do what they do. This does not minimize their motives, which are fair and just. This does not minimize their work ethic, which very often is stronger than native born Americans. I do not believe that they take jobs that regular American would not do. I believe that at a certain point a job is a job, and any man, regardless of nationality will take that job. We need a better mechanism for controlling the flow of illegal immigrants into the country. Bon Appetite.

Part 2: In my opinion, Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D’Ice, is no bigot. Bill Balsamico is certainly a patriot, and he definitely has some knucklehead opinions. But Bill Balsamic, owner of Casa D’Ice, is more than anything simply a brother with an opinion. He is just another guy like the rest of us who happens to be concerned with the current state of affairs. Perhaps because Professor Sam Richards does not agree with this man’s view, it may make Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D’Ice, a bigot; however, looking at any statement the man made in the video would indicate that Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D’Ice is not a bigot at all. In his remarks about immigration Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D’Ice, clearly stated that he has no issue with legal immigrants. In fact, Bill Balsamico’s, owner of Casa D’Ice, grandparents were legal immigrants themselves. He feels that it is unfair that the United States of America has an issue of with illegal immigrants. And how this may be construed as bigoted, ‘blows my mind’ to quote Professor Sam Richards.

Part 1: After reading the title to Professor Sam Richard’s post “Is this guy a bigot, a patriot, a knucklehead, or just a brother with an opinion”, I expected that Bill Balsamico of Casa D’Ice had gone on some kind of rant against black people or people of Hispanic origin. I thought that he might have even refused to serve people of Hispanic origin. I then watched the video. I was honestly very surprised. Maybe I am blind to something, but I did not hear a single bigoted comment out of Bill Balsamico’s, owner of Casa D’Ice, mouth. I thought it was very unfair of Professor Sam Richards to potentially label Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D’Ice as a bigot.

Part 4: Black, brown, Asian, or white, it does not matter. We want to help those who we love. Is that unfair? Yes it is. But that is a fact of life we cannot change, and in my opinion should not. Affirmative action is institutional discrimination on the virtue of skin color. Why is it okay to deny someone a job because they are white, but not okay to deny someone a job because they are black? Effectively affirmative action is doing just that. Moreover, nepotism benefits white people in college admission, much less than it does to black people. How many of us know someone on the admissions board at Penn State. I would reckon, that is a pretty low number.

Part 3: Professor Sam Richards also brings up nepotism in his discussion of affirmative action. His intentions and agenda here are completely clear. He wants us to see affirmative action as a balance to nepotism. On one hand, white people who tend to occupy higher places in society help out their family members who will also be white. On the other hand, affirmative action will balance this. The comparison is false. Professor Sam Richards just builds up a straw man to then take him down. For one thing, family affairs are not some kind of government institution, they are families. It is our intrinsic nature to help our family members.