Harvard Law Dean Minow Proves Hearsay Unacceptable

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Normally we post under “Reference Materials,” among other things, any book reviews from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post. “Freedom From Religion” does not appear to have been reviewed in any of these three publications – though we have posted for “Original Proposal” (before one even clicks on it for the postings in that category) the very-intriguing quotation of the former ACLU President (1991-2008) and current NYU Law Professor regarding “Freedom From Religion.”

HOWEVER, ON MARCH 2, 2011, THERE OCCURRED THE FIRST ITEM FOR POSTING UNDER “REFERENCE MATERIALS” –

By way of background, Q&A No 8 posted as part of the monthly Short Quiz under “Participant Comments” stated –

(1) The Roman Catholic Doctrine of "Blood Guilt" held that every Jew alive at any point in time including the present, is responsible for the death of Christ.

(2) It is politically incorrect to notice that The Holocaust was proper under the Roman Catholic Doctrine of "Blood Guilt"!!!

(3) However, one of Germany's most famous trial lawyers, Weddig Fricke, wrote a famous book on the subject = "The Court Martial of Jesus: A Christian Defends The Jews Against The Charge Of Deicide." Fricke wrote the book in the wake of defending a person who had killed 9 Jews in a concentration camp as a "wonderful Grandfather" whose only fault was being misled by his Roman Catholic religion. [Only the northern half of Germany is Lutheran, while the southern half has always remained Roman Catholic.]

(4) According to Fricke, the Roman Catholic Church did not abandon its Doctrine of "Blood Guilt" until 1961 - 16 years after the end of World War II.

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The first posting in this “Reference Materials” section is from a 3/2/2011 Transcript of MacNeil-Lehrer (aka The PBS News Hour With Jim Lehrer) in which the last item in the News Wrap mentions that Pope Benedict XVI’s new book “Jesus of Nazareth: Part II, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection” will be released on March 11, 2011 – AND MAKES THE CASE AGAINST BLOOD GUILT!!!

According to The PBS News Hour (which apparently received an advance copy), the Pope states that the Doctrine of Blood Guild was renounced by the Catholic Church in 1965 – apparently Weddig Fricke’s 1961 renunciation date must have been an earlier unofficial renunciation.

The PBS News Hour does not indicate whether the Pope acknowledges that the Roman Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Blood Guilt caused (or at least contributed to) the World War II Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed.

However, it is interesting to note that virtually all of the Roman Catholic countries [e.g., France, Poland, Austria and Germany (though only the southern half of Germany was and is Roman Catholic, Hitler was born and raised in Austria which is 100% Roman Catholic)] eagerly volunteered their Jews to Hitler’s death camps, and only in the Protestant countries of Northern Europe (e.g., Denmark and Holland) was their substantial resistance to doing so.
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johnkarls
Posts: 2033
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Harvard Law Dean Minow Proves Hearsay Unacceptable

Post by johnkarls »

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(Please see Dean Minow’s article posted as a separate topic below.]

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow’s article entitled “Tolerance In An Age Of Terror” (University of Southern California Law School – Interdisciplinary Law Journal – Vol. 16 – pp. 453-494) is a bitter disappointment!!!

It provides a wonderful analytical framework for analyzing the issue stated in its title!!!

But then proceeds to prove why hearsay is unacceptable!!!

[Historians call hearsay “secondary sources” and no historian worth her/his salt works from anything but “primary sources” unless they are unavailable – and even then would require as many corroborating “secondary sources” as possible before accepting anything as “fact”!!!]

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Exhibit A = Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Criticism of the Dutch Policy of Permitting Its Islamic Citizens To Commit Honor Killings and Assassinate Apostates On Dutch Soil – Even Though The Honor Killings and Apostate Assassinations Were Murder Under Dutch Law
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Dean Minow addresses the threatened assassination of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the assassinations of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn by relying solely on a hearsay evidence (i.e., a “secondary source”) = a book by one Ian Buruma entitled “Murder In Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance”!!!

As a result, Dean Minow describes Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an Islamic apostate (one who has left the Islamic faith) – (1) WITHOUT ANY APPRECIATION THAT IT IS THE OBLIGATION OF EVERY GOOD MUSLIM TO ASSASSINATE ISLAMIC APOSTATES (WHICH IS WHY, AS NOTED IN Q&A No. 2 UNDER PARTICIPANT COMMENTS ON THIS BULLETIN BOARD, THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA’S APPEARANCES IN ISLAMIC COUNTRIES ARE RESTRICTED TO U.S. MILITARY BASES AND/OR CLOSED ROOMS FOR WHICH SECURITY IS PROVIDED SOLELY BY THE U.S. SECRET SERVICE); (2) WITHOUT ANY APPRECIATION THAT AYAAN HIRSI ALI DENIES BEING AN APOSTATE, AND (3) WITHOUT ANY APPRECIATION THAT THE ASSASSINATION THREAT FOR BEING PERCEIVED AS AN APOSTATE IS WHAT DROVE HER SINCE 2004 INTO HIDING IN EXILE IN THE U.S.

Also as a result, Dean Minow describes the motivation for the assassination of Theo van Gogh as (p. 476) as having made a film with Ayaan Hirsi Ali “criticizing the abuse of women under Islam”!!!

From non-hearsay evidence (i.e., a primary source = Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book entitled “Infidel” which was published in hardcover on 2/5/2007 – 2.5 months before Dean Minow wrote her article so there is no excuse for Dean Minow’s having used “hearsay” rather than “direct evidence”), WE KNOW THAT WHAT DEAN MINOW DISMISSES AS “ABUSE OF WOMEN UNDER ISLAM” WAS IN FACT THE PRACTICE OF “HONOR KILLINGS” WHICH COMPRISE MURDER IN EVERY WESTERN SOCIETY!!!

Indeed, relying on her hearsay evidence, Dean Minow only admits (pp. 478-9) that Dutch Muslims lure their daughters/sisters to Islamic countries under false pretenses in order to murder them there!!!

If Dean Minow had bothered to read the non-hearsay evidence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she would have known that the movie that Ayaan made with Theo van Gogh was criticizing “honor killings” on Dutch soil!!!

Dean Minow dismisses the assassination victim, Pim Fortuyn (p. 477) as “a successful, conservative, gay populist who said, ‘successive Dutch governments had been far too tolerant of intolerance. They should never have allowed those dish cities to grow into hotbeds of religious bigotry.'"

If Dean Minow had consulted non-hearsay evidence, she would have known that: (1) Pim Fortuyn founded a new Dutch political party with other non-political friends, (2) that the sole issue of Pim’s new Dutch party was the violation of Dutch law on Dutch soil by Muslims to which a “blind eye” was turned in the name of religious tolerance (HONOR KILLINGS BEING EXHIBIT A), and (3) that Pim was assassinated only days before his new political party swept to power and, accordingly, only days before Pim would have headed the new Dutch government.

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Exhibit B = Dean Minow’s Reliance on Hearsay for her misleading claim about the purpose of the book by the Founding Dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government – which means that Dean Minow missed the entire reason for the current debate on “Tolerance In An Age Of Terror” which was the title of her article!!!
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Dean Minow cites (footnote 184 on p. 485) Dean Graham Allison’s book “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe” as one of three items supporting Dean Minow’s dismissive comment: “Failures to devise increased security for chemical plants, water works, cargo shipments, and nuclear material that could end up in terrorist hands also look like underreaction, given security analyses and expert recommendations.”

If Dean Minow had bothered to read Dean Allison’s book and expert reaction to it, rather than rely on hearsay evidence about what it contains (which reliance on hearsay is obvious from her comment quoted above and from her article as a whole), she would have known: (1) THAT DEAN ALLISON WAS ADDRESSING OSAMA BIN LADIN’S FATWA TO KILL 10 MILLION AMERICANS WITH ATOMIC BOMBS (TECHNICALLY, ObL’S FATWA WAS ONLY FOR NUKING 4 MILLION AMERICANS AT THE TIME DEAN ALLISON’S BOOK WAS PUBLISHED), AND (2) EXPERT REACTION WAS THAT DEAN ALLISON’S APPROACH OF HAVING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR POWERS APPLY THE SAME SECURITY PRECAUTIONS TO NUCLEAR MATERIAL THAT THEY APPLY TO THEIR GOLD RESERVES IS A “HORSE ALREADY OUT OF THE BARN” APPROACH BECAUSE THE 178 SUITCASE-SIZE BOMBS MISSING FROM THE OLD SOVIET UNION HAD LONG-SINCE BEEN AGREED BY EXPERTS TO BE IN THE HANDS OF TERRORISTS, WITHOUT EVEN CONSIDERING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES THAT TERRORISTS ALREADY HAD TO OBTAIN NUCLEAR MATERIAL FROM THE OLD SOVIET UNION ITSELF AND OTHER POWERS!!!

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Grade = F-Plus With RequestTo Revise
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Although, as mentioned at the beginning of this posting, Dean Minow provides a wonderful analytical framework for analyzing the issue stated in its title, it would be interesting to speculate what her remedial effort would have been if her article had been given an F-plus grade and returned with a note to re-do the article on the basis of discussing (1) what is really at issue with nuking 10 million Americans (which number exceeds the 6 million Jews killed in The Holocaust), and (2) what was really at issue with Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Pim Portuyn regarding Muslim honor killings and Muslim assassinations of apostates on Dutch soil which were being ignored on the altar of permitting Muslims to practice their religion even though such practices constituted murder under Dutch law.

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Typo
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I’m glad to see that Dean Minow and the Univ. of Southern Cal. Law School have as much trouble with typos as I do!!! On p. 461, Dean Minow refers to a “street far” when she obviously meant “street fair”!!!

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Interesting Nugget
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As has been mentioned several times over the years on this bulletin board, I was married for 33 years to the co-author of the country’s best-selling high-school world-history textbook = 6 editions and counting (McGraw-Hill was the publisher of the most recent 2-3 editions with National Geographic illustrations).

And mentioned that it was my assignment, when not working as an attorney 1967-1997 and then as an investment banker, to read 12-15 thick biographies and/or historical tomes in order to provide interesting “nuggets” of information that my ex-wife might then decide to include in the next edition of the textbook (or not!!!).

Dean Minow’s article did contain an interesting “nugget” that I would have researched further in the old days – searching for primary sources or, failing that, as many additional secondary sources as possible.

Dean Minow’s “nugget”???

That (p. 485) France and Germany ban all hate speech unconditionally and Germany bans political parties that challenge liberal democracy, pursuant to which the Communist Party is banned in Germany.

Primary sources to be provided for my ex would have been the French and German statutory texts banning hate speech.

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