June 17, 2013

Ulysses S. Grant (Photo CBS)

by David Robb

Two weeks before President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and freed the slaves, his top field general, Ulysses S. Grant, committed the worst official act of anti-Semitism in American history. It was a war crime that went unpunished, and today it is all but forgotten.

June 13, 2013

Anastasia Solovieva-King (Photo AP)

The murders of two mail-order brides in Washington State led the U.S. Congress to enact the Federal International Marriage Broker Regulation Act in 2005. The legislation was intended to stop abuse of mail order brides by prospective husbands with criminal histories.

by Marie Kusters-McCarthy

The mail-order bride business is booming. In the United States alone there are over 300 such agencies. Clients can peruse information on 150,000 would-be brides on the Internet or catalogues. Many women are enticed by the thought of meeting a wealthy American husband who can offer them a better life.

The vast majority of males using these brokers are from the United States and Western Europe and most brides are Asian, Eastern European or South American. In the United States there are approximately 12,000 mail-order weddings annually through marriage brokers.  Market research shows it is a $2 billion business worldwide and growing.

June 10, 2013

Jean Harris (photo NPR)

A distraught Jean Harris paid one last visit to her estranged lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, intending to take her own life but ended up shooting him when the famed “Diet Doc” tried to wrest the handgun from her. What should have been ruled an accidental death or, at most, involuntary manslaughter, led instead to Harris’s wrongful conviction of murder.

by Denise Noe

On March 10, 1980, the bestselling Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower received a publicity boost. Tarnower could not enjoy the fruits of it since it was his killing. Called “The Headmistress and the Diet Doc,” the case grabbed international headlines because of the social prominence of Tarnower’s slayer, Jean Harris, the 56-year-old headmistress of the exclusive Madeira School, as well as that of the victim.

In addition, as Diana Trilling observes in Mrs. Harris, “To many women . . . it had only to be known that Tarnower had replaced his mistress of 14 years with a woman 20 years her junior and more than 30 years younger than himself for Jean Harris to be regarded as embattled female spirit.” Trilling continues, “Whoever had known sexual jealousy, that most destructive of emotions – and this would be so for men no less than for women – had known madness” and could sympathize with Jean Harris.

Prominent feminist Betty Friedan saw no feminist implications in the case and derided Harris as a “pathetic masochist” for sticking with Dr. Tarnower after their relationship soured.

As most facts emerged about the case, it was learned that Jean Harris had for years suffered a gnawing sense of being “inadequate” and that she believed she could no longer be “useful” as a human being. Long divorced and with her sons grown, she was terrified of a jobless old age. Her romance with Tarnower had led to her suffering for years under a campaign of extraordinary harassment. By the night of March 10, 1980, she felt that there was nothing solid in her life as both personally and professionally she was being shoved aside. There was overwhelming evidence that she wanted to end her own life.

June 6, 2013

Ariel Castro

The field of abduction provides a fascinating if complex area of study.  The individual who seeks to kidnap and then enslave the subject in question is treated as a creature lacking human traits.  It is not merely anti-human but non-human, a figure of fantasy, who conceals his quarry.  With frequency, the term “monster” is used.  It took a matter of hours for the term “monster” to be employed in the context of Ariel Castro.

by Binoy Kampmark

Absentees occupy a distinct part of human consciousness.  They are suspended, either alive or dead, often both.  They might appear at any given moment, or they might never do so.  There is contingency about their existence, qualified, uncertain, and tortured.  

For three missing women in Cleveland – Amanda Berry, 27; Georgina ‘Gina’ DeJesus, 23; and Michelle Knight, 32 – not to mention a 6-year-old daughter born to Berry – hope had been suspended.  They were never struck off the “missing list” – faith prevailed that they were still alive.

June 3, 2013

The author uses the Steubenville rape case as a primer for confronting the rape culture that grips the United States.

by Avi McClelland-Cohen

"Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism" - Mary Pipher

Much of America is already aware of the Steubenville rape case, or at least one of the countless similar cases involving teenagers, alcohol, and sexual assault. Such stories have become almost commonplace of late, with many ending in the suicide of the victim, making the tale all the more heartbreaking.

What is lacking is a discussion of why rape is so prevalent or, more importantly, what can be done to reverse the trend. Regardless of political party or personal ideology, a society without rape is one almost everyone can agree we should work towards. So where is the anger? Where is the outrage and betrayal that seems only appropriate when our children are attacking each other in the most brutal of ways?

May 30, 2013

Adolf Hitler

Known as one of the greatest madmen in history, Adolf Hitler was one of life's pathetic losers - a school dunce, a failed artist, a sexual impotent, a sociopathic racist and a drug addict suffering from both manic depression and Parkinsson's disease. But was he also a pedophile? Hitler had “sexual contact” with only a handful of women throughout his life. Five of the women attempted suicide and four of them succeeded.

by Siobhan Patricia Mulcahy

During the WW II, American psychiatrists labeled him a “schizophrenic” and “psychopath”. Winston Churchill wanted to borrow an electric chair so he could be “executed like a common criminal” in Britain.

But what is the truth about the man behind the dictator's mask?