[Avodah] Lashon Hara about non-Jews

[Kelmar, Michael J.]

R' Zev Sero wrote: 

"Charging interest and failing to return lost property are not negative
actions, which come from or could engender bad middos.  They are the
normal way we should expect to interact with strangers... And if someone
has been careless enough to lose something and you were lucky enough to
find it, why on earth should you expend time and energy to track them
down, and then give it to them?  What have they ever done for you, that
you should do them such favours?"  

The Torah permits me to keep the aveida even when there is no particular
carelessness on his part (for example, the band of his $20,000 gold
watch broke which can happen to anyone), and the Torah permits me to
keep the aveida even when there is no tircha on my part to return it (it
was my next-door-neighbor's watch, who has been a shabbos goy for me a
hundred times and lent me his lawn-mower).

"This isn't a bad midah, it's a normal balebatishe midah."

Mi amar?  Chopping off heads is a normal baalebatishe midah in some
places.

"Speaking LH, though, seems like something negative."

OK, I agree.  But it sounds very touchy feely to me.  The Torah allows
an Isha Yafas Toar b'kishrei milchana.  So maybe the Torah allows a
person to vent his taavah for blabbing about people so that he should do
it in a permitted way and not about Yidden.  Who knows?  We didn't write
the Torah.  We don't need to be m'chadesh new issurim.