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When she was only five years old, Song Kosal, was a little girl growing up in Cambodia. 300 grams of TNT exploded. A GYATA 64 anti-personnel mine produced by Hungary changed her life. She survived and in her mid twenties, her poster-size picture was carried down a run-way by girls and women from a Cambodian community in Norway at the South Norway Museum of Modern Arts at the Miss Landmine Cambodia finale-in-exile on November 14th. Song Kosal heard the news that her government had banned the Miss Landmine Contest only days before the event was supposed to take place.

The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

It turns out that "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" is a passionate defense of our nation's public schools, a national treasure that Ms. Ravitch believes is "intimately connected to our concepts of citizenship and democracy and to the promise of American life." She issues a warning against handing over educational policy decisions to private interests, and criticizes misguided government policies that have done more harm than good. Ideas such as choice, utilizing a "business model" structure, accountability based on standardized tests and others, some favored by the left, others by the right are deemed as less, often much less, than advertised. Ms. Ravitch doesn't oppose charters, but rather feels that the structure itself doesn't mandate success. As in conventional schools, there will be good ones and bad ones. But charters must not be allowed to cream off the best students, or avoid taking the most troubled, as has been alleged here in New York City. Here main point, however, is broader. "It is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing educational policy to be directed, or one might say, captured by private foundations," Ms. Ravitch notes. She suggests that there is "something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public educational policy to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people." However well intended the effort, the results, in her telling, have not been impressive, in some cases doing more harm than good.

According to this CONSERVATIVE and BUSH Assistant Secretary of Education, "No Child Left Behind" is destroying one of the great social "glues" of America - its public school system. Of course, not only Bush and the Republicans are to blame, Democrats went along with NCLB on the "promise" of extra federal funding for implementing it AND supporting American public schools. That was funding that never materialized due to our other great national priority - making corporate cronies rich via the war in Iraq (and hoping to make the oil companies richer there as well, but apparently failing miserably to do so ... so far). NCLB could have been suspended when that happened, but strangely (NOT!) Bush and the Republican controlled Congress conveniently forgot their promise (perhaps because NCLB unfunded was more like no teachers union left un-destroyed!?). More from http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/28/entertainment/la-ca-diane-ravitch28-2010feb28 on this book - Diane Ravitch, probably this nation's most respected historian of education and long one of our most thoughtful educational conservatives, has changed her mind -- and changed it big time. Ravitch's critical guns are still firing, but now they're aimed at the forces of testing, accountability and educational markets, forces for which she was once a leading proponent and strategist. As President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, embrace charter schools and testing, picking up just where, in her opinion, the George W. Bush administration left off, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" may yet inspire a lot of high-level rethinking. The book, titled to echo Jane Jacobs' 1961 demolition of grandiose urban planning schemes, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," has similarly dark warnings and equally grand ambitions. Ravitch -- the author of "Left Back" and other critiques of liberal school reforms, an assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration and a

Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers - of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses. So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait - let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?

stop at a gas station in Miami Gardens early Monday left a young couple dead when a group of carjackers tried to steal their souped-up car. The men were apparently after 23-year-old Julian Soler's prized 1997 white Mustang Cobra, police said. Miami Gardens police said Soler's girlfriend, Kennia Duran, 24, saw the men shoot her boyfriend before pulling her out of the car and fatally wounding her, too. Detectives called the double murder "cold-blooded." "There was no need to kill them," police spokesperson Rafael Suarez said. No arrests have been made.

Islam is a balanced religion. It believes in respecting all sects, all cultures and all civilizations. All laws relate to Islam are meant for Muslim benefits . It is true that in the recent years, Islam has become a victim of extremism. The purpose of Islam has never been to spread Islamophobia. Islamic ideas have been exploited to give them the shape of Islamophobia. Islam does not define a mosque and state as distinctive. A mosque is there, to provide a forum to the Muslim to unite and pray. The gesture is to promote congregational prayers, which is also an aspect of Christianity. Islam does not believe in forcing its concepts upon Non-Muslims. Unethical Jehad has never been an Islamic thought. It is just that some extremist groups are trying to manipulate Islam and use the Ideals to their benefit. Islam believes in respecting all religions. That is what the Holy Prophet (PBUH) taught the Muslims. Islam does not preach unkindness to any. May it be your enemy or slave. These are not the aspects of Jihad. A woman can legally have a physical relationship with her husband only. It is definitely no concept of Jihad. Islam believes in respecting a woman, not exploiting her dignity and respect. Islam does not allow illegal confiscation of property during Jihad. Islam does not promote destruction. Taxes does not mean degrading. Taxes are defined to establish a system and maintain a proper division of wealth. If Christian and jews had to pay Jiziah, Muslims had to pay Zakat .Brutality is not a custom of Islam. A Muslim derives so much contentment from Islamic values, that they do not need to run away from the religion. Anything , which drives a person from sanity is not liked in Islam. The reason being that all wrongs can be committed, when a person is drunk and is not in a normal state of mind. This is human nature, that we cannot drive contentment until we avenge someone for the bad they have done to us. However Islam prefers forgiveness. Sometimes a harsh punishment

Would O'Reilly be interested in running? He says no. "I have more power doing what I'm doing than getting involved with the political process," he told Stephanopoulos. "Plus you have to kiss butt to get money." As for frequent "O'Reilly Factor" guest Sarah Palin, O'Reilly says she absolutely wants to run but has to weigh whether she wants to put her family through the process. And, he added, she needs to study up. "Sarah Palin needs to go to college," O'Reilly said. "Political college, world affairs college, and she is. She's hired a bunch of advisers and they're giving her a whole bunch of tracks to learn, because it is a sophisticated deal."

Oh my goodness! Next he'll say Rush needs to lose weight. Then he will really be in trouble.

Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn't taken a friend's advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old's biology lessons. Mule's precocious daughter Elizabeth excels at science and has been studying tarantulas since she was 5. But she watched Elizabeth's excitement turn to confusion when they reached the evolution section of the book from Apologia Educational Ministries, which disputed Charles Darwin's theory. "I thought she was going to have a coronary," Mule said of her daughter, who is now 16 and taking college courses in Houston. "She's like, 'This is not true!'"

Home Fooling.

Palin doin' her thing!

The anti-globalisation movement suffered a dizzying setback on 9/11. Symbolic gatecrashing into the well-guarded meeting places of the super-rich suddenly seemed a much more sinister activity than before. Busting up branches of Starbucks and other Seattle-style antics became anathema in an atmosphere of injured and vindictive patriotism. But Naomi Klein, the combative theorist and publicist of anti-globalisation, was not about to accept such guilt by association. Her reply, The Shock Doctrine, deals with the corporate acquisitiveness that she sees as ravaging the planet and reformulates the ideas of the anti-globalisation and anti-corporate movements for a post-9/11 world. Klein believes she has found the answer to a question that has perplexed many on the left: if every modern American government has been a tool of powerful business interests, what, if anything, makes the Bush administration uniquely odious? Her answer is that the Bush administration draws its political support not from America's corporate class generally, but rather from a particular part of it: 'the sprawling disaster capitalism complex'. She has in mind the companies that reap huge profits from catastrophes, both man-made and natural. They include defence contractors, arms dealers, high-tech security firms, the oil and gas sectors, construction companies, private healthcare firms and so on. Not exactly ambulance-chasers, they are driving the ambulances themselves - for a profit. For the most part, they capitalise on emergencies rather than deliberately bringing them about. But the distinction is not always so clear: the stock price of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defence contractor, almost tripled between 2003 and 2007 after a former vice president at the firm chaired a committee agitating for war with Iraq. The Iraq war was also 'the single most profitable event' in the history of Halliburton, whose former CEO, who still retains stock options, is Dick Cheney.

The madness that is the proposed tax repatriation holiday is continuing and gathering steam. More and more members of congress are coming out of the woodwork, scratching their chins in contemplative consideration as it were, pretending that they've just realized what a great day a corporate tax holiday would be - not that they've taken gazillions of dollars from the firms lobbying for it or anything. The latest convert seems to be Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley. Berkley's plan is to offer a pseudo-holiday - not the full-fledged happy-ending massage the companies wanted (i.e. a reduction from 35 percent+ to 5.25 percent) but a mere ten-point shave: Representative Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat, is the latest lawmaker to consider legislation allowing multinational companies to send offshore profits to the U.S. at a reduced tax rate. Her proposal, which was confirmed yesterday by Berkley's communications director, David Cherry, would allow companies to return profits to the U.S. at a 25 percent tax rate, 10 percentage points below the maximum statutory rate. Most companies publicly supporting a holiday, such as Duke Energy Corp., have spoken favorably of the 5.25 percent rate that is being offered by Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican. One thing that people must understand about this tax repatriation business is that it's a wholly bipartisan affair. It's not solely the work of evil Republicans. This is a scheme that requires heavies in both parties to help ram the knotty, hard-to-sell legislation through. On the Democratic side, unsurprisingly, the main actor is going to be Chuck Schumer. John Kerry is also involved with this nastiness. Barbara Boxer led the 2004 effort and the failed 2009 campaign to get a holiday, and is rumored to be lurking somewhere in this business. Note that Cisco, a California corporate heavyweight and one of the companies lobbying most ravenously for this tax holiday, has been a consistent lifelong contributor

A Rumpus Lamentation on What We Lost Say you took the long view of September 11, 2001, the view from the heavens, the view of a compassionate celestial being. From up there, you'd see that approximately 150,000 earthlings died that day. Most of these deaths were caused by malnutrition and age-related illnesses, roughly 1500 were murders, hundreds more were due to civil wars. Also, 2,977 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. *** A lot of human beings died, that's my point. They all left behind mourners. Imagine the mother who watched her child die of hunger. Here's this tiny person, a daughter. She has a name, a face. She doesn't explode or fall from a skyscraper. She simply stops breathing. No cameras record her final moment, the lamentation of that mother. These images are not replayed on the television over and over and over. What would be the point of that? *** I recently went on a radio program to discuss the literature of 9/11. The host spent most of the hour chatting with people about their memories. They all talked about watching television. They were telling personal stories about watching television.

One of my editors issued this challenge: "You may not use the words 'liberal' and 'conservative' in your writing for one week." I looked down at the sentence I'd just written: "She dropped her conservative bathing suit cover and, much to the delight of the male patrons (and a few of the females), she began to smooth warm baby oil liberally on her taunt, tan, seemingly-endless legs." Should I delete the line? No, he liked that kind of writing! No surprise there...

Millions of Americans hoped President Obama would nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer financial watchdog agency she had created. Instead, she was pushed aside. As Warren kicks off her run for Scott Brown's Senate seat in Massachusetts, Suzanna Andrews charts the Harvard professor's emergence as a champion of the beleaguered middle class, and her fight against a powerful alliance of bankers, lobbyists, and politicians.

Sen. Patrick Leahy is suggesting that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton abandon her White House run.

Northern areas of Pakistan For a decade, the northern areas of Pakistan have been under terrorism. The whole area was destroyed by terrorism and then the 2005 disastrous earthquake almost destroyed the northern area of Pakistan. At first, the innocent residents of northern Pakistan were under the terrorism of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; now, they are in the fear of the U.S. drone attacks. After the event of 9/11, the world has been completely changed, the western world, especially the U.S., has been hostile to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Will peace ever be restored in the northern areas of Pakistan? The northern area of Pakistan was under the invasion of the Taliban. The Taliban had taken over the area and enforced many severe laws. Girls were banned from acquiring education, girls' educational institutions were destroyed completely, and women were banned from earning a living. Women were also not allowed to go out of the house unnecessarily, if the situation occurs that they have to, they should be accompanied by male Mahram. If a female was caught alone in the street, then she was severely punished. A couple of years ago, a mobile phone recorded video was released in which the Taliban was spanking a girl with a leather belt in front of everyone. The girl was caught in the street with her father in law. The Pakistani Army conducted various operations in the areas and killed most of the Taliban and brought many areas back to peace.