When Michael Moore said that capitalism should be replaced by democracy, it didn’t make the most sense, I agree. However, it is well known that the economic system of socialism change how effective a political system works. Captialism, when allowed to go to extremes can also interfere with our political system.
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Speech on media propaganda - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views
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The 30-minute speech I gave last month at the Symphony Space in New York is now available on video, and is posted below in three YouTube segments (the first segment also contains the 4-minute introduction of my speech). The speech pertains to the evolution of my views on media criticism, the nature of media propaganda and what drives it, and what can be done to combat it. A DVD of the entire event -- featuring the three other speeches: from Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore -- is available at FAIR's website. I want to note one example, from today, that vividly illustrates many of the themes I discussed in that speech. It is found in the following passage from this Reuters article on Obama's escalation of the covert war in Yemen and his targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki for assassination: A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. strike last Friday killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel al Qaeda operative, which followed last month's attempted strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Whether Awlaki has any operational role in Al Qaeda at all is a matter of intense controversy. The U.S. Government has repeatedly asserted that he does, but has presented no verifiable evidence to support that accusation. But what is not in dispute is the notion that Awlaki is "the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." He unquestionably is not, and never has been, as multiple Yemen experts have repeatedly noted. The Reuters claim is factually and entirely false. Whatever one's views are on Obama's assassination program, targeting U.S. citizens without due process obviously raises extraordinary and vitally important questions. As The New York Times' Scott Shane put it when confirming Awlaki's inclusion on Obama's hit list: "The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen. . . . It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an America
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shared by thinkahol * on 27 Jul 11
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Evil Corporate Tax Holiday Gains Bipartisan Support | Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog... - 0 views
www.rollingstone.com/...ns-bipartisan-support-20110726
Evil Corporate Tax Holiday Gains Bipartisan Support | Rolling Stone Politics Taibblog Matt Taibbi on and the Economy
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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
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shared by thinkahol * on 20 Aug 11
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Economic Scene; If taxes were lower, the economy would grow faster, right? Economists s... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...w-faster-right-economists.html
Economic Scene; If taxes were lower the economy would grow faster right? Economists say not necessarily. - New York Times
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AS Election Day approaches, serious discussion about economic policies is hamstrung by the devotion of both parties to reducing taxes. The big reason, of course, is that President Bush emphasizes tax cuts, including elimination of the estate tax, to the exclusion of almost everything else. The Democrats, in turn, hesitate to propose an economic plan that does not include long-term reductions for middle-income workers, and most refuse to talk about rescinding the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But the degree of misleading information emanating from both Washington and the media about how taxes affect the economy is disturbing. As I listen to the radio, watch TV news and read a variety of newspapers, it seems that quite a few Americans, including economics writers and media hosts, think that low-tax countries unquestionably grow faster than high-tax economies. Right and left, they seem to attribute more rapid growth in America to lower taxes. What may surprise them is that there is no evidence for that. ''You can make a theoretical case that high taxes impede economic growth, but it is just not supported by the evidence in the U.S. or across countries,'' said William Easterly, a former World Bank economist soon to join the faculty of New York University.
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Hello Wall Street - We Are Anonymous - YouTube - 0 views
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Hello citizens of the internet. We are Anonymous. On September 17th, Anonymous will flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices. We want Freedom. This is a Non Violent protest, we do not encourage violence in any way. The abuse and corruption of corporations, Banks and Governments. ENDS HERE!! Join Us! We Are Anonymous. We Are Legion. We do not Forgive. We do not Forget. Wall Street, Expect Us!
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shared by thinkahol * on 28 Sep 11
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Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution ( Occupy Wall Street ) | Occupy P... - 0 views
occupyportland.org/?p=107
Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution ( Occupy Wall Street ) | Portland
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angella on September 27th, 2011 at 1:08 pm # Online Protest Your Voice Will Be Heard Right to political protest The right to political protest is protected by the Constitution. Section 17 of the Bill of Rights provides for rights to conduct peaceful and unarmed activities such as assembly, demonstrations, pickets and petitions. Political protest also involves imparting related information, and this right is guaranteed by the section regarding freedom of expression (Section 16 of the Bill of Rights). Although the right to political protest is protected by the Constitution, this right may be limited by principle. Activists must remember that none of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are absolute. The Constitution gives government the power to limit these rights. Section 36 of the Bill, however, says the limitation of fundamental rights or freedoms must be reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. The Following Abstracts from the Bill of Rights Might Apply To Any On-Line Protest Section 15: Freedom of religion, belief and opinion Everyone has the right to believe or think what they want, even if their opinion is different to the government. Everyone has the right to practise the religion they choose. Government institutions, like schools, can follow religious practices (like having prayers in the morning) but this must be done fairly and people cannot be forced to attend them. A person can also get married under the laws of their religion. But these cannot go against the Bill of Rights. For example, a woman who marries according to customary law does not lose her rights of equality when she gets married. Section 16: Freedom of speech and expression Everyone has the right to say what they want, including the press and other media. Limiting this right There are certain kinds of speech that are not protected. These are: propaganda for war inciting (encouraging) people to u
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shared by thinkahol * on 13 Sep 11
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Executive Summary:"Public Opinion and Democratic Responsiveness: Who Gets What They Wan... - 0 views
www.russellsage.org/...lens-democratic-responsiveness
Executive Summary:"Public Opinion and Democratic Responsiveness: Who Gets What They Want From Government?" by Martin Gilens | Russell Sage Foundation
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Gilens examines the extent to which different social groups find their policy preferences reflected in actual government policy and the variation in these patterns across time and policy domains. For example, when Americans with low and high incomes disagree on policy, are policy outcomes more likely to reflect the preferences of affluent Americans? If so, does the advantage of more affluent Americans differ over time (e.g., depending on which party controls the congress and presidency) or across policy domains? Similarly, are Republicans or Democrats in the population more likely to get the policies they prefer when their party is in control of national political institutions? Because his database contains policy preferences broken down by income, education, partisanship, sex, race, region, religion, and union/non-union status, Gilens will be able to address a multitude of questions concerning government responsiveness to public preferences. For this study, Gilens uses data on public preferences and policy outcomes based on 754 national survey questions from 1992 through 1998 and restrict his attention to divergent policy preferences of low- and high-income Americans. Each of these survey questions asks respondents whether they support or oppose some proposed change in U.S. national policy, and he has used historical information sources to determine whether each proposed change occurred or not (within a four-year coding window from the date of the survey question). When Gilens looks separately at respondents with different incomes, he finds that the higher an individual's income, the more likely it is that government policy will reflect his or her preferences. This relationship, however, does not increase in a linear fashion: the difference between poor and middle-income Americans is modest compared with the difference between those with middle and high incomes. In other words, it is not that the poor are especially less likely than middle-income Americans to get
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Another Crazy Idea: Wash Your Food Before You Eat It | Ayliana87's Xanga Site - Weblog - 0 views
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A Libertarian rebuttal to the post two links down on my profile, written a little more intelligently than most, from somebody who I find myself liking a little - but still showing some of the glib blindness that drove me away from that movement. Eg. responding to the report of the selling of tainted meat by saying that one could prevent the problem by cooking the meat until it's medium (ie. greyish red, instead of grey outright, and only mostly tasteless). "See", she seems to be saying, "even without governmental regulation, you have a choice", not quite getting that it isn't a reasonable choice. Selling meat that doesn't have to be cooked to death to be safe is absolutely possible; my grocery does it with regularity and I cook it rare with regularity, without problems following. So is it reasonable that people in places where the merchants or those they buy from are not as ethical should have to maybe choose between enjoying their meals, or surviving them, just so that somebody else be slimy without undue interference? With how ever much charm, the author of this piece answers that question with a resounding "yes", and shows why Libertarianism is, as I've said, not about the promotion of personal freedom so much as it is about the promotion of personal irresponsibility.
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Skepticblog » Capitalism-A Propaganda Story - 0 views
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Suggestion #1 Shermer should stay out of politics and economics. #2 He and all of you should read this: How the Servant Became a Predator, Finance’s Five Fatal Flaws By William K. Black Assoc. Professor, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City
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Michael Moore is a fantastic skeptic. He doesn’t fall for the cultural mythologies of our age. The fervor that some people hold for their favorite economic systems is much akin to that held for religions. People get bent all out of shape when someone is sacrilegious enough to point out the problems and disconnects within their worshipped system. Some people think that there is some kind of magical something or other to their economic system that makes it function automatically. When you go looking for the “man behind the curtain”, you find out how frail the system really is.
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The microeconomics that drive the lives of ordinary people and businessmen do not necessarily coordinate with the macroeconomic needs of a nation.
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In this latest installment in his continuing series of what’s wrong with America, Michael Moore takes aim at his biggest target to date, and the result is a disaster. The documentary is not nearly as funny as his previous films, the music selections seem contrived and flat, and the edits and transitions are clumsy, wooden, and not nearly as effective as what we’ve come to expect from the premiere documentarian (Ken Burns notwithstanding) of our time. And, most importantly, the film’s central thesis is so bad that it’s not even wrong.
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I fail to see how businesses only operate without coercion. Businesses only operate without coercion if they have been coerced to do so. There are many examples in history of businesses taking as much control of their employees’ lives as possible. It is only due to government regulation that we do not have more businesses treating employess as property as some coal mines once did.
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If we ask which economic system produces the greatest human well-being, the overwhelming evidence is already in: we know economic libertarianism doesn’t work. The only serious question, the only question for critical thinkers, is what balance between state and market (assuming we can even make a meaningful distinction between them in some cases) is ideal?
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Both are idealistic, purist and pseudo-rational systems of belief that were the basis of the greatest ideological divide of the 20th century. I think it’s time we grew up from both and set about the hard task of finding out how to really make an economic system work for us, and not the other way around.
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In general, libertarians seem to have a blindspot when it comes to noticing the self-serving aspects of their beliefs. They often spout words like “liberty” and “freedom” without even considering that they might be truly wanting “liberty” from responsibility toward others and “freedom” from paying back the society that has often served their interests quite well.
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shared by thinkahol * on 24 Jun 11
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United States v. Dougherty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
en.wikipedia.org/...United_States_v._Dougherty
United States v. Dougherty - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
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United States v. Dougherty was a 1972 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in which the court ruled that members of the D.C. Nine, who had broken into Dow Chemical Company, vandalized office furniture and equipment, and spilled about a bloodlike substance, were not entitled to a new trial on the basis of the judge's failing to allow a jury nullification jury instruction. The Appeals Court ruled, by a 2-1 vote: " The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a "necessary counter to casehardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors," does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power. On the contrary, it is pragmatically useful to structure instructions in such wise that the jury must feel strongly about the values involved in the case, so strongly that it must itself identify the case as establishing a call of high conscience, and must independently initiate and undertake an act in contravention of the established instructions. This requirement of independent jury conception confines the happening of the lawless jury to the occasional instance that does not violate, and viewed as an exception may even enhance, the over-all normative effect of the rule of law. An explicit instruction to a jury conveys an implied approval that runs the risk of degrading the legal structure requisite for true freedom, for an ordered liberty that protects against anarchy as well as tyranny. " Nonetheless, the defendants were given a new trial on the grounds that they had been denied their right of self-representation.[1] The Circuit Judges' assumption that jurors know about their nullification prerogative has since been brought into question by other empirical evidence.[2] According to Irwin Horowitz, "Beyond the empirical issue, lack of nullification instructions maintains a deceit. After all, juries can nullify, but they know this fact only on a so
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shared by thinkahol * on 24 Oct 11
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Colbert Channels Herman Cain on the Unemployed: Blame President Obama AND Yourselves! |... - 0 views
www.alternet.org/...resident_obama_and_yourselves!
Colbert Channels Herman Cain on the Unemployed: Blame President Obama AND Yourselves! | AlterNet
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Stephen Colbert took on Herman Cain's conflicting opinions on the cause of the unemployment crisis. Is the crisis unemployed people's fault for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, or President Obama's fault for passing lousy legislation? In Herman Cain's world, both things are true, and Wall Street is definitely not to blame. As Colbert notes, unemployed people shouldn't be occupying Wall Street; instead, "You should be out in front of the White House blaming yourself for not having a job." Watch the segment here:
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10 reasons why #DemExit is serious: Getting rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not enou... - 0 views
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The fact that the party even has superdelegates is a sign of its anti-democratic, pro-oligarchy stance. As Branko Marcetic of In These Times reports the superdelegate system was created specifically to challenge the will of voters. According to Marcetic, “When a Sanders supporter criticized superdelegate Howard Dean for sticking with Clinton despite Sanders’ landslide victory in Vermont, Dean tweeted back: “Superdelegates don’t represent the people.”
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The DNC created a debate schedule designed to make it hard for candidates to challenge Clinton’s status as the “presumptive” nominee. Debates were held on weekends, at times that conflicted with other events, and were generally slotted to attract fewer viewers.
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Fox News offered to host one. Fox News wrote that, “the race is still contested, and given that you sanctioned a final trio of debates, the last of which has not yet been held, we believe a final debate would be an excellent opportunity for the candidates to, as you said when you announced these debates, ‘share Democrats’ vision for the country.’” There never was a California debate set up. Not on Fox News or any other venue.
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The Sanders camp alleged that the joint fundraising agreement offered Clinton a chance to “launder” money through the DNC.
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It clearly goes against what was intended for the joint fundraising committees.” Given the already significant war chest Clinton had to run her campaign it is not surprising that Sanders supporters would find this news disturbing.
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The recent fights over the DNC platform reveal a real lack of support for progressive policy, especially on key economic issues
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shared by Joe La Fleur on 20 Apr 12
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Merkel ally says - 0 views
atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/...islam-not-part-of-germany.html
islam muslims sharia jihad obama politics news germany
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Tom Watson MP » Blog Archive » Power of Information: New taskforce and speech - 0 views
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We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.
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Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform
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Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.
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The difference of course is that today we contend with what Richard Saul Wurman describes as a ‘tsunami of data’
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My job is to make sure that government can benefit from this new thinking too. When we were first elected in 1997 people had a recipient relationship with data, they got what they were given when they were given it. It was static.
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In scale, the spread of social media is comparable to the spread of telephones in the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Yet it’s happened in two years not 20.
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As Clay Shirky would say, we’ve reached a point where technology is simple and boring enough to be socially useful and interesting.
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Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
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Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least
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Richard is here tonight and I hope that after the formal proceedings you might like to share some of your own ideas with him. Richard is also joined by a number of other taskforce members. They’re all people with remarkable track records in this field. We’re lucky. The UK has some of the world’s leading talent.
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And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode.
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The taskforce will bring its expertise to bare on existing initiatives to see if we can what we already do better
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I want the taskforce to ensure that the COI and Cabinet Office produce a set of guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil service code but also lives within the spirit of the age. I’ll be putting some very draft proposals to the taskforce to consider later this week.
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By bringing people onto the taskforce with the skills and experiences of people like Sally Russell we can move further and faster in this area.
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Two weeks ago the Prime Minister signalled that we were moving public services to the next stage of reform. He said that we were not only going to, further enhance choice but also empower both the users of services and all the professionals who deliver them - to drive up standards for all.
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Transformational government is about wrapping services around the citizen, not citizens around the services.
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Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.
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I’m the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and I didn’t know about an important recycling initiative going on in my own patch. This information now means that a bag load of clothing for a small child and a habitat sofa are about given a second chance to give pleasure.
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And much of that information has the potential to be reused in data mashups. Some of it already is, like Hansard on theyworkforyou, or Google Maps using Ordnance Survey data.
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The Power of Information Report recognised that, and made recommendations to the Treasury. The Treasury, with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, published an independent economic study in the Budget and announced its intention to look at these issues during this spending review cycle.
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It was this early open source approach that arguably fostered 500 years of Islamic scholarship in important fields like medicine, astronomy, lexicography, literature and science. In contrast, European data was stored in monasteries and did not foster easy knowledge transfer. As Gibbon wrote in the ‘Decline and fall of the Roman empire’ the ‘age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years’ and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals?
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I believe in the power of mass collaboration. I believe that as James Surowiecki says the many are smarter than the few. I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever. I said that I don’t believe the post-bureaucratic age argument. It’s just old thinking, laissez faire ideas with a new badge. The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.
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The irony that laying claim to the ownership of a policy on open source was lost to the poor researcher who had spent a day dissecting the speech. He’d been able to do so easily because it was freely available on my blog, a simple tool used for communicating information quickly and at nearly zero cost without the requirement to charge for access. The point is, who cares? It doesn’t matter who has the ideas. It’s what you do with them and how you improve on them that counts.
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Lawrence Lessig: Systemic Denial - 0 views
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So in coming to this meeting of some of the very best in the field -- from Elizabeth Warren to George Soros -- I was keen to hear just what the strategy was to restore us to some sort of financial sanity. How could we avoid it again? Yet through the course of the morning, I was struck by two very different and very depressing points. The first is that things are actually much worse than anyone ever talks about. The pivot points of our financial system -- the infrastructure that lets free markets produce real wealth -- have become profoundly corrupted. Balance sheets are "fictions," as Professor Frank Partnoy put it. Trillions of dollars in liability hide behind these fictions. And as expert after expert demonstrated, practically every one of the design flaws that led to the collapse of the past few years remains essentially unchanged within our financial system still. That bubble burst, but we can already see the soaring profits of the same firms that sucked billions in taxpayer funds. The cycle has started again. But the second point was even worse. Expert after expert spoke as if the problems we faced were simple math errors. As if regulators had just miscalculated, like a pilot who accidentally overshoots the run way, or an engineer who mis-estimates the weight of cargo on a plane. And so, because these were mere errors, people spoke as if these errors could be corrected by a bunch of good ideas. The morning was filled with good ideas. An angry earnestness was the tone of the day.
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There were exceptions. The increasingly prominent folk-hero for the middle class, Elizabeth Warren, tied the endless list of problems to the endless power of "the banking lobby." But that framing was rare. Again and again, we were led back to a frame of bad policies that smart souls could correct. At least if "the people" could be educated enough to demand that politicians do something sensible. This is a profound denial. The gambling on Wall Street was not caused by the equivalent of errors in arithmetic. It was caused by a corruption of the system by which we regulate those markets. No true theorist of free markets -- and certainly none of the heroes of even the libertarian right -- believe that infrastructure markets like financial systems can be left free of any regulation, including the regulation of rules against fraud. Yet that ignorant anarchy was the precise rule that governed a large part of our financial system. And not by accident: An enormous amount of political influence was brought to bear on the regulators of these core institutions of a free market to get them to turn a blind eye to Wall Street's "innovations." People who should have known better yielded to this political pressure. Smart people did stupid things because "the politics" of doing right was impossible. Why? Why was their no political return from sensible policy? The answer is so obvious that one feels stupid to even remark it. Politicians are addicts. Their dependency is campaign cash. And in their obsessive search for campaign funds, they let these funders convince them that for the first time in capitalism's history, markets didn't need the basic array of trust-producing regulation. They believed this insanity because it made it easier for them -- in good faith -- to accept the money and steer financial policy over the cliff. Not a single presentation the whole morning focused this part of the problem. There wasn't even speculation about how we could build an alternative to this campaign funding system of pathological dependency, so that policy makers could afford to hear sense rather than obsessively seek campaign dollars. The assembled experts were even willing to brainstorm about how to educate ordinary Americans about the intricacies of financial regulation. But the idea of changing the pathological economy of influence that governs how Washington governs wasn't even a hint. We need to admit our (democracy's) problem. We need to get beyond this stage of denial. We need to recognize that until we release our leaders from a system that forces them to ignore good sense when there is an opportunity for large campaign cash, we won't have policy that makes sense. Wall Street continues unchanged because the Congress that would change it is already shuttling to Wall Street fundraisers. Both parties are already pandering to this power, so they can find the fix to fund the next cycle of campaigns. Throughout the morning, expert after expert celebrated the brilliance in Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Nation's last truly great financial collapse. They yearned for a modern version of his system of regulation. But we won't get to Franklin Roosevelt's brilliance till we accept Teddy Roosevelt's insight -- that privately funded public elections tend inevitably towards this kind of corruption. And until we solve that (eminently solvable) problem, we won't make any progress in making America's finances safe again.
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Everyone recognizes that our nation is in a financial mess. Too few see that this mess is not simply the ordinary downs of a regular business cycle. The American financial system walked the American economy off a cliff. Large players took catastrophic risk. They were allowed to take this risk because of a series of fundamental regulatory mistakes; they were encouraged to take it by the implicit, sometimes explicit promise, that failure would be bailed out. The gamble was obvious and it worked. The suckers were us. They got the upside. We got the bill.
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Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution - Yahoo! News - 0 views
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Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth's creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children "religious or moral instruction." "The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians," said Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "Most home-schoolers will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program." Those who don't, however, often feel isolated and frustrated from trying to find a textbook that fits their beliefs. Two of the best-selling biology textbooks stack the deck against evolution, said some science educators who reviewed sections of the books at the request of The Associated Press. "I feel fairly strongly about this. These books are promulgating lies to kids," said Jerry Coyne, an ecology and evolution professor at the University of Chicago. The textbook publishers defend their books as well-rounded lessons on evolution and its shortcomings. One of the books doesn't attempt to mask disdain for Darwin and evolutionary science. "Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God will find many points in this book puzzling," says the introduction to "Biology: Third Edition" from Bob Jones University Press. "This book was not written for them." The textbook delivers a religious ultimatum to young readers and parents, warning in its "History of Life" chapter that a "Christian worldview ... is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is."
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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!'"
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shared by thinkahol * on 16 May 11
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American Democracy Beyond Casino Capitalism and the Torture State | Truthout - 0 views
www.truth-out.org/...1305143581
With all due respect to Charles Dickens it appears be the worst of times for public and higher education in America if not democracy itself; schools are increasingly viewed as a business prized above customer satisfaction efficiency while largely judged t
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With all due respect to Charles Dickens, it appears to be the worst of times for public and higher education in America, if not democracy itself; public schools are increasingly viewed as a business and are prized above all for customer satisfaction and efficiency, while largely judged through the narrow lens of empirical accountability measures. When not functioning as an adjunct of corporate value or a potentially lucrative for-profit investment, public schools are reduced to containment centers, holding institutions designed to largely punish young people marginalized by race and class.
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shared by thinkahol * on 20 May 11
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When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution | OurFuture.org - 0 views
www.ourfuture.org/...-enough-seven-steps-revolution
When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution | OurFuture.org
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"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac
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People: Jeremy Bowen under fire over Israel reports | News | The First Pos | Apr 16 2009t - 0 views
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Greg Dyke, the BBC's former director general, who said it was wrong for the trust to spend months investigating individual reports by journalists that had been compiled under pressure and tight deadlines."The problem is that journalism is not an exact science,"
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Pressure of deadlines is not an excuse, but it does increase the burden of proof for intent. In addition, in a complex story like this, balance arises from the totality of coverage, and an individual report can only be approximately neutral. Should we not expect an experienced reporter like Bowen to provide some original interpretation of motives?
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Saddam is Hanged for His Crimes, Who will Hang Bush/Blair for Theirs? - 0 views
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Rumsfeld's famous hand shake with Saddam provides the proof on tha
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Saddam was originally a CIA man recruited to assassinate the previous Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassem
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First time I hear this one, also not substantiated with references, this article should be in the science-fiction section
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm Info on Saddam's relationship with the CIA
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his war of aggression against Iran
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Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 - partly instigated from a border dispute between the 2 countries - Iran was supplying the Kurds with weapons in the border areas. http://www.brucekelly.com/saddam-hussein-iran.html Both countries deployed chem weapons http://www.fas.org/irp/gulf/cia/960702/72566_01.htm The US supported Iraq against Iran. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/irq8-m29.shtml
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From a Facebook commentor on the article: "In a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote: "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of Jordan." U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski met with a Saddam Hussein in July 1980 in... Read More Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint efforts to oppose Iran."
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From a commentator on the article on Facebook: "In a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote: "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of Jordan." U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski met with a Saddam Hussein in July 1980 in Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint efforts to oppose Iran."
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700 thousands mostly civilian Iraqis during the last three years of American occupation
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The article refers to the past 3 years - the last estimate by Lancet (as we know the US doesn't count the results of its carnage) was in 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_casualties_of_the_Iraq_War 654,965 to 2006 - so a ballpark for the last 3 years around the 700000 mark is plausible if one accepts the Lancet methodology. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ OTOH says around 100,000 all told.
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hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
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Death counts from wars - good link is here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat4.htm
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Saddam is just a "baby" ruthless dictator compared to Bush and Blair.
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when he converted Iraq's reserve funds from Dollars to Euros
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This happened in the 21st century, not the 80's, but its agreed on by many that it changed the game
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Saddam's fatal mistakes of trading oil in euros, not dollars happened twice - In 1999 and in November 2000. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/dollar/2003/03oil.htm
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Saddam's fatal mistake of switching to euros from dollars for oil happened in 1999. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/dollar/2003/03oil.htm
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that were used to bomb Kurdish Halabja
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CIA published a report back in the 80's stating Iraq did not own the Chemical Weapons used in Halabja, yet, coincidently Iran did.
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Some still dispute the events, yet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack and see discussion.
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last three years