Friday, June 11, 2004
Interview with Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, England: "Interview with Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, England"
Now don't everyone have a heart attack at once but I am linking to the National Catholic Reporter. This Bishop has some really great things to say, if you ignore the homosexuality and abortion thing, I actually agree with some of the stuff he says. It makes tremendous amounts of sense.
I encourage you to read it.
As I like to say, wisdom is wisdom no matter what religion it comes from. :oD
posted by Kimber
at 3:29 PM ::
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
An interesting little article I read in the
Sierra Club magazine...
Ideological Alamo
A censored textbook sparks a free-speech lawsuit
Dr. Daniel Chiras never thought that writing texbooks would get him branded a traitor. But that's what happend when the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education decided that the latest version of his popular environmental-science text was inappropriate for the state's public schools. Objecting to passages that noted the United States' disproportionate production of greenhouse gases and raised questions about the biblical mandate to have dominion over nature, the board rejected Chiras's book in 2001, lableing it "anti-American" and "anti-Christian". Chiras sued last fall, calling the decision unconstitutional.
With more than 4 million children in public schools and a purchasing budget topping $500 million, Texas buys more textbooks than any state except California - so the board's decision could affect authors, publishers, and students nationwide. "The First Amendment protects school textbooks from being rejected on the basis of points of view, but that's just what the board has done", says attorney Adele Kimmel, who represents Chiras and two Texas students in their lawsuit. "This is blatant censorhsip".
Noting that previous editions of his book
Environmental Science: Creatign a Sustainable Future have been a teaching staple for years, Chiras maintains he was targeted by right-wing critics. The suit's defendants, including former board chair Grace Shore, the co-owner of a small gas and oil company, declined to be interviewed, although David Bradley, a Galveston-area board member, did tell his hometown
Daily News the free-speech suit was "silly and frivolous".
Textbooks that the board did approve went through extensive, last-minute revisions to soften language out of step with conservative ideals. In a section about climate change, one publisher even added the line, "Does it really matter if the world gets warmer?" -
Dan OkoIt starts with brainwashing the children, doesn't it.
posted by Kimber
at 1:02 PM ::
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Lawyers Argued Bush Could Order Torture:
"Administration lawyers concluded in a policy paper last year that a president can legally order interrogators to torture terrorist suspects."
Well, the groundwork has been lain. And since we don't recognize the world court, he's pretty much free to do whatever the hell he wants to at this point.
Am I the only one frightened by this? Am I the only one that see this, in combination with the Patriot Act (which is already being used on civilians at an alarming rate) as another step toward official declaration of martial law?
I don't know. Maybe I am wandering down the primrose path to Art Bell-dom. But it really makes me nervous.
posted by Kimber
at 8:47 AM ::
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Report: Justice Dept. Memo Offers Basis for Torture:
"The U.S. Justice Department offered justification for the use of torture against al Qaeda detainees in an August 2002 memo to the White House, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The memo said if a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, 'he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,' the newspaper reported.
The memo also said that arguments centering on 'necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability' later, according to the Post."
posted by Kimber
at 8:39 AM ::
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Monday, June 07, 2004
Well, Reagan is dead. Having lived through all 8 years of his administration as the child of a UAW member, I am ashamed to say a small little part of me did a happy dance.
Everyone remembers him as "The Great Communicator". The smiling, grandfatherly image caring for all of us. The man at the podium telling Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." You know the single greatest legacy Regan left to me? The thing that I will always remember him for? He kneecapped the unions. When he told the airtraffic controllers that in 24 hours they would no longer have a job, and they didn't, the entire cosmos changed for me. From that day forward no union anywhere had any power other than what the company deigned to give it. He singlehandedly undid the work of 50 years. Spat on the blood-soaked ground of 1930's Chicago. Obliterated the work of Woody Guthrie and Upton Sinclair. He might as well have carried an axe-handle into every factory in the United States and cracked the skulls of every worker for daring to hope for a living wage, let alone a better life.
His legacy to the common man of America was the elimination of the middle class. Remember the days when there WAS an American Dream? A house, with a white picket fence and a car? 2.3 kids and a dog? This is what we were all supposed to be working for. And up until that day there was at least a chance that if you worked hard and lived right, you could attain that. Women could still stay at home and raise the children and men could still work and earn enough to support the household. You didn't get rich, but you had enough.
I moved out on my own (well, with John) in 1988. We were both working and he was going to school. We had no kids. I was working for a nursing home as a kind of "utility worker". I made maybe $150 a week. Then I moved over to an in-home care agency. I was making $3.45 an hour. Then I worked as a short order cook at a restaurant. Here I hit the big time. $5.25 an hour. John was working at Hardees and going to school. Our rent on the single-wide trailer we were living in was $170 a month not including anything. We still had to pay water, lights, phone et. al. In 1991, we moved to Maine. Bush Sr. was in office and things still sucked pretty bad. John worked at 7-11 and went to school and I worked at a restaurant. He made about $5 an hour and I made about the same. Our rent was $400 for three rooms in an attic.
Then Clinton got into office. You know when we bought our house? 1996. There was finally starting to be a middle class again. In 1997 we decided to have a kid. In 2001 we decided to have another one.
You know when I first heard the term working poor? In 2002, after my hubby and I were both downsized at the same time. Since then the job John got after he was unemployed for about 7 months was eliminated and the warehouse moved to Vermont. So he is unemployed again and we are bankrupt. Our state senator had to work to get funds released so all the guys from his warehouse could get retraining money. Older guys who had been working there since the 60's lost everything. Their company pension, their seniority everything. All they have left is what they will get from the Teamsters if they were vested. And they are in their 60's and 70's and unemployed. Bush Jr. is using Reaganomics as a template for his economic policies. He is trying the trickle down effect again. We're getting trickled on, alright. The rich are pissing on the poor again and loving every minute of it.
Reagan was a very charismatic fellow, I suppose. For some reason, people just love him. "Good ol' Dutch" is all I have heard for the last 2 days. I suppose you can add this to my list of things that makes me un-American but I don't mourn the passing of Ronald Reagan. He has left a swath of destruction through the path of my life I don't know if I will ever recover from. No amount of granfatherly charisma is going to fix that.
posted by Kimber
at 9:06 AM ::
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