End of Issue #24


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Editorial and Rants

A long, long time ago there used to be this nice Canadian...  Not so today.

The Americans

June 5, 1973 - From: "Let's Be Personal" - CFRB, Toronto, Ontario

By Gordon Sinclair

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.  It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse.  Who rushed in with men and money to help?  The Americans did.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger.  Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help.  Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts.  None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris.  I was there.  I saw it.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help...  Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples.  So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes.  Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries.  Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on... let's hear it!  Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107?  If so, why don't they fly them?  Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes?  Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios.  You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles.  You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again.  You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at.  Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded.  They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'.  Let someone else buy the Israel bonds.  Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them.  When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose.  Both are still broke.  I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?  I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around.  They will come out of this thing with their flag high.  And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these.  But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians.  And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over... has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.







This can't be true!  Eurosavages are morally superior!  A rich, clueless movie star told me that!

France Rapped Over Human Rights

February 12, 2006 - From: news.bbc.co.uk

France's law enforcement and prison system have been sharply criticised by Europe's human rights watchdog.

The Council of Europe found prisons were overcrowded and police operated with a sense of impunity, according to excerpts from a report due next week.

The council's human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles said there was a "widening gap" between the "text of law and what is actually practiced".

The report comes months after many French cities were rocked by riots.

The report makes 50 recommendations to improve France's record.

They include faster and more effective access to legal assistance for detainees, separating convicts and people awaiting trial and shortening the maximum allowed 45-day solitary confinement.

Details of the report were leaked to Le Parisien newspaper, and confirmed by Mr Gil-Robles.

System of Justice

The findings are based on Mr Gil-Robles inspection of seven prisons and five police precincts last September.

He said France "has a relatively complete legal arsenal offering a high level of human rights protection" but "does not always give itself sufficient means to put it into application".

He found prisons were overcrowded and dirty, jail cells in police stations were in a terrible state and the justice system was too slow.

He criticised the treatment of minors in prisons and warned that a "hardening of immigration policies... risks violating the rights of genuine asylum seekers".

He said there was a weak reaction to anti-Semitic and racist crimes and called on France to fight against all forms of police brutality and violence.

"What is most important for me is that the penitentiary system is not a system of vengeance but a system of justice - for punishing criminals and, afterwards, permitting them to reintegrate into society," Mr Gil-Robles told France-Info radio.

"Today, this is not possible given the current state" of the French system.

The Council of Europe is intended as the guardian of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in all its 46-member states.


Unbelievable.  Your tax money at work.  I'm sure the ACLU will be out there screaming "separation of church and state!"  No?  They're not?  Heh.  I wish we had schools where being a fucking idiot was illegal.

The Art of Compromise

February 17, 2006 - From: www.twincities.com

By Doug Belden

As violent protests over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad continue around the world, a St. Paul charter school is quietly negotiating the delicate question of how to teach art to Muslims.

Any depiction of God and his prophets is considered offensive under Islam, and disrespectful representations are even worse, as the recent worldwide outrage over the Danish cartoons has shown.  But some Muslims also refrain from producing images of ordinary human beings and animals, citing Islamic teaching.

That presented a challenge for Higher Ground Academy, a K-12 school just west of Central High School on Marshall Avenue that has about 450 students.  About 70 percent of them are Muslim immigrants from eastern Africa.

Executive Director Bill Wilson said he had concerns for some timeabout how to reconcile the school's art curriculum with the views of Muslim families, but the departure of the art teacher at the end of last school year gave him a window to act.

This fall, he hired ArtStart, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization, to offer more options for about 150 kindergartners through second-graders, including visual arts and drumming.  But parents were still upset that their children were drawing figures, Wilson said, and some pulled their children out of art class altogether.

Wilson then sat down with teacher and parent liaison Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmad, who also is the imam at an Islamic center in Minneapolis, to work with ArtStart in determining how to meet state standards without running afoul of Muslim doctrine.

"We said, 'Look, we can do better than this,' " Wilson said.

No Human Images

Out the window right away went masks, puppets and that classic of elementary school art class, the self-portrait, said Sara Langworthy, an artist with ArtStart.  Revamping the curriculum "definitely require stepping outside of the normal instincts that you fall back on," she said.

In their place came nature scenes and geometric forms and patterns, said Carol Sirrine, ArtStart's executive director.  This week, the class was cutting out shapes to make into cardboard pouches.  Another project involved taking photographs and mapping the neighborhood around the school.

The conversation about what is appropriate is still open.

In a meeting this week, Langworthy asked Ahmad whether the students can do silhouettes of hands.  That's fine, he said.

Ahmad's involvement has put many parents' minds at ease, said Said Jama, father of kindergartner Suhyr Ali Jama.  Wilson said Muslim enrollment in art has rebounded since the changes were introduced.

Langworthy said she and fellow teacher Katie Tuma don't police what the students draw, but they do have conversations with students who are drawing figures to make sure it's really OK.

Not that the children are always the most reliable sources.  Langworthy said early on a few told her it was all right to draw animals as long as they didn't give them noses.

Second-grader Hawi Muhammed said her parents don't mind if she draws people once in a while, but "God ... doesn't like people to draw a lot," she said.

Her parents prefer to see things like "gardens (or) a house," Hawi said.  "That's what they like me to do."

Pictures of people and animals aren't banned in the school, and the religious teachings don't strictly prohibit viewing drawings made by someone else.  For example, body tracings that students had cut out and decorated under the previous art curriculum still hang in a main hallway.

But projects that would naturally lead to figure drawing are no longer assigned, Langworthy said, which isn't a huge loss when it comes to meeting the state standards.

The relevant state requirement for grades K-3 is that students "understand the elements of visual art, including color, line, shape, form, texture, and space."

Accomplishing those objectives without having students draw people and animals just takes a little extra thought, Langworthy said.  "There's a billion ways to solve the problem," she said.  "So if you're limited to only 700,000, I can live with that."

As Sirrine put it, "In a sense, it's narrowing.  But then within that, you can find the depth."

Example For Others

Conflicts between religious beliefs and art curriculum aren't unheard of elsewhere in St. Paul or around the state, but they aren't widespread, say education officials.

Abdisalam Adam, an English as a Second Language resource teacher in the St. Paul school district, said issues like the one at Higher Ground have come up a few times, but "it is not very common."  (Charter schools are public institutions that operate independently of the districts in which they are located.  In Higher Ground's case, St. Paul Public Schools is the sponsoring organization, which means it has some general oversight responsibility.)

Michael Hiatt, director of professional development and research at the Perpich Center for Arts Education -- the state agency that offers training and support for arts curriculum -- said there was a religious group a few years ago that wanted to modify the dance curriculum offered in one district, but "I don't see it growing.  I don't see an increasing number of requests."

At Higher Ground, Wilson said he plans to use ArtStart -- which is typically hired for one- or two-week residencies rather than long-term relationships with schools -- to expand the art curriculum to grades three through five this fall.

And he said once the program is fine-tuned, "we'd like to be able to export this" to any school that is interested.

Wilson said Higher Ground has experience in mediating cultural conflicts because of tensions that have arisen between its majority African population and the rest of the student body, almost all of whom are African American.

Certain forms of hip-hop dance performed by African-American students at school talent shows are offensive to some Muslim students, for example, but "we've always accommodated that with lots of discussion," Wilson said.

That openness to cultural compromise served the school well in the case of the art classes, he said, laying a foundation of understanding with Muslim parents before the cartoon furor of the past few weeks hit.

"If we pay attention to cultural diversity and cultural competency, those kinds of issues shouldn't emerge," he said.  "We got it right before this whole thing busted open in Europe."


More political correctness to destory our schools.  So much for working hard.  Celebrate diversity!

`Gifted' Label Takes a Vacation in Diversity Quest

February 22, 2006 - From: www.washingtonpost.com or www.amren.com (no reg)

By Lori Aratani

Middle school magnet programs in Montgomery County have traditionally operated as schools within schools, offering specialized curriculum to a few select students--who have been mostly Asian and white.

But this fall, educators decided to try a different approach.  Instead of selecting a few hundred students for traditional school magnets, officials opened magnet programs at three middle schools to everyone.

In doing so, county educators--like officials of a growing number of school systems across the country--are trying to find a more diverse pool of students.  They are experimenting with new ways to reach out to students who might have special abilities but may not have been recognized through traditional screening methods.

"In the future, where we want to move is where it's not so much identifying children as gifted and talented so much as getting them the services they need to reach their potential," said Martin Creel, director of the accelerated enriched instruction division.

In Fairfax County, educators have created the Young Scholars Program, aimed at identifying kindergartners from underrepresented populations who have potential but might need extra support.  The school system also has added expanded honors classes at its middle schools in hopes of giving a broader spectrum of students more opportunities, said Carol Horn, coordinator of gifted programs for the school system.

"We've changed from labeling children to labeling services," Horn said.  "It's not whether you're gifted, it's what's appropriate for you."

The approach has its critics--those who fear that curriculum will be watered down because too many kids with varying abilities are being thrown together.  But Montgomery and Fairfax officials--like those undertaking similar efforts across the country--insist that the quality of education will not be diminished.  Key to the task is offering high-quality training that helps educators understand how to reach all students, Creel said.

{snip}

During the spring, Montgomery officials came under fire from a group of black parents who were concerned about the low numbers of blacks and Hispanics who were being admitted to middle school magnet programs.  They were also alarmed by how few of them were being labeled "gifted and talented" by the school system's second-grade screening process, which uses a variety of yardsticks.  School officials said they were working diligently to narrow the gap between students but acknowledged that they have more work to do.

But it is just this concern--that too many students are being shut out of elite programs for reasons difficult to pin down--that is fueling the school system's push for better access to special programs and less emphasis on labels to determine into which reading or math group a student is placed.


The Queer Muhammad: An Experiment in Tolerance

February 13, 2006 - From: www.townhall.com

By Mike S. Adams

Dear (NEA Chairman) Dana Gioia:

I write to you today, not with a request, but with a demand.  I've been sitting back patiently while the NEA has been promoting anti-Christian "art" for a number of years.  In fact, one could say that I have been supporting it, too, given that my tax dollars have been spent on this garbage.  And maybe I've been supporting it in another way by refusing to write you to express my frustration.  That is, until now.

In the spirit of the "separation of church and state," my demand is that you commission a painting - fully funded with tax dollars - that has one intention and one intention only: To offend Muslims everywhere.

This new painting will help the NEA avoid any accusations of state sponsorship of religion by insulting some religion other than Christianity.  In the past, you've supported the "Piss Christ" and the "Elephant Dung Mary."  Now, I'm asking you to fund the "Queer Muhammad."

For this painting, I want the artist to put the Prophet Muhammad in a pink bathrobe.  I also want him holding a little toy poodle.  Finally, I would like you to feature him reading a copy of "Playgirl" magazine.  If you want to get daring, you can also feature him French-kissing Salmon Rushdie.  Or better yet, feature him French-kissing Jacques Chirac.

Regardless of the precise form it takes, I want five million reproductions of the "Queer Muhammad" in poster form.  It may sound like a large order for a first printing.  But here's what I intend to do with them:

First, I'm going to staple a "Queer Muhammad" on the door of Barbara Streisand.  She's been a real pain in the ass throughout this whole War on Terror.  I want to see whether she gains some respect for George W. Bush after Islamic fascists torch her Southern California estate - all for expecting adherents to the "religion of peace" to be as tolerant of homosexuality as Hollywood liberals.

And, then, I'm heading to the Upper West Side to place a "Queer Muhammad" on the door of Michael Moore.  That fat joker will be begging Charlton Heston for a gun by the time the New York City Muslims throw their first Molotov cocktail.

Next, we're off to Colorado to the home of Ward Churchill.  After I place a "Queer Muhammad" on his home, I'll put one on his office door at the university.  And, while I'm at it, I'll hit the office doors of every anti-war professor in America.

I also plan to visit all those professors who have "Darwin fish" on their university office doors.  For years, they've been desecrating a sacred Christian symbol with impunity.  Come to think of it, many have been desecrating an Old Testament religious symbol by using rainbows as a backdrop for those "celebrate diversity" bumper stickers.  When they place those on their office doors, they do more than just promote acceptance of sodomy.  They ridicule a covenant between God and Noah.

Maybe after the Muslim Student Associations begin ripping down the "Queer Muhammad" posters - always leaving the Darwin fish intact - some of these professors will begin to realize that white Christian heterosexual males really aren't so bad after all.  And maybe some will realize that young Muslim males are the most dangerous demographic group on the face of the planet.

But the professors and the movie stars won't be the only ones included in my little experiment in tolerance and diversity.  I want to make sure to include members of the gay community, too.  That's why the "Queer Muhammad" will be posted on the door of every gay bar in San Francisco.

Under my plan, when California Muslims attack these businesses, the gay political lobby will finally have some use for politically correct and seldom-used "hate crimes" legislation.  It will also give that large segment of the gay population - the ones who always need something to whine about - something legitimate to whine about.  And it will give Christians a break from the gay mission to invade and pervert the Christian clergy.

That will leave me with about four million "Queer Muhammad" posters for the most ambitious aspect of my plan.  This involves hanging posters on the doors of every active member of the National Rifle Association.  When the Islamic fascists begin hurling stones at the houses of NRA members, many of my brothers (and sisters)-in-arms will start heading for the nearest gun safe.  I know I will.

Maybe a few of these violent Muslims will survive their attack on the First Amendment, after it is thwarted by the Second Amendment.  If so, I have a special plan for the Islamic fascist survivors.  This plan was inspired by my realization that so many members of the anti-war movement are also members of the pro-gay movement.  Here it is, in all its leftist-inspired brilliance:

The NRA members whose homes were attacked will all petition local Democratic prosecutors, the media, and even their Democratic legislators to charge the fascists with hate crimes for attacking the image of the "Queer Muhammad."  This will draw a line in the sand for these Democrats.  Will they side with the Muslims against the gays?  Or will they side with the gays against the Muslims?




If things work according to my plan, we will be able to kill off a lot of these Muslim terrorists and simply claim self-defense.  Even better, we'll cause significant division and strife among the American Left.  After it all goes down, I'll head to my refrigerator instead of my gun safe.

Then I'll drink a nice, cold Carlsberg.  Bottled and brewed by our allies in Denmark.


If other countries don't like how Gitmo is run, why don't they take in the terror suspects?  After all... they are all innocent!  LOL!

Some Gitmo Prisoners Don't Want to Go Home

March 6, 2006 - From: www.breitbart.com

By Ben Fox

Fearing militants or even their own governments, some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations do not want to go home, according to transcripts of hearings at the U.S. prison in Cuba.

Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return.  The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back.

President Bush has said the United States transfers detainees to other countries only when it receives assurances that they will not be tortured.  Critics say such assurances are useless.  The U.S. has released or transferred 267 prisoners and has announced plans to do the same with at least 123 more in the future.

Inmates have told military tribunals they worry about reprisals from militants who will suspect them of cooperating with U.S. authorities in its war on terror.  Others say their own governments may target them for reasons that have nothing to do with why they were taken to Guantanamo Bay in the first place.

A man from Syria who was detained along with his father pleaded with the tribunal for help getting them political asylum in any country that will take them.

"You've been saying 'terrorists, terrorists.'  If we return, whether we did something or not, there's no such things as human rights.  We will be killed immediately," he said.  "You know this very well."

It is impossible to know how many of the detainees, most held for years now without being charged, fear going home.  The U.S. military does not comment on individual cases, and the detainees generally are not in a position to offer any evidence of persecution as they plead their cases before the tribunals.

A Saudi identified only as Yasim, who said he attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and was jailed in his country for selling drugs, told the tribunal that after being repeatedly interrogated at Guantanamo, he fears his fellow prisoners as well as others back in Saudi Arabia.

"I can't go back to my country.  I have been threatened to be killed by many people," he said, according to the transcripts, which the Pentagon released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

A detainee from Uzbekistan told the tribunals in December 2004 that his father and uncles were jailed for their Muslim faith in his native country and said he fears the rest of his family would be tortured if he returned.

The prisoner shrugged off the threat to his own safety in Uzbekistan, where the government has clamped down on Islamic groups which are not sanctioned by the state.

"I'm not afraid to die.  We all belong to Allah and we shall return to him," he said.

This Uzbek's fate is unknown, as is that of almost every other detainee whose names are no longer blacked out when they appear in the hearing transcripts.  The Bush administration has not said who has been held in the prison it opened in January 2002, and does not announce when or where individual detainees are released.

What the Pentagon has said is that 187 prisoners have been released, and 80 others have been transferred to prisons in more than a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia, Bahrain and Pakistan.  An unknown number of these prisoners were later released but many languish in other jails, again without charges, let alone trials.

"We have no authority to tell another government what they are going to do with a detainee," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico told the AP a year ago when asked about dozens of Pakistani prisoners transferred home for continued detention.

The personal threats that detainees may face after leaving Guantanamo Bay pose a human rights challenge to the United States, which has stopped bringing new prisoners to the camp and is under international pressure to close it altogether.

"This policy of handing over prisoners to countries that the U.S. challenges on their human rights abuses is a sham and it opens the United States to charges of hypocrisy around the world," said Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has sought passage of a bill that would ban the U.S. from sending prisoners to other countriesto face torture.

In the case of one group of prisoners, Muslims from western China known as Uighurs, the U.S. has struggled to find a solution.

A military tribunal has determined that five are "no longer enemy combatants" and can be released from Guantanamo Bay.  The U.S. agrees they could face persecution back in China but so far has not found a third country to take them.

For now, the Uighurs are being kept at Camp Iguana, a privileged section of the prison with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean.

A Uighur told a military tribunal that he feared going back to China so much, he considered trying to convince the panel that he was guilty, according to a hearing transcript.

"If I am sent back to China, they will torture me really bad," said the man, whose name did not appear in the transcript.  "They will use dogs.  They will pull out my nails."

Two of the Uighurs are appealing a federal judge's rejection of their request to be released in the United States, where a family in the Washington suburbs has offered to take them in.

"Home is China, and in China you disappear into a dungeon and no one ever hears from you again," said their lawyer, Sabin Willett.  "These guys are not a risk to anyone.  They should be released here."