Robert Kennedy Jr. in Burlington

In the below video, Robert Kennedy Jr. speaks in Burlington Vermont about the failure of the Bush administration to uphold environmental laws. This is what a man who loves his country sounds like:

What do you think?

Cops Caught Stealing Protestors' Cameras

See more police misconduct by clicking here.

Cops Caught Stealing Protestors' Cameras: In the latest attack on the first amendment, a shocking video has emerged of the NYPD attacking a protestor and stealing his camera and footage at a demonstration demanding justice for an independent video journalist who was shot and killed earlier this year in a state sanctioned murder.

The filmmaker, Flux Rostrum, was filming the interaction between protestors and police outside the Mexican Consulate in late October at a demonstration protesting the murder of journalist Brad Will, who was shot and killed on October 27, 2006 during the teachers' strike in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. His murderers are believed to be local officials.

Flux was not arrested, nor did he receive a receipt for seized property. Without any warning, he was jumped by two police officers, one of whom is an NYPD captain, and knocked down onto the asphalt of 39th Street. A police officer then snatched the camera out of Flux's hands. As Flux attempted to protect himself and his equipment from being trampled and beaten, the cop with the camera conferred with another officer and scurried back into the building to hide the camera.

Video of the events quite clearly shows the cop saying "I want that camera" before Flux is jumped and attacked.

When Flux attempted to get his camera back after the demonstration, he was threatened with arrest by a Lieutenant at the 17th Precinct. His lawyer was told that camera was found "abandoned" at the scene and that it had been turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office to be used as evidence against people arrested at the Mexican Consulate demonstration that day.

See more police misconduct by clicking here.

The Danger Of False Accusations

The Danger Of False Accusations by Scott Hughes

Here's an excerpt:

"When activists, who actively oppose sexual victimization, try to recruit the help and cooperation of others and society as a whole, these activists often fail to understand the hesitance of others and society. The rightful fear of false accusations motivates this hesitation."

Poor people are like bonsai trees?

Poor people are like bonsai trees?

Poverty Is A Threat To Peace

"To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly." -Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus is the MAN. He fights poverty through his non-governmental organization and micro-loans. What do you think?

Michael Jackson: They Don't Care About Us

Michael Jackson: They Don't Care About Us (Prison Version)

• More than 5.6 million U.S. citizens are in prison or have served time there. (Source)


• That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world.


• Over 25% are incarcerated for non-violent drug "crimes".


• Private corporations get paid billions of tax-payers' dollars to build and maintain prisons.


• The profits of which these companies use to bribe and lobby politicians.


• 16,000 children die from hunger everyday.


• Thousands of working-class American soldiers died in the war in Iraq.


• Over 600,000 Iraqi citizens died from the war in Iraq.


• Well over half the U.S. government's federal budget goes to Pentagon spending.


• Like the prison industry, military companies, weapons manufacturers, oil companies, etc. use their profits to lobby and bribe politicians.


• The war in Iraq cost over $310 billion so far.


• The war on drugs costs over $50 billion per year.


• 14 million children in the U.S. live in food insecure households.


• Race, money and connections determine who goes to jail, rather than guilt. (See: Tyrone's story.)

Michael Jackson is right. They really don't care.

What do you think?

Public Schools Make Children Into Dumb Slaves

Also check out: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

The following is a 1980 article by Walter Karp, entitled The Teaching Of History:

Writing American history is a harmless occupation, but teaching it to American schoolchildren is a political act with far-reaching consequences. The reason for this is clear. You cannot recount the past without making fundamental political judgments, and you cannot deliver those judgments in a classroom without impressing them deeply on the minds of future citizens. Children know a great deal about many things, but about public affairs they know virtually nothing. Most of us carry to our graves scarcely altered the political lessons we imbibed half-consciously from long-forgotten history textbooks. Professors of American history erect Gothic cathedrals of erudition on political axioms acquired from their fifth-grade "social studies" readers. To teach American history to a great mass of American schoolchildren is to exercise genuine political power. Yet of all forms of political power, the power to teach history to children is the only one Americans have handed over without a struggle to a remote and unaccountable few, commonly known as the educational establishment. America Revised, by Frances FitzGerald, [subtitled "History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century." 240 pages. Atlantic/Little, Brown, $9.95] is an attempt to describe what the educational establishment has done with that power through the years.

FitzGerald's main achievement is the scutwork. She has pored through the pages of hundreds of musty American history textbooks, something nobody, I believe, has ever done before. She describes their contents, delineates their overall "philosophy," and shows how they changed from generation to generation. About what it all signifies, however, she has only confused and contradictory notions. She never really understands that her subject is the education--and miseducation--of a self-governing people. Still, FitzGerald's material is invaluable; when cast into a political history of which FitzGerald seems blissfully ignorant, it reveals a great deal about the way we are currently ruled.

Subverting True Political History

The history begins just before the turn of the century, when the first school managers powerful enough to impose their conception of history on a large number of children introduced the first American history text to the public schools. Until then what little history American schoolchildren learned they had direct from their schoolmarms by way of a sort of oral tradition. What they learned, however, they learned so well that historian Mark Sullivan blamed nineteenth-century schoolmarms for delaying our entry into the first world war. The only history they taught, Sullivan complained in his six-volume chronicle Our Times, was the American Revolution, and the way they taught it had made it impossible for most Americans to believe that England was fighting for "democracy against autocracy" in the trenches of France. The schoolmarms' American Revolution is readily reconstructed. On one side stood the tattered sons of liberty, whose forebears had come to an unknown continent in search of religious freedom. On the other side stood a tyrannical king and his arrogant Redcoats, foredoomed in their pride to a stunning defeat. What better way than this to inculcate love of liberty and hatred of tyranny in the future citizens of a free republic?

Since American educators always claimed they were providing "training for citizenship," the first history textbooks might have been expected to fortify the oral tradition of the schoolmarms. In fact, they did exactly the opposite. According to FitzGerald, the first history text taught children that the colonists had come to America for "commercial motives" and not for religious freedom at all. With that premise laid down, FitzGerald writes, the texts "looked on the American Revolution as a matter of practical politics more than anything else." Instead of the sons of liberty, the pioneer texts offered the sons of the dollar; instead of a revolt against arbitrary power, squalid maneuvering for economic advantage. The obvious lesson of these texts is that Americans who profess to fight against tyranny are probably hypocrites trying to make money, an excellent lesson if you happen to favor tyranny. Such was the "citizenship training" offered by the pioneer textbooks. Most American schoolchildren never read them, however, since they were used exclusively in a few big-city school systems "to Americanize" (as the phrase went) the children of immigrants. The first exercise of the power to teach history was an attempt to corrupt the utterly defenseless. It was also a harbinger of what was to come.

"Americanizing" native Americans was a far more delicate problem, and educational leaders were long reluctant to try it in any systematic way. The problem became inescapable, however, in the early years of the twentieth century, when, for the first time, Americans in large numbers began attending public secondary schools. This new turn of events, so far from being a source of pedagogical satisfaction, threw educators into a panic and set off the greatest crisis in the history of American education. The crisis was this: the public secondary schools, which had catered chiefly to the well-to-do and successful, adhered to a traditional liberal arts curriculum of "history, language, and literature--the "arts that liberate," as Montaigne has called them. With the children of ordinary people attending high school, American educators found themselves face to face with a specter that had haunted Europe for a century: the danger of educating people beyond their station, or, as the National Education Association preferred to put it, leading them "away from the pursuits for which they are adapted." The danger was largely political. By teaching the liberal arts to commoners, the new secondary schools might well become the spawning ground for popular tribunes, politically ambitious guttersnipes, and similar dangerous malcontents. As J. E. Russell, head of Columbia University Teachers College, put it in 1905: "How can we justify our practice in schooling the masses in precisely the same manner as we do those who are to be their leaders?"

Something had to be done quickly or democracy might one day break out. Educational leaders quickly worked out a solution. Let the secondary schools teach the children of workers what was fit only for workers. As Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton, sternly advised the Federation of High School Teachers: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." Since there was no way to stop "the masses" from entering high school, the only way to meet the crisis, in short, was to prevent them from learning anything liberating when they got there. Instead, the educational leaders said, the new secondary schools should offer vocational training in particular and something called industrial education in general. This, the influential Douglas Commission said in 1905. was a "new idea" in education. and in truth it was. Until ordinary Americans began attending secondary school, no secondary school in the civilized world had ever seen fit to teach its students a trade. FitzGerald attributes this vulgar innovation to the supposed fact that lofty university presidents like Wilson and Russell had lost their influence over public education--a perfect example of thoughtless snobbery.

The "new idea" must have been somewhat perplexing to schoolmarms of the old-fashioned sort. The public schools were supposed to train citizens, yet here were the country's leading educators--"we"--insisting they regard their pupils not as future citizens but as future working hinds, whom Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard, urged teachers to "sort" by their "evident or probable destinies." If the schoolmarms were troubled, however, a stalwart band of educational reformers stood ready to reassure them that training Americans for their industrial "destiny" was the heart and soul of "democratic" education. By far the most important of the reassurers was John Dewey.

The "Realistic" Education of John Dewey

Neither the subtle reasoning, nor the ardent idealism of the famed educator mattered much in the history of American education. What proved important were a few of his salient principles. Suitably adapted, they have supplied educational leaders with the lasting framework for a pedagogical system designed to prevent "the masses" from ever learning in a classroom what a free people ought to know. For that purpose, Dewey's most important contribution was his conviction that democracy has little to do with politics and government. Democracy, according to Dewey, was "primarily a mode of associated living," which for most Americans chiefly meant working together in factories. Having stripped democracy of its political character, Dewey and his colleagues, who prided themselves on their "realism," went on to redefine it as "industrial cooperation." With this new, "realistic" definition, they effected a permanent pedagogical revolution. For one thing, it enabled the Deweyites (and more interested parties) to sever the venerable ties that bound the common schools to the needs and requirements of popular Government. The schools were to be adapted instead, Dewey wrote in 1897, "to the circumstances, needs, and opportunities of industrial civilization." Instead of the American Republic, the American economy would call the tune. The new "realistic" definition of democracy even stripped public education of its theoretical republican objective, which was, as Jefferson had said, to teach future citizens "how to judge for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom." Such knowledge was unlikely to enhance, and might well impair, "industrial cooperation." The new object of "democratic" education, Dewey said, was to teach every child "to perceive the essential interdependence of an industrial society." Thus instructed, the future citizen (i.e., factory worker) would develop what Dewey called "a socialized disposition."

With economic "interdependence" as its subject and a "socialized" worker as its goal the new "democratic" curriculum had little place for history. For political history, which recounts the diverse deeds of men, there was to be no place at all. Jefferson had urged the schools to teach children political history so that Americans might "know ambition under all its shapes and [be] prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purpose." From the political past they would learn to detect the would-be despot wearing the cloak of the popular tribune and the oligarchy masquerading as the enlightened and the elect. How could free men protect their liberties if they never learned from political history that liberty, in fact, has ambitious enemies? To Dewey, on the other hand, political history was "undemocratic" (and FitzGerald wholeheartedly agrees with him) precisely because it deals with the deeds and intentions of ambitious men. The doings of the high and mighty, in Dewey's "realistic" view, were no business of American schoolchildren, who were to share in the public life of America by leading "a socialized life" in the American work force. Instead of political history they were to be given "social studies," ,which would teach them, among other industrial matters, about the modern division of labor ("how milk is brought to the city") and, in the loftier grades, about the "evolution" of American industry. Given such instruction, Jane Addams noted in her 1902 work Democracy and Social Ethics, American children would not only develop a cooperative disposition, but they would find their adult toil "much more exhilarating," realizing, as they did, the useful slot they were filling on the national industrial "team."

Stripping Deweyite "realism" of its idealistic trappings proved but the work of a moment to the educational leaders, who knew a good thing when they saw one. In 1911, a committee of the National Education Association, the largest and most influential of the teachers' organizations, urged the nation's high schools to drop history altogether, on the Deweyesque grounds that it failed to promote the "social efficiency" of the ill-bred. Social studies, history's fledging rival, would be better able, said the committee quite correctly, to "accommodate youngsters to existing conditions." That was not what Dewey had in mind, but it was latent in his "cooperative" precepts, and the educational leaders were not the only ones to realize it. Revealingly enough, the first public-school system organized on Deweyesque lines was established in 1907 in Gary, Indiana, a one-year-old company town founded by, and largely in thrall to, the U.S. Steel Corporation. J. P. Morgan knew a good thing when he saw one too. So did the United States Congress. Under President Wilson's leadership, it began funding "vocational education" in the public schools, the first serious federal attempt to shape the content of public education.

To the purblind Deweyites political history was elitist; to the powerful few it was politically dangerous--then and always. "Throughout history," as FitzGerald rightly notes (though, alas, only in a passing remark), "the managers of states have with remarkable consistency defined good citizenship as a rather small degree of knowledge of, and participation in, public affairs." To replace political history with Deweyite social studies was the perfect means of meeting the educational requirements of the powerful. In social studies, American youngsters would learn that America was chiefly an industrial system and not a republic at all, that a "good citizen" is a worker who gets up when the alarm clock rings and speeds to his job on time. In social studies, too, they would learn that the "real" history of America is the "development" of American industry--history without politics in it, which teaches the most corrupt of political lessons, that politics does not matter. Pedagogical wit could scarcely devise a better instrument for ensuring "a rather small degree of, and participation in, public affairs. To replace political history with social studies has been the abiding goal of America's educational leaders since ordinary Americans began attending high school. Interestingly enough, it took them more than half a century to register a complete triumph.

Industrial Education

FitzGerald does not try to explain why American parents, teachers, and local school boards resisted, circa 1911, what Americans since 1965 have accepted without demur. The general explanation, perhaps, is that corrupting a venerable republic is not the work of a day.

For one thing, the "new idea" of industrial education was a new idea seven decades ago. At the time, millions of Americans believed strongly that America was a democracy corrupted by industrial capitalism, alias "the money power." That America was nothing more than industrial 'capitalism--the essential axiom of social studies and Deweyism--had never crossed their minds. Indeed, it was still a fairly new idea even to advanced intellectuals. Americans were still a political people who thought in political terms. Samuel Gompers, the British-bred trade unionist, used to complain bitterly about the political proclivities of America's trade-union members. Instead of "bargaining at the workplace," as all good workers should, they insisted on contesting elections, backing insurgent candidates, and behaving for all the world as if they were citizens. Not surprisingly, Gompers was an ardent champion of "industrial education." Because Americans thought in political terms, they cared greatly about "the money power" but little about the division of labor. As for history, the only idea they had of it was political. In a history book you read about armies, wars, generals, rulers, heroes, and villains--George Washington on the one hand, George III on the other. What social studies was designed to root out of the popular mind had yet to be rooted out when the NEA urged the high schools to replace history with social studies.

The old habits of thought would no doubt have proved a flimsy barrier had the educational leaders enjoyed in 1911 the power to impose their will on America's decentralized public education. Today, a quite small number of educators have virtually unchecked sway over the curriculum of America's public schools, which have become, as one educator put it in 1962, "a monolith under oligarchic control." The "textbook philosophy" (FitzGerald's phrase) the educational oligarchy propounds is the "philosophy" the textbook publishers dispense--one that the large majority of school districts will buy, and pass on to the overwhelming majority of students. In 1911 the educational elite had no such sweeping power. Local control of the common schools, though waning, had not yet become a sham. To a degree, it could still meet the purpose for which it was originally intended: preventing the "managers of states" from teaching a republic's children that "good citizenship" consists in "a rather small degree of knowledge of, and participation in, public affairs." The usurpation of local control in the years after World War I was to be an essential element in the corrupting of a venerable republic.

Events on the national political stage proved a still more formidable barrier to the designs of the educational leaders, and almost derailed them completely. When "industrial education" was first concocted, Americans had seemed a thoroughly defeated people. A handful of finance capitalists controlled the economic arteries; a disciplined Republican party held national politics in thrall. A powerful few seemed to reign supreme in virtually every career and profession. America, as Henry Cabot Lodge said at the time, had at last become "an aristocratic republic." Then, quite suddenly, middle-class Americans awoke from their slumber and discovered that they were as powerless as everybody else. To the shock and dismay of Lodge--who thought it the end of civilization as he knew it--middle-class Americans, a complacent bourgeoisie for decades, began pouring into the public arena, determined to overthrow "the machine," to curb monopoly and bring the "money power" to heel. Just when the leading educators were urging the schools to look on America as an "industrial society," middle-class Americans who did the teaching, served on the school boards, and voted in the school board elections--had suddenly remembered that America was a republic, and an endangered one at that.

Traditional modes of thought, the absence of an educational oligarchy, and the middle-class political revolt combined to produce a surprising result. Although the new "industrial" pedagogy made rapid headway, America's schools, despite the united urging of big businessmen, trade unions, and leading politicians, refused to let go of history. Instead they fortified the curriculum with the only American history texts ever used that were not intended to corrupt future citizens. These texts flourished in the years between 1910 and 1930, which FitzGerald terms the "Hundred Flowers" era of American history texts. Written by trained historians, representing diverse points of view, the new texts, born of the Progressive revolt, were intensely political and remarkably free of cant. Their virtues are well worth noting, because eliminating those virtues was to be the immediate task of the educational establishment, which had to put off for another generation the extinction of political history.

Subverting the Threat of Real Political History

The most popular textbook of the period was American History, by David Saville Muzzey, first published in 1911. It was the antithesis of "industrial education" in every respect, since the grand lesson of Muzzey's text was that politics matters greatly, and matters to every citizen. Muzzey's readers learned, first and foremost, that the actions of people made American history and that the high and the mighty, in fact, have power--a liberating truth in itself. Moreover, the powerful bore constant watching, for villainy was not unknown in high places. In Muzzey's history President Polk, for one, was a bastard who instigated an unjust war with Mexico in order to grab some territory. Readers of Muzzey learned that democracy in America, too, bore watching. Indeed, Muzzey's history of America is largely the history of the vicissitudes of democracy. A Yankee Republican of the old school, Muzzey seems to have viewed all modern life as one giant menace to liberty and self-government. The major problem of the age, he warned young readers, was "the corruption of the government by the money power." American democracy needed defending, and it had nothing to do with industrial cooperation.

Muzzey's most successful rival was Willis Mason West, whose textbook American History and Government, published in 1913, seems to have been a rejoinder to Muzzey's. Whereas the latter thought democracy in America had gone from a Golden Age to the dogs, West, more a man of the Left, commenced his history with the bold assertion that "democracy has as yet been tried only imperfectly among us." Politically divergent though they were, the two leading texts agreed on the main point. American history was essentially political history, and the dramatic theme of that history, the impulse of political life and the catalyst of action, was the struggle over democracy itself.

While texts such as these were circulating, (often in watered-down revisions), the educational leaders seem to have bided their time until they were powerful enough to eliminate from the curriculum history lessons so inconducive to "social efficiency" and so unlikely to "accommodate youngsters to existing conditions." All through the post-Versailles years the nascent educational establishment, backed by state legislators, strengthened its hold on the public schools and on the schools that train public-school teachers. During those years the number of local school districts was cut from 120,000 to less than half that number. State educational commissions were established to reduce still further the formal autonomy of the remaining districts. By a dozen different devices--licensing laws, state guidelines, and so on--control of the curriculum passed completely out of the hands of citizens and into the grip of an increasingly tight-knit, ingrown professional oligarchy. All it needed to emasculate the lingering "Hundred Flowers" tradition was a sharp change in the political atmosphere. With the outbreak of World War II, the oligarchy struck at once, and the tradition, FitzGerald says, came "abruptly" to an end. For the next twenty-five years every new textbook used in the schools was written on the assumption that its readers were potential subversives.

In the new textbooks, which soon swept the country, political history became a hollow and meaningless form. Politics was reduced to acts of government, and villainy in high places vanished from the past. All American wars were now righteous and all American Presidents virtuous men who did, FitzGerald writes, "as well as could be expected given difficult circumstances." Imperialism, a term freely applied in the earlier texts to America's seizure of the Philippines, was now reserved exclusively for overseas ne'er-do-wells. Jingo nationalism, refreshingly absent in the "Hundred Flowers" era, pulsated through every page of the new propaganda texts. "There is a fascination with patriotic symbols," FitzGerald reports, "the flag, Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty." Readers were adjured to accept, admire, and adore virtually everything about America except its republican institutions. In the new propaganda texts--and this is the telltale of their calculated corruptness--democracy ceased to be the theme and catalyst of American history; it excited no strife, inspired no banners, and suffered no defeats. Instead it became the fixed and unchanging attribute of the United States, like the spots on a leopard--"a Platonic form abstracted from history," as FitzGerald well puts it. Severed from history, democracy ceased to be menaced by anything except foreign enemies and their domestic agents, whose activities in the neighborhood, one textbook advised, should be promptly reported by "young people" to the FBI, "in line with American traditions."

Even as a "Platonic form," however, democracy was too dangerous to describe at length. From the new textbooks readers learned that democracy meant the right to vote and nothing more, a definition that does not distinguish America's republican institutions from the totalitarian politics of the Soviet Union. Even reduced to a nullity, democracy, to the educational establishment, was still too dangerous to praise too highly. The fear that citizenship might break out haunts the pages of the propaganda textbooks. Instead of lauding democracy. the textbooks found subtle ways to denigrate it. One of the major texts of the era, FitzGerald says, "concludes with an essay extolling the virtues of freedom not for its own sake but merely as the greatest asset in the world struggle." A more common technique of denigration was the textbooks' insistence that what was truly great about America was its enormous gross national product. The textbooks, FitzGerald says, were "far more enthusiastic" about the GNP than about the Bill of Rights. Without eliminating political history entirely, the textbooks, which devoted considerable space to "industrialization," were hearkening back to the corrupt basic tenet of Deweyism--that America was not a republican polity but, far more important, an industrial system. Times had changed, however. Whereas "cooperation" had been the dubious deity of the original industrial pedagogy, the new deity enshrined in the propaganda texts was productivity pure and simple. One prominent junior-high-school history text argued, for example, that slavery was not all that bad because it alleviated America's chronic shortage of labor. Whereas Lincoln had said that if slavery were not evil then nothing was evil, this modern school text, still in use ten years ago. taught children that nothing is evil if it enhances production--the common principle of the capitalist, the commissar, and the tyrant.

The Extinction of Political History

Such were the corrupt history textbooks the educational oligarchy inflicted on a republic's children, from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the bombing of North Vietnam. Around 1965 that textbook era, too, came to an end with what FitzGerald calls "the most dramatic rewriting of history ever to take place" in America. The cause of this eludes her, but it, was quite obviously the civil-rights movement that provided the main spur for revision. At a stroke it exposed the sham of the propaganda textbooks. American democracy could hardly remain a "Platonic form abstracted from history" while Americans were out in the streets and on the hustings fighting for political liberty. Moreover, insurgent blacks demanded a place in the history texts, which had ignored their very existence for decades. Thanks to the civil-rights movement the time was peculiarly ripe for restoring to American classrooms a deeper and more exacting political history than even Muzzey and West had provided. Here was yet another educational crisis, almost comparable to the construction of high schools at the turn of the century. Educational reformers hit on a solution at once. If the corrupt political-history texts were doomed, what American schoolchildren should get in their stead was no political history at all.

One group of reformers, known as "The New Social Studies Movement," urged the educational establishment to teach sociology instead of history. Whereas the established social studies made do with crude notions such as the division of labor, the New Social Studies would teach budding scholars how to use such refined social-science concepts as "role," "status," and "culture." This, the reformers said, would sharpen their "cognitive skills," as it had so manifestly done for professors of sociology. The American past could remain in the curriculum, but only as a "laboratory for testing social-science concepts," to quote a New Social Studies manifesto. Grinding American history into sociological mush readily recommended itself to the educational bureaucrats in the Kennedy Administration, which supported the endeavor with the customary avalanche of grants.

A second group of reformers urged the school managers to offer textbooks that were "relevant" to the immediate problems of "disadvantaged" minorities. What these disadvantaged needed, their self-appointed spokesmen said, were history texts that enhanced their ethnic and racial "pride." Since no political history of America could possibly make anyone proud of being scorned, proscribed, betrayed, or enslaved, the new ethnicity, too, won rapid and pious approval. Through a judicious blend of "social-science concepts" and sops to ethnic pride, the educational establishment has found another way to secure "a rather small degree of knowledge of, or participation in, public affairs." It is not really new, however. It is simply the old industrial education dressed up in a new disguise.

As in the old industrial pedagogy, the first principle of the contemporary textbooks is that America is not a republican commonwealth. It is merely a society like a dozen others, including outright tyrannies and totalitarian regimes. That, of course, is fundamental to any system of corrupt education in America, as educational leaders had realized more than half a century before. Over the years, however. industrialism had lost its savor. The new America of the textbooks is not an industrial society anymore. It is now, FitzGerald says. a "multiracial. multicultural society" composed of distinct ethnic groups and races, each with its own history. achievements, and heroes--Cesar Chavez for Mexican-Americans, for example. This new textbook America, with its "multiple perspectives," FitzGerald regards as an intellectual advance over the "outdated" view of America as a nation-state. On the other hand, she notes, taking both sides of every issue from sheer inability to decide what is important and what is mere cant, this new textbook America is indistinguishable from Yugoslavia, or, for that matter, the Ottoman Empire. America's future citizens, previously taught to regard themselves as workers, are now taught to regard themselves as ethnic tribesmen--"We're family"--who must learn to live harmoniously with other tribes cohabiting on the North American continent and especially with American Indians, who, being the most tribal, are the most admired figures in the contemporary history texts. Millions of young American's, for example, know more about Ishi, the last "wild Indian"--he was captured in 1911--than they do about the Founding Fathers. A number of contemporary history texts begin with glowing accounts of the Aztecs and the Mayans in line with the basic textbook principle that America is a lot of tribes living in North America. "Poor Columbus," FitzGerald writes. "He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history." So, too, is the American republic.

Like the old social studies of "industrial development," the new history texts offer a past shorn of politics and virtually devoid of people. The educational leaders have at long last triumphed over the very idea of political history. In the new textbooks no man and no deed is responsible for anything. History, in the social-science "laboratory" of the textbooks, is now the product. FitzGerald says, of "impersonal institutions and faceless social forces," which she regards as more "democratic" than political history--exactly what it is not and can never be. On the other hand, she is dismayed to discover that "there is no known case of anyone's creating a problem for anyone else" in this wonderland of abstractions. It is impossible for anyone to do so. In the new sociologized history texts, no human being has ever enjoyed sufficient power to do anything for good or ill. Famous men, in this "democratic history," are loci of impotence with illustrious names attached. Watergate, in the latest texts, is something that happened to Richard Nixon, and history in general is a slew of forces, pressures, and disasters inflicted by fate on the high and the mighty, who appear as hapless men of goodwill. "There are," FitzGerald says, "no human agencies left."

To erase every trace of human action, the textbooks perform prodigies of verbal mendacity. In one typical textbook, FitzGerald says, the authors attribute the "problems" facing post-Reconstruction America to "the era of Reconstruction," as if an "era" can possibly cause anything. In the no-action history of the textbooks, abstractions do everything because humans are forbidden to do anything. At all costs the readers must never be allowed to suspect that people are capable of making a difference. Like the Stone Age tribes they are asked to admire, our children are now taught to regard the American past as an incomprehensible destiny as empty of human purpose as the landscape of the moon.

The Success of "Sociology"

With the extinction of political history the educational oligarchy has finally resolved the grand crisis of twentieth-century education: how to prevent the masses from learning what is fit only for their leaders. From the new textbooks, the children of the American republic will never gain knowledge of, or the slightest incentive to participate in, public affairs. Nor will they ever learn from their sociologized texts how to detect "ambition under all its shapes." What the new textbooks teach on every page and with every passive verb is that, for all practical purposes, there is no such human activity as public affairs and no such human motive as political ambition. How can there be when "faceless social forces" make our history and the high and the mighty appear only as the victims of fate? No reader of these degraded texts will ever learn from them how to "judge for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom." The new textbooks have snuffed out the very idea of human freedom, for that freedom at bottom is precisely the human capacity for action that political history records and that the textbooks are at such pains to conceal. In the "multiracial, multicultural" America of the textbooks every citizen is a tribesman and every tribesman the hapless subject of powers and dominions he does not even know exist. Such is "good citizenship" in the corrupted common schools of contemporary America.

The educational establishment, FitzGerald concludes, has deprived Americans of their "birthright," a personal loss she sincerely laments, but the judgment scarcely covers the ground. What the political history of the textbooks reveals is that a powerful few, gaining control of public education, have been depriving the American republic of citizens, and popular government of a people to defend it. And the American history textbook, so innocent-seeming and inconsequential, has been their well-chosen instrument.

by Walter Karp

What do you think?

Also check out: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

SpyChips, RFID, and Real ID

This 11-minute video is a good summary on the coming National ID System. The Real ID act started off as H.R. 418, which passed the House (261-161-11) and went stagnant. It was then attached as a rider on a military spending bill (H.R. 1268) by Representative Sensenbrenner (R) of Wisconsin (the author) and was voted upon (100-0). It was signed into public law (109-13) on May 11, 2005.

Recommended reading on this subject: Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID

Also, check out wethepeoplewillnotbechipped.com.

Why support Hugo Chavez?

To me, the below video isn't about Hugo Chavez. It's about the power of the people, and their non-violent revolution to regain control of their natural resources from a greedy elite who try to monopolize the natural resources such as oil by teaming up with foreign powers (namely the West) who want to exploit these countries for their natural resources.

Unfortunately, socialistic governments, such as the socialist democracy under the democratically-elected Chavez, have historically failed to bring in a new era of freedom, and instead develop into corrupt permanent governments; that is, an Animal Farm post-revolutionary failure of sorts. Hopefully, Chavez and the Venezuelan people will continue their activism in such a way that concludes with non-governmental organization and voluntary solidarity, rather than governmental corruption and political greed & selfishness. Such a success depends on the people, not on Chavez or the government.

Regardless of how we feel about Chavez and the Venezuelan revolution, the below 75-minute video about it is enlightening.

Here's the description I received: "Hope you all enjoy this movie... It gives you some insight into why Hugo Chavez is so important. If you kids feel moved to support this cause, stop buying gas from anywhere but Citgo... and your purchase will not support terrorists (Saudi Arabia) nor warmongers here in America. It will support literacy, health care, and a better state of living for all in Venezuela. Learn why the people love Chavez, and watch this. Agree or not with Chavez, but watch how the people REVOLTED when he was removed from power. The took the capital and occupied it. The military came to their defense. It was amazing... sh*t we dream of here in Amerikkka, really happening. And our news media just ignored the revolution in South America:"

Power To The People!

Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties

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Republican Pedophilia

STOP REPUBLICAN PEDOPHILIA

• Republican County Board Candidate Brent Schepp was charged with molesting a 14-year old girl and killed himself three days later.

• Republican Congressman Mark Foley abruptly resigned from Congress after “sexually explicit” emails surfaced showing him flirting with a 16-year old boy.

• Republican executive Randall Casseday of the conservative Washington Times newspaper was arrested for soliciting sex from a 13-year old girl on the internet.

• Republican chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition Lou Beres confessed to molesting a 13-year old girl.

• Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.

• Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

• Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.

• Republican petition drive manager Tom Randall pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 14, one of them the daughter of an associate in the petition business.

• Republican County Chairman Armando Tebano was arrested for sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl.

• Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.

• Republican campaign worker Mark Seidensticker is a convicted child molester.

• Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.

• Republican Mayor Tom Adams was arrested for distributing child pornography over the internet.

• Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.

• Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

• Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.

• Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.

• Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.

• Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.

• Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.

• Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.

• Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.

• Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.

• Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

• Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting two 8-year old girls, one of whom appeared in an anti-Gore television commercial.

• Republican fundraiser Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

• Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

• Republican Congressman Donald “Buz” Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.

• Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.

• Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.

• Republican campaign chairman Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child and was arrested again five years later on the same charge.

• Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.

• Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.

• Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography.

• Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.

• Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.

• Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. “Republican Marty”), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.

• Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.

• Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.

• Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

• Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.

• Republican anti-gay activist Earl “Butch” Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.

• Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.

• Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.

• Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.

• Republican legislator Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).

• Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was found guilty of molesting a 15-year old girl.

• Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.

• Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.

• Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.

• Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.

• Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.

• Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.

• Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.

• Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.

• Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.

• Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a “good military man” and “church goer,” was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

• Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.

• Republican campaign worker, police officer and self-proclaimed reverend Steve Aiken was convicted of having sex with two underage girls.

• Republican director of the “Young Republican Federation” Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.

• Republican president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Russell Harding pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer.

• Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.

• Republican Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children in Iraqi prisons in order to humiliate their parents into providing information about the anti-American insurgency. See excerpt of one prisoner’s report here and his full report here.

Source:

http://www.armchairsubversive.com/

Exxon Spends Millions to Cast Doubt on Global Warming

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Stephen Castle in Brussels

The world's largest energy company is still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund European organisations that seek to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on global warming and undermine support for legislation to curb emission of greenhouse gases.

Data collated by a Brussels-based watchdog reveals that ExxonMobil has put money into projects that criticise the Kyoto treaty and question the findings of scientific groups. Environmental campaigners say Texas-based Exxon is trying to influence opinion-makers in Brussels because Europe - rather than the US - is the driving force for action on climate change.

"ExxonMobil invests significant amounts in letting think-tanks, seemingly respectable sources, sow doubts about the need for EU governments to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Olivier Hoedeman, of the Corporate Europe Observatory. "Covert funding for climate sceptics is deeply hypocritical because ExxonMobil spends major sums on advertising to present itself as an environmentally responsible company."

It has long been known that the oil giant, which in 2005 recorded an all-time record for quarterly income, has spent millions of dollars to fund climate sceptics. Exactly how much is unknown but some estimates suggest $19m (£9.7m) since 1998.

In its 2005 report, Mr Hoedeman's group details payments by ExxonMobil to two organisations the International Policy Network, which received $130,000 and the Centre for the New Europe (CNE), which received $50,000.

The Observatory suspects Exxon has also funded other groups engaged in undermining legislation. Its report said: "There is mounting evidence that many EU-focused think-tanks are heavily funded by corporations and this raises serious concerns about their agenda and their independence." The two groups cited in the report have long been accused of denying climate change. Greenpeace's ExxonSecret website notes that in 2004 the network issued a press release criticising the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying it had "intentionally exaggerated its estimates of temperature increases by using highly implausible scenarios of future growth in emissions of greenhouse gases".

Greenpeace also lists a 2004 posting on CNE's website which claimed: "The Kyoto Protocol is failing because it is ineffective, costly, and unfair. It is also 'scientifically flawed'."

Last year The Independent revealed how a US-based lobbying group which received substantial funding from Exxon was seeking to develop a Europe-wide network of think-tanks, journalists and major businesses to act against legislation to counter climate change. The organisation claimed its approaches had been flatly rejected.

Kert Davies of Greenpeace said: "Europe is leading the world right now in terms of climate policy. Exxon know that if they can [enlist] lobbyists they may be able to slow things down. That is the tactic right now."

Such is the concern about ExxonMobil that earlier this year the Royal Society, considered Britain's leading scientific academy, wrote to it asking that it stop funding groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

Ellen Bisnath, a network spokeswoman, confirmed that the organisation had accepted $130,000 from the oil company. She said: "We are an independent think-tank and we are contributing to the scientific debate on climate change."

Homophobia, Self-Hate, & Sexual Insecurity

I believe that most homophobics are either self-hating homosexuals in denial or otherwise insecure in their own sexuality.

Research that was done that supports this theory.

"The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who ad-mitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992 ). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies."

Take Back The Night!

Take Back The Night!

It's about time we started to defend women and put an end to rape violence against women.

Get the druggies out of jail and put the rapists in. Stop enforcing victimless crimes (such as drug use and gun-ownership) and start protecting innocent people from victimization.

What do you think?

Take Back The Night!

Search for crops that can survive global warming

Search for crops that can survive global warming

What do you think?

Video Of Man Killed By Police Torture While Restrained

See this video and more police misconduct.

The use of electric shock as a method of torture was first documented in Nazi, Germany, but today it is still used as an acceptable use of ... all » torture in the United States.

In Gwinnett County, Georgia, an un-edited police videotape shows 31-year-old Deacon Frederick Williams being struck with a TASER five times in 43 seconds, just 4 minutes after being led into the jail.

He was handcuffed behind his back and in leg restraints, following an epileptic seizure at his home; an ambulance was called by his wife and son, but the police arrived first. His last words were: "Don't kill me, man. Don't kill me."

No charges have been filed in the torture / murder; the County DA refused to show this video to a Grand Jury, even though another man in custody was murdered just months earlier after being tortured with a TASER by the same police.

While the Bush administration seeks to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions to allow the torture for foreign detainees, few people realize that torture is already 100% legal in the US when a US citizen is tortured by American State or Federal authorities.

The torture standards now under debate relate only to foreign detainees, who presently retain far more rights than any US citizen. However, the Bush administration has refused to address the documented and widespread torture of its own citizens of which its own officials are fully aware.

See this video and more police misconduct.

War As Self-Defense?

War As Self-Defense?

http://scottsafetyshop.com/blog/?p=94

Here's an excerpt:

"Politicians and warmongers call war 'self-defense' as an excuse and a disguise for it. Just like all motivations, the motivations for war come from selfishness, governmental corruption, and such. Politicians and the leadership couldn't care less about the safety of the people that they claim to defend."

What do you think?

Police fire 50 rounds, kill unarmed groom

Police fire 50 rounds, kill groom on day of wedding:

• Police say no gun was found in victims' car


• Police say shooting stemmed from undercover operation inside the club


• Relatives say dead man was Sean Bell, due to get married Saturday


• Police shot Bell and two other men as they left strip club

CNN article

Click Here To View More Police Misconduct

NSTA Rejects Free Global Warming DVDs

The below is a letter written by Laurie David:

Science a la Joe Camel

By Laurie David

Sunday, November 26, 2006

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.

The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.

The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other "special interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil's foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school.

And Exxon Mobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.

NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence.

The education organization also hosts an annual convention -- which is described on Exxon Mobil's Web site as featuring "more than 450 companies and organizations displaying the most current textbooks, lab equipment, computer hardware and software, and teaching enhancements." The company "regularly displays" its "many . . . education materials" at the exhibition. John Borowski, a science teacher at North Salem High School in Salem, Ore., was dismayed by NSTA's partnerships with industrial polluters when he attended the association's annual convention this year and witnessed hundreds of teachers and school administrators walk away with armloads of free corporate lesson plans.

Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto.

"The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission," Borowski says. "The oil and coal guys won't address global warming, and the timber industry papers over clear-cuts."

An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: "Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future."

So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to cleaner, renewable energy.

It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day.

As for Exxon Mobil -- which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign that trumpets clean energy and low emissions -- this story shows that slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn't change the beast within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for years.

While NSTA and Exxon Mobil ponder the moral lesson they're teaching with all this, there are 50,000 DVDs sitting in a Los Angeles warehouse, waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids' science homework.

laurie@lauriedavid.com

Laurie David, a producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," is a Natural Resources Defense Council trustee and founder of StopGlobalWarming.org.

While Poverty Persists, There Is No Freedom

This is a link to a letter by Nelson Mendela:

Nelson Mandela: While Poverty Persists, There Is No Freedom

Other quotes by Nelson Mandela:

"No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones."

"No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

"I must deal immediately and at some length with the question of violence. Some of the things so far told to the Court are true and some are untrue. I do not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the Whites."

"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

Tyrone Brown In Jail For Life Over Marijuana?

Tyrone Brown is serving a lifetime sentence in Texas over smoking marijuana - he has already spent 16 YEARS in jail!

Tyrone Brown was featured on ABC TV's 20/20 show on Nov 3, 2006. You can view the 20/20 Webcast of Tyrone's segment here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2632423

The "justice" system is broken. We need a revolution.

Michael Richards (a.k.a. 'Kramer' from Seinfeld) Racist

LOS ANGELES - Michael Richards stunned a comedy club audience, shouting racial epithets at people who heckled him during a stand-up routine.

The 57-year-old actor-comedian, best known for playing Jerry Seinfeld's eccentric neighbor Kramer on the hit TV show "Seinfeld," was performing at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood Friday night when he launched into the verbal rampage, according to video posted on TMZ.com.

The tirade apparently began after two black audience members started shouting at him that he wasn't funny.

Diamonds Are Forever

Kanye West's song, Diamonds from Sierra Leone, won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Rap Song. The original song is about Roc-A-Fella, and the chorus "Throw ya diamonds in the sky" refers to the Roc-A-Fella hand sign, which is in the shape of a diamond. After making the song, Kanye West learned more about the plight of West African children who mine conflict diamonds and die in civil wars financed by diamonds and decided he would use the video to get this message across. He also recorded a remix of the song, featuring Jay-Z, where he talks about conflict diamonds. The remix was included on the album, whereas the original version was included as a bonus track. Here is the video to the original:

A conflict diamond is a diamond mined in a war zone to fund war. Even with regulations in place, you might be purchasing conflict diamonds that kill children. Don't buy mined diamonds.

Additionally, diamonds fall in the category of useless overpriced material crap that the powers that be push on us, and that we foolishly overvalue. In turn, we waste our money and often go in debt just to have a little bit of this overpriced natural resource, thus enslaving ourselves to the pseudo-capitalistic status quo. Thanks to our pathetic inability to resist commercials, while our communities live in poverty and we waste our wealth & potential, diamond manufacturers get rich by enslaving and abusing women and children.

Food Not Bombs Connecticut

The following link is for a Google group for Food Not Bombs in Connecticut:

Google Group: Food Not Bombs - Connecticut

"Food Not Bombs is one of the fastest growing revolutionary movements and is gaining momentum throughout the world. There are hundreds of autonomous chapters sharing free vegetarian food with hungry people and protesting war and poverty. Food Not Bombs is not a charity. This energetic grassroots movement is active throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Food Not Bombs is organizing for peace and an end to the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. For over 25 years the movement has worked to end hunger and has supported actions to stop the globalization of the economy, restrictions to the movements of people, end exploitation and the destruction of the earth." -FoodNotBombs.net

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Where Your Money Goes (U.S.)

That is why we must avoid paying taxes. Don't report your income to the IRS. Avoid buying so-called luxuries that are taxed in your state. (By ordering products from out-of-state, you can usually avoid paying state sales taxes.) If you're really brave, send the taxes to a charity of your choice, and send the IRS a note telling them what you did and why. If we voluntarily pay taxes to a plutocratic government that spends our money to kill innocent people, for the sake of military profits, then we are also guilty! For example, the blood of the over 600,000 Iraqis killed by the Iraq war is on the hands of the American tax-payers.

Boycott taxes! It's our money anyway, and they have no right to take it. Taxation is theft.

"Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." -Henry David Thoreau

John Stockwell: Crimes of the CIA (recorded in 1988)

John Stockwell: Crimes of the CIA (recorded in 1988):

John Stockwell, an ex-CIA station chief, details the many illegal, unethical, immoral, and genocidal things the CIA has done to the world and to the American people. John Stockwell is the highest ranking official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. This speech was given in 1988. He is author of the book, "In Search of Enemies"

Land of the Free?

LJ Heiss - Land of the Free?