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 groom on day of wedding:
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
 | Subscribe to Food Not Bombs - Connecticut | |
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, 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"
