Welcome to Kansas, ca. 1200 AD

Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back in time to the state of Kansas, USA. Yes, the religious right has succeeded in its goal to take over that state's board of education and change what's being taught to kids from scientific material to faith-based material.

Not only that, they also rewrote the definition of science.

Revisiting a topic that exposed Kansas to nationwide ridicule six years ago, the state Board of Education approved science standards for public schools Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for intelligent design advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.

"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Democrat.

She's so right. Right now, the whole world laughs and pities them.

The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

Incredible. I feel bad for all the sane parents still in the state of Kansas who will see their kids' brains sullied by these insane theories. Their only chance to make things right is to go vote next year and vote Democrat, kick those morons out of office, and change everything back to what it was (and what it should be,) once and for all.

Another school shooting

It happened Tuesday and involved a student shooter and a dead assistant principal. Another assistant principal and the principal himself were taken to a hospital.

So sad. The level of violence in this country is amazing, and the fact that there are so many guns around makes it all that much worse. I understand that it's a constitutional right to bear arms, but I don't see why there can't be more safeguards, especially when so many of these accidents have already happened and continue to happen.

It just goes to show that if you have a good enough lobbyist and enough money to throw at politicians, you can get whatever you want.

And innocent people pay the price for it. As usual.

US Army proves Bush a liar

A couple days ago, I posted about the accusation Italian public television RAI made that the US had used illegal chemical weapons (White Phosphorous) against innocent and unarmed Iraqi civilians, INDISCRIMINATELY (notice the irony here, since chemical weapons were one of the many reasons given by Bush for attacking Iraq.)

Well, now there is hard evidence that the accusation, although denied (GET OUT!!) by the Bush administration, is in fact true. And the proof comes from the Army itself, so it will be quite hard for Bush to disprove it (is he gonna start smearing the US military like he does with everyone who doesn't agree with him?)

Check out this link at Daily Kos:

"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
...
there is no way you can use white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature.
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Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.

SHAKE AND BAKE!! Absolutely appalling. Let's see how the administration pulls itself out of this sticky mess and how much more America will be hated now in the Middle East.

President Bush. Worst President Ever.

France's riots

It's been two weeks now that France has been rattled by civil unrest that has caused a lot of property damage and plenty of political turmoil. The spark for the violence was the accidental death by electrocution of two teens of North African descent, while they were hiding from the police in an electricity sub-station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

The violence has spread to Paris and several other cities in France, and was feared it could spread to other European cities as well. The underlying problem is racism.

Racism exists and is a problem on both sides of the Atlantic (actually, everywhere in the world,) but it's been mostly ignored in Europe for decades. Immigrants (legal and illegal) pour into just about any European country from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe. They perform the lowest paying jobs and duties that Europeans don't want to do anymore, and are regarded as inferior to the countries' "real" citizens.

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before we would see in Europe the same kind of riots and violence America witnessed in the past decades, before and after the Civil Rights Act was added to the US Constitution.

The 'rioters' demand to be treated fairly and equally, especially if they are legal immigrants or citizens themselves, a request that is more than reasonable, if you ask me.

From CNN:

Violence in France appeared to be on the decline as officials toughened their stance against rioters and threatened to deport any foreigners convicted of involvement.

Vehicle torchings continued overnight as the unrest stretched into a 14th night. But the number of arson attacks dropped.
...
Vandals set several cars on fire in Toulouse, including one they pushed into a school courtyard, setting the facility on fire.

Another school was torched in the eastern city of Belfort, and vandalism at power stations in Lyon, France's second-largest city, caused blackouts. The night before, Lyon's subway system was shut down after a petrol bomb was thrown in a train station, French media reported.
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Although France's national unemployment rate is about 10 percent, in areas hit by rioting the level is nearer 40 percent.

France has no affirmative action; an official French study found that youths with Arab-sounding names have their job applications rejected up to five times as often as those with traditional French names.

I'm Italian, so I can speak for experience. Immigrants come in, take up some job no one else wants to do, and try to insert themselves in the local society. Problem is, they look and sound different. Everybody knows they are immigrants, and are viewed with suspicion and diffidence, no matter their situation or behavior.

The citizens tolerate them, as long as they stay 'invisible.' As soon as they try to affirm their rights, to which they should be entitled, especially after living in a country for years, they are put back in their place, and told not to make a stink.

That's not right, and can't keep them quiet forever, especially when their population grows in number at a faster pace than the citizenry itself.

Large minority pockets can be found everywhere across the Old Continent, but they are seldom viewed or treated as the so-called 'locals.'

I'm curious to see if the latest unrest will finally bring about some much needed expansion of civil rights and full acceptance on the part of the European countries that, just like the US, can't keep on ignoring the problem of immigrants as if they didn't exist or were undeserving, since Europe's economy depends on them just as much as it depends on its 'real' citizens.

Democrats score in off-year elections

Well, well, well. Finally some good news for us liberal (= smart) thinkers.

I know that Tuesday's elections weren't for the White House or the Congress, but still, there were two governorships (New Jersey and Virginia) up for grabs, and one race was really close, but we won both.

Above all, Bush tried to help the Republican candidate by showing up Monday night in Virginia, and it totally backfired on him, since the guy lost anyway. And this will have repercussions next year during the midterm election races. Bush might be viewed as poison (just as Bill Clinton was after the Lewinsky debacle) instead of an advantage:

The loss in Virginia was a personal setback for Bush, who put his declining political capital on the line with an election-eve visit on behalf of Republican former attorney general Jerry Kilgore -- only to see him soundly defeated by Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine.

With Bush's popularity at the lowest level of his presidency, the results helped giddy Democrats claim momentum one year before elections to decide control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress and 36 governorships.
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Kilgore's poor showing could give pause to Republicans considering calling on the president for help in the 2006 elections.

"I think it would have been closer if the president hadn't gone in there," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told reporters.

"It really is a disaster for Bush," said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, who called the results "the logical consequence of Bush's growing unpopularity."

"Virginia is Southern and conservative and that's the Republican base," Sabato said. "If they start losing their base, it's easy to imagine both houses of Congress going Democratic."

What a nice mental image :-)

Furthermore, all the ballot initiatives championed by the once-rising-star of the Republican party, Arnold Schwarzenegger, were defeated, hence (re)positioning California solidly on the Democratic side of the electoral spectrum and dimming the prospects of the Terminator to win a full term next year.

As for gay initiatives, it was a mixed bag. A state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was approved in Texas, as expected, but an attempt to repeal an anti-discrimination law in Maine failed, and this was the only real contest that mattered (nobody thought Texas would endorse gay-rights at this juncture in time.) From MaineToday.com:

Maine voters decided Tuesday to keep the state's gay rights law on the books, making Maine the last New England state to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.

All in all, a good showing for the Democrats everywhere. Now let's just hope this is a good omen for next year's midterm elections. Wouldn't it be nice to take back Congress and then impeach the lying scumbags in the White House?

Another black eye for Bush and America

A documentary about the use last year of internationally prohibited chemical weapons on innocent civilians by US military forces in Fallujah, Iraq, will be broadcast tomorrow night in Italy by state-owned TV channel RAI:

The documentary - 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' - uses witness accounts from former US soldiers, Fallujah residents, video footage and photographs, to support its claim that contrary to US State Department denials, white phosphorous was used indiscriminately on the city, causing terrible injuries to civilians, including women and children.

"I heard the order being issued to be careful because white phosphorous was being used on Fallujah. In military slang this is known as Willy Pete. Phosphorous burns bodies, melting the flesh right down to the bone," says one former US soldier, interviewed by the documentary's director, Sigfrido Ranucci.

"I saw the burned bodies of women and children. The phosphorous explodes and forms a plume. Who ever is within a 150 meter radius has no hope," the former soldier adds.
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The evidence in 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' claims to show the US forces did not use phosphorous in the legitimate way - to highlight enemy positions - but dropped the substance indiscriminately on the city, and on a massive scale. The documentary also shows the terrible damage wrought by the US bombardment of Fallujah, and the carnage to civilians, some of whom lay sleeping.

Equally disturbingly, a document in the report claims to prove that the U.S. forces have used the MK77 form of Napalm - the chemical used with devastating effect on civilians during the Vietnam war - on civilians in Iraq.

Naturally, the use of white phosphorous and Napalm is prohibited by UN conventions and the US signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, but c'mon, it's just an international agreement.

No wonder nobody respects the US in the world anymore. I wonder if the media will report about this story this side of the Atlantic.

Nice work, George. You're doing a heck of a job.

Back

I'm back at work from my business-learning-trip to Ohio. It was a very tough week, and I learned a lot. Now I'll have to practice as much as possible with the material, in order to learn even more and get better at my job.

All in all, I'm not looking forward to the next classes (sometime next year.) But like I said before, I don't have a choice and will have to attend them.

I'm still tired from the past couple of weeks. First, there was the anxiety for my midterm, then, the anxiety for the trip, then the stress of the class, then the anxiety for the test on Friday (which went very well,) and then the trip back. Friday night I was tired, but nothing compared to how I felt on Saturday. I really felt like I got beat up or something. I'm still not fully recovered.

Anyway, it's good to be back.

Almost home :-)

Rove is guilty. Why is he still working at the White House?

In this ABCNews article, Matthew Cooper, one of the reporters involved in the Valerie Plame scandal had this to say when asked who his source was:

One of the reporters at the center of the investigation into the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, says he first learned the agent's name from President Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove.

Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also said today in an interview with "Good Morning America," that the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, confirmed to him that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
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There is no question. I first learned about Valerie Plame working at the CIA from Karl Rove," Cooper said.

Libby has since claimed that he heard the Plame rumors from other reporters. Cooper disputed that version of events. "I don't remember it happening that way," he said. "I was taking notes at the time and I feel confident."

If a trial goes ahead, Cooper said he would name Rove as his source of the information.

"Before I spoke to Karl Rove I didn't know Mr. Wilson had a wife and that she had been involved in sending him to Africa."

Why is Karl Rove still working in the White House? His name has been linked to a CIA agent outing scandal time and again, but he still has his top level post in the most powerful government in the world during a time of war, and still has access to national-security-level classified information.

Where is the outrage?! Can we think of any other president so spineless, ineffectual, arrogant, and dangerous that he keeps a traitor on his side during wartime? I believe even Reagan and Nixon weren't so stupid, insane, or crazy.

You're doing a heck of a job George. Curious to see what your legacy is going to look like in a few years.

OnBase training - Day 3

Oh my God, I'm so tired. Today was by far the worst day, so chock full of information I felt like I wanted to scream. I'm starting to really worry about the following classes, which everyone says are MUCH harder than this one. And I have no choice but attend them. Unless of course, I find another job (yeah right, like that's ever gonna happen!!) Anyway, one more lecture day and then the test. Can't wait for this whole thing to be over. I miss my family, my routine, my house. I'm homesick at this point, and I really just want to go home. I don't know how people who are always on the road do it. I guess you must be cut out for it.