takes my breast away....oops....breath ....sorry...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp2Q7yVRyNM

at 3:50 into the 7 min vid there is a perfect description
of how we should elect our president...

works for me...

I think more to the point is that he was selling defective vests
to our soldiers who were being killed...

this is the definition of evil....

think I'll side with the experts on this one rambill...

she is not the only scientist taking this stand ...there are
many many more...you must be kidding to think it is no
big deal to be spreading nuclear byproducts all over the
landscape ...I have a close friend who is part of the nuclear
family movement..her father while in the service was ordered
to be in the field of operation during nuke tests..told it was
no big deal...unfortunately he died young of a yet undetermined
blood disease linked to radiation exposure...and there are many families
with similar stories getting together finding out the truth...
radiation is no big deal...yeah right...

by the way ..I do not buy into the global warming thing..have done
my homework on that one too...

One Down: Obscenely Decadent War Profiteer Hauled Off in Handcuffs

By Sarah Anderson, AlterNet. Posted October 26, 2007.

It looks like the party may be over for one corporate crook.

America's most ostentatious war profiteer is no longer a free man. In a long-anticipated move, FBI agents arrested bulletproof vest maker David H. Brooks in his Manhattan apartment at dawn on Thursday. In the tradition of Al Capone, Brooks was nabbed on allegations of financial shenanigans, despite strong suspicions that the defense contractor has much more serious crimes on his hands.

Brooks emerged as the poster boy for shameless war profiteering in November of 2005 when he blew some $10 million in profits from military contracts on a celebrity-studded party for his daughter. Leaked details of the bash drew national attention, including a description of Brooks' pink suede suit and photos of his daughter on stage with the rapper 50 Cent. A New York Times editorial compared Brooks to the ill-fated Marie Antoinette.

And indeed, while Brooks won't face a guillotine for his greed, he could spend up to 70 years in prison if convicted of all charges. The 71-page indictment (PDF) alleges that while Brooks was chief executive of DHB Industries, a leading provider of military body armor, he pocketed more than $185 million from insider trading, fraud and tax evasion. He is also charged with using millions of dollars in DHB funds for personal expenses.

A sampling of the charges authorities say Brooks concealed from shareholders and the IRS:

* $7,900 for a facelift for Brooks' wife

* more than $1 million for expenses related to his 100 trotting and breeding horses

* $101,190 for a belt buckle studded with diamonds, rubies and sapphires

* $101,500 for an armored vehicle for his family's use

* more than $1 million for numerous family vacations, including frequent stays at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and various Caribbean and European villas

* $31,802 to transport one of his daughters and her college friends to Halloween parties in Madison, Wisconsin, using a private jet

* hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonus checks drawn on a DHB bank account handed out by Brooks at a company Christmas party to non-DHB personnel, including his horse trainer

* and of course the predictable $10,000 here, $5,000 there for purchases at Luis Vuitton, Gucci, Gianni Versace, and Prada boutiques around the world

What makes Brooks' greed particularly obscene is that the bullet-proof vests that boosted his fortunes in the first place turned out to be not so bulletproof after all. In May 2005, the U.S. Marines recalled more than 5,000 DHB armored vests after they failed ballistics tests for stopping 9 mm bullets. As reported in a previous story for AlterNet, the Marine Corps Times revealed that Pentagon officials had dismissed repeated warnings by inspectors about deficiencies in DHB's vests.

______
If this was China he would be shot.....and then body parts sold to the highest bidder....

maybe we need to reach the point where we admit that our
government WANTS a world war...and are actively working
toward that end...when you examine all the talk & action as
of late what else can you deduce from these maniacs...

they would rather have a world war than have to face an
implosion of the world economies...what better way to avoid
this ....

toxic waste is being dumped everywhere as far as I know...
but DU application is in your face....and more widespread...

you'll have to excuse my absence wouldee I was at work..

Dont feel I need to defend myself because of an article written
by someone else..I do agree with him...maybe I would have written
it differently...I think the decline of the school system is related
to interference from the federal government...Does anyone remember
neighborhood schools from the past ...or even one room schools..like
I went to...I believe the trouble magnified when we constructed warehouse
schools...with over crowded classrooms..and of course there is the meddling
of the federal government in the form of testing, curriculum molding and
a bloated management structure...

get rid of the federal government...go back to state managment...and local
if possible...

Wall Street Czars depopulating the World
Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:48:55
By Afsaneh Ostovar, Press TV, Tehran
Leuren Moret is an American independent scientist and international expert on radiation and public health issues.

She has devoted her life to awakening the public to the destructive consequence of depleted uranium munitions that are used by the US military. She has made relentless efforts to stop the US continuing to pullout the environment.


Q. The US is using DU weapons in violation of international treaties. Why is not the international community forcing the US to put an end to the use or production of such weaponry?

A. I've asked that question many times myself.
With the demonstrated total and complete failure of international judicial remedies - by the International Criminal Court and the world court - to enforce the 1925 Geneva poison gas protocol, the Geneva and Hague conventions, international agreements and other treaties, and the failure of depleted uranium weapons to meet the standards (in four out of four categories) of legality under international law, it is clear that the international judicial system is morally and procedurally bankrupt. In other words, international laws and treaties are meaningless and/or selectively enforced. Just like the US nuclear weapons labs where I have worked, they selectively enforce the rules only when they want to 'get someone', in other words, they unfairly target and enforce laws that may be on the books, but are ignored.

And that has been true throughout the nuclear project since the end of WWII when atomic bombs, weapons of mass destruction, were dropped on living civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the only two Christian cities in Japan. And that was a case of Christians dropping the first atomic bombs on Christians. Those first atomic bombs were weapons of mass destruction and they were illegal in every sense of the law. They were dropped without the consent of the scientists who developed them, without the consent of the political leadership (with the exception of President Truman who was talked into it by one man - Col. Henry Stimson, Sec. Of war and a Wall Street banker and member of Skull and Bones), and with the strongest opposition coming from the US military leadership - especially General Leslie Groves who was in charge of developing atomic bombs as head of the Manhattan Project.

The decision to drop two atomic bombs was made by one man - Colonel Henry Stimson - a Wall Street banker with ties to Churchill and the city of London bankers. It's always the international bankers who are engineering these horrific wars and the development of ever more horrific technologies of war.

However the hypocrisy of the US government must also be addressed. Depleted uranium munitions meet the definition of WMDs under US Federal Code in 2 out of 3 categories, and they violate US military law because the US is a signatory to the Geneva and Hague conventions. If the US government is so worried about Iran being a nuclear threat, then why did Henry Kissinger give Iran nuclear power plants, and President Gerald Ford give Iran plutonium?

September 16, 2005, in the UN General Assembly, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela said:

"We could, on the basis of national realities, exchange knowledge, integrate markets, interconnect, but at the same time we must understand that there are problems that do not have a national solution: radioactive clouds, world oil prices, diseases, warming of the planet or the hole in the ozone layer. These are not domestic problems."

And on September 17, 2005, in the UN General Assembly President Ahmadinejad of Iran eloquently brought the depleted uranium issue to the table:

"Ironically, those who have actually used nuclear weapons, continue to produce, stockpile and extensively test such weapons, have used depleted uranium bombs and bullets against tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and even their own soldiers and those of their allies, afflicting them with incurable diseases, blatantly violate their obligations under the NPT, have refrained from signing the CTBT and have armed the Zionist occupation regime with WMDs, are not only refusing to remedy their past deeds, but in clear breech of the NPT, are trying to prevent other countries from acquiring the technology to produce peaceful nuclear energy. All these problems emanate from the fact that justice and spirituality are missing in the way powerful governments conduct their affairs with other nations. "

A third courageous world leader has also recognized that depleted uranium global pollution is the most important issue today, for example Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, former Prime Minister of Malaysia. He held an international war crimes conference February 5-7, 2007, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, attended by 5000 people.

The issue of radioactive weapons and depleted uranium played an important role at this conference.

So we have three world leaders now who have spoken out about the horror and illegality of depleted uranium weaponry. But the NATO countries are silent and complicit in the poisoning of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Lebanon with their illegal weapons. The approximately 5000 US bunker buster bombs that Israel bombed Lebanon with, in the July 2006 attack. Dr. Chris Busby has reported evidence of not only depleted uranium in the bomb craters along the Lebanon/Israel border, but also traces of deuterium, high levels of uranium 235, and neutron activation products that quickly decayed within 3 weeks. The analyses were done at the British Government Radiation Laboratory at Harwell, so they must be correct.

Those anomalous radiation fingerprints suggest that 4th generation nuclear weapons were also included in the bunker buster dirty bombs. In other words, the US/Israel are now carrying out two nuclear wars from within the same bomb - or shall we call it the new 'super nuker.' What hypocrisy for the US to cry 'terrorist' about Iran, when US bombs delivered by Israeli jets are nuking Lebanon, Israeli citizens, and everyone in the region. Well, it is well known in America that the victimizer always turns himself into the victim.

The truth is that the 'nuclear states' have, and are using, nuclear weapons for blackmailing weaker countries in order to depopulate them and steal their mineral resources. It's just that simple.


Q. What is the depleted uranium and how does it affect the lives of human beings? What are the consequences of DU contamination?

A. Depleted uranium is radioactive waste from the nuclear weapons and nuclear power programs. 99.5% of the uranium that is mined becomes depleted uranium after 0.5% uranium 235 is removed in the enrichment process. Iran is legally enriching uranium for their nuclear power program, and the IAEA has stated that this is a perfectly legal activity in a country with nuclear power plants. It is being used as an excuse by the US and international community to threaten Iran.

In 1942, radioactive poison gas weapons were suggested for development under the Manhattan Project. In other words, the scientists did not know if they could successfully make atomic bombs, so they said “…Let's make dirty bombs, dirty missiles, and dirty bullets out of the depleted uranium, since we have lots of that, and it will permanently contaminate the air, water, soil, food, and blood in a region where we use these munitions.” It was a great weapon to kill, maim and disease lots of people.

So in 1942 they knew everything about depleted uranium but did not use it until 1973, during the oil crisis, when the US government gave it to Israel and supervised them using it in the Yom Kippur war. I have met so many women in Berkeley, California, who lived in Israel [occupied Palestine] then in Kibbutzes, and they have an epidemic of breast cancer in their families now. Well, that was just the beginning.

The US has contaminated 39 states with depleted uranium since 1945 from testing, manufacture, sales, storage and disposal of these weapons. The US is in a massive epidemic of radiation related illnesses, which is increasing every year - the US government nuked its own people with atomic bomb testing, nuclear power plants, and now depleted uranium.

Not only are the Middle East and Central Asia contaminated forever with radioactive depleted uranium, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, but it has contaminated and mixed throughout the global atmosphere, causing a global epidemic of diabetes and other radiation related illnesses.

Depleted uranium is a radioactive nano-particle doomsday machine, which is not only causing diabetes all over the world, but it is invisibly increasing death rates, and decreasing birth rates globally - that is called depopulation. The Queen of Britain and the Rockefellers (US) own most of the uranium, and the city of London bankers control world uranium supplies and prices. Nice partnership, isn't it? Through her mother (maiden name Roche), Princess Diana was actually a Rothschild (city of London bankers). Many people believe that Prince Charles married Diana for her Stuart bloodline, which made her more royal than Charles. But when Prince William becomes king, England will have a Rothschild on the throne… that is the bloodline wanted from Princess Diana.

Well, if you think about the thousands of tons of depleted uranium the US/UK have admitted using since 1991, that would be the same as releasing the radiation from at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the atmosphere since 1991, ten times more than during atmospheric testing. Well, look at the increase in diabetes in Japan since 1991, which represents the global effect of depleted uranium pollution.

Source: vital statistics of japan 2004 (vol.1), ministry of
health, labour and welfare, p.202-3.


Then there are the effects to consider on the unborn babies. Consider the large increase in low birth weight babies in the US since 1991, caused by the global depleted uranium pollution. This is happening all over the world. Unlike infant mortality, these babies survive but they are at much greater risk for health problems during their lives: diabetes, learning disabilities, obesity, heart defects, and they are never really strong and healthy. The babies may look normal on the outside, but the DNA is damaged both in the nucleus and in the mitochondria of the cell, as well as other damage we still don't understand. Over future generations, the genetic damage will be expressed in unpredictable ways, and gradually the genome will degrade and decline in vigor. source: US government data: Center for Disease Control (CDC)

The consequences of depleted uranium global pollution is damage to the genome of the entire planet which is being degraded and destroyed slowly over time - for all living things. This is a demonic plan by the city of London and Wall Street banking establishments, and the new world order, the 'globalists' who want to depopulate the world by 2-4 billion people. They don't call London the world capital of terrorism for no reason.

Depopulation, through a continuous global covert nuclear war, has been waged against citizens, paid for by citizens through taxation, privatized, and secretly implemented by the global ruling elite. From 62 years of depleted uranium wars alone, global public health has been devastated by large increases in death rates and chronic disease, and decreasing birth rates, both evident in the vital statistics of many countries since 1945. This is a global trend.

This is what Henry Kissinger said about it in 1974 in the National Security Council:

Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that 'depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the third world.' He cited reasons of national security, and because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries… wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and to the economic interests of the US.

Implications of world wide population growth for US security & overseas interests”, national security memo 200, April 24, 1974

According to an NSC spokesman at the time, the United States shared the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the 'population crisis' is a greater threat to US national security interests than 'nuclear annihilation'. In 1975, Henry Kissinger established a policy-planning group in the US state department's office of population affairs.

By 1979 depopulation was the top priority of US national security policy, as outlined in the national security paper global 2000 written by Rockefeller contractors Henry Kissinger, Z. Brzezinski, Gen. Alexander Haig, and Ed Muskie for President Carter.

So it is very clear that depleted uranium weaponry is being used for the purpose of depopulation in the Middle East, Central Asia, Lebanon, Yugoslavia… and these areas of course are rich in mineral resources that the Zionist Anglo-American economic empire wants to control. The tiger economies (China, Japan, Korea and India) are another serious economic threat - so another nuclear war is being carried out against them with nuclear power plants forced on them by the US/UK war crimes racketeering syndicate (who own the uranium and the nuclear power industry). The Zionist Anglo-American banking establishment is an international permanent war economy, a war crimes racketeering syndicate, the most vicious and ruthless in the history of the world: once again, they are the greedy bankers of the Wall Street and the city of London, and let's include the British throne which will soon crown a Rothschild as king.

Q. What parts of the world have been poisoned by the DU? Are there more regions at risk of contamination?

A. All of the world has been poisoned by the DU - most of it since 1991. The health statistics from around the world clearly show the global impact. But even the oceans are being killed by the radiation, the baby fish die just like our babies. Or they are born weak and may not survive to become adult fish. This also happened during atmospheric testing. Between 1957 and 1963 the fishing catch in the North Atlantic declined by 50%, but recovered within a few years as soon as atmospheric testing ended, because of the partial test ban treaty which Russia, the UK and US signed. However, the pacific fishing catch declined 65% by 1970 and never recovered because some nuclear states continued testing. It is happening all over again since 1991 with the introduction of DU weaponry by the US and the UK. In Japan, I learned that the fishing catch has declined 10% just in the past few years.

The DU is globally mixed in 1 year - it is found in the ice record in Antarctica, Hawaii, the Alps, the Himalayas, and even in the Andes of South America. There is nowhere to hide or any way to escape.

Q. The US soldiers who were sent to the Persian Gulf War were also poisoned due to the DU US weapons. There are many reports of their devastating situation in the past and at the moment. Isn't the US government concerned about the lives of its own military personnel?

A. Here is a news story tonight on the internet. It is the despair and anger expressed by a member of Congress from the San Francisco area where I live. Listen to his words on the floor of Congress speaking to Bush “you have no money for health care for children… or for more war… You just like to blow things up.”


Here is a lawyer friend of mine, from the international law firm of Morrison and Foerster, who has filed a class action lawsuit against the Veterans Administration for Health Care for our very sick veterans… the medical disability rate is over 55% since 1991, when they started using depleted uranium weapons.

Our children are being turned into uranium meat as soon as they are sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. What about the poor people who live in those regions and have for thousands of years….

The leadership in the US, the Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon have been taken over by a shadow government - that shadow from Wall Street and the city of London. The US is bankrupt and is being carved up like a turkey by the globalists. Europe is too… the EU is just another region being dragged into slavery… like the US-Canada-Mexico, which is now undergoing unification. I cannot believe this global nightmare being rolled out.

Our soldiers are just being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan and given a death sentence as soon as they arrive. Our national guard, to protect our states from being overtaken by our own military, is being destroyed to make this global takeover easier. Black youth in the ghettoes are refusing to join the military. They are saying “it's more dangerous in Iraq now than in the ghetto… We are staying home.”

Major Doug Rokke told me that gang members and juvenile delinquents coming back from their army service in Iraq are taking military trucks from bases here like at Fort Lewis, and going out into towns around the military bases and robbing banks. Then they go back into the ghettos and kill the police… That's what they learned in Iraq.

As Henry Kissinger famously said after Vietnam:

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy".

I think in reality the US government has killed far more Americans, their own citizens, than they have killed in other countries. The CIA has cannibalized the US just like it has eaten through the economies and killed the people of many other countries. The CIA is bringing the drugs from Afghanistan and South America into our communities. It's a great way to fund elections and to make huge profits.

Over $850 billion a year in drug money in the US is the CIA cash-flow through the US economy. The US economy would collapse without it.

Q. Are these soldiers receiving proper health care from the current US administration?

A. Of course not. They are receiving a plane ride back to the US and then they are dumped into their communities by the Pentagon and given no help, no medical care, nothing. I have them calling me up every day, they find my name on the internet, and they are begging me to help them… they want to commit suicide, their wives are sick… this is a nightmare not only over in the Middle East and Central Asia, but here as well.

Our country is bankrupt - morally, spiritually, and financially.

Q. Could you explain for our readers the beginning of your opposition to the nuclear weapons?

A. Well, I worked in two nuclear weapons labs, as a geoscientist cleaning up the mess at the labs. I did not know what nuclear weapons were until I went to Japan in 2000, invited to the Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Conference as a plenary speaker. I was horrified when I saw the effects of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Americans had seen the aftermath in 1945 of those horrific bombs, there never would have been a nuclear weapons program in the US. It was hidden from the public and still is. It is a brotherhood of death, the ultimate rejection of life… it is a huge lie.

When I stood in the peace museums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I realized that I had to spend the rest of my life working on the terrible issue of nuclear pollution. I am a mother, I am a scientist, I am a woman and a giver of life; I cannot stand to see another mother and father with a sick child, a sick baby, a sick grandparent… the youngest and the oldest are the ones who suffer from radiation the most.

So here is what I am doing, a global campaign, a US campaign to get DU bills for our soldiers in the state legislatures - Congress is nonfunctional.

In Hawaii they call me the 'enfant terrible' of depleted uranium.

Well, if I am a naughty child for doing that, I am a very very very much more naughty scientist… and I am having lots of fun with my radiation wrecking ball… informing the public about what they should know about radiation and its impact on public health and the environment. Seriously, there really is no other choice.

Q. What are the human costs of the depleted uranium?

A. We are facing a global mass extinction of 2-4 billion people, and a war against the genetic future of all species.

If the Bush Administration and the US Navy are really stupid enough to bomb Iran with their [nuclear] friend Israel, well then they deserve what they get if they knock over that beehive. Iran is not Iraq… Iraq was a 'cakewalk' compared to what a mess they will have with Iran.

I want the people of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the people of the world to know that I love and respect them. Americans are not bad people, I am not a bad person because I am American, it is our government that has hijacked and stolen our country and our soul from us.

But this nightmare they are creating is not over yet, and like Iraq, it will not turn out the way they think it is going to… Bush is not the only sociopath in power who likes to blow things up. Other countries may retaliate…

And there are many ways to punish the Zionist Anglo-American economic empire. Its future is fading…. You never create wealth by destroying things.

AO/RE

________
ok...so I'm clearly wearing my aluminum foil hat with this one...I admit that cuz I agree with the points of the article...DU is real... and it has consequences...now lets hear from those that wear their aluminum foil on the insides of their heads..wrapped around the blackish freezer burned meat that was once a functioning brain....

American kids, dumber than dirt
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career.
And he often writes to me in response to something I might've written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the various nefarious factors shaping their minds and their perspectives and whether or not, say, EMFs and junk food and cell phones are melting their brains and what can be done and just how bad it might all be.
His response: It is not bad at all. It's absolutely horrifying.
My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.
Nor does he speak merely of the notion that kids these days are overprotected and wussified and don't spend enough time outdoors and don't get any real exercise and therefore can't, say, identify basic plants, or handle a tool, or build, well, anything at all. Again, these things are a given. Widely reported, tragically ignored, nothing new.
No, my friend takes it all a full step — or rather, leap — further. It is not merely a sad slide. It is not just a general dumbing down. It is far uglier than that.
We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock bottom. We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon, and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.
It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.
Now, you may think he's merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it. It's a bit like the melting of the polar ice caps. Sure, there's been alarmist data about it for years, but until you see it for yourself, the deep visceral dread doesn't really hit home.
He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it."
But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.
It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he's taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph. Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler.
It is, in short, nothing less than a tidal wave of dumb, with once-passionate, increasingly exasperated teachers like my friend nearly powerless to stop it. The worst part: It's not the kids' fault. They're merely the victims of a horribly failed educational system.
Then our discussion often turns to the meat of it, the bigger picture, the ugly and unavoidable truism about the lack of need among the government and the power elite in this nation to create a truly effective educational system, one that actually generates intelligent, thoughtful, articulate citizens.
Hell, why should they? After all, the dumber the populace, the easier it is to rule and control and launch unwinnable wars and pass laws telling them that sex is bad and TV is good and God knows all, so just pipe down and eat your Taco Bell Double-Supremo Burrito and be glad we don't arrest you for posting dirty pictures on your cute little blog.
This is about when I try to offer counterevidence, a bit of optimism. For one thing, I've argued generational relativity in this space before, suggesting maybe kids are no scarier or dumber or more dangerous than they've ever been, and that maybe some of the problem is merely the same old awkward generation gap, with every current generation absolutely convinced the subsequent one is terrifically stupid and malicious and will be the end of society as a whole. Just the way it always seems.
I also point out how, despite all the evidence of total public-education meltdown, I keep being surprised, keep hearing from/about teens and youth movements and actions that impress the hell out of me. Damn kids made the Internet what it is today, fer chrissakes. Revolutionized media. Broke all the rules. Still are.
Hell, some of the best designers, writers, artists, poets, chefs, and so on that I meet are in their early to mid-20s. And the nation's top universities are still managing, despite a factory-churning mentality, to crank out young minds of astonishing ability and acumen. How did these kids do it? How did they escape the horrible public school system? How did they avoid the great dumbing down of America? Did they never see a TV show until they hit puberty? Were they all born and raised elsewhere, in India and Asia and Russia? Did they all go to Waldorf or Montessori and eat whole-grain breads and play with firecrackers and take long walks in wild nature? Are these kids flukes? Exceptions? Just lucky?
My friend would say, well, yes, that's precisely what most of them are. Lucky, wealthy, foreign-born, private-schooled ... and increasingly rare. Most affluent parents in America — and many more who aren't — now put their kids in private schools from day one, and the smart ones give their kids no TV and minimal junk food and no video games. (Of course, this in no way guarantees a smart, attuned kid, but compared to the odds of success in the public school system, it sure seems to help). This covers about, what, 3 percent of the populace?
As for the rest, well, the dystopian evidence seems overwhelming indeed, to the point where it might be no stretch at all to say the biggest threat facing America is perhaps not global warming, not perpetual warmongering, not garbage food or low-level radiation or way too much Lindsay Lohan, but a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better.
What, too fatalistic? Don't worry. Soon enough, no one will know what the word even means.
________
yep..I agree with this...

they edited the word apocalypse to read party??

Jeeesus Spider...are you that desperate to make a political point?...
the Turks and Kurds have been at it for years...there have been
predictions of Turkish action there for just that long also...
Blame it on our democratic numbnutz in congress..hahaha..
you give them waaaay too much credit...

you are good at that adj4u...

Philosopher...

the point of this articles I believe is to alert us to the fact that the
current frothing at the mouth over Iran has been in the planning
stages long before the war of words in the last year...

For more than 30 years we negotiated with the Russians despite
the fact that they have thousands of missiles...but yet we are s'posed
tp get all bent out of shape over Iran who has none?...give me a
break...I doubt they are suicidal as a nation which they would have to be
if they started a war with us...

If we have reached the point of preemptive use of nukes as foreign policy
then heaven help us...

Basically I dont believe 50% of the garbage said about Iran....

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.
"The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State Department," says Leverett. "They're basically saying, 'You've been trying to engage Iran for more than a year now and what do you have to show for it? They keep building more centrifuges, they're sending this IED stuff over into Iraq that's killing American soldiers, the human-rights internal political situation has gotten more repressive -- what the hell do you have to show for this engagement strategy?' "
But the engagement strategy was never serious and was designed to fail, they say. Over the last year, Rice has begun saying she would talk to "anybody, anywhere, anytime," but not to the Iranians unless they stopped enriching uranium first. That's not a serious approach to diplomacy, Mann says. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies. That's how wars are averted. You work up to the big things. And when U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had his much-publicized meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this spring, he didn't even have permission from the White House to schedule a second meeting.
The most ominous new development is the Bush administration's push to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

the rest here:
http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107

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when are we as a country gonna realize that this administration has an agenda that
has been in place since day one....and it has nothing or little to do with the wants
of the american people...are we so blind?.....how many people have to warn us?...

if you wanted to manipulate the war theatre it would come in handy to
have a couple planes to make combat runs that you can blame on the enemy...
conspiratorial yes...but it fits pretty nicely

meant...someone TALKING sense...

Make builders, lenders fix the housing mess
The housing industry showed incredible creativity when it came to qualifying people for mortgages they couldn't afford. Let's make its leaders put their thinking caps on again and fix the problem.

By Jim Jubak
Remember Enron? The company claimed revenues of $111 billion in 2000 only to file for bankruptcy in 2001 when it turned out that revenues, profits and asset holdings were either wildly overinflated or didn't exist at all.
Losses to shareholders were variously estimated at $60 billion to $80 billion. Those are huge numbers. But when you add up all the fines and settlements paid by the parties the courts decided were responsible for at least part of the fraud, it comes to less than $10 billion.
So now we're in the midst of the mortgage and housing mess, and it's reminding me more and more of the Enron scandal every day.
Inflated revenues? Check.
Accounting fraud? Check.
CEO selling stock just before the company's fortunes tank? Maybe. The Securities & Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into stock sales by Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial (CFC, news, msgs). More on that later.

Before we go down the same unsatisfying road once again, I'd like to propose a different approach to dealing with this latest disaster: Let the punishment fit the crime. Make the companies, the CEOs, the managers and the employees who violated regulations and laws pay off their fines not with cash, but by working out new terms to save the loans they made that are about to go bad.
Hey, who better to fix these mortgages than the companies that made these loans in the first place?
No one left to repair loans
We sure can't leave the industry to fix itself. Because so many mortgage lenders have laid off staff, they don't have enough people to handle all the requests for refinancings and workouts that are flooding their offices. According to Moody's (MCO, news, msgs), lenders have eased terms on just 1% of the subprime-mortgage loans that have reset in January, April and July of this year.
If a subprime borrower can't get someone in the mortgage industry to pay attention, the odds of that borrower going into default go up with every passing month. With more than $350 billion of adjustable-rate mortgages due to reset at higher interest rates in the next 18 months, the problem is only getting bigger.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/MakeBuildersLendersFixTheHousingMess.aspx
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what a refreshing point of view....make those responsible for their actions...will never fly in this country unfortunately....and before anyone screams that the home buyers are at fault I only remind you that many may have been lied to...or had the facts misrepresented...

If you saw the interview on 60 mins it was very apparent where
their attitude lies...the interviewer was trying to get him to admit
he felt "bad" about innocent Iraqi casualties...the best she could
pry out of that monsters mouth was that it was unfortunate about
the "collateral" damage...and she baited him a number of times...

wait till Blackwater comes home and is used here...and it will happen..

So gay scouts = pedophile nightmare?...leave it to our society to
toss out worse case slogans to instill fear....and of course as a
society we ignore real nightmares

http://informeddissent.com/2007/06/28/the-franklin-cover-up-bush-pedophile-ring/

the scout controversy is small potatoes people