Ten Years After September 11: Recalling the Outrageousness of the Hollywood Left
September 9, 2011 No Comment
Ten years after the attacks of September 11, it’s worth recalling how the immediate reaction of some on the far Left was to blame the United States foreign policy for instigating the attacks, and how various Hollywood celebrities spent the remainder of the decade trashing the War on Terror and likening the United States to some sort of Nazi regime or police state. Some even promoted wild conspiracies that the United States government had participated in the attacks themselves, or was sheltering terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Here, culled from the MRC’s vast archives, are 25 blood-boiling quotes showcasing the Hollywood Left’s outrageous take on the War on Terror over the past ten years, with links to several videos: “Am I angry? You bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the price with their lives. “Keep crying, Mr. Bush. Keep running to Omaha or wherever it is you go while others die, just as you ran during Vietnam while claiming to be ‘on duty’ in the Air National Guard. Nine boys from my high school died in that miserable war. And now you are asking for ‘unity’ so you can start another one? Do not insult me or my country like this! “Yes, I, too, will be in church at noon today, on this national day of mourning. I will pray for you, and us, and the children of New York, and the children of this sad and ugly world .” — Message posted by left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore on his Web site, September 14, 2001. “We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, not cowardly.” — ABC’s Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect , September 17, 2001. “Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word ‘cowardly’ is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.” — Novelist and playwright Susan Sontag writing for the “Talk of the Town” section of the Sept. 24, 2001 New Yorker . “I despise him [President George W. Bush]. I despise his administration and everything they stand for….There has to be a movement now to really oppose what he is proposing because it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral and basically illegal….It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It’s humiliating.” — Actress Jessica Lange at a September 25, 2002 press conference at an international film festival in San Sebastian, Spain where she was given a lifetime achievement award. Her remarks were shown in the U.S. on the syndicated show Inside Edition on October 4, 2002. “This is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers who stole the White House (you call them ‘hawks’, but I would never disparage such a fine bird) have hijacked a nation’s grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist.” — Former Cheers star Woody Harrelson in an op-ed headlined “I’m an American tired of American lies” published Oct. 17, 2002 in London’s The Guardian newspaper. Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore: “What happened to the search for Osama bin Laden?…You don’t think they [the U.S. government] know where he is?” Bob Costas (astonished): “You think they know where Osama bin Laden is and it’s hands off?” Moore: “Absolutely, absolutely.” Costas: “Why?” Moore: “Because he’s funded by their friends in Saudi Arabia! He’s back living with his sponsors, his benefactors. Do you think that Osama bin Laden planned 9/11 from a cave in Afghanistan? I can’t get a cell signal from here to Queens! I mean, come on, let’s get real about this….I think the United States, I think our government knows where he is and I don’t think we’re going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon.” — Exchange on HBO’s On the Record with Bob Costas , May 9, 2003. “I wondered to myself during ‘Shock and Awe,’ I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?” — Actress Meryl Streep at a July 8, 2004 Kerry-Edwards fundraiser held at Radio City Music Hall, as quoted by the Boston Globe the next day. “I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don’t know anything about the Iraqis, but they’re angry and frustrated in their own lives. It’s like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we’ve got a new bunch of Hitlers.” — Singer Linda Ronstadt, as quoted by USA Today reporter Elysa Gardner in a November 17, 2004 profile. “No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas and we are expressing our solidarity with you.” — Singer Harry Belafonte to Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez during a televised rally on January 8, 2006 in a clip shown on FNC’s Hannity & Colmes the next day. “Unless you are willing to accept torture as part of a normal American political lexicon, unless you are willing to accept that leaving the Geneva Convention is fine and dandy, if you accept the expression [expansion?] of wiretapping as business as usual, the only way to express this now is to embrace the difficult and perhaps embarrassing process of impeachment.” — Actor Richard Dreyfuss in a February 16, 2006 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “In my country, we seem to be sanctioning renditioning of innocent people without trial…put them in jail without telling anyone…and torture them out of suspicion of what we think they might do….This is exactly what [George] Orwell was talking about when he spoke of thought crimes.” — Actor/left-wing activist Tim Robbins, who was in Athens, Greece, performing in a stage version of Orwell’s 1984 , as quoted in a May 2, 2006 Agence-France Press dispatch. “As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries….Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.” — Rosie O’Donnell on ABC’s The View , September 12, 2006. “When they say the ‘terrorists want the Democrats to win,’ you say ‘are you insane? George Bush has been a terrorist’s wet dream.’ He inflames radical hatred against America and then runs on offering to protect us from it. It’s like a guy throwing shit on you and then selling you relief from the flies.” — Bill Maher on his HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher November 3, 2006 offering his suggested “talking points” for Democratic candidates. “You have two choices in life, Elisabeth. Faith or fear. Faith or fear, that’s your choice. You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking….Get away from the fear. Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.” — Rosie O’Donnell to co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on ABC’s The View , November 9, 2006. Actor Zach Braff, NBC’s Scrubs: “You know America…my middle name is Israel. We’re both named after countries…. Do you think that you have any traits in common with the country that is your namesake?” Actress America Ferrera, ABC’s Ugly Betty : “Well, you know, I mean, I guess I’m a free-spirited person and America’s supposedly the ‘land of the free,’ right? Or at least we will be in 2008.” — Exchange during the “Spirit Awards” shown live on the Independent Film Channel, February 24, 2007. “It is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself — it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved…World Trade Center One and Two got hit by planes. Seven, miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.” — Rosie O’Donnell discussing 9/11 on The View , March 29, 2007. [ Watch the video on MRC-TV ] “I just want to say something: 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?…If you were in Iraq, and the other country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?” — Co-host Rosie O’Donnell on ABC’s The View , May 17, 2007. “Over the past six years we’ve had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and the people, an attack on the Constitution and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war. And this is a song about things that shouldn’t happen here, happening here. And so right now we plan to do something about it — we plan to sing about it.” — Bruce Springsteen introducing his song “Living in the Future” before a live concert on NBC’s Today , September 28, 2007. “Let’s face it: If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamned wars in the first place.” — Actress Sally Field at the Emmy awards, September 16, 2007. Author Laura Ingraham: “It’s a free country though, right?” Co-host Whoopi Goldberg : “Well, it used to be. I used believe that it was, and then a lot of-” Ingraham: “You don’t think that it’s a free country?” Goldberg: “Not as free as it was when I was a kid.”… Co-host Joy Behar: “Nobody was tapping into my phone when I was watching Howdy Doody.” — Exchange on ABC’s The View , November 12, 2007. “We’ve been redefined for seven years now as a war-mongering, far-right, intolerant nation who’s raping our own atmosphere and demonizing the poor and letting the banks rob us blind. I think if — any incremental move away from that would be a godsend. And I think Obama will, at the very least, put the brakes on this madness and in some ways heal it….I think the rest of the world, if they see that America elects a man of color, I think they’ll breathe a big sigh of relief and not think that we’re this war-mongering, rich white guy country.” — Actor/comedian Richard Belzer on FNC’s Geraldo At Large , March 2, 2008. “Is Cheney a goon? I don’t mean that to be like a smart ass, but he seems like he might be a goon….My feeling about Cheney — and also Bush, but especially Cheney — is that he just couldn’t care less about Americans. And the same is true of George Bush. And all they really want to do is somehow kiss up to the oil people….Is there any humanity in either of these guys?” — CBS Late Show host David Letterman interviewing former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 11, 2008. [ Watch the video on MRC-TV ] “The word, ‘zoo,’ is sort of elephant-speak for Guantanamo. They’re really, they are suffering and being tortured.” — Actress Lily Tomlin at an animal-rights protest in Los Angeles, clip shown on NBC’s Today , December 4, 2008. “We’ve lived through a nightmare…in the past eight years….We’re going through something that we haven’t gone through in my life. Foreign policy, domestic policy — driven to its breaking point. Everything got broken. And the philosophy that was at the base of the last administration has ruined many, many people’s lives. The deregulation, the idea of the unfettered, free market, the blind foreign policy. This was a very radical group of people who pushed things in a very radical direction, had great success at moving things in that direction, and we are suffering the consequences.” — Singer Bruce Springsteen in an interview with producer Mark Hagen published January 18, 2009 in Britain’s The Observer . “9/11? Inside job, plain and simple….I am talking about a massive neo-conservative government effort. It’s been in the works for over twenty years….One problem: How you going to put it into action? I mean, the American people are never going to go for shit like that, right? You’re damn straight. No, what you need is an event, an event that gets everyone’s heads turned around the right way. What you need is a new Pearl Harbor. That’s what they said they needed. You’re looking at a guy who went to 58 funerals in 26 days, I can tell you that is sure as shit what they got.” — New York City firefighter “Franco Rivera,” played by Daniel Sunjata, on FX’s Rescue Me , April 14, 2009. [ Watch the video on MRC-TV ]
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enlarge “He shall overcome.” There are times when the leading intellectual lights of the Right get so cocky of their own victory that they unleash an ideological stinkbomb so rank that it will give pause to even the most enthusiastic Tea-Aid drinker. George Will tossed one of these out there yesterday with his column celebrating the infamous Lochner Supreme Court ruling that barred states from creating 60-hour work weeks: Liberal certitudes continue to dissolve, the most recent solvent being a robust new defense of a 1905 Supreme Court decision that liberals have long reviled — and misrepresented. To understand why the court correctly decided Lochner v. New York and why this is relevant to current arguments, read David E. Bernstein’s “Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform.” Since the New Deal, courts have stopped defending liberty of contract and other unenumerated rights grounded in America’s natural rights tradition. These are referred to by the Ninth Amendment, which explicitly protects unenumerated rights “retained by the people,” and by the “privileges or immunities” and “liberty” cited in the 14th Amendment. Progressivism, Bernstein argues, is hostile to America’s premise that individuals possess rights that preexist government and are not fully enumerated in the Constitution. This doctrine stands athwart liberalism’s aspiration to erase constitutional limits on government’s regulatory powers. An 1895 New York law limited bakery employees to working 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week. Ostensibly, this was health and safety legislation; actually, it was rent-seeking by large, unionized bakeries and the unions. Corporate bakeries supported the legislation, which burdened their small, family-owned competitors. The bakers union hoped to suppress the small, non-unionized bakeries that depended on flexible work schedules. I must admit that I find it surprising that an entire ideological movement exists that pines for a past time that none of its adherents were alive to see, but that’s pretty much how modern conservatives feel about late-19th Century America. They’re sort of like people who go to Renaissance Fairs, except they celebrate Social Dawrwinism instead of swords and sorcery. I wonder if Will dresses up as Andrew Carnegie or J.P. Morgan when he attends his little Gilded Age Reenactment Society gatherings? At any rate, Will really doesn’t like the fact that we have 40-hour work weeks, child labor laws or minimum wage. He thinks that America was a freer place when employers were able to fire you without compensation after losing your hand in a machine and he’s really pushing for a Lochner revival to get us there. Check out his disdain for the SCOTUS dissenters’ reasoning: The main dissent radiated progressivism’s statism and paternalism: Government may limit working hours lest workers damage their “physical and mental capacity to serve the State, and to provide for those dependent upon them.” Yeah, God forbid the government lessens the chance that some poor bastard gets the black lung at the age of 32 after working 80-hour weeks in a coal mine. Give me liberty or give blue-collar people death! Progressives celebrated Holmes’s gift to government of almost untrammeled police powers. He said courts should defer to economic regulations because the Constitution does not “embody a particular economic theory.” Thus began liberals’ distortion of Lochner as expressing the court’s commitment to laissez-faire doctrine. I get the feeling that Will wouldn’t have complained when the federal government used its untrammeled police powers to break up railroad strikes. Tyranny in defense of moneyed interests is no vice, after all. You really have to wonder if the 40 percent of people who consider themselves “conservative” in this country really know what they’ve signed themselves up for. I tend to think they’ll have a change of heart once George Will makes it legal for their bosses to fire them for refusing to work 90-hour weeks without overtime and/or suffering crippling injuries on the job.
Continue reading …9/11 anniversary: photographers recall day of horror – interactive slideshow
September 9, 2011 No Comment
Photographers who were in New York on 9/11 describe the carnage they witnessed and explain the visceral power of photographs to capture a moment. Their images – and those taken by members of the public fleeing the burning towers – show intimate glimpses of individual grief and shock in the devastated city Francesca Panetta Iain Chambers Jim Powell Elliot Smith Christian Bennett Guardian Interactive team
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Munir Farooqi, Israr Malik and Matthew Newton exposed by undercover police infiltrating faith stalls in Manchester Three men who recruited vulnerable men to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan to fight a holy war have been jailed after they were convicted of offences following an anti-terror trial. Munir Farooqi, 54, Israr Malik, 23, and Matthew Newton, 29, were exposed after undercover police officers infiltrated faith stalls in Manchester and found they were trying to groom vulnerable men to travel to training camps and battlefields abroad, where they would “fight, kill and die” in a jihad against coalition forces. They were convicted following a trial at Manchester crown court. On Friday, Farooqi was given four life sentences and told he must serve a minimum of nine years before he can be considered for parole. He had been convicted of preparing for acts of terrorism, three counts of soliciting to murder and one count of dissemination of terrorist publications, following a four-month trial. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Richard Henriques said: “You are in my judgment a very dangerous man, an extremist, a fundamentalist with a determination to fight abroad.” Farooqi had used his experiences fighting with the Taliban as a “tool of recruitment” to run the “Manchester recruitment centre” from Islamic bookstalls in the city. His operation was “sophisticated, ruthless and well honed,” the judge said. “You found the images of coffins draped in American flags as a source of great amusement. As residents of this country you owe allegiance to the Crown, that appears to have escaped your attention.” The group used dawah stalls – in Longsight and Manchester city centre to target vulnerable men and after converting them to the faith, radicalised them using terrorist literature, CDs and DVDs. Two undercover officers spent more than a year infiltrating the group and gaining the trust of Farooqi, who had been previously jailed in Afghanistan after fighting alongside the Taliban in 2001. One of the detectives taped him boasting: “If we die, we win. You have Allah on your side, how can we lose? You know jihad is not about you giving your life away. If we’re going to go there you make sure you take at least 40 or 50 people with us so we’ve done something.” The undercover officer said Farooqi told him he had been jailed for fighting in Afghanistan and he had been trailed by MI5 after returning to Britain. Matthew Newton, a white convert who worked as an estate agent, was convicted of engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism and two counts of dissemination of terrorist publications and sentenced to six years. He told the court he had never heard Farooqi advocate violence. Malik, from Fallowfield, was convicted of engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism and two counts of soliciting to murder and received an indeterminate sentence. It will be five years before he is eligible for parole. Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter, head of the North-West counter terrorism unit, said: “This was an extremely challenging case, both to investigate and successfully prosecute at court, because we did not recover any blueprint, attack plan or endgame for these men. “However, what we were able to prove was their ideology. These men were involved in an organised attempt in Manchester to recruit men to fight, kill and die in either Afghanistan or Pakistan by persuading them it was their religious duty. “That is not an expression of religious freedom, but a concerted effort to prepare people to fight against our own forces abroad. In law, that is terrorism. “Munir Farooqi was the leader. He used his dawah stall to attract vulnerable people like Israr Malik, and then begun to radicalise them, encouraging them to perform violent jihad abroad. He even arranged for these publications to be brought into a prison. Having already fought in Afghanistan in 2001, his war stories were another powerful way of influencing vulnerable young men. For young men who feel angry at the world, these powerful messages can be very persuasive.” He added: “We have worked very closely with a number of mosques, local partners and community leaders to keep them informed since the arrests, as we know this case has provoked strong feelings. I would like to thank those people for their support and understanding throughout what has been a very challenging investigation.” Officers found three books and three DVDs that were considered terrorist publications at Farooqi’s home among more than 50,000 books and leaflets and more than 5,000 recordings. UK security and terrorism Global terrorism Taliban Manchester Afghanistan Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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While former Rep. Anthony Weiner's district is not always a Democratic stronghold, it does tend to vote more liberally. David Weprin, the Democratic New York State assemblyman running in the special election for Weiner's former seat is not the greatest candidate, either. A few weeks ago, he told a newspaper that he thought the national debt was around only $4 trillion. With a weak Democratic candidate, some are wondering if Republican Bob Turner can take the seat, and if he does, hold it in the November election as well. So far, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already spent nearly $500,000 in TV ad spots in the district, which began airing yesterday and will continue through Monday. The Democratic House Majority PAC has also bought additional advertising time to support Weprin. If Turner still pulls a win, do you think he
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Killer who struggled with murderous thoughts was not mentally ill, inquest hears Raoul Moat compared himself to fictional characters such as King Kong and the Incredible Hulk while on the run from armed police and said he hated himself as he struggled with his murderous thoughts, an inquest heard. The feelings could have been triggered by a traumatic childhood in which he was beaten and once saw his mother burn all his toys, the jury heard at Newcastle crown court. He was paranoid, suspicious, mistrustful of authority figures and blamed other people for his misfortune. But the 37-year-old former bouncer was not mentally ill, according to a forensic psychologist brought in to advise expert police negotiators. Moat shot himself after a tense six-hour standoff with armed police, in Rothbury, Northumberland, in July 2010. He had been on the run for a week after shooting his former girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, killing her new boyfriend, Chris Brown, and blinding PC David Rathband. The inquest heard Moat was tormented by bad dreams and feelings which he detailed on a dictating machine while he was on the run. In the message recovered by police, Moat said: “I feel like King Kong when he’s right at the top of that building, all messed up, when he’s in a real mess. I hate myself. I do hate myself. “It is a part of me. I’m like the Incredible Hulk. It is not anger, it is something completely different.” He likened it to being a wild animal “and it’s been there all my life.” He said: “I’ve had it at the back of my mind and it only ever comes out when I get hurt. It is just bonkers. A psychologist said it has got something to do with my mother and rejection; I don’t know, I don’t understand that kind of thing.” He said the violence he had committed “did not feel real” and likened it to playing the video game Doom . And he said when he shot his victims his jaw had been “champing, like he was on ecstasy”. Forensic psychologist John Hughes said the recordings showed Moat “ruminating and rehearsing” what had happened in his mind, as he tried to make a decision on his next move. Andrew Straw, cross examining for the Moat family, said the former doorman had been plagued throughout his adult life by nightmares in which he was seven-years-old and being chased by monsters. Straw asked Hughes if Moat, who was once prescribed antidepressants for depression, was mentally ill. Hughes said: “He has hit a point where he is turning things over in his mind and trying to make sense. He is using analogies that make sense to him. He feels like there is a huge, terrible, angry person in there. “I did not interpret it to mean in a bigger picture there was any mental illness at that point.” He said there is not the sort of chaotic disorder and failure to plan as there would be if he was mentally ill. He spoke of the need for the expert police negotiators to control the stand-off situation carefully. He said this would give Moat a sense of control that could prevent an “awful outcome” as they were by that stage dealing with “a suicide intervention” situation. The inquest continues. Raoul Moat Crime Mental health Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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In speech hailing new generation of free schools, prime minister pledges to raise standards and raises prospect of eliminating illiteracy Opponents of free schools are defending an educational establishment that has let down pupils and accepts failure as a fact of life, David Cameron has said. In a speech hailing the new generation of free schools opened this week, the prime minister pledged to raise standards and raised the prospect of eliminating illiteracy. “When China is going through an educational renaissance, when India is churning out science graduates, any complacency now would be fatal for our prosperity,” he said at the Free School Norwich. “And we’ve got to be ambitious, too, if we want to mend our broken society, because education doesn’t just give people the tools to make a good living – it gives them the character to live a good life, to be good citizens.” The prime minister reiterated his warning, delivered last weekend, that benefits could be cut from the parents of children who played truant. “We need parents to have a real stake in the discipline of their children, to face real consequences if their children continually misbehave,” he said. “That’s why I have asked our social policy review to look into whether we should cut the benefits of those parents whose children constantly play truant. Yes, this would be a tough measure – but we urgently need to restore order and respect in the classroom, and I don’t want ideas like this to be off the table.” Cameron was speaking at the end of a week in which 24 free schools, created under legislation enacted in the coalition’s first few months, opened. The schools, free from local authority control, have greater freedoms than the academies established by Tony Blair. The prime minister was scathing about critics of free schools who say they will divert resources from existing schools. “Those opposing free schools are simply defending the establishment – an establishment that has failed pupils and infuriated parents for too long,” he said. “Those who support free schools are on the side of parents, charities and committed teachers who are trying to make things better on the side of the choice, freedom and competition that will really drive up standards.” Cameron was highly critical of an education establishment that he said had tolerated failure. “For a long time in this country, there has been a scandalous acceptance of under-performing schools,” he added. “It’s the attitude that says some schools – especially in the poorest areas – will always be bad. “That meekly accepts educational failure as a fact of life. Well, I’m sorry – that’s patronising nonsense.” The prime minister said the government would drive up standards by: • Ending “wrong-headed methods” that have failed pupils and making sure every teacher has the resources to deliver synthetic phonics teaching. “That’s the method that’s proven to work – and that’s how we can eliminate illiteracy in our country,” he said. • Raising the bar on GCSE results. By the end of the current parliament, a school where less than 50% of pupils are achieving five good GCSEs will be deemed to be underperforming. The last government set this at 30%. • A greater focus on rigorous subjects tested in a rigorous way. “Our curriculum review will mean we are really demanding in what we expect our children to learn,” he said. • A focus on tackling “coasting schools”. The prime minister said two schools in deprived parts of London – Burlington Danes Academy in Hammersmith, and Walworth Academy in Southwark – had achieved impressive results at GCSE. But in Oxfordshire and Surrey, relatively affluent counties represented by the prime minister and the education secretary, Michael Gove, only 16 state secondary schools did better than the two London schools. “”Why is there this difference?” Cameron said. “Why are these schools coasting along?” The prime minister said that, by the end of next year, the government would have transformed about 150 failing secondary schools and 200 failing primaries into academies. “Britain is a modern, developed country. If they’re seeing excellence as standard in cities like Shanghai, why can’t we see that in cities like London? “We’ve got the resources, we’ve got the fantastic teachers, we know what works. Now we just have to have the will – the energy – to make this happen and, believe me, we have it.” Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union, said: “The prime minister’s vision of an education system which delivers the best for everyone is one with which we agree. “The union simply does not accept that the fragmentation of our education system is the right answer. The free schools and academy programme are a divisive and unnecessary experiment with this. “To ensure that every young person has the very best chance to both reach their full academic potential and to be a ‘good citizen’, we need well-ordered schools within a coherent education service supported by youth provision, and a range of local support services. This government’s programme of cuts is hitting all this provision.” Free schools Schools David Cameron Education policy Liberal-Conservative coalition Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …From our good friends at Next Media Animation . Rick Perry was born a democrat to rancher parents deep in the heart of Texas. He met his wife in kindergarten at a piano recital. Perry was a backer of former vice president Al Gore. But GOP operative Karl Rove convinced Perry to switch sides. Perry became the governor of Texas when George W. Bush and Karl Rove left for the White House. He is known for creating jobs. But critics say his business grants reward political donors. His HPV program was attacked because it benefited a donor. Also unpopular is a $5 “pole tax” that bar patrons must pay to enjoy live nude entertainment. Perry is not a Bush clone. In fact, Perry and Bush hate each other. Bush and Rove backed Perry’s GOP rival in the 2010 governor’s race. Perry is known for praying. He prayed for drought relief. But God has a sense of humor and denied Perry his rain. Still, Perry leads the GOP race. Will he go all the way?
Continue reading …NY Times ‘News’ Story Hits G.O.P.’s ‘Untrue…Misleading’ Claims About Drilling, Social Security
September 9, 2011 No CommentThree liberal New York Times reporters teamed up Thursday morning to fact-check the Republican debate (and defend Obama) at the Reagan library. John Broder, Nicholas Confessore, and Jackie Calmes cowrote “ Attacking the Democrats, but Not Always Getting It Right ,” which was not labeled or presented as “news analysis” (a label the Times is using less of lately) but as a factual news story. The text box read: “ The candidates’ arguments run into factual hurdles .” During more than an hour and 45 minutes of intense debate on Wednesday night, the Republican presidential candidates did not shy away from exchanging blows with each other. But some of the toughest criticism — and some of the most factually problematic — was reserved for the policies, programs, and principles traditionally associated with Democrats, from tackling climate change to broadening access to health care to providing retirement insurance for the elderly. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, assailed the federal government and President Obama in particular for what he said were overbearing regulations on oil drilling, coal mining and nuclear energy. “We are an energy-rich nation and we’re living like an energy-poor nation,” he said, asserting that Mr. Obama had halted offshore drilling, blocked construction of new coal plants, slowed development of nuclear plants and failed to develop natural gas trapped in shale formations. But those claims are largely untrue. While Mr. Obama declared a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP spill in 2010, the government began granting permits again earlier this year and activity is approaching pre-spill levels. The administration recently announced a major lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico and gave provisional approval to a Shell project in the Arctic off the coast of Alaska. And while a number of utilities have canceled plans to build new coal plants, that is largely because demand for electricity has slowed, not because of new federal regulations. The Heritage Foundation disagreed in a memo on Thursday , faulting a slow permit process that has stalled both onshore and offshore drilling, as well as environmental litigation. Responding to G.O.P. opposition to the idea that global warming poses a threat that needs to be combated with economy-crippling regulation, the paper assured readers: The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is occurring and that human activity — chiefly the burning of fossil fuels and cutting down of tropical forests — is likely to blame. The reporters even rushed to the defense of Social Security’s viability. Some of the sharpest language of the night came when Mr. Perry laid into Social Security, saying, “You cannot keep the status quo in place and call it anything other than a Ponzi scheme.” But that metaphor is misleading. Government projections have Social Security exhausting its reserves by 2037, absent any changes, but show that the payroll tax revenues coming in would cover more than three-quarters of benefits to recipients then. Only deep into the story did the Times evaluate attacks by candidates against their fellow Republicans.
Continue reading …Shakespeare in the West Bank: British troupe savour ‘Elizabethan’ crowd
September 9, 2011 No Comment
Raucous audience at Bethlehem refugee camp see closing performance of The Tempest by Jericho House theatre It was, said the director, an Elizabethan atmosphere. People came and went throughout the play. There was chatter and laughter and crying babies. One boy kicked a football, another swung from an overhead metal bar near the stage. Yet this was not the Globe theatre on the south bank of the Thames, but an open-air performance in the shadow of Israel’s concrete wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem. One of the defining symbols of the occupation, here the wall towers over a Palestinian refugee camp, making it perhaps an appropriate setting for a Shakespeare play with themes of exile, injustice, resistance and – ultimately – freedom and forgiveness. Overlooked by Israeli military watchtowers, and against a backdrop of graffiti (“One day the sun will rise on a free Palestine”), the British troupe struggled at times to hold the attention of the mainly young audience, nearly all of whom were seeing a Shakespeare play for the first time. Ruth Lass, whose captivating performance of Ariel was received enthusiastically, was unfazed. “You play with what’s there. In Shakespeare’s times it would have been like this. You have to work hard to hold the audience. That’s the nature of theatre,” she said. The innovative theatre company Jericho House spent a year preparing for its mini-tour, which ends on Saturday, to East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nablus and the mixed Israeli-Arab city of Haifa. It returns for a run at a London church on 21 September. Director Jonathan Holmes said he chose The Tempest because of the echoes its themes have in the occupied West Bank. The play “becomes a contest for territory between people of different cultures, and people of the same culture. Shakespeare uses this dynamic to explore different systems and ideas of political resistance.” The parallels were not exact, he said. “This is at one level a very English play. We’re not trying to make it overtly about the situation here. We’re offering a neutral production and we’ll see if the resonances are heard.” The first tour of a European Shakespeare production in the West Bank – at least since the British Mandate era – was mainly funded by the British Council and the Qattan Foundation. Jericho House would have liked to take the production to Gaza, but the logistical and security challenges were too great. “Cultural openness is very important in parts of the world that don’t get to travel or have exposure to other cultures,” said Holmes. No special co-ordination was made with the Israeli authorities, and three of the cast “with Middle Eastern-sounding names” were detained and questioned for several hours at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport, according to Holmes. They performed without a set, in modern dress, using few props, and without rehearsing in the selected spaces – a “high-risk” approach, according to Holmes. Finding the right venues had been tricky, he said. “The space itself has an enormous effect on the show. It’s essential to find a space that will speak as strongly as the text or performance.” The pioneering Freedom Theatre in the northern West Bank city of Jenin was on the original itinerary. But the performance was cancelled after the theatre’s director and founder, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was shot dead by masked gunmen in April . “Juliano was our principal contact,” said Holmes. “He was the one who really understood how the project would work, and he wanted it to come to the Freedom Theatre.” At the end of the performance at Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, Nancy Ijara, 18, who studied Shakespeare at school, said she particularly enjoyed the scenes of Miranda and Ferdinand’s marriage and Prospero’s forgiveness. Walid Abusrour, 49, who now lives in the US but was visiting family in Bethlehem, said: “Occupation and The Tempest are the same thing. It’s about freedom. What we’re also looking for is freedom, and to get back what we lost.” Abdelfattah Abusrour, manager of the Alrowwad cultural centre, which hosted the performance, was delighted. “For children, it was very hard to focus; it’s a lot of words in a foreign language [a summary in Arabic was given before each act]. It was challenging but the idea was to present it in a context that is powerful.” The theme of banishment, he said, “connects to our case as refugees in our own country. And we also always hope for a happy ending.” Palestinian territories William Shakespeare Israel Middle East Theatre Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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