I know it's the holidays and i don't have to post, but....

Article

Judge who sued over pants loses job

Wed Nov 14, 12:29 AM ET

WASHINGTON - A judge who lost a $54 million lawsuit against his dry cleaner over a pair of missing pants has lost his job, District of Columbia officials said.

Roy Pearson's term as an administrative law judge expired May 2 and the D.C. Commission on Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges has voted not to reappoint him, Lisa Coleman, the city's general counsel, wrote Nov. 8 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press.

Pearson was one of about 30 judges who worked in the Office of Administrative Hearings, which handles disputes involving city agencies. He had held his position for two years.

The Washington Post and The (Washington) Examiner, citing sources familiar with the case, reported the commission's decision last month.

Pearson's lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court claimed Custom Cleaners, owned by South Korean immigrants, did not live up to Pearson's expectations of "Satisfaction Guaranteed," as advertised in store windows.

Pearson demanded repayment for the lost pants, as well as damages for inconvenience, mental anguish and attorney's fees for representing himself. He calculated his losses initially at $67 million but lowered his request to $54 million.

Pearson did not immediately respond to an e-mail from The Associated Press requesting comment.

REFLECTIONS

What can i say? Karma ftw!

please don't grade this Ms Kuang.

The people fiddle while the government is being grilled

The police fiddle while children are killed
Minette Marrin August 26, 2007

It is no exaggeration to say that today’s children have been betrayed by today’s adults. The killing of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool is a direct consequence of a mass abdication of responsibility by the generations that should have been protecting him – and his murderer, too.

I am not talking about Rhys’s grieving mother and father, who are loving parents of the sort every child should have. I mean the agencies of state, from police officers and local authorities to those in Whitehall and Westminster who have turned their backs on adult obligations and discouraged the rest of us from taking them on.

Although we are the most spied-upon nation in Europe and although we have spent billions on social renewal schemes, we have reached a state in which children and teenagers in big cities live in terror of other children and teenagers and in despair of protection from adults. They carry knives because they are afraid.

They are afraid on their way to and from school and they learn almost nothing when they get there, partly because adults don’t protect them from bullying, thieving and disruption. Teachers have either lost or relinquished their authority and children can expect little or no guidance and protection from them, or from their parents, or from council care, or from the police.

Children know the police cannot protect them from gang leaders and that they would be daft to cooperate as witnesses. I know of two boys who were tortured by a young teenager to stop them giving evidence against him. For many young people in inner cities, there is no alternative to the comparative safety of gang life.

Since January eight young people have died in shootings – six in London, one in Manchester and now one in Liverpool. According to Home Office figures, the total number of young people aged between five and 16 who were murdered, one way or another, has gone down from 44 in 1995 to 20 in 2005-6 (and 40% of these were killed by a parent). However, overall gun killings went up from 49 in 2005-6 to 58 in 2006-7, which is a big leap.

Knife crime has gone up and knife owning is becoming common: 12 teenagers have been stabbed to death since the beginning of this year. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London found that between 22,000 and 57,000 young people could have been the victims of knife crime in 2004; without better official data it is impossible to know.

It is clear that violent crime among those under 18 has risen for four consecutive years. And it is increasingly clear that, like mass illiteracy and innumeracy, this is at root due to an adult flight from responsibility – a loss of a sense of proper authority, replaced by a misguided pursuit of improper authority.

Take policing, the first, thin line of protection. I find it incredible to learn that there are known gangs in Croxteth, where Rhys was shot (as in Peckham, where Damilola Taylor was stabbed). If the police know of these gangs, why don’t they control them with all possible severity? Why don’t they watch them ceaselessly and remove the ringleaders with Asbos? Why don’t they have police on the beat, as politicians keep promising?

Of course they know of these gangs. Recognising the gravity of gang gun crime, Merseyside police set up a special unit called Matrix two years ago with 200 officers. Why aren’t they patrolling the danger spots aggressively? If 200 officers are not enough, why aren’t there more?

According to locals, the car park where Rhys died had become a meeting place for gangs, yet plans to have police there between 8pm and midnight were withdrawn last May. A camera was proposed for this coming October. It is depressing by comparison that a camera was already in place on a beach in Sussex to catch two girls exposing their breasts, and police were available to arrest and charge them, and accompany them to court last week (though the case was later dropped), while nobody from our busybody state was watching the known troublespot where Rhys died.

There was also police time and presence enough in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, this month to arrest a boy who threw a sausage at a man in the street and to charge him with assault, for which he could stand trial at vast expense. A police culture that permits this is the culture of Nero – fiddling with cocktail sausages while the inner cities burn.

The police are not entirely to blame, however. It is not their fault that under politically correct micromanagement from Whitehall, policing has become pen pushing, forcing them off the beat. Alistair McWhirter, a former chief constable of Suffolk, recently made the well-known point that officers spend much of their time doing preposterous amounts of paperwork.

A file for a simple assault case contained 128 pieces of paper and had been handled by more than 50 people before it got to court. Recording an arrest will take up at least a morning of an officer’s time in paperwork. It was irresponsible enough to dream up such a time-wasting procedure; it has been almost criminally irresponsible, after several years of complaint, to continue with it. This is the betrayal of the Whitehall mandarins, who have insisted on this nonsense, in all public services, backed by government.

The failures of the police are only one part of a complex collection of social problems and if society is broken, the police can hardly be expected to fix it. What’s needed is a passionate backlash against irresponsibility and irresponsible, misguided waste and the terrible state sector mentality that promotes both.

It’s this mentality that has produced teachers who can’t or won’t teach, school leavers who are unemployable, students who can’t study, feckless parents, broken homes, police who are obsessed with things that don’t matter, neighbours who dare not stand up to other people’s children, jails overcrowded with the wrong people, idiotic state sector make-work, intrusive quangos imposing idiotic make-work and the divisive follies of multiculturalism and uncontrolled immigration.

Until we begin to stand up against all these things, we can probably expect more senseless killings of children.

Reflection

After yet another untimely passing it is inevitable that an article like this one should be written. As the columnist has mentioned, it is society’s neglect of obligations that has resulted in Britain’s current state of affairs, of which Rhys’ incident was but a small part. The columnist, however, also expressed the view that it is the administration that has promoted such neglect, which I do not agree with. I believe it is the general public that has perpetuated it.

In this age of democracy, the ones with the most power are the voters, not the voted. While this encourages the government to perform in the interests of the people, it also means the government is at the mercy of said people’s whims. As such, the government’s policies are sometimes formed not in the interests of the people, but according to the interests, which as will be illustrated can have dire consequences.

I am no expert on police dealings, but I am sure that they were originally meant to deal with real criminals such as the ones who were (directly or indirectly) responsible for the death of Rhys. They were definitely not meant to go after sausage-throwing adolescents. The reason Whitehall assigns police to such trivial incidents in the community is the public forces them to. Evident here is the public’s ‘abdication of responsibility’; problems that were once solved by one’s self, such as restraint of children, now require police intervention. The people’s uncaring attitude towards their obligations results in them forcing the authorities to cover for their shortcomings.

The police force being swamped with paperwork is another indication of the public’s manipulation. It is Whitehall that implements the system, but it is the public forcing the agency’s hand. The reason so much paperwork has to be done is so that there are no loopholes to exploit. Granted, even without public pressure this should be done, but the public presses for even more detail, even more exact recounting; should a felon escape on a legal technicality, there would be many condemning the current administration and calling for change. To prevent such events, there is no other choice but to increase the amount of paperwork done by the police.

One might argue that the public is also calling for more policemen to be patrolling the streets. Given the resources the authorities would probably implement that too, but as it is they seem to be working at full capacity. I know not why the authorities have chosen paperwork over patrols – I did say I was no expert – but either way they still leave one of the people’s wishes unfulfilled.

This columnist has highlighted a major problem, but has erred in her focus. It is the people who have neglected their obligations, and they have tried to get the state to fulfil them, causing the state to neglect its original tasks, so until the British stop blaming their government and start changing themselves, they indeed can expect more killings like Rhys’.

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Harder to find than a star in Singapore's night sky

At Iraq's front line, U.S. puts ex-foes on payroll
Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:37pm ET

JURF AS-SAKHR, Iraq (Reuters) - Under a tree by a battlefield road in Iraq's "Triangle of Death," Lieutenant- Colonel Robert Balcavage meets his new recruits.

The men are Iraqi Sunni Arabs who are about to join the U.S. military's payroll as a local militia. They want guns.

"I am not giving out guns and ammo," the U.S. commander says. The men listen carefully as the interpreter translates.

"I've been shot at up here enough times to know that there's plenty of guns and ammo. Me personally. Some of you guys have probably taken some pretty good shots at me."

Slowly but deliberately, U.S. forces are enlisting groups of armed men -- many probably former insurgents -- and paying cash, a strategy they say has dramatically reduced violence in some of Iraq's most dangerous areas in just weeks.

It is a rare piece of good news in four years of war, and successes like this are likely to play a prominent part when U.S. commander General David Petraeus makes an eagerly anticipated report to congress in mid-September.

"People say: 'But you're paying the enemy'. I say: 'You got a better idea?'," says Balcavage. "It's a lot easier to recruit them than to detain or kill them."

But U.S. forces also say the militia -- dubbed the Concerned Citizens Programme, or CCP, -- is only a temporary measure. If the comparative peace is to hold, the mainly Shi'ite government must offer the fighters real jobs in its army and police force.

TRIANGLE OF DEATH

U.S. forces have launched an offensive against Sunni Arab militants and Shi'ite militias following a build-up of U.S. troops to 160,000 aimed at quelling sectarian violence.

They have partially succeeded, although hundreds of people are still being killed every month.

Balcavage's territory in the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad covers the sectarian fault line dividing Sunni Arab western Iraq from the Shi'ite south.

The lush date-palm groves in the irrigated river valley were a heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, while the steaming towns of Iskandariya and Musayyib became a cauldron of sectarian violence and power base of Shi'ite militia.

Since last October, 23 members of Balcavage's battalion of 800 paratroopers have been killed in the area U.S. troops call the "Triangle of Death."

But the unit's charts show sudden, unexpected improvements in security in the past few weeks. At one point the battalion was hitting 16 roadside bombs a day but that fell to four last week. Mortar barrages, once constant, have almost ceased.

The CCP effort is focused on the road leading from the town centre north. A potentially strategic artery linking the region to Baghdad and to the Euphrates valley of Anbar province to the west, it has been sealed off for nearly a year.

The last time Balcavage's troops went up this road in January, they hit six roadside bombs, had three armored Humvees destroyed and had to fight their way out.

But as they started moving up the road this week, they were met by a local chieftain, Sheikh Sabah al-Janabi, in white robes with a shiny, chrome-plated pistol holstered at his waist.

"We are glad to see you," the sheikh told the U.S. colonel, greeting him warmly with a broad smile. "Our men will guard the road. If we receive any shots, please let us answer, not you. We give you our word as we promised."

ROOTS OF INSURGENCY

The valley's inhabitants are from the Janabi tribe, a Sunni Arab group once favored by Saddam Hussein, who recruited and stationed his feared Medina Division of shock troops here to protect the capital from restive Shi'ites to the south.

When U.S. occupation authorities dissolved the Iraqi army in 2003, many Janabi returned home -- armed, jobless, angry and fearful, and joined the insurgency.

But in recent weeks, Janabi leaders have approached the Americans offering to make peace. Balcavage's troops took fingerprint and retina data of nearly 1,000 men in the area.

Each militia member will earn $370 a month, about 70 percent of the salary of an Iraqi policeman or soldier. Contracts are signed with sheikhs in villages, and each is given authority to hire 150-200 men.

A chart Balcavage first drew on a napkin and then added to his regular briefing shows the scheme ending by early 2008 with militiamen being incorporated into the Iraqi army and police.

He stopped to talk to some of the militia as his column of U.S. infantry and mainly Shi'ite Iraqi soldiers made their way into what had been enemy territory. He took the names of two Janabi men who had been officers before the U.S. invasion and promised to try to secure them jobs in the army or police.

"You should have done this a long time ago," said Abdul Razzaq Homayid, in a frayed robe and sandals, with a beat-up AK-47 on a knotted cord over his shoulder.

"Your invasion of Iraq brought hardship. Everything was destroyed and we had no salaries. All of these men are unemployed."

He asks about opening the town centre, rebuilding the health clinic, fixing schools.

The colonel nods: "We'll get it done. We've got to keep talking and not fighting."

Reflections

Compared to the last article on Iraq that I did, this one is significantly more heartening. It is the sole piece of good news concerning the protracted conflict which I have heard in recent times. This new CCP initiative works on so many levels, it seems like a godsend.

First off of course would be the most obvious benefit stated in the article: violence against the occupying US forces has notably decreased. This benefit on its own, though, is not enough, as it would mean the US having to continually, in the words of one Internet detractor, ‘buy off the resistance’. In the short term it is invaluable, but in the long term there are other merits that are more important to both Iraq and the US.

The CCP has laid the groundwork for what would please the Democrats greatly, although strictly speaking it’s good news for all. In my opinion the programme, although as stated in the article is temporary, will ultimately make it easier for the floating fighters to tie down jobs in the still-young military and police forces. This would facilitate a faster transfer of power from US to Iraqi forces, meaning a swifter withdrawal of US troops. Iraq also stands to reap the benefits of reduced unemployment. Not only would potential insurgents not have to join guerrilla gangs, they would be helping restore order.

The other benefit of this initiative seems more diplomatic than military, but nevertheless contributes greatly to diffusing the current situation. The entrusting of security to local sheiks and the Iraqi people in general seems to me a gesture that at least the occupying forces, if not their commander i.e. President Bush, have enough faith in their capability to run their own country. This is to say that the Iraqi people are being told they need not be babysitted, and they are powerful enough to take care of their own security. If this initiative is not a gesture of goodwill and way to sweeten relations, I don’t know what is.

This is, of course, a very optimistic take on things. The road to success for this initiative has more obstacles than every road in Iraq put together. Even after the implementation there have been killings and bombings (although I am not whether these occurred in the places where the CCP is in effect; nevertheless they demonstrate how fragile peace is). However, the ongoing success Balcavage has enjoyed bodes well, and I’m always one to hope for the best.

I’ll be listening out for those fixed clinics and schools.

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OH MY ZOMG

And I'll get away with anything i want because i enliven people's lives

Second post at the death! Uncooperative Blogger and less-than-optimal time management do not go well together. But still, I've pulled it off!
Original article found here:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6637855.stm

Hilton backs online pardon appeal

Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is backing an online petition seeking a pardon of her 45-day prison sentence because she enlivens "mundane" lives.

The petition to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also claims she was being used as a scapegoat to highlight the dangers of drink-driving.

Hilton was sentenced after being found guilty of violating her probation for a drink-driving conviction.

She must start her jail term by 5 June or risk a doubling of her sentence.

'Role model'

In a message on a MySpace website, Ms Hilton apparently endorsed the online appeal, saying: "My friend Joshua started his petition, please help and sihn it (sic). I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!"

The petition paints Ms Hilton as a role model who "provides hope for young people all over the US and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives".

It also draws parallels between other high-profile US figures who were forgiven for their misdeeds.

"If the late former President Gerald Ford could find it in his heart to pardon the late former President Richard Nixon after his mistake(s), we undeniably support Paris Hilton being pardoned for her honest mistake," it says.

Mr Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Aaron McLear, said the governor would not become involved in any case "until the individual has exhausted their judicial remedies".

Ms Hilton's representative, Elliot Mintz, could not verify whether the MySpace message attributed to his celebrity client was genuine, but he did say the petition "appeared to be authentic".

Separately, her lawyers have said they will appeal against the sentence.

Reflection

It was with mixed amusement and chagrin that I read this article. I have never been a celebrity-worshipper, and I harbour a particular distaste for the especially trashy ones. The blatant disregard of all wrongdoings in view of Ms Hilton’s celebrity status was so childish in its premises that I could not help breaking into a smile.

The petition claimed Ms Hilton (it’s strange, calling her Ms; she hardly behaves maturely enough to warrant it) was being made a scapegoat to highlight the dangers of drink-driving (DUI). The petition fails to note that Ms Hilton received the same sentence any other driver would get; it was the hordes of paparazzi that had trumped up things. The way I see it, she has brought this upon herself. It is laughable, how she seems to want the good without the bad, using the media to catalyse her rise to fame, and then resenting having this notorious episode publicised.

I was tickled further by how Ms Hilton was made out as a role model, providing a guiding light in our sad lives. If we all lived our lives like Ms Hilton the world would fall to pieces. Just imagine: everyone traipsing around partying like animals, wearing what appear to be clothes but are really just illusions of clothes, and generally behaving like they’ve had one too many martinis. Scared yet? The petition also insinuates that our lives would not be worth living if not for the bright spark called Ms Hilton. My dislike of trashy celebrities might impair my rational thinking, but I think it safe to assert that life will go on without a blonde girl’s crazy idiosyncrasies. Or do I fall outside the category of ‘most of our otherwise mundane lives’? I’ll not judge that.

What was less amusing though was the comparison with Richard Nixon. Nixon was a president of the United States; he actually made contributions to his country, and even then his pardon was not well-received. Ms Hilton has made a sex video and contributed slightly to the economy by selling tabloids. Some say Nixon’s Watergate crime is more serious, but Ms Hilton, like it or not, is influential among youths, and popularising a lifestyle such as hers is a serious offence in its own way. I still believe that most parents want their children to stay away from drink-driving and lead respectable lives, but with today’s rapidly changing values I am not so sure anymore.

Isn’t it sad when the only thing we respond to is celebrity? More serious accidents involving DUI happen with regrettable regularity, but people only notice when the victim is a famous bimbo. That said, perhaps the high profile is needed to raise awareness. Ancient Greek Tragedy had heroes of high standing in order to make their downfall all the more tragic. My only wish is that people would not make heroes out of flighty heiresses, and if these are the only heroes we have then life is indeed no longer worth living.

500 words.

Shell

just reread the rubrics and saw the bold 'regularly'. i seriously wish i could update this thing more, just that there's no TIME. less than optimal time management undoubtedly plays a factor, but it can't be the only reason.

maybe the hols will see more activity. for now its back to history assignment.

A hollow memorial?

Article: Site of Colo. Indian massacre honored

By Robert Weller, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070428/ap_on_re_us/sand_creek_massacre
In order to deal with dead links i shall post the article here. Its horribly long, but there isn't any other option.

SAND CREEK MASSACRE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Colo. - More than 142 years after a band of state militia volunteers massacred 150 sleeping Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in a misdirected act of vengeance, a memorial to the tragic event was officially dedicated Saturday.

The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic site, located 160 miles southeast of Denver on Big Sandy Creek in Kiowa County, pays tribute to those killed in the shameful Nov. 29, 1864, attack.

Seeking revenge for the killings of several settlers by Indians, 700 militia members slaughtered nearly everyone in the village. Most were women or children.

Descendants of some of the victims were among several hundred people at Saturday's dedication on the rolling hills of the southeastern Colorado plains. A mock village of a dozen tepees was set up in a grove of cottonwood trees along the creek that historians believe marks the site of the killings.

After a prayer and a blessing for the troops in Top of FormBottom of FormIraq, members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes chanted and played drums.

"It's a site of shame, but it's finally being memorialized properly," said David Halaas, a former state historian.

Eyewitness accounts of the attack include a letter from Lt. Joseph Cranmer: "A squaw ripped open and a child taken from her. Little children shot while begging for their lives."

Tribe descendants claim they can still hear the children cry when they visit the site.

"If there were any savages that day, it was not the Indian people," said former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe.

Campbell, who sponsored the legislation making the spot a national historic site, said he slept beside the creek Friday night "to get a picture" of what the people saw before the attack.

"I think it is the greatest testimony of the strength of a nation — that you are big enough and strong enough to acknowledge the cruelties and injuries of the past," said Patricia Limerick, chairwoman of the University of Colorado's Center of the American West and author of "Legacy of Conquest."

The attack was recognized almost immediately as criminal. Congress condemned it and President Lincoln fired territorial Gov. John Evans.

Witnesses told a congressional hearing that the victims were not hostile. Indian trader John S. Smith testified that the militia's leader, Col. John Chivington, knew the band at Sand Creek was peaceful and was not involved in the attacks on settlers.

But Chivington, a Methodist minister known as "the fighting parson," was feted by Denver residents as a hero after the raid. They were terrified that the Confederacy would use Indians as their surrogates to wage war on them.

"Among the brilliant feats of arms in Indian warfare, the recent campaign of our Colorado volunteers will stand in history with few rivals, and none to exceed it in final results," read an editorial in the Rocky Mountain News at the time.

A Civil War memorial installed at the Colorado Capitol in 1909 listed Sand Creek as a great Union victory. But a plaque was added in 2002 giving details of the massacre to set the record straight.

The Indians were camped at a site assigned to them by the Army. When the attack started, Southern Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle hurriedly hoisted a U.S. flag above his lodge, but to no avail. Black Kettle survived but was killed in an attack at Washita, Okla., in 1868 by soldiers led by Col. George Armstrong Custer.

Since some of the victims of the attack were of mixed blood — the descendants of Indians and white fur traders — whites today also have a reason to revere the memorial, Limerick said.

"There may be stories of equal anguish in our history but this is right up at the top. In a strange way, it is a basis for national pride," she said.

Reflection

Rarely can an article seem so cheery but in reality be so bleak. Although the optimist in me pointed to how the Sand Creek massacre was finally being remembered, the pessimist gestured resignedly to its superficial nature, and how it would have little effect in changing mindsets.

Too often has George Santayana been quoted, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". The Sand Creek memorialisation would then be a step in the right direction. I for one was ignorant of the atrocity until I read of the dedication ceremony. That is the one thing I credit the memorial with; not only did it remind those who knew, it reached out to those who did not.

However, I am disenchanted because despite the plethora of monuments and memorials attitudes do not seem to be changing. The misjudgments made nearly one and a half centuries ago are still being made today.

First, people still fear the unknown. This though is not the main problem; it would be solved if people just bothered to inform themselves about what they so feared. The problem is that information they receive is often false or distorted, which exacerbates fear and misunderstanding. Just as the Denver residents of 1864 thought a band of women and children were warmongering savages, many modern Americans view anyone with a turban as a religious fanatic.

An even more disturbing fact is that people who know the truth choose to disregard it. Colonel John Chivington knew the Sand Creek band to be peaceful, but still ordered his troops to attack. Why? We will probably never know. What we do know is that today, ‘all Chinese own takeaways’ and ‘all blacks are immoral’ are phrases still prevalent in American life, despite them being obviously untrue.

The worst problem though is that, due partly to the above two human flaws, people wanting to assimilate themselves into society find it nigh impossible. Black Kettle was a pragmatic chief who wished to co-exist harmoniously with the white settlers but was repeatedly shortchanged. Despite complying with demands by raising an American flag over his lodge, he could not stop Chivington’s men from overrunning his camp. Such behaviour is frighteningly evident in the modern clique found everywhere, not just in America. I was part of such a group; no matter how hard a person tried to change, we would still mock and ostracise that person. The similarity is startling.

The misconceptions that caused the Sand Creek massacre still permeate the American psyche. If they are not corrected, what is in place to prevent a repeat of such a shameful chapter?

Patricia Limerick believes that “it is the greatest testimony of the strength of a nation — that you are big enough and strong enough to acknowledge the cruelties and injuries of the past”. I disagree. Acknowledgement is but the first part. The nation must then work to ensure such cruelties never happen again; that is the true mark of strength.

495 words

A lone foraging emperor penguin 'toboggans' on its belly across the frozen Ross Sea, with the live volcano Mount Erebus in the background, off Ross Island, Antarctica, December 9, 2006.



Don't you just feel so POWERLESS to stop the ravaging of the earth when you see this picture? I mean, just look at the solitude and loneliness and you feel like you can't make a difference. Or maybe it's just me.


ps I'm tempted to use this as a markable entry. Brevity is wit, isn't it? But then there's the problem of the 350-500 word limit. Shackled by the need to score good marks....

Barking up the wrong Tube

Article is found here: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/technologynews/view/261285/1/.html

Channel News Asia recently ran an article on how Australia’s Victoria state is taking up the futile challenge of curbing the Internet’s influence on its teenagers. Actually they say they will block Youtube on all school computers to clamp down on cyber-bullying, but it is essentially the same thing.

To give readers a bit of background history, a group of schoolboys sexually abused and humiliated a girl, then posted a video on Youtube. Public outcry ensued, and the education board felt it had to do something. Thus, they banned Youtube.

The first thing I thought when I read the article was whether the Education Minister Jacinta Allen, or whoever approved the ban, had actually thought before passing it. I wonder if he or she actually asked how banning Youtube in schools would prevent cyber-bullying. For example, would it have prevented the humiliation incident? Would the schoolboys, after filming, have gone to school just to upload the video? If they could not have uploaded it in school, would they have broken down and turned themselves in to the discipline master?

The reason for banning Youtube, according to Ms Allan, is that ‘All students have the right to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment -- this includes making students' experience of the virtual world of learning as safe and productive as possible.’ Also, ‘The (state) government has never tolerated bullying… approach extends to the online world.’

From this we can conclude that the government thinks banning Youtube will make students’ experience of the virtual world ‘safe and productive’, and send a zero tolerance signal to bullies.

The ‘productiveness’ part I understand; students are already barred from watching videos in class so that they can concentrate on work. However, I fail to see how it makes the virtual world safer. Perhaps it is just my lack of experience in this area, but if they assume that preventing students from viewing potentially ‘harmful’ videos, like the humiliation one, will make the virtual world safer, then I think they are wasting their time. They should put themselves in students’ shoes; wouldn’t they be smart enough not to view such videos under the noses of their teachers?

I also do not see how banning Youtube will send a zero tolerance message to bullies of any kind. I personally know bullying to have been around before Youtube was conceived. If the government has such a tough stance against bullying, they would have detected this humiliation case before it even got onto Youtube. That they only noticed it when it was posted on a public website shows how serious they are about eradicating bullying.

Perhaps it is time to rethink how we educate the young about bullying. Seeing how it is still prevalent, I think the current methods are not working. I am not going to lie and say I know how to stop bullying. All I know is there are ways to improve, and banning Youtube in schools is not one of them.

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Infighting in Infighting

I refer to the article on Yahoo! News written by Brian Murphy: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070303/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

This is yet another article detailing the violence in Iraq; the Hell’s Kitchen where bullets outnumber flies and roadside bombs spring up faster than weeds, and while there is oil underground the only liquid seen topside is blood.

This killing would have been like any other if not for the reason the victims were chosen. The six Sunni victims had attended a reconciliation conference with Shiites; soon after, they received death threats. If it had been a Shiite group which carried out the killing, it would have been just another case of sectarian violence; still a condemnable act, but an expected one. This time the killers were Sunnis.

Having no other news of Iraq other than reports of bloodshed, it is easy to forget that most Iraqis just want peace. The impression I got from the news was that that all Sunnis hated Shiites and vice versa. After reading this article I realised that it is the only the Sunni extremists, not the whole community, who are trying to topple the Shiite-led government.

While relieved that it is only a few who are causing chaos, I am burdened with new knowledge of the divide that exists within the Sunni community, and it is into this chasm that the possibility of peace is being pushed. How can there be peace between Sunnis and Shiites if there isn’t even peace within their own communities? While there are some who actively try to bridge the rift, there are some who will kill to keep the wound open. They want peace, but it seems they cannot agree on how to achieve it.

The worst part, though, is the fact that while I sit at my desk and pontificate, I know that I am really doing nothing to alleviate the situation.

There is a quote from the movie Hotel Rwanda. A camera-man, after shooting scenes of the Tutsi massacre, says: “I think if people see this footage, they'll say Oh, my God, that's horrible. And then they'll go on eating their dinners.”

While I might think that I am cut deeply by the cold-blooded killing and insensitive actions, I will soon shove it to the back of my mind. It will be just another snippet of information to be stored away so that I may fill my head with more important things, like the latest head-shaving antics of Britney Spears or today’s Garfield strip.

When this post is published another improvised explosive device (IED) will have gone off in Diyala. And when I think about it, I will be deeply traumatized for ten seconds before opening a chat window and forgetting about all.

438 words

These three crazy dudes ran across the Sahara in 111 days

I’m quite sure you all concur in my assessment of these 3 ultra-athletes. Anyone who runs 2 marathons a day in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a hundred and eleven days has to be a bit loco. To give you a further insight into their resiliency (or insanity), they had to deal with tendonitis, diarrhea, cramping and a whole host of other unsavoury problems. And what for? To see if they could accomplish something many call impossible. I hope they don’t hear someone say that running across Antarctica with no clothes on is impossible.

They do deserve to be lauded for their efforts though. Unless you’re some Super-ironman-ultra-triathlete who can top it. And since most of us can’t even run a marathon and not be sore for the following week I safely conclude that very few people will think about topping it.

The full article is here: http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-runningthesahara&prov=ap&type=lgns

Sleepy now. I’ll post a proper English entry soon.

bah

Urk i havaen't had time to update.... anyway one should be coming along soon. I'll just post now so that it looks like i'm posting.

DEBUT ALL PLEASE CLAP

Hi. My first foray into blogging and its for a school project. It seems ironic seeing how lots of people, myself included, use blogging to put off doing schoolwork. Ah well, we shall see how this goes.

Anyways I've got to hurry up and finish this blog. See y'all around sometime later.