Chilean Police tear gas student marchers

From Reuters via Yahoo! News:

Police used tear gas and water cannons to try to break up Chile's biggest student protests in decades on Tuesday as thousands of students marched to demand the government spend more of its fat budget surplus on education.

clickhereforallofit

We need protests like this in the States.

As my Economics teacher Mr. Jack Foster told us on a few occasions, education is the most underalocated resource in this country. Whether that is statistically true or just opinion, its definately something to think about. Mr. Foster's basically philosophy is based on the fact that people with higher education are less likely to commit a crime and more likely to vote and/or participate in other ways in their communities; therefore, the easier that higher education is to obtain, the less crime and higher voter turnout you will have. It also goes without saying that the more educated people we have, the less unemployment and therefore less poverty we will have, which is probably why having higher education reduces someone's chance of commiting a crime.

So the better alternative to building more prisons to accomidate more criminals is to instead give more money to schools to lower their tuitions. Its my own philosophy that other government functions should be cut as well to have more funds for education, the main one being National Offense (also called "Defense"). I've said before that we should cut funding to NASA too, and it pains me to say that because space travel is so freaking COOL, but it just shouldn't be such a high priority anymore. I mean, landing more things on Mars will not lower the poverty rate, nor anything but prove that we can land more things on Mars and that to me is pointless, lets cut their budget.

It may also help out our country a lot to FIX THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM, but you can read all about that at RealArt.

In summation, before our president became president, he was governor of Texas, Texas being having the second worste education system in the country, with Bush being responsible for the way the current Texas school system. With education being such an important resource to harness to fix very important things like crime, poverty, and participation in government, was Bush ever the right choice to be our country's leader? I think not, seeing as he and his Congress cut student loans a few months ago! Combined with his John Reagan Wayne foreign policy, was there a worse choice?

College is too expensive. Most people can barely afford it. If the government gave more money to their schools they wouldn't have to charge so much. The cheaper it is to go to college, the better off our society will be. Poverty poses a bigger threat to us than terrorism, this should be the hot issue today, not whether illegal immigrants should be made felons.

Bush Vows New Look at Iraq Military Needs

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

President Bush, facing political pressure for troop cutbacks, said Tuesday he would make a fresh assessment about Iraq's needs for U.S. military help now that a new government has taken office in Baghdad.

Bush also said Americans should not judge what's happening in Iraq solely on the basis of the unrelenting violence. "It is a difficult task to stop suicide bombers," Bush said at a news conference.

[...]

"We haven't gotten to the point yet where the new government is sitting down with our commanders to come up with a joint way forward," the president said. "However, having said that, this is a new chapter in our relationship. In other words, we're now able to take a new assessment about the needs necessary for the Iraqis."

[...]

"This is a new, permanent government that will chart a new path for Iraq," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "Obviously, we will play an instrumental role in security operations, but as their capability grows and they centralize authority of Iraqi forces, our role will change."

clickhereforallofit

SEE! SEE! "Our role will change," now they're preparing us for it! Geez this is exactly what I've been talking about, its like this conference or whatever it is was conducted just for me. "We haven't gotten to the point yet where the new government is sitting down with our commanders to come up with a joint way forward [But they sure as hell will! Woo hoo we got us a Muslim state at our finger tips hee-yuck!],". I like that way of putting it, "joint way forward," more like, "whatever we want them to do,". Do we need anything more to see why we're there?

The true face of "democracy promotion"

From Noam Chomsky's newest book, Failed States:

In March 2004, concerned that elections in El Salvador might come out the wrong way, the democracy promotion misionaries warned that if Salvdorans made the wrong choice, the country's lifeline--remittences from the United States, a crucial pillar of the "economic miracle"--might be cut, among other consequences. They also clarified their mission by offering their achievements in El Salvador as a model for Iraq. In reaction to the favorable coverage of this audacious stand, one of the leading academic specialists on Central America, Thomas Walker, distrubuted an op-ed to newspapers around the country describing the "free elections" under US domination hailed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others...The candidates, moreover, were limited to "a narrow spectrum from center to far right"; voter abstention was threatened with murder, and votes were cast using sequentially numbered, identifiable ballots "deposited in clear plastic boxes in front of armed soldiers--so translucent that [the ballots] could be read even when dully folded."
(my emphasis)

Just the other day, it may have even been my last post, I challenged the notion that the Iraqi people are actually receiving the government that they desire. According to Thomas Walker, our government intended to use the Salvadoran election as a model for that of Iraq's. If so, my allegations were completely correct, and Chomsky goes on to say:

And no doubt [war planners] want to withdraw--but only once an obedient client state is firmly in place, the general preference of conquerors...

Which also goes along with what I said the other day, I think it was along the lines of, "the new government that we're helping to form will naturally comply with our interests". I refered to Failed States in the beginning of that post but I had not yet gotten to the part that I just now quoted. I say all that to say this: I'M AWESOME.

I shall be a music major

I just now received a letter, finally, from the University of New Orleans Department of Music. I've been accepted.

I'm going to be a jazz student in New Orleans. This is cool. I still need to get me some money.

Iraqi Government Approved Amid Violence

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Iraq's parliament approved a national unity government Saturday, achieving a goal Washington hopes will reduce violence so U.S. forces can eventually go home.

But as the legislators met, a series of attacks killed at least 31 people and wounded dozens, and police also found the bodies of 22 Iraqis who apparently had been kidnapped and tortured by death squads that plague the capital and other areas.

[...]

The Bush administration hopes the new national unity government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds can calm violence and pave the way for beginning the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

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So once this new government gets rolling and starts trying to get things done and the violence continues, then will the Bush Administration rethink their insistence on keeping troups in Iraq? I seriously doubt it. Or lets say that in the next few months, the insurgents do just all of a sudden say "Gee, democracy's great! Lets go back home and forget all this!", and everything is alllllll better, will I re-think my opposition to the occupation? NO.

The Iraqi people voted for their new government, yes, but who decided who they were going to vote for? Twas US, of course, thats what this whole "giving them democracy" charrade really means. We invaded Iraq not to free its people (according to Chomsky in his newest book Failed States, the new Iraqi consitution gives fewer rights to women than they had under Saddam) but to secure our own oil interests and assert our dominance in that industry, and the new government that we're helping to form will naturally comply with us (otherwise we wouldn't be letting them take power, duh!).

And if we're the ones protecting or coordinating the elections, how do we know that the Iraqis are really getting what the majority of them voted for anyway?

Coerced Confessions - A Corporate Abuse

From nader.org

In a recent column I wrote about police interrogation tactics that lead a surprising number of people to confess to crimes they didn’t commit. It turns out that corporate America has followed suit. Many large corporations take a “loss prevention” approach that utilizes training manuals modeled after the leading police manuals -- using the very techniques that cause false confessions.

[...]

Last month . . . A civil jury struck a blow for corporate accountability, socking AutoZone with a verdict of $7.5 million in punitive damages.

The case stemmed from events several years ago, when a store manager became convinced that one of his employees (a loyal worker with a sterling reputation) had stolen $800. The manager followed the playbook. He had a security guard grill the employee in a small office for almost three hours, confronting him with false evidence and threatening his discharge and arrest unless he confessed. If he did confess, he was assured, he could pay the company back and keep his job, and the matter would remain private.

[...]

In the case of the AutoZone employee, the company didn’t even keep its coercive promise -- it fired him almost immediately after his confession and took the amount he “stole” out of his last paycheck. But Joaquin Robles turned out to be the wrong person to mess with. His lawsuit not only gave him justice, but also shed the spotlight on the corporate coercion industry. The trial exposed the manual used by AutoZone's so-called “loss prevention” managers and produced testimony from other employees about similarly coercive treatment.

clickhereforallofit

Yeah, I'm about to put in an application at Office Depot. I gotta save up some rent money this summer for New Orleans so I can just do school and not have to worry about working when I first move there. Anyway, this story is kinda scary, I would NOT want to be falsely accused of stealing and get damn near tortured for it.

I'm sure it won't, lets go over the Office Depot Code of Associates:

• Fair and honest treatment of every individual is the standard
• Communications of opinions is encouraged
• We attract, develop and promote the most qualified people
• There exists a balance between family, community and the company
• We recognize and reward accomplishment
• We encourage a positive approach to work
• We conduct ourselves with uncompromising honesty and integrity
• Hard work and having fun go hand-in-hand

Man, AutoZone should adopt Office Depot's school of thought, you know they care about their customers down there at the 'ol Office Depot...

They haven't even hired me and I hate them, haha.

Yeah man, UNO

A few posts ago I said I got screwed over by UNO, but they called yesterday and said that I still get the scholarship.

Yeah, I'm going to UNO. I'm moving to New Orleans. Pretty cool.

The War, The Media, and Common Sense

It seems like the headlines about Iraq alternate every day, switching from opimistic to pesimistic, hopefull to hopeless, positive to negative. The strange part is, they all use factual information (for the most part). The stories of violence are true, as true as the stories about the new government taking steps toward stability and strength. Public opinion about Iraq can no longer be affected by the latest body count, or the latest peaceful meeting between new Iraqi leaders.

The government received some intelligence that said Iraq was secretly stocking up and/or hiding large amounts of WMDs, but they also received intelligence suggested otherwise and ended up being right. The government chose to ignore the latter and only told us about the false intelligence, and led us into war based on lies.

Most people know that now, but some choose to support the war anyway because of the "good news" that comes from Iraq, like Iraq's emerging "democracy" that "we're helping to create". They don't care that it all started because of lies. They don't care how many innocent civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan (more than the amount that died in New York in 2001 on 9/11). They think that this "democracy" that we're imposing on Iraq is a good thing because it will somehow promote Peace in that region in the future, yet the violence rages on just as intensely as when the war began.

We are given news and facts and numbers everyday, but we're not reminded of the history of the U.S. presence in that region. We have to find that information ourselves. We have to be refered to it by individuals on a one-on-one basis, and after that we have to actually follow through and read up on it. If everyone had the same knowledge of the other side of American history to what they learn in public school, things would surely be different when it comes to public opinion about the so-called "War On Terrorism".

The media, according to the Constitution, has the freedom to publish information that they feel should be published. If the media were as liberal as some would have you believe, you would think that we'd see many more interviews with people like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, making their connections between U.S. foreign policy since World War II and our current Mid-Eastern dilemas more public than they are. Of course, most people have never even so much as heard of Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, and have never heard the most rational arguments against the current administration. Its obvious to me that individuals in the media are either not liberal or are truely regulated by the government more than we think they are.

We went to Iraq for one reason; we continue to occupy the country for a whole new reason. "Terrorists" from all parts of the region continue to be drawn to Iraq to fight because of the U.S. presence. Shouldn't the solution be obvious by now?

Bush to Send Up to 6,000 Troops to Border

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

President Bush said Monday night he would order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and urged Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, as he tried to build support for a major overhaul of the nation's tattered immigration laws.

[...]

He called for enactment of a guest worker program to allow immigrants to take low-paying jobs, and he said employers must be held to account for hiring illegal immigrants. He said that a tamperproof identification card for workers would "leave employers with no excuse" for violating the law.

clickhereforallofit

That was my emphasis on the "allow immigrants to take low-paying jobs" portion of the long article. I read that that and thought, "Aha! Bush is for exploitation of immigrants!", but then I had to catch myself. He didn't say he thought that immigrants should be paid below minimum wage did he? Whew, that was a close one, he can still be the second prophet from God.

I could talk about more of the article but......screw that I'm tired.

My first big ScrewOver

I got another letter from UNO today, I'm getting pretty used to them. I opened it unenthusiastically since I thought it was another dumb "Congratulations on your acceptance to UNO!" letters that I've gotten a few of now, but the content of this envelope was different today. It was an offer letter stating that I had been chosen to recieve the St. Charles Scholarship for my "strong academic performance", for $3,522, renewable each semester for four years if I maintain at least a 2.75 and complete 24 credit hours each semester. "Sweet!", I thought, "this will cut the tuition in half!", which is true.

But then I read on:

I hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity by reviewing, signing, and returning one copy of this offer letter, along with the signed Scholarship Regulations Guidelines no later than May 1, 2006.

Fucking great. The one scholarship I actually get chosen for, I didn't even have to apply for, and now I CAN'T GET IT! If this is any indication of my luck to come, I'm going to be a very angry person very soon. I swear this could only happen to me.

C-Span Asks Website to Pull Colbert Clip

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Political comedy often is intended to stir controversy, but this doesn't usually involve broadcasting rights and the public affairs network C-SPAN.

The cable network asked two Internet video providers, YouTube and IFILM, to pull clips of Stephen Colbert's April 29 performance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner from their Web sites.

C-SPAN said it contacted the companies because the copyrighted material was posted online without its permission.

Both YouTube and IFILM complied with the request.

clickhereforallofit

C-Span has every right to request that YouTube and IFILM don't show this footage. Like they say, it is uncopyrighted. It can easily be viewed at C-Span's website--WRONG!!!! I tried watching the Colbert footage at c-span.org and guess what, neither of my browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) are able to open the link! Firefox is one of the fastest growing internet browsers right now, EVERYONE and their mom is switching to it, so many in fact that Microsoft is literally bribing Windows users to keep using Internet Explorer by forwarding a very popular chain letter (I even forwarded it!).

So I guess Freedom of Speech is up to me, I must download a third internet browser (or as many as it takes to find one that will work) to view the Colbert footage in the only place where it is available now, C-Span's website.

This is further proof that the so-called "Liberal" Media is trying to keep that footage under-watched. Fortunately, there are some blogs that already put that video on their pages and I doubt C-Span knows nor ever will know.

Need more proof that the media is trying to keep this footage on the downlow? Yahoo! News put this in its "Entertainment" news section, the place near the bottom of the page, not right along the side with the political events. The White House Correspondance Dinner was a political event, thats why it was on C-Span, so I think it belongs more in the current events section.

Weird how these big corporations like C-Span and Yahoo! don't want the Colbert footage to be seen. For those who don't know, Colbert took some serious jabs at President Bush's policies at that dinner, while he was SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO HIM! He himself made a joke about the "Liberal Media":

And as excited as I am to be here with the President, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America

[...]

what are you thinking? Reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished.

click here for the transcript

If the mainstream media that he was surrounded by is as liberal in reality as his character said they were, wouldn't they, in reality, have covered Colbert's act a little more? It was much more funny than the Bush impersonator, who got way more coverage and didn't show the president in such a negative light.

The non-Fox American media is not liberal or even against Bush, they're just not as insanely biased to the Right as Fox News is. The whole transcript is available only in places where readers are already on Colbert's side of the spectrum, no new audience can easily be exposed to this alternative view that everyone should see for a change. Its not enough just to watch the Steve Colbert Show, this was way more direct and conspicuous than the material from the show, which is not always about just Bush anyway. It was more than just making fun of how he talks and how he looks, it was pointing out the crucial flaws in Bush's policies that have led to many deaths and the mainstream media has done the very un-liberal thing and kept it under cover.

Mexico leftist says staying course

From Reuters via Yahoo! News:

LAGOS DE MORENO, Mexico (Reuters) - The leftist candidate for Mexican president stumped in enemy territory this weekend and pledged not to change course after a series of missteps tripped up his once front-running campaign.

[...]

Lopez Obrador was hurt by his failure to participate in the first of two televised debates, by his hot-head image as he snapped at President Vicente Fox and other critics, and by aggressive advertising from conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon that helped push the conservative ahead.

Lopez Obrador, who promises welfare programs and infrastructure projects to lift up the poor, says the polls are rigged and that he holds a solid lead as he tours the countryside appealing mainly to the underclasses.

[...]

Fox's election in 2000 ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and he remains personally popular. But he did not deliver on promises of jobs and other benefits and that record is seen as a liability for Calderon and his National Action Party.

[...]

"He is dangerous because he likes to go into debt," said Jose Luis Rosas, 29, a food company employee in the small town of Lagos de Moreno outside Guadalajara.

Lopez Obrador's camp calls the claims lies in a "dirty war" led by Fox.

clickhereforallofit

I don't know much about Obrador at all right now but at first glance he seems pretty good. But then again, so do a lot of Democrats...

Arizona Posse to Arrest Illegal Immigrants

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

A posse of 100 volunteers and sheriff's deputies will patrol the Phoenix area and arrest any illegal immigrants, the county sheriff said.

The group likely will be deployed across parts of Maricopa County by the weekend, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Wednesday.

Volunteers will be drawn from the department's 3,000-member posse, whose members are trained and are often former deputies.

"It's important to send the message out to stay in Mexico and don't come roaming around here hoping you're going to get amnesty," said Arpaio, who in years past gained notoriety for putting inmates on chain gangs and issuing them striped uniforms and pink underwear.

Arpaio's deputies have already arrested about 120 illegal immigrants using a new state smuggling law.

"We're going to arrest any illegal who violates this new law," he said. "I'm not going to turn these people over to federal authorities so they can have a free ride back to Mexico. I'll give them a free ride into the county jail."

Under the law — as interpreted by the Maricopa County attorney — illegal immigrants can be arrested and prosecuted for conspiracy to smuggle themselves into the country. The law's authors have said they intended it to be used to prosecute smugglers, not the immigrants being smuggled.

Lawyers for nearly 50 undocumented immigrants charged with conspiracy to commit human smuggling have filed motions to have the charges dismissed.

A Los Angeles attorney brought into the case last week by the Mexican Consul General's Office in Phoenix plans to file another motion claiming Maricopa County Attorney officials are violating state and federal law because it's the federal government's job to control illegal immigration.

Both motions are to be argued in county court on May 23.

#################################################

Thats the whole article, and hopefully the Associated Press didn't distort the context of this like they did with that article the other day about Iran.

Why is that deputy so hell-bent on putting illegal aliens in prison? If he's pissed off about them being here, why does he want to keep them here? Isn't it obvious that he's got something against non-American people? I'm not gonna say its a racial thing, because its probably not, but he's definately anti-anything thats not American, or at least anti-anyone who isn't American. Its called xenophobia, and this guy is foaming it at the mouth. Xenophobia is gushing from this guy's badge, and the same probably goes for the members of his posse. What is so offensive about someone wanting so much to live a better life that they commit the unthinkable crime of just walking right on in to America instead of trying to go through the tedious legal process?

Like I said yesterday, its more than just "upholding the law", its personal with many people, and I don't think thats a very democratic reason for members of a "democracy" to be so intent on punishing these people.

The Minutemen just don't get it and neither does the Associated Press

From the AP via Yahoo! News

Border Group Begins Cross-Country Campaign

LOS ANGELES - In the shadow of this week's huge pro-immigrant demonstrations, the opposition Minuteman Project launched a cross-country tour Wednesday to rally support for tighter border control.

[...]

The group hopes to counter the impact made by the more than 1 million illegal immigrants and their supporters who took to the nation's streets on Monday. Demonstrations by the Minuteman Project that day were scattered and small, often numbering fewer than 100 people per city.

Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist told about 40 supporters before the group left from a park in South Los Angeles that the recent immigration marches were a "declaration of domination."

"Ours is not a racial cause. It's a rule of law cause."

clickhereforallofit

The Associated Press said simply that the marchers on Monday were supporters of illegal immigrants. They make it out to seem like the marchers were saying that all illegal aliens should stay here, but thats not what the marches were about at all. It was about workers' rights. If someone (whether they're a legal citizen or not) finds work, they deserve to be paid a decent wage. Furthermore, if someone comes here illegally and finds work for an extended period of time, it would be more beneficial to the country to grant them citizenship rather than make them felons. Felons are likely to be put in prison where they'll cost the American tax payer even more money, which is supposedly the whole reason why these totally "not racist" people are so pissed off about illegal immigration.

It may be hard to argue that the Minutemen are racists, but it is no doubt that they are xenophobic and really don't understand what the new legislation is going to do if it gets passed as law. If their's is a "rule of law" cause, shouldn't they be on the same side as the marchers? The marchers are against the potential law, not the current law. The Minutemen also don't understand, and probably don't want to understand, the reason why all those people were marching this Monday. They forget that Monday was MAY DAY, not just some work day picked at random, and that May Day is a traditional holiday that is in rememberance of the Haymarket Riot which was about labor, not 'who belongs where' and 'who dominates who'.

When all of this is taken into consideration, any support left for the bill must come from a prejudice against Mexicans, and nothing about "rule of law". Its the Minutemen who are delcaring dominance, not the May Day marchers.

Iran Threatens Israel if U.S. Attacks

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Iran's first target would be Israel in any response to a U.S. attack, a Revolutionary Guards commander said Tuesday, reinforcing the Iranian president's past call for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

"We have announced that wherever (in Iran) America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," the Iranian Student News Agency quoted Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani as saying.

clickhereforallofit

How about that? To Iran, an attack on Israel is equivalent to a retalatory attack on the U.S. And what have many lefties been saying for the last...I don't know how many years? They've been saying that we need to change our relationship with Israel, and that our alliance with Israel is putting us in danger of Middle Eastern hatred that could translate to more terrorism. As I've said before, it doesn't matter whose "right" in the religious struggle in the Middle East, we should simply just separate ourselves from it. Being a neutral observer of Middle Eastern conflicts will make us much safer from terrorism than going over there and shooting people.

UPDATE:

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

"Mr. Dehghani was the spokesman of a military maneuver which ended on April 8, and his statement is his personal view and has no validity as far as the Iranian military officials are concerned," Afshar was quoted as saying.

clickhereforallofit

Stupid Associated Press! Screwed up yesterday too it seems. I think I need to find another news source, or just be less lazy than browsing the headlines on Yahoo's homepage.

'A Day Without A Mexican' - today

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Immigrants Demonstrate Economic Clout

Illegal immigrants made their point Monday: Without them, Americans would pay higher prices and a lot of work wouldn't get done.

As nationwide demonstrations thinned the work force in businesses from meat-packing plants to construction sites to behind the counter at McDonald's, economists said there can be no dispute within the context of the contentious immigration issue that the group wields significant clout in the U.S. economy.

[...]

While the full impact of the one-day Day Without Immigrants boycott was hard to immediately gauge, it was palpable in some industries with a heavily Hispanic work force. On-the-job turnout was dramatically lower at some locales in the meat-packing, masonry, restaurant and landscaping businesses, and numerous firms closed for the day.

clickhereforallofit

There's some numbers and statistics about the shortage of workers that occurred today if you check out the whole article.

Someone just asked me, "Why don't we have a march?". I could not attempt to come up with a response that could explain why that question made no sense, but now I've had some time to think: ITS NOT US AGAINST THEM! There's some poor legislation thats going through Congress right now and there needed to be something to show that the H.R. bill will be ineffective and regressive as a law.

Mexican Americans and illegal aliens are not here to intimidate you or try to do away with your way of life. They're just trying to improve their own.