Lucas E. Nikkel, a Dartmouth graduate, wants to be a doctor, but for now he is teaching eighth-grade chemistry at a middle school in North Carolina, one of nearly 2,200 new members of Teach for America.

“I’m looking at medical school, and everybody says taking time off first is a good idea,” he said. “I think I’m like a lot of people who know they want to do something meaningful before they start their careers.”

For a surprisingly large number of bright young people, Teach for America – which sends recent college graduates into poor rural and urban schools for two years for the same pay and benefits as other beginning teachers at those schools – has become the next step after graduation. It is the postcollege do-good program with buzz, drawing those who want to contribute to improving society while keeping their options open, building an ever-more impressive résumé and delaying long-term career decisions.
nytimes.com

How totally creepy. Before they start their meaningless careers they go to ‘teach to the poor’ to experience meaning. And to build their resumes.

…Given his background, it is easy to view Mr. Jal as more of a metaphor than an artist – a Christian seeking peace with Muslims, a product of violence who rejects violence, a refugee turned spokesman. In Britain last year he became a cause célèbre with a thick press packet even though his sole recording, the religious-minded 2004 LP “Gua,” was (and still is) available only as an obscure Kenyan import. The publicity even helped earn him an invitation to perform in the multicity Live 8 concerts organized by Sir Bob Geldof to raise awareness of global poverty – although Mr. Jal was relegated to a tiny satellite event for African artists that never made the broadcast.

“I met Bob Geldof and he told me I have to sell four million copies of my CD before I can perform at Hyde Park,” Mr. Jal recalled, referring to the event’s main location in London. “I was thinking someone like me needs to be exposed so people would hear the message I have. And if they like my music, they could buy it – it would be a good chance for practicing fair trade,” he added, laughing.
nytimes.com

“More of a metaphor than an artist”…more imperialist discourse. It’s always what blacks represent, and never who they are.

…Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is warning of the geopolitical consequences of delivering a rebuff to Turkey. “We’re concerned about a so-called clash of civilisations,” he told The Politics Show, to be broadcast on BBC1 at noon today. “We’re concerned about this theological-political divide, which could open up even further down the boundary between so-called Christian-heritage states and those of Islamic heritage. We need to see Turkey in the European Union and not pushed the other way.”
independent.co.uk

It’s so 21st century: instead of fighting the alien Ottomans we remove their dread threat by turning them into collaborators.

Dear Tony,
I’m writing to you as the leader of the party from which I am now resigning. I joined the Labour party in 1964 but this week is the first time I have felt ashamed of my membership. You will say it was an accident that two men were viciously bundled from the conference hall on Wednesday. But then you lie as you breathe. It is impossible that you do not know that when you took power as Labour leader you were determined to stamp out all public dissent and discussion within the party. It is impossible, in a more recent time frame, that you did not know and approve of the decision that there would be no debate on Iraq.

Even as I write this phrase, its absurdity, its grotesqueness hits me again. No debate on Iraq, no debate on the most important foreign policy issue that has confronted Britain since World War Two. No debate on Iraq, which has brought such a fear of violence to London. No debate on Iraq – on the national disaster with which the names of Guantanamo and Britain will be linked in infamy for our generation and probably beyond.

It is unthinkable that the Labour party could not debate the Iraqi war. But, of course, it is equally unthinkable that it could. For the situation there is so dire, the peril in which you have placed the nation is so acute that if even the smallest murmurs of evidence and argument were to be heard they would soon become a gale that would sweep you from office. It was telling that you did not even dare to speak to the old geezer they roughed up. But you had only to take one look at Walter Wolfgang and you could see Old Labour incarnate. An Old Labour that believed in swaying democratic opinion by fact and reason. An Old Labour that believed in debate. Given 60 seconds in front of the television cameras with Wolfgang and you’d have been mincemeat. You presided over a government which suborned its security services to provide false headlines for you to mislead the Commons into voting for the war. Worse, you ignored every lesson of our last imperial disaster in Mesopotamia – a campaign which became a byword for our soldiers being slaughtered to satisfy the vanity of politicians.
observor.guardian.co.uk

ouch.

…Unfortunately for the paper [NY Times] more questions than answers have been thrown up by Ms Miller’s abrupt volte-face.

Should she be celebrated as a media martyr who stood up for the right of reporters to protect the identities of sources? Or is this to do with her – and the paper’s – mistaken reporting before the Iraq war of Saddam Hussein’s purported stash of weapons of mass destruction?

…In March 2004, the paper published an astonishing mea culpa, singling out six articles that had given credence to the administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction without sufficient evidence. Four of those were written by Ms Miller.

…There is much still to be explained. It has also been reported that among those who went to visit Ms Miller in prison was the controversial US envoy to the UN, John Bolton. No one knows what his involvement in this affair might be.

Critics speculate the following, however: Ms Miller’s reputation was in shreds after the Iraq invasion. Going to prison on behalf of journalists everywhere provided a good distraction.
independent.co.uk

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A Dubai-based newspaper said Sunday it stands by a story in which it quoted Iran’s president as saying he might curtail oil sales if his nation is referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program.

However, the Khaleej Times acknowledged that the confusion might have arisen because the reporter, a freelance journalist, told the president she was working for another paper.

After the story quoting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared Saturday, the president’s office issued a statement saying he “never had an interview, either oral or written” with the newspaper.

On Sunday, the newspaper said the reporter on several occasions “presented herself (to Ahmadinejad) as a reporter with the American-based Arabic News, and not as a Khaleej Times reporter, though she has given this report exclusively to Khaleej Times.”
news.yahoo.com

Iran Hints of Reductions of Oil Sales Over Nuclear Dispute
The NY Times does not mention the controversy.

Species are dying out faster than we have dared recognise, scientists will warn this week. The erosion of polar ice is the first break in a fragile chain of life extending across the planet, from bears in the north to penguins in the far south.

The polar bear is one of the natural world’s most famous predators – the king of the Arctic wastelands. But, like its vast Arctic home, the polar bear is under unprecedented threat. Both are disappearing with alarming speed.

Thinning ice and longer summers are destroying the bears’ habitat, and as the ice floes shrink, the desperate animals are driven by starvation into human settlements – to be shot. Stranded polar bears are drowning in large numbers as they try to swim hundreds of miles to find increasingly scarce ice floes. Local hunters find their corpses floating on seas once coated in a thick skin of ice.

It is a phenomenon that frightens the native people that live around the Arctic. Many fear their children will never know the polar bear. “The ice is moving further and further north,” said Charlie Johnson, 64, an Alaskan Nupiak from Nome, in the state’s far west. “In the Bering Sea the ice leaves earlier and earlier. On the north slope, the ice is retreating as far as 300 or 400 miles offshore.”

Last year, hunters found half a dozen bears that had drowned about 200 miles north of Barrow, on Alaska’s northern coast. “It seems they had tried to swim for shore … A polar bear might be able to swim 100 miles but not 400.”

His alarming testimony, given at a conference on global warming and native communities held in the Alaskan capital, Anchorage, last week, is just one story of the many changes happening across the globe. Climate change threatens the survival of thousands of species – a threat unparalleled since the last ice age, which ended some 10,000 years ago.

The vast majority, scientists will warn this week, are migratory animals – sperm whales, polar bears, gazelles, garden birds and turtles – whose survival depends on the intricate web of habitats, food supplies and weather conditions which, for some species, can stretch for 6,500 miles. Every link of that chain is slowly but perceptibly altering.
independent.co.uk

…The army said that the boy had been killed when soldiers in the West Bank town encountered Palestinians throwing stones and bottles at them. Thinking an armed Palestinian was approaching them, it said, they opened fire. But Mr Tantawi said a medical examination had shown several bullets were fired at his son’s chest.

He told the Yedhiot Ahronot website: “You need to look at the body to understand it was a targeted shooting with the intention to kill.

“One bullet pierced his heart and exited his back. No religion in the world, no morality or law can explain what happened.” He said children who had been with the boy at a local park had told him they were playing at the time of the shooting. His comments came as Hamas lost ground to the dominant Fatah party in the West Bank municipal elections.
independent.co.uk

Some ‘Intelligence’ are intelligent enough to question this abundance of “top lietenants”:

“U.S. intelligence officials and counterterrorism analysts are questioning whether a slain terrorist—described by President Bush today as the “second-most-wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq”—was as significant a figure as the Bush administration is claiming.”
The ‘Second’ Man: The slain Abu Azzam may not have been Zarqawi’s top deputy after all September 29, 2005

Recalling that back in 2004, it was reported :

“A Jordanian extremist suspected of bloody suicide attacks in Iraq was killed some time ago in U.S. bombing and a letter outlining plans for fomenting sectarian war is a forgery, a statement allegedly from an insurgent group west of the capital said.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq “during the American bombing there,” according to a statement circulated in Fallujah this week and signed by the “Leadership of the Allahu Akbar Mujahedeen.”
The statement did not say when al-Zarqawi was supposedly killed, but U.S. jets bombed strongholds of the extremist Ansar al-Islam in the north last April as Saddam Hussein’s regime was collapsing.
It said al-Zarqawi was unable to escape the bombing because of his artificial leg.
Before the Iraq conflict began last March, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said al-Zarqawi received hospital treatment in Baghdad after fleeing Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence sources said he apparently was fitted with an artificial leg.
The statement said the “fabricated al-Zarqawi memo” has been used by the U.S.-run coalition “to back up their theory of a civil war” in Iraq.”
Iraq militants claim al-Zarqawi is dead March 4, 2004.

Does Zarqawi have an infinite supply of lieutenants/deputies/aides/associates/second-in-commands/etc., or do we just arbitrarily declare that every 100th insurgent we capture or kill is “a top aide” to Zarqawi?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Below is an almost comprehensive list (I’m sure I missed a few) of Zarqawi’s “top lieutenants” we’ve captured, killed, or acknowledged over the last two and a half years. I count 33.
uruknet.info

Sunni death cult is pushing Iraq towards civil war
…Most of the insurgents are by the admission of the US military Iraqi Sunni nationalists fighting to end the occupation. The neo-Salafi differ because they see this as only part of their struggle to create a fundamentalist Islamic state in Iraq…

The foreign volunteers are used as cannon-fodder and supply most of the suicide bombs. Most volunteers come from Saudi Arabia. The exact role of Zarqawi is uncertain because he claims all attacks. The US has been happy to promote him as bogeyman and all-purpose demonic enemy. He renamed his group al-Qa’ida in Iraq in October 2004 but appears never to have met Osama bin Laden.

Despite the impact of the foreign suicide bombers, the number of foreign fighters in Iraq is low, about 3,000 out of 30,000 insurgents in total. The US military said this summer that 90 per cent of the resistance is Iraqi and Sunni.

Mr Cordesman believes that “Zarqawi does not dominate the neo-Salafi and Sunni extremist insurgency in Iraq, but he has become its symbol”. At times his statements are directed against Shias as whole; at others he distinguishes between the pro-government Shia and Kurdish parties and those that are more nationalist, such Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement. Whatever the rhetoric, car bombs and suicide attacks are directed at killing as many Shia civilians as possible.

The neo-Salafi groups, believing they are fighting in God’s cause, will never negotiate and have no interest in seeking compromise. Their ferocity makes them difficult to uproot. In Fallujah last year they told 11 imams of mosques whom they considered hostile that they would kill their children in front of them if they did not stop preaching.

Well all these years we have had it pounded into our heads that the Shia are the fundamentalist extremists. How does supposed’Zarqawi’ who supposedly fought with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan emerge as a symbol for Sunnis? You’d think that Shi’ite Nationalists like al Sadr would appeal to peace-loving US and UK, but look at Fallujah. The idea I keep in mind is that anybody fomenting civil war is a friend to/creature of Blair and Bush.

Middle-Class Family Life in Iraq Withers Amid the Chaos of War
…Educated, invested in businesses and properties and eager for change, the middle class here had everything to gain from the American effort.

But frustration is hardening into hopelessness, as families feel increasingly trapped by the many forces that are threatening to tear the country apart.

Insurgents fight gun battles on their streets. Sectarian divisions are seeping into their children’s classrooms and even their own dinner table discussions. Their secular voices are barely audible above the din of religious politicians and the poorer Iraqis they appeal to.

The daily life the middle class describe is an obstacle course of gasoline lines, blocked roads and late-night generator repairs.

In these families’ homes, the talk is mostly about leaving. “For Sale” signs dot the gates of the houses on their block. But gathering children and extended families is proving difficult, and many families, potentially the most skilled builders of democracy here, are bracing themselves for a future that appears to them increasingly under siege.

by Justin Felux
Bill Bennett, a prominent right-wing blowhard, has recently come under intense fire for remarks made on his radio show, in which he stated, “I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could … abort every black baby in this country.” He quickly backed away from the proposition, saying “That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.” It’s unfortunate that Bennett chose to be so politically correct, because I think he may be onto something here. He’s just wrong about the target. If we really wanna get tough on crime, it’s the white babies who should start getting the coat hanger treatment.

Consider the fact that whites commit three times as many violent crimes as blacks every year, just in raw numbers. This is just for ordinary “street crimes” such as assault. The numbers become skewed out of this world when you consider “white-collar” crimes (typically, the collar isn’t the only thing that’s white).

For instance, job-related accidents and illnesses claimed the lives of 70,000 Americans in 1992, a significant portion of which can be chalked up to white employers neglecting to comply with occupational health and safety laws. According to studies, up to 64,000 die every year due to pollution and other environmental hazards produced by industry. Another 21,700 die due to consumer product deaths, costing the nation $200 billion a year. Another $200 billion is lost annually due to white-collar embezzlement. These two statistics alone add up to over 26 times the amount of all the robberies and petty thefts committed every year combined!

We should also not forget the ravages of the white-owned health care system and insurance industry. Around 18,000 adults are killed every year as a result of a lack of medical coverage. Over 25 thousand die as a result of unnecessary prescriptions and surgeries performed by mostly white doctors. All in all, corporate criminals take about ten times as many lives as street criminals. And I haven’t even mentioned the white men who control the apparatus of state, which through war, sanctions, and other means kills hundreds of thousands, if not millions more. Over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq alone, for example.

I don’t know about you, but every time I see a white man in a suit I find a place to hide. Once I feel safe, I call the Department of Homeland Security to report his suspicious activity. I simply don’t feel safe knowing that all these savage, white thugs are out walking the streets. After all, from Bob Chambliss to Timothy McVeigh to Eric Rudolph, by far most of the terrorist attacks in America have been committed by whites.

Which brings me to my next point: even if a white guy isn’t wearing a suit, you still shouldn’t assume that he isn’t dangerous. One can find a plethora of deadly and pathological behaviors uniquely prevalent among whites who look just as ordinary as you and me. Most notable among them are spree killing, serial murder, and cannibalism. About 90% of all serial killers are white men. Some other white pastimes include animal torture, vampirism, Satan worship, witchcraft, self-mutilation, eating disorders, and child sexual molestation. White men engage in child sexual abuse at twice the rate of black men. By aborting all the white babies, we will be protecting a great many children from the horror of enduring abuse at the hands of white male sex perverts (pardon the redundancy), in addition to preventing the creation of new white molesters in the future.

Alas, even if we allowed white fetuses to continue living, and they manage to avoid the pitfalls of vampirism, corporate employment, and serial murder, the odds are still pretty good that they will turn out to be hopeless drunks. Whites are 74% more likely than blacks to binge drink regularly. In fact, there are more binge drinking whites than there are blacks in the entire population of the country! Naturally, whites are twice as likely as blacks to drive drunk, resulting in over ten thousand deaths every year. The same trend can be seen when considering drug use in general, contrary to popular belief. Whites make up 74% of illegal drug users, whereas only 14% are black. Whites make up a majority of drug dealers as well.

Given all of these facts, can there be any doubt that aborting every white baby would not only reduce the crime rate, but would also result in a much safer, cleaner, and happier existence for all Americans? I can already hear some of you sissy liberals whining about “human rights” or some other nonsense. In reality, you are soft on crime and lack the rugged individualism necessary to get things done. At the very least, we should start forcibly sterilizing white males, much in the same way we did to Latinas and black women up until the 1970s.

I think the most interesting debate will be over the question of what to do with mixed race babies. Should we apply the “one drop” rule, whereby one drop of white blood marks the fetus for termination? I doubt we’ll need to take it to that extreme. If the baby is say, 1/8 white, then its more destructive tendencies should be sufficiently diluted. Nevertheless, police and homeland security should still apply increased scrutiny to individuals whose skin looks suspiciously pale. I’m sure Bill Bennett wouldn’t mind taking a little harassment from the cops if it results in a safer America for everyone.
zmag.org