I read an interesting article on the CNN website by Lou Dobbs, Personally I’m not a huge fan of the man but he does bring up and interesting point about the public school system and possible reform. What a big topic, and to being with I’ll tell you straight out right that I am a biased party. I home schooled high school, and absolutely hated my middle school career.

Now some facts that Dobbs makes known which I had been paying attention to for some time are the facts that our government puts a lot of faith into the bipartisan effort no child left behind, which is inept at best. Also the fact that one of our promises by bush before being put into office was that he would have a certified teacher in every core class room in America by 2006, well what do you know its 06 isn’t it? Guess how many states passed that requirement? 0, none, no state in the union has actually met that requirement. I am really starting to like the idea of referring to this as the shrub administration, ineptitude abounds.

Lets look at some things real quick; Most of the prison population in America is at best a high school graduate. Yet we spend more and more money on prison systems in America. Which area of our budget do you thinks suffers when we have Military considerations because of the continuing action in Afghanistan (Yes we are still active in that region, why, because we haven’t caught Osama) and our war effort in Iraq, with no end in sight. Our public school system looses funding because of these things, instead of spending more money on public schools in order to get more people graduating and more people into college. The current government feels its more pressing to fund war efforts and penitentiaries to hold minor drug offenders. The more educated a person is the less likely they are to commit crimes in an effort of personal gain.

These are personal views about the public school system, if you think my view is skewed or want to bring up some new statistics feel free, but find them yourself. Then we can have a nice time of me finding my statistics and arguing till we’re blue in the face because our statistics from two different sources don’t match up (I wonder why).

On an off note, got my voter registration card off in the mail today, and have my birthday coming up in just a couple days. I need to start reading up on current officials running for office in the Houston area, doesn’t that sound like fun.

Oh a website I recommend you visit, The New American Century, basically this website was started for the betterment of the world with the united states at the helm of world political reform, because we have a duty as the last world power to help usher all the other nations into the century with democracy at its fore front. A quote of the front page of the website reads,

The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

I think its kind of haughty of America to think that our leadership is the correct leadership not only for ourselves but also for the rest of the world don’t you? Sounds kind of like a world domination plan to me. Why is it that we feel we have the best moral standing? This website drives me crazy. Within their statement of principles are the names of people that supported the idea of this non-profit such as, Elliott Abrams, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes, Donald Rumsfeld, and many more. It kind of scares me that officials within our government and very influential people believe that we should control the world through democracy; I mean come on, what happened to allowing other nations their own form of government as long as it was fair and didn’t hurt us in any way.

So complain about my views a little, give me some comments so I can think of new stuff to rant and rave about. I guess I’ll have to get to immigration soon, maybe touch on Fossil fuels and alternatives, and why our government isn’t pushing for more research.

I had written an essay a while back discussing the use of Terrorist and Freedom fighter by the western world, and what kind of over tones that those words carried in conversation. It's part of what gave me the idea for an essay on Democracy, Republic, and Capitalism. So give me an idea of what you think of this essay, maybe I can intigrate more ideas into the next one.


Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?


The language the U.S. government uses to describe military actions across the world is truly propaganda and is highly questionable. The word usage that the United States of America chooses to sway public opinion pertaining to certain military and political actions is of questionable rationale. The U.S. has a history of using specific words to persuade and convince the American public of certain ideas: words such as terrorism, and freedom fighters. Within political disputes such as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, these words are used all too often. The Palestinians are “terrorists,” but are also fighting for their freedom. In Central America during the 80’s, the U.S. backed certain “freedom fighters” in their battle against tyrannical governments, yet most of these militant extremists used terrorist tactics. Each political regime in America uses the words interchangeably to further their own foreign policy agendas.

This inconsistency is interesting because America has used its own terrorist tactics in its own time. We threw the Boston Tea Party as an act against unreasonable taxation of goods by a ruling government in Britain. We formed civilian militias throughout the colonies, and fought our “occupier” to gain freedom from their unfair system. We were militants and terrorists to the British, but still consider ourselves to be freedom fighters, and nothing less.

Let us look at the Palestinian and Israeli dispute. Historically this was Palestinian land, and was given to the Jews as compensation for the horrible atrocities of WWII. The Israelis themselves committed terrorist acts upon the British government in hopes of gaining the status of an independent nation. Even the Israelis admit to this. Ahmad Yusuf, quoting Leah Rabin, the widow of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, “We were terrorist once, and they did not uproot us and we went on dealing in terrorist activities. Despite all the efforts of all the British army in the land, we went on with terrorism.” Yet the American government does not consider this terrorism, and this is not how it is presented to the American public.

Due to the formation of a Jewish nation, the Palestinians were forced from their land. They, in turn, fought the Israelis in much the same way that the Israelis fought the British, and yet are considered by America to be terrorists. Edna Homa Hunt of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs writes, “Throughout the Israeli occupation, newspapers in Israel have reported many acts of violence – I would call them terrorism – against the Palestinian communities of the West Bank and Gaza. But not only does the world media – especially in the U.S. – fail to report these acts of mayhem, they are disguised as actions for “law and order,” not what they are—acts of terror.” How can the Palestinians be considered terrorists while the Israelis are not?

During the Reagan administration, we were involved in many different Central American countries both politically and militarily. In an article from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) by Bill Vann about John Negroponte, who was the ambassador to Honduras during that administration. Vann says that Negroponte “played a key role in supplying and supervising the CIA-backed [Nicaraguan] ‘contra’ mercenaries who were based in that country, and whose US-funded operations claimed 50,000 lives.” While at the same time “Honduran military death squads, operation with Washington support, assassinated hundreds of opponents of the US-backed regime.” These actions would be considered horrific, many would call them extremists and terrorists, yet America called them friends.

During the Reagan administrations covert actions in Central America, propaganda was actively used to sway public opinion. Otto Reich, a highly placed member of the Reagan administration, working with the National Security Council and Oliver North, mounted an extensive propaganda effort that violated a congressional mandate and was aimed toward the American public. Reich was later cleared and re-employed by the first Bush administration. The U.S. government clearly decides how it is going to spin a current political event to that it can get majority backing from its citizens.

The U.S. spins reports and information pertaining to issues that do not sit well with the U.S. population, in order to keep the government active in political situations abroad. Words like “freedom fighters” and “terrorists” hold deeper political meanings than may be obvious on the surface. Freedom fighters are good. Terrorists are bad. It is objectionable to manipulate these words in such a way as to support an individual administration’s agenda.

There are quite a few things as of late that have triggered my political ranting and raving. The entire Enron Lay and Skilling trial, talk about fun, these guys manipulated and played the American market and did it in a way that had never been seen before. Don’t get my wrong, I hate the guys, and think they deserve what they get as a prison sentence, but damn was Skilling a smart guy. He just wasn’t smart enough to know when to quit. Lay on the other hand doesn’t appear to me as a guy that could pull something like that off, he just seems like someone with low morals that had good friends.

Yay for Network Neutrality, this is an issue that isn’t being pushed by the media into the lime light, who would with immigration and Iraq/Iran at the fore front. Not to mention all the resignations, appointments, scandals, and law breaking going on within the government (that will come another day). Basically what Network Neutrality is, is a number of bills in front of the house and congress at the moment, challenging the freedom of the internet. What these bills are aiming at is the idea that the internet is an entity that can be bought and sold, certain internet providers want the right to limit access to websites. Unless either, the user pays extra for the extra content, or the web site itself pays to be seen on the providers terms. Yay for capitalism. If you couldn’t tell I cant stand the idea of paying for something that has historically been free, the internet started with private servers that you could connect to via phone lines, much like Telnet clients these days. These were servers owned by corporations or hobbiests, and people would connect to talk and share ideas. The internet has grown to a point where it is easier to connect, it is easier to share ideas, this means it is a breeding ground for innovation and new ideas. So whats the best option here? Oh I know, lets charge and limit access in order to make it harder for independents and startups to be known. If you are interested check out Save the Internet, I always recommend that people get both sides of the argument, but because I am arguing for this side, find your own damned links to the opposing side. Then make your choice.

Speaking of which, I have heard this recently dealing with Network Neutrality because Google is always a big name to tie into these discussions. THEY ARE NOT FUCKING EVIL FOR WHAT IS GOING ON IN CHINA! God I hate people that make this argument, they are keeping one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world open to themselves. They are accepting the laws of the nation that they are working within, which by the way is international law. You complain about idiot foreign nationals that come into our nation and ignore our laws, shut the hell up about Google, and insisting they do the same.

I guess this is my introduction to the blogging world. I made this as a way to keep my writing out in the open and scrutinized. I will also be using this for random information about the things I see surrounding me. I should be headed to New Mexico this summer for an internship so this is also a way for me to chronicle my time there.

A lot of this will be my writing, Political, Emotional, Poem or Prose. Some of it will just be ranting about the world, Political, Technological, and Scientific. If you have a problem with a view I express, awesome, I welcome discussion, leave a message and bitch me out if you want.

Because I have been writing well before I started this there is a backlog of information and things to write about. So I guess I can restrain myself and try to make regular updates, this will give me plenty of time to work on new material.

Now what to post first…