March 25, 2005

Emanations and Penumbras

Glenn writes:

But I do think that process, and the Constitution, matter. Trampling the Constitution in an earnest desire to do good in high-profile cases has been a hallmark of a certain sort of liberalism, and it's the sort of thing that I thought conservatives eschewed. If I were in charge of making the decision, I might well put the tube back and turn Terri Schiavo over to her family. But I'm not, and the Florida courts are, and they seem to have done a conscientious job. Maybe they came to the right decision, and maybe they didn't. But respecting their role in the system, and not rushing to overturn all the rules because we don't like the outcome, seems to me to be part of being a member of civilized society rather than a mob. As I say, I thought conservatives knew this.

The problem with Glenn's reasoning is that the most cavalier abuse has been by the courts themselves. Judges brush aside acts of congress and the Florida legislature as if these bodies were no more than an advisory committee. This has been nothing new. Courts facilitated the killing of the unborn innocent. Now they order the killing of the disabled innocent. At the same time they've done this, they've also used other emanations and penumbras to endorse racial discrimination via quotas, protect 17 year old mass murderers, ban the mention of God from the Pledge of Allegiance, and force the removal of any reference to God from the public square, using whatever criteria they make up at the time, sometimes even relying on laws that were passed in foreign countries, accountable to no American voter at all. What was done to protect Terri Schiavo was that the Legislative and Executive branches finally did something to say to the courts, "No, you unelected old farts in robes don't speak for the American people. We do." And even then, the courts reached back and spit in Congress' face.

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March 24, 2005

Intentional ignorance.

Bill Preston at Junkyard Blog has an excellent post at the amount of intentional ignorance present in the blogosphere:

he blogosphere, once known for its niche punditry and its thousands of angles on every story, is now home to a new innovation: The triumph of intentional ignorance. Look around. Over here, you'll see go-to blogger Glenn Reynolds--a law professor--utterly bereft of an opinion on a major, potentially landmark, legal case that touches on just about every single issue he claims to find interesting. Family law? Check. The definition of marriage? Check. Bioethics and the ability to extend our lives--or not--through advancing technology? Check. Federalism versus states rights? Check. The fundamental right to life, liberty and all the rest? Check. Media bias? Check. The Terri Schiavo case, as wrenching and emotional and as utterly depressing a story as it is, has all the elements that one would think would get blogger of Reynolds' reputation and ability firing on all cylinders.

Yet on this story, all he can manage to do is link to others. And what are those others saying?

Not much, actually. Intentional ignorance is their one defining characteristic. He has linked both to Eugene Volokh and Bill Hobbs, both of whom have offered up essentially the same take on the Schiavo story--I'm ignorant of the facts, I intend to stay that way, but Congress was wrong to act, and the rest of you are wrong to get all worked up about this.

I like and respect all of these bloggers. All three have been absolute stalwarts on the biggest issue of our time, the war on terror. All three have been indispensible in dealing with the mad moonbattery of the left over these past few years. And all three have shown an amazing energy and determination to get at the facts of even the most mundane stories.

Yet in the case of the legally sanctioned starvation of an innocent woman, none of these three along with several thousand others can be bothered to check on a few facts, make up their minds and take a stand. They deplore Congressional action, decry some alleged violation of federalism, yet cannot be bothered to learn even the most basic facts of the case at hand. And they appear to be proud of it.

That pretty much nails it. Shepard Smith on Fox is another intentional ignoramus as well--even saying it is a "fact" that Terri Schaivo is in a vegetative state. Shep, that's not a fact. That is only what a judge says is a fact. A Jury said OJ is innocent too. I say he's a murderer. Let's see him sue me for libel and win.

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March 21, 2005

One Judge, and not a single jury

When I think of the Terry Schiavo case, the first thing I think of is how little respect is given for Terri's life v. how much respect is given to death row inmates. The average death row inmate gets a jury trial to determine guilt, another jury trial to determine punishment, automatic state appeal, automatic federal appeal, and finally, clemency from the governor of the state. Compare this to Terri Schaivo, who is an innocent. There was no jury trial at any point, and the governor of a state, or even the president, can do precious little to save her life, even with the backing of the state legislature and the US Congress. When people talk about the "imperial judiciary", the Schaivo case is a textbook example. One unelected judge's opinion as to the worth of Terri's life is somehow greater than that of the about 1000 legislators and two chief executives, all of whom are accountable to millions of voters on a regular basis. Exactly when did "We The People" get turned into "We the Appointed Judiciary?"

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March 16, 2005

Robert Blake

He did the crime,
He won't do the time, yeah!

More later.

Update: OK, there wasn't any more. However, this was my first post using a cell phone to blog, so cut me some slack.

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March 15, 2005

My apologies

For Eat an Animal for PETA day, all I had was clam chowder. Yes, clams are an animal, but just barely. Since my surgery, there hasn't been too much I can eat that has legs and makes noises. Frankly, that is a bummer, since I really wanted to eat something that would have been cute, cuddly, and in a Disney movie. Or, failing that, something I could boil alive.

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March 14, 2005

I have a better idea

Glenn links to this story on getting coeds to use the morning after pill during spring break. Glenn writes:

You'd think that anti-abortion folks would approve, unless they just don't like the idea of people having sex.

No, that's not the problem. The problem is that once the egg is fertilized, the woman is pregnant. From that point on, you are no longer preventing pregnancy, you are aborting pregnancy. And the solution, the 100% effective solution, is simply to keep your pants zipped.

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March 12, 2005

Freedom Falafel

It looks like the Iraqis are instigating a boycott on Syrian products.

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March 11, 2005

Yes, I know I said I would talk about the Eden project today

But the weather stunk, and I didn't have my boots on, so I'll do it over the weekend.

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But I want the Olympics!

OK, Jeff Jarvis and John Gibson don't want the Olympics to come to New York. Fine. But if the Olympics don't come here, many of us in the New York Tri-State area will be robbed of a source of great entertainment, and no, I'm not talking about the events. I'm talking about the shear glee in being able to torture our "betters" in Europe by giving them incomprehensible directions.

Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey: Pardonnez mois, simplistic warmongering Americain Cowboy. How do I get to Meadowlands Stadium?
Our Hero: OK, well the first thing you will have to do, get on Interstate 95 north. When you see signs for Bridgeport, get off the highway. Now, when you get to the bottom of the exit ramp, you will see a number of African American men there. They are special valets hired by the International Olympic committee. Hand them your car keys and tell them you are from the David Duke Friendship Center, so they'll make certain to treat you extra special..

Lefty BBC/Guardian Reporter: Arrogant Ignorant Warmongering Yank! I can't find my favorite beer in Manhattan! Where can I get a fooking Newcastle?
Our Hero: Gee, I've always been able to get Newcastle just fine around Yankee Stadium. You just don't know how. Noone will serve you a Newcastle unless you use the code phrase and wear the proper hat. First wear this hat. The big red on the top stands for Beer. Then stand up on up on the bar, and shout "Reggie Jackson isn't good enough to kiss Ted Williams' ass!" That's how you order a Newcastle in New York.

EUroWeenie: Excuse me, ignorant uneducated American. I am from the European commision on the sizing of leeks. Leeks are a very important part of the Olympics, and I need you to tell me how to get there, or the UN will send you a nasty note.
Our Hero: Oh, gee, I wouldn't want the UN mad at me, would I?
EUroWeenie: No you wouldn't. You'll drown under their UN Resolutions of Fury!.
Our Hero: That doesn't sound good. OK. Here is where you go for special handling of disgusting EUroWeenes, er, Distinguished EU Commissioners. Get on the Staten Island Ferry. When you get off the ferry, say "Louis Farrakhan sent me." I'm certain you'll get to where you are going in no time..

Now if the Olympics don't come to New York, many of us will miss out on all of these wonderful opportunities for entertainment. Shame on Jeff for robbing us of these golden opportunities!

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March 10, 2005

I'm a bit more optimistic

The Command Post has a roundup noting the efforts of Eden Again in restoring the marshlands of the Lower Tigris and Eurphrates river system. The consensus seems to be modestly pessimistic about how the marshlands will return to their original state. I'm a bit more optimistic than that. I think looking at the reforestation of the Mt. St Helens ecosystem and the reforestation of New England are good examples of why we shouldn't be pessimistic at all. I'll do a little hiking tomorrow with my camera to show exactly how effective natural forestation is, and why we shouldn't be all that pessimistic about Iraq's marshlands. Much of New England forestland has been restored completely. I'll get some photographic evidence of how thorough the reforestation has been, and how strongly the ecosystem has come back from what it was like in the 1850's tomorrow. When it comes to nature, we tend to shortchange just how effective Mother Nature is at adapting and exploiting her surroundings, we also want her to work on our timetable, and not her own.

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Why Communism is Evil

My friend over at Infoshop has his knickers in a gather about how I'm dissing Lenin:

speaking of fascists, some fool right-wing imperialist blogger (who calls himself the Great Satan's Minion, for crying out loud) dissed Lenin in an attack on me, using Richard Pipes as a source- who once worked for the senator from Boeing, and most of his attack dwells on Lenin's feelings towards the bourgeoisie (who Pipes equates with the Jews). well, sorry if i dont get the analogy, trying to put a ruling class based on exploitations somehow as synonymous with a complex and historic people who define themselves religiously, culturally or ethnically, but i think your nazi allies would love that analogy.

Of course, maybe I should quote Lenin himself to prove exactly how much of a mass murderer he was. Let's take a look at what Lenin wrote, courtesy of the Library of Congress:

Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example.

1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.


2. Publish their names.
3. Take away all of their grain.
4. Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out:let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

Yep, Lenin was a saint.

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March 09, 2005

Fire Ward Churchill, part deux

A commie "progressive" responded to my post about how Ward Churchill should be fired. I responded, but I thought it was a large enough that it merited its own posting:

Churchill has never endoresed mass murder. What a lie. Try reading his words before repeating other peoples' slander.

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it. --Ward Churchill

Silly me. All he did was say that the workers at the WTC were mass murderers who deserved their fate. That is sooo much better.

In the academic world, one can't overcome an opponent by deleting his posts or outspending his political campaign; one must engage in actual debate.

What debate? The modern academy are a bunch of hothouse flowers. You use speech codes to stifle any dissent(witness Thomas Klocek and Larry Summers). You intimidate students, and deny tenure to professors who are not doctrinaire lefties. And you claim to foster a climate of debate? On what planet?

That's why progressives, who tend to win debates with conservatives and fascists, have more power there than in government and business

If "progressives"(read: leftists and communists) are so effective at winning debates, then how come the left has been spending the last 8 years being beaten in the presidential race, and the last 10 years being beaten in literally thousands of House and Senate races? How come the majority of state houses and governors are all Republican? How good are your legendary powers of debate when you can't convince a majority of your natural correctness?

But government officials and businessmen have some power in the academic world by virtue of position and wealth, and it is that influence that prevents the left from completely dominating there as it otherwise would.

In other words, because they pay your salary. But since governments are elected by the people, they obviously all should agree with you, because you progressives are such master debaters, right? Yet even the majority of Democrats think your views are intolerable.

None of the smears against Churchill stand up to scrutiny, but that does not slow down their repetition by participants in the witch hunt.

Really? Then where is the release? Why does Ryan Mails, Thomas Mails'
son, say "I cannot imagine he would ever grant permission to anyone to
copy one of his pieces." Churchill was hired as an affirmative action
hire, yet isn't even native American! Not only that, he doesn't have a
doctorate in the field he purports to be an expert in, and received a
department chair for. How many department chairs are given to people
without PhDs?

I'd go on, but frankly, for someone who is such an excellent debater, you seem to have an argument so full of holes I could drive a fleet of SUVs through it. The great scholar from a second rate college who couldn't get a ph.d, committed plagiarism, and applauds the deaths of thousands of Americans. Gee, what a hero.

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Great, now all they need is rice

Castro gives rice cookers to women

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How I fixed comment and TB spam

After seeing this post about comment and trackback spam, and considering how I've now mostly beaten the spammers for the time being, I figure it is a good time for me to post about how I did it.

First, and this is most effective, is to rename mt-comments.cgi and mt-tb.cgi. Most comment spammers these days are using bots. They scan your site, look for posts, then bang on mt-comments.cgi and mt-tb.cgi directly. Most, if not all, MT sites leave this file named the default value. The spambots currently don't bother to check mt.cfg to find out what the file is actually named. they just bang on mt-tb and mt-comments. If you look at a piece of my errorlog you can see that the spambots are still at work--but all they are hitting is empty space.

So how do you fix this? Simple. First, rename mt-comments.cgi and mt-tb.cgi to some other name(but leave the .cgi intact--you could change the extension, but then you would have to play with mime types, and we want to keep this basic for now). Next, go to mt.cfg, and look for the following:

# CommentScript mt-comments.pl
# TrackbackScript mt-tb.pl

Remove the # and leading space, then change mt-comments.pl and mt-tb.pl to whatever you renamed the file. This will stop about 95% of the automated bots out there.

After that, the next important step is to upgrade to mt 3.1+. This is a bit of a pain, but is necessary for the third step, installing the Mt-blacklist 2.0 plugin. It is important to install both at once. Mt-blacklist under previous versions of MT don't allow moderating comments, only deleting them once they show up. MT 3.1 allows moderating comments, and uses typekey to prevent unregistered users from spamming(which is important).(Oh, you should use typekey authentication as well--not as important, but still useful). Mt-blacklist 2.0 takes stronger steps to combat spam than its previous version. If you don't upgrade to Mt-3.1, use mt-blacklist anyway. It is still better than nothing. A final note: when installing MT 3.1, make certain to rename mt-comments and mt-tb after you install. It will install new versions of both files, using the original name, and spammers will hit your site again.

The final step is to install the Nofollow plugin. This really doesn't stop spam. What it does do is remove the incentive for spammers. If enough sites do this, spam won't pay at all, and that's a good thing.

What has been the effect of this on my site? TB spam is currently non-existent. Comment spam occurs about once a week or so. In neither case does any spam make it through to the site for people to view. In other words, I've managed to seriously put a hit on spammers. Eventually the spammers will work around what I have done, but by then, hopefully, Sixapart will make a more permanent fix, like randomizing mt-comments, or making some kind of cipher key that defeats automated bots. In any event, what I have works now.

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What wonders a lens can do

Powerline carries this photo of yesterday's demonstrations in Lebanon:

Looks like a big crowd, right? The buildings far off look real small, and the crowd seems to extend into forever. But is it really? The best way to tell is to look at the building on the left:

See the curve? That's from using a very wide angle lens. Now take a look at the far background of the picture:

(There is a larger version available if you click on it. If you notice, there is a quite pronounced curvature of the landscape in the distance. Both of these point to the use of a wide angle lens that was used to take the shot. It makes the demonstration look much larger than it would ordinarily. The reason for this is the same reason why car manufacturers have the "This image is closer than it may appear" warning on passenger side view mirrors. In this case, because the image is from a wide angle lens, it makes everything look farther than it really is, thereby making the demonstration look larger than it really was. How many people were there? I don't know, but the claim of 200,000 demonstrators seems dubious, IMHO.

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Thomas Klocek Roundup

OK, here's the roundup on the Thomas Klocek railroading:

1. Solomania notes that Thomas Klocek was not only denied a hearing but that the DePaul student newspaper was banned from interviewing anyone on Klocek's side. DePaul University's new motto: "Freedom of speech is whatever we decide it is." He also has a post with links to relevant newspaper articles, press releases, etc.


2. Commander Salamander notes

   That being said, it is no surprise that at the home of Fascist oppression in America, AKA academia, they would try to silence an opposing view. I will bet a per diem check that Depaul never suspended a professor for challenging pro-Israel issues, pro-Bush, pro-American, pro-Capitalism, pro-Reagan opinions.

   He also says this is why he blogs anonymously.


3. The Rocky Mtn News notes the double standard between Ward Churchill and Thomas Klocek:

   If Hoffman had bothered actually to look into the sort of professors who are being disciplined these days for speech, she would have noticed that they tend to be scholars who offend the likes of Churchill, not parrot his views. Most resemble Thomas Klocek of DePaul University - professors who dare to upset a faction of the political left. Professor Klocek was censored and suspended after making "offensive" comments during an outside- the-classroom argument last fall with a group called Students for Justice in Palestine.

   Why is Churchill the national poster boy for beleaguered academic freedom and not Klocek?



4. Here is his profile on Rate My Professor


5. Jay Ambrose has an excellent article comparing Churchill, Larry Summers, and Klocek:

   The new McCarthyism, you see, aims to deter thought from what certain elitists deem appropriate, to corral supposedly errant expressions in the name of peace and compassion but in the spirit of despotism. Just as the old McCarthyism could be hurtful in its search for Stalinists infiltrating Hollywood, government and beyond, the new McCarthyism can cost people in their lives. Consider, for instance, Thomas Klocek, a professor at DePaul University who made so bold as to debate students who were maintaining that Israel was Hitler-like in its treatment of Palestinians and was later suspended without a hearing.

   The most politically correct of our universities seem airless places, closed off from much of the energy and vigor of the rest of this rambunctious, heterogeneous, frontier-fostered continental nation of ours, and thus we see them prohibiting free speech by students, denying aspirants tenure because they might entertain a conservative thought or two or practicing a form of affirmative action that is nothing less than a quota system of racial preferences.

One final note: A bunch of visitors are coming from a lefty site which calls Ben Meyer a "moderate." Here is a point to ponder: exactly how rational is a point of view of a blog that happily quotes from one of the greatest mass murderers of all time?

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March 08, 2005

How Bush is driving the left nuts

In the Independent, Guardian, NBC News, and Fred Kaplan in Slate, are all dealing with a rather difficult proposition, given their stance for the past 3 years: Was Bush right after all?

This is forcing the left into the kind of knots they never really had to deal with after Reagan won the cold war. The reason is that in 1989, when the Iron Curtain began to come down, Reagan was out of office. This was a bit unfortunate for Reagan, because left back then could make the spurious claim that Reagan had little to do with it, and Eastern Europe would have been liberated regardless. Since Gorbachev was around, he got the credit, which, by all rights, belonged to Reagan. So the left was able to get by on the illusion that Reagan had nothing to do with it though Natan Sharansky would beg to differ. In any event, the left had their delusions, and have maintained them to this day, only begrudgingly giving Reagan any due, now that it is 22 years since the Evil Empire speech.

Now cut to 2005. Democratic revolutions and reforms are breaking out all over the middle east. Bush's strategy of overthrowing Saddam and creating a democracy in Iraq, then using big-stick diplomacy to push democratic reform in the greater Middle East, has so far been a success. He's achieved a promise from the Egyptians for multiparty elections, the Lebanese people are calling for the ouster of Syrian troops from Lebanon, and Iraq has held its first truly free elections in its history(for that matter in the history of the Arab world as a whole). What makes this so infuriating for the left, especially the anti-American left, is that all this is happening while Bush is still in the White House. That's the barb on the spear. The correlation is just too strong to ignore. The words of the Bush Inaugural Speech:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world

Turns out not to have been overreaching, but in fact, remarkably prescient. And the claims of the left, that Iraq was a quagmire, that Moslems are fundamentally incapable of understanding democracy, that freedom is a province best reserved and only understood by white people, have been shown to be consigned, in Bush's own words, to "history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

And that is why Bush drives the left nuts.

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March 07, 2005

My apologies

That last post was bad. I hereby apologize for the pun on the word podcast. In fact, you could call this the first pancast of a puncast about doing a pudcast instead of a podcast. This, of course, is completely different from codcasting(an idea I think sounds fishy) or podcasteing(only possible in India).

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Jeff Jarvis did a whatcast?

Jeff Jarvis has put a couple of podcasts up on his blog. Imagine what would have happened had he had gotten one of fhe vowels on podcast wrong. Thankfully, his spelling is impeccable, and we'll never be confronted by the horrors of uncensored pudcasting.

Update: Yes, that was pretty bad. Call it my first puncast.

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March 02, 2005

Who is Ben Meyer?

Michelle Malkin links to a story about how Depaul University Professor Thomas Klocek is being suspended for speaking out against the Lefty/Dhimmi attitude so prevalent on campus today:

Last fall, DePaul University professor Thomas Klocek was suspended without a hearing for challenging the viewpoints of certain Muslim students on campus at a student activities fair. He is now demanding a public apology from the university president in order to avoid litigation.

Klocek showed up to the news conference bound and gagged, illustrating what he believes the university did to him by censoring his views on the Middle East. Klocek says he was unfairly suspended for his views on the Muslim and Palestinian people.

"The students claimed professor Klocek's arguments were racist and hurt their feelings. They went to the dean of the school and 10 days after the debate the professor was suspended without a hearing," said John Mauck, Klocek's attorney.

Later on, about 1:10 into the video, the ABC News reporterette Theresa Guitierrez meets up with a random student. If she had done her legwork, I'd call her a reporter, but she didn't so she gets the appellation reporterette that she richly deserves. Anyway, they make it look random--he just happens to walk right up to the camera:

DePaul student Ben Myer witnessed Klocek arguing with the group students for justice in Palestine.

"As I was walking over, professor Klocek was explaining to my colleagues that there was no such thing as Palestinians, that they don't exist. He made aggressive gestures toward the students. He approached in a very confrontational way," Myer said.

So, exactly who is Ben Meyer? Well, if you want to see for yourself, take a look at this google search. But here are some choice links for the mouse challenged:

• Groups Thirst for Change
  

  DePaul students were accused of violating fire codes as they gathered in the hallway of the 22nd floor of the Loop Campus CNA building on Wednesday.

  The students were calm but firm, repeating to the administrative staff that their purpose was to show support for a private meeting being held between DePaul President Father Hochschneider, student representative Ben Meyer and five Coca-Cola executives to discuss the possibilities for an investigation into human rights violations at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America.

  [...]

  “We are a coalition of student groups, Activist Student Union (ASU), DePaul Student’s Against War (DSAW), DePaul Alliance for Latino Empowerment (DALE) and Concerned Black Students (CBS) … who got together and realized that this was an important issue to the DePaul Community,” said Matt Muchowski, a junior political science student who visited the bottling plants in Colombia last summer. “We decided to take up this issue of solidarity with Colombian trade unionist to heed their call to boycott Killer Coke.”

  “My concern is for the rights of the Colombians because I strongly believe Colombians should not be denied the right of liberty for the benefit of the few,” said Erika Abad, a Latin American Studies student and an Amate House resident.

  Currently, DePaul administration is attempting to maintain an amicable relationship with Coca-Cola, and is negotiating with the student requests and the Coca-Cola corporation.

  “I don’t think [the meeting] was positive,” said Meyer. “Coca-Cola is telling their side of the story and DePaul is eating it up; we need to get this contract cut.”



• Activist DePaul Students Speak on Summer Delegations
  

  
  The following Wednesday Ben Meyer and Gihad of DePaul’s Students for Justice in Palestine will talk on their separate experiences. Ben Meyer went with a group that is working with youth who are affected by the Apartheid Wall. Gihad was also able to travel with Chicago's Palestine Solidarity Group through several refugee camps, documenting the suffering of a people who’s home is occupied by an agressor army.



• Campus Antiwar Network

  Depaul University, Lincoln Park
  Depaul Students Against the War
  Ben Meyer
  ***-***-****
  depaulagainstwar@yahoo.co



• Film Review: Frontiers of Dreams and Fears
  

  Their friendship develops through e-mails and pen pal letters; and they share their dreams of Palestine. A member of the Students for Justice in Palestine organization, Ben Meyer, hosted the showing at DePaul University’s Schmidt Academic Center.



• Students Protesting Coca-Cola's Plans for South America
  

  Ben Meyer, 20, a junior at DePaul University and a member of the DePaul Anti-Coke Coalition, said contractors, such as Coca-Cola, are interfering with the efforts of organized unions in Colombia by allowing the paramilitary death squads to kill and threaten union leaders.

  "Coca-Cola is refusing to address the problem, saying [it’s] the problem of the contractors and it’s not their corporation that is responsible for the human rights violations," Meyer said.

  Meyer, a political science major from Naperville, said the idea of the rally generated at a national conference organized by the Colombia Action Network last month. Since the conference, members of the DePaul Anti-Coke Coalition have been contacting various faculty and staff members about their cause and inviting student organizations from other universities, such as Loyola and Northeastern, to speak at the rally.

  "We hope to continue to work with the administration on this issue and encourage them to end the contract with Coca-Cola, and we hope to further educate the students on Coke’s involvement in Colombia" Meyer said.

You get the idea. The main evidence that network uses to report that this professor was "threatening" students is an eyewitness who happens to espouse the same pro-terrorist, tinfoil hat leftwing causes as the supposed "victim". Yet, by watching the affiliate's report, you would have no idea that this student is virulent lefty only slightly removed from the violence loving Ward Churchill.

And that brings up another point. Ward Churchill is being protected by the education establishment, mainly because he is left wing. Thomas Kopek was tossed out like a cheap dishrag, mainly because he isn't a doctrinaire lefty. This is another reason why state legislatures need to toughen the oversight of higher education. Little could be done about private colleges like DePaul, but the Stalinist oppression of non-leftwing viewpoints could be ended in publicly funded universities, simply by expressing the will of the electorate via their representatives.

Update: Giacomo at Just the Facts and Jack Lewis also notice the double standard

Posted by John Bono at 12:49 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (4) | TrackBack
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March 01, 2005

I wonder if FrankJ knows about this?

Auction lets winner name monkey

Somewhere in the wilds of Bolivia, a monkey waits for a name – and for a price, you can choose that name: your own, your wife's, your mother-in-law's, your tax accountant's.

I can only imagine what FrankJ at IMAO would name it.

Posted by John Bono at 06:32 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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Godwin's Law Invoked

Robert Byrd brought up Hitler when discussing judicial appointments. As Godwin's law has now come into play, I declare the Republicans the winner of the debate.

Posted by John Bono at 06:10 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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