She also served in city council and mayor...
Posted By: sam on 2008-08-29
In Reply to: I would be glad to learn more about her, so I will, but briefly - ss
and on term as a governor gives her one year more governing experience obama has. And she DOES mean change from Washington politics...she is fAR removed from that. She has a reputation for reform, took on the good ol'boys in her own party and won. Those wanting change should be happy to see her.
She has an 80% approval rating in her state. That is unheard of. SHe must be doing something right, because not only Republicans live in alaska.
She is pro life. That is true. But you on this board have told me repeatedly I should not be a one-issue voter. So, lead by example.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
How does this relate to the mayor of Salt Lake City??
nm
Great speech by the mayor of Salt Lake City. sm
Speech by Mayor Rocky Anderson, democrat, on 10/27/07. They should bump Hillary and put this guy out there.
Salt Lake City, Utah --
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”
“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”
“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”
“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”
“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”
“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.
It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?
Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, ‘We won’t take it any more!’ ”
“As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation’s values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places – for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.”
In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.
It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.
In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress’s sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment.
We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country – and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people – 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks – a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.
As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship -- as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths -- we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: “You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions.”
“But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ‘We won’t take it any more.’”
If we want principled, courageous elected officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders – the leadership has to come from us. If we don’t insist, if we don’t persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy – and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration – and to candidates running for office – and to the world – that we support the status quo.
Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what’s right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part.
Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction.
It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.
How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses.
Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?
We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising heck on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don’t cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.
Let’s awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: “We won’t take it any more!”
I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say “No more” and mean it?
I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.
If we expect our nation’s elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted – that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided, principled leadership.
The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won’t let it go on one more day – that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation’s reputation in the world.
Let us be unified in drawing the line – in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.
In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans – and as moral human beings – we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.
Served Today
http://www.americasright.com/2008/09/berg-v-obama-update-friday-september-5.html
and perhaps the country would be better served...
if O had stayed in Chicago. :)
And who never served in the military
and is on record as despising it? Class? Obama!
Has McCain really served this country
all his life or has he served himself? I am sick and tired of these career politicians. My opinion is that McCain will be the next Herbert Hoover if he is elected. What Obama will bring if he is elected I do not know but I do know that either politician who is elected, and one will be, they had better be a rocket scientist if they hope to save this country. Again, I'll take a chance on the unknown versus the known. I was going to do a write in for Lou Dobbs but the last few days he has really started to show that he is really a McCain supporter and I have lost a great deal of respect for him and his "telling it like it is" Mr. Independent.
As for Obama's birith certificate, I wish people would get over that. Donchathink if there was anything illegal about it the McCain camp would have ferretted it out? I do. Nothing but stupid rumors. I'm far more worried about Palin's air head than I am about Obama's birth certificate. Not to mention the question of McCain's judgment in selecting her as his running mate, which IMHO he selected her not for the "good of his country" but thinking she would get him elected. What does it say about him that he had only met her once? twice maybe? and really didn't even know her. His first major decision even before he was elected tells a lot about how he would run the country.......business as usual...do what's best for his big business cronies and to he11 with the American people, same ole, same ole.
And for the Democrats..........they don't have such a hot record either, passing the bail-out and trying to ram illegal immigration down the throats of the American people regardless of what the PEOPLE want.
Flame away, I'm in an unusually grouchy mood this morning.
How can one doubt that McCain served our country?
Did you miss the part where he was a prisoner of war and served our armed forces? Anyone related to a military member knows that they make less money than their civilian counterparts and, in exchange, get the honor of putting their own lives in danger to serve this country. I am sure that McCain did not want to be a prisoner of war and I can bet that it was not exactly self-serving. If you do not like his politics, fine, but don't cheapen his sacrifices to this country!
Couldn't ask for a better mayor....
Ditto on the Katrina and Rita chapter. Mayor Bill is top of the line. Wish he could stay forever.
I lived out West before moving back in...the commute to see friends and family was too much for me. That area experienced some of the same evolution as Sharpstown did in terms of mixed populations of ethnic populations, but without the benefit of the Super Neighborhood designation, at least as far as I know. It really has made a difference and that was the point I was trying to drive home about the proactive, inclusive approach. That progressive attitude is another thing that makes me really proud call Houston my home.
She was the mayor of W. fcol
You seriously think that folks didn't tell her about the people her children "associated" with? Really?????
I agree with the poster that this was poor judgement on Palin's part and on the part of the McC campaign for not vetting her better. She used her children as political fodder and put them out there for discussion.
She was mayor, constituents had asked her...
about some questionable books in the library. In a meeting with the council she brought up that concern. According to that same Alaskan (Kilkenny, a Democrat, go figure), the same one who wrote the email cutting her to ribbons and one of the points was "She has hated me since 1992"....the first time she described the issue it was "I remember she brought up something about some books in the library but she never took it anywhere." Now, since she is running for VP, it has become "She tried to ban books!" Typical political crap. She was doing her job. Constituents brought her concerns and she brought those concerns to the council.
I saw the military head of the Alaska National Guard last night on TV, and the sitting mayor of Wasilla. Both had nothing but good things to say about her. The National Guard gentleman was really PO'ed that people so minimized the role of the governor as commander in chief of the National Guard. She was involved last weekend in deploying Alaska National Guard assets to Louisiana to help with Gustav.
You would think these folks would spend more time talking about what there #1 is doing than trying to crucify the other side #2. But, that is the way of the left. Politics of personal destruction and the bloodier the better...and enjoying every minute of it. McCain has more character in his pinkie.
The mayor of Chicago also spoke this...sm
morning explaining the need for city employee layoffs.
Affirmative Action has served its purpose. There was a time and place
for it and that time is gone. Affirmative action leveled the playing field quite nicely, but now serves to tilt the scales and make white people the minority. It needs to be done away with. It has run its course.
I suppose the meth labs just sprung up after she was Mayor, eh? (nm)
:p
Gee...they left out the Mayor of Detroit whining for money. What's up with that? sm
Detroit is just one of many with their hands out to the feds. Detroit has been a drain on the rest of Michigan for years. The best thing that can happen to Detroit is to cut it loose and float it up the St. Lawrence Seaway and then the rest of the state can get back to business...if there is any left that is.
In fact, the number of labs increased after Palin became mayor nm
read
since McC was in my city
yesterday morning taking credit for rounding up his party to pass the bill that ultimately failed, I assume hw is now willing to take responsibility the bill failing for being an ineffective leader in his own PAR-tay. Lurching about again trying to make political hay. Bill Maher on the View today commenting, very funny. He said he always knew Bush had one more big catastrophe in him. Bill said W will not be satisfied until the white house is on fire and black plumes of smoke are rising behind him as walks away. He asked that ditz Elizabeth if she thought Obama was the anti-Christ and laughed at her wide-eyed "NO!!!"
Name the city and state this happens in? sm
I'm sorry this is foreign to me.
It's already happening in my city
People are getting fed up here with the lack of law enforcement and judicial enforcement that they are taking the law into their own hands. On average of three times a month owners are shooting intruders and attackers in their own home or own their property because they know that law enforcement will either #1 show up way to late to stop the crime or #2 not show up at all! Even if the subject is apprehended the likelihood that they'll only get a slap on the wrist (if even that) by the judicial system is very high.
People are plain fed up where I live---especially with crimes against children and families.
Here's the scenario in my city
I've been keeping up with what happens to people who actually shoot people in their house or on their property in my area. The majority of the shooters have been store clerks who are tired of being victims. However, there have been several home invasions in the last year where the owner has shot the intruder. Just a few weeks ago a man saw another man breaking into his backyard storage building, and he shot the guy from his house. The subject fled and then wrecked his car about a mile from the break in. When all was said and done the owner was not charged eventhough he shot the man eventhough the man never entered his living space.
As far as I know none of the store clerks or home owners have been charged in the last year (at least that is what the media reports).
Eventhough I believe in gun ownership and defending your property and home I think the recent law passed in Florida where you can shoot anyone who is threatening you (anywhere) is a little broad and I think will be used to get criminals off, because all they have to say is I felt threatened so I shot the dude. I think though when somebody comes on your property then you should be able to take any action to defend yourself within reason. Now, this shouldn't be an excuse for shooting your neighbor because they are piling leaves on your property etc. Common sense should rule, and every case should be judged individually on the circumstances surrounding the incident.
I agree with you completely about the child criminal sentencing aspects. Personally, I don't think these monsters should live but at the very least they should be castrated....seems harsh but its the only way to *neuter* the animal that lives inside these monsters.
Chicago is no different that any other big city...sm
New York, Miami, LA and many others.
I live in PA and not in a city.
It used to be called rural agricultural, but now it's suburban housing.
Did ya hear the news that the city
mayors are now looking for handouts? Where will it all end? They don't think the governors should get it because it will be used to pump up their balance sheet, but the city mayors think they should get it because they will use it to get jobs for the people. Are they now going to wave a magic wand and have jobs appear?
Like DH says, "We have nothing anymore. No production jobs at all. They're all overseas. When they left the steel industry go down the tubes, that was the beginning of the end."
well that's fine if you live in the city
but like I said, people who live in the country like myself and our neighbors also have livestock to protect. What are they supposed to do when their guns are taken?
We have a single shotgun in the home. It is unloaded. We have no children. Now if we do have children we will have a locked gun cabinet and they will be taught from an early age that guns are not toys. It's called teaching responsibility. You can't just "do away" with all things dangerous in this society. Rules do not apply to crooks and criminals.
Yes, there needs to be legislation on guns. There is no reason for people to own semi automatics and stuff like that. But I believe we have a right to own shotguns, handguns, and rifles (rifles are used for deer hunting and other big game hunting).
Why would you say I need counseling? Just because I believe we have a right to bear arms? (I think some other folks believed that too...)
Don't know what you are talking about, I am a city girl.
But enjoy!
I never liked Circuit City. I didn't like how it's -
set up, how you sort of go into a 'lockdown' situation once you're in there, and that it's impossible to simply browse without being followed and harrassed by their too-many salespeople.
I bought a CD player there a number of years ago, and never went back. I prefer Fry's for electronics, and Walmart for just about everything.
First of all, a whole city didn't drown.....
the ones who found themselves in a horrible situation ALSO live in a free society, unfortunately, it is a society to them that only knows how to let government do their thinking for them.........
If they had half a brain, they would be screaming at their wonderful crooked little mayor, demanding to know where all those billions went he was given many years ago to fix the levy to prevent just this type of catastrophe, but of course all they know to do is hold the government responsible for everything they don't like about their world. Well, get in line...I could certainly make a long list as well but I still do NOT want the government living my life and doing my thinking for me. If they had been proactive in the first place and had actually taken an interest in their government, they would have been demanding to know why the levy wasn't upgrade years and years ago!!
The war has nothing to do with their ignorance. If I choose to keep myself ignorant, then I will or I can teach my children to read, educate themselves, and think for themselves. That's not what's happening. When someone is completely dependent on the government generation after generation, it becomes obvious they do not want to think for themselves and certainly have NO ideas about a FREE society and what that entails.
I have family down there. They have always tried to get answers as to the use of that money that just disappeared down the tubes, thanks to their crooked mayor and to this day, no one has made him answer to that. The flooding was horrific and there is no question about that. My daughter has taught children in our state who lived through it and saw family members drown before their eyes. No diminishing the trauma on those folks. But you can't start using the war expense as an excuse not to hold their politicians responsible for where the billions of dollars already received went to.
Where should president be while major US city drowns?
nm
For a city of 4 million plus and then having to bus in people from Cobb
even if they had 20,000 which I heard crowd estimates about 15,000, that is not a lot of people. With radio personality Sean Hannity here, think probably most went to see his spouting off. That man is going to have a stroke if he keeps on with his rantings.
Oh, that is just decay of modern society; found in any city.
Issue is the maintenance and you can bet your sweet probably big butt that if there were mansions (campaign donators) rather than shabby homes but generation after generation of welfare recipients in the way of a levy failure, the Corp of engineers would have reinforced the barriers long long ago.
Losing millions of low income, noncontributing citizens just isn't seen as a big problem, is it?
What can we expect should H5N1 take ahold and go into epidemic proportions may be a magnified version of NO only we will be the unlucky irrelevant citizens. Sure would solve a lot of problems by whipping out 1/4 of the world's population, the bottom 1/4 though, not the top; they are special.
The only problem I can see with what you are describing is 20 years of suboptimal Family Planning strategies. Thanks to republicans right wing religious zealots who have a magical view of life thanks to very effective brainwashing techniques. I see it worked on you.
Pretty hard to fight city hall........
There isn't a whole lot he can do with the pubs obstructing everything he is trying to accomplish. My theory is, they put up McPalin because they KNEW they wouldn't win because they have NO IDEA how to clean this freakin' mess up either. That way, just possibly, the RNC can gain some ground since they have all but buried themselves. Kinda like Carter inheriting Nixon's upstanding accomplishments. Gotta love the RNC, they are such an honest, upstanding, homophobic and value-oriented tribe. How's that for a wide stance?
Could Tony Blairs Tight Fist be Coming to a City Near You...sm
I ran across this article today and it explains from British citizens point of view what happens when you allow leadership to dismantle the principles (Constitution) of a nation. I understand the *concept* behind the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and detainee laws (where the president is the decider), but if the public lets the powers that be slip in laws like this with no protest we could find ourselves under arrest and DNA swabbed for not returning a child's ball that landed in your yard.
(Long read but interesting.)
The Way Police Treat Us Verges on Criminal
Guilty until proven innocent now seems to be the watchword of a government that increasingly treats its law-abiding citizens with absolute contempt
Henry Porter
Sunday October 29, 2006
The Observer
A father and his eight-year-old son got off a train at Blackpool on a Friday evening two weeks ago to be confronted by a number of police officers moving passengers towards a scanner. There was a mildly threatening manner about them and it was clear that they expected everyone to pass through the scanner, which they said was being used to search for knives.
The man, whose name is Danny, quietly told the police that unless they had a very good reason, he would not be searched. One or two passengers hesitated, then joined him in refusing to go through the scanner. The police were clearly disgruntled, but couldn't do anything because Danny was right: they had to have reasonable grounds for suspecting he was carrying a knife in order to search him. 'I am not some rabid left winger or civil libertarian,' he wrote in an email to me. 'It just seems we are allowing a police state to be developed without an argument.' On the phone, he seemed to modify this by saying that the police behaviour had been oppressive.
Thank God there are still people like Danny who know the law and understand that part of its fragile essence is the respect for the rights of the innocent citizen when confronted with authority. The British Transport Police may insist that its Operation Shield, as this random trawl is known, is for the common good in that it fights knife crime, but think twice about the attitude it betrays and you realise that it is another small erosion in the esteem for the individual. Such behaviour makes everyone a suspect.
Tony Blair talks incessantly about respect, yet there are few who have done more to degrade authority's respect for the public. Nowhere is that better seen than in the behaviour of the police, which gradually becomes more coercive and imbued with the idea that we are all bad hats until we prove otherwise. We now live in a country where the idea of wrongful arrest has become a historic curiosity and where anyone can be arrested for the slightest offence and compelled to become part of the government's DNA database.
We live in a country where young boys - one was just seven - are taken aside and questioned for trying to knock conkers out of chestnut trees on public ground. Where a grandmother whose neighbour accused her of not returning a ball kicked into her garden was arrested, fingerprinted and required to give her DNA. The police went through every room in her house, even her daughter's drawers, before letting her go without charge or caution.
Where two sisters can be arrested after a peaceful protest about climate change, held in solitary confinement for 36 hours without being allowed to make a phone call, then told not to talk to each other as a condition of their bail. As this paper reported, their money, keys, computers, discs and phones were confiscated, their homes searched.
There is much more, all of it enabled by Blair's laws and encouraged by a vindictive and erroneous contention that defendants' rights must be reduced in the pursuit of more and quicker prosecutions. Our prisons are full, problem teenagers are, by default, exiled to a kind of outlawry and every citizen becomes the subject of an almost hysterical need by the authorities to check up on and chivvy them.
The government regards us not just as wedded to too many regrettable vices - smoking, speeding, drinking too much, eating unhealthy food and taking no exercise - but also as innately prone to law-breaking. Perhaps with good reason, since, according to the Liberal Democrat homes affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, some 3,000 criminal offences have been created by Labour. The more crimes there are, the more criminals there will be.
Mass surveillance has begun on our motorways and in our town centres. Metropolitan drivers increasingly find themselves pressed into numberplate-recognition camera traps on the same principle that inspires Operation Shield. Everyone has something to hide unless they can prove otherwise, which is why the police also enthusiastically pursue samples for the DNA database. (Incidentally, by next year, the total number of profiles will rise to three million, one in five of which will belong to black people.)
The police are in their very own heaven and demand more and more powers of instant justice, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. These will allow them to crush people's cars, issue more on-the-spot fines and ban 'undesirables' from any area they choose without having to go to court. Even parish councils are to become part of this culture of minatory bossiness. Instead of having to apply to central government to introduce new bylaws, they are to be given powers by Ruth Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Minister, to levy instant £100 fines for skateboarding, not cleaning up dog mess, busking and, no doubt, scrumping for apples and playing Pooh sticks. How will it end - with CCTV cameras watching small boys for inappropriate behaviour in the vicinity of horse chestnuts?
In his frantic terminality, Blair plans the sinister information-sharing index, otherwise known as the universal child register, and last week was musing that we should all have our DNA stored on the national base. Link this to his earlier remarks about identifying problem children who might grow up to be a menace to society by intervening before they were born and you begin to feel the chill of the technology-driven authoritarianism.
What runs through all this seems to be a rather surprising dislike of the British people. It was once possible to believe the government's unusual attention to law, order and behaviour was benevolent yet ill-conceived. Now it looks more like the result of late-onset sociopathy, influenced by a long period in power and the degenerate entanglement between Downing Street and the seething red-top newspapers.
The prevailing account of Britain in the current political establishment has become deeply pessimistic and, to my mind, wrong. Yes, we have problems with home-grown terrorism, loutishness, a swelling underclass, unintegrating minorities, but there is another story. Britain is also a success and it should occur to one of our political leaders to defy the orthodoxy of decline and compliment the nation on its adaptability and deep reserves of virtue and toleration.
Think of the charitable activity in this country, of the level of public debate that wells up in BBC programmes such as Any Questions, the deep interest in history, the eagerness of the audiences at arts festivals all over Britain, the humour and generosity of spirit, the commitment to local communities, to understanding each other's needs and of the array of passions and hobbies which absorb so many millions of people whose quiet, law-abiding fulfilment as Britons goes undescribed by the furious negativity of the moment. It is these people, with their stored-up virtue and unself-conscious decency, who the government seeks to turn into suspects and infantilise by its morbid intrusion.
It is not the government's business to encroach on our experience as individuals in a democracy, to threaten us with so much oppressive legislation and always to assume our guilt. But there is another reason and that is because we are soon going to have to have the debate about individual liberty in the context of rapid climate change. That will only work if the government treats us like adults and says: 'Look, this is potentially the greatest crisis civilisation has ever faced and we need your help.' The resulting contract must be between equals - the people and the state - and in a relationship where respect flows both ways.That, ultimately, is what this nagging and suspicious government threatens.
ACORN hired inner city people, paid by commission, probably to buy
dd
Some educational advice. Go to your local hospital and city hall....sm
Ask them how births are recorded. I think you will be surprised. EVERYTHING is now computerized. Even old birth records.
Yeah right. Served under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II
x
Europe - Swastika vigilantes kill foreign students to keep their city 'clean' ...see article.
Swastika vigilantes kill foreign students to keep their city 'clean'From Jeremy Page in Moscow
|
|
![src=http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/trans.gif]() |
THE African students did not even see the man raise the swastika-emblazoned shotgun as they emerged from the Apollo nightclub in St Petersburg.
When he opened fire from the shadows behind them, some of the group thought it was a firecracker going off.
Then they saw Samba Lampsar Sall, a 28-year-old student from Senegal, lying dead on the pavement with his throat blown apart.
Within hours, a sinister message had appeared on the website of a group called the Party of Freedom. “The clean-up of the city continues,” it said.
Mr Sall had come to study at St Petersburg’s State Communications University in 2001 in the hope of finding a better life when he went back home.
Instead, around dawn yesterday, he became the latest victim of a hate campaign by neo-Nazi extremists on the streets of Russia’s cultural capital.
“How can people be so evil?” asked Michael Tanobian, an African student who was with Mr Sall when he was killed. “We come here just to study, for nothing else. We don’t take anything here.”
Mr Sall’s brutal murder exposes one of Russia’s most disturbing problems as President Putin prepares to host the G8 summit in St Petersburg in mid-July. For all its grandeur and impressive art collections, Russia’s second city is fast becoming the racist capital of the world.
Critics say that the authorities are not doing enough to combat the extremists who routinely attack, and kill, Africans, Asians and immigrants from the Caucasus or Central Asia.
Seven people have been killed, and 79 injured, in more than 40 racist attacks this year, according to Sova, a non-governmental organisation that monitors extremism in Russia.
Last year, 28 people were killed and 366 injured in racially motivated crimes, it says.
The Interior Ministry sent a team of special investigators from Moscow to work on yesterday’s murder. The Foreign Ministry expressed “sincere condolences to the relatives and loved ones of the deceased”. The Prosecutor’s Office said that the case was being treated as a racist killing.
But dozens of similar cases have been treated as “hooliganism”, a crime that carries a far lighter sentence. One of the most shocking attacks occurred in 2004, when teenagers stabbed to death a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St Petersburg. Last month, a court convicted them of hooliganism, giving six of them 18-year jail sentences and one of them five years.
Desire Defaut, chairman of the local community group African Unity, urged Mr Putin to lead the fight against neo- Nazism. “They must make an announcement at a state level that such a problem exists and state organs must work on it,” he said. “We can’t say they are doing enough if there are two attacks within one week.”
Last week, the nine-year-old daughter of a Russian woman and her African husband was wounded in a knife attack in St Petersburg. “What more proof of extremism do they need in St Petersburg?” asked Juldas Okie Etoumbi, chairman of the Association of the African Students of Moscow. But, he added, the problem is not confined to St Petersburg. In the past week, skinheads in Moscow beat up a journalist of Caucasian origin and the culture minister from the Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria.
Mr Putin has called racism “an infection” and pledged to stamp it out. But critics say that the Kremlin has tolerated, and even encouraged, ultra-nationalist groups to foster loyalty to the State and make itself look relatively liberal.
MURDER CITY
Sept 2003 Tajik girl, 5, beaten in St Petersburg
Feb 2004 Tajik girl, 9, stabbed
Mar 2004 Syrian student pushed in front of train
June 2004 Anti-Nazi campaigner shot dead
Oct 2004 Vietnamese student stabbed
Sept 2005 Congolese student beaten
Dec 2005 Cameroonian student stabbed
Feb 2006 Malian medical graduate stabbed
Apr 2006 Senegalese student shot |
|
|
