contributions

School’s evolution teaching goes on trial today
by Greg Lloyd Smith
HARRISBURG, PA — (OfficialWire) — 09/26/05 — A group of parents in the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is seeking to overturn a decision by the local school board who have insisted that so-called Intelligent Design-the theory that complex organisms have been designed (presumably by God) rather than having evolved in response to natural selection-must be (…)

by Norla Antinoro
It’s a gas shortage! Here we go again. I remember the last one and it was no fun. This one looks to be every bit as bogus and as bad for the ordinary citizens as the last one. The signs were there. Hurricane Katrina sent prices of fuel up. Then Hurricane Rita shut down all the refineries in the southern USA from North Carolina to Texas. There were rumblings that this would have repercussions. Gas prices were going to go up because the refineries had to shut down.
Gas (…)

Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked in Cells
As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff’s department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.
Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were (…)

What we were actually doing in Basra was to turn a blind eye on abuse, murder and anarchy
By Robert Fisk
"Water is your friend" was the advice regularly given to a truly good friend of mine here in the Middle East. The speaker was a member of the One-Thousand- Litres- a-Day-Keeps-Dehydration-at-Bay Brigade, although I have to say that the Arabs take a different view. After generations of sword-like desert heat, they take tea in the morning, endure an oven-like day without sustenance, and (…)

By Andrew Gumbel
A leading US human rights group accused prison officials in New Orleans yesterday of abandoning hundreds of men in the city jail in the run-up to Hurricane Katrina, leaving them locked up without food, water, electricity, fresh air or functioning toilets for four days as the floodwaters rose to their chests, necks and higher.
Human Rights Watch described the prisoners’ ordeal at the Templeman III facility in New Orleans as a "nightmare" and said, based on interviews with (…)

My name is Hart Viges. September 11 happened. Next day I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better.
So I went to infantry school and jump school and I arrived with my unit of the 82nd Airborne Division. I was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003. We drove into Iraq because Third Infantry Division was ahead of schedule, and so I didn’t need to jump into Baghdad airport.
As we drove into Samawa to secure their supplies my (…)

One hundred thousand people. I read the news from Washington DC that one hundred thousand protestors are marching on the capital, sharing a flood of outrage on our faltering King George, who frankly, doesn’t care if one hundred million demonstrated. I look at the pictures from the day and I see marches with multitudes of people, smiles and laughter, and creative props, costumes and actions. I’m sure the people who are participating feel empowered and alive.
Hundreds of thousands of people (…)

Morning Edition, September 23, 2005 · In the days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, officials in local, state and federal governments held a series of telephone conference calls aimed at coordinating their responses to the storm. The sessions were recorded by Walter Maestri, emergency manager for Jefferson Parish, who shared them with NPR.
In tapes of the disaster planning meetings, emergency managers and civic officials evinced a growing concern with the strengthening (…)

By Tom Engelhardt
George was out of town, of course, in the "battle cab" at the U.S. Northern Command’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, checking out the latest in homeland-security technology and picking up photo ops; while White House aides, as the Washington Post wrote that morning, were attempting "to reestablish Bush’s swagger." The Democrats had largely fled town as well, leaving hardly a trace behind. Another hurricane was blasting into Texas and the media was preoccupied, but (…)

By ELISABETH GOODRIDGE
Support for U.S. troops fighting abroad mixed with anger toward anti-war demonstrators at home as hundreds of people, far fewer than organizers had expected, rallied Sunday on the National Mall just a day after a massive protest against the war in Iraq.
"No matter what your ideals are, our sons and daughters are fighting for our freedom," said Marilyn Faatz, who drove from New Jersey to attend the rally. "We are making a mockery out of this. And we need to stand (…)