war

R.I.P one of many aid workers and not the last to die.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Kassig is the fifth Western hostage ISIS apparently beheaded
He converted to Islam during his captivity and also went by the name Adbul Rahman Kassig
He was a former U.S. soldier who became a medical worker
He wanted to help the victims of war and was captured in Syria a year ago

(CNN) — American aid worker and former soldier Peter Kassig was beheaded by ISIS terrorists, the White House confirmed Sunday, hours after a video claiming to show the victim surfaced online.
ISIS held Kassig as a hostage and in previous communications had threatened his life.
The video shows the aftermath of a beheading in which the victim is not clearly recognizable.
President Barack Obama confirmed the 26-year-old’s beheading, saying Kassig “was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity.”
Kassig, who converted to Islam in captivity, also went by the name Abdul-Rahman Kassig.
Kassig: ‘Able to share a bit of hope’ Obama: Beheading was ‘act of pure evil’ How is this ISIS video different? ISIS reportedly beheads Peter Kassig
He first traveled to the Middle East as a U.S. soldier and returned as a medical worker, feeling compelled to help victims of war.
He did aid work in Syria, where he was captured. He was held hostage for over a year.
“We are heartbroken to learn that our son, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, has lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering,” Kassig’s parents, Ed and Paula, said in a statement.
The parents released a previously unpublished audio recording of their son, recorded by a journalist before Kassig was taken captive.
“You know we would have a chance here to make up for a lot wrong that we did in this part of the world if we stepped in, in the right way,” Peter Kassig says in the recording. “If we just as a country did what other people helped me to do in that hospital. How much did I impact the political situation inside Syria? None. How much did I impact the political situation back home? None. But what I did do is that over period of time in that hospital I was able to share a little bit of hope and comfort with some people.”
The Kassig family expressed heartbreak over the beheadings of the other Westerners who came before their son, and asked for prayers for the safe return of other captives.
“While ISIL revels in the slaughter of innocents, including Muslims, and is bent only on sowing death and destruction, Abdul-Rahman was a humanitarian who worked to save the lives of Syrians injured and dispossessed by the Syrian conflict,” Obama said.
ISIL is another term for the group ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which calls itself simply the Islamic State.
The video
A familiar figure appeared in Sunday’s beheading video, dressed in all black and speaking with what sounds like an English accent.
A man fitting the same description appeared in previous videos of the apparent beheadings of other Westerners.
But this recording is different from previously released ones. It is longer, almost 16 minutes, and does not include a statement by the victim, as previous ones had.
And it is utterly brutal, showing in graphic detail the beheadings of other men, whom militants claim are pilots for the Syrian government.
The narration spends much time on ISIS’ history and the figure taunts Obama, saying he will have to return troops to Iraq in greater numbers than before.
And for the first time in such a video, the speaker names the place where he is standing with the victim — in the town of Dabiq in Aleppo province, Syria.
The fifth Westerner
Kassig is the fifth Westerner whom ISIS claims to have beheaded via video messages.
The first was U.S. journalist James Foley. A video of his killing was posted online in mid-August, just over a week after Obama approved “targeted airstrikes” against ISIS.
In early September, ISIS released a video showing the beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff. Sotloff’s apparent killer spoke in what sounded like the same British accent as the man who purportedly killed Foley.
Less than two weeks later, ISIS announced in a video the apparent killing of British aid worker David Haines.
And on October 3, ISIS released a video showing the apparent beheading of hostage Alan Henning.
Secretary of State John Kerry praised Kassig’s compassion and reiterated the goal of defeating ISIS.
“This was a young man who traveled to one of the world’s most dangerous places to care for the innocent victims of a bloody conflict, and fearlessly dedicated himself to helping those in need,” Kerry said. “There can be no greater contrast than that between Abdul-Rahman’s generosity of spirit and the pernicious evil of ISIL.”
Plea for mercy
Kassig’s life was threatened on the video that showed Henning’s killing.
A week after its release, Kassig’s family released a YouTube video of their own, asking his captors to show mercy and free him.
Kassig’s mother, Paula, addressed her son in the video. “We are so very proud of you and the work you have done to bring humanitarian aid to the Syrian people,” she said.
The couple noted they were releasing the video on the day of Islam’s Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, when Muslims slaughter lambs, goats, sheep and cattle and distribute the meat to the poor and their families.
A native of Indiana, Peter Kassig founded Special Emergency Response and Assistance, a nongovernmental organization aiding Syrians fleeing the civil war there.
From 2012, he delivered food and medical supplies within and outside Syria and provided trauma care and training, his family said.
Soldier, helper, captive
Kassig’s journey began when he joined the U.S. Army Rangers in 2006 and deployed to Iraq in 2007. He was honorably discharged for medical reasons after a brief tour and returned to the United States to study political science and train for 1,500-meter races. But something wasn’t right.
“I was going to school with kids who look the same, were the same age as me, but we weren’t the same,” he said in an interview with CNN in 2012. “I wanted more of a challenge, a sense of purpose.”
In 2010, Kassig took time off and began his certification as an emergency medical technician.
In the two years that followed, he fell in love, got married and quickly divorced. Devastated and heartbroken, he went back to school, but he couldn’t shake his depression.
“I needed a game changer,” he said.
He eventually traveled to Lebanon and founded SERA to deliver food and medical supplies to swelling refugee camps.
On October 1, 2013, he was “detained” on his way to Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, his family said.
“Peter really believed that an individual can make a difference in the world through their love and compassion and intelligence,” said Margaret Brabant, Kassig’s college adviser and a professor at Butler Univeristy in Indianapolis. “… That is the message that I think Peter would want me to convey.”

-I do not believe what my government and other U.S agencies say regarding the quagmire that they have created in the Middle East, I just know that it has been done for the personal gain of the oligarchy and does not benefit the worker in the trenches. The primitives of those nations have mobilized against the poor hapless idiots stupid enough to sign their names on the line to defend elitism and will continue to behead the victims of the rich. Islam is not a religion of peace, as we forward-thinkers know, and has been stirred to action due to the greed of modern nations. Had we stayed out of these cesspools, the inhabitants would still be battling among themselves. Had we turned quickly to green energy and disarmed the oligarchs, there would be no oil sheiks today, they would have melted back into the desert to practice their atrocities on each other.

Religion poisons EVERYTHING and needs to be swept away for good. Unfortunately, I believe that our flawed greedy race will take itself out sooner than any dirty bomb or plague. The poor bastard above who put himself at risk to accomplish nothing in a complete toilet of a nation gets my pat on the back for being a great but misguided fellow. One can pontificate forever about the humanitarian aspect of what this guy did, but they can’t deny that many of these people have ended up in shallow graves without their goddamned heads. Consciously wading into these shitholes actually does no good at all and usually results in getting tortured an killed with all of your efforts being wiped away by your enemy. Aid workers build schools and Muslims blow them up which equates to pounding sand in a rathole. This poor bastard even converted to his captors’ ancient mythological poison and still got fucked in the process and there is still now one less aid worker alive to care for those who will go back and get killed anyway. 

I can get behind causes, but I sure as Hell won’t commit suicide to do so.

 

A child to be proud of!

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EDUCATION ISSUE

This is a special issue devoted to science and math education.

 

Young Students Against Bad Science

 
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
Published: September 2, 2013
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Your parents may have had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to school. But as ideological warfare threatens the teaching of climate science and evolution in many schools, it is clear that today’s students face their own obstacles on the road to a respectable science education — and some are speaking out.

 
Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Zack Kopplin is trying to overturn a law that allows creationism to be taught in Louisiana schools.

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From curriculum to technological advances to experimentation — a view of the state of science and math education across the country.

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For his high school senior project, Zack Kopplin started a campaign to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, a 2008 law passed in his home state that opens a “back door” to teaching creationism in public schools, he says. Currently taking a year off from Rice University to work and travel, Mr. Kopplin, 20, is widely recognized as the state’s leading voice against science denial education. He has expanded his campaign to fight similar laws across the country, as well as the use of public vouchers to send students to religious schools. He argues regularly, if unsuccessfully, before the Louisiana Senate to strike down the law, and his April appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” in which he faced off against a conservative economist, Stephen Moore, went viral.

“I’m proud to be from Louisiana, but I don’t want people to laugh at me when I go out of state. ‘Oh that’s the guy from the stupid state with the creationism law,’ ” Mr. Kopplin said.

In Britain in March, Esha Marwaha, a 16-year-old from Hounslow, West London, started an online petition calling for Education Secretary Michael Gove to abandon a plan to remove references to climate change from the geography curriculum for students under 14. The petition got more than 30,000 signatures, and in July, Mr. Gove changed course.

Ms. Marwaha, a self-described geography fanatic, said lessons about climate change — whether it is caused by people or not — are crucial to keeping future students engaged in evidence-based science.

“We do need to come out with an actual well-rounded education,” she said.

Then there is Katelyn Campbell, 18, whose objection to a factually dubious sex-education assembly at her high school bubbled over into a confrontation with her principal, which bubbled over onto the Internet.

As a senior at George Washington High School in Charleston, W.Va., Ms. Campbell complained to the American Civil Liberties Union about an April assembly featuring an abstinence advocate, Pam Stenzel. Among the lessons Ms. Stenzel shared with the school that day, according to a friend of Ms. Campbell’s who taped the assembly, was that condoms provide no protection from sexually transmitted diseases. “She called out any woman who had sexual contact,” said Ms. Campbell, who boycotted the assembly. “I saw people crying when they came out.”

Irritated by her actions, Ms. Campbell said, her principal threatened to tell Wellesley College, where Ms. Campbell had been accepted, that she was a troublemaker. Ms. Campbell filed an injunction against her principal, seeking to prevent him from “discriminating against me in any way,” and told the news media her story.

Several days later, Wellesley used its Twitter account to make its position known: “Katelyn Campbell, #Wellesley is excited to welcome you this fall.”

Ms. Campbell now attends Wellesley, where she is double majoring in American studies and chemistry.

 
 

Thank God! ( hahahahahahahahaha ).

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Irish schoolchildren to learn about atheism

Up to 16,000 primary-school pupils in multi-denominational sector will learn about atheism, and others will be offered courses on the internet and smartphone apps

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality is a key text in the first ever atheist curriculum for Irish schoolchildren. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

In a historic move that will cheer Richard Dawkins, lessons aboutatheism are to be taught in Ireland‘s primary schools for the first time.

The lessons on atheism, agnosticism and humanism for thousands of primary-school pupils in Ireland will be drawn up by Atheist Ireland and multi-denominational school provider Educate Together, in an education system that the Catholic church hierarchy has traditionally dominated.

Up to 16,000 primary schoolchildren who attend the fast-growing multi-denominational Irish school sector will receive tuition about atheism as part of their basic introduction course to ethics and belief systems, including other religions.

From September 2014 children could be reading texts such as Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality, his book aimed at children, according to Atheist Ireland.

But Michael Nugent, Atheist Ireland’s co-founder, stressed that all primary-school pupils, including the 93% of the population who attend schools run by the Catholic church, can access their atheism course on the internet and by downloading an app on smartphones. He said these would be advertised and offered to all parents with children at primary schools in the state.

“There will be a module of 10 classes of between 30 to 40 minutes from the ages of four upwards. It is necessary because the Irish education system has for too long been totally biased in favour of religious indoctrination. And if parents whose kids are in schools under church control want to opt their kids out of learning religion (as is their right these days) then they can use our course as an alternative for their children to study,” he said.

Nugent added: “Religion isn’t even taught properly as an objective subject with various religions and their origins examined and explained. The teaching is to create faith formation first, not objective education. We see our course as a chance for young Irish children to get an alternative view on how the world works.”

Jane Donnelly, a member of Atheist Ireland and a parent of two children in an Irish secondary school, welcomed the creation of an atheism alternative for Irish pupils.

“I opted my two girls out of religious education classes and they were told to go to the library and find a philosophy book to read during RE instead. The range of philosophy books was very limited so I sent them into school each day with a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion for them to read.”

Religion, education and the Irish Republic

• God is omnipresent in the 1937 Irish constitution, with article 6.1 stating: “All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people”; and article 44.1 noting: “The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.”

• Since the foundation of the republic, the Catholic church controls up to 93% of the state’s 3,200 primary schools.

• The Catholic church’s near monopoly of influence in education means that the ultimate power in each school is the local Catholic bishop.

• In Dublin the city’s archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, is patron of about 470 primary schools. He is responsible for the management of the ethos of those schools, for senior appointments and is the one who can be sued when legal action takes place.

• The Irish taxpayer, and not the church, pays the bills for all the schools the hierarchy controls.

• The Irish education minister, Ruairi Quinn, has promised “the most radical change in primary education in Ireland since the state was founded in the 1920s” by taking the power of the church from running almost all schools in the state and putting it into the hands of elected governors. So far his reforms have not begun in earnest.

• This article was amended on 27 September 2013 to clarify that pupils in multi-denominational schools will learn about atheism as part of the wider curriculum covering ethics, beliefs and religion. Atheists will not be teaching children that God does not exist, as originally stated, rather, children will be educated about atheism, including the atheist belief that God does not exist.

 

Syria.

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Hey you light bulb headed son of a bitch! No fucking war in Syria! I don’t know about your rich corporate purchased ass, but $16 Trillion in debt is quite enough thank you! You pack of ravenous wolf assholes sit by while trading with countries that traffic human beings right under your nose, send us food that requires no inspection, work children in sweat shops and ship out pet food with arsenic in it. The only reason that you want to go into Syria is for some corporate or political benefit! 

The bold truth is that it is not moral to destroy our country by playing world policeman! More children die in third world nations in a week than have died in the two years of Syrian civil conflict, so why all of a sudden is war on the table? Come on! Give us a patented Obamalama “It’s the right thing to do.” answer! Go ahead! I would like to hear this self-serving lie! The U.S hasn’t recovered from the recession, there are a record number of American children going hungry and being beaten to death by abusive parents. I’m just wondering when your self righteous ass is gonna spend a little of MY money taking care of problems in MY country? Maybe use some of the money allotted to the NSA for solving some problems instead of letting them use it to watch me slap the salami in my own bathroom? Hows about donating your enormous head to science so that they can turn it into a huge light bulb? They could even use that huge melon of yours to house a family of five! The religious right(wrong), wants this because they don’t care about anything but right wing bullshit AND they believe that their gawd wants us to kill non believers at all costs(Muslims). Also, these idiots actually claim to speak to something that can’t be heard or seen! Psycooooo!

Don’t get me wrong, I hated your predecessor as well! He was just a tractable dumb legacy kid who would have failed the entrance exam to Bubba’s Cookin’ Cawlidge. The Demoncrats AND the Republotards are all bought and paid for and only have their own corporate interests in mind. Lawyers, lawyers, fucking scumbag lawyers all of them! As long as scumbag lawyers control the nation, we will never have a system of fairness and democracy. If you have to spend a kings ransom to secure decent representation then the injustice system is broken, so why would you trust a stinking lawyer to tell you the truth on Syria?! Anyway, think about it very carefully. Bush lied about Iraq and all of you were sorry, what is different about this one? Also, Saddam gassed the Kurds and America was aware and just sat by and did nothing! Things haven’t changed, Obama just sees an angle for his corporate masters! I will go now and speak out again later. Thank you friends. I don’t write this because I don’t care about the children, I write because the Hope & Change asshole is blowing smoke about the real agenda behind his wanting to destroy the nation financially by getting into another never ending conflict. Lies, lies, lies yeah!

I’m still heeeere!!

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WARNING: This blog entry may contain content insulting to just about everyone. Please proceed with care. 

I have taken a small sabbatical from posting because my daughter spilled juice on my computer and it’s toast! I am here at work posting with limited time but at least I’m able to lend to the chaos that is having a strong opinion. The good news is that marriage equality is gaining good ground every day and the NSA is keeping us really safe by watching us masturbate! We wouldn’t want those goddamned terrorists assembling bombs on OUR dick-beating time now would we? The debate on Syria has taken a different turn with our staunch ally Great Britain saying, “Cheerio you stupid fucks, hows about you bankrupt yourselves going to war with yet ANOTHER bunch of assholes who hate us!’ Outstanding! I say, let us send them our street bums in the form of Soylent Green and concentrate our money over here on at least attempting to solve one whole domestic problem! We have several unfinished ones that we never seem to use total concentration on before we move onto the next one that we will leave hanging. The light bulb headed idiot in the White House has issued a statement that the right thing to do is to initiate yet ANOTHER ill-conceived strike on yet ANOTHER Middle Eastern nation resulting in yet ANOTHER financial downturn for the people that actually support this country, the middle class! But take heart citizens, the super rich will war profiteer off of this one too and you will receive only bullshit rhetoric from the AIC ( Assholes in Charge ). Why just a little while ago Halliburton was fleecing our own soldiers for poor to non-existent services and overcharging the Gub for fuel! Ahhh, the memories!

Well, saddle up America! You’re the ones sitting back and letting this shit happen and just voting in the next mouthpiece for the rich, so enjoy the ride while Souros, the Koch brothers, Eric Prince and a long list of other evil assholes gobble up your money and trash your economy once more!

Kids here are going hungry as we spend millions of tax dollars helping ungrateful nations and giving welfare to idiots that will never find their way in life. We spend millions doing surgery on idiot drug addicts and other reprobates so that they can go right back on the street and use again. The choice should go to those that are in real need and those who don’t need should be given the shine! The people of this country need to get their collective heads out of their collective fat asses and get some real values back! There are children dying in every third world nation across the globe, but we need to bomb Syria to save the most publicized ones?! Get real! I had some ignorant lemming compare us not going to war with Syria like hesitating to save Europe from Hitler! Really?! The social PC pressure is on to completely back the insane decisions of Obama The Christ and leave common sense in the dust. Sorry, the people in the Middle East will be killing each other for years to come AFTER the Syrian conflict is a distant memory in everyone’s eyes because that is the way of fanatical religion and despotic dictatorships!

I, for one, am totally against this insanity unless we go over and bulldoze the whole thing and put up hotels and 7-11s to compensate for the lost funds footed by the middle class. I will now end this rant before I go totally overboard  and turn to attacking welfare idiots again. Thanks again to the unfaithful for tuning in again to my never ending angst!

Things straight!

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Hello from the internet!

I have many times come upon a news story in the self-serving ratings-grabbing media that has left me sticking my fingers down my throat making vomiting noises. Today I will elaborate and demonstrate the very loads of shit and drivel to which I refer!

I read that that attention grabbing fat fuck Oprah was being a fucking bitch,( as usual ), in Zurich by pulling the race card as self-important assholes usually do. Well, I dismissed the news story because I know Goddamned well that EVERYONE knows who that asshole Oprah is and just wanted the Goddamned money for the handbag because these asshole stars are always throwing their CONSIDERABLE weight around. There IS NO story here, period! Reasonable logical people do NOT rely on celebrities for instruction in how to conduct their lives. We use evidence and reason. not hype, to make informed decisions that effect our lives. I don’t give two brass plated fucks about what Angelina and the kids are doing, I pay attention to Brad and the lessons I can learn from World War Z! He actually demonstrated a very important thing that people who want to survive a zombie apocalypse need to know! NEVER get caught in a densely populated area and don’t LIVE in such an area! Get to an area of fresh water and wide open spaces, point taken! The point is to not listen to the magic box in the living room to tell you how to live! Also, don’t believe any Demoncrats or Republicunts! Be logical and pragmatic, be in the middle.

Point 1-Zimmerman identified as Hispanic, so it was Hispanic on black crime. Media distortion over!

Point 2-Paula Deen stupidly, in this fucking liberal society, admitted to using the N-Word 20+ years ago. I don’t give a rats ass about her personal leanings as long as her fried chicken kicks ASS! How many motherfuckers have these thoughts and NEVER get vilified for it? Duck fuckin’ Dynasty anyone?

Point 3-Black leaders pressure people to sit on their ass and do nothing. Other communities look at each other with puzzlement when you ask who their ‘leaders’ are. Why? Because others exist in their communities without self-appointed assholes like Sharpton and Jackson telling them what to think and do! These idiots have done nothing but feed off of the dependency that they have fostered in their own communities. The moral of the story? Stop listening to these self-appointed assholes, start taking care of your illegitimate children and get a fucking job! No one is getting on you for more melanin in your skin, we just get on you for crying ‘poor me’ and rejecting personal responsibility. I know that the liberal assholes today don’t know what personal responsibility is, but logical reasonable people do!

Barack Obama identifies with his African roots and that is great! We have an American President with African heritage, awesome! The fact is is that racism will ALWAYS exist as long as differences in appearance exist, that is fact. Smart people are able to see past this, ignorant people are not. We live in a world of 90% followers so what does that say to anyone? It says that sheeple will believe anything that the magic box in the living room tells them! Thus, we must believe that unless the 10% of forward thinkers takes control of these idiots, then nothing significant will happen. People need to be lead, they cannot exist without leadership. Look at the Mormon religion. It has NO BASIS in proof but has 13 million moron followers! If this is not a scathing indictment of humanity, I don’t know what is!

When the shit hits the fan the liberal PETA assholes are gonna thank fucking christ for gun-toting, survivalist meat-eating hunters who had the mind to prepare for an emergency! Anyone without a marketable skill, say a career welfare asshole, will have no use in a society and will be left to die! All dumbshit observations like ‘they were kept ignorant’, or ‘they don’t know any better’ won’t be worth a piss in Hell. Everybody will be expected to produce or be turned out to perish the way it should be! Here is MY social contract! If you work, you eat! If you don’t work, you perish, PERIOD! Fuck political correct Naziism and liberalism, none of this shit works in an emergency because it involves letting a facet of humanity sit on their asses due to an imaginary slight!

African slave traders sold their people into slavery in the beginning of slavery and are STILL selling people into slavery now! I don’t own ANY of this! Put the blame where it belongs and tell the truth, if the Africans had had the same technology then they would have committed the same atrocities as the conquerors of yesteryear! Shit happens and GET BEYOND IT! I and all of my like-minded thinkers do not do ‘white guilt.’ We never will. Fuck liberals and their gun control and false racist calls, AND their unrealistic idiot expectations of the human race. Fuck Republicunts and religion!

I’m off to enjoy Paula Deen fried chicken and Venison steak shot between the eyes by yours truly! Politically correct people, go fuck yourselves in your fucking asses and keep your feel-good bullshit to yourself! My folks, promote bio-energy, solar and water power, grow your own gardens, raise your own beef/pork, hunt and live off of the grid. Take reason and logic to heart and apply it to your every day life. Kill your TV and listen to your network of people. Peace out people!