community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
School Board Chicken Hawks Vote Down Peace Resolution
by George Kanakis
Wednesday, Mar. 26, 2003 at 10:52 PM
G.Kanakis@verizon.net (email address validated) 412.421.3751
This evening, 5 members of the PGH School Board voted down a resolution sponsored by PAPPY that would have put the board on record as opposing using education funds towards the war.
Well, the Chicken Hawks have spoken. This evening, the Pittsburgh School Board voted 3-5, with 1 abstention, against a resolution that would put the Board on record as opposing using education funding towards the war in Iraq. I'm gathering more information and hope to publish a detailed report in the next few days.
THanks for the support!
by ian
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2003 at 1:04 PM
I just wanted to thank everyone that came to the meeting to support PAPPY's resolution. By my estimate there were more then 20 people that showed up to support. You guys are great!
Who voted which way?
by John Lacny
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2003 at 2:00 PM
So who voted which way? I have a hunch. Was it the white majority that voted against the antiwar resolution?
Someone should tell Darlene Harris that the 70 or so students who demonstrated against the war outside the school board building a few weeks ago were probably more numerous than the kids who go to, say, Spring Garden Elementary.
Fuck these people.
Who voted how.....
by George Kanakis
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2003 at 9:49 PM
G.Kanakis@verizon.net
First a correction, The Post Gazette is reporting that the vote was actually 2 in favor, Brantley & Taylor, 5 opposed, (the usual suspects plus Isler) and 2 abstentions. I thought I counted 3 in favor, but I cannot remember who I thought the the 3rd vote was, so I'll have to go with the PG on this. (UGH!) I know Matthews was one of the abstentions. I believe Floyd McCrea was the other.
Spring Garden
by George Kanakis
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2003 at 9:51 PM
Yes John, I believe the official enrollment is 70-72 students.
votes
by ian
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2003 at 11:21 PM
There were 2 for, 3 abstentions, and 4 opposed
They voted against it because...
by George K.
Friday, Mar. 28, 2003 at 11:04 AM
dodgerambler@yahoo.com
...because the war is a just one. There is no racist component to the war, unless you count Saddam's racism in his tactics to silence opposition to him.
Let the TRUTH be known:
Why We Must Fight � and Now!
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
By William J. Bennett
Three weekends ago, millions of demonstrators across the globe protested on behalf of "human rights." Their marches, slogans, placards and speeches did not declaim against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, did not cite the human rights reports detailing his tyranny and torture, did not take account the plaints of Iraqis fortunate enough to live in exile.
Rather, they protested the U.S. and the U.K. and their efforts to topple Saddam and liberate Iraq. Now, we are seeing more television advertisements along these lines, and even a "virtual march on Washington."
Just after the celebration of Abraham Lincoln�s birthday, it is appropriate to remember his lament: "The world has never had a good definition of the word �liberty.�" With Saddam flouting international law, and President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair attempting to enforce it, portrayals of Bush as Adolf Hitler � as we saw and heard in the "human rights" protests � betray an ignorance of liberty, an ignorance of right and wrong, an ignorance of commonsense. Because Bush and Blair are putting together a coalition of countries to oust Saddam, they are labeled the warmongers and tyrants. We live in a confusing time indeed.
Lincoln described liberty by a useful analogy: "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty." Lincoln made it clear who the sheep was and who the wolf was. It is equally important to recognize who the liberator is.
Those who march against the U.S. and the U.K. today, those who condemn Bush and Blair and remain silent when it comes to Saddam, are in league with the wolf�s view that the shepherds are destroying liberty. The people of Iraq will soon know what Afghanis know. The true wolf was devouring Afghanis, the true shepherd saved them.
It is worth remembering what those in the former Soviet republics know and what the anti-American Western street has forgotten: It was, and is, U.S. and British resolve that truly liberates the oppressed and that defends the lives and liberties of the free against the appetites and ill-will of the world�s dictators.
In 1998 then-President Bill Clinton stated: "What if he [Saddam] fails to comply [with disarmament] and we fail to act? He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then go right on building up his arsenal. Someday, someway, I guarantee you, he'll use that arsenal." Last year, former Vice President Al Gore stated, "[W]e know that he [Saddam] has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country."
It is not President Bush who woke up one day to discover that Saddam was making and harvesting weapons of mass destruction. Yet it is Bush who is blamed for doing something about it. Saddam may be mad, but he is not a scientist. He does not collect chemical and biological weapons for mere pleasure and intrigue. Just ask the survivors of Halabja. So when Saddam acts, it will be Bush and America who are blamed for inaction, for appeasement. We will be liable for such blame because we are the only ones who can do something about it.
We are not at war with Muslims or Arabs around the world; we are at war with some Muslim and Arab leaders who misinterpret their religion and put a primacy on war over peace and slavery over freedom. But among the leadership in the world�s moral democracies there is no misinterpretation, and nowhere is that more true than in the case of the U.S.
This is not a new role for us, but is a unique role we proudly inherit as the world�s liberator. As Wolf Blitzer pointed out: "Over the past two decades, almost every time U.S. military forces have been called into action to risk their lives and limbs, it's been on behalf of Muslims. ... [T]o assist the Afghan mujahadin � during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, to liberate Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion of 1990, to help Somali Muslims suffering at the hands of a warlord in Mogadishu, to help Muslims first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo who faced a Serb onslaught, and more recently to liberate Afghanistan from its Taliban and Al Qaeda rulers."
Those who protest against the U.S. just now are legatees of those who protested against the U.S. in the 1980s, when we fought the focus of evil then, the Soviet Union. But ask a former Soviet, or East Berliner, if he is better off now than he was, say, 15 years ago. Ask a Nicaraguan. Ask a Bosnian Muslim. U.S. resolve can be thanked for all that, even as those who protested our defense and military postures marched in favor of appeasement.
Indeed, we live in a strange time when the anti-nuclear movement and its leaders of yesterday can today suggest a course of inaction such that Saddam will be able to join North Korea in becoming a nuclear power. The only logical conclusion one can reach is that for the protesters today, weapons in the hands of the U.S. are to be met with outrage while weapons in the hands of Saddam are to be met with silence.
We seek to liberate Iraq today, not only because for Saddam "[t]orture is not a method of last resort in Iraq, it is often the method of first resort," according to Kenneth Pollack, President Clinton�s director of Gulf Affairs at the NSC. We seek to liberate Iraq because after Sept. 11, 2001, we were put on notice. We were put on notice that civilized people can no longer live in a bubble and hope for the best. We were put on notice that there are fanatics and tyrants who want nothing from us but our death. And this notice requires action: the action of the brave, the action of the unthanked, the action of the free.
In Iraq as in other contemporary situations, the responsibility to act has been ours because the ability has been ours. The responsibility has been ours because oppressed people look to us for their deliverance. There is a duty in being the nation that Abraham Lincoln, speaking of our Declaration of Independence, called "a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression." That is who we happen to be. And it is an honor.
your inner child
by your inner child
Friday, Mar. 28, 2003 at 12:29 PM
hey george
listen to me
i'm afraid
you aren't happy anymore
truth is, you haven't been happy for a long time
even as you read these words, you are consumed with hatred and so called learning
this is exactly what they want you to do
feel what they feel and fool you that their thoughts and conclusions are your own
wake up george
listen to me
i'm afraid
i'll be here when you're ready to play again
to my inner child
by George K.
Friday, Mar. 28, 2003 at 1:29 PM
dodgerambler@yahoo.com
Hello my time travelling friend. i say time travelling, because there is no inner child here in this time frame. I grew up a long time ago and face reality as it comes to me, day by day. I face the fact that I have a responsibility to develop the reasoning capacity of the three lives that my wife and I have brought into this world. We shelter them from some of the harsher realities and do not shelter them from others, answering their questions with facts that naturally lead to other questions.
We explain the world in the context of history, not in the context of feelings. We have them participate in community service, helping people in ways that teach people to help themselves: teaching people to read, write, and think.
With regards to government, I tell them many times not to trust ANY media, independant or otherwise, without multiple confirmation. I demonstrate the manipulation of visual "proofs" by showing them the "special effects" documentries and such, and showing them what computer graphics can do to change what they see.
My inner child has grown up into an adult that reasons with logic and insight that is critical and all my own. I choose with free will to support the ideals of the US that justify expanding our sphere of influence into Iraq to help these people and free up their resources.
No matter how much the group of people on the opposing side of the Bush doctrine try to defame PRESIDENT Bush with soundclips and silly anecdotes, it will not work. He and his administration have chosen a hard path to seperate the US from the "world legal structure" that I certainly do not want to be a part of.
While local governments may have the power to pass local referendums on local issues, they certainly do not have the power to pass resolutions on National Policy. That path is ineffective.
So, inner child, get back in your time machine of fantasy, and leave, so a thinking man can continue to do the work of a man, and teach his children how to reason.
oh dear George K
by jwg
Friday, Mar. 28, 2003 at 2:12 PM
How long ago did your soul die? You, sir, are nothing but a living corpse. Please teach your children "facts" because they will never know love.
Revised Results
by George Kanakis
Friday, Mar. 28, 2003 at 8:59 PM
Just watched the school board meeting on the city channel and my revised vote count was correct. 2 in favor, 5 opposed, and 2 abstentions.
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