21 March 2010
21 March 2010
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2130 by Jeff Hess
Jews are practiced at altering our lives for 24 hours as a way to promote self-reflection and to reconnect ourselves with our spiritual roots. We call the period Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. But there is nothing unique about our practice, other have and do create their own special days. Like Arrest Yourself.
I would suggest one alteration to the U.S. Campaign For Burma’s day of action: no electronics. None. Nada. Unplug everything if you can. Cook and/or heat your food on a hibachi. Light candles. Turn off the music, the Internet, the phone, the clocks.
21 March 2010
21 March 2010
THEY SWORE IT WASN’T ABOUT RACE…
1314 by Jeff HessFrom McClatchy:
Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted “nigger” Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s.
Protesters also shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, spat on at least one black lawmaker and confronted an openly gay congressman with taunts.
Capitol Police escorted the members of Congress into the Capitol after the confrontation. At least one demonstrator was reported arrested.
“They were shouting, sort of harassing,” Lewis said. “But, it’s okay, I’ve faced this before. It reminded me of the 60s. It was a lot of downright hate and anger and people being downright mean.”
Lewis said he was leaving the Cannon office building to walk to the Capitol to vote when protesters shouted “Kill the bill, kill the bill,” Lewis said.
“I said ‘I’m for the bill, I support the bill, I’m voting for the bill’,” Lewis said.
A colleague who was accompanying Lewis said people in the crowd responded by saying “Kill the bill, then the n-word.”
“It surprised me that people are so mean and we can’t engage in a civil dialogue and debate,” Lewis said.
Silly Congressman, he’s assuming that tea baggers are civil.
21 March 2010
FROM MY DAD…
0630 by Jeff Hess
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.
21 March 2010
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0030 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
Probably the most common amateur surprise ending is one in which the author, having deliberately concealed a central fact from the reader simply to make the story work, concludes by revealing that fact with a flourish. The reader”s usual response to this sort of trickery is not awe at the author”s imaginative powers and verbal legerdemain but cold fury at his unadulterated gall. p. 186
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
20 March 2010
20 March 2010
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2130 by Jeff HessThere is a new coalition of political activists in Myanmar brought together by their shared disgust and opposition to the faux-election plans of the State Peace and Development Council (aka Myanmar’s military dictators) which coalition members believe will worsen ethnic tensions in the eastern and norther regions.
From Voice Of America:
Burma rights and exile groups want the international community to denounce the government’s preparations for elections this year, saying they are undemocratic and are increasing ethnic tensions.
A coalition of rights groups and political exiles on Friday said election laws released last week confirm that Burma’s military government intends to use the elections to legitimize its rule.
The coalition, called Burma’s Movement for Democracy and Ethnic Rights, wants foreign governments to reject the elections.
The election laws require parties to purge political prisoners from their ranks, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The rules also require allegiance to the controversial 2008 constitution, which reserves a quarter of all parliamentary seats for the military.
Khin Ohmar is with the Forum for Democracy in Burma, which is part of the coalition. She says military rule would ensure continued ethnic oppression and human rights abuses.
“And, it’s not only us here on the border but also the people in the country, whose voice cannot be raised and heard freely, are saying the same thing – this is the constitution forced by the regime to adopt in 2008. And this is the constitution that has actually given a sole power, overarching power, to the military regime in all three branches of the government,” she said.
A farce is a farce, regardless of the lipstick used.
20 March 2010
20 March 2010
JUST SAY NO TO LEE…
1628 by Jeff Hess
Meanwhile, from Plunderbund:
Go to HandsOffOurPrimary.com, sign the petition, and click “next”. You will then be able to email a letter to every single member of the ODP executive committee for whom the Brunner campaign has an email address. Browse the list – you can even decide who you want to get your email, and who you don”t want to get your email. I, of course, emailed all of them. So should you – tell them in no uncertain terms, an ODP endorsement in the US Senate primary, this late in the game, is a very bad idea.
20 March 2010
MY COMMENTS…
1359 by Jeff Hess20 March 2010
TEA BAGGERS HATE AMERICA…
0841 by Jeff HessThat is the only conclusion that I can reach. These misguided, mislead and misinformed people want to complete the task of national destruction begun during the eight years of the Republican leadership of President George Walker Bush. That they so easily admit to their ignorance doesn’t surprise me. These are people who consistently fall back on the old I-don’t-have-much-book-learnin-but-I-have-lots-of-common-sense saw.
No, they can’t have our country back. They’ve proven themselves incapable of caring for our great nation and we need to protect it, and ourselves, from this rabble.
20 March 2010
HOW HAVE I MISSED THIS…?
0823 by Jeff HessIn my role as a tutor for several east-side school districts, I work with students who have been suspended for a variety of reasons, but most often fighting in school. So, I read with interest the story in the New York Times about suspensions and zero-tolerance policies in schools.
I was particularly interested in the mention of Cleveland’s school system and went looking for local stories about this school success.
I didn’t find any.
Granted, my search was not exhaustive, but I would think this bit of good news about Cleveland’s schools would be easily found.
Why do I have to read about this in the New York Times?
Zero tolerance and the quick resort to suspensions have been politically popular, but education leaders are having second thoughts. “If our primary obligation is to educate kids, then to punish them by excluding them doesn”t make sense,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said strict punishment should not be the main tool for order.
“Lots of schools don”t provide the panoply of services we think are important – prevention and intervention strategies and alternative placements for disruptive students,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview.
Studies have not found that zero tolerance has created safer schools or better learning environments, said Russell Skiba, professor of educational psychology at Indiana University. He was part of a 2006 task force of the American Psychological Association that called for more graduated punishments and programs attuned to adolescence.
Over the last several years, many cities including Denver, Baltimore and Cleveland have moved away from zero tolerance, said Jim Freeman, a lawyer with the Advancement Project, a civil rights group in Washington. Among the methods shown to help, Mr. Freeman said, are anti-bullying programs, positive-behavior feedback and training of students and teachers in conflict resolution.
The Baltimore schools, with aid from the Open Society Institute, amended the discipline code and adopted in-school mentoring of disruptive students. Suspensions in 2008-9 were down 39 percent from two years before.
With similar strategies, including peer mediation, violent incidents in Cleveland schools fell by one-fifth in each of the last two years.
That is good news. Anyone else interested?
20 March 2010
FROM MY DAD…
0630 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.
20 March 2010
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0030 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
On the one hand, the reader knows that the book he”s holding in his hands is a novel, that some myopic fictioneer made up the whole thing and penned (or more likely typed) all the letters or diary entries. This being the case, one might argue that all other considerations should be subordinated to Telling The Story. p. 182
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
19 March 2010
19 March 2010
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2130 by Jeff HessOnly 2,199 political prisoners left to go. I’m happy for Nyi Nyi Aung and his family, but he had his American citizenship on his side and Americans ought not to celebrate too much and not remember the other men and women suffering as prisoners-of-conscience in Myanmar’s prisons. We can’t celebrate until they’re all free.
From The Washington Post:
Burma’s government on Thursday released a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Montgomery Village after six months of sometimes brutal captivity.
Nyi Nyi Aung is a democracy advocate who was born in Burma and had traveled there often under his legal name Kyaw Zaw Lwin, which allowed him to visit family and work with the underground democracy movement. But last summer Nyi Nyi Aung helped deliver a petition to senior United Nations officials with 680,000 signatures calling for the release of all political prisoners in Burma and bringing new attention to himself.
Welcome home.
19 March 2010
19 March 2010
19 March 2010
THE POWER OF CLEVELAND TECHNOLOGY…
0725 by Jeff HessJust how long do you suppose it will be before you’ll be able to buy a hacker version of Pay Technologies’s Webteck Plus on the Internet and go on your own prank run?
