Global
As soon as the federal government shut down for the first time in nearly a decade, a surreal disquiet settled over the D.C. area. For political junkies inside the beltway the whole scene leading up to the shutdown was actually something of a spectacle. With countdown clocks, last minute deals, and dramatic speeches on the house and senate floors, this was political theatre at its finest. But as soon as October 1 came the hype started to fizzle and a harsh reality set in.
More than 800,000 federal workers were sent home without pay. Funding for national science programs all but completely came to a halt. National parks closed their access to the public. Cuts to the Head Start program were amplified, although the shutdown is only an additional burden to the across-the-board sequester cuts that affected Head Start in March.
More than 800,000 federal workers were sent home without pay. Funding for national science programs all but completely came to a halt. National parks closed their access to the public. Cuts to the Head Start program were amplified, although the shutdown is only an additional burden to the across-the-board sequester cuts that affected Head Start in March.
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With a half mile remaining in the Arrowhead Invitational, St. Francis DeSales High School cross country runner Ian Lawson looked to the spot where Bob Lennon would’ve stood and tried to remember what the veteran coach would’ve told him.
Lennon, 64, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while bicycling on Miller Paul Road in Granville on Sept. 14.
“I couldn’t think of anything inspirational he said,” says Lawson, a senior who placed seventh in 17 minutes, 21 seconds in the Arrowhead Invitational on Sept. 18. “I’ll be honest. It’s not like he had the most inspirational words for us. The last race he coached, the two things he said to me were ‘hold that position’ and ‘OK, go now.’”
While the words might not exactly match Vince Lombardi’s or Knute Rockne’s inspirational speeches, they’ve become the mission statement for the Stallions boys and girls cross country teams. DeSales is simply holding on to each other as they go forward without their coach.
“They’re coping by sticking together,” says Katie Shelton, a DeSales guidance counselor who has been co-coaching the team with 1999 DeSales graduate Emily Rizek.
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The Columbus College of Arts and Design hosted its second annual Mix Symposium last Friday and Saturday, with keynote guest Jeff Smith (Bone, RASL). With a number of panels featuring academic presentations, several workshops where students discussed the comics craft with local creators, and a two hour keynote featuring Smith and journalist Tom Spurgeon, the symposium highlighted the diversity of the comics medium and the growing comic scene in Columbus.
The symposium was designed as a place for dialogue between academics, creators and fans. “This year’s Mix came closer to achieving the symposium’s aim,” said Mix organizer Robert Loss. “That’s a tough thing to measure, honestly; it’s a very egalitarian and somewhat experimental approach. It’s one thing to have both groups at one event, but it’s another to actually have them engage with each other on panels.”
The event featured twelve panels covering a number of topics that extended beyond mainstream superhero comics. “We had a more diverse Mix [this year], with presentations on women’s comics, international comics, and African-American comics,” said Loss.
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It's been a little embarrassing to be a Transformers fan lately. Michael Bay's movies keep making piles upon piles of money regardless of how viciously they're panned by critics. While the live-action movies, the first of which was released in 2007, have catapulted the 80s-icon Robots In Disguise into 21st-century pop culture stardom, they've also made the name synonymous with terrible writing, worse acting, unintelligible fight scenes and explosions at the expense of everything else. Is that really what we're fans of?
IDW Publishing has been putting out comics about the Transformers since 2005, but only recently have they reached a quality not only above nearly every other Transformers show, comic or movie before them, but indeed over a lot of other comics on the shelves today. Nearly any writer or artist given duties on a Transformers series will tell you what big fans they've always been, but nobody owns it quite like writer James Roberts and artist Alex Milne on the currently-running Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye series.
With the Transformers name so closely tied to bad storytelling, it's not surprising that “MTMTE” doesn't get the attention it deserves.
The community was out of control — the children, oh my God, the children, were sniffing gasoline and pretty much abandoning any pretense of a future — and the social and criminal-justice systems were just adding to the problem. Nothing was working.
“Our children slammed us against a brick wall,” Burma Bushie said.
This is the story of a culture in shambles. It was the early ’80s. Bushie’s community is called the Hollow Water First Nation Reserve, a village of about 900 people in eastern Manitoba, more or less at the end of the highway. There was one road in and one road out.
They may have felt utterly isolated in their troubles, but what a few of them started to do — in synchronicity with people in other indigenous communities — has spread hope and awareness across the planet. They began reaching beyond the known (i.e., Western) world, deep into their souls and into the roots of a lost way of life, to save their children and the future. Without intending to, they started a movement. And the slow reverberation of change continues to spread.
America just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s great “I Have a Dream” speech. Everyone says that they “love” Dr. King (now), but the media did notice that no top Republican Party leaders attended any of the main anniversary events.
Maybe it was this line of Dr. King ’s that they don’t like: “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification…”
What is nullification? It’s one of the last-ditch philosophical stands of the slaveholders, the historically disreputable — and thoroughly discredited — concept that a state could “nullify” a federal law by declaring it null and void. The idea of the Slave Power was that the Southern states would “interpose” themselves between the national government and the slaveholders, and prevent our laws from being enforced.
Maybe it was this line of Dr. King ’s that they don’t like: “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification…”
What is nullification? It’s one of the last-ditch philosophical stands of the slaveholders, the historically disreputable — and thoroughly discredited — concept that a state could “nullify” a federal law by declaring it null and void. The idea of the Slave Power was that the Southern states would “interpose” themselves between the national government and the slaveholders, and prevent our laws from being enforced.
The sickening terrorist attack carried out in Nairobi is a reminder of one thing among several others; talking points will not suffice when such devastation needs to be properly explained to the public. As Americans are once again forced to brush away the dust atop their maps they hurry to locate Kenya. Yet, as this story has unfolded, Kenya has proven to be just the tip of the iceberg. In order to gain a richer understanding of the terrorist attack in Kenya and its explicit motivations one must dig deeper into an older conflict involving the immediate region’s key player, Somalia.
Without a constant national government from 1991 to 2006, Somalia was essentially a modern day example of a stateless society. Between rampant crime and poverty throughout Somalia, chaos became the norm. To correct this nebulous conception of rule the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was created in the middle of 2004. Designed to impose order and crack down on the escalating crime rates and warlord-style governance, the ICU had another crucial element which cannot go overlooked; it meant to enforce Islamic law on the areas that it controlled.
Without a constant national government from 1991 to 2006, Somalia was essentially a modern day example of a stateless society. Between rampant crime and poverty throughout Somalia, chaos became the norm. To correct this nebulous conception of rule the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was created in the middle of 2004. Designed to impose order and crack down on the escalating crime rates and warlord-style governance, the ICU had another crucial element which cannot go overlooked; it meant to enforce Islamic law on the areas that it controlled.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Top Muslim leaders in the Council of Muftis of
Russia warned President Vladimir Putin it was wrong and dangerous for
a court to order the banning and destruction of a Russian translation
of the Koran, and compared it to "crazy American pastor" Terry Jones's
Koran burning.
The Koran is available in several Russian translations but a court ruled on Sept. 17 "that the translation by Elmir Kuliyev, published in Saudi Arabia in 2002, violated federal law banning extremist materials," Associated Press reported.
"Russian Muslims were appalled by the neglect of law shown by the court" in the southern Black Sea port of Novorossiysk said Ravil Gainutdin, head of the Council of Muftis of Russia, in an open letter to Putin on Sept. 20.
Gainutdin "said the court's order to destroy the Muslim holy book was particularly outrageous," AP reported.
Muslims perceive the Koran as God's words transmitted in Arabic through the Prophet Muhammad, and forbid the intentional destruction of the holy book, including translations.
The Koran is available in several Russian translations but a court ruled on Sept. 17 "that the translation by Elmir Kuliyev, published in Saudi Arabia in 2002, violated federal law banning extremist materials," Associated Press reported.
"Russian Muslims were appalled by the neglect of law shown by the court" in the southern Black Sea port of Novorossiysk said Ravil Gainutdin, head of the Council of Muftis of Russia, in an open letter to Putin on Sept. 20.
Gainutdin "said the court's order to destroy the Muslim holy book was particularly outrageous," AP reported.
Muslims perceive the Koran as God's words transmitted in Arabic through the Prophet Muhammad, and forbid the intentional destruction of the holy book, including translations.
This article is the foreword to David Swanson's new book, War No More: The Case for Abolition.
I lived in Iraq during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. On April 1st, about two weeks into the aerial bombardment, a medical doctor who was one of my fellow peace team members urged me to go with her to the Al Kindi Hospital in Baghdad, where she knew she could be of some help. With no medical training, I tried to be unobtrusive, as families raced into the hospital carrying wounded loved ones. At one point, a woman sitting next to me began to weep uncontrollably. “How I tell him?” she asked, in broken English. “What I say?” She was Jamela Abbas, the aunt of a young man, named Ali. Early in the morning on March 31st, U.S. war planes had fired on her family home, while she alone of all her family was outside. Jamela wept as she searched for words to tell Ali that surgeons had amputated both of his badly damaged arms, close to his shoulders. What’s more, she would have to tell him that she was now his sole surviving relative.
David Swanson
I lived in Iraq during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. On April 1st, about two weeks into the aerial bombardment, a medical doctor who was one of my fellow peace team members urged me to go with her to the Al Kindi Hospital in Baghdad, where she knew she could be of some help. With no medical training, I tried to be unobtrusive, as families raced into the hospital carrying wounded loved ones. At one point, a woman sitting next to me began to weep uncontrollably. “How I tell him?” she asked, in broken English. “What I say?” She was Jamela Abbas, the aunt of a young man, named Ali. Early in the morning on March 31st, U.S. war planes had fired on her family home, while she alone of all her family was outside. Jamela wept as she searched for words to tell Ali that surgeons had amputated both of his badly damaged arms, close to his shoulders. What’s more, she would have to tell him that she was now his sole surviving relative.
David Swanson