And that marks Democrats’ first job in this new era: We will stand up to bigotry. There is no compromise here. In all its forms, we will fight back against attacks on Latinos, African Americans, women, Muslims, immigrants, disabled Americans — on anyone. Whether Donald Trump sits in a glass tower or sits in the White House, we will not give an inch on this, not now, not ever.
www.elizabethwarren.com
MODESTO, Calif. – May 1, 2016 – PRLog — Denise Hartley has received the Woman of the Year Award by the Veterans of Foreign War Post 3199.
With this award she also received the Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition by Representative Jeff Denham, 10th Congressional District, California; State of California Senate Certificate of Recognition, by Cathleen Galgiani, 5th Senate District; California Legislature Assembly Certificate of Recognition, by assembly members, Adam C. Gray, and Kristin Olsen; and by the County of Stanislaus, Board of Supervisors, and the Modesto City Council.
Denise Hartley is currently (2016) the art specialist at Ripon High School, California. She has two Bachelor of Art degrees, one in Fine Art, and the other in Philosophy. Her Master of Art degree is in Fine Art, New Media (digital art). She completed her teaching credential, and began her teaching career three years ago, in 2013. Denise is also a professional artist and muralist, and a Fine Art business owner, her work is found at www.dahartley.com
Artist D.A.Hartley has developed two separate and distinct art styles that follow a naturalistic theme. Her works are displayed in an Art Installation format, including paintings, video, water reflection pools, and peaceful meditation rooms. Her paintings are low relief and sculptural, created on large wood panels, with deep texture, oils, stains and gold leaf. Her most recent works are created in a Photo Realism style with a nature theme; as gnarled trees embedded in rock, and more contemporary abstract themes. Her art and philosophy blog can be found at https://friendnature.wordpress.com
Denise is passionate about getting her students art into as many art shows as possible in California. This is the third year her students have entered the VFW Auxiliary Young American Creative Patriotic Art Contest. Two of her students tied for First Prize, Ripon High School students Quieanna Burton and Ulises Martinez. Her many talented students have won prior VFW local competitions in Stockton, Ripon, Turlock, Ceres, and in Modesto, California.
Denise as Art Specialist, currently teaches 200 students at Ripon High School. She teaches drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and Art History. She is also qualified to teach computer generated Digital Art.
At Ripon High School she is the advisor for Art/Anime Club, and Fashion Club. For two years she has taken her advanced students to San Francisco art colleges and museums. Spring, 2017, she will be taking a group of students to Spain.
Her students have entered and placed top honors at exhibitions at the Haggin Museum, and the San Joaquin Department of Education’s, Art Expressions Exhibition in Stockton; the Mistlin Gallery Student Art Show in Modesto, the Congressional Art Show, sponsored by Rep, Jeff Denham, the Youth Art Month show at Modesto Junior College, and the Turlock Regional Art Show at California State University, Stanislaus. Her students work has also shown at the Ripon Almond Blossom Festival, and the Ripon City Library, California. One of her students was chosen as an art scholarship recipient at Mistlin Gallery. Her past students have received scholarships, and are art/art history majors at several colleges.
In her art career she studied at the Art Students League in N.Y.C.; was trained by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in sculpture restoration; worked for U.S.Vice President Nelson Rockefeller as sculpture restorer for his art collection; she worked for the painting restorer at Whitney Art Museum in New York City; the Fresno Art Museum as registrar; and for the Fresno Metropolitan Art Museum, teaching drawing classes. She also worked for the Department of Education in Kauai, Hawaii, teaching young children on the Autism Spectrum. She loves working with children and young adults, and is the mother of seven children, and has six grandchildren.
ReBlogged from Lack of Environment: http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/my-final-word-on-fracking/#respond
Professor Iain Stewart
***
Letter written to Professor Stewart by Lack of Environment, author Martin Lack: http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/my-final-word-on-fracking/#respond
Herewith appended below is an email I sent today to Professor Iain Stewart (and copied to all those named in it).
Dear Professor Stewart,
I wanted to express my appreciation for the sensitive way in which you handled the issues in last night’s Horizon programme and for all the facts, figures and research findings it contained. I was particularly interested in the evidence that shale gas has escaped from poorly-constructed wells in the USA. Even if the UK can improve on the 6 to 7% failure rate in the USA, 100% success (i.e. no failures) is highly improbable. Therefore, if fracking must be pursued (for whatever reason), this would make it imperative that the BGS establish baseline monitoring for methane as soon as possible. Would it be possible to get a copy of the transcript of the programme (or a list of References)?
Given my geological background and my MA in Environmental Politics, I have written a great deal about Fracking and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) on my blog. However, having started out very much opposed to both Fracking and CCS, my position has evolved as a consequence of ‘exchanges of views’ I had last year with Professor Peter Styles (Keele) and with Professor Robert Mair (Cambridge/Royal Society). As a result of these exchanges – summarised or linked to here on my blog – I would agree with Peter that we probably need shale gas. However, I believe Peter also agrees with me that we probably cannot afford it*. I also understand that the remit of the Royal Society specifically excluded the long-term sustainability implications of pursuing fracking.
Nevertheless, this leaves me wondering whether you could encourage the BBC to do a second programme to address the consequences of humans burning all the Earth’s fossil fuels simply because they are there; and/or the need for ‘Western’ per capita energy consumption to be drastically reduced? Having read David MacKay’s book, Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air, I think our biggest problem is that most people do not think holistically about the problems we face or, even worse, they seem to think concepts such as ‘ecological carrying capacity’ are just eco-Marxist propaganda. However, although it would seem that CCS is now going to be essential in order to minimise anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), I think it is also the biggest obstacle to getting politicians to take decisive action to decarbonise our power generation systems.
Even if such a second Horizon programme is not likely, I remain very appreciative of all you have done – and are doing – to raise the profile of ACD as an Earth Science issue that should be of concern to all.
Kind regards, [etc]
ReBlogged from Lack of Environment: http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/my-final-word-on-fracking/#respond
* If fracking becomes the new energy boom, it is very hard to see how CCS will ever be able to be rolled-out on a global scale to keep pace with unabated CO2 emissions.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY by Friend Nature
Ethiopian military currently uses RAPE as a weapon. Suspected chemical warfare has influenced President Obama in his decision to provide arms to Syria; systematic RAPE by the military in Ethiopia, used as a war tactic, must be considered by President Obama as a CHRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.***
Excerpt from the article by Graham Peebles:
With the international media banned by the Ethiopian government since 2007 and with an economic and aid embargo being enforced the region is totally isolated, making gathering information about the situation within the five affected districts difficult. I recently spent a week in Dadaab where I met dozens of refugees from the Ogaden; men, women and children who repeatedly relayed accounts of murder, rape, torture and intimidation at the hands of government forces. Accounts that if true, – and we have no reason to doubt them, confirm reports from, among others – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Genocide Watch – who make clear their view, that the Ethiopian government has “initiated a genocidal campaign against the Ogaden Somali population”, constituting “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
Related articles
- Ogaden Refugees Fleeing Government Persecution (counterpunch.org)
- Ogaden Refugees Fleeing Government Persecution: Voices From Dadaab (albanytribune.com)
- State Terrorism – Arbitrary Killings, Rape, Torture, and Destruction of Property by Graham Peebles (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
- Ogaden Refugees Fleeing Government Persecution (rinf.com)
- Voices From Dadaab: Ogaden Refugees Fleeing Government Persecution (ramyabdeljabbar.wordpress.com)
- OSA’s Appeal Letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the Conflict in Eastern Oromia, Ethiopia (freedom4oromia.wordpress.com)
- Ethiopian rebel group ends arms struggle, returns home (sudantribune.com)
- World Report 2013 (dagmawitewodros.com)
- Amnesty International 2013 Report: Ethiopia (sebhatamare.wordpress.com)
Ethiopian troops in Gereida (South Darfur) (Photo credit: UNAMID Photo)
This article may contain language depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be read by a mature audience.
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
June 6, 2013
The Ethiopian military and paramilitary forces, operating in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, are, it is alleged, carrying out extra judicial killings and gang rapes; falsely arresting and torturing innocent civilians; looting and destroying villages and crops in a systematic attempt to terrify the people. This is the consistent message coming out of the region and from those who have fled persecution and are now in the world’s largest refugee camp, in Dadaab, Kenya.
View original post 1,515 more words
Whatever your take on the recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there’s no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought. What’s the resulting cost to our privacy — and more so, our democracy? Lawrence Lessig, professor of law and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses the implications of our government’s actions, Edward Snowden’s role in leaking the information, and steps we must take to better protect our privacy.
“Snowden describes agents having the authority to pick and choose who they’re going to be following on the basis of their hunch about what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. This is the worst of both worlds. We have a technology now that gives them access to everything, but a culture if again it’s true that encourages them to be as wide ranging as they can,” Lessig tells Bill. “The question is — are there protections or controls or counter technologies to make sure that when the government gets access to this information they can’t misuse it in all the ways that, you know, anybody who remembers Nixon believes and fears governments might use?”
Few are as knowledgeable about the impact of the Internet on our public and private lives as Lessig, who argues that government needs to protect American rights with the same determination and technological sophistication it uses to invade our privacy and root out terrorists.
“If we don’t have technical measures in place to protect against misuse, this is just a trove of potential misuse…We’ve got to think about the technology as a protector of liberty too. And the government should be implementing technologies to protect our liberties,” Lessig says. “Because if they don’t, we don’t figure out how to build that protection into the technology, it won’t be there.”
“We should recognize in a world of terrorism the government’s going to be out there trying to protect us. But let’s make sure that they’re using tools or technology that also protects the privacy side of what they should be protecting.”
A former conservative who’s now a liberal, Lessig also knows that the caustic impact of money is another weapon capable of mortally wounding democracy. His recent book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, decries a pervasive “dependence corruption” in our government and politics that should sound a desperate alarm for both the Left and the Right. Here, Lessig outlines a radical approach to the problem that uses big money itself to reform big money-powered corruption.
Producer: Gail Ablow. Editor: Rob Kuhns.
Intro Producer: Robert Booth. Intro Editor: Paul Desjarlais.
Photographer: Alton Christensen.
Lawrence Lessig on Government Spying.
Related articles
Photo of Aaron Swartz and Lawrence Lessig at the launch party for Creative Commons at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Technology has exceeded our humanity” (Photo credit: Toban B.)
Who are we as a nation, and what ideals do we represent?
I know that our lives are so busy; family issues, job security, day-to-day survival; I recommend that we speak out while we still can. Will we be willing to trade our freedom’s for security from ‘terrorists’?
Official portrait of NSA director Keith B. Alexander. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
NSA Director Keith Alexander
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Seal of the United States National Security Agency, used between 1963 and 1966 before being replaced by the current seal. The NSA was formed in 1955, but did not have its own seal for several years. This seal was first used in February 1963, before being replaced in September 1966 with the seal used today. The NSA has no information on the origin or design of this seal. For more information, see here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
big brother (Photo credit: Vince_Lamb)
Bill Moyers and Sheldon Wolin 2008 Video I
Bill Moyers and Sheldon Wolin 2008 Video II
***
Wikipedia:
Wolin’s work addresses participatory democracy with primary focus on the United States.
He makes a distinction between democracy as system of governance
and any of the formal political institutions of the state.
In other words,
he decouples democracy from governance
and towards a political system based on democratic principles.
***
Sheldon Wolin
Sheldon S. Wolin (born August 4, 1922) is an American political philosopher and writer
on contemporary politics.
He is currently Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.
His most famous work is Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought.
In 1950, Wolin received his Harvard University doctorate for a dissertation titled Conservatism and Constitutionalism:
A Study in English Constitutional Ideas, 1760–1785. After teaching briefly at Oberlin College,
Wolin taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1954 to 1970.
In a political science department that was largely composed of empirical studies of micro-political issues,
Wolin was a political theorist who managed to build that component of the program by bringing
Norman Jacobson, John Schaar, and Hanna Pitkin into the department.
He was a major supporter and interpreter to the rest of the world
of the theory behind the Free Speech Movement,
and he became a mentor to one of the FSM’s more prominent activists,
Michael Lerner on whose Ph.D. committee he served.
He also published frequently for The New York Review of Books during the 1970s.
From 1973 through 1987, Wolin was Professor of Politics at Princeton University
where he mentored a large number of students
who have subsequently become leading figures in contemporary political theory,
including most notably: at Berkeley, Hanna Pitkin (Emeritus, Berkeley),
J. Peter Euben (Duke University) and Harlan Wilson (Oberlin), and at Princeton, Uday Mehta (Amherst College),
Wendy Brown(Berkeley), Frederick M. Dolan (Emeritus, Berkeley and California College of the Arts),
Dana Villa (Notre Dame), Nicholas Xenos (Massachusetts), Kirstie McClure (UCLA)
and Cornel West (Princeton).
At Princeton, Wolin led a successful faculty effort to pass a resolution urging university trustees
to divest from endowment investment in firms that supported South African apartheid.
Aside from Oberlin, UC Berkeley and Princeton,
Wolin has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, UC Los Angeles, International Christian University (Tokyo, Japan),
Cornell University, and Oxford University.
US President Lyndon Johnson (right) meets with special assistant Bill Moyers in the Oval Office, White House, Washington, DC, 29 November, 1963. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Posted on: 11:03 am, May 23, 2012, by Cary Docter, updated on: 08:53pm, May 23, 2012
The incident occurred in the provincial capital of Talokhan,
in the Bibi Hajera girls school, said Dr. Hafizullah Safi,
the province’s director of public health.
***
Forty of the girls were still hospitalized, he said, with symptoms including
dizziness, vomiting, headaches and loss of consciousness.
***
Blood samples have been sent to Kabul in an effort to determine the substance used, he said.
“A number of girls from 15 to 18 were brought from a school to hospital today,”
said Dr. Habibullah Rostaqi, hospital director.
“Generally they are not in a critical condition.
We are looking after them, but let’s see what happens later.
We understand so far from the situation, they are more traumatized.”
“The Afghan people know that the terrorists and the Taliban
are doing these things to threaten girls and stop them from going to school,”
said Khalilullah Aseer, spokesman for Takhar police.
“That’s something we and the people believe.
Now we are implementing democracy in Afghanistan and we want girls to be educated,
but the government’s enemies don’t want this.”
***
There have been several instances of girls being poisoned in schools in recent years.
***
In April, also in Takhar province, more than 170 women and girls were hospitalized
with suspected poisoning after drinking apparently poisoned well water at a school.
Local health officials blamed the acts on extremists opposed to women’s education.
While nearly all the incidents involve girls,
earlier this month nearly 400 boys at a school in Khost province fell ill
after drinking water from a well that a health official said may have been poisoned.
I will punish the student,” Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak told
a press conference on Tuesday.
***
***
ReBlogged from PRESS INSIDE :http://saccsivdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/80-school-girls-poisoned-in-faryab-province-of-afghanistan/
By SAYED JAWAD – 21 May 2013, 9:36 pm
According to local authorities in northern Faryab province of Afghanistan,
at least 80 school girls were poisoned in Sherin Tagab district on Tuesday.
District chief for Sherin Tagab, Syed Luqman confirming the report said
the school girls belonged to Islam Qala girls school.
Mr. Luqman further added the incident took place after an unknown individual
attacked the compound of the school with toxicant gas,
leaving at least three girls unconscious.
***
He said the number of school girls later increased
to 80 after inhaling the poisonous gas.
This comes as several girls were poisoned in north-eastern Takhar province of Afghanistan last month.
However, education ministry officials denied militants involvement
behind the poisoning of school girls and
called it a psychological issue.
***
Education officials also warned to try
those school girls who ‘claims’ of being poisoned in the future.
Follow Khaama Press (KP) | Afghan Online Newspaper on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook. Stay updated via RSS
***
Yahoo! News Singapore
AFP News – Wed, May 8, 2013
I will punish the student,” Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak told
a press conference on Tuesday.
“From now on, if I find anyone saying ‘I’m poisoned’
and the poisoning is not proved by the hospital,
***
“I will punish the teacher, I will punish the head teacher and
I will punish the school director,” he added.
***
Afghanistan’s education minister
has threatened to punish schoolgirls who
claim to suffer from alleged “poisonings” that many officials
believe are actually temporary psychological illnesses.
***
Scores of girls’ schools over recent years have seen mysterious mass faintings,
nausea and similar symptoms that are often blamed by police and the local media
on poisoning by Taliban insurgents or toxic gas leaks.
But no laboratory evidence of poison or other toxins has ever been found at schools
and no deaths have occurred,
with the girls often released from hospital after only a few hours.
***
In the latest case, 200 girls were reported to have been “poisoned”
at a school in Kabul on May 1,
causing an outbreak of screaming, stomach aches and vomiting.
***
The education department said the government was determined to
crack down on the causes of outbreaks of
‘psychological illnesses among young girls’.
“When one student faints,
it spreads around and everyone might think it’s poisoning,”
Mohammad Kabir Haqmal, spokesman for the ministry, told AFP.
***
“If tests prove it is mass hysteria or any other natural cause,
of course no one will be punished”.
***
What the minister said was that we will pursue those who disrupt the classes.”
***
Wazhma Frouqh, a female education activist,
criticised the minister’s stance and said
that previous cases of “poisonings” had dissuaded families
from sending their daughters to school.
“The minister should not have said that he will punish schoolgirls,”
she told AFP.
“His job is to find out what has happened and protect schools.”
***
Girls were banned from going to school under the Taliban,
but numbers have risen since the extremist regime was ousted in 2001
and the government says 40 percent of pupils are now female.
***
AFP News – Wed, Apr 18, 2012
More than 100 Afghan schoolgirls were taken to hospital Tuesday after
drinking water believed to have been poisoned by opponents
of education for girls, an official said.
“I think some radical elements who oppose girls going to school are behind this act,”
said district governor Mohammad Hussain, adding that police were looking into the incident.
***
The schoolgirls fell ill after drinking water from a tank at their high school
in the small town of Rustaq
in the northeastern province of Takhar, Hussain said.
Education ministry spokesman Abdul Saboor,
however, cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the cause of the incident.
“According to our reports a number of these schoolgirls
were panicked and taken to hospital
and they were then quickly dismissed.
“But some others are still there.
We think it is a small incident,
but we are continuing our investigations.”
***
Afghan girls were banned from going to school or working in offices by the hardline Islamist Taliban
regime until it was overthrown by a US-led invasion in late 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban have since waged an insurgency against the Western-backed government of
President Hamid Karzai and some 130,000 NATO troops in the country.
Millions of girls now go to school,
but they and their teachers are occasionally attacked.
***
Provincial health director Hafizullah Safi said 140 schoolgirls had
been admitted to local health facilities
but most were released after recovering from symptoms which included headache and nausea.
“Most of the schoolgirls who were brought to the hospital after falling ill have been dismissed,
the other girls in the hospital are in stable condition,” he said.
In similar cases last year hundreds of girl students were taken to hospitals across the country
after falling ill from suspected gas attacks or water poisoning.
Authorities at the time mostly blamed the Taliban,
though some suggested that the cause might have been mass hysteria,
‘a phenomenon recorded around the world, often among young girls’.
***
Also printed in the New Zealand Herald : http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10799685
***
ReBlogged from Morning Cup O’ Joe: http://morningcupojoe.com/2010/06/29/afghanistan-school-for-girls/
In Afghanistan from 2006 to 2008, there were 461 attacks on schools for girls,
and in 2008,
15 girls were attacked with battery acid on their way to school.
***
Afghan Schoolchildren in Kabul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles
Afghanistan34P-Takhar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Below is an email from Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Courage Campaign. Congresswoman Speier started a petition on the MoveOn website, where anyone can start their own online petition.
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Dear MoveOn member,
Sexual violence in the U.S. military is a crisis.The Pentagon estimates that sexual assaults increased from 19,000 in 2011 to 26,000 in 2012. That’s 71 sexual assaults EVERY DAY, and in roughly 56% of cases, the victims are men.
Making matters worse, each branch of the armed forces has its own judicial system, and it’s currently legal for base commanders to overturn a jury’s guilty verdict, as happened at Aviano Air Force Base in February 2013.
The STOP (Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Prevention) Act takes the prosecution, reporting, oversight, investigation, and victim care of sexual assaults out of the normal military chain of command—which has proven grossly ineffective—and places jurisdiction in an autonomous Sexual Assault Oversight and Response Office.
That’s why I started a petition to the United States Congress, which says:
I stand with Congresswoman Jackie Speier in support of the Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Prevention Act (STOP Act) to end military rape.
Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.
Thanks!
–Congresswoman Jackie Speier
This petition was created by the Courage Campaign on on MoveOn Petitions Political Action Edition, which is licensed to and paid for by MoveOn.org Political Action. We are not responsible for the contents of this or other petitions posted on the site. The Courage Campaign didn’t pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell the MoveOn.org list.
Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 8 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
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Friend Nature: Artist D.A. Hartley 