THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

.

.
Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Saturday, May 22, 2010

From the Art of Marcus Gray

Bernanke, the man who depreciates our money

National Journal, first published: 22/02/2010

Benjamin Shalom Bernanke
"The man who depreciates our money"
"The so-called financial crisis is systemic"
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/7273332/Darius-Guppy-our-world-balances-on-a-sea-of-debt.html
Darius Guppy: our world balances on a sea of debt

What is needed is a root and branch re-evaluation of that most curious of cultural inventions – money, argues Darius Guppy.

Published: Telegraph, London, 12:03AM GMT 21 Feb 2010
In the year 1994 there resided in the cell next to mine a certain ‘Tommy.’
Benjamin Shalom Bernanke is "Mr. Inflation"
"Mr. Inflation. The man who depreciates our money," reads the title of Focus magazine (Germany) on 25 January 2010. Needless to say that the Hebrew Bernanke heads the private Jewish institution, called "Federeal Reserve" (FED) in the US.
Now Tommy had been imprisoned for counterfeiting Dutch Guilders to such a high standard that he had fooled the banks themselves.
As was customary among prisoners who became friends, Tommy allowed me to read his legal papers and I quickly became fascinated by the Judge’s sentencing speech, the gist of which was that Tommy’s activities had been parasitical. By creating money out of little more than thin air he had reduced the purchasing power of more deserving members of society. What would happen if everyone behaved like him?
Immediately I thought of arguments used, in a different context, by Thatcherites and neo-liberals in general regarding inflation. Inflation, just like counterfeiting, dilutes the value of the community’s hard-earned wealth and as such constitutes a terrible social evil. Creating too much money - ‘real’, just as much as ‘fake’ - can wreck an economy. Such indeed was the reasoning of the Nazis when, during World War Two they came up with a plan – that came close to implementation - to ruin Britain’s economy by flooding the country with near perfect counterfeit bills.
A lot of nonsense has been written and said about the world’s current economic woes - how the crash is the fault solely of the banks and how, by implication, Governments are blameless and in particular how it could all have been avoided and will indeed be made right by greater financial regulation, and so on. All of which constitutes a classic example of what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre terms “the fallacy of managerial expertise”: an attempt by ‘experts’ to blind us with science in order to justify their own over-paid existences and mask their confusion.
After all, if they had been so skilled, then why is it that not one of them - either politician or finance minister or financial journalist or just plain financier - was able to predict the current debacle?
These ‘experts’ will tell you that the present difficulties are simply the result of abuses and excesses in a system that is basically sound. In short, all that is required is for some faults to be corrected. But do not believe them. For the reality is that the problem is systemic and a little tinkering here or there will achieve nothing in the long term.
In fact, what is needed is a root and branch re-evaluation of that most curious of cultural inventions – money – how it is created, how it circulates within an economy and how it can best be used to serve the interests of the community itself.
To begin then, the experts owe it to the people to explain to them in the simplest terms how it is that money actually works.
Such is the task I propose to undertake in this essay and for this it seems to me that the layman must grasp two fundamental concepts above all others:
First, that the confusion should not be made between ‘legal tender’ and ‘money’ as a whole. In particular, were one to ask the man on the street - indeed were one to ask most politicians and even most bankers - who it is that actually creates the money which rules our lives they would no doubt reply “the State.”
And in this they would be wrong.
For while it is true that Governments create legal tender – which is to say the physical notes and coins that circulate in an economy – that legal tender represents, at its absolute highest, only 3 per cent of the total money in circulation in the global economy. It is in fact the commercial banks, largely unaccountable and privately owned, that create the world’s money in the manner I will describe below.
Indeed, even were Tommy responsible for printing every single note in circulation throughout the world his power to dilute the rest of our wealth would amount to only a tiny fraction of that of the real manufacturers of money - which leads us to the second most fundamental point of all - that the activities of my friend Tommy and the activities of the bankers are in essence identical: the creation of money – which is to say claims on the rest of us - out of nothing.
Without knowing it, therefore, Tommy’s judge punished him for usurping not so much the role of the State as the role of the banks.
More to the point, the very same mistake – namely the mis-identification of where money truly originates - has been made by virtually all our politicians, economists and financial commentators.
Consider the absurd contradiction at the heart of neo-liberal, Monetarist, Thatcherite economics which has constituted the Western orthodoxy for the past few decades: to emphasise on the one hand that the money supply should be brought under control whilst simultaneously allowing banking – where the money is actually manufactured – to run riot!
To grasp how the global fraud works we will need to step back in time and imagine ourselves next to the original goldsmith-banker.
Now our goldsmith-banker has a vault in his business premises and in this vault ten of his customers each deposits a bar of gold weighing 1 kilogram - for safekeeping and in the hope of a return for lending our banker their gold and thereby depriving themselves of the benefits they would enjoy had they elected to spend their wealth now.
Classical economic theory would have it that our banker fulfils a useful social function – namely bringing together those who have a surplus of money with those who have a deficit but who, despite this, nevertheless have the energy, work ethic and vision to make a profit for all concerned out of this union. In short, our banker lends the ten gold bars in his vault to certain of his other customers who in turn use this wealth to embark on profitable ventures, ventures that generate a surplus by the end of year one. Happily, the vault now contains eleven gold bars out of which our banker can pay his depositors and himself a reasonable return.
This process, which for obvious reasons depends first and foremost upon economic ‘growth’, continues apace and is refined, at least to begin with, in ways that appear eminently logical. In particular, our banker soon questions the wisdom of keeping all the gold bars in his vault where security is a concern. Likewise, the procedure of having to descend to the vault and withdraw the gold bars and transport them to different parts of the country and carve them up into smaller units becomes too burdensome. The picture is further complicated when one appreciates that by now thousands of banks have sprung up all over the place and have begun to lend to each other.
At this point therefore he comes up with an idea – to create a token, a token in itself valueless, such as a piece of paper, that will represent a given quantity of the gold either in his own vault or held to his account at some giant, more secure vault – a precursor to Fort Knox if you like. Such a token can then be circulated and exchanged within the economy in a manner that is relatively hassle-free. Historians credit one of the first examples of such an instrument – the cheque – to the Knights Templar. In this way, a pilgrim could encash a cheque drawn on a European preceptory at a Templar branch in the Holy Land.
So far so good. And good it remains just so long as for the face value of each of the pieces of paper in circulation there exists a corresponding amount of gold sitting in a vault somewhere that can be accessed in the real world.
At this juncture therefore the virtual and real economies are able to advance pretty much in lock-step.
However, it is at this precise point that something truly wondrous and truly diabolical occurs.
For our banker and his banker friends make an imaginative leap.
Experience has taught them that the bearers of the pieces of paper which they have created rarely attempt to claim the gold their paper – or their ‘money’ - represents en masse.
Our banker reasons thus: “just so long as the pieces of paper that my friends and I have put into circulation are not encashed simultaneously then it is largely academic how many such pieces we create. If, for example, we have 1 kilogram of gold in our vaults and we issue ten pieces of paper to ten different clients each with a face value equivalent to that 1 kilogram, then so long as two people do not come to the bank on the same day demanding their gold we will be able to keep out of trouble.”
Clearly, the most crucial part of our scheme is to create a culture of confidence. The bearers of our pieces of paper must feel secure about our ability to convert their paper back into their gold, orreal wealth. Best therefore to give names to our institutions such as ‘prudential’, ‘guarantee’, ‘trust’, ‘security’, ‘fidelity’ and so on.”
The reader will appreciate the beauty of the scheme: for now, instead of earning interest on a single piece of paper our banker can earn interest on ten such pieces of paper! Moreover, whilst charging interest on these ten pieces of paper, he has only to pay out a reduced rate of interest on the single gold bar that has been deposited with him!
And, incredibly, this is indeed exactly what happens.
Currently the average fractional reserve requirements for banks amount to under 10% which means that for every dollar (or equivalent) the banks have on deposit they can lend out at least ten such dollars – virtual dollars which they summon from nowhere – and on which they charge interest.
Just as incredibly, this fact – the key to understanding how the international financial system actually operates and why the world is in such a mess – is discussed virtually nowhere in mainstream circles: not in The Financial Times, not in The Economist, not in the broadsheets, not in Parliament, not in the City and not in the economics departments of most Universities.
Either the process is unknown in these circles therefore - a sign of mediocrity - or it is indeed understood but kept deliberately quiet - a sign of wickedness.
Let me repeat: supposedly ‘sovereign’ Governments – representative of their people, at least in theory – do not control the single most important mechanism when it comes to their economies: namely the production and distribution of money. That role has been diverted in large measure to the banks which manufacture money out of nothing and charge interest on that conjured-up money. In fact, beyond a pathetic interest rate cut here and a token cut in VAT rates there our politicians have zero real power when it comes to directing their country’s economy.
Only in a world of lies and illusions, a world in which actors become our leaders and our heroes, could such sorcery be possible.
The picture has of course become a great deal more complicated. Soon pieces of paper are no longer required and instead entries on a bank’s ledger will suffice. Eventually, a further layer of virtuality is added when computers emerge and with them credits in cyberspace. Likewise all sorts of financial instruments and ‘products’ are devised by the experts – Collateralised Mortgage Obligations, Put and Call Options, Floating Rate Notes, Preference Shares, Convertible Bonds, Semi-Convertible Bonds and endless other ‘derivatives’ – but in essence these additions constitute mere variations of the same basic Three Card Trick.
Moreover, the illusion becomes self-reinforcing. Those involved in the process, sitting behind their computer screens, shuttled from one air-conditioned capsule to another, stressed by the pressure and the volatility of the hallucinogenic nightmare they inhabit, yet sheltered from the tactile realities of the outside world, no longer control the beast they have created. How far removed from the days when wheat landed on the docks and merchants met in coffee houses and bazaars to haggle over things they could feel.
Now it may be argued that while it is true that money is manufactured in the manner I have just described – in other words by creating loans to the banks’ clients – surely just as much money is destroyed every time a loan is repaid? This is true to an extent. However, the point to be grasped is that while money is indeed created and destroyed in vast amounts every second of the day, the interest on that money remains un-destroyed and accumulates within the system – and at a compounded rate, moreover.
The reader will appreciate the problem and how it is that the process described is far more inflationary and far more parasitical than the activities of all the Tommys in the world put together. For while that money, which by now has mutated into a vast mutual-indebtedness monster, grows exponentially, the wealth it is supposed to represent cannot grow at the same pace for very long. In short, while there is no limit to the number of zeros we can create on a computer – zeros which represent claims on us and on what we own - there is a very real limit to the amount of oil in the ground, the amount of wheat in the fields and the amount of livestock in our farms.
Granted, the discovery of a continent here, a technological invention there and an increase in efficiency somewhere else can accommodate the growth in the real economy that is required to keep pace with the growth in the virtual one, but only to a point – which is of course precisely why the economic explosion begins with the discovery and opening up of just such continents from the early 16th Century on and is reinforced with the advent of the industrial revolution. Capitalism, banking and growth become inseparable, but in a world bounded by the real, logic dictates that the virtual economy must eventually peel away from the real one and sooner or later the day of reckoning arrives - when the gulf that separates these two economies is too large to be sustained - for no power on earth can match the power of compound interest in the ether.
Consider the well-known tale of the Chinese Emperor and his opponent at a game of chess to whom the Emperor asks what reward would satisfy him in the event his victory. The opponent, his subject, replies that a single grain of wheat, doubled for each of the 64 squares on the chess board, would suffice. The Emperor, imagining that he has a good deal, plays on and loses, only to learn that he now owes his adversary the equivalent of 2000 times the current annual worldwide production of wheat.
Such are the miracles of compound growth. Such too is the reason why financiers have been able to award themselves increasingly astronomical sums. For their virtual printing presses are calibrated to an exponential production while no such calibration applies to Mother Earth.
It was the 1921 winner of a Nobel Prize for Chemistry and not for Economics, Frederick Soddy, who was among the first to articulate the mechanism by which money is created by the banks and how it mutates into debt in the ways I have described and his arguments have been developed over the years by thinkers such as Herman Daly and Richard Douthwaite.
In fact, the reasoning can be extended to cover not only bankers but the financial sector as a whole. A company makes a certain profit; a multiple of many times can be applied to that figure to arrive at a ‘value’ for that company (the price-earnings ratio) – based, as ever, on the assumption of future growth. That value can then be leveraged yet further for it to raise debt against its share price and so on and so forth. Taken to ever more ethereal extremes, such super-ovulation can mean that a single company with nothing more than an idea to be applied to the internet and a turnover less than your average Fish ‘n Chips can create yet more tokens – share certificates - worth several times the entire annual production of diamonds for the continent of Africa, a process known, retrospectively, as the dotcom bubble.
There are a couple of features which should be immediately apparent.

First, such a system constitutes in effect a redistribution mechanism from the poor to the rich which is of course precisely why the banks and Western Governments are so desperate to ensure its survival and the hegemony which results from it.
Money breeds more money and develops a quality akin to matter – the larger the agglomerations, the greater their gravitational pull or, as the Bible puts it: “unto he that hath shall be rendered and from he that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath.”
Indeed, contrary to what they may tell you, the banks never really want their loans to be repaid at all. Just so long as the interest is funded it is in fact to their benefit for the capital to remain outstanding on their books as ‘assets’ and for the debts to be rolled over. Every time the IMF or World Bank extends a line of credit to some impoverished nation, are they being ‘charitable’ therefore or are they simply perpetuating the enslavement?
Second, such a system relies entirely, as do all Ponzi schemes, on the assumption of continued growth, hence its inherent instability. Once that growth is threatened the edifice collapses. Householders in Britain today will appreciate such a phenomenon – the result of ‘leverage’ - only too well: put up 10 per cent for a property and borrow the rest from the bank. That property’s value need rise by only 10 per cent and you have doubled your equity. But on the flip side that value need fall by only 10 percent and you are wiped out.
Which in turn explains precisely why a contraction of a mere 2 or 3 percent in the global economy leads not to a correspondingly minute fall on international stock markets, but to financial Armageddon.
Likewise with the banks – lend ten times more money than you possess and when the economy grows – or at least pretends to grow – Porsches galore, but when the lack of growth is exposed it requires only 11% of the loans on your books (in value terms) to be bad and you are bust. The truth is not that these institutions have suddenly become insolvent therefore, but thatthey were never really solvent in the first place since the assumptions on which they were founded could not apply in the real world. Simple false-accounting has meant that by rolling over their debts they have been able to keep them on their books as ‘assets’ rather than losses and forestall the evil hour.
There is an overarching name for the process I have outlined – ‘usury’ - and our predecessors from the Ancient and Medieval worlds appear to have appreciated much better than us its ultimate destination: ruin.
In sum, I have argued that both the analyses of the current economic crisis and the sticky-plaster remedies advanced by politicians, financial journalists and the financial industry itself to counter that crisis are woefully inadequate because they fail to grasp what is in fact a simple anddevastatingly effective swindle, a swindle largely invisible because it has become so deeply embedded in our culture.
The consequences of that swindle, in particular the desperate need for economic growth, the consumption, wastage, and the environmental and cultural despoliation which it engenders, together with some possible antidotes worthy of consideration, must be dealt with separately.
In the interim, suffice to say that some original and radical thinking, the type of thinking one encounters nowhere in any of the political parties, will be required.
Readers of the Telegraph in particular should take note - a degree in PPE or History and a few A-Levels in the Bleedin’ Obvious will not make the problems go away.

Oil threat to florida Keys


The Biggest Eco Disaster In History

This Is Just The Top Light Oil

The Heavy Oil Is Sitting On The Sea Floor






This Will Wreck The Louisiana And Florida Coast Lines

Louisiana's Multi Cultural Governor Keeps His Mouth Shut



 
This Is A Disaster Of Biblical Proportions
What happened is that some greedy Zionists drilled a well at uncharted depths, and were too cheap to follow procedures. Once you have drilled through the mud and hit rock, you install a well-head before you drill through the rock and on to the oil.
Next these incompetents had the well blow up, and just lied about the oil volume (five times what they reported). Because the oil is heavy crude, it is sinking to the ocean bottom, and wrecking the Gulf's shrimping, oyster, and fishing industry. Now it heads to the Keys, and turn that paradise into ghetto. Next, it goes up the Florida east coast, and wrecks those beaches. Finally it goes out to sea and heads towards Europe.
 
  
Where Is The US Navy?
Why hasn't the US Navy been brought in to contain the spill?
  
His Holiness Reverend Jacob Judicial
I have received many emails saying this may not have been an accident. Looking at the lack of Government response makes one wonder.
  

EDUCATION/USA:Lunatics in Charge

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/hbd-human-biodiversity/lunatics-in-charge/
Thursday, 20 May 2010

Lunatics in Charge


By Steve Burton


At the website of the National Association of Scholars, an anonymous victim of the educationist racketexplains much of what you need to know about why Johnny can't read, write, or calculate (without a calculator). Briefly, it's because teacher's training today is totally controlled by mad folk.
His remarks are "based on a public lecture that the author presented to students interested in issues of campus free speech":
"First, you have to understand that educational policy is consumed by the achievement gap, which is the disparity between groups of students on most educational measures...I don't just mean that this is the number one priority. It's the only priority...Nothing else matters. No Child Left Behind was entirely about the achievement gap and measuring schools to see if they'd closed it. Obama's Race to the Top is just another take...again, focusing on testing and this time holding teachers responsible if they can't get low-performing students to improve."
And, second, you have to understand that, in ed-school, there's only one permissible take on "the achievement gap, its cause and solution" - i.e., "the progressive view...which holds that social injustice, institutionalized racism, white prejudice, and other societal ills cause the achievement gap." Express any doubt on that point - even to the rather timid extent of suggesting, along with those horrid right-wing extremists, the Thernstroms, that differing cultural values may play some role here - and the sociopaths who run the place will do everything in their power to destroy you. Fortunately, in the author's case, they didn't quite succeed (though they did frighten him into anonymity).
So what do our progressive educational overlords really want? They "want to fix the achievement gap by moving underachieving students closer to high-achieving students...who will model desirable behavior..." I.e., for these people, unless your child is an underperforming member of one of the officially approved minorities, they really couldn't care less about what's best for him. So far as they're concerned, his only use is to sit next to the previously mentioned under-achievers in class and to "model desirable behavior" for them. And if, instead, it's the bad habits of the underachievers that end up rubbing off on the better students? No problem. There's more than one way to reduce an achievement gap.

The Lebanese village's justice


Residents of Ketermaya stand next to a poster showing the a murder victim's bodyIn Ketermaya many residents believe vengeance to be the same as justice
At the end of April, Rana, who is a teacher, returned from work to find her house covered in blood.
They killed an innocent man, a man who was not proven guilty by a court of law
Omar NashabeAl-Akhbar newspaperΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΜΑΓΚΑ ΜΟΥ, ΘΑΒΡΙΣΚΑΝ ΤΗΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΤΑ ΔΙΚΑΣΤΗΡΙΑ (ΤΑ ΞΕΠΟΥΛΗΜΕΝΑ) ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΤΕΧΝΑΣΜΑΤΑ ΤΩΝ ΣΥΝΗΓΟΡΩΝ ΚΑΙ Η ΚΑΤΑΡΓΗΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΘΑΝΑΤΙΚΗΣ ΠΟΙΝΗΣ ΚΑΙ Η ΖΩΗ ΧΑΡΙΣΑΜΕΝΗ ΤΗΣ ΦΥΛΑΚΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΔΙΑΜΑΡΤΥΡΙΕΣ ΟΤΙ ΠΡΕΠΕΙ ΝΑΧΕΙ ΑΚΟΜΗ ΚΑΛΥΤΕΡΕΣ ΣΥΝΘΗΚΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΙΣΟΒΙΑ ΠΟΥΝΑΙ ΜΙΑ 5ΕΤΙΑ ΤΟ ΠΟΛΥ!
She first saw the mutilated bodies of her elderly father Youssef and her mother Kawthar, then she found her daughters, nine-year-old Zeina and seven-year-old Mony.
Both were dead. Zeina had been stabbed 27 times.
This was the most brutal murder in living memory in Ketermaya, Rana's sleepy home village in the Chouf Mountains south of Beirut.
But it was not the crime, it was the punishment that shocked the rest of Lebanon.
Confession
Hours after the murder, police arrested a suspect, Rana's neighbour, an Egyptian man who worked as a butcher in the village.
Rana Abu MerhiRana discovered two generations of her family murdered
Mohammed Muslem, 38, already had a criminal record and according to the police, after a night in custody he confessed to killing the family.
The next morning, as thousands of villagers gathered for the funerals, a police car carrying the suspect and several policemen appeared in the streets.
Police would later explain that as part of the investigation they wanted Mr Muslem to re-enact the murder at the crime scene.
The crowd stopped the car and dragged Mr Muslem out.
Mob rule
He was severely beaten, but police got him back and even managed to take him to the local hospital.
The mob followed. They snatched him and brought him back onto the streets.
Residents of Ketermaya take pictures of the hanging body of Mr Muslem (photo from 29 April 2010)Witnesses took pictures of the hanging corpse
By then, villagers say, the policemen were all gone.
Clear mobile footage, which has been widely distributed in Lebanon, provided a detailed account of what happened next.
The crowd chanted, as they watched a group of young men stab the butcher to death.
His body, stripped down to his underpants, was tied to the front of a car and paraded through the streets.
Once they reached the centre of the village, the young men raised the body and hanged it from a meat hook attached to a post.
'Like a judge'
"They killed an innocent man, a man who was not proven guilty by a court of law, who never had an opportunity to defend himself," says Omar Nashabe, the editor of the legal pages at Lebanese daily al-Akhbar and a well-known criminal justice expert.
Map
According to Mr Nashabe neither Mr Muslem's alleged confession nor subsequent DNA tests that revealed the victims' blood on his T-shirt can justify what happened.
"In this case, the police seem to have acted like a judge. Violation of the presumption of innocence is a continuous problem in Lebanon, but this is just one side of the Ketermaya incident," he says.
There was, he argues, no procedural reason to take the suspect to the crime scene, especially at the time when angry residents were outside.
Rule of law
Many in Lebanon say they want the government to explain who took the decision to take Mr Muslem back and why the police failed to provide adequate protection to a person in their custody.
If they want to arrest us, they will have to arrest the entire village - we killed him together
Resident of Ketermaya
"It's indicative of the erosion of rule of law in this country and it's a huge test for the Lebanese authorities," says Nadim Khoury of Human Rights Watch.
"Will the government be able to explain the police actions? Will they conduct a transparent investigation? We are waiting for the answers," he adds.
Politicians have promised to act.
From the president down, Lebanon's leaders have spoken about their shock and vowed to investigate the crime.
Suspensions
Several youths who participated in the lynching have now been arrested. The country's Justice Minister, Ibrahim Najarr says it's a sign that the government is taking the case seriously.
A crowd in KetermayaVillagers pay their respects to the Abu Merhi family at the village cemetery
Mr Najjar said the Interior Ministry had already investigated the actions of the police and taken the "necessary measures".
Mr Najjar refused to elaborate, but sources say the measures consisted of a 10-day suspension of two policemen.
Nobody has been sacked, no-one has resigned.
The BBC contacted the Interior Ministry for the official account of the results of their internal investigation but it refused to comment.
In Ketermaya, windows of shops are decorated with copies of a statement in which residents thank the authorities and the police for allowing justice to take place.
Next to them hang gruesome pictures of the mutilated bodies of Rana's family members.
The villagers are anxious, nervous and at the same time defiant about what happened.
'Wake-up'
"Its not our fault, it's the police. They are the ones who brought him back," said one man.
"If they want to arrest us, they will have to arrest the entire village. We killed him together," said another. Neither wanted to be identified.
"I think above all what happened in Ketermaya shows the extent of the collapse of the authority of the state, it shows that we are going thought a serious crisis," says Omar Nashabe.
"The whole criminal justice sector is in ruins, and no-one is trying to rebuild it. This incident should be a wake-up call for politicians, a reminder that we need a system in which the state and procedures are respected, in which it's not up to the police to condemn a suspect," he says
However, the man in charge of Lebanon's justice system disagrees.
"Justice in Lebanon exists. We have judges, we have tribunals, we have credibility," says Mr Najjar.
He says it's important to investigate the incident, but he also calls it an isolated case which could have happened in any country and which is not indicative of wider problems.
[ΣΤΟ ΧΩΡΙΟ ΑΥΤΟ ΑΠΕΔΕΙΞΑΝ ΟΤΙ ΑΚΟΜΗ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΕΙ Η ΟΝΤΟΤΗΣ "ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ" ΚΑΙ ΑΥΤΟ ΕΝΟΧΛΕΙ ΟΛΟΥΣ ΑΥΤΟΥΣ ΠΟΥ ΘΕΛΟΥΝ ΝΑ ΓΙΝΗ ΟΛΟΣ Ο ΚΟΣΜΟΣ ΟΠΩΣ ΚΑΤΗΝΤΗΣΑΝ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ! ΝΑ ΣΕ ΣΚΟΤΩΝΗ, ΝΑ ΣΕ ΒΙΑΖΗ, ΝΑ ΣΕ ΛΗΣΤΕΥΗ, ΤΟ ΚΑΘΕ ΚΑΤΑΚΑΘΙ ΤΗΣ ΥΦΗΛΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΝΑ ΛΕΣ (ΟΠΩΣ ΕΙΠΕ Ο ΚΑΤΟΙΚΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΑΓ.  ΠΑΝΤΕΛΕΗΜΟΝΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΤΗΛΕΟΡΑΣΗ) "ΝΑΙ, ΒΙΑΣΑΝΕ ΤΗΝ ΚΟΡΗ ΜΟΥ ΤΡΕΙΣ ΦΟΡΕΣ ΟΙ ΠΑΚΙΣΤΑΝΟΙ, ΑΛΛΑ ΔΕΝ ΗΜΑΣΤΕ ΡΑΤΣΙΣΤΕΣ!"--ΟΧΙ ΔΕΝ ΕΙΣΑΙ ΡΑΤΣΙΣΤΗΣ, ΕΙΣΑΙ ΤΟ ΠΙΟ ΕΚΦΥΛΙΣΜΕΝΟ ΑΝΙΜΑΛΙΟ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ ΟΛΟΥ!!! Η ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ ΔΕΝ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΡΑΤΣΙΣΤΕΣ, ΕΙΝΑΙ ΑΠΛΩΣ ΑΠΟΧΑΥΝΩΜΕΝΑ ΑΝΙΜΑΛΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΜΙΑ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ ΠΟΥ ΠΕΘΑΙΝΕΙ ΑΤΙΜΩΤΙΚΑ ΜΕΣΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΧΛΕΥΗ ΤΩΝ ΕΧΘΡΩΝ ΤΗΣ!]

Oil spill in Gulf of Mexico map


Oil spill in Gulf of Mexico map


Approximate oil locations 15 May

Texas schools to get controversial syllabus



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10141121.stm

Texas schools to get controversial syllabus







Page last updated at 0:03 GMT, Saturday, 22 May 2010 1:03 UK
Students in a classroom (file image)Texas' decisions could influence curriculums across the US
Education officials in the US state of Texas have adopted new guidelines to the school curriculum, which critics say will politicise teaching.
The changes include teaching that the UN could be a threat to American freedom, and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.
Critics say the changes are ideological and distort history.
However, proponents argue they are redressing a liberal bias in education.
Analysts say Texas, with five million schoolchildren, wields substantial influence on school curriculums across the US.
The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani in Los Angeles says publishers of textbooks used nationally often print what Texas wants to teach.
Jefferson out
Students in Texas will now be taught the benefits of US free-market economics and how government taxation can harm economic progress.
They will study how American ideals benefit the world but organisations such as the UN could be a threat to personal freedom.
And Thomas Jefferson has been dropped from a list of enlightenment thinkers in the world-history curriculum, despite being one of the Founding Fathers who is credited with developing the idea that church and state should be separate.
The doctrine has become a cornerstone of US government, but some religious groups and some members of the Texas Education Board disagree, our correspondent says.
The board, which is dominated by Christian conservatives, voted nine-to-five in favour of adopting the new curriculum for both primary and secondary schools.
But during the discussions some of the most controversial ideas were dropped - including a proposal to refer to the slave trade as the "Atlantic triangular trade".
Opponents of the changes worry that textbooks sold in other states will be written to comply with the new Texas standards, meaning that the alterations could have an impact on curriculums nationwide.