Scores (a strip club) raised the funds at an Aug. 23 back-to-school event called "Detention" that featured strippers dressed as teachers, schoolgirls and librarians.
This isn't what the environmentalist zealots want to hear, especially from an MIT meteorology professor. And I like the Globe reporter's comment about stifling opposing viewpoints:
Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.``We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as ``the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," ``the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and ``Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."
He's smart. He's an effective debater. No wonder the Steve Schneiders and Al Gores of the world don't want you to hear from him. It's easier to call someone a shill and accuse him of corruption than to debate him on the merits.
Climate statistics show that, with all the "global warming" hysteria today, our temperatures are still not as high as they were back in medieval times. Those medieval folks must have been driving a lot of cars and SUVs.
Buffalo Affiliation with NYSUT in Serious Doubt. This Friday, September 1, there will be only one statewide teachers' union in New York, and NEA New York will cease to exist. At that point its largest local, the Buffalo Teachers Federation (BTF) will be in legal and administrative limbo, because it has yet to declare its intentions regarding affiliation with the merged New York State United Teachers (NYSUT).
Negotiations between BTF President Phil Rumore and top officials at NYSUT continued all summer and were largely cordial. In the past few weeks, however, the mood has gotten more and more combative, to the point where Buffalo's affiliation with NYSUT now has to be considered less than a 50-50 proposition.
The issues and personalities defy quick summary, but it is clear that BTF wants more services from the huge, merged NYSUT than it was getting from financial basket case NEA New York. BTF also wants a measure of autonomy when it comes to PAC recommendations and funding.
BTF plans what seems to be a rank-and-file vote for next month on affiliation, but this alone has caused tensions with NYSUT. NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi informed Rumore that the state union would "communicate with your membership" prior to the vote about the advantages of affiliation. Rumore doesn't want NYSUT campaigning for affiliation in Buffalo.
Communications between the two sides have become more and more strained, with NYSUT warning about the "isolation of BTF and its members from the rest of the education union community," and BTF characterizing such statements as "not-so-veiled threats."
Rumore was able to make some veiled threats of his own. In delineating all the services BTF would be able to provide its members if it wasn't sending dues money to NYSUT, AFT and NEA, Rumore noted that his union "would no doubt be able to place $500,000 - $700,000 per year in our reserves for future contingencies." Such "future contingencies," EIA believes, surely include any attempted raiding by NYSUT.
Obviously those folks in Buffalo are pretty smart, as I've been recommending just such an action in my own local union for years. Follow along:
I recently attended an advance screening of ABC’s outstanding, epic miniseries "The Path to 9/11" (airing this September 10-11), and I came away enormously impressed. Writer/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh ("Into the West"), director David Cunningham ("To End All Wars"), and the whole production team have done a magnificent job in presenting the complex events leading up to 9/11 with accuracy, fairness, and artistry...
Let me start by saying that "The Path to 9/11" is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible.
This is the first Hollywood production I’ve seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden. One astonishing sequence in "The Path to 9/11" shows the CIA and the Northern Alliance surrounding Bin Laden’s house in Afghanistan. They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in essence tells the team in Afghanistan that if they want to capture Bin Laden, they'll have to go ahead and do it on their own without any official authorization. That way, their necks will be on the line - and not his. The astonished CIA agent on the ground in Afghanistan repeatedly asks Berger if this is really what the administration wants. Berger refuses to answer, and then finally just hangs up on the agent. The CIA team and the Northern Alliance, just a few feet from capturing Bin Laden, have to abandon the entire mission. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shortly thereafter bomb the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing over 225 men, women, and children, and wounding over 4000. The episode is a perfect example of Clinton-era irresponsibility and incompetence. (boldface mine--Darren)
Apparently, the documentary recounts the bureaucratic bungling and lack of action against al Qaeda that was pervasive prior to the September 11 atrocities. It is by no means, I understand, pro-Bush. It is, instead, an effort to present history accurately. This evidently has many former Clinton officials and apologists in their default kill-the-messenger mode. Great pressure is being brought to bear on ABC and Disney to reopen the editorial process at this late stage (the documentary is supposed to air on September 10-11) so that the years 1993-2001 may remain forever airbrushed.
Teachers at the private Oakland elementary school have stopped asking the children to line up according to sex when walking to and from class. They now let boys play girls and girls play boys in skits. And there's a unisex bathroom.
Park Day's gender-neutral metamorphosis happened over the past few years, as applications trickled in for kindergartners who didn't fit on either side of the gender line. One girl enrolled as a boy, and there were other children who didn't dress or act in gender-typical ways. Last year the school hired a consultant to help the staff accommodate these new students.
"We had to ask ourselves, what is gender for young children?" Hodes said. "It's coming up more and more."
For some children, it's a passing phase. Some grow up to be heterosexual, some gay. Some children insist they are the opposite sex although they might have a hard time explaining it. One nurse therapist said a boy once told her, "I think I swallowed a girl."
"The point is we don't know the outcome and don't need to know," said Catherine Tuerk, who runs the gender variance outreach program at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., considered a leader in the field.
Odiaga speaks from a decade of experience counseling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens who she says are scarred by early memories -- a daughter forced to dress like a girl or a son whose dad hit him when he refused to play sports.
Gender variance is an especially touchy topic when young children are the subjects. The Traditional Values Coalition calls efforts to accommodate these kids "normalizing the abnormal."
The group's executive director, Andrea Lafferty, said gender variance is a Bay Area phenomenon.
"If you talk to your typical person across America, they would be appalled," she said. "God made us male and female, and God makes no mistakes. To teach a child at an early age self-hatred, and that's what this gender variance is, is very sad."
Then again, sometimes the religious folks make it easy for the left. I mean, seriously. Of course God makes no mistakes. But he allows people to be born with heart defects all the time. That's not a "mistake", that's the reality of the human condition. So is this gender issue, probably, but not to the degree that it's raised to in the Chron article.
Apparently the UN can't please anyone these days.
Is the Israeli flag also upside down on this sign, or just the American?
History buffs, students and teachers: Bookmark this site -- www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu.My cursory look is pretty favorable.The University of California has downloaded 150,000 historical photographs, documents, political cartoons, works of art, diaries and transcribed oral histories on a new Web site called Calisphere. The site is free and open to the public.
Ex-teacher gets 15 years for aiding terror group
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 26, 2006
A federal judge yesterday sentenced a former third-grade teacher at a Muslim school in Maryland to 15 years in prison for providing support to a terrorist organization known as the "Virginia jihad network," which used paintball games to train for a holy war.
The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq.How does this rate compare with that in other groups? One meaningful comparison is to the civilian population of the United States. That rate was 8.42 per 1,000 in 2003, more than twice that for military personnel in Iraq.
The comparison is imperfect, of course, because a much higher fraction of the American population is elderly and subject to higher death rates from degenerative diseases. The death rate for U.S. men ages 18 to 39 in 2003 was 1.53 per 1,000 -- 39 percent of that of troops in Iraq. But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil. The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.
The death rate of American troops in Vietnam was 5.6 times that observed in Iraq...
In both the Army and the Marines, enlisted personnel have 40 percent higher mortality than officers. The excess mortality of enlisted soldiers is diminished by the high mortality of the lowest-ranking officers, lieutenants, who are typically the leaders of combat patrols. Lieutenants have the highest mortality of any rank in the Army, 19 percent higher than all Army troops combined...
Hispanics have a death risk about 20 percent higher than non-Hispanics, and blacks have a death risk about 30 to 40 percent lower than that of non-blacks...
The number of wounded in Iraq through March 31, 2006, was 7.5 times the number of dead; the rate at which wounds are incurred was one per 33 troops per year.
More on WalMart and its critics, here. I feel about WalMart like I do about Bush -- it's not that I'm crazy about them, it's that their critics just seem crazy, period.
"Under state law, foreign flags can only be in the classroom because it's tied to the curriculum. And the principal looked at the curriculum, talked to the teacher, and found that there was really no curriculum coming up in the next few weeks that supported those flags being in the classroom," said Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer...
"It's much along the lines of a science teacher who puts up a map of the solar system. They may not spend every day and every lesson talking about Mars, but they want the students to see that and to see the patterns of the planets and the order, and the students will observe that and absorb that learning visually," Hamlin said.
Whenever the issue comes up amongst friends or family, I always urge those I’m speaking with to look north. Take a good, hard look at the Canadian system - a real look - and then come back to me for discussion of “free healthcare for all.”
Educration: education + bureaucrat, rhymes with edu-trash-en, The peculiar and surreal ideology of education professionals, the education administration bureaucracy, and teachers' unions. Educration is noted for its singular hostility to reality and facts, and its blind devotion to itself at the cost of students and the quality of education.
It is no accident that the parallels between liberalism and educration are so striking. The two ideologies share so much in the way of initial assumptions, what passes for logic and research, priorities, and outlook that they are nearly synonymous.
Have fun!
Yes, I can hear the cries of "Foul, foul!" all across the land, but this is hardly a new phenomenon. In 1997, while campaigning to raise the minimum wage (a project that continues today), ACORN sued to avoid paying California's minimum wage to its own workers.
Last year, Las Vegas Weekly found that the picketers protesting Wal-Mart's substandard wages and working conditions had been hired by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 711. They were non-union, with no benefits, and spent five hours a day in 104 degree temperatures. The workers inside the air-conditioned Wal-Mart make twice as much.
Earlier this year, we learned that several industrial unions were hiring the homeless to walk picket lines. "The fact that the people demonstrating were not members of the union doesn't make much difference," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "What matters is that the carpenters working on the building had no health care and no pension."
The latest entry comes from the left-wing monthly In These Times. The Fund for Public Interest Research raises money for a wide variety of liberal causes, from the Sierra Club to the Human Rights Campaign, mostly through the work of canvassers. These young workers either go door-to-door or phone in an effort to get people to donate to whichever liberal group is picking up the tab that day. The Fund boasts of having raised more than $350 million and gathered more than 20 million petition signatures in 20 years.
The canvassers have a high turnover rate, which is unsurprising since they often make less than minimum wage. In Los Angeles, the poor pay and working conditions prompted some canvassers to seek union representation. The response by The Fund was swift: the office was shut down and union supporters were fired. Read the whole story here.
*******************************
Meade Instruments Corporation
6001 Oak Canyon
Irvine, CA 92618
Dear Ladies/Gentlemen:
It’s difficult to find words to express how disappointed I am with your company. I recently bought a telescope for my son for his 10th birthday, only to find out that the image in the telescope is backward. Try to imagine my shock upon learning, while watching the accompanying DVD, that this isn’t a big deal!
I contacted your customer support personnel by email and received a poorly written response in return that essentially said, “Go to our web site, find an authorized dealer, and order a different lens from them.” Why doesn’t an appropriate lens come with the telescope? Am I cynical to believe that you include the 90 degree lens with your telescopes, but not the 45 degree erect image prism, in order to make an additional $45 in sales when saps like me discover that what they’re viewing is backwards?
Looking at Jupiter and its moons may not require correct imaging, but looking at the moon sure does. And what about more terrestrial viewings?
I’ve already purchased the lens that should come with the telescope. It cost me over $45; it cost you any future purchases from me, because what you’ve done here isn’t right.
Sincerely,
Irving's Lorenzo de Zavala Middle School and Lively Elementary are rich in technology, equipped with wireless Internet and laptops for students.
But their students also are among the state's neediest, with many poor and learning English as a second language.
Both were recently flagged for poor test scores.
But the technology gods should overcome those hurdles and fix that, right?
Two years later, the extent of academic gains is unclear – though students widely report being more excited about school because of the technology.
"We already know it has an impact on student engagement," said Anita Givens, the Texas Education Agency's senior director for educational technology. "But over time, we'd also like to see an impact on student achievement scores."
What's the point of being excited about school if you're not learning what you're supposed to?
See, I hear this argument made all the time. "If it weren't for football/wrestling/drama/shop/whatever, this kid wouldn't even come to school." But if they're failing every class but football/wrestling/drama/shop/whatever, what good are we doing? We truly need to determine what the mission of a school is, and I don't just mean that b.s. mission statement that we haggle over every couple of years, the one that talks about safe environments and creating lifelong learners and all that unmeasurable fluff. If the school exists to keep kids off the street, then the argument above holds water. If we're supposed to teach them something, then it does not. Seems pretty simple to me.
The study compared math and reading scores of sixth-graders at 22 schools in the Texas Technology Immersion Project with those from 22 schools without the technology. "In fact, students in immersed schools had slightly lower scores than comparison students," the study noted.
Interesting. Needs more study.
"Overall, it's not just how often you use the technology – it's how well you use it," said Kelly Shapley, director of the Texas Center for Educational Research, which conducted the study. "We did see some significant effects on student technology proficiency and school satisfaction. But it didn't translate into academic achievement in the first year." Regarding the first sentence--duh. Technology is a tool, nothing more. Regarding the second--let's continue this study and see if there's any improvement. I hope you taught the teachers, and well, how to use these tools, or you'll get no improvement at all. Students and teachers expressed concern about how distracting they can be during class. "I play policeman more often than not when my kids are online," a teacher in the survey wrote. "I'm not able to help students because I'm always shutting down instant messaging and e-mail sites." And from the mouths of babes we get: He (or she) said it, not me!
This doesn't surprise me at all. It might also be a part of why there hasn't been test score improvement; they've made it easier for the students not to pay attention! One student suggested using the money spent on laptops on "textbooks and better teachers to raise student's GPAs."
There's plenty more in the article. It's fairly balanced in coverage between pro and con, although to me the cons outweigh the pros. You're free to make your own call, and post your comments on the topic here at Right On The Left Coast.
And let's not forget this: If there's no credit attached, students will not do it.
Technology is not pedagogy. Technology is not a substitute for teaching. Technology is merely a tool. Nothing more.
Child-centred - education: "we can't be bothered to teach them… perhaps they'll do it themselves".
Critique - media, academia: same as 'rebuttal'. When a Lefty alleges that someone's writing is 'riddled with factual inaccuracies' then mysteriously fails to identify any.
Disproportionate - foreign affairs: Describes any act by USA or Israel.
Diversity – creating a workforce based on how people look rather than on their skills or aptitude
Egalitarian - "if I can't have one, then neither can you". Shared misery much better than unevenly scattered joy.
Fascism/Nazism - apparently the 'opposite' of Socialism – despite sharing party members, ideology and – in National Socialism – the name.
Hate-speech - "shut up!".
Inclusive - Means 'drop entry standards until anyone can get in'.
Impartial - media, BBC: the balance achieved by attacking the Opposition for being Conservative and attacking the Government for being insufficiently Lefty.
Intolerance - Intolerance can only committed against certain defined groups of people. These do not include, Americans, the middle class, white manual workers, rural people, business and Christians obviously.
Islamophobic - anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.
Legitimate grievances - foreign affairs: why we're all to blame for deranged Islamists murdering people in the developed world.
Multi-cultural – All culture is valid – unless Western in some way. Usually to be 'celebrated' and always found to be 'vibrant'. See 'diversity'.
Palestinians - archetype 'victims' no matter how many teenagers they murder in bars and fast food outlets. Never responsible for anything they do – or done in their name – because of 'root causes' or 'legitimate grievances'.
Progressive - describes ideas generally thought up around 40 years ago – that still don't work.
South Africa - a national showcase for Lefty policies with a one-party state, some of the worst crime levels in the world, tragic AIDS mortality and declining economy.
Unilateral - media, BBC: used to describe any act by the United States in furtherance of its national interest.
Beautiful! But I just have to add one more:
Hate-crime - same as 'normal' crime as far as victims are concerned - but much more distressing for Lefties.
KENTON, Ohio (AP) -- A judge decided two high school athletes can complete the football season this fall before they serve 60-day jail sentences for a car crash caused by a decoy deer placed in a country road. Two teens were injured...
Last November, teens stole the decoy from a man's home, created a base to help it stand upright because it had only two legs, and then drove up and down the road, watching as drivers swerved to avoid it, prosecutor Brad Bailey said. He said Howard did not stop the prank.
Robert Roby Jr. crashed his car into a pole and broke his neck, collarbone, arm and leg. His passenger, Dustin Zachariah, suffered brain damage, Bailey said.
"If we did not care if their children died," I add, "there would be no reason to clutter military emplacements with their presence. If it were not that we are horrified by the deaths of children, the enemy's children would be clear of all places of battle -- because they are, except for the fact that we love them, a hindrance."
"It must be," I tell her sadly, "Here: That we pursue war without thought of the children. That we do not turn aside from the death of the innocent, but push on to the conclusion, through all fearful fire. If we do that, the[ir] children will lose their value as hostages, and [our children] as targets: if we love them, we must harden our hearts against their loss. Ours and theirs."
"We can only do," I must warn her, and you. "We can only do, and pray, that when we are done we may be forgiven."
Former Laguna student innocent in grade-changing case
By Christina Jewett -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 3:38 pm PDT Tuesday, August 15, 2006
A former Laguna Creek High School student was cleared Tuesday of 93 charges of grade changing and five counts of burglary in Sacramento juvenile court, ending more than a year of legal wrangling for 19-year-old college student Alexander Ochoa.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Richard H. Gilmour declared Ochoa's innocence to a crowd of the teen's family, who let out cheers and applause.
Ochoa emerged from the court beaming and hugged his grandmother and other emotional family members.
"I never doubted my innocence - never," Ochoa, a college sophomore, said after the hearing.
Ochoa was accused in the spring of his senior year at Laguna Creek High School of inflating the grades of nearly 40 students. He was expelled from school after the grade-changing incident, but was later exonerated of the charges in a school hearing.The 19-year-old said he plans to fly to Los Angeles Tuesday night, where he will join the Occidental College football team on its second day of training. Ochoa attended Occidental as a freshman on scholarship and said he plans to study to be a doctor.
Gilmour ruled that the prosecution did not prove Ochoa's guilt in any of the 98 charges. Gilmour said Ochoa's nearly "ironclad" alibis on days of alleged burglaries and grade-changing at the school cast doubt on Ochoa's sole involvement in the case.
He also noted that the three witnesses against Ochoa offered no evidence that he changed grades, and all had lied to officials in the course of the investigation.
Gilmour also noted the testimony of character witnesses in the trial, saying Ochoa was uniformly deemed to be a trustworthy and upstanding person.
Emphasis above is mine. Don't the two boldfaces statements above cry out for further explanation?
But he's been found 'not guilty'. So now we have to ask: who did it? Is it back to square one and start search ing for new criminals, or are the school and district now going to drop it because their case against this former student was so bad?
But for some Oakland residents, the school that supports the young men's dream of becoming officers and gentlemen is an affront to their personal values.
One of the residents most opposed to the presence of a military school in the Oakland is City Council candidate Aimee Allison, a conscientious objector to war who is writing a book, "Army of One," that highlights efforts to counter military recruitment in the nation's high schools.
As a practical matter, Allison believes that for all the school has been given -- nearly $7,400 a year per student -- it has underachieved. Other Oakland public schools receive about the same amount per student...
It's true that the school's academic performance has been average compared with schools of similar size statewide, with similar ethnic makeups and resources, according to the state's academic-performance ranking. The military academy ranked fourth among 21 Oakland middle schools on the state index in 2005.
"I'd like to take that level of resources and put it into a school that reflects peace and the things that are important to the people who live here," Allison said.
Well, wait a minute.
For more than 500 families, a school that emphasizes discipline and organization as part of the overall high school experience is an important community resource.
Bruce Holaday, the school's superintendent, said military school certainly isn't for every Oakland student and simply represents another option for Oakland students.
"It's true that one size doesn't fit all, but what we're offering -- habits of good character, looking sharp, being polished, polite and well educated -- a lot of families do appreciate," he said.
If this were truly about equity in the distribution of Oakland's schools, why wouldn't Allison raise a flap over Brown's Oakland School for the Arts?
"This might just be red meat for some of her more extreme acolytes," Brown said. "This is a very high-quality, academic environment, and if people want this choice, why can't they decide for themselves?" he asked. "OMI is a college-prep school that's grown from zero to 500 kids at the same time the public schools are losing 1,500 students a year, and it's unconscionable for an Oakland politician to take away an educational opportunity that parents want."
"For my money, there are two kinds of men that walk the earth: men of action, and all others."
"To be sitting in the safety of your home, several years into a war, subject to the 24/7 media coverage of that same war and its brutality, and then to go sign up for the Army Infantry, says a lot about a man's character. To stick it out when so many in our society look daily for a reason to quit says a great deal about a man's heart, the support he gets from his family, and his ability to see a larger picture."
"Men, don't ever think for one minute that the kids running around on some university campus, protesting or breaking things, whining about this, that, or the other, have anything on you."
"Your head will not be filled with the empty theory of those who, in actuality, know very little, because they lack the intestinal fortitude to commit to anything that requires risk. I'm speaking of the snide, arrogant sort, who spend the day blaming America for every wrong in the world before going home to sleep at night under that blanket of freedom provided by better men--better men just like you."
"Don't let the pessimistic television talking heads, the highbrow newspaper writers, Hollywood idiots...(I can't understand what he says here)...Blame America First crowd get you down. I'm speaking here of the latte-biscotti crowd. They are simple background shadow men, and they will always exist on the periphery of any endeavor that requires selfless service or loyalty. They are not worthy of your concern. And truth be told, in the pit of their fickle, cowardly hearts, they wish they could be just like you. The intestinal fortitude that is a part of your fabric is something that they covet but will never know."
"I, for one, will never, ever apologize for being an American, and don't you ever feel that you have to."
"We're number 1, don't ever apologize for it, just be damn proud of it."
Think of Connecticut's much-ballyhooed Senate race as a face-off between history and math.
Those who ignore the lessons of history may be doomed to repeat them, but analysts who can't add and subtract generally have much more serious problems.
Who can disagree with that last sentence? Let's hear it for arithmetic!
Last week one of our national staff member's sons was kidnapped. This has occurred in the past to other staff members, but after a ransom was paid, the family member was returned. In this instance the terrorist cut this kids fingers off and used a power drill on his head. He did not survive. He was only 18. Please do not jump to conclusions about my stance on the GWOT.
NICOLE Kidman has made a public stand against terrorism.
The actress, joined by 84 other high-profile Hollywood stars, directors, studio bosses and media moguls, has taken out a powerfully-worded full page advertisement in today's Los Angeles Times newspaper.
It specifically targets "terrorist organisations" such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.
"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads. (emphasis mine--Darren)
"If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.
"We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."
A who's who of Hollywood heavyweights joined Kidman on the ad.
The actors listed included: Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt.
Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names.
Other Hollywood powerplayers supporting the ad included Sumner Redstone, the chairman and majority owner of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul, Haim Saban.
Racism a factor in L.A. gang violence
By ANDREW GLAZER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 40 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES - Alejandro "Bird" Martinez and a crew of fellow gangbangers were joyriding in a stolen van when they came upon a black man parking his car — and decided to kill him.
Three of them riddled Kenneth Kurry Wilson and his Cadillac with bullets from a .357-caliber revolver and a 9 mm semiautomatic and blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun.
This month, Martinez and three other members of the Avenues, a Hispanic gang entrenched in one Los Angeles neighborhood, were convicted of federal hate crimes usually tagged on white supremacists.
Although the slaying was seven years ago, the verdict this month was one in a series of reminders that racially motivated black and Hispanic gang violence is still a Los Angeles reality.
While some police, academics and even gang members insist racism isn't a factor in the violence, a pair of headline-grabbing killings — of a Hispanic teen by a black assailant described by witnesses as yelling a gang name as he fled and a drive-by shooting by a pair of black gunmen who killed three Hispanics — suggest otherwise.
Indeed.