I’m heading out tonight for an evening at Shakepeare in the Park. Weather permitting, I’ll be picnicking on green chili cocktail shrimp, beef tenderloins, chicken salad on crackerbread, jalapeno-stuffed olives, roasted peppers, lemon pasta and fresh fruit a’plenty. The girlfriend and I will then settle onto a blanket to sip wine or lemonade and enjoy Richard III, as presented by Shakespeare Dallas.
It’s such a rough life.
If anyone drops by and the site is jacked up, bear with me. Just a little maintenance.
Great season premier of Battlestar Galactica, by the way. If you missed it and aren’t currently stuck in line for the new Harry Potter book, catch the rebroadcast in a few hours.
The University of California system has decided to halt its participation in the National Merit scholarship program, one of the more prestigious such scholarships in the nation, based on the program’s reliance upon standardized tests. In actuality, the problem is that the results of the scholarship competition are not politically correct enough for the likes of California.
Staring [sic] in fall 2006, University of California campuses no longer will award National Merit Scholarships because the program relies exclusively on a high-stakes standardized test to determine students’ academic merit, university officials announced today.
Note the word “exclusively” there. I point that out because, well, it’s either a lie or poor journalistic research, as I will show later.
The move is expected to affect hundreds of students whose performance as juniors on the PSAT, a precursor to the SAT college entrance exam, determines whether they are eligible for the National Merit program. The test is used as a first cut to eliminate about 99 percent of the more than 1 million students who take it each year.
UC will continue awarding scholarships to National Merit students to whom it already has promised awards. It had about 600 of them last year and they received about $735,000 in scholarships.
It is kind of them to not immediately welsh on money they promised to current scholars.
The decision by chancellors of the six UC campuses to drop out of the prestigious program follows a recommendation by the Academic Council, the faculty’s executive body, to stop awarding scholarships and admissions preferences to National Merit winners. The faculty body rejected the program saying that using only one test, which has no demonstrated ability to predict college success, is inconsistent with how UC defines merit.
Again the one-test lie. Truth will follow.
“We believe we have better standards for measuring academic merit,” said UC Santa Cruz astronomy professor George Blumenthal, Academic Senate chairman. Those standards include using grades, test scores and a broad array of other factors that make up a student’s entire academic record.
UC Berkeley and Riverside did not participate in the National Merit program. The newest campus, Merced, decided not to take part in advance of its opening this fall.
Berkeley. No surprise there.
“We honor and respect academic achievement, and we are very proud to have many National Merit scholars apply to the University of California,” said UC Provost M.R.C. Greenwood. “The decision is not meant to diminish those students or their accomplishments in any way. This is an issue of ensuring that when the university uses its own resources to fund merit-based scholarships, it does so in a way that is consistent with its own policies.”
I respect the fact that the state university system rightly has the power to decide how to relegate its own funding. I disagree that this decision does not diminish current scholars, as it blatantly states the Cali system believes the current recipients were selected through an unfair process and others more deserving were probably omitted. That has to be the statement or there would be no change.
This is nothing more than political correctness because the California collegiate folks aren’t happy with the make-up of the scholarship recipients, as this story makes clear.
Among University of California undergraduates, for example, 3.1 percent are black and 13.8 percent are Latino. But only 1 percent of the system’s winners of National Merit Scholarships are black and only 2 percent are Latino. Asian and white students received 45.3 and 39.8 percent of the scholarships, respectively, more than their share of the student body.
Similarly, while 18 percent of University of California students come from families with incomes over $120,000, 33.8 percent of the university’s National Merit Scholarship winners come from such families.
PC BS carries the day in California, and the one-test lie is used as its foundation. Perhaps it’s time we finally address that repeated falsehood.
The PSAT is taken by more than a million high school juniors each year. About 50,000 of the highest scorers are eligible for the merit awards. Other criteria such as essays, grades and letters of recommendation are used to select winners.
The PSAT is a gateway to semifinalist status. The SAT establishes the threshold towards finalist status, and then recipients are selected based upon prior academic performance, personal communication skills and the input of others. The scholarship is most assuredly not based “exclusively on a high-stakes standardized test.”
I am unhappy with the decision of country’s largest state university system in this matter and fear the effect it may have on the National Merit scholarship program. Oh yeah, I feel I must make the disclaimer that I attended Texas A&M University, at least the first four years, on a National Merit scholarship, the value of which was adjusted upwards because of my low family income. I am white, though, so please feel free to disregard my opinion.
Military investigators said they proposed disciplining the prison commander at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because of abusive and degrading treatment of a suspected terrorist that included forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog.
They said Wednesday they recommended that Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller be reprimanded for failing to oversee his interrogation of the prisoner, who was suspected of involvement in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said he overruled their recommendation and will instead refer the matter to the Army’s inspector general. Craddock concluded that Miller did not violate any U.S. laws or policies, according to officials familiar with the report.
I don’t know that the details of this story constitute abuse, as they really sound more like mild hazing. I do actually hope that the bra portion is true, because the thought of a violent terrorist wearing Victoria’s Secret dainties in lieu of a bomb vest is freaking funny.
Tomorrow night is the return of SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica for the start of its second season.
Don’t miss the best show in television. One prediction: Adama will survive the attack that brought season one to a jolting end.
Not in too much of a mood for blogging tonight, so how about link dumpalooza on the war against Islamist terror?
Let’s start with what, in my view, is the most disgusting story of the day.
Suicide bomber kills 18 Iraqi kids
Tiny plastic sandals, some tattered and stained with blood, lay in a pile near a child’s crushed bicycle. Mothers wailed and beat themselves after a suicide bomber killed 18 children and teenagers getting candy and toys from American soldiers.
One of the soldiers was among the up to 27 people killed in Wednesday’s blast in an impoverished Shiite Muslim neighborhood. At least 70 other people, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded. A newborn was among those hurt.
[…]
“There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children,” said Karim Shukir, 42. The troops began handing out candy and smiley-face key chains.
“Suddenly, a speeding car bomb…struck both the Humvee and the children,” Shukir said.
Americans give chocolate. Islamists give death. Tell me this is not a war that needs to be fought.
Australia to redeploy troops to Afghanistan
Australian Prime Minister on Wednesday announced that Australia will send 150 troops to Afghanistan at the request of the United States, Afghanistan and others to combat the regrouping of Taliban and al-Qaeda networks.
The troops, comprising SAS (Special Air Services) soldiers, commandos and logistic support, will be deployed in September, when parliamentary elections will be held in the war-ravaged country.
The fresh troops will stay there for 12 months working with the US troops.
[…]
Australia sent 1,500 strong troops to Afghanistan in 2001 but withdrew all the troops in 2002. There is only one Australian engineer being engaged in mine clearance in the Asian country at present.
Welcome back, blokes. As an aside, I’ve always held the Aussie spirit in very high regard.
Labor alarmed by PM’s talk of terror attack
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd is alarmed by Prime Minister John Howard’s comments that the possibility of suicide bombing attacks in Australia like those seen last week in London cannot be ruled out.
Mr Howard says he does not believe the Government’s decision to redeploy soldiers to Afghanistan will make Australia more of a target but says he cannot count out the possibility of an attack here.
“We shouldn’t complacently imagine that there aren’t potentially suicide bombers in this country,” Mr Howard said.
Mr Rudd says if Mr Howard has intelligence about potential threats he should make it public.
“If you have have no intelligence that there are suicide bombers in Australia, then make that plain to the Australian people as well,” he said.
Mr. Rudd, I have some relevant intelligence for you: there are people out there that would love to kill you. And me. And any infidel they can touch with their knives or shred with their bombs.
British Police Search for Mastermind of Blasts
Britain said today that it was hunting the mastermind of the terror attacks here last week, and the British Home Secretary offered the first official indication that officials believe the four attackers were suicide bombers who “blew themselves up” in the blasts.
The police said late today that officers had raided a home in Buckinghamshire, around 40 miles northwest of London and close to Luton, where police seized a car laden with explosives one day earlier. Police officials declined to give further details or to say whether the raid, conducted under anti-terrorism laws, was against the home of a fifth suspect.
The four coordinated mass-transit bombings last Thursday confronted Britons with the very scenario they feared most – an attack by British-born terrorists drawn from the ranks of disaffected Muslims and seeming to copy the grim tactics of assailants in Israel or Iraq that most Britons see only on their television screens.
Make no mistake — suicide bombers will find there way to many more western countries. The London attacks underscore the dire situation many European nations must soon face, that of large pockets of isolated, unassimilated Moslem immigrants that are fertile breeding grounds for radicalism and violence.
Pakistan ‘thwarted’ UK pre-poll plot
Pakistan helped Britain avert a terrorist attack ahead of the general election in May by alerting officials to a potential plot, the Pakistani interior minister said on Wednesday.
Aftab Khan Sherpao said that information shared by Pakistan with Britain led to arrests in various countries, including Pakistan, and that the plot was “abortedâ€.
“Before the general elections in the UK we had received reports that [a terrorist attack] may arise before the elections, and that was aborted because of the information provided by the government of Pakistan,†Mr Sherpao told reporters in Islamabad.
This story, along with the recent bombings, show the flawed concept of treating this war exclusively as a criminal matter, even with large cooperation from the international community. Law enforcement and intelligence has to be perfect or blood flows. That is the reason why such a strategy must be coupled with something more. Currently, that something more is trying to provide an alternative to the radical culture by building a viable, democratic Iraq. If that fails, the alternative strategy may eventually have to be far bloodier.
Italy convicts 2 on terror charges
An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted two North Africans of belonging to an extremist cell alleged to have planned attacks in Italy, including one against Milan’s subway.
Judge Silvia Milesi sentenced the defendants — Moroccan Mohamed Rafik and Tunisian Kamel Hamraoui — to up to four years and eight months in prison, a defense lawyer said.
A third suspect, Tunisian Najib Rouass, was sentenced to one year and two months in prison on the lesser charge of inciting violence, while a fourth, Tunisian Romdhane Ben Othmane Khir, was acquitted, said lawyer Ilaria Crema.
All defendants denied the charges, and those convicted are expected to appeal the ruling. Prosecutor Roberto Di Martino described the verdict as a “balanced ruling.”
I do sincerely hope that the aim of the ruling was for justice rather than balance.
Italy police detain 174 people in anti-terror sweep
Police raided scores of homes and detained 174 people across Italy on Wednesday in a sweeping anti-terrorism crackdown on suspected Islamic militants.
“The operation has been prepared for some time and confirms Italy has never lowered its guard in the face of terrorist risks,” Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told journalists.
The crackdown, involving 201 search warrants from Milan to Naples, follows last week’s deadly attacks in London and comes a day after Pisanu warned that terrorism was “knocking on Italy’s door” and urged parliament to strengthen security laws to prevent an attack.
“I’m not saying that we have seized terrorists. It’s a preventative operation in high-risk environments,” Pisanu said before the announcement of detentions.
Okay, so you won’t say you seized terrorists. Would you at least describe the round-up as a “balanced raid” of potentially murderous radical Islamist bastards?
Now, let’s bring it home to America where the “T” word apparently finally has some bite.
Muslim Leader Gets Life for Inciting Jihad
A man convicted for what he said — words that prosecutors said incited his followers to train for violent jihad against the United States — had a few more things to say yesterday in a federal courtroom in Alexandria before he was sentenced to life in prison.
Ali Al-Timimi, a prominent Muslim spiritual leader, delivered an impassioned statement in which he asserted his innocence, read the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and said his religious beliefs do not recognize “secular law.” He then compared himself to the Greek philosopher Socrates, who was sentenced to death for corrupting the young and dishonoring the gods of Athens.
“I will not admit guilt nor seek the court’s mercy,” Timimi told a courtroom crowded with his supporters and prosecutors. “Socrates was mercifully given a cup of hemlock. I was handed a life sentence.”
[…]
The Timimi case culminated an investigation in which 11 Muslim men, all but one from the Washington area, were charged with participating in paramilitary training — including playing paintball — to prepare for “holy war” abroad. Timimi was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the earlier case, in which nine men were convicted in 2003 and 2004.
[…]
The heart of the government’s evidence against Timimi was a meeting he attended in Fairfax on Sept. 16, 2001, five days after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Timimi told his followers that “the time had come for them to go abroad and join the mujaheddin engaged in violent jihad in Afghanistan,” according to court papers.
Treason.
Hey, if the guy wants hemlock, give him some freakin’ hemlock already.
That’s tonight’s global terror link-o-rama. It’s a small (terror-filled) world after all.
National Guard chief says Iraq danger “misrepresented”
The head of the National Guard says the dangers American troops face in Iraq have been exaggerated — complicating recruitment efforts at home.
Lieutenant General Steven Blum says the casualty rate for Guardsmen is low compared to any previous armed conflict. He says he loses more people in private car and motorcycle wrecks.Blum says Iraq is dangerous — but that the degree of danger has been “misrepresented.”
Surveys of potential recruits and their parents show fear of being hurt as one of the major reasons young people don’t enlist.
Blum says more than 250-thousand National Guardsmen have been mobilized since Nine-Eleven. Only 262 of them have been killed. Pentagon figures show more than 90 percent of those were in Iraq.
Part-Time Forces on Active Duty Decline Steeply
The number of Reserve and National Guard troops on domestic and overseas missions has fallen to about 138,000, down from a peak of nearly 220,000 after the invasion of Iraq two years ago, a sharp decline that military officials say will continue in the months ahead.
The decrease comes as welcome relief to tens of thousands of formerly part-time soldiers who, with their families, employers and communities, have been badly stressed by their long call-ups for duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Reserve and National Guard members from all of the armed services make up about 35 percent of the troops in Iraq, a share that is expected to drop to about 30 percent by next year; the vast majority are from the Army Reserve and Army National Guard.
Despite these pieces, a lag is to be expected before reality sinks in, if in fact the media truly ever lets the reality be well broadcast.
U.S. National Guard chief sees recruiting shortfall
The Army National Guard, tapped heavily by the Pentagon for soldiers in Iraq, likely will miss its recruiting goal for the third straight year, the general who runs it said on Tuesday.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon, argued that the Army National Guard was not in “serious crisis mode” even as it stood about 19,000 troops below the 350,000-strong force authorized by Congress.
Perhaps there’s a need for this old soldier, perhaps not. I know a dear friend has gone back in and is over there in the sandbox. That little fact lives as a daily itch.
Okay, since last weekend’s upgrade to WordPress 1.5.1.3, I’ve been toying with some things.
I plan to change the look of Target Centermass in a major way soon. However, I also plan to give the the reader the ability to select from a list of appearances and the current look will, of course, be an option. I also plan to keep the targeted-T72 as part of a new three-column theme. Beyond that, expect some retro video gaming graphics, both home and arcade, to be options, along with anything else that springs to mind. Hell, I might even create a theme based on my editor days of the ol’ high school newspaper. What the hey, I’m talking geek.
And while I’m talking geek, I want to make sure everyone is aware of the fact that this Friday is the start of the second season of the best show currently on television — SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica. Want to go even geekier? Spend some time over at the Unofficial Battlestar Galactica Blog.
The California National Guard, already facing an investigation into allegations of spying on anti-war activists [discussed here], is now under attack for being culturally insensitive towards our enemies.
Islamic leaders and peace groups are criticizing the California National Guard for a flier posted in its headquarters suggesting the United States should execute Islamic terrorists with bullets dipped in pig’s blood to deny them entry to heaven.
The poster attributes the practice to World War I General John J. Pershing.
“Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq?” the flier stated. It was posted outside a cubicle in the Guard’s Civil Support Division.
A second flier showed the wings and tail of a bomber forming a peace sign with the slogan, “Peace the old fashioned way.” Also posted was a cartoon from a Web site showing a Red Crescent ambulance stuffed with weapons and a caricature that looks like the late-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unloading the weapons.
Let’s see. The peace-through-strength poster, an idea that has stood the test of time, isn’t even worth mentioning beyond saying it sounds like a cool graphic. Yes, the other two posters sound culturally insensitive … to terrorists. Cue the freakin’ violins. Frankly, I have no problem with insensitivity towards our enemies. However, these fliers should not be on display in a home-front headquarters, at least not in today’s overly sensitive, politically charged world. At the absolute very least, they most definitely should not be up when it is known that CAIR and peaceniks are going to be visiting. That’s just stupidity.
Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Doug Hart at first defended the postings to the San Jose Mercury News, which reported the posters Tuesday but later said they had been removed.
Peace activists spotted the fliers during a tour last week. The tour came after peace groups and a state senator questioned whether a new Guard unit had been formed to spy on U.S. citizens and had monitored a Mother’s Day anti-war rally.
“It’s troubling to see a governmental organization dedicated to the security of our country promoting culturally and religiously insensitive ideas,” said William Youmans, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara. “It’s very possible to combat terrorism without offending the cultural values of a major world religion.”
No, what’s troubling is that this political correctness garbage is trying to make an issue with how our military views our enemies. We’re talking about a dark-humored flier suggesting a foul way of treating animals who would want nothing more than to carve off the heads of our soldiers. We’re talking about posters not insensitive to Islam but rather fairly insensitive to terrorists. It was dumb for the posters to be up during the visit; it will be tragic if this story gains any further mileage.
For the soldier or soldiers who put up the fliers, give the mildest of reprimands and maybe an annoying one-hour sensitivity lecture. Slightly more to the commander. For those offended, give a sample of caricatures of our enemies from WWII-era for maybe some hopefully annoying perspective.
As an aside, Snopes.com has more on the Gen. Pershing story.
Last night I mentioned a leaked British memo regarding planned troop reductions. I put forth that, even if the memo was valid, its subject material should be considered tentatively optimistic. Well, that has proven accurate.
A leaked British Defence Ministry memorandum has confirmed that London and Washington hope to reduce troop strengths in Iraq next year – but also reveals some of the problems.
The memo does not indicate that basic policy has changed or will change. This is that the troops will be there “as long as is needed”.
But the plan is that not so many will be needed.
The authenticity of the memo has been confirmed by the British Defence Secretary John Reid, who signed it.
He has called it an [sic] “scenarios” document, but it was prepared for the cabinet committee on defence and foreign policy and it demonstrates how seriously the British government is considering how to reduce its commitment.
These are the hopes:
- British troops could be reduced from 8,500 now to 3,000 by the middle of next year.
- US troops could be cut from 176,000 to 60,000.
These are the problems:
Everything depends on handing over security to Iraqi control. This in turn depends on the build-up, training and ability of Iraqi security forces.
A handover should happen in two British-controlled provinces, Muthanna and Maysan, in October and the two others, Dhi Qar and Basra, in April 2006.
In the far more dangerous US sector, where most of the fighting is taking place, there are also plans to place security in Iraqi hands in most of the provinces next year.
However – and it is a big however, especially in the US sector – the memo indicates strong disagreements within military staffs about the wisdom of this planning.
The Pentagon and the US Central Command are said to favour large cuts, while local American commanders are more doubtful. These on-the-ground officers feel it is too soon to think about such reductions.
The piece goes on to look at the political pressures, obvious though they may be, that drove the sunshine-on-my-shoulders best-case-scenario memo, as well as the inherent risks to such a sizable early withdrawal.
As for me, I’m in favor of either a complete withdrawal or an increase in forces, or somewhere in between, depending on the actual situation on the ground at the time. I’m certainly against any scheduled withdrawal written in stone, though I would hope that our governments and militaries are planning for all reasonable contingencies.