9/11 being taught to students

September 8, 2009

updated 7:19 p.m. ET, Tues., Sept . 8, 2009

NEW YORK – Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined Sept. 11 family members and college professors on Tuesday at a hotel blocks from the World Trade Center site to unveil a plan to teach middle and high school students about the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The 9/11 curriculum, believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks, is expected to be tested this year at schools in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.

It was developed with the help of educators by the Brick, N.J.-based Sept. 11 Education Trust, and was based on primary sources, archival footage and more than 70 interviews with witnesses, family members of victims and politicians, including Giuliani and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a New York senator at the time of the attacks.

The curriculum is taught through videos, lessons and interactive exercises, including one that requires students to use Google Earth software to map global terrorist activity.

One of the main goals is to help students entering middle and high school, who may been too young to have strong memories of the attacks, to develop a tangible connection to what happened.

“In a few years, we will be teaching students who were not even alive at the time of the attacks,” said Anthony Gardner, the executive director of the Sept. 11 Education Trust.

‘One of the critical subjects’
The nonprofit group is run by victims’families, survivors and rescue workers who worry that educators don’t teach about the attacks because they don’t have the educational tools to do so.

Giuliani said that the curriculum can help students to think critically about the attacks as both a historical event and one that shapes the present, noting the continued threat of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“This is one of the critical subjects on which young people should develop some ideas and thoughts. They’re going to have to live with this for quite some time,” he said. “It gives young people a framework in which to think about Sept. 11, all that it meant and all that it means to the present.”

For the professors who helped to develop the plan through the Taft Institute for Government at Queens College, creating that framework to understanding how 9/11 affects today’s policies was critical to the endeavor, and part of the challenge.

“The real trick is to get kids to see that it’s not just a dramatic event like 9/11 that connects them to these issues, it’s connected to their lives in the everyday, said Michael A. Krasner, a political scientist at Queens College. He said a range of viewpoints are reflected in the curriculum, including from Muslim scholars, to enrich the discussion.

‘Not sugardcoating the event’
The curriculum was designed so that teachers could tailor it to their own classrooms, but it gives an open-eyed view of 9/11, Gardner said.

“We’re not sugarcoating the event,” said Gardner, whose brother died in the World Trade Center. “We’ve included images that are challenging.”

I could not have said it better myself…

September 7, 2009 — 1 Comment

Van Jones Exit Isn’t Right-Wing Win, It’s an Obama Surrender By: John Nichols @ www.thenation.com

The decision of Van Jones to resign as President Obama’s “green jobs” czar is not a victory for Republicans who griped about the White House environmental aide’s willingness to call them out on their extreme partisanship.

Nor was it a victory for right-wingnuts like Glenn Beck – who waged a bitter campaign against Jones, highlighting his history of activism on behalf of environmental justice, racial reconciliation, global solidarity and an inquiry into events leading up to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It was an unnecessary and unwise surrender by an Obama administration there is neither ready nor willing to fight “those who spin lies for profit” — as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People president Ben Jealous described those who smeared Jones.

Jones made a gracious exit from his key position in an administration that was unwilling to stand up for him, issuing a Labor Day weekend statement that said: “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Jones said in his resignation statement. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

Jones said he had been “inundated with calls from across the political spectrum urging me to stay and fight.” The NAACP and other groups had initiated campaigns to keep Jones in his position as White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs.

Few doubt that Jones would have stayed on, if the president and his aides had been willing to defend the ablest advocate for green jobs.

Nor is there doubt among those of us who have known and worked with this remarkable man over the years that, when Jones signed a petition or spoke at a rally, he did not always agree with every detail of what was being said – anymore than a Republican congressman who speaks at a teabagger rally agrees with the signs in the crowd that call for acts of violence or a conservative talk-show host agrees with callers who claim President Obama was not born in the United States.

Those heirs to Joe McCarthy who have been waging a campaign to discredit and dismiss high-ranking African-American appointees of the Obama administration have highlighted the fact that Jones’name appeared on a petition calling for an aggressive inquiry into whether Bush-Cheney administration aides failed to take necessary steps to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

While some who circulated that petition may have believed the worst about members of the former administration, Jones clearly and unequivocally stated the more extreme position “certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever.”

Jones wanted a more serious inquiry, as did many mainstream Democrats and Republicans who worried about the constrained and ineffectual approach of the 9/11 Commission and a Bush-friendly Congress. As the NAACP’s Jealous says, “I have known Van Jones for more than 15 years. In that time he, as is characteristic of great public servants, has continuously grown and increased his capacity for improving the condition of humanity. Throughout, he has been guided by a powerful sense of patriotism and love for all.”

Jones’Republican critics knew this.

His Fox TV attackers were fully aware that this was an ugly smear campaign designed not so much to embarrass Jones as to undermine the administration.

They just wanted to get rid of Jones, who has for many years been among the savviest and most effective advocates for green jobs – and whose appointment to the green jobs” position was one of the strongest signals that the Obama administration was serious about both environmental protection and job creation.

President Obama and his aides let the right spin a fantasy about a man who led the highly-regarded Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and was recently listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential player’s of 2009.

In so doing, they allowed Glenn Beck to define the administration.

This won’t make the Obama presidency stronger; nor will it position the president to work more effectively with Congress on issues such as health care reform – let alone “green jobs” initiatives.

The right now knows they can make this administration blink. And they will keep poking and prodding White House aides and appointees until Obama and his inner circle push back.

That’s how Washington works.

Republican strategists and the echo chamber in the media understand this.

Unfortunately, the president and his aides do not.

Norwegian Wood

September 7, 2009

So alot of you who know me (D) are probably aware that Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite novelists.  A couple of his short stories have been adapted to film, and they may leave you thinking WTF? The Norweigan Wood is a beautiful and extremely derpessing novel that is being turned into a film. According to my girlfriend ”its going to be the most emo thing on the planet”. She is probably correct but that still doesnt take away from my excitement. While Norweigan Wood is not my favorite Murakami book it is probably his most famous,  definitely in Japan.  I must mention that the lead charaters in the novel are being played by two of Japans best actors  Ken’ichi Matsuyama and Rinko Kikuchi. Anyways, I lifted some info from the Toronto Japanese Film Pow-Wow blog (which is a great blog for Japanese film by the way check it out http://www.jfilmpowwow.blogspot.com/).

Just over a year ago the internet was buzzing about the news that French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung would be adapting Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel “Norwegian Wood” into a feature film (read our full coverage here. While Murakami’s dense, often surreal work seemed tailor-made for the big screen no one, save maybe Jun Ichikawa and his film “Tony Takitani”, had ever lived up to the author’s singular vision, so the fact that the man who brought us such transcendently beautiful films as “The Scent of Green Papaya” and “Cyclo” was going to to be tackling a Murakami novel got a lot of people excited. So did the news that two of Japan’s biggest young actors would be starring in the film, namely Ken’ichi Matsuyama and Rinko Kikuchi. Sadly once the initial fervor wore off the “Norwegian Wood” buzz died down to nothing; but during a wander through YouTube recently I came across this item broadcast on Japanese television on June 17th: an interview with Tran Anh Hung discussing the film which includes behind the scenes footage of Matsuyama as the novel protagonist Toru Watanabe and Kikuchi as one of his love interests Naoko. Be patient though. You have to get past the 2-minute 30-second mark before you get to the behind the scenes shots.

“Norwegian Wood” is set for a 2010 release.

I guess its deeper than Glenn Beck…

September 6, 2009

Among Pence’s campaign contributors is Blackwater’s owner, whom Pence defended after the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad.

By Jeremy Scahill Rep.

 Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican whose name has been mentioned as a potential GOP presidential candidate (and who is not sure if he believes in evolution), led the witch-hunt to force the resignation of White House Green Jobs advisor, Van Jones, over comments Jones made years ago and a 9/11 “truth” petition Jones signed which he said he did not read in its entirety. Jones apologized for some of his comments, which were made before he took his job with the Obama administration and said the petition “certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.” Late Saturday, Jones resigned. “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Jones said in a statement released Sunday. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.” (For a very good analysis of this story, read this). On Friday, Pence, who describes himself as “Christian, Conservative, Republican, in that order,” said Jones’s “extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Beyond the obvious here (the hate-filled rhetoric we see every day from racist, right-wing wackos, including those in public office), it is an interesting comment considering that Pence is an extremist right-wing evangelical Christian who has taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Blackwater’s owner, Erik Prince. Prince has also donated to Pence’s Political Action Committee “Principles Exalt a Nation.” In December 2007, three months after Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, Pence and his Republican Study Committee, which serves “the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives,” organized a gathering to welcome Prince to Washington. “Not only has Mr. Prince personally been targeted by partisan warfare repeatedly over the past months, but the use of contracting throughout the government has been under attack by this Congress,” Pence’s committee’s statement said. Should Pence resign for cavorting with and accepting campaign cash from a man who allegedly “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” in the words of a former employee? Oh, right. Those are apparently positive attributes in Pence’s view.

Man this site is funny!

September 4, 2009

Stuff White Evangelicals like?

Have you always wanted to get into the Stuff White People Like craze, but you can’t because you don’t relate to its implicit godless secular humanism? Well, maybe this one’s for you. Since August of last year, this recovering evangelical in Seattle, a preacher’s kid married to a preacher’s kid, has been tallying a list of Stuff Christian Culture Likes.

Some of my favorites:

#15 Dry Humping