my project!

so this might not have a lot to do with linguistics, but it is a really entertaining and inspiring article. and radical clowning did come up briefly in class last week. enjoy...

Superman Saves Bogota
How A Big City Mayor Made A Mockery of Crime
by William Thomas 05-12-05

so i was thinking about what i had said in class last week about how freedom doesn't mean anything to me and the whole concept had been bastardized by bush and his overuse/misuse of the word so i decided to do some googling to try to figure out exactly what they did mean by freedom and i came across this which i thought might be interesting to some folks as its a linguistic analysis of bush's second inaugural speech. let me know what you think, do you agree with her? also, a quote from goethe: "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."

You Are What You Grow

Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning Some Abortions

WASHINGTON - A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, restricting abortion rights in a ruling on one of the nation’s most divisive and politically charged issues.By a 5-4 vote, the high court rejected two challenges to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003 after its approval by the Republican-led U.S. Congress.

The decision marked the first time the nation’s high court has upheld a federal law banning a specific abortion procedure since its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that women have a basic constitutional right to abortion.

U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Federal Abortion Ban

Law Threatens Women's Health; Criminalizes Safe, Early Abortions

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the federal abortion ban in the cases Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart. The ban, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2003, criminalizes abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy that doctors say are safe and the best to protect women's health. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) denounced today's ruling.

"This ruling flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women’s health and safety," said PPFA Deputy Director of Litigation and Law Eve Gartner, who argued Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood. "Today the court took away an important option for doctors who seek to provide the best and safest care to their patients. This ruling tells women that politicians, not doctors, will make their health care decisions for them."

“Today's decision is a shocking setback for women's health," added Gartner. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her dissent, ‘…the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.’

Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure

WASHINGTON, April 18 — The Supreme Court narrowly upheld a federal law today banning a controversial abortion procedure, giving the anti-abortion movement one of its biggest legal victories in years.

so i usually do my daily morning news sweep at the al jazeera website and this morning i caught this article about abortion. initially this was one of the ideas i had for a project topic so stay tuned for lots more posts about this as i do more research. the al jazeera article is pretty short but here it is anyways:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/97463D17-1089-4072-8EDB-995B3C67C5F4.htm

 

i found the article below on one of the feeds on the side of the main page. the headline read "sunnis and shiites - why do they fight?" so i dove into the article expecting to hear some thoughtful analysis of the cultural political climate between these two groups since their split hundreds of years ago. what i got however was shocking. this guy says that " Conservatives and Republicans don't hate liberals and Democrats, but liberals and Democrats hate conservatives and Republicans." but offers no explanation. he says he understands it and the reasons for it but doesn't explain it at all... that was my second red flag. the first was the first sentence of the paragraph actually. so, yes, i am irish but it is SO ignorant to classify the conflict between northern and southern ireland as a purely religious thing it shocks me that this guy could manage to get printed. i see absolutely no similarity whatsoever between these two conflicts. i don't understand how this could make it past any editor. third, all the information he spouts off, no matter how educated it may sound, is on wikipedia. everything he says and more. wikipedia. then, at the end of the article, he completely discounts both cultures and any relevance they may have for anyone by talking about violent acts committed by muslims. after this, to close, he says " So what's the point of studying any further? How could 21st century Christians and Jews ever make any sense of that?" which just blew my mind. as if christians and jews aren't just as guilty of massive 21st and 20th century atrocities as muslims. remember george bush praying to god and asking for guidance... and then invading iraq? not to mention whats going on in israel-palestine.