| South Africa Allows Killing of Elephants
South Africa said Monday that it will start killing elephants to reduce their burgeoning numbers, ending a 13-year ban and possibly setting a precedent for other African nations. Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said the government was left with no choice but to reintroduce killing elephants "as a last option and under very strict conditions" to reduce environmental degradation and rising conflicts with humans. There will be no "wholesale slaughter," he told reporters. The announcement follows months of impassioned debate, with some conservationists arguing for elephant killings to protect the ecosystem, and animal welfare groups outraged at the prospect of slaughtering one of the planet's most intelligent and self-aware creatures. South Africa has been hugely successful in protecting its elephant population, once on the verge of extinction in parts of the country.
Beyond the Multiplex
On the other, it was pretty much a ka-ching Christmas season for mainstream and independent film alike, and many of you who weren't dragged by family members to "Alvin and the Chipmunks" or the latest "National Treasure" installment saw other things. Moderately surprising other things, I have to say. We have a whopping surprise indie hit this winter and it is -- no, not "No Country for Old Men," although that will pile up plenty o' loot on the way to multiple Oscar nominations and beyond, and not Paul Thomas Anderson's massively hyped "There Will Be Blood," which has opened prodigiously in New York and Los Angeles but may prove too long and too dark for mainstream audiences. No, the avalanche-force, market-changing sleeper hit of 2008 is Jason Reitman's teen-pregnancy comedy "Juno," which rocketed to a box-office take of $26 million over the holidays and looks likely to take down "No Country" (currently at $42 million) as Indiewood's reigning champion.
Ipswich dash Saints' hopes of a win
Full reaction, match report and pictures in Monday's Daily Echo. 5:17pm Saturday 1st March 2008 Print Email this Comment .b_box { border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; background-color: #EEEEEE; color: #000000; padding: 5px; width: 307px; } .b_box img { border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; padding: 5px; background-color: #ffffff; } .b_box a, .b_box a:visited .b_box a:active { color: #000000 !important; } .b_box a:hover { color: #FF0000 !important; } .msg_div { padding: 0px; width: 307px; clear: left; } .entry { border-left: 1px solid #D7D7D7; border-right: 1px solid #D7D7D7; padding: 5px; width: 307px; } .entry2 { border-left: 1px solid #D7D7D7; border-right: 1px solid #D7D7D7; padding: 5px; min-height: 80px; } .b_entry { border-left: 1px solid #D7D7D7; border-right: 1px solid #D7D7D7; border-bottom: 1px solid #D7D7D7; padding: 5px; width: 307px; } fieldset { margin-top: 10px; border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding: 0px; } legend { padding: 2px 6px; color: #000000; background: #EEEEEE; border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; font-weight: bold; margin-left: 10px; } .headcell { text-align: center; color: #000000; background: #EEEEEE; border-bottom: 1px solid #D7D7D7; } .headcell a:link, .headcell a:visited, .headcell a:active { color: #000000; } .headcell a:hover { color: #FF0000; } .caltab { border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; margin-top: 5px; } .year_daycell { text-decoration: underline; text-align: center; } .year_fullcell { background: #EEEEEE; border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; } blockquote { border: 2px outset #D7D7D7; } .buttonclass { background: #EEEEEE; color: #000000; } .
What Is the ‘Change We Can Believe In’?
I could relate to that sentiment because in the mid-sixties I went from civil rights organizing in Harlem (in the days when "The Movement" was proudly interracial) to enlist in a community organizing school directed by Fred Ross with Saul Alinksy himself as our visiting guru. We took courses with them, but mostly learned by applying his techniques in the neighborhoods and housing projects of Syracuse New York. The program was funded by the War On Poverty until it became "controversial," a hot potato. I was there along with two colleagues from the Northern Student Movement, an affiliate of SNCC, the Southern-based Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. We had worked in the Harlem rent strikes. Some of us had gone South to assist in organizing for voting rights in Mississippi.
How Easily Offices Are Stolen in the US
Voting as a rubberstamp, a hoop of approval, a ritual that the pre-selected candidate must go through in order to ensure at least some baseline of public support, determine to what extent the "sale" was successful, etc. In short, the candidate that our system usually produces is that which can best sell the middle- and working-class on the agenda furthest from its own class interests. That's abnormal to be sure. Are we 75% democractic, 25% rigged? 75% rigged? Hard to say. Without the Range Vote, elimination of electronic voting machines, solving the problem of the Corporate Media, and massive campaign reforms, we'll never really know how much of our system is on the up-and-up vs. not. A dictatorship, on the other hand, offers 100% clarity. .
TCC seeking bonds, tax hike
Tulsa Community College is asking the average Tulsa County home-owner to pay about $50 more a year to back a $76 million capital bond issue and finance a property tax increase of 1.7 mills.
The two requests will go before voters May 13.
"This is really about growth of the college," President Tom McKeon said.
Academic programs have waiting lists, the college needs more professors, and it needs more money for operations, he said. The extra income would go toward associate-degree programs that prepare students to immediately enter the work force.
TCC wants to accommodate a student body that has grown 18 percent in the past nine years and expand programs that prepare students for in-demand professions, such as health care, McKeon said.
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