Finished!

An-nd, I finally finished the icon set that I was working on over the last couple of days.

Lyrics are from the Dresden Dolls, as follows.

my sad picture of girl getting bitterer
can you extract me from my plastic fantasy
i didnt think so but im still convinceable
will you persist even after i bet you
a billion dollars that i'll never love you
will you persist even after i kiss you
goodbye for the last time
will you keep on trying to prove it?

Pictures are of myself, Anna, barbies and the actual band. Please note that I designed these images to be compiled into a moving icon as soon as I get Animation Shop back, which is why some of the frames look odd on their own or make no sense.

( Icon song set lies here! )

@_@ Gods I used an awful lot of different styles, but hey, I'm still playing around with Photoshop. *pokes icons* I need more piccies of me...

Edit: Almost forgot to say that I made a few random icons as well! Political + Yu-Gi-Oh.

( Misc. )

Domestic Violence Rant, requested by kura_chan

Domestic Violence.

Read this first.

Why did I give you the above link? Because I think that it really highlights the nature of the problem that exists. It's not only that domestic violence exists in and out of itself, but the way that it's treated. Do you know what the number one cause of death amongst pregnant women is? Murder. Usually by their husbands or boyfriends. One in four families has to deal with incest, one in four has to deal with child abuse. A woman is battered every fifteen seconds. Domestic violence is a wide-spread problem, and just because it occurs behind closed doors does not mean that it's something that should simply be ignored. Do you know what the busiest nights for womens' shelters? Christmas night and Super Bowl night, since that's when people have been drinking the most and emotions are running high.

Doesn't anyone else see something wrong with days that most people are celebrating also being the days upon which some people suffer the most?

I have an aunt who was married to an abusive man. Basically, their financial situation was getting worse, and one night, while she was sleeping, he basically came into the room and started to beat her up, completely unprovoked. He hit her, kicked her, slammed her against the wall - the next day, she took a flight out to Sri Lanka and started to sue him for divorce. My father took my aunt's husband's side, and my mother almost left him because of that. (I told her that she should have, because I would have gone with her but that's a different story). She was bruised for over a month, and her nose was broken.

Rich, poor, married, unmarried, it doesn't make a difference. Violence is violence, abuse is abuse and nothing protects you from being a victim. Maybe it won't be your family, but what about your boyfriend? Your husband? Or even if you escape, what about your friends? Chances are that they won't be so lucky. I can't think of a single friend I have who doesn't know someone who had to deal with abuse (and if you say that you don't, that's because you don't know about it, not because it didn't happen).

Quite frankly, apart from rape, domestic violence is one of the most awful crimes that I can imagine someone committing, and it always dismays me when I get reminded of how lax the penalties are for it. I rate it even higher than murder, because the victims of domestic abuse have to live with it, and at least when you're dead, you're dead and well out of it.

Domestic violence also leads to problems of dependency and self-esteem in most cases, since victims tend to be dependent on their abusers, both financially and emotionally. Having to leave them is difficult, but staying just keeps them trapped in a circle of violence. And by that, I'm thinking of adults in a relationship, not children who honestly don't have anywhere else to turn - kids that try to turn their parents in for abuse get ignored, and few children even attempt to do that.

...it's just wrong on so many levels. Domestic violence takes place in the home - the home. Your home is supposed to be a safe haven, somewhere that you can be with people that love and cherish you, somewhere safe where you can be happy. It's not supposed to be where you suffer, its privacy is not supposed to make it easier to hurt you. The people that live there are not supposed to hurt you either. They're the people that you share a shelter with, people that you care for and should care about you in return. They're either your flesh and blood, or those whom you love so closely that you wanted to make them family. You give them trust and love, and you should have that returned to you instead of receiving pain. Betrayal only works when you care about someone, and the more you care about them, the more it hurts to have them hurt you. Emotional wounds pile on physical ones, and although it's easy to tell people to get out of harmful situations, it's a lot harder to do that.

Abusers often threaten their victims to make them stay, by saying that if they leave, they'll kill their victim or target their victim's family. Often, the victim falls for such threats and stays. That's wrong though, since think about it a little - if a person is cowardly enough to take out his/her frustration on someone close to them who is unlikely to tell the police, then they wouldn't have the courage needed to actually committ murder or arson, most likely. Cowards are cowards down to the bone, and abusers fear landing in jail - that's why they target the voiceless. The shy, the young, the dependent, the trusting; all of them are prey for a strong personality and a cruel egoist.

What victims should always remember is that they are not alone; others have suffered as they have, others will be willing to help them. Please, if anyone you know is in such a situation, urge them to get out. There are shelters for people to live in while they get on their feet again and look for jobs and there are resources dedicated especially for such situations. Here are some of my favorites:

Hot Peach Pages. A globally-relevant site, it can help visitors from all around the world find a local shelter or local resources to call upon.

Aardvac. US-specific, this site covers mostly governmental issues but also explains how to deal with crime in a legal context and how to recover about it.

The Domestic Violence Handbook. Exactly what it says, and neatly organized into chapters as well.

[/rant + information session.]

(no subject)

EdWatch
105 Peavey Rd, Ste 116
Chaska, MN 55318 952-361-4931
www.edwatch.org



International Baccalaureate


June 30, 2004


International Baccalaureate

by Allen Quist


The International Baccalaureate (IB) program was started in the mid 1960s by European diplomats who wanted their children to have an undergraduate program that would enable them to attend college anywhere in the world. IB is run by a non-governmental organization called the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO). In 1996 UNESCO formed a “partnership” with IBO to form what it called a universal “curriculum framework for peace education.” [Reported in The Washington Times, January 18, 2004]


IB has been adopted by 1,450 schools worldwide, 502 of them being in the United States. IB requires that the tests administered under the program be sent to the IB headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland for grading. The U.S. Department of Education recently established a $1.2 million grant program for middle schools that are willing to participate in IB and become feeder schools for IB high schools. [Ibid]


The Washington Times reported that IB is now a pilot program of UNESCO developed for the purpose of creating what UNESCO calls an “international education system.” The purpose of IB, said UNESCO, is to “… be a school of values, attitudes, [and] above all of practical action … [Ibid]


The IB website states that the IB curriculum is based on six themes. These six themes are as follows [http://www.ibo.org]:

Who we are

Where we are in place and time

How we express ourselves

How the world works

How we organize ourselves

Sharing the planet


These six themes focus more on attitudes, values, beliefs and behavior than on academic knowledge, just as UNESCO said. That is, IB is transformational education as opposed to knowledge-based education. The IB themes taken together constitute a worldview--an overall philosophy of life. According to UNESCO, the worldview taught by IB includes the promotion of the Earth Charter (a religious/pantheistic document),* the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which views human rights the same way Communist countries view human rights) ** and multiculturalism (which is based on the ideology of Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci).*** [http://www.unesco.org/education/asp/studies.shtml]


Because of the non-academic nature of IB, many colleges and universities will not accept IB courses as fulfilling undergraduate requirements for admission. [Reported in The Washington Times, January 18, 2004]


America’s foundational principles of national sovereignty, natural law and inalienable rights are at odds with the IB curriculum and are not taught. IBO explicitly states that its curriculum does not follow the political system of any particular nation, including the United States.


In summary, IB is a transformational system of education which exists to promote internationalism. It is structured to change the attitudes, values, beliefs and behavior of its students to conform to the world government system. Dr. Ian Hill, Deputy Director of IBO, recently said that the primary goal of IBO is the promotion of “world citizenship.” [In his article, “Curriculum Development and Ethics in International Education,” given at the UN Disarmament Forum, 2001, http://www.unidir.ch/pdf/articles/pdf-art53.pdf]


* The Earth Charter is a broadly defined religious and political document that promotes the following positions:


1. Earth worship (pantheism)
2. Socialized medicine
3. World government
4. Abortion on-demand
5. Education for sustainability including spiritual education in New Age/pantheism
6. Adoption of the gay rights agenda
7. Elimination of the right to bear arms


** The UN Declaration of Human Rights ends with the words: “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” That is, the UN Declaration of Human Rights takes the same form as the constitutions of all Communist countries which say that governmental policies have higher standing than individual human rights. The U.S. Declaration of Independence, in contrast, states that human rights have a higher priority than government decisions.


*** Multiculturalism, as defined by Samuel Huntington, Richard Bernstein, and David Horowitz:


1. Believes that all cultures are equal. It also intends that all groups have equal outcomes -- on income levels, education test scores, use of natural resources, and the like.
2. Follows the Marxist worldview that portrays government as being a creation of the powerful used to keep themselves in control and used to exploit the weak and vulnerable.
3. Is postmodernist. It views knowledge as being a tool by which the powerful subdue the vulnerable. Even language and traditional academic disciplines such as mathematics are viewed as constructs by which the strong exploit the weak.
4. Views history as the study of "multiple perspectives" of history. Traditional history is to be deconstructed, and students are expected to construct their own history (under the guidance of IB instructors).
5. Sees morality, modesty, human rights and the family as being mere constructs. Believes that marriage is a creation of powerful males used to keep vulnerable females under subjection. Includes obscenity for the purpose of deconstructing student beliefs about modesty, morality and marriage.
6. Takes a negative view of individualism. Group identity and group rights are promoted instead. An emphasis on group projects and group grading is used to teach group identification and group consciousness.
7. Sees private property rights from the same Marxist perspective. Views Christianity as a construct used by the powerful to exploit the masses. Multiculturalism is opposed to Christianity.


[This article is included in the Appendix of The Battle For America Being Fought In Our Schools, by Allen Quist, to be published in the Fall of 2004]


*******





Sue Abderholden


National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Minnesota


800 Transfer Road, Suite 7A


St. Paul, MN 55114


Phone: 651-645-2948 or 1-888-473-0237


Fax: 651-645-7379


sabderholden@nami.org