Caribbean Remembers End of Slave Trade, “Good Fat” OK For Heart Attack Patients, 2 Found Alive After Fall Off Cruise Ship, And A Weather Report.
Featuring: Michelle Benish
Length: 00:04:54

 

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Photo by Preston Bezant/O’Collegian

Photo by Michael Bevers/O’Collegian

Photo by Jake Duncan/O’Collegian

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Cartoon by Perry Gaither/O’Collegian

The OSU History and Music departments will present a documentary tonight about how the hymns of the Muskogee (Creek) Tribe fit into the tradition of sacred singing.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Oklahoma State placed four All-Americans and finished fifth at the NCAA Wrestling Championships with 69 points at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich.

If some body had told me before the season the Cowgirl basketball team would be dancing in the NCAA Tournament while the Cowboys watched their tourney from home, I would have said they were crazy.

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Oklahoma State claimed a victory in its first Big 12 Conference series of the season by defeating Kansas on Sunday at the Jayhawks’ Hoglund Ballpark.

People are always offering the following argument as to why a policy or law, such as the Patriot Act, exists: But nobody you know has been affected by it.

What kind of crap logic is that?

Me personally? No, not yet. I’m not going to bore you with the infamous and almost always misquoted statement by Pastor Marint Niemöller, the one that ends with “when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

The point is, even though it’s a cliche and everyone is using it to defend the mentality of fighting for civil liberties, it’s very, very relevant:

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

And I, because I love America, adamantly refuse to be anything other than vigilant.

Keep this in mind the next time one of us so-called bleeding hearts, we who supposedly hate America and sympathize with the terrorists, “whine” about our fellow humans, citizen or otherwise, having their civil liberties stripped.

On December 31, 2003, a man by the name of Khaled El-Masri, a Lebanon-born German citizen was arrested by Macedonian police while trying to cross the Serbian/Macedonian border.

After being turned over to the CIA he was allegedly held illegally, without right to legal council or the ability to defend himself, for months on end.

According to El-Masri, he was also beaten, interrogated, tortured and raped in a CIA Black Site prison in Afghanistan known as the “Salt Pit”.

This is but one example amongst many of the concept of Extraordinary Rendition, a term use the CIA uses to describe the process of circumventing basic civil liberties and human rights by extraditing a suspected terrorist to another country, usually in the Middle East, outside of international jurisdiction and in areas where the laws are grey and there’s little hope for the accused.

If you think that our government wouldn’t do this to you because you’re a U.S. citizen, you may be right, at least for now. But consider the plight of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who has a frighteningly similar story.

If our neighbors to the north are fair game, it may not be long before our own people are as well.

On January 27, 2005, President Bush said in an interview with the New York Times, “Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.”

Either the standard is a moving target, or the president is once again not a member of reality when it comes to how things work in his own Administration.

Those (such as Rush “Club Gitmo” Limbaugh) on the Right who say that our detention centers are actually rather nice and we treat the detainees there with decency and respect are obviously not following up with their information.

While I’m sure that, given the choice, a political prisoner would rather be psychologically tortured and humiliated in Gitmo than beaten and raped in the “Salt Pit,” neither is a prime example of a civilized nation that touts Civil Liberties and Bills of Rights as their selling points.

If we’re going to tell other countries how we want them to be run, we had best be prepared to make a good example of ourselves.

This means we have to actually apply these tenets that our country has been built upon over the last two hundred plus years. You know, those things like “all people are created equal,” and “due process under the law,” and of course, the now practically nonexistent “innocent until proven guilty.”

It’s disturbingly ironic to hear the president say that terrorists hate freedom, while his own Administration is stripping away those very same freedoms from potentially innocent people.

In America’s past, racial inequalities were rampant including miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

The rhetoric proposing such laws is mirrored today in opposition to gay marriage.

For the third time in a year, a student has caught meningitis.

Although students living on campus must get the meningitis shot or sign a waiver stating they understand the dangers they place themselves in by not getting the vaccination, students continue to opt out.

Consumer report Video MP3 players

With the introduction of the new iPhone, Apple seems to have completely secured its place as king of the MP3 market.

However, for listeners seeking an alternative to the cliché iPod, several excellent substitutes exist.

Finally, a new movie that appeals to men and women — some women, anyway.

Director Antoine Fuqua’s “Shooter,” starring Mark Wahlberg, is a thrill ride with action, violence and a lot of explosions.

An assistant professor at OSU is conducting a study to determine whether green tea beverages or supplements can reduce body fat and prevent health problems.

The third OSU student within a year was diagnosed with meningitis, a sometimes-fatal infection of the lining surrounding the brain and spinal cord, March 16 at Stillwater Medical Center.

The OSU Writing Center is helping students and faculty members all over campus become better writers through new customized tutorial sessions and programs.