Warning: Explicit sexual content. "These firefighters dedicated their lives to save the lives of others. They did not sign on to become unwilling props to a controversial political and social agenda," says Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, representing a group of brave men in uniform who were subjected to "vile sexual taunts" at a San Diego gay pride parade. Via Gawker.
posted on Aug 8, 2007 - View this thread

Firefighters.
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - View this thread

"As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA."
posted on Sep 6, 2005 - View this thread

Firefighters defend $120 million telescope. Obviously forest fires and telescopes (qtvr) don't mix.
posted on Jul 8, 2004 - View this thread

Bush's campaign commercials feature footage from 9/11, but anger firefighters and families of victims. Is it disingenuous to defend the ads when you claimed just nineteen weeks after the tragedy that you would not use the disaster for politcal gain? If anyone should be able to use the event for political purposes, it would be Giuliani, who defends Bush's actions.
posted on Mar 5, 2004 - View this thread

Fresh in from the 'perfect timing' department - not even 24 hours after the fire brigade goes on strike, the south west of England goes on flood watch and a Fireworks factory explodes. For some added fun, the army are banned from driving the modern fire engines and instead drive famous 'green godesses'.

Even ignoring the lack of cover (644 GGs replacing 4,311 normal engines) and lack of equipment the army fire teams have, should emergency services be able to strike?
posted on Nov 14, 2002 - View this thread

Report from Ground Zero Brenda Berkman, highest-ranking female FDNY firefighter (25 women, 11,475 men): “[O]ne good thing that has come out of it is that I didn’t have to die to find out how many people care about me. It has really been overwhelming, the love and concern that has been directed to me from women and men from all over the country.” No female firefighters died in the bombing: “We have fathers and sons on that list, brothers on that list.... But no women firefighters, which was an absolute miracle because a huge percentage of us are in the companies that were hit the hardest.”
posted on Mar 11, 2002 - View this thread

In reviewing ‘A beautiful mind’ NYT reviewer said of Nash "Before he married Alicia …he fathered another child…. and abandoned both mother and child to poverty. He formed a number of intense, apparently sexual bonds with other men, and he lost his security clearance ….. after he was arrested for soliciting sex in a men's room. When his illness became intractable and his behavior intolerable, Alicia divorced him. …. None of this has made it to the screen." It went on to say that "The story ….egregiously simplifies the tangled, suspicious world of cold war academia." Most other reviewers appears to have judged that movie on its merits as a work of art and seemed to like it. Recently, the plans to build a statue to honor the FDNY firefighters were dropped after a controvery broke out over plans to alter the original image of three firefighters hoisting the American flag. In an article that tried to put the later controvery in a context, NYT said that that "Sculptors, and artists in general, always take liberties". Conservative columnist Jonah Golderg in a different column defended the sanctity of ‘factual accuracy' in art. I rarely agree with Goldberg. But I think if one is depicting an event or a likeness of an event one has an obligation to stay close to the truth. Where do you draw the line between creative freedom and factual accuracy?
posted on Jan 20, 2002 - View this thread

"Today's heroes don't have to do anything; they just need to be noble victims" The people who lost their lives on September 11 -- office workers, firefighters, airline pilots -- have almost unanimously been labeled "hereos." Were they really, or were they "just" victims who tragically died while "doing their jobs"? According to this article, we should be hesitant to loosen the requirements for heroism: "Heroes often end up as role models, a task not well suited for victims. Moreover, by lowering the bar for heroism, we cheapen the word and, in some ways, the exploits of people who have earned the right to be called that in the past. " (via a & l daily).
posted on Jan 15, 2002 - View this thread

Criticism Over WTC Statue Race Issues -- I'm sure many of you are familiar with a recent photo featuring three firefighters raising an American flag over the WTC rubble. Now a company has been commissioned to make a statue of the photo at FDNY Brooklyn Headquarters. In the statue though, the three white men who were originally depicted in the photo have been transformed into one white man, one black man, and one Hispanic man. There has been criticism over whether it is going to far to make these changes in order to be politically correct. Others are saying the statue should be more of a symbolic representation of all ethnicities that sacrificed themselves during this tragedy. What do you think?
posted on Jan 12, 2002 - View this thread

More Public Servants to Rally Around. In what appears to be a extremely trying time, the members of the NSW Fire Brigade have been working insane hours, under the most intense conditions....and with a largely volunteer force. Although, I heard NSW Premier Bob Carr this morning on the news state that he intends to have the (accused) arson culprits visit burn wards and help with clean-up with the intent to "traumatize" theses kids. Strong stuff but I gather that's the kinda guy he is. Of course, if you feel the urge, you can give until it hurts. (registration required). Makes me want to emmigrate again.
posted on Jan 5, 2002 - View this thread

``The truth doesn't even matter anymore. This is not about truth. This is about perceptions, attitudes, dislikes and malicious intent..." Three firefighters were suspended following an incident where they removed an American flag from a truck for maintenance considerations. Later, during informal discussions in the station it came out that neither considered the flag to represent what they feel America is about. Only then were they suspended pending further investigation. Also, it wasn't official policy until after this incident that all firetrucks in the county must fly the flag. Seems to me that the flag ceases to be a symbol of freedom when one is forced to carry it.
posted on Oct 3, 2001 - View this thread

Five Firefighters found alive Amazing. 48 hours after the collapse. "Five firefighters were found alive in New York on Thursday, trapped in an SUV buried in rubble from the World Trade Center. Two of the firefighters were able to leave the vehicle unassisted; all five were transported to the hospital."
posted on Sep 13, 2001 - View this thread

We've got a good old fashioned battle a' brewin'. Endangered wildlife acts have placed American heroes in danger and now have killed them. Would the young smoke jumping "forest savers" agree? Or are they now turning over in their graves that republicans have leeched themselves onto personal tragedy to make rightist inroads on ecological conservation?
posted on Aug 1, 2001 - View this thread