Despite signed agreements and promisses made to world leaders in prson, Russian armor – backed units still man check-points inside Georgia. Their heavy presence in the critical port city of Poti shows they want to blockage trade. From William D. Zeranski in the American Thinker comes this:

The port city of Poti is a strategic site and has undergone a $200 million port development project. Russian soldiers have set up check points and continuingly patrol the city. “Russian forces also set up a checkpoint near Senaki, the home of a major military base in western Georgia,” and far deeper in the interior of the Georgia nation.

If setting up multiple check points and categorizing large swaths of land as security zones is the Russian government’s interpretation of compliance, the US and the West better start advancing their own game of compliance before Georgia is “complianced” out of existence.

We must stand firm against the Russians. I understand that Dick Cheney is visiting soon. While humanitarian help is relatively easy, we will have to do more. And some will be heavy lifting. Initially it will be re-arming the Georgians and re-arming them with the very best anti-tank and hand held SAM missles. Somehow I believe these have already been provided. These will let the Russains know they will be hit back and hit back hard. If needed, more will come.

The port of Poli will need to be reopend and put back into the hands of the Georgians. The presence of a coalition of navy ships of the Georgian coast will ensure this. With the Ukrainians signalling an end to the Russian navy’s use of their Black Sea port, NATO ships can change the balance of power.

Ultimately, it must be us and our willing allies to do this. But it must be done or the Russians will move again to change the world to a place we do not want our children and their children to live.

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Captain Ed Morrissey does just that with his post this morning in Hot Air. Says Morrissey:

Mitt Romney, a former Governor, may be best positioned of all, though, on the economy. If Romney gets selected for McCain’s running mate, he will be the only one of the four principals who has actually run a business, and run it successfully. He knows more about economic policy in both academic and practical terms than any of them, and hits Barack Obama in his key strength among voters.

Michigan is in play as it is, but as Morrissey points out, even more so with Romney.

Romney (and Pawlenty and Blunt) also have another quality that Joe Biden lacks: potential to deliver battleground states. Speculation about Michigan appears to have a solid basis in fact. In May, Survey USA tested a McCain/Romney ticket against several different iterations of an Obama ticket. Surprisingly, it beat every single possibility, but was especially strong against an Obama/Biden ticket:
vs Obama/Biden: +18
vs Obama/Clinton: +5
vs Obama/Gore: +5
vs Obama/(John) Edwards : +3

I’ve also heard that Romeny’s addition on the ticket benefits in Nevada and (I cannot believe this one) California. Romney will be terrific as an attack dog and will prove to be more presidential to voters than either Obama or Biden. His success in the private sector coupled with executive experience as a govenor of a large and important state puts his resume at the top.

I think I can speak for many republicans that in the event he is chosen, it will prompt a collective sigh of relief like no other past republican VP ever has.

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Bradley that is. You remember the one. The former NY Knick great who became a US Senator and a respected one at that. He even ran for president once, but somehow you could tell he wasn’t really up to it. Maybe the ego just big enough.

Bill Bradley if you can remember was one of the first Democrats of note to endorse Barack Obama. The old Knick said it was the Obama superior judgement.

Where’s Bill been lately?

At the time of the Bradley endorsement, no vetting had occured. I wonder if Bradley knew about Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright. Did he know about the Annenberg money? He had to know that Obama was a product of the Chicago Dem machine, but probably knew little of the details.

Would Bradley have suggested his old Senate collegue, Joe Biden?

We ‘ve not heard from Bill Bradley but I’d sure like to know what he thinks of his endorsement now.

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From his own blog, Maoist Michael Klonsky boasts of the success of his Annenberg funded Small Schools Workshop. From a link titled “Social Justice Schools: The magazine “The Nation” generates the story titled, “The Concious Classroom,” the story of Little Village Lawndale High School located on the Chicago West Side.

Positioned among smoky factories and aging row houses on Chicago’s West Side, the immaculate Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) serves as a constant reminder to community residents of what collective action can produce. Concerned that 70 percent of neighborhood students traveled to different parts of the city for high school, parents organized vigorously for the construction of a new facility in their backyard. After initially approving the plans, city officials stalled construction, claiming that funds had to be diverted to other projects. In response, the community redoubled its efforts, culminating in a nineteen-day hunger strike at the site of the proposed building, referred to by supporters as Camp Cesar Chavez. “Construyan la escuela ahora!” was the protesters’ battle cry, and after six long years, the school was opened as promised in 2005.

Aside from the beautiful building, the struggle birthed a new educational environment for Little Village’s youth. “The parents kept saying they really wanted our school to teach the values of peace and struggle,” says Rito Martinez, the principal of Social Justice High School at LVLHS, “and what the community had to do to fight for the school.” One of four small schools housed on the campus, Martinez’s social justice school was specifically created to foster basic skills and literacy–as well as critical inquiry–through projects and problems centered on race, gender and economic equity. “There’s a combination of self-awareness and the opportunity to become socially conscious,” he says. “We’re not dogmatic about it…but we give them the opportunity for self-discovery.”

On a fall morning a week into the school year, it’s clear that the school’s methodology excites the students of LVLHS, 98 percent of whom qualify as low-income. It’s Wednesday, which means the kids participate in extended teacher-generated colloquiums focusing on topics that allow students to explore their identity in an academic setting. In a section on student organizing, thirteen high schoolers attempt to define the word “community,” brainstorming about their city’s assets and problems and how the students can tackle an issue of importance to them. Down the hall, an enthusiastic teacher focusing on ethnography leads a lively discussion about racial stereotypes in the media as an entree into the idea of hegemony. Hands pop up across the packed classroom as students argue about how advertisements influence the way society views larger populations. As Martinez notes, providing students the flexibility to “explore learning” is something that’s generally offered only to kids in affluent districts, yet the practice can be transformational.

While the history of LVLHS’s genesis is unique, its approach is not; the movement to link education, social justice and activism is appealing to a growing number of educators and community organizations around the country. Updating successful principles from liberatory education programs of the past, teachers and community members are finding exciting ways to engage a new generation of urban students alienated by mainstream methodologies, something countless reform efforts have thus far failed to accomplish. And as Congress moves to reform or scrap the No Child Left Behind Act, legislators could benefit from studying these new techniques, which have been largely ignored on a national scale.

Back to the Future

Much of the work that now falls under the social justice education umbrella is grounded in a rich educational lineage dating back more than forty years. Among the intellectual forebears is Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, author of the landmark 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire described traditional education as “suffering from narration sickness,” in which the hierarchical relationship between teacher and student causes the former to deposit facts into the latter without cultivating an understanding of what those facts mean. He argues that only through a dialectical praxis, or “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it,” will students develop the critical skills necessary to realize their potential as scholars and citizens.

Another equally important influence is the Freedom School movement of the 1960s. In 1964 various civil rights organizations created a network of free alternative summer schools in Mississippi as a means to end the political marginalization of black people by encouraging students to become active in their communities. Divided between an “academic curriculum” that used reading, verbal and writing activities based on the student’s own experiences and a “citizenship curriculum” that allowed for discussions about each student’s role in the Jim Crow South, the course work was demanding. But more than 3,000 black students of all ages attended that summer, demonstrating the program’s appeal.

Twenty-first-century social justice education builds on these models while also emphasizing dialogue and remaining attentive to each student’s social environment. “Taking kids’ lives as a point of departure and bringing the world into the classroom really does seem to give a context and a purpose that is very motivating,” says Stan Karp, a veteran English teacher and an editor of the Milwaukee-based education reform magazine Rethinking Schools.

Conservatives, with the New York Sun and City Journal leading the charge, have denounced the movement for indoctrinating public school students with leftist politics at the expense of general education. But successful social justice education ensures that teachers strike a balance between debating sociopolitical problems that affect children’s lives and teaching them academic basics on which they will be tested. A science teacher can plant an urban garden, allowing students to learn about plant biology, the imbalance in how fresh produce is distributed and how that affects the health of community residents. An English teacher can explore misogyny or materialism in American culture through the lens of hip-hop lyrics. Or as Rico Gutstein, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, suggests, a math teacher can run probability simulations using real data to understand the dynamics behind income inequality or racial profiling. These are “examples of lessons where you can really learn the math basics,” he says, “but the purpose of learning the math actually becomes an entree into, and a deeper understanding of, the political ramifications of the issue.”

Such practical exercises, advocates argue, improve upon the standard approach to youth development, which aims to promote individual success but fails to examine the inequities that inhibit it. “At least to expose people to a structural analysis of inequality and the distribution of goodies in society,” says Charles Payne, the Frank P. Hixon Professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, “seems to be one of the more obvious ways that we can do better than we have done.” If executed properly, social justice education also lays the intellectual foundation so essential for independent analytical thought while providing students the opportunity to realize their own human agency. In this way, urban students are treated not as burdens to their community but as partners in solving the complex problems that plague their neighborhoods.

The Method Spreads

Social justice education has made inroads inside and outside the conventional classroom setting. Since 1992 the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) has stood at the forefront of this movement, running modern freedom schools in cities nationwide. CDF leaders devised a model curriculum focused on five components: high-quality academic enrichment; parent and family involvement; civic engagement and social action; intergenerational leadership development; and nutrition, physical and mental health. Like their Freedom Summer predecessors, college-age students attend a national training workshop and facilitate coursework at all the schools. Since 1995 more than 64,000 children and families have been involved, including 7,000 children in forty-nine cities in the summer of 2006.

Independent freedom schools have developed as well, each with its own local nuances. In San Francisco, students meet weekly to discuss topics like “Art and Protest” and “Nonviolence and Direct Action.” Chicago youth, upon passing a rigorous application process, are actually paid $1,200 to attend an intensive six-week program that highlights sociopolitical consciousness and movement strategy.

Ironically, the rise of public charter schools, which have been promoted by the right and sometimes resisted by education reformers on the left, has been a boon for social justice education. “I don’t see how that rapid expansion is possible without the proliferation of small schools and charter schools,” says Payne. “They create an institutional opening and a resource base that wasn’t there before.” Public charter status is valuable because funding is still provided by the government, but teachers are granted more autonomy to experiment with material that some may deem too controversial in standard settings. In New York City alone, more than fifteen charter schools have opened with explicit social justice themes, many of them in the past five years. Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland have followed suit.

With more education schools assigning the works of Freire and Jonathan Kozol, a growing number of teachers, with the help of local teachers’ organizations, are infusing their curriculums with liberatory theories too. One such group is the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE), an organization of past and present public school teachers founded in 2002 that gives teachers the chance to discuss larger issues of social justice while formulating ways to bring those topics into the classroom. “We find that there are a lot of teachers who are highly politicized, but they are isolated in schools where they are being forced to implement curriculum or policies that are really antithetical to their own belief system,” says Bree Picower, a NYCORE member and an assistant professor at New York University’s Department of Teaching & Learning. “And we look to try and network those teachers.” Teachers 4 Social Justice (T4SJ), a similar group in Chicago, holds an annual curriculum fair where teachers can exchange lesson plans as well as tactics on the best way to teach about injustice in schools that don’t explicitly support such activity. “You have to be careful. You have to build allies,” says Gutstein, a co-founder of the Chicago T4SJ. “But the reality is that there’s always space. There’s always cracks.”

Perhaps most encouraging, liberatory education advocates from diverse parts of the country are beginning the slow process of organizing. “Oftentimes it’s individuals or individual institutions doing their own work,” says Tara Mack, director of the Education for Liberation Network. “And it’s one of these things where you look up and realize that there are actually a lot of different people who share similar values but haven’t necessarily connected with each other.” Mack’s burgeoning organization–an outgrowth of a listserv of educators, academics and researchers–planned and ran Free Minds, Free People, what many have called one of the most productive social justice education conferences to date. More than 400 participants from across the country convened at LVLHS in June and ran panels, shared resources and discussed the best way to build institutional strength. Other networking groups are budding as well, including Education Action!, a nonprofit created by Jonathan Kozol, and the Teachers Activist Group, a national association attempting to align local organizations like NYCORE and T4SJ.

Breaking Into the Mainstream

In part, the growing interest in social justice education can be attributed to a kind of Bush backlash. Surging inequality and further disinvestment from urban cores to offset tax cuts and military spending have given teachers and activists the impetus to speak frankly to kids about ideas of fairness and justice, even if the President’s No Child Left Behind Act has limited curriculum flexibility. “I think it’s the…polarization that you see,” says Gutstein. “People are talking about things in ways which I don’t think I’ve heard since the 1970s, and that includes education.”

But blaming the current Administration misses a larger point. Social justice education is a pedagogy that’s reinvigorating educators frustrated with the ineffectiveness of longstanding reform efforts. Despite new focus on the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” many urban students remain deeply alienated from traditional methods that seem so removed from their lives. The links between academic and financial success are tenuous at best, and command-and-control testing ignores the critical skills needed to improve the communities that the private sector and government have all but abandoned. In this context, focusing on structural inequality and human development is a compelling alternative.

While difficult to quantify empirically because much of the work is new and geographically localized, the pedagogy has shown humble signs of success. One Philliber Research Associates study found that the reading ability of 1,598 children who attend CDF Freedom School programs in Kansas City “significantly improved,” outdistancing similar students, irrespective of whether or not they attended summer enrichment programs. Of the attendees, low-income middle schoolers made the greatest gains. And as those interviewed point out, the anecdotal evidence from students, teachers and parents is overwhelming. “We’re rethinking these educational practices across the board,” says Mia Henry, director of the Chicago Freedom School. “Because everyone is trying to find a way to do it right.”

Social justice education, while growing in influence, has not yet entered the majority of mainstream education-reform conversations. Hunger strikes and protests like those at Little Village Lawndale High School may speed along the process. But if students remain engaged and educators continue to experiment and improve on their methods, it should be only a matter of time.

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Stunning not only in its focus but its arrogance, Mike Klonsky’s Chicago HS was priliminarily known as Camp Ceasar Chavez after the leftist organizer of illegal allien growers in California of the 60′s and 70′s. But there’s more. At Lawndale HS and English teacher is encouraged to explore mysoginy and materialism in America through hip hop music. Or maybe a math teacher can explore income inequities based on racial profiling. All are highlites mak public school curriculum based on making America seem evil. And all funded through Obama/Ayers efforts to control curriculum and indoctrinate Chicago youth.

But again there’s more. The Lawndale model is intended to be used in other cities to start Charter Schools, an Obama favorite. His agenda is revealed here as many observers, including this one took Obama at his word he would be championing school choice in larger cities where public schools had been failing and many legitimate private entities had begun effective charter efforts in those areas. Little did anyone know, he may well have had the Obama/Ayers Lawndale Model in mind. In San Francisco and New York similar models are already being implemented under the old guise of the 1960′s radicalism, Freedom Schools.

H/T: Commentor Maybee at JOM

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Dr. Stanley Kurtz was initially rebuffed by the U of I – Chicago Library for access to the Obama-Ayers use of Annenberg Challenge grant funds in their efforts at reforming Chicago Public Schools. Late last week the Library agreed to release the files to Dr. Kurtz. Here’s some words from Kurtz, blogging in The Corner:

I’ll have more to say about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in some follow-up posts, but first I want to express my gratitude to the many readers who contacted UIC to call for release of the records. UIC has now agreed to make these records public. I received cc’s from several hundred emailers, and I have indications that the actual number of messages to UIC may have been in the thousands. I’m also extremely grateful to the radio talk-show hosts, bloggers, and columnists who helped build pressure for release of the records. Although UIC has sought to portray this as a simple misunderstanding. It’s clear from Chicago radio talk-show host, Jerry Agar’s interview with a UIC spokesman that the university and donor were keeping alive the option of UIC giving all the records back. It’s also clear from my initial struggle with library personnel that their schedule for release of the records was several weeks down the road, at the very least. I believe that public scrutiny and pressure foreclosed the options of return or delay and led to swift release of the records. So, again, to all who helped with this battle, a hearty and happy thank you.

It’s clear quite a bit of pressure was applied to the Library by the public and that Dr. Kurtz gives credit to everyone who wrote and blogged on the matter.

See more of Kurtz posts here and here.

But there’s more. Steve Diamond has led on this from the beginning. Here’s something from his latest post where he asks what role did Bill Ayers play in all of this:

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Bill Ayers, the former terrorist leader of the Weather Underground, is now a prominent member of the UIC faculty in their College of Education. He was the founder of the CAC and helped pick Barack Obama as the CAC Board Chair in 1995.

Bill Ayers co-chaired the key operational arm of the CAC, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which he had helped organize in 1994 when preparing the original application for the $49.2 mn Annenberg Challenge grant. The CAC’s offices were actually originally set up, rent free, in the same building as the College of Education of the UIC, where Ayers has long taught.

Then this of Ayers:

Of course, Ayers is a close political ally of Barack Obama and it would have been highly inappropriate of the UIC Library to warn him of the entry of an Obama critic onto UIC turf only to allow him and the Library to invent an excuse – the allegedly missing but legally unnecessary “deed of gift” – to prevent access to the validly possessed CAC records.

Without a full explanation of the role of Ayers in this series of events, it is unlikely that the public will feel reassured that the CAC documents have not been tampered with.

Writing in Pajamas Media, Clarice Feldman covers the possible political problems it may cause Barack Obama:

Will the voters regard it as relevant that while Ayers and Obama were furthering their career interests in the disposition of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge millions, they did absolutely nothing — per a formal review of the program — to improve the academic performance of the pupils in their program and, indeed, may have hindered their academic progress by trying to turn every school they worked with into laboratories of revolutionary action in line with Ayres’ authoritarian agenda and belief that the public school system is “nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony”?

While the Obama team make questionable decisions like the one to pick Joe Biden for VP, they do have a sense of timing. As with the decision to string along the actual Biden announcement keeping the Clinton campaign out of the news, so goes the CAC file controversy.

Its easily plausible that Obama’s allies kept the noted conservative Kurtz from accessing the papers now but knew they would have to release them at some point. They couldn’t have bad news out in the days just prior to the convention as it might give the Clintons ammo for stealing the nomination. If there is indeed bad news in the files, they kicked the can down the road. The Obama campaign might even try to circumvent Kurtz by pre-empting him with a Friday style document dump of their own for spin control.

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At Newsbusters, Tom Blumer notes that Joe Biden’s Wikipedia page is, well, getting touched up a bit.

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We are told that John Maine has a bone spur “on the back of his shoulder”. Where specifically we are not told.

At any rate, a spur is almost best case scenario as its easily shaved down through a scope. If there is minimal soft tissue damage, he could be back to full strenghth by spring training.

But what to do now?

It hurts and he is unable to throw between starts. Not throwing on the side often leads to performances like last night. Its a routine he won’t be able to sustain. Although he had good velocity last night, he displayed poor command and had no movement on his fastball.

If he is unusually sor this morning, the Mets will know its not going its not going to work. The spur might be causing soft tissue damage and they will need to shut him down for the year to have the surgery and begin the rehab. The good news is that the outlook is good.

Word may come soon that we’ll see Jon Niese put on the 25 man roster before September 1 to be eligible for the play-offs.

Even if the Mets are not going to shut down Maine, they could DL him to create a spot for Niese before September 1st and still have Maine eligible for October. Niese is 4-1 for New Orleans (AAA) and starts tonight in Albuquerque. His next spot fits perfect for the Mets as it falls within a day of when Maine would take the mound next.

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Jim Geraghty reported Friday that Barack Obama had marveled at the infrastructure he saw at the Beijing Olympics and said it was better than ours.

“Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics , Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business, you’re starting to think, ‘Beijing looks like a pretty good option.’”

Aside from being a factually incorrect statement, the subtleties of Obama’s statement reveal his own admiration for the communist system. Its little wonder he’s spent a lifetime surrounding himself with like minded folks.

A young Barack Obama’s first mentor was Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party and as it turns out a child molester His long friendship with anti-american terrorist Bill Ayers is well documented as is the hate america first Jeremiah Wright.

It is in these individuals he sought intellectual guidance and validation throughout his life and is the basis of his own personal values. His slip of the tongue while stumping in Virginia this week is further evidence of dangerous core beliefs

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I flipped the channel just in time to see medical personnel wrapping up Houston Texans’ special teams player Harry Williams after a violent collision during a kick-off against the Dallas Cowboys. He sustained a fracture at Cervical vertebrae number 3. Just one vertebrae higher could have proved fatal as it controls breathing.

In December of 1997, Detroit Lions trainer Kent Falb and team physician Dr. Terry Lock saved the life of Reggie Brown when they quickly removed the helmet to begin rescue ventelation. Here’s a stirring account of those events:

Early in the fourth quarter, Sanders runs 15 yards for a touchdown. The Lions lead, 13-10, and the Silverdome is rocking. Nearly 80,000 fans are making so much noise that Lions defensive end Robert Porcher feels the artificial turf move beneath his feet. Nose tackle Luther Elliss lines up directly across from the Jets’ center, only a few feet from quarterback Neil O’Donnell, but Elliss hears only staccato sound bites as O’Donnell yells signals to his teammates. O’Donnell has to call a timeout and then ask for assistance from referee Dick Hantak–twice–before he can get the Jets’ first play off after the kickoff.

On the third play, Adrian Murrell takes a handoff from O’Donnell and follows left guard Lamont Burns and left tackle Kerry Jenkins into the line on a draw play. Burns gets turned around and shoved backward by Elliss. Brown, his head lowered, moves in from his weakside linebacker position to try to tackle Murrell a couple of yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Linebacker Antonio London comes in from the other side. Massive bodies converge in a powerful collision. Elliss (291 pounds) drives Burns (300) into Brown (241), the crown of Brown’s helmet smashing into Burns lower back. The impact jams Brown’s neck into his shoulders and knocks him back and down.

Elliss reaches down to help Brown up, but his teammate doesn’t move. Other Lions players implore him to get up. Brown’s lips mouth words he can’t speak. Panic. Free safety Mark Carrier signals frantically to the sideline for medical help.

ELAPSED TIME: 19 seconds

That’s how much time passes between Brown’s fall and Falb’s arrival at his side. London is hysterical. “He ain’t breathing! Hurry, Kent! You’ve got to do something!”

Falb, 57, is in his 32nd season with the Lions. He joined the club as an assistant trainer in 1966, was promoted to head trainer the next year and has never missed a game–640 and counting. He treated Mike Utley, the former Lions guard, who fell awkwardly on his head and shoulders during a game in November 1991 and suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. And he was on the sideline at Tiger Stadium in October 1971 when Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes suffered a fatal heart attack late in a game against the Bears.

As he looks at Brown, Falb’s first thought is: “Dear God, don’t let me lose another player.”

Falb puts his left hand on Brown’s chest. He feels a heartbeat but realizes Brown isn’t breathing. Falb asks him if he wears a mouthpiece, thinking it might be lodged in his throat, but Brown mouths a “no.” Some of the Lions players confirm that.

Dr. Terry Lock, an orthopedic surgeon in his second season as a consultant to the Lions, arrives seconds after Falb. His initial suspicion is one every doctor of sports medicine fears: a spinal cord injury. But now Brown’s lips and tongue are turning blue and everyone–Falb, Lock and the stunned, onlooking players–are struck by a more grisly thought: Brown is going to die.

“It didn’t look good,” says Allen “Jocko” Hughes, the Lions’ director of security who was on the field trying to keep the players from crowding Falb and Lock. “I was on the police force for 28 years, and I’ve seen people like that, They don’t make it.”

Complicating the situation is the very gear Brown is wearing to protect him from injury. He is suffocating, trapped behind the facemask of his helmet. But the doctors can’t just yank the helmet off. If his neck isn’t already broken, that could do it. It is a very unusual situation for a victim of possible spinal trauma. And one the medical team has little time to ponder. A person who stops breathing for four minutes is at risk of brain damage.

The facemask is secured by four screws. In addition, there are two pieces of hard plastic called shock blockers (one on each side) that would have to be cut off. All of that would require time–precious seconds they can’t afford to squander. “We’ve got to take his helmet off,” Lock says.

While Falb supports Brown with his left hand under his neck and his right hand under his head, Lock positions himself above Brown. He unfastens the chinstrap. Then, using both hands, he reaches into the ear holes and pries apart the helmet so that the jaw pads can slip easily over Brown’s face.

“At the time, I didn’t feel nervous at all about taking the helmet off,” Lock says. “I was more concerned with how we were going to ventilate him and keep him alive.”

Lock begins giving Brown, who has been without air for about 90 seconds, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, four breaths at a time. He has been practicing CPR for 15 years, ever since he graduated from medical school in 1983–but only on mannequins. This time, a life is in his hands.

Lions coach Bobby Ross comes on the field and motions the players back, so Falb and Lock have room to work. Every time he gets a group of players to step back, another moves forward.

“You wanted to watch,” Lions linebacker George Jamison says, “but it was almost too much to bear at the same time ”

Lions safety Ron Rice walks over to London, the most shaken player, and puts a hand on his shoulder. Players from both teams shout encouragement to Brown, as if their words can will him to stave off death.

“Come on, Reggie!”

“You can fight it!”

“Don’t give up, Reggie!”

As Lions defensive tackle Marc Spindler watches Falb work on Brown, he relives the scene When Utley was paralyzed. Some of the Jets’ players are remembering Dennis Byrd, who fractured his fifth cervical vertebra in a November 1992 game against the Chiefs. Byrd was paralyzed temporarily from the waist down but gradually recovered. He now walks on his own.

ELAPSED TIME: 2 minutes, 45 seconds

At the south end of the Silverdome, near the tunnel where an ambulance is parked during games, paramedic Bill Grubb has walked to the middle of the end zone, as he does every time there is an injury, and waits to be summoned. He sees the signal from Bill Ford, one of the Lions’ assistant trainers.

As Grubb retrieves his medical emergency equipment–a gurney, a spine board and a medical bag containing, among other things, an EKG machine, an artificial respiration device and oxygen–he gets unsolicited help. Two Lions, center Kevin Glover and wide receiver Johnnie Morton, come running up. “He ain’t breathing He ain’t breathing!” they scream. Eyeing the defibrillator, Morton says, “Give me those paddles!” With Grubb on the right side of the gurney, Glover on the left and Morton pushing from behind, they race to the rescue.

Two of the Jets’ doctors, Elliot Pellman, an internist, and Elliott Hershman, an orthopedist are assisting. Pellman inserts a catheter connected to a bag of saline solution into Brown’s right arm as a precautionary measure. If Brown goes into cardiac arrest there will be an immediate avenue to get medication into him intravenously.

Some 1,300 miles away, in Round Rock, Texas, a suburb of Austin, a mother watches her television in shock as medical personnel work furiously to save her son. At first, Elizabeth Brown thinks Reggie has suffered another “stinger”–a pinched nerve in his neck. But as time passes, she realizes the injury is much more serious. Her state of emotions evolves from denial to shock to helplessness. The Lions don’t have her phone number, and she doesn’t know who to call in Detroit.

The Silverdome, which moments before had shook with such loudness that it almost rattled your ribs, now is blanketed by an eerie calm. From the coaches’ booth in the press box, Lions defensive coordinator Larry Peccatiello looks at Brown through binoculars, hoping to see an arm or leg move, a twitch, some movement.

On the Jets’ sideline, Chris Hayes, a second-year safety, watches silently, tears streaming down his face. James Farrior, a rookie, has his arm around Hayes, trying to console him. The scene is almost surreal. Players from both teams, perhaps as many as 50, are on the field. Enemies only minutes before, they have come together now as a family. Some are screaming and standing so close to Brown that it is making the medical personnel’s job more difficult. At one point, Falb rises to look for something and bumps his head on a player’s shoulder pads. “Please get back!” Falb hollers.

A few feet behind the crowd surrounding Brown, four Lions players–Glover, Elliss, Ray Roberts and Hessley Hempstead–kneel in a circle, their arms around each other, their heads bowed in prayer. On the Lions’ sideline, Spindler walks up to Dave Wilson, the team chaplain, and asks him to pray with him for Brown. They kneel and hold hands.

As Porcher looks at Brown, still blue and unable to breathe on his own, he reflects on the day before. After Saturday’s practice, he and his father had gone to Chuck’s Soul Food Restaurant, half a mile from the Silverdome, with Brown, Jamison, Larry Tharpe and Tracy Scroggins. They filled all the stools at the counter. Porcher couldn’t believe how much food Brown ordered: catfish, grits, toast and a BIT sandwich. “How are you going to eat all that?” Porcher had asked Brown, who washed it down with a large glass of lemonade. They sat there eating, talking and laughing, never suspecting that a little more than 24 hours later one of them would be lying on the field, fighting for his life.

The player most oddly affected by the developments is Scott Kowalkowski. He is Brown’s backup, so he will be going in at weakside line-backer when the game resumes. Although he is as upset as the rest of the Lions, Kowalkowski is on the sideline talking to linebackers coach Gary Moeller about what schemes the Jets might use. Sitting in the stands is Kowalkowski’s father, who empathizes with his son. Bob Kowalkowski played for the Lions from 1966 to ’76 and was on the field when Hughes suffered his heart attack.

Hantak calls up to the press box to Art McNally, the NFL’s associate supervisor of officials, who is working as the NFL’s assigned observer for the game. Realizing that Brown could die on the field, Hantak asks about the protocol regarding completion of the game. McNally tells him that the game will have to continue; only the NFL commissioner is empowered to stop it. Hantak knows he will have to communicate this sobering information to Ross and Bill Parcells, the Jets’ coach.

Lock continues to give Brown mouth-to-mouth. He is so focused on his mission that he has no idea how much time has elapsed. Clearly, every second is an eternity. There is discussion about intubating Brown; it would be an effective method to protect Brown’s airway and guarantee he would get oxygen, while at the same time protect him from gastric aspiration (vomiting). But pushing Brown’s neck back to insert a tube in his throat is too risky. It could exacerbate any spinal cord injury. An artificial respirator is safer.

Grubb, the paramedic, removes a plastic bag-valve mask from his medical bag and puts it over Brown’s nose and mouth. It is connected to a pliable, rubber receptacle about the size of a football that holds 2,000 cubic centimeters of air. At the other end is a clear, plastic bag through which oxygen flows, replenishing the reservoir in the rubber receptacle. Grubb gently pulls up on Brown’s jaw, opening an airway but not risking further neck movement. He begins to squeeze the rubber bag, pumping air into Brown.

ELAPSED TIME: 7 minutes 45 seconds

An ambulance emerges from the south tunnel, its emergency lights flashing as it backs down the field. Brown remains unconscious, still unable to breathe unassisted, but the immediate danger of suffocation has passed. The doctors and medical personnel continue to monitor his vital signs and stabilize him. Despite the long delay and the fear still etched on the faces of players, there is no urgency to move Brown into the ambulance and take him to a hospital. Each step is deliberate, systematic, precise.

ELAPSED TIME: 9 minutes

Noise starts to circulate again in the stands as the fans begin to clap and cheer. Chants of “Regggg-ie! Regggg-ie!” cascade onto the field.

Brown is placed on the gurney. He is strapped to the spineboard by lateral restraints across his arms, hips and legs. Styrofoam blocks, anchored by sandbags, support his head.

ELAPSED TIME: 12 minutes, 15 second

The gurney is lifted into the back of the ambulance, which will take Brown to Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital, about 10 minutes away, for preliminary tests. Just before he climbs into the ambulance, Dr. Keith Burch, another of the Lions’ physicians, is handed something by cornerback Corey Raymond. “Give this to Reg,” Raymond says. It is a laminated holy card, with a prayer and a picture of St. Joseph. Raymond’s mother sends him holy cards, and he brings them to games. While Brown was being treated, Raymond remembered the holy card and ran off the field and up the tunnel to the locker room, where he it from his dressing stall.

As players from both teams begin to disperse and return to their sidelines. Spindler and Jets defensive lineman Hugh Douglas touch closed fists in a gesture of good will. Looking up at the scoreboard, Spindler says to Douglas: “Now we’ll find out what this team is all about.”

The ambulance remains on the field while doctors and paramedics clamp down the gurney and hook up an oxygen tank. Falb shakes hands with Pellman, thanking him for his assistance, and starts to walk toward the Lions’ bench. He looks up and sees a sea of faces, all of them a blur except one. The face in the crowd belongs to former Lions safety Harry Colon, who, only nine weeks earlier, had suffered momentary paralysis after he was knocked unconscious during a game on the same field. Tests disclosed a congenital problem in his spine and Colon had to retire. Falb looks at Colon, standing on the sideline in street clothes, and says to himself: “I wonder what he is thinking.” Falb looks away for a second. When fie looks back. Colon has disappeared. He never sees him again that day.

ELAPSED TIME: 13 minutes

Most of the Jets’ players on the sideline are kneeling in prayer, some members of the offense are doing the same on the field. Ross gathers his players around him on the field, informs them that Brown no longer is in danger of dying and then gives perhaps the most difficult pep talk in his coaching career.

“Listen,” Ross says. “They talked to the league, and we’ve got to finish the game. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but that’s what’s got to happen. In that light, we’ve got to be professional. There’s two things we can do for Reggie now: pray for him and play for him. Let’s do that.”

Then the Lions’ players and coaches–led by Wilson, the chaplain–say a prayer. Wilson asks God to watch over Brown and give his teammates the strength to complete the game.

ELAPSED TIME: 16 minutes, 10 seconds

The doors are closed and the ambulance heads for the tunnel as cheers ring out throughout the stadium. The Jets’ offensive players and the Lions’ defensive players are back on the field.

ELAPSED TIME: 17 minutes

Hantak signals for the clock to restart.

In the ambulance, Lock holds Brown’s head, even though it is stabilized by the blocks and sandbags. Brown’s color gradually returns, and just when the ambulance pulls into the hospital’s parking lot he takes some breaths on his own. As the back doors are opened, he begins to regain consciousness. The doctors ask Brown if he can move his arms or feet He can do neither. Now, the fear is that Brown is paralyzed.

He is taken to a trauma room and immediately administered a large dose of methylprednisolone, a powerful steroid that will reduce and prevent further swelling around the spinal cord. Brown asks about his family and his girlfriend, Kerrie Patterson, who is flying to Detroit that night. Brown remembers the flight number. Someone has to go pick her up, he pleads. Then, he begins vomiting

X-rays and a CAT scan are inconclusive; Brown’s vertebrae seem reasonably lined up. Finally, a positive sign: Brown begins to move his toes and feet. The function in his upper extremities is slower to return, and one hand is weaker than the other. After about two hours of tests, doctors prepare Brown to be transported to Henry Ford Hospital, near downtown Detroit. Later that night, he is fitted with a special device called a halo, which stabilizes his head and spine. Doctors attach a ring around Brown’s head by inserting four 2-inch titanium screws into his skull, using only a local anesthetic. It is supported by four posts connected to a vest around his upper torso. He has to wear the halo 24 hours a day for the next three months (see story, page 25).

On Monday morning, there is discouraging news. Doctors discover the top two vertebrae in Brown’s spinal column, C1 and C2, are displaced. Surgery is performed to fuse them together.

As they get ready to put Brown back in the ambulance for the trip to Ford, Burch, readies into his pants pocket and feels the holy card. He looks at Lock and says, “I think it’s time we gave this to him.” Burch tells Brown one of his teammates gave it to him. Then he places the card on Brown’s chest, under the cervical collar he is wearing.

Down in Elizabeth Brown has made contact with a doctor at Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital. She stays up late, waiting by her phone, as the Lions call her with updates on Reggie’s condition. She is relieved to learn that he has some movement in his legs and arms. Tomorrow, she will board a plane for Detroit to be with her son. Tonight, she will sleep fitfully and say a lot of prayers.

By the time Lock returns to the Silverdome, the locker room is nearly empty. The Lions have qualified for the playoffs and Sanders has joined Eric Dickerson and O.J. Simpson as the NFL’s only 2,000-yard rushers, but the postgame mood is bittersweet, tempered by the players’ anxiety about their teammate. An emotionally spent Lock finds Falb in the training room. “Wow!” he says. “I can’t believe what we’ve gone through.”

And then the two men most responsible for saving Reggie Brown’s life hug each other.

The lesson is this. NFL players receive the finest trauma car in the event a serious spinal injury occurs during a game. The certified athletic trainers (ATCs) on NFL staffs are the most highly trained professionals in dealing with not only responding to these emergencies but also in the overall crisis management of the sports medicine team. Most colleges have ATCs on their staffs.

Sadly many of our high schools do not. Budget difficulties of the public school systems and the peculiar politics of the ATCs place in health care today often leave our kids uncovered at events. Most high school football games have ambulances at games. Yet without an ATC on the sideline, its unlikely that the heroics of Kent Falb and Dr Lock can be duplicated. There just isn’t enough time.

Falb is retired and is a member of The NATA Hall of Fame. He still lectures our future ATCs at Erskine College near his Aiken, South Carolina home. Dr. Lock still practices medicine in the Detroit area.

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Some say the best glipse of history comes only for historians after 100 years have past. But Ralph Peters totally casts this hypothesis aside this morning with his remarkably astute observations of what just happened in the Caucasus.

One can only admire the unrivaled acuity with which Putin, the old KGB agent, sized up the other players he knew would come to the strategic gaming table. He took his cue to begin planning his punitive expedition into Georgia last winter, when a core group of European states, led by Germany, refused to inaugurate concrete measures (such as MAPs, or Military Action Plans) to set Ukraine and Georgia on course to become NATO members. Moscow read NATO’s Sendung as an abandonment, especially of Georgia. Thereafter, Russia’s leader surveyed the international characters who had chips on the table: President Bush had convinced himself that Putin was his friend and could be blindsided; Europe’s leaders could be depended upon to quibble among themselves while seeking to avoid incurring any serious costs; and the mercurial President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia could be goaded into a conflict at the time of Russia’s choosing.

Peter says this of what Putin will do next:

He’ll murder again, as a consequence. We’ve seen this pattern played out in the United States, when, in the 1990s, the Clinton administration refused to take Islamist terrorism seriously: al Qaeda was supposed to fade away because we wanted it to fade away. But al Qaeda wasn’t interested in our wishes. Likewise, Western European states that have enjoyed the richest, longest stretch of peace in their history don’t want the party to end and so make excuses for Russia.

But the party always ends. Vladimir Putin just put Europe on notice that time’s up and the catering bills are due. Nonetheless, Western Europe will continue its efforts to duck out on its strategic creditors: The continent’s oldest democracies will have to be cornered miserably before they accept the new, brutal reality created by Russia’s new czar. In the short term, Putin will continue to terrorize Georgia. In the mid-term, his diplomats will placate Europe with promises. In the long-term, he’ll do whatever he damn well pleases. For all his savagery, it’s impossible not to admire Putin’s Kampfgeist. He may well be the giant of our age.

Its hard no to find everything that Peters write to be anything but prophetic. I tease my high school freshmen that with my 50th birthday coming in February, I am “half a hundred”. My own son is now 18 and has not grown up in an age of innocence with the specter of Islamic mass murderers around.

Yet he had been fortunate in a sense that he really never contemplated world-wide nuclear destruction that the Cold War offered. But as Ralph Peter’s “Putanism” seems to be a new clear and present danger, I fear that my son and his generation will realize two monsters whereas we only had one.

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