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How Do We Improve Public Schools? Take Away Their Funding, Terrorize Teachers, and Send Kids Somewhere Else (According to lawmakers)
By Elizabeth Walters
How can we improve public education for our children?
The answers to this question--and the perspectives on the current quality of public education in the United States--are as varied and individualized as the 55 million students who attend public school in this country. Recently, legislators in Louisiana, like their counterparts in many other states, have sought to improve their state’s educational climate. They have good reason for doing so--in its annual Kids COUNT ratings, meant to evaluate quality of life for children in each state and based on measurements that include educational indices, the Annie E. Casey Foundation consistently ranks Louisiana as 49th (thank you, Mississippi).
The Winds of War
by Stephen Lendman
When Washington plans regime change, wars are waged if other methods fail.
For over a year, Western-generated violence ravaged Syria. Assad remains firmly in control. As a result, expect war. All signs suggest it.
Annan's so-called peace plan is sham cover for what's planned. A longstanding imperial tool, he's part of the problem, not the solution. Instead of pointing fingers the right way, he blames Syria for insurgent crimes.
So does Ban Ki-moon, calling Assad "fully accountable for grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law." He added that government forces are using the so-called April 10 halt to violence deadline as an "excuse" to increase it.
Poverty in a Small Town
Rosemarie Jackowski
Will the United States ever rise above the evils of classism and racism? Is 'poverty' the new black?
The Vermont Council on Rural Development recently held community wide meetings to explore ways of improving life in small town Bennington. Most of the focus is usually on economic development. This time there was also a meeting focused on the issue of poverty. Meetings such as this are held every year or so. They usually result in discussions about having more meetings to decide when to have more meetings about having meetings. Then someone is appointed to write a report about the meetings.
The Zionist cuckoos in Christianity’s nest
Stuart Littlewood
"The destiny of the Jewish people is to return to the land of Israel and reclaim their inheritance promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. This inheritance extends from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates. Within their land, Jerusalem is recognised to be their exclusive, undivided and eternal capital, and therefore it cannot be shared or divided.
At the heart of Jerusalem will be the rebuilt Jewish temple, to which all the nations will come to worship God. Just prior to the return of Jesus, there will be seven years of calamities and war known as the tribulation, which will culminate in a great battle called Armageddon, during which the godless forces opposed to both God and Israel will be defeated.
Abdulhadi Alkhawaja Near Death
by Stephen Lendman
Abdulhadi Alkhawaja
Abdulhadi is a heroic human rights activist. A previous article discussed him and his ordeal in detail.
April 11 marks his 63rd hunger striking day for justice - if he's still alive. Bahrain won't clarify beyond a short less than reassuring statement. Ruling Al-Khalifa despots keep brutalizing him. They want him dead and silenced.
Among his many distinguished credentials, he co-founded the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR. He also served as its first president. On April 9, his lawyer, Mohammed Al-Jeshi, expressed fear he died. "Authorities have been refusing since (Sunday) all requests, made by myself and by his family, to visit or contact" him, Jeshi said.
The unclassified Zelikow torture memo as evidence of crimes
By Michael Collins
"My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views," he [Zelikow] continued. "They did more than that: The [2006] White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives." Phillip D. Zelikow, State Department Counselor, 2005-2007, to Congress, May 13, 2009
Former legal counsel to the Department of State, Phillip Zelikow, produced a convincing and elegant argument for the immediate cessation of anything that looked like torture in February 2006. The government declassified the memo last week and National Security Archive released it on April 3.
The failure to follow Zelikow's clear statement of the law, withholding the memo without justification, and the failure to prosecute those responsible for the previous acts represent evidence of crimes.
The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
In Part 1 of this series, I examined the elite assault on education – through the Chamber of Commerce, right-wing think tanks, and the Trilateral Commission – which arose in response to the massive social and political activist movements of the 1960s. The threat of popular democratic participation – that is, active and activist participation of the population in the decision-making process of a community or nation – was too much to bear. The fact that a significant degree of this activism had been mobilizing from the universities was enough reason for elites to declare a “crisis of democracy” and demand more apathy, complacency, and pacification from the population, more authority for themselves, and more control over the society as a whole. The result of this was neoliberalism – globally and locally – in government, the media, and the schools. The “Crisis of Democracy” was that there was too much of it. The solution, therefore, was to deconstruct democracy.
NAFTA Partners Take Steps to Boost Trilateral Relationship
By Dana Gabriel
While bilateral initiatives have dominated North American issues over the last couple of years, the trilateral relationship has suffered. With a series of high-level meetings, the U.S., Canada and Mexico are taking steps to boost the NAFTA partnership. First, the defense ministers met to discuss shared continental security threats. This was followed by a leaders summit which pledged to deepen trade, regulatory, energy and security cooperation. The recent meetings have caused some to once again take notice of the incremental efforts to merge all three countries into a North American Union.
In what was hailed as an historic event, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay, Mexican Secretary of National Defense Guillermo Galvan, and Mexican Secretary of the Navy Mariano Mendoza recently held the Inaugural Meeting of North American Defense Ministers. As part of a framework they agreed to: “Develop a joint trilateral defense threat assessment for North America to deepen our common understanding of the threats and challenges we face. Explore ways to improve our support to the efforts of civilian public security agencies in countering illicit activities in our respective countries and the hemisphere, such as narcotics trafficking. Explore how we can collaborate to increase the speed and efficiency with which our armed forces support civilian-led responses to disasters. Continue to work together to strengthen hemispheric defense forums.”
Guenter Grass is absolutely correct about Israel
By Khalid Amayreh
German poet and Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass deserves to be applauded for his moral courage, intellectual honesty, and audacity to challenge some of the established taboos pertaining to Israel and Jews.
In a piece of poetry published by a German newspaper last week, Grass, 84, condemned his country's arm sales to Israel, saying the Jewish state must not be allowed to threaten its neighbors with overwhelming conventional and nuclear weapons.
Thanks to a decades-old western policy of ignoring the development and possession by Israel of weapons of mass destruction, Israel has effectively become the Nazi Germany of the Middle East.
BIG BROTHER'S GETTING BIGGER
By Jack A. Smith
Government surveillance and attacks on the privacy of American citizens were bad enough under the Bush regime but they are getting even worse during the Obama years.
In addition to retaining President George W. Bush's many excesses, such as the Patriot Act, new information about the erosion of civil liberties emerges repeatedly during the era of President Barack Obama from the federal government, the courts and various police forces.
The Supreme Court added judicial insult to persona l injury April 2 when it ruled 5-4 that jail officials may strip-search anyone arrested for any offense, even a trifle, as they are being incarcerated, even if they are awaiting a hearing or trial. The four ultraconservative judges were joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
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