by Danny Weil

Philosophers for Change

[Note: This piece concludes the two-part essay. For Part 1, please see: Link]

Ted Forstmann and private advocacy philanthropy as a social movement

When there is an obvious financial pay-off for those promoting public policy changes through ‘advocacy philanthropy’, it behooves citizens to critically examine those advocates, their agendas and the implications of their claims. Sadly, this is not the case in America today nor was it at the time the leverage buy-out of public schools was being driven by those who posed as charitable individuals but whose real agenda was and is the incessant accumulation of profits.  However, in the spirit of critical examination, let us begin with entrepreneur, Ted Forstmann.

Forstmann was not an unfamiliar face at the time he was first advocating for the privatization of education.  Besides being a multimillionaire venture capitalist, Forstmann considered himself, “a pioneer of the leveraged buy-out” [1]. This is not surprising. He served on the boards of, or was a spokesperson for, many conservative organizations. His interest in school privatization and educational commercialization was born long before he founded the Children’s Scholarship Fund.

According to Forstmann, his educational pursuit was governed by what he had supposedly learned about schools. For example, he suggested that before the American Revolution and for one hundred years of our country’s history, education was widely available and diverse. He went so far as to argue that competition kept the quality of educational experiences high and education was then a voluntary act. Further, he claimed that during this period literacy was high – in fact, he stated it was higher than in some states today.

Many other right-wing market fundamentalists echo the same rhythmic mantra. Andrew Coulson, a darling of reactionary neo-liberals, has stated:

Early colonial America was arguably the freest civil society that has ever existed.  This freedom extended to education, which meant that parents were responsible for, and had complete control of, their children’s schooling. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, and no teacher certification requirements. Parents could choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children, and no one was forced to pay for education they did not use or approve of.

Prior to the Revolutionary War, the majority of American schools were organized and operated on a laissez-faire basis. There were common schools (often partially financed by local taxpayers, but primarily funded through private means) and specialized private schools of every sort (church schools, academies that prepared students for college, seminaries, dame schools for primary education, charity schools for the poor, and private tutors). Free schools were established by philanthropists and religious societies throughout the country to meet the educational needs of the very poor [2].

Of course, what Coulson, Forstmann and other market fundamentalists refused to acknowledge is the fact that in colonial America only the Anglo population was considered in literacy estimates.  Native Americans, African Americans, slaves and indentured servants were excluded from any statistical rendering. In Virginia alone, an entire 40% of the population who were slaves was simply disregarded in literacy estimates. Slaves were largely illiterate and prohibited from learning to read as a means of racism and social control [3].

Never mind the facts, for Forstmann and his ilk, a combination of competition, charity, and private and semi-public institutions “worked” in the past and thus the conclusion is that they will work now. The problem, Forstmann has argued, is that starting in the 1850’s with the state of Massachusetts, America began a dramatic shift from free-market and charitable education to “government-run schools” [4]. And even though America today cannot be compared to the America of the pre-Civil War era, Forstmann’s position remained clear during his life – America needed to replace public schools with charitable choice and privatization.

If all this sounds familiar, it should, for Forstmann’s position is little more than an echo of conservative economist Milton Friedman’s position and the ideological echo chamber he was part of has managed to collar many erstwhile advocates with their views dominating the corporate media. Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman argued for the modern concept of vouchers in the 1950s, stating that competition would improve schools and cost efficiency. The view further garnered popularity with the 1980 TV broadcast of Friedman’s series Free to Choose for which volume 6 was devoted entirely to the promotion of “educational freedom” through programs like school vouchers.

There is little doubt that comparable to Milton Friedman, Forstmann’s ideological educational vision was heartfelt and deep pocketed. However, there is no escaping the fact that Ted Forstmann was an entrepreneurial venture capitalist with a market driven agenda for education that seems more commercial and self-interested than altruistic.  For Forstmann, like all capitalists, profits come before people and if this means circling the ideological wagons around this grim reality then so be it.  Forstmann himself, claimed at the time of his launching of Children Scholarship Fund (CSF), that his interest in privatizing education through the use of philanthropic private school scholarships was driven by beneficence, not profit.  As late as 1998 he commented in a speech to the Washington Press Club: “This is a real moral issue. I hate talking about the economics of it” [5].

To read part one and more of part two, please go to: Philosophers for Change:(http://philoforchange.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/advocacy-philanthropy-and-the-leveraged-buy-out-of-public-schools-part-2/).

And:

the postcapitalist discussion

NOTE:

I inserted and ascribed the following quote to Andrew Coulson from his 1999 book, “Market Education: The Unknown History”, published by The Social Philosophy and Policy Center and by Transaction Publishers:

“Early colonial America was arguably the freest civil society that has ever existed. This freedom extended to education, which meant that parents were responsible for, and had complete control of, their children’s schooling. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, and no teacher certification requirements. Parents could choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children, and no one was forced to pay for education they did not use or approve of.

Prior to the Revolutionary War, the majority of American schools were organized and operated on a laissez-faire basis. There were common schools (often partially financed by local taxpayers, but primarily funded through private means) and specialized private schools of every sort (church schools, academies that prepared students for college, seminaries, dame schools for primary education, charity schools for the poor, and private tutors). Free schools were established by philanthropists and religious societies throughout the country to meet the educational needs of the very poor ”.

Mr. Coulson wrote to my editor on May 21, 2013 and stated:

“I never wrote the quotation that you ascribe to me above. It is false to claim that this text appears on p. 75 of my book “Market Education,” on any other page of that book, or indeed anywhere in anything I have ever written. Please correct the record” (May 21, 2013 e-mail).

Andrew Coulson is the current Director, for the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. He has been Senior Fellow in Education Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and he’s editor of School Choices. (http://www.newmedia.ufm.edu/gsm/index.php/Improving_Educational_Services_for_the_Benefit_of_the_Poor).

I researched Coulson’s claim that he did not write the quote and found that indeed, he did not. Thus, the quote cannot be attributed to him and for this I apologize to readers.

However in my research regarding Coulson’s claim disavowing the quote, I also found out that his former employer, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has also used this quote, word for word and they too have attributed it to him over 12 years ago.  Funny, it took Coulsen less than 12 hours to contact my editor but in the last twleve years he has done nothing about his former bosses at Mackinac!  This is all about the right wing thought police monitoring website and often then engaging in Dos attacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack).

In a January 9, 2001 paper written for the Mackinac Center entitled: Early Colonial Period to
the American Revolution: A Free Market Education, by Mr. Matthew J. Brouillette, President and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and former Director of Education Policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/about/page/staff-2) repeated the quote word for word and he too attributed the words to Andrew Coulson (http://www.mackinac.org/3254). This seems odd, as Coulson was a Senior Fellow in Education Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy for years. Surely he must have been aware words were being ascribed to him falsely?

Brouillette’s citing of the quotation, which he incorrectly attributed to Coulson, was once again repeated in an article written on July 26, 2010, entitled: The Evils of Public Education; Why UP and All Public SUCs Must be Privatized?from the Vincenton Post: Promoting Honesty, Ojectivity and Integrity (http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/the-evils-of-public-education-why-up-and-other-sucs-must-be-privatized/).

Here, the author not only quotes Brouillette and the passage he attributed to Coulson, but the post goes on to speak of government “education camps” — key right wing language (ibid).

The Association for Waldorf Schools for North America in a 2007 report entitled: Independent Schools And School Choice Legislation in the United States September 2007 The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America The Institute for Social Renewal also repeated the same quote falsely attributed to Andrew Coulson (http://thecenterforsocialresearch.org/sites/default/files/assets/csr/about/schoolchoice07.pdf).

One can only assume that either the quote was written by Brouillette and attributed to Andrew Coulson, or written by another unknown person and then handed to Brouillette and then spread through various organizations.

Either way, Coulson certainly did not write these words and I admit the mistake made in the article. It is odd, however, that Coulson would not want to correct the record where ‘right wing’ reactionary sites also use the reference and then attribute it to him which they have been doing for years. This is especially true when one finds that Coulson was intimately connected to the Mackinac Center that falsely quoted him.

So, let this be seen as a god faith attempt to clean the record for Mr. Andrew on all accounts.

What we do know, is that Andrew Coulson has recently remarked in the Journal of School Choice, Vol. 3, No. 1, February 2009: pp. 1–46:

“I have previously presented evidence and arguments to the same effect (Coulson, 1999). After surveying alternative school governance and funding systems in more than a dozen times and places from classical Greece to contemporary Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, I found that school choice and direct payment of fees by parents, autonomy for educators, minimal regulation, vigorous competition among schools, and the profit motive for at least some portion of schools were associated with the most effective and responsive education systems. The lack of even one or two of these characteristics was associated with inferior outcomes” (http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/10.1.1.175.6495.pdf).

Readers should also note that:

“The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Murray Rothbard, Ed Crane and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries. In July 1976, the name was changed to the Cato Institute. According to the 2011 Global Go To Think Tank Index, Cato is the 6th most influential US based think tank, ranking 3rd in Economic Policy and 2nd in Social Policy” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute).

Thus, when it comes to my statement in the article that “Andrew Coulson, a darling of reactionary neo-liberals….” —  this can hardly be refuted and for this reason this illustrative depiction of Andrew Coulson will remain as will the words attributed to him by his reactionary buddies at Mackinac and friends.

Keep the web open and free!  We have a world to win!

The post Advocacy philanthropy and the leveraged buy-out of public schools — Part 2 appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

Teachers, once loved by the people, are now demonized as greedy, laxy, sex-driven, and simply useless.  This is no mystery; the ruling class hates education and only speaks of it in market terms.

Now, this from Greece:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324715704578479271015596576.htm)l Updated May 12, 2013

Teachers in Greece Warned to Not Strike By STELIOS BOURAS ATHENS—Greece ordered teachers on Sunday to scrap a planned strike this week, or otherwise face arrest, the government’s latest bid to stamp out worker opposition to austerity measures international creditors demand. For the third time this year, Greece’s coalition government invoked a law allowing for compulsory civil mobilization, signaling a willingness to press the country’s powerful unions and to stick to the country’s planned overhauls. In a copy of the government gazette published Sunday, the government instructed some 80,000 secondary-school teachers to call off the strike set to start Friday that would disrupt university entrance exams. “Taking into account the urgent need to prevent the threat of negative consequences from the proposed strike…we declare civil mobilization for all secondary teachers and the necessary resources,” it said.

Teachers plan to strike in response to government plans to increase their workweek by two hours and the transferring of personnel to different schools, depending on staffing needs, moves teachers say will lead to job cuts. After meeting on Friday, Greece’s secondary-school teachers union, OLME, agreed on a 24-hour strike for May 17 and rolling strikes to be held the week after. OLME plans to hold a rally in central Athens on Monday and called on the country’s two largest public- and private-sector workers groups—ADEDY and GSEE—to join them in a nationwide 24-hour general strike at the end of the week in opposition to the government’s “authoritarianism.”

Since the start of the year, the government, which is led by the conservative New Democracy party, has also ordered striking seamen and transport workers back to work by invoking the law ordering workers to return to work or face arrest and risk dismissal. Greek governments have generally used those special powers sparingly, but in an effort to show his resolve against the unions—and despite grumbling from his junior coalition partners from the Socialist and Democratic Left parties—Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been making more use of this emergency measure. It is the first time, however, that it has been enacted before workers actually walk off the job. Write to Stelios Bouras at stelios.bouras@dowjones.com

The post Teachers in Greece Warned to Not Strike appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

http://progressivegazette.blogspot.com/2013/05/shock-video-california-police-break.html

The post Shock Video: California Police Break Into Home, Taze Victims appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

http://www.telegrafo.com.ec/actualidad/item/en-el-yasuni-las-madres-viven-a-plenitud.html

Residents provide accommodation to tourists and the revenues created are used for communal savings

Three hours from El Coca (Orellana) sits a community, which occupies 21,400 hectares of national park. 182 people live there who, since 1998, have been involved in an ecotourism project.  They have created chonta-pambil cabins and receive 10,000 tourists annually. Proceeds are used for health and education of their

Women rule the Yasuní. At least this is true in the Anangu community, located three hours down the Napo River, where 27 women decided to take over the town and start a community tourism project in the jungle. They called it “Yasuni Ecolodge Kichwa” (http://www.yasuniecolodge.travel/).

Mary Yumbo, 26, leads the initiative. She is the mother of two girls and their culture that they maintain the home while the men go hunting and then afterwards, rest. The women harvest cassava and fish in the river to feed the family.

Yumbo leads the way, with attached children in front of her belly as she holds the cabuya shigra within which to place food. Women plant the fields, they manage the house, they prepare the food and prepare the chicha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicha)  and woven necklaces, earrings and bracelets from seeds collected in their long daily walks.  They walk barefoot for more than 200 kilometers.

For 15 years, community tourism became an option for the locals. In the area where 182 people (33 families) live, administrators provide two private hotels near them and they work as tour guides.

In the past, it was very difficult because they had to leave their children.  Thus, the community decided to found their own eco-friendly hotel.

“We work here and we do not leave our children. Tomorrow a group of 15 gringos will come. We are happy”, says the woman with long black hair and wearing a painted sleeve (a plant of extracting the color black) a sun and chonta leaves on her forehead and cheeks.

She was born in Yasuní, which is defined as “life”.  Speaking looud and holding her child’s hand she warns: “We are determined to protect our life if necessary in Yasuní, even if someone wants to destroy or exploit it.”

The commune Añangu sits in the province of Orellana, about 21,400 acres of Yasuní Park which borders the 998,000 acre extension and reaches the province of Pastaza.

Traveling is not easy.  Canoes arrive with one or two engines, which, depending on the weather, have to overcome the thick fog that forms on the Napo River. The residents know that when there is fog on the water, it will be very hot.

They say the Napo River is wise. The guide helps them not to get stuck, either in the current or sand mountains that emerge when the tide is low. To this must be added that large trees have established deep roots and thick trunks and thus water rises to the surface.

“Those are our lights,” jokes a driver, who, to avoid the boat pond in the sand, watches the water and when they leave bubbles, he knows that the river is low.

The temperature exceeds 30 degrees Celsius

The Kichwa community chose a secluded spot to settle. It’s in the middle of the jungle and they live in absolute harmony with boas, monkeys, eagles, tigers, panthers, tapirs, tarantulas, peccaries, which also face their own struggle to survive.

“Look there, there’s a tapir skeleton; about 15 days ago I chased a tiger,” said Ricardo Yumbo, 22 years of age. The battle was intense. From that tapir remains only the skeleton of what was once his jaw. The young man is the husband of Mary and a “tour guide” of Yasuni, whose biodiversity sets its own show in the middle of the jungle.

About 10 thousand people a year visit the lodge. They pay $ 150 a night and the money that the district receives is put in a savings community, used to create work or for the needs of each of its members. For example, in case of illness, recovery is funded as is the education of children and the children’s school breakfast. There also exists a school and a medical clinic.

Among its goals, stresses Mauritius Jipa, promoter of the initiative, is to create a college and a university to keep their children from leaving the community.

Visitors are offered three meals daily that are prepared by a chef community. Ricardo is Yumbo (22 years), and his specialty is a variety of maito and chicken. Ricardo did not learn gastronomy in an academic center.

“Experiment with the flavors”, he says with great confidence, and therefore he devised a small fried cassava muchines causing sensation among the inhabitants of Anangu, especially among children.

The community recently met Edison Paredes, a professional chef who helps them and teaches them to make desserts when they are needed.

“I learned to make apple pie”, says Ricardo.”I will do this more often,” he insists.

The Sounds of the Yasuni Park

Can you hear the sounds of Yasuni?   Just listen carefully and be guided by the flight of thousands of butterflies of different colors and the singing of more than 200,000 birds, whose sizes range from three to 25 and 30 inches as the multicolored macaws, swallows, and eagles flying around the area .

Their singing sounds very strong. They hide and flit among the towering trees of pambil, the color is of dark green, measuring up to 35 meters high.

There are some parrots which prefer to lick, they are drawn to a huge rock, where millions of birds feed on mineral salts; this, according to Ricardo, keeps them alive.

There are also paired, while-yellow-black boas and they tangle, very slowly, between the liconias tree, preparing for their bird hunting.

In the Anangu community, Mary serves chicha de yuca pondo, freshly harvested. She does not ferment cassava; she prefers chewing chicha; but now they put yellow sweet potato in it as well. She says the task of chewing cassava mother was due to the fact they had the belief that she offered harmony. Beside her, Jacinta Yumbo, 52, sings because having visitors in her community is cause for celebration.

The residents also serve guayusa, and many take it before bed and if they have nightmares they do not go to the forest the next day, because they are convinced that something will happen.  Jacinta’s song talks about the work of women in the preparation of chicha and when they all are drunk, she turns the pots and then rests with your partner.

In this part of the Yasuni, nature is thick and the trees are lush with thick trunks and roots that are strong and deep and that are infinite, as are the leaves that blend into the blue sky.  One of the striking trees has two logs: one 30 inches in diameter.

“It’s called matapalo“, shouts Richard.  The growth which is below the trunk is thin, but as it grows it becomes thicker.

“Sooner or later it ends up strangling the trees which live their struggles, just like us.”

The post In Yasuni Park, Ecuador: mothers are living fully: A Happy Mother’s day for the indigenous of Ecuador appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

May 1st 2013, 19:35 by Economist.com

NEARLY a quarter of the world’s young people are economically inactive – not in employment, education or training. Failing to employ the young today damages growth now and in the future….. But the Economist misses the fact that rising surplus labor, those that do not work, is connected to the vicious cycle of capitalism that uses workers to cut the cost of labor for higher profits and replaces them with robotization and low wages — or incarerates them as disposable people, for-profit.

High government indebtedness, caused by plutocratic, capitalist theft, has left the public sector unable to help create jobs. Capitalism is creating a world without jobs, as I indicated in my work, Pity the Poor Luddite (http://www.dailycensored.com/pity-the-poor-luddite-the-end-of-work-under-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-the-surplus-labor-army/). (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130125/ap-us-great-reset-luddites/).

We are now, as the Economist notes, looking at a world without work and a world with more and more surplus labor and consequent violence, war and social unrest.

Add to this the suicide rate that is going up in the US and actually all over the world, and the future looks dim (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318586/Suicide-rate-middle-aged-Americans-soars-shocking-28-percent-year-period.html).

This does not have to be the state of the world and its people. Changing the way we produce and reproduce our lives, from a system that puts profit before people to one that puts people before profit, will mean that we must move from the suffocating rubber room of capitalism to the oxygenated new world of Socialism. Anything else will be just more fraud and wishful thinking.

The post Global youth unemployment: The lost generation and surplus labor appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

Picture of George W. Bush’s niece, Lauren Bush, who was married to fashion icon Ralph Lauren’s son, David, back in August of 2011  at the Ralph Lauren Ranch

THE MISEDUCATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

The post Ralph Lauren, Lauryn Hill and Lanny Breuer; The miseducation of the Department of Justice appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s department has received $1 million for a violence prevention unit that is getting attention from privacy advocates. Florida legislators awarded the money to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw to create the unit with the idea that they will be able to prevent gun tragedies from occurring. Bradshaw intends on utilizing specially trained deputies and mental health professionals in the prevention of crimes.

“Every single incident, whether it’s Newtown, that movie theater, or the guy who spouts off at work and then goes home and kills his wife and two kids — in every single case, there were people who said they knew ahead of time that there was a problem,” Bradshaw said. “If the neighbor of the mom in Newtown had called somebody, this might have saved 25 kids’ lives.”

Bradshaw is readying a hotline and is planning public service announcements to encourage local citizens to report their neighbors, friends or family members if they fear they could harm themselves or others.

While the deputies and mental health workers might be able to spot a problem, the vast majority of people do not see the warning signs until after an incident occurs.

The goal won’t be to arrest troubled people but to get them help before there’s violence, Bradshaw said. As a side benefit, law enforcement will have needed information to keep a close eye on things.

On paper, this appears to be a noble cause, but if there is nothing wrong with a person, how is keeping a close eye on anyone a benefit? It raises Stasi comparisons, something no American should ever strive for.

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’”

No. You do not want to call the police because someone says they hate the government. Many Americans do not like their government, but they have the right to espouse that view. You even have the right to say you hate your mayor, congressman, or anyone else and wish them dead. If one takes a moment to think, they have probably voiced those opinions out loud [12 angry men], but out of frustration and never with any real intent. Now, if that person says, “I hate the mayor and I’m going to shoot him,” while holding a shotgun, then you might want to call the police. In this case, a new crime prevention unit is not needed because people already do this.

It hurts people to go knock on a door and ask if everything is okay because people do not want others butting into other people’s business for something that was said, especially when the person reporting it doesn’t have the qualifications to determine intent. It undermines free speech and creates a climate of fear where dissent can be easily misinterpreted and people are put under suspicion for no reason.

That’s enough for Senate budget chief Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who helped push through the funding last weekend.

He said he met with Bradshaw about the program and “got assurances from the sheriff that this is going to be done in a way that respects people’s autonomy and privacy, and that he makes sure to protect against people making false claims.”

If he got assurances, then why doesn’t he list what they are so that everyone can see if those assurances are valid or not? How does the sheriff intend to protect innocent people from making false claims? Saying there are assurances to protect people indicates that something has been discussed, so why isn’t it out in the open?

Mental health advocates, however, worry about a potential new source of stigma, and the potential for erosion of the civil rights of people with mental illnesses.

It is not just citizens with mental illnesses that have to be worried about being stigmatized. Anyone who is suspected of not liking the government is going to be forced to talk to a mental health professional. This information may or may not be public. If the person is taken in for questioning, neighbors are likely to make conclusions about what is happening, making life difficult for the person questioned. If any of this is made into the public record, the person could have problems later on finding a job. Those who do have mental illnesses could also be singled out merely because they are different.

“How are they possibly going to watch everybody who makes a comment like that? It’s subjective,” said Liz Downey, executive director of the Palm Beach County branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We don’t want to take away people’s civil liberties just because people aren’t behaving the way we think they should be.”

It is impossible to watch everyone unless you resort to Stasi-like tactics and Soviet-style political commissars and get every citizen to report on each other. What will happen is the police will have a database of people that they have harassed for no reason, yet still may continue to “keep an eye on” while those that may truly have criminal intentions keeps quiet and falls into whatever the police think is socially acceptable. Not everyone behaves the same. Some people have quirks that are not harmful at all, yet others might find it weird and report a person for being different.

Bradshaw acknowledged the risk that anyone in a messy divorce or in a dispute with a neighbor could abuse the hotline. But, he said, he’s confident that his trained professionals will know how to sort out fact from fiction.

“We know how to sift through frivolous complaints,” he said.

Obviously, the police can’t figure out all the frivolous items. There are several instances of SWAT teams being called in after a fake 911 call because an individual online 911 said that person X is at home making a bomb right, there’s a domestic assault happening, or any number of other things. This phenomenon is called “swatting” and it has serious repercussions for the person that is made a suspect.

The police also cannot distinguish right away if a person is simply a target through a messy divorce without going to that person’s house and performing their version of the “are you okay” spiel. Again, they must actually go and disrupt this person’s life, with others watching and jumping to conclusions, in order to sort fact from fiction.

Also, after troubled people are identified by Bradshaw’s teams, then what? Who will pay for their care? The state? Medicaid? The county? The Palm Beach County Public Defender has a good program to ensure qualified people apply for the Social Security and Medicaid benefits they may need, she said. Some high-level conversations have started, but more are needed, Berner added.

No one really knows what they’re going to do with people that need help. Another question not being asked is how long are the people going to be kept under surveillance? How long will their names be kept in the database that is going to be made? If the police ask if you’re okay and you say you’re fine and tell them to go away, currently your right, what happens next? Are they put on a “keep an eye on” list? There are far too many questions that haven’t been answered or even looked at. We’re just supposed to take one man’s assurances that he’ll do the right thing. How many people will be caught up in this unit and have their lives ruined until the sheriff gets everything sorted out?

Video.

Photo.

The post Palm Beach County residents encouraged to report neighbors who “hate” the government appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

The post CORRUPT CA. WORKERS COMP SYSTEM GETS AWAY WITH MURDER-AGAIN STATES LAUSD/UTLA TEACHER ROZY PRESS appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

Seems the little darlings are never too young to be monetized and militarized.

Thanks, Barrack! Change We Can Believe In

Originally published by Bitch Magazine, December 2012, http://bitchmagazine.org/article/navy-steals

From Draft NOtices, April-June 2013

Committee Opposed to the Military and the Draft

http://comdsd.org/article_archive/NavyandSTEMeducation.html

– Seth Kershner

Although women make up about half of the United States workforce, they represent just 24 percent of careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In order to correct this, major nonprofit groups have been organizing STEM enrichment camps for middle- and high-school girls, driven by the philosophy that more women will pursue STEM careers if their interest is piqued at an early age.

But recently, some girls-only STEM programs have gone beyond fostering interest in science and math among the next generation of women. Branches of the U.S. military – in particular, the Navy – have increasingly been using these programs to market the military to girls as young as 11 and 12.

Founded in 1974, Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) organizes dozens of STEM conferences for middle- and high-school girls each year. According to its website (http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/), the EYH “recently had the opportunity to partner with the Navy and learn about careers where young women are underrepresented.” They give girls the following pitch: “You probably never gave much thought to having a career with the United States Navy.  Many girls don’t. . . . We want to introduce you to several inspiring professional women who are currently active in the Navy and serve on aircraft carriers, who serve as Navy divers, or who serve in other interesting Navy careers.” Accompanying the text is a handy-dandy link to the Navy’s recruiting website.

Although details of the partnership were hard to come by (EYH’s interim executive director, Sheryl Bize-Boutte, said she’d have to check with the Office of Naval Research before granting an interview), one can divine a possible sign of Navy influence in the location of one of this year’s EYH conferences – the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. “Because this program is at the Naval Postgraduate School, some of the workshops will focus on cool Navy careers,” boasts the conference website. Many of the workshop presenters are on the Navy payroll and teach topics like cryptology.

And on the local level, single-sex STEM camps often seem like military recruitment lite. One prominent example is the Pacific Aviation Museum’s Flight School for Girls at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. According to its website, the three-day flight program gives girls in grades 6–8 a chance to learn scientific principles of flight through demonstrations and experiments. In addition to classroom instruction led by museum educators and a historical interpreter dressed as Amelia Earhart, there’s a day set aside for horsing around with military hardware, donning flight suits, trying out a cool P-40 Warhawk flight simulator, and – wait for it – meeting “women in aviation careers.” Who are these latter-day Earharts? None other than Navy pilots, and judging by the photos from recent flight-school sessions posted on the museum’s website, they appear to have been given ample time to talk with small groups of girls about STEM opportunities in the Navy.

Military support for single-sex STEM camps can be seen as the latest iteration of an ongoing effort to expand the military’s all-volunteer recruiting base. First, by promoting “cool Navy careers” in areas where young women may be underrepresented (like STEM fields), these military partnerships are engaging with what anthropologist Hugh Gusterson calls “feminist militarism” – the complex of cultural attitudes that convey that women can overcome second-class citizenship by serving in the military. By the logic of feminist militarism, it’s not enough to enter a traditionally male-dominated field like aviation engineering – to really show you’re equal to a man, you need to serve in the Navy.

Secondly, the Pentagon – by pushing the idea of military service on girls as young as 11 and 12 – is simply following the advice of its own Joint Advertising Marketing Research Studies program, which warned in its November 2011 “State of the Recruiting Market” report that “if joining the military is not considered by age 17, it likely will not be in later years.” The U.S. Army Recruiter Handbook also points out that contact with seventh- and eighth-grade students can “positively impact high-school and postsecondary school recruiting efforts.” In other words, get ’em while they’re young.

Unfortunately, scientists have been slow to react to the Pentagon’s apparent co-optation of STEM instruction. Kathy Barker, a Seattle-based writer with a PhD in microbiology, is working on a study of scientists-as-activists. “I have never found anyone in the scientific community concerned about militarism,” Barker told me in a recent phone interview. But Barker herself has bucked that trend, documenting the military’s use of STEM programs to recruit and coauthoring a study of high-school military recruiting that was published in the American Journal of Public Health. “Scientists have an acceptance of and complicity with the military that few realize, much less protest,” Barker added. “The Navy is using EYH for advertising and recruiting. Everyone wins except the girls, who are collateral damage.”

This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/)

The post Navy Steals: The Military’s New Interest in single-sex STEM Camps appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.

Only in the US are most people unaware of the sordid news coverage by the corporate owned media.  Fixating on ‘getting coffee stains out of their rug’, ‘the Kadashians’ and bug-a-boos about missing teens and what might lurk in their closet, the US people remain one of the most ill-informed citizens in the world.

Add to this a bankrupt educational process that assures no critical thinking about personal and social issues in favor of setting up ‘testing centers’ for the multi-nationals, many simply remain ‘cyber fools’ in the thickening hideousness of world affairs.

From: El Telegrafo, Ecuador

http://www.telegrafo.com.ec/actualidad/item/ex-periodista-de-cnn-confirma-fabricacion-de-la-informacion.html

05 May 2013

Major U.S. media fixes create the news as they protect their economic interests in that country; an example of this situation is the blackout of the distribution of news of the hunger strike of prisoners in Guantanamo.

Writing News

As part of the Day of Press Freedom there have surfaced several revelations about the internal management of the press in the United States.  This would be thee case of the former reporter Amber Lyon, who revealed that during her work for CNN, she was ordered to send false news and exclude some that the U.S. government did not favor in order to create a public opinion in favor to launch an attack against Iran and Syria.
Lyon was quoted by a Slovak news website saying that the media mainstream in the  U.S. intentionally work to create propaganda against Iran to get the support of public opinion for a military invasion against the country.
She revealed that the scenario used before the war against Iraq is ready to be repeated, where Iran and Syria are constantly “demonized”.
The journalist said that the manipulation and manufacture of CNN printed news and their broadcast news continues selectively, claiming that the channel receives money from the U.S. Government and governments of other countries in return for news content.
Lyon is an American investigative journalist who has become known for reporting on human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain, and police brutality against demonstrators in the United States. In June 2010 she began working for CNN, where he investigated sex trafficking, the Gulf oil spill, and the hacking collective known as Anonymous.
Another clear sign that the U.S. media do not publish all the news in the US is the situation that is recorded at Guantanamo.
The hunger strike of prisoners in the country’s north could be published in the press, but the mainstream media are not U.S. backers for this story, reports the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States in a note published by the Venezuelan newspaper Correo del Orinoco.
The agency says that 130 prisoners in Guantanamo went on hunger strike for about seven weeks to protest the treatment and conditions in this prison.  This is the same prison as U.S. President Barack Obama promised to close in 2010.

On Tuesday, Obama said it would resume efforts to achieve the green light from Congress to close the Guantanamo prison, whichis considered expensive, ineffective and a recruiting tool for extremists.
The authorities, meanwhile, continue to question the figures and point out that only 26 prisoners go hungry, while another 8 are fed by force. However, when the international news network Russia Today broke the story on March 12, U.S. officials denied it.
“We heard that lawyers are not allowed to visit the prisoners. Moreover, there is a big difference between what they say and what the administration lawyers report.  It shows that the administration is still trying to silence the situation, they do not want to diffuse.  And it means something serious is happening, “said investigative journalist Andy Worthington.
When consulting people on the US streets about if they think the story should be covered by the U.S. media, the answer was unequivocally positive.
Meanwhile CNN, the most powerful chain in the country, ignores the issue of hunger strike and focuses on other aspects such as, for example, how much money will be used to renovate the facility.
“No one talks about it. If this happened in Russia, if people had disappeared into a black hole illegal in Russia and faced indefinite incarceration without trial or charges, without access or lawyers, Western media have been full of this issue, “said British MP George Galloway.
And in the news business, the media have to set priorities and choose the stories that deserve your attention. It turns out that not only the voices of the silenced are starving prisoners, but citizens are left confused after learning the truth, and they choose to focus on manufactured media content.

The post Center for Constitutional Rights denounces media silence: A former CNN journalist confirms the “manufacture” of information appeared first on DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News.