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- DARRELL EWING INVOKES RIGHT TO ATTY. FOR RE-TRIAL MARCH 25, CITES COX’S CRIPPLING ‘RULES OF THE ROAD’
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- JUDGE KIEFER COX DENIES DARRELL EWING’S MOTION TO DISQUALIFY FOR ACTUAL BIAS; APPEAL HEARING FEB. 23
- FREE DEM BOYS! JAY LOVE SHOW WITH DIANE BUKOWSKI, ON DARRELL EWING/DERRICO SEARCY, FRI. FEB. 9 @8:30 PM
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EYEWITNESS REPORTS FROM MCKINNEY DELEGATION IN LIBYA DAY 8
EYEWITNESS: Dedon Kamathi Returns from Libya and Reports (radio interview above).
DeDon Kamathi has just returned from a tour of Libya with former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. He is interviewed by Askia Muhammad of The Final Call, on WPFW-FM Radio in Washington D.C. as posted above.
WAR IN LIBYA HAS BEEN U.S. PROJECT ALL ALONG
Click on http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/183967.html to hear interview with Don DeBar
American journalist Don DeBar says the Libyan war has been a “U.S. Project” all along.
DeBar told Press TV’s U.S. Desk that there has been an attempt to position the war on Libya “as being not an American military activity but rather one of NATO. However, the majority of the resources are either directly owned by the United States or were financed by the U.S.”
The anti-War activist said the Libyan “operation is being conducted under the direction of the United States.”
DeBar said “the expenditure in the Libyan war can be spent to stimulate the American economy for job development and things that are desperately needed” in America.
Washington has resorted to cutting education and “all kinds of basic safety net programs” all the while “starting wars just about everywhere,” he added.
DeBar said the U.S. is maintaining military bases in over 100 countries. “Yet they’re expanding the money that is going to the military” in the face of all the bad economic data that is coming in.
RS/SM/HJ
Libya says Nato air raids ‘killed 700 civilians’ by end of May
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13611132
31 May 2011 Last updated at 19:06 ET
The Libyan government says NATO air raids have killed more than 700 civilians since bombing began in March.
Spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said more than 4,000 people had been wounded, but gave no evidence to confirm his figures.
NATO has denied killing large numbers of civilians, saying its air strikes are to protect Libyans from Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.
Four powerful explosions were felt in the centre of Tripoli on Tuesday night, Libyan state media reported.
Planes were heard flying over the capital, but it was not possible to determine the targets of the raids.
Speaking at a news conference in Tripoli, Mr Ibrahim accused Nato of killing and injuring hundreds of Libyan citizens.
“Since March 19, and up to May 26, there have been 718 martyrs among civilians and 4,067 wounded – 433 of them seriously,” Mr Ibrahim said.
He said the figures did not include military casualties.
Foreign reporters in Tripoli have not been shown evidence of mass civilian casualties.
Asked why not, Mr Ibrahim said casualties had not been concentrated near the capital but scattered across the country.
He also denied that South African President Jacob Zuma, who met Col Gaddafi in Tripoli on Monday, had discussed an “exit strategy” with the Libyan leader.
“If Gaddafi goes, the security valve will disappear. His departure would be the worst case scenario for Libya,” he told reporters.
Moussa Ibrahim denied that Col Gaddafi had discussed a strategy for his departure
A statement released by Mr Zuma’s office after he returned to Pretoria said Mr Gaddafi would not leave Libya, despite growing international pressure.
“Col Gaddafi called for an end to the bombings to enable a Libyan dialogue,” the statement read.
“He emphasised that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties.”
After initially backing NATO’s involvement, Mr Zuma and the African Union have called for a halt to air strikes, arguing that Nato has overstepped its UN mandate to protect civilians.
Both Libyan rebels and Nato have refused to accept a ceasefire until Col Gaddafi agrees to step down.
On Tuesday, Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Gaddafi’s regime was “finished”, during a visit to the rebel capital Benghazi, in eastern Libya.
“He [Gaddafi] must leave office, he must leave the country,” Mr Frattini told a joint news conference with Ali al-Essawi, the rebels’ foreign affairs chief.
“His aides have left, he has no international support, the G8 leaders reject him, he must go.”
NATO’s “ALTERNATE UNIVERSE” IN LIBYA
The Pentagon and its NATO partners are engaged in one of the most obvious and intensive propaganda ploys in their military operations against Libya since the days leading up to the “Coalition of the Willing” attack on Iraq.
By Wayne MADSEN
(USA) 08.JUN.2011
http://www.mathaba.net/news/libya
Suggestions that the government of Muammar Qaddafi is on its last legs and that life in Tripoli has drawn to a standstill as a result of the NATO bombing campaign are not based on reality, as any unbiased observer who has recently been in Tripoli, has witnessed…
In addition to NATO’s “information war” against Libya, the corporate media press corps gathered in Tripoli, including notorious Pentagon war correspondents for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, have furthered the Pentagon’s and NATO’s propaganda claims by making false reports from the ground in Tripoli.
![Bodies of Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren on Libyan TV](http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Bodies-of-Qaddafis-son-and-three-grandchildren-on-Libyan-TV-300x220.jpg)
Publisher of these images from Libyan state TV said Libyan govt. "claimed" they were the bodies of Col. Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren; world media now admits they were killed by NATO bombs
In one report from Tripoli, The Post’s Simon Denyer suggests that the Libyan government was faking some casualties as being the result of NATO air strikes on civilian targets rather than merely from non-combat-related causes. That same meme was echoed by John Burns, who is running up the New York Times’s hotel tab in Tripoli reporting on the same “made-in-the-Pentagon” propaganda line. Having been to El Khadra Hospital in Tripoli, I can attest to the fact that several individuals were injured directly by NATO airstrikes, including many with shrapnel wounds to the legs, arms, and torsos.
While German Chancellor Angela Merkel was being swooned by President Barack Obama in Washington to commit German military forces to the NATO campaign against Libya, the Deutche Presse-Agentur, the German Press Agency, falsely reported from Tripoli that life in the sprawling city of some 1.3 million peoplehad ground to a halt, that schools were closed, and that stores were shuttered, as Qaddafi’s forces were increasingly coming under pressure, with some units defecting.
My own account from Tripoli is that as of June 6, students of all ages were still in school, stores were open — although some larger food markets had limited hours of operation due to NATO sanctions on goods coming into Libya by air and ship — and that life in Tripoli continued as normal. The NATO sanctions have resulted in massive lines of cars, trucks, and taxis queued up to fill up when petrol stations receive gasoline from land routes from Tunisia or from locally-refined oil.
The NATO sanctions and their effect of the lives of Libyans living in the central government-controlled western region is a form of “collective punishment” designed to weaken the resolve of the western Libyans to support their embattled government. However, the sanctions are having the opposite effect, with even those who may have favored the replacement of the Qaddafi government, now rallying around their government leaders as NATO prepares to usher in a neo-colonial administration. With Italy a member of the NATO coalition, Libyans recall Italian atrocities committed against Libya during Rome’s colonial occupation and Libyans will support Qaddafi against the Italians, French, and British, who, along with the Americans and Canadians, seek to impose a puppet regime in Tripoli.
Western Libyans in contact with their relatives in Benghazi, the eastern city under control of the Interim National Transition Council made up of figures of exiled opposition groups, long-supported by the CIA, Britain’s MI-6, and the French Direction General de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE), recent defectors from Qaddafi’s government, and extremist Wahhabi Salafist elements encourages and supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, report how life has changed under the rebels. Women in cities like Derna, which is under the control of Salafist veterans of the “Al Qaeda” operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, including some released from U.S. detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are afraid to leave their homes because the Salafists have imposed extremist Islamic codes on women appearing in public without the veil. Under Qaddafi, there were no restrictions on what women or men could wear in public. However, men cannot have beards in their Libyan passport photographs. The possession of Libyan passports bearing photographs of bearded Salafist leaders in the rebel movement indicate they have been issued fake passports by the rebel authorities in Benghazi.
Civil servants, including teachers, in the rebel-held east have not been paid after rebel leaders looted the Central Bank of Libya in Benghazi of 900 million Libyan dinars and $500.5 million in U.S. cash. Although the central government in Tripoli would like to help Libyan citizens in the east, there is no way for payments to be transmitted to the idled civil servants, as well as pensioners and those families who received $500 per month under Libya’s oil revenue sharing program. The Libyan rebel “finance minister” Ali Tarhouni is believed to be a longtime CIA asset and it was he who planned the theft of the cash from the safe vault of the Central Bank in Benghazi, carried out with the assistance of a CIA-supplied safecracker from the United Arab Emirates.
A number of Libyan ministers who defected from the government to the rebels were known to be opposed to Qaddafi’s policy of sharing revenue with the Libyan people and were more interested in fattening their own bank accounts and investment portfolios. It is not coincidental, therefore, that one of the first targets of the NATO warplanes was the office in Tripoli responsible for conducting an investigation of fraud of senior government officials. Many of the officials under investigation for fraud and corruption, including senior Qaddafi ministers, are now top officials of the Interim National Transition Council, recognized by France, Italy, Britain, and other NATO countries as the “legitimate” government of Libya. Western nations are already cutting deals with rebel leaders for new oil concessions that will place the interests of Big Oil over those of the Libyan masses. Continue reading
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JUSTICE FOR AIYANA JONES CTTE. LEADS PSA CAMPAIGN TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY
![JAJC sky banner](http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/JAJC-sky-banner1.jpg)
Banner flown on first anniversary of Aiyana Stanley-Jones' murder by police, May 16, over her former home and prosecutor and police offices, sponsored by JAJC
From the Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee
![Cornell Squires and Roland Lawrence of Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee are interviewed by major media in Detroit May 16, 2011](http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Cornell-Squires-and-Roland-Lawrence-of-Justice-for-Aiyana-Jones-Committee-are-interviewed-by-major-media-in-Detroit-May-16-2011-219x300.jpg)
Cornell Squires and Roland Lawrence of Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee are interviewed by major media in Detroit May 16, 2011
Detroit, 12:00 am, June 12, 2011 – The Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee (JAJC) in association with Fluid Shapes is producing a public service announcement on how police brutality has and is increasingly affecting Black young men. Central to this campaign will be the police killing of 7-year old Aiyana Jones. The 15, 30, 45, and 90 second spots will feature committed and serious advocates who work hard to stop the shooting, maiming, and killing of Black youth by the police.
JAJC has invited Lupe Fiasco, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Chris Brown, Sean Penn, Janet Jackson, Lady Gaga and a few other celebrities which should make for an integrated mix of our varied communities. If you want to be a part of this effort or know someone who should, please email us at: justice4aiyana@hotmail.com.
The public service announcement videos will share how the police killed Aiyana Jones, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, and the numerous others in our community who had no chance to fend for themselves against the powerful and mighty U.S. police agencies that have ties all the way to the Pentagon.
JAJC Chief, Roland Lawrence aka Fige Bornu says, “Righteousness begins with each and every one of us; and no matter how one spins the police killing of mostly young Black men, the fact is that the center will not hold. One day in time, this assault against this particular demographic group, which is young Black youth, will and must be addressed, remedied, and stopped at its core.”
Contact: justice4aiyana@hotmail.com
Click on http://sfbayview.com/2011/justice-for-aiyana-jones-now/ to read story originally published in VOD on JAJC aerial protest commemmorating first anniversary of cop murder of Aiyana Jones. The story has also run in The Final Call.
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FREE NELI LATSON! AUTISTIC YOUTH UNJUSTLY JAILED AND ABUSED!
DEAR COMMUNITY
IF THE NEED FOR THE BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENT WAS OVER THEN HOW COULD THIS BE HAPPENING OVER AND OVER??!! THIS WEEK THEY HAVE MOVED NELI LATSON FROM THE PRIVATELY OWNED PRISON TO
THE STATE PENN.
HIS MOTHER IS DISTRAUGHT. COULDN’T REACH HIM BY PHONE. COULD YOU JUST IMAGINE THE DISTRESS NELI IS GOING THRU!!!!!!! PLEASE HELP. PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION AND HELP GET THIS BOY HOME TO HIS MOTHER.
Reginald “Neli” Latson, is a 19 year-old autistic young man, who on the morning of May 24, 2010, sat in the grass outside the local library in Stafford, VA and waited for it to open. Police allege that it was reported that there was a suspicious black male who had a gun. Deputy Calverley then approached Latson and searched him for a gun. No gun was found. Calverly asked Latson for his name, and Latson refused and tried to walk away as he had committed no crime.
THE HELL BEGAN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEXVuQKVIjM
FOR FULL INFO PLEASE VISIT : http://avoiceforneli.com/
http://avoiceforneli.com/
PLEASE DO PASS THIS EVERYWHERE!! PLEASE DO SIGN PETITION AND ENJOIN TO BRING THIS BOY HOME. WE KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Governor Bob McDonnel (R) *****HE MAY BE RUNNING FOR PRES IN 2012
Street address:Office of the GovernorPatrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor 1111 East Broad Street Richmond, Virginia 23219 Phone Numbers:(804) 786-2211Fax: (804) 371-6351
MOTHER LISA ALEXANDER
LEGAL DEFENDER
LISA GREENMAN
202 744 7036
lgreenman@rcn.com
SENT BY
AGNES JOHNSON
aajsyr@yahoo.com
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RALLY TO SAVE CATHERINE FERGUSON ACADEMY AND ALL DPS SCHOOLS THURS. JUNE 16
Catherine Ferguson Academy (CFA) is a Detroit Public School. CFA is a JEWEL of DETROIT and it is about to be stolen from our community- we must defend it and defend ourselves. CFA students are standing on their feet fighting to defend public education, fighting to stop the destruction of programs in all of our schools through class size increases and elimination of our teachers, and against the closing of all of the public schools on the closing list.
CFA is on the list to be closed. It is a school for pregnant and parenting teenage girls. At CFA, our sisters, cousins and friends, are not treated as outcasts, but are cared for and treated as fellow persons with value.
CFA is a regular comprehensive high school, where the students can bring their children. There is early childhood development and pre-school, and nurseries. There are doctors, nurses and others who come to the school to provide services for the students and their children to make sure that they are all successful. There is also a wonderful farm with goats, ducks, chickens, honeybees, fruit trees, vegetables and even a horse.
In a society where being a teenage mother enslaves most to a life of poverty and limited opportunity, CFA is like the first “safe house” stop on the underground railroad to freedom, a place of new beginning and hope for young women who have been told by so many that their own lives are over.
We can save all of our schools and programs by uniting in action at CFA to make it clear that the new “Jim Crow”, second class treatment of black and Latina/o and other minority students has no place in our city.
On April 15, 2011, the brave students of CFA led Detroit and shook up the nation by sitting down and refusing to leave the school over spring break. This action resulted in numerous schools coming off of the closing list. However, CFA is still on the closing list and is being used as a “political football” between the Democrats and the Republicans, both of whom could keep the school open, but neither will without a fight led by the students to make them keep it open.
Next time at CFA, if hundreds, not just dozens of people are gathered outside to defend the school, we will save CFA and win more of our demands.
Just like the auto workers forced the powerful auto companies to recognize their union in the 1930’s through sit-down strikes, and Black high school and college students in the South broke the back of segregation by sitting down at lunch counters, and the hundreds of Northwestern High School students in Detroit kept their school open by walking out together and marching out last year, we must recognize, just as Dr. Martin Luther King did, that if young people act on “the fierce urgency of now,” we can move mountains.
In addition to closing CFA and numerous other schools, class sizes in all DPS high schools are being threatened to increase to forty-five (45) students per class starting in fall of 2012. Schools that offer a college prep curriculum will no longer be able to effectively do so in reality. And neighborhood schools will lose electives all together, as well as many extracurricular activities. We must organize a massive mobilization to save CFA and preserve the quality of all DPS schools.
Anyone and everyone can and should come – people of all ages, schools, cities, etc., but the students have to lead!
At this point, we have so much power at CFA because of the first set of actions. Students at Southeastern walked out three times and won the right to sing at the MSVMA choral festival, and led a successful campaign to defend the rights of a transgendered classmate. If more students and youth in Detroit stand up and fight, we will win much more. Now is the time to stop listening to the naysayers in our life–three Ps–parents, principals and preachers, who too often speak out of fear and not strength, telling us to just keep our heads down and not to fight for what we know we deserve and believe in. They say that there is another way, and that the adults will take care of it, but the adults have not and will not do what is necessary to fight and win. Join the movement and fight for your dignity, equality and hope for your future.
Have your school adopt the following demands:
The enemies of public education know that their plan is not about balancing the district’s budget. They are fully aware that their statistics are wrong and fabricated and that this plan will make the district lose money. For example, they say CFA costs the District $2.7 million* when it really only costs $750,000 and the rest comes from special federal and state funding, not the DPS general fund.
The racist, white billionaires, who do not want to pay for public education any more, believe that the people of Detroit do not have value and want to fulfill that prophecy through force. This is about implementing the New Jim Crow and forcing people to defer their dreams by blocking any opportunity for them to lead and shine. It is their intention to destroy public education, and get away with it with only minimal objections from the community, without any serious consequences, without Detroiters organizing and raising total HELL to stop the destruction of our schools and our neighborhoods.
Roy Roberts and other pessimistic politicians, who are backed by a tiny minority of billionaires, ARE NOT OUR “FRIENDS”. They are overseers hired to implement and enforce the New Jim Crow system of education on black and Latino/a students – separate and completely unequal once again. This means that special Detroit schools such as CFA, Renaissance and Cass and creative and loved programs in neighborhood schools like music and robotic programs, will all be in the past and no longer exist for black and Latino/a students in Detroit.
Then, wealthy white people can say to working class and poor white people, “you may have a poor education system that we refuse to pay for, but at least you are not black or Latino/a.” They are closing schools and firing teachers to drive students out of the district and gentrify the city by race and class. A few middle-class students will go to private schools or leave the city, and the rest will be warehoused in inferior, overcrowded schools. Whether or not our schools stay open or teachers keep their jobs depends on whether we can overcome our fears and express our anger in a collective manner, and put our foot down and declare that Detroit students, our schools, our programs, our neighborhoods and our city are not for sale.
We can end the regime of overcrowded classrooms, police in the schools doling out repression and brutality, and turning what should be places of learning, where we can express and develop our full creativity and humanity, into cheap, stripped-down, prison-like holding cells. We want and deserve the full range of subjects and extracurriculars – art, music, dance, theatre, sports, AP and foreign language courses, chess, etc. – that a first-class comprehensive public education has to offer. To the extent that any school becomes a charter, if they do not meet the full standards of the students and parents, they must lose their charter immediately!
We CAN defeat this plan, but only by getting off our knees and fighting back. It’s time to heed the words of Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest leaders in the history of our nation, who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Take action and organize your school– Join BAMN (The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, BAMN) at 855-ASK-BAMN (855-275-2266), or email BAMN Coordinator Donna Stern at donna.stern@ueaa.net www.bamn.com
Follow us on twitter: @followBAMN
*The Detroit News, 05/27/2011
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RALLY RE: CRIME LAB INJUSTICES, FRI. JUNE 17, 8 AM, FRANK MURPHY HALL
(VOD ed.: story coming shortly.)
The Detroit People’s Task Force to Free the Wrongfully Convicted will be hosting a protest on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 8 a.m. in front of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice at 1441 St. Antoine Street to address the ongoing scandals involving the Detroit Crime Lab and the cases of many wrongfully convicted defendants. The lab has been closed for three years, and there have been no new trials, despite the Wayne County Prosecutor’s pledge to confess error three years ago and award new trials to those wrongfully convicted. In addition, the Prosecutor and the Detroit Police have engaged in a campaign of denying justice by destroying evidence and case files while at the same time illegally obtaining funding of city tax dollars to conduct sham investigations that went nowhere.
The prosecutor should not be meddling with the files her staff handled in fraudulently convicting people to prison. And the Detroit Police should not be in charge of guarding the very fraudulent evidence they produced to obtain those convictions. The task force has been fighting for three years for an independent audit into the investigations of adjudicated cases of wrongful convictions. And with the recent revelations of yet more scandals involving Detroit Police and the Prosecutor as it concerns these cases, enough is enough. Our freedoms from unjust imprisonment are at risk; our rights to due process of law are at risk; and every fundamental right to a fair trial has been lost. We cannot sit idly by while this attack on humanity continues. Please come out and support the task force in calling for an independent federal probe into the Detroit Crime Lab. Let not your silence become betrayal and defend the lives of those whose freedoms were stolen from them. The life you save from such capricious government today may be your own tomorrow.
For more information about the protest, please contact Roberto Guzman, Paralegal and Activist at (313) 272-1406 or Marilyn Jordan, President of the Task Force at (313) 784-4021 or Kevin Carey, Executive Director, at (313) 887-4344
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UNITED STATES: GOOD-BYE, PUBLIC EDUCATION
Alberto Ampuero* Havana. June 2, 2011
GRANMA ONLINE
If you had to express the greatness of the United States in one word, that word would be “education,” according to Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Laureate in Economics.
But that was earlier, when the development of education primarily signified the development of public education, and the U.S. was seen as the great land where higher education was available to the general population. Today, this image of the country has collapsed, says Krugman.
The United States currently has problems of all sizes, shapes and colors. One of the most serious is the crisis of the public education system. The low scores of academic performance and the failure of standardized tests on the part of tens of thousands of students from poor and marginalized communities combine with constant budget cuts and the trends toward privatization of the public education sector.
Add to all this a fundamental problem: Public education has undergone a qualitative shift in its operation and objectives. Education is no longer seen as a right; it has become a business opportunity. Teachers have become employees who pursue the “success” of their “clients” — the students — and the role of education authorities is in the process of being reduced to mere administrative functions at best.
In his speeches, Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, has repeated that “the secret ingredient of America’s success is its entrepreneurial spirit,”* and that this was the objective of education.
Klein and about a dozen other municipal education leaders reiterated this vision last October in a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post, where they asserted that “the transformative changes needed to truly prepare our kids for the 21st-century global economy simply will not happen unless we first shed some of the entrenched practices that have held back our education system, practices that have long favored adults, not children.”
This approach to promote the reform of the education system forms a part of a national debate in which the “reformers” in power have declared that the public education system is a failure. They declare that more than any other factor, the main obstacle to student success “is the quality of their teachers,” and they propose applying business rules that above all assess teacher effectiveness.
There is a second line of attack, in which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is actively participating, which attacks public schools as ineffective, without taking into account the meager resources with which they operate, and accuses teachers’ unions of refusing to accept the dismissal of less qualified teachers. Its alternative is charter schools, which are public schools that are administered by private groups and presented by the Obama administration as key to the salvation of public education.
As part of its Race to the Top program, the government is incentivizing states to raise their limits on the number of charter schools in exchange for federal funds.
Furthermore, the current administration seeks to replace roughly 5,000 poorly performing traditional schools with charter schools. The government has made the juicy sum of $3.5 billion available to the states to subsidize the “change” of these poorly performing schools. The more poorly performing schools that close, the more money the states receive.
But as Diane Ravitch points out, charter schools are “a force for privatization” of public education. Ravitch is a professor at New York University and former Assistant Secretary of Education, and one of the most influential national figures in the debate.
This type of school, financed with public funds, does not need to operate under the same rules as other public schools. It usually selects its students instead of accepting everyone, which allows it to deliver better results. Its teachers are not necessarily unionized; therefore, they lack labor rights. And it can accept private investment, which allows it to establish other regulations.
But something odd happened on the road to “success.” According to a broad investigation carried out by experts at Stanford University, only 17 percent of charter schools were better than traditional public schools, according to standardized test results. 37 percent were worse in comparison, and 46 percent were virtually identical.
Professor Ravitch argues that the great debate surrounding education is now between those who “believe that public education is not only a fundamental right but a vital public service, […] and those who believe that the private sector is always superior to the public sector.”
(Taken from ARGENPRESS, edited by S. Carter, translated by J. Rudolf)
* Los Angeles based journalist
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U.S./NATO BOMBS KILL, WOUND CIVILIANS–DAY FIVE OF CYNTHIA MCKINNEY TOUR
From Don DeBar, WBAIX Radio
First, some audio, wherein Cynthia McKinney describes what it’s like to be in a city that is under heavy US/NATO bombing (she said she counted 89 explosions yesterday!)
Interview with Cynthia McKinney in Tripoli, Libya, as aired on Wakeup Call with Esther Armah, WBAI-FM, NYC, June 8, 2011 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuRHU6S1xzYF
Former Congresswoman McKinney describes, among other matters, how the racist CIA-backed Libyan rebels are targeting and killing Black Libyans in particular for supporting Muammar Qaddafi.
Wayne Madsen gives further deatils of the bombardment in an excerpt from his blog at www.waynemadsenreport.com –
TRIPOLI – Tonight we are seeing the heaviest NATO strikes in three days of being in Tripoli. Although military targets are being hit, it is a matter of time before we see the takeout of infrastructure targets as was done in Belgrade and later, in Baghdad. Libyan state TV is still on the air (I did an interview there last night that has resulted in strangers coming up to me and thanking me for reporting the truth about what is happening in Libya). Internet still works and the lights are still on. However, AT&T, T Mobile, and Verizon have severed all cell phone links with Libya. The world must know that the real criminals in Libya are the rebel leaders who are handing over their country to the Western powers, western oil companies, and the global bankers who have been chewing on the carcasses of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland and other nations and are now baring their fangs for a big feast on Libya.
Also from Wayne’s blog, a little historical context for US/NATO operations under the last Democratic president:
From Silvija (Diaspora)
The same western elites vultures started the dog fight and chewed up Yugoslavia, Wayne, as you know. American bombs feel different than regular war, don’t they?
Regular war is snipers, bullets, a bunch of mortars. American wars are a comprehensive mind-boggling bombing runs pounding everything to dust if you ever sit under such an event. I sat under 10 days of endless American bombs in 1995 when Clinton launched a covert giant war with massive air strikes already in 1995 – a year before the NATO war he fought and admitted fighting there – he still says he did not fight that particular war as he did not have sex with that woman and he never inhaled, either.
During that big 1995 war that was never even reported in US media, the US bombed the Serbs out of Croatia and Bosnia in while Yeltsin was in the hospital with a heart attack and could not help the Serbs and while the world MSM attention was focused on that week’s 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima event. Massive US bombing all around us – y’all got some big loud dramatic bombs, I saw and heard them and got sick of my grandma’s basement stay for so long. Same thing – western elites had converged on YU, got everybody fighting with implanted external rebels, plus real local hotheads funded and armed by the US, US arming and directing Croatia HV and Bosnia HVO, bin Laden also deployed to Sarajevo ‘burbs to stir that up, Soros doing psyops and the US bombing us overhead. They are efficient at breaking up countries. Same M.O. as in Libya now.
Video of Cynthia and her travel mates visiting victims of the bombing in Tripoli is running in a 40 minute loop at www.WBAIX.org
Don DeBar
87 Ferris Pl
Ossining, NY 10562
914 374-2475
dondebar@optonline.net
www.WBAIX.org
Watch live streaming video from wbaix at livestream.com
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PUT PA 4 (EM LAW) ON BALLOT
Dear DFT Members, Citizens and Community Leaders:
Now is the time to take action! Let’s take back our DPS, our community, our city and our state! Its imperative that everyone attend the DPS Board Advisory meeting on Wednesday, June 8, 2011. The meeting is at the Detroit Public Library(Main location) in the Friends Auditorium from 5:30pm – 7:45pm. We will get specific information on how to get rid of the evil, anti-human rights, and dictatorial discriminatory law. Please plan on attending and take action to reclaim our authority. Pass this message to every person you know.
God Blessings! Christal Bonner (313)350-2393
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From Cynthia McKinney: WE ARE NOW UNDER ATTACK IN TRIPOLI!
June 6, 2011
(VOD ed.: Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is leading a “Dignity Delegation of independent journalists to report truthfully from the ground in Libya during its bombardment by US/NATO forces.)
Sent by Don DeBar
It is now 1:10 in the afternoon and as the daily life in Tripoli unfolds that includes teachers, staff, and children at school, shopkeepers working in their businesses, streetsweepers sweeping the streets, people moving to and fro in the cars, on bicycles, and on foot, Tripoli has thus far since around 11:00 up to now, received at least 29 bombs.
Interestingly, the efforts of the Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, and others to portray Libya claims on the bombings as “absurd” are patently false and are merely efforts to defend in the court of public opinion, the indefensible bombing of civilians going about their lives in a heavily populated area. The Washington Post headlined “Libya government fails to prove claims of NATO casualties” and the Los Angeles Times headline blared “Libya officials put a spin on a conflict.” These bombs and missiles are not falling in empty spaces: people are all over Tripoli going about their lives just as in any other major metropolitan city of about two million people.
Meanwhile, NATO has a spin machine of its own: NATO says it is making “significant progress” in protecting Libyan civilians. “What we did target was the military intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli,” the alliance said. I am currently with a delegation of former MP’s and professors from France who are here in Tripoli on a fact-finding mission. The program for today was to visit the camps of internally displaced persons in this part of the country. However, we are not able to complete our program while Tripoli is under attack. I will do my best to visit some of the areas bombed today when/if this attack lets up.
What were you doing today between 1:00 pm and now? The people of Tripoli endure the trauma of repeated bombings in their immediate environment.
See video of wounded civilians, taped in their rooms in El Khadra Hospital in Tripoli, at www.WBAIX.org
Watch live streaming video from wbaix at livestream.com
TRIPOLI, LIBYA: NATO air strikes increase in Tripoli.
By Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
June 6-8, 2011
Sunday afternoon and evening (June 5) saw heavy NATO air strikes on Tripoli. A quiet Sunday night was punctuated by the sound of NATO jets flying over the city followed by loud explosions heard from WMR’s vantage point at a seaside hotel in central Tripoli.
Although NATO claims it is striking military targets, WMR has confirmed reports of explosions from NATO bombs in residential areas of Tripoli.
WMR has also been informed of recent top-level defections form the Libyan rebel coalition to the government of Muammar Qaddafi. A number of former Libyan opposition leaders, who were never affiliated with the armed wing of the rebel movement, say that diving Libya and seeing Libyan irregulars, NATO and U.S. bombs, and foreign mercenary forces killing Libyans was never a goal of the moderate opposition, which wanted change through dialogue and reform.
WMR has also been informed that along with 900 million Libyan dinars and $500.5 million in U.S. dollars being stolen by the Libyan rebels from the Libyan Central Bank in Benghazi, the rebels have also looted the bank accounts of private companies in eastern Libya, including from banks in Benghazi, Derna, Tobruk, and Beida.
There are also credible reports that French troops in Misrata, Libya, now occupied by rebel forces, have been overseeing the procurement of human organs from those killed in the fighting in the city. The past theft of human organs from conflict zones, such as Kosovo and the West Bank, has involved Israeli middlemen and traffickers.
New chant heard at people’s demonstration at Qaddafi compound in Tripoli
Jun 5, 2011
Libyan civilians, defying NATO to strike Muammar Qaddafi’s Tripoli compound, Bab al-Azizia in the air war, code-named Operation Unified Protector, nightly converge at the site of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 bombing of the compound, to chant, “Allah, Muammar, Libya wa bas!” (God, Muammar, Libya Only!)
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