An Organizing Approach to School Change

Don’t’ face school reform alone; organize
An organizing approach to school change.
Let us be clear. A progressive teacher working in a school is good, but it is not school reform.. A progressive activist teacher will improve the education of 30 students, or 100 students, and these are significant contributions. But, one or two activists are not school reform nor is a single progressive principal.
The success of some outstanding schools serving low income neighborhoods indicate that schools can improve, children in poverty can be provided with high quality schooling.(Chenoweth, 2007) Individual schools that have improved their performance and academic achievement are valuable islands of hope for reform. And hope is a vital ingredient in working for change.
Few, or none of the superintendents of major school systems – and their staffs- have reformed their schools to produce equal opportunity. We know from experience in several cities that school reform efforts are not sustained beyond the tenure of a superintendent or a principal. Indeed there are numerous cases of schools and leaders making important changes only to be stopped by control oriented superintendents in the name of reform ( Wilms, 2008). And, there has been realistically little improvement in reducing the achievement gap in urban systems.

Teachers as agents of change
Reform will occur when groups of teachers work together to create a new, more democratic school system to better serve all of the students. Real School reform requires substantive change.
We need to develop a new conception of teachers as change agents for those teachers committed to civil rights and the success of their students. This potential role is under developed. We need active and activist teacher leaders to guide and direct change to a more democratic and a more equal school system. In most school districts administrators are not promoting democratic reform and perhaps their positions prevent them from promoting democratic reform.
There currently exists a number of leadership roles for teachers. They fill positions such as lead teacher , grade level leaders, host teaches, mentor teachers, student advocates, curriculum specialists, teacher organizers, language specialists, union leaders and change agents.
Teachers leaders are needed to provide a teacher voice and advocacy for quality education within the school reform efforts. Teacher organizers are in particular need when schools are under some form of re-constitution or re-organization to improve achievement

What does a change agent do? In Doing Democracy: The MAP model for Organizing Social Movements, the authors list the roles of change agents as including:

Organizing people power and engaged citizens for the common good.
Educates and involves the majority of the citizens on the issues.
Involves pre-existing grass roots and parents organizations, networks, unions.
Places the issues on the societies agenda.
Promotes alternatives.

For teacher activists the first group to organize is other teachers. First you need to find one ally, then two. We know from organizing that relationships matter, so you need to develop positive on-going relationships with a number of teachers in your school site. Indeed, this will make your own work life more interesting and bearable.
Parents are a second important component of organizing. With large scale immigration there is no reason to limit your organizing to citizens, parents are more appropriate partners. It will help to keep in mind those activities which all adults can participate in and those limited to citizens (such as voting).
An important task is to plan an educational agenda. School talk is often mystifying to parents. And, since so much professional talk is used, parents can be mislead to pursue anti democratic projects. Parents have been recruited and used in the anti bilingual political campaigns and often used in divisive campaigns over reading.
Teachers should look for a community based organization in their area and work with it. Several community based organizations such as those affiliated with the IAF, or PICO, or ACORN, work on school reform and prepare parents to become community leaders ( see Anyon, 2006, Oaks and Rogers, 2006, http://www.industrialareasfoudation.org). Parent organizing can provide the power needed for sustained change in the power structure of a school district. Teachers, parents, and educational activists need each other. The first step is building relationships of trust among these constituencies.

As soon as you begin to organize for social justice you will encounter other, already existing groups. Perhaps the most frequent encounter will be with a union activist in your building. It is useful to map out the existing groups and interests and conduct some informal research to see which of these groups may assist you. For example a union activist may well encourage you to bring your goals within the union effort. This is a possible approach. Certainly if you can bring the union to support your projects this will assist you. It is important and valuable for teachers to bring their unions along as they pursue progressive change. These are our institutions with staff, money, and resources.
However, a note of caution is needed. Unions have their institutional agenda which usually focuses on the salaries and the treatment of employees. These are important issues particularly for under paid teacher and teacher assistants. The union agenda is rather well understood. And, whenever possible, you want to work in cooperation with union. However, quite often the invitation to work within the union is actually a recruitment of you to work on the union agenda rather than on your social justice agenda. You can be an activist and will be encouraged to carry out the many valuable service projects of the union. And it is important to have the union with you when you encounter conflict. But it is a significant question. Does working within the union allow you to pursue your previous goals? Or, are you quickly recruited to work on the union goals? This is an area of needed continuous dialogue with your allies. After all, the union may have already developed a valuable strategy which supports your work.

Senator Barack Obama on education

Sen. Barack Obama's speech, "What's Possible for Our Children," was delivered at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, Colorado on Wednesday:

"It's an honor to be here at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts. Just three years ago, only half of the high school seniors who walked the halls of this building were accepted to college. But today, thanks to the hard work of caring parents, innovative educators and some very committed students, all 44 seniors of this year's class have been accepted to more than 70 colleges and universities across the country.
"I'm here to congratulate you on this achievement, but also to hold up this school and these students as an example of what's possible in education if we're willing to break free from the tired thinking and political stalemate that's dominated Washington for decades, if we're willing to try new ideas and new reforms based not on ideology but on what works to give our children the best possible chance in life.
"At this defining moment in our history, they've never needed that chance more. In a world where good jobs can be located anywhere there's an Internet connection— where a child in Denver is competing with children in Beijing and Bangalore — the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge. Education is the currency of the Information Age, no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success but a prerequisite. There simply aren't as many jobs today that can support a family where only a high school degree is required. And if you don't have that degree, there are even fewer jobs available that can keep you out of poverty.
"In this kind of economy, countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow. Already, China is graduating eight times as many engineers as we are. By 12th grade, our children score lower on math and science tests than most other kids in the world. And we now have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation in the world. In fact, if the more than 16,000 Colorado students who dropped out of high school last year had only finished, the economy in this state would have seen an additional $4.1 billion in wages over these students' lifetimes.
"There is still much progress to be made here in Thornton, but the work you've done shows us that we do not accept this future for America.
"We don't have to accept an America where we do nothing about six million students who are reading below their grade level.
"We don't have to accept an America where only 20 percent of our students are prepared to take college-level classes in English, math and science. Where barely one in 10 low-income students will ever graduate from college.
"We don't have to accept an America where we do nothing about the fact that half of all teenagers are unable to understand basic fractions. Where nearly nine in 10 African-American and Latino eighth-graders are not proficient in math. We don't have to accept an America where elementary school kids are only getting an average of 25 minutes of science each day when we know that over 80 percent of the fastest-growing jobs require a knowledge base in math and science.
"This kind of America is morally unacceptable for our children. It's economically untenable for our future. And it's not who we are as a nation.
"We are the nation that has always understood that our future is inextricably linked to the education of our children — all

After touring the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, United States Senator Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting in the school auditorium on Wednesday, May 22, 2008. (THE DENVER POST | KATHRYN SCOTT OSLER)
of them. We are the country that has always believed in Thomas Jefferson's declaration that "talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth or birth."
"That's who we are. And that's why I believe it's time to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education, one where we all come together for the sake of our children's success. An era where each of us does our part to make that success a reality: parents and teachers, leaders in Washington and citizens all across America.
"This starts with fixing the broken promises of No Child Left Behind. Now, I believe that the goals of this law were the right ones. Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More accountability is right. Higher standards are right.
"But I'll tell you what's wrong with No Child Left Behind. Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.
"We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind. We must provide the funding we were promised, give our states the resources they need and finally meet our commitment to special education. We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test. Recently, 87 percent of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art. But we need to look no further than MESA to see that accountability does not need to come at the expense of a well-rounded education. It can help complete it — and it should.
"As president, I will work with our nation's governors and educators to create and use assessments that can improve achievement all across America by including the kinds of research, scientific investigation and problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st century knowledge economy. The tests our children take should support learning not just accounting. If we really want our children to become the great inventors and problem-solvers of tomorrow, our schools shouldn't stifle innovation, they should let it thrive. That's what MESA is doing by using visual arts, drama and music to help students master traditional subjects like English, science and math, and that's what we should be doing in schools all across America.
"But fixing the problems of No Child Left Behind is not an education policy on its own. It's just a starting point.
"A truly historic commitment to education — a real commitment — will require new resources and new reforms. It will require a willingness to move beyond the stale debates that have paralyzed Washington for decades: Democrat versus Republican; vouchers versus the status quo; more money versus more accountability. It will require leaders in Washington who are willing to learn a lesson from students and teachers in Thornton or Denver about what actually works. That's the kind of president I intend to be, and that's the kind of education plan I've proposed in this campaign.
"It begins with the understanding that from the moment our children step into a classroom, the single most important factor in determining their achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from. It's not who their parents are or how much money they have.
"It's who their teacher is. It's the person who stays past the last bell and spends their own money on books and supplies. It's the men and women here at MESA who go beyond the call of duty because you believe that's what makes the extra difference. And it does.
"And if we know how much teaching matters, then it's time we treated teaching like the profession it is. I don't want to just talk about how great teachers are. I want to be a president who rewards them for their greatness.
"That starts with recruiting a new generation of teachers and principals to replace the generation that's retiring and those who are leaving. Right here in Colorado, more than 6,000 teachers won't be returning to the schools where they taught last year. That's why as president, I'll create a new Service Scholarship program to recruit top talent into the profession and begin by placing these new teachers in overcrowded districts and struggling rural towns, or hard-to-staff subjects like math and science in schools all across the nation. And I will make this pledge as president to all who sign up: If you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education.
"To prepare our teachers, I will create more Teacher Residency Programs to train 30,000 high-quality teachers a year. We know these programs work, and they especially help attract talented individuals who decide to become teachers midway through their careers. Right here in MESA, you have excellent teachers like Ike Ogbuike, who became a math teacher after working as an auto-engineer at Ford and completing a one-year, teacher-residency program.
"To support our teachers, we will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced, successful teachers with new recruits — one of the most effective ways to retain teachers. We'll also make sure that teachers work in conditions which help them and our children succeed. For example, here at MESA, teachers have scheduled common planning time each week and an extra hour every Tuesday and Thursday for mentoring and tutoring students that need additional help.
"And when our teachers do succeed in making a real difference in our children's lives, I believe it's time we rewarded them for it. I realize that the teachers in Denver are in the middle of tough negotiations right now, but what they've already proven is that it's possible to find new ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them.
"My plan would provide resources to try these innovative programs in school districts all across America. Under my Career Ladder Initiative, these districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as mentors to new teachers with the salary increase they deserve. They can reward those who teach in underserved areas or teachers who take on added responsibilities, like you do right here at MESA. And if teachers acquire additional knowledge and skills to serve students better — if they consistently excel in the classroom — that work can be valued and rewarded as well.
"And when our children do succeed, when we have a graduating class like this one where every single student has been accepted to college, we need to make sure that every single student can afford to go. As president, I will offer a $4,000 tax credit that will cover two-thirds of the tuition at an average public college and make community college completely free. And in return, I will ask students to serve their country, whether it's by teaching or volunteering or joining the Peace Corps. We'll also simplify the maze of paperwork required to apply for financial aid and make it as easy as checking off a box on your tax returns because you shouldn't need a Ph.D. to apply for a student loan.
"Finally, as so many of you know, there are too many children in America right now who are slipping away from us as we speak, who will not be accepted to college and won't even graduate high school. They are overwhelmingly black, and Latino, and poor. And when they look around and see that no one has lifted a finger to fix their school since the 19th century, when they are pushed out the door at the sound of the last bell — some into a virtual war zone — is it any wonder they don't think their education is important? Is it any wonder that they are dropping out in rates we've never seen before?
"I know these children. I know their sense of hopelessness. I began my career over two decades ago as a community organizer on the streets of Chicago's South Side. And I worked with parents and teachers and local leaders to fight for their future. We set up after-school programs, and we even protested outside government offices so that we could get those who had dropped out into alternative schools. And in time, we changed futures.
"And so while I know hopelessness, I also know hope. I know that if we bring early education programs to these communities, if we stop waiting until high-school to address the drop-out rate and start in earlier grades — as my Success in the Middle Act will do — if we bring in new, qualified teachers, if we expand college outreach programs like GEAR UP and TRIO and fight to expand summer learning opportunities for minority and disadvantaged students — like I've done in the Senate — or if we double funding for after-school programs to serve a million more children, as I've proposed to do as president, if we do all this, we can make a difference in the lives of our children and the life of this country. I know we can. I've seen it happen. And so have you.
"Yes, it takes new resources, but we also know that there is no program and no policy that can substitute for a parent who is involved in their child's education from day one. There is no substitute for a parent who will make sure their children are in school on time and help them with their homework after dinner and attend those parent-teacher conferences, like so many parents here at MESA do. And I have no doubt that we will still be talking about these problems in the next century if we do not have parents who are willing to turn off the TV once in awhile and put away the video games and read to their child. Responsibility for our children's education has to start at home. We have to set high standards for them and spend time with them and love them. We have to hold ourselves accountable.
"This is the commitment we must make to our children. This is the chance they must have. And I will never forget that the only reason I'm standing here today is because I was given that same chance. And so was my wife.
"Our parents weren't wealthy by any means. My mother raised my sister and me on her own, and she even had to use food stamps at one point. Michelle's father was a worker at a water-filtration plant on the South Side of Chicago and provided for his family on a single salary. And yet, with the help of scholarships and student loans and a little luck, Michelle and I both had the chance to receive a world-class education. And my sister ended up becoming a teacher herself.
"That is the promise of education in America, that no matter what we look like or where we come from or who our parents are, each of us should have the opportunity to fulfill our God-given potential. Each of us should have the chance to achieve the American dream. Here at MESA, you've shown America just how that's possible. I congratulate you, and I wish you continued success, and I look forward to working with you and learning from you in the months and years ahead. Thank you."

Obama v. McCain on NCLB

Candidates Split Sharply
On Bush's No Child Left Behind Law
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER and AMY CHOZICK
Wall Street Journal
May 29, 2008; Page A6
Barack Obama attacked a key plank of John McCain's education platform, taking up an issue that has been on the back burner amid a campaign dialogue dominated by war and the economy.

The candidates' biggest disagreement on education policy comes over President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which threatens sanctions if schools don't meet certain standards of achievement. Sen. Obama wants to overhaul the law, while Sen. McCain wants to extend it.

"We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind," Sen. Obama said Wednesday while touring the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, a Colorado public school that leans heavily on the arts to teach subjects such as math and English. "We must provide the funding we were promised ... We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test," he added.

The Illinois senator cited Mapleton's unorthodox model of instruction as an example of creativity fostering success. He noted a study that asserted: "87% of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art."

The general election will offer stark differences on education. The Democratic presidential front-runner supports federal funding toward universal prekindergarten in states. Sen. McCain is opposed. Sen. Obama wants to cut banks out of the student-loan business and would have students only borrow directly from the government. Sen. McCain says students benefit from competition between bank-based and "direct" government lending.

In a speech in November, Sen. Obama declared that the No Child Left Behind law "has done more to stigmatize and demoralize our students and teachers in struggling schools than it has to marshal the talent and the determination and the resources to turn them around."

In discussing No Child Left Behind on his Web site, Sen. McCain says that "we finally see what is happening to students who were previously invisible."

Signed into law six years ago, No Child Left Behind is considered one of President Bush's signature domestic achievements. The goal was to close the gap between high- and low-achieving children by holding their schools accountable. But while it passed with bipartisan support, the law has been widely panned for its rigidity by parents, teachers and education policymakers -- particularly among the heavily Democratic teachers unions.

Sen. Obama, as well as his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, has proposed a revamping of the law.

Clinton aides say she wants to see testing models that distinguish between failing schools and schools that are just falling short. The New York senator's campaign says she wants to move beyond testing to other indicators of progress.

Sen. Obama, too, wants to take a fresh look at the testing models. The campaign says the law unfairly puts the responsibility for student performance heavily on schools. Sen. Obama wants to see parents -- not just schools -- held accountable, by requiring districts to adopt school-family contracts that lay out expectations for student behavior, attendance and homework, the campaign says.

The Bush law holds schools accountable by exacting punishments if students don't meet goals. Schools that fail to reach their yearly improvement targets face sanctions such as reduced managerial authority or even layoffs for teachers.

Sen. McCain says the No Child law has succeeded by shining a spotlight on how effectively schools are teaching. His campaign says the threat of tough sanctions gives schools a big incentive to improve.

There is also a clear partisan split on another hot education issue: whether preschool should be more widely available. Currently, most states provide only limited funding for pre-K.

But in recent years, a number of states have invested more from their budgets to expand pre-K availability, at least for lower-income families. Sens. Clinton and Obama both propose helping states establish or expand pre-K programs further. Sen. Obama proposes a "Zero to Five" plan, at a cost of $10 billion a year, providing incentives to states to expand early education for young children.

Sen. McCain says that a federally sponsored pre-K program already exists, which provides preschool services to low-income families. "Let's not look to expand the role of the federal government in this area," says a campaign aide, explaining the senator's position. "Rather, let's look to ensure where the government is playing a role, it's doing so effectively."

Recount : Florida 2000

‘Recount’ Gets It Right, Even if America Didn’t
By Brad Friedman
This review was originally posted on The Brad Blog.

I don’t mind admitting it. For an Election Integrity journalist, HBO’s Recount is pure pornography.
So it was with great anticipation that I sat down on Sunday night to watch the film as it premiered, along with the “Diebold Document Whistleblower” (and my new colleague at VelvetRevolution.us) Steven Heller and his wife, and Robert Carillo Cohen, one of the filmmakers of HBO’s landmark documentary, the Emmy-nominated Hacking Democracy which enjoyed a re-airing earlier in the day, as the cable net set the stage for its newest democracy thriller/heart-…

As it turns out, HBO seems to have gotten just about all of it right from a factual standpoint. At least from the perspective of someone who followed those extraordinary 36 days incredibly closely both during and since, as the country hung in limbo as if, yes, dangling by a chad. There was quite a bit of nuance packed in to the two fast-paced hours, even down to the dirty machinations of Florida’s corrupt and soulless Rep. Tom Feeney who played a minor, but key role in both the film and the stolen election.
Getting it right, or close to it, is apparently no small feat, since even the New York Times, the “paper of record”, was unable to do so even in their review of the film, seven years after they covered the actual events, and six years after they correctly wrote, “If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards...Mr. Gore would have won.”
Never mind history though, now for the Times it’s the revisionistic: “Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been re-tallied.” (For the record, the Times was right six years ago, here’s the evidence [PDF], and wrong last week.)
While time has done few favors for the Times, the historical distance, and time-compression of the two hour film, managed to capture the thrilling, exhausting and disappointing back and forth, up and down roller coaster of the original saga --- while identifying the players who deserve much of the thanks for the failure to count every vote accurately, as per the voters’ intent, or even at all --- in what was finally democracy lost.
Among the players targeted for failing to ensure the proper administration of democracy: then-Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, who the film identifies as having almost single-handedly allowed hundreds of military ballots to be counted for George W. Bush despite any evidence whatsoever that any of them were actually cast prior to the close of polls on November 7th, 2000.
While I had been aware of the Gore campaign foolishly rolling over to the cynical and opportunistic GOP attempts to bully them, by painting them as anti-troop --- based on their eventually-abandoned premise that all counted ballots should actually be legal ones --- I hadn’t drawn a direct bead on Lieberman for blowing that call.
If the filmmakers were accurate in that depiction, then it looks like one of John McCain’s biggest supporters in 2008 had been undermining Democratic White House ambitions long ago.
Given the film’s familiar outcome, no small amount of credit is due the filmmakers who were able to succeed in having a room of jaded (understatement) election buffs still rooting for the good guys to pull it out this time around. (Without giving too much away, they didn’t. Gore was still named the loser, despite having received more votes in Florida in 2000 than Bush [PDF], even after tens of thousands of legal minority voters were excluded from voting at all, merely because their names sounded something like others who had purportedly been convicted of a felony at one time or another.)
The result: a taut, often hilarious, consistently engaging, still-maddening and sick-making political thriller. History would thank you for watching it. Again and again.

California School crisis and the economy

The school reforms initiated in the 1980s and currently in vogue in California suppress the ideological issue of equality of opportunity. Conservative school reform advocates portrayed bilingual and multicultural education as divisive and as a “distraction” from important issues (Bloom, 1987; Hirsch, 1987). Not surprisingly, the important equity goals embodied in the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s were ignored. Neo liberal efforts focused more on school management than on the actual dynamics of teaching and learning in classrooms. Moreover, few conservative reform efforts attended specifically to schools that were failing to meet the needs of poor and cultural minority students.
The ideology of neo liberalism in school reform remained dominant until late 2008 , but it is weakening. It lost dominance because it did not produce the results promised, a well functioning education system for all. And, the problems of neo-liberalism, an over reliance on tests, increasing drop out rates, fraud and corruption in accountability, and the persistent failure of achievement in low income schools, became more visible. The promises of neo-liberal reforms did not materialize.
The problems of neo-liberal reforms were not only those of the U.S. education system. Between 1980 and 2008, free market capitalism, or free trade, or neo-liberalism, produced wealth for the wealthy and economic stagnation for the great majority in the U.S. and destitution for vast millions in the world. Life did not get better for the average U.S. citizen. Education – long the hope of the majority of working people - did not produce advantages in the global economy. The U.S. economy stagnated while newly industrializing countries of China, Brazil, India, and to a lesser extent, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, and others grew – and inequality grew in these countries.

Schooling for Working-Class and Marginalized Students
Bob Chase, then president of the National Education Association, notes that “the richest nation in the world has yet to muster the political willpower to provide every child with a decent chance at quality education. At least 15 million children in America attend substandard schools…. That’s why the states must level up funding for the poorest public schools, especially inner city and rural schools” (Chase, 1997, p. 2). He says further, “To set high academic standards for all students nationally, without providing the resources to meet them, would be a cruel joke. As cruel a joke as promising to treat each child equally and never living up to that promise” (p. 2).
We spend less per student than 16 other modern industrialized countries (Slavin, 1998). Moreover, of these, we are the only country that does not actively promote equality of educational opportunity. In the Netherlands, for example, schools receive 25 percent more funding for each lower-income child and 90 percent more funding for each minority child than in the United States (Slavin, 1998). Clearly, schools serving working-class students and cultural minorities fail in large part because our nation refuses to invest in its children.
While we have now spent trillion dollars on a war in Iraq, the nation could have invested that money in South Central Los Angeles, or the south side of Chicago, in jobs and infrastructure and hospitals and schools. It is a political and economic question of great importance of why we can quickly find money for war after war, even when the U.S. is not attacked, but we can not find money for schools and teachers. ( Overthrow, 2006)


Our economy needs well-educated workers. We cannot permit schools to continue to fail. When schools succeed for the middle class and fail for working-class students and students of color, schools contribute to a crippling division along economic and racial lines in our society. Schools, as public institutions, must find ways to offer all children equal educational opportunity. Yet reformed schools are more exceptions than the common pattern, particularly in our urban areas.
Let us be clear about the reality of schools in our nation. Some middle-class schools could benefit from reform, but most middle-class schools work. Most schools in urban areas, however, are unable to provide the equal educational opportunity called for by our national ideals and by constitutional law. There will be no significant change in the quality of urban education without substantial new funds allocated to these schools. As the NEA’s Chase has noted, children in these schools need and deserve the same quality of buildings, teachers, materials, and resources as do students from affluent neighborhoods. Recently, legislation in the state of Maryland was introduced to bring all schools up to “adequate” levels of funding. This is a significant step toward equitable funding across districts ( Montgomery 2002) Important adequacy of funding decisions have been made in courts serving New Jersey (Abbot), California (Williams) and New York. Only in New Jersey has even modest efforts been made to respond to the constitutionally required equal protection of the students. (Karp, 2007) If even state constitution and courts can not or will not order adequate funding, what more can we expect? For example California is regularly noted as the richest state in the nation- and yet it ranks 47th in per pupil expenditures, California’s students rank 48th. out of the states in 4th. grade reading, 47th. in 4th. grade math, and 43rd. in 4th. grade science. California ranks 48th. in 8th. grade reading, 45th. in 8th. grade math, and 42nd in 8th. grade science. (Students First, 2007). California regularly scores at the lowest levels in the nation while expecting to retain its dynamic, growth oriented economic prosperity.
While major neo liberal organizations regularly issue reports claiming that reform of public education is necessary for economic progress, these groups are opposed to the one reform most likely to work; adequate funding of schools in low income areas. (Karp,2007)
The U.S. and most states need a substantive change to provide excellent schools for all children- and the political leadership of both parties refuses to provide the money for such change, instead they propose tests, standards, and blaming the teachers. This is the current status in California dealing with the budget. We can only conclude that legislative and political leadership, perhaps as a consequence of lack of democracy, wants to keep on talking and talking and do not wish to improve the schools to provide democratic opportunity.

The Veneer of the Trivial

Would that it was truly a veneer. Yet it seems that what should be simply a veneer goes much deeper. The trivial now presents itself as the most engrossing, most vital and celebrated preoccupation to impose itself upon our collective consciousness.

We're a culture engrossed with celebrity, with consumerism, with slight conscience and lack of any meaningful commitment. Most certainly, when a situation arises that looms large in the popular imagination, there's a collective outcry and a passion evinced for "doing something" positive.

But the real essence of peoples' lives now appears to be self-absorptive, acquiring wealth and with that wealth, material goods well beyond our practical needs. We're loathe to diminish our assets, and when we tire of them, prefer to sell them a rock bottom prices through the Internet or through grungy little garage sales, rather than profit charitable agencies that can use them for re-sale or provide them gratis to needy families.

We grudgingly pass over a few dollars to charity and feel ourselves to have done our duty. Or prefer not to support charity, and let others do it for us. When volunteers are needed to give support to agencies providing assistance to the under-privileged, or to enhance the lives of community members, we're just too busy and can't become involved.

The concept of social equality and general welfare resonates with us, quite as long as it doesn't disrupt our singular way of life. We're inspired by the lives and lifestyles of celebrities, and we're driven to repeat the excesses of materialism that we see demonstrated through films and television.

We seem somehow to imagine that the lives we see portrayed through fiction are more meaningful than our own pedestrian lives and we fall over ourselves to emulate what we admire on the surface of existence.

As human beings we have such inordinate potential. Cerebrally, mechanically, empathetically, collectively for the good of the community of which we are a part. But it's such a drag, truth to tell. It's much more entertaining and fulfilling to fall into the otherworld of advertising and public relations, to find truths there, rather than to listen to our own inbred sense of emotional needs and priorities.

We're incapable of setting priorities, of recognizing values that have deep meaning. Our most gripping needs are to transcend the boredom of having it all, because no matter how much we have, it is never enough, there's always more that we could/should acquire, and somehow satisfaction still eludes us.

The calamities, natural and man-made, that befall societies whose human-rights quotient are repressed, and whose populations endure on the edge of subsistence, are not our problems to solve, and we make no effort to beleaguer our brains, not waste thought on them.

The hapless, socially disadvantaged, uneducated among us are not our problems, either. The growing homelessness, child abandonment, drug-addled misfits and welfare recipients in our society are there because they deserve no more than they have.

We're a sad and sorry lot.

Lies and Vicious Calumnies

What is it with the news media in the West, have they been completely suborned by their unspoken pledge to uphold a collective agreement to paint Israel in the most blighted colours possible, throwing truth and reality to the winds? Guess it sells.

The condemnations that accrue and rain down on Israel for its purported inhumane treatment of a neighbour population that outright refuses to relinquish its vendetta against an upstart presence are cringe-inducing to Israelis, seemingly incapable of mustering the resources to deny slanderous accusations.

During the Israel-Hezbollah confrontation that escalated into semi-war proportions in the summer of 2006, the "political wing" of the terrorist organization proved itself adept at providing western news media with photographs showing Israel in a human-rights abusing light, just as the "military wing" of that group laid the theatricals by staging assaults directly from within crowded population centres.

Doctored photographs allied with vicious propaganda were fodder for international condemnation of Israel. As public relations and media manipulation go, Hezbollah proved downright masterful. But they wouldn't have succeeded as spectacularly as they did without the complicity of the news sources eager to avail themselves of these special resources handed over to them by Hezbollah's agents.

And when it came to cynical manipulation of public opinion, leading to outright censure of Israel, no one knows how to twist reality as well as the Arabs do, they've had a long tradition of doing just that. Their blythe arrogance in flying traditional white flags of truce to avoid fire when they ferried about members of their militia placed real refugees from firing zones at risk, but that hardly mattered to the warriors of terror. About as much as deliberately placing civilians at risk by firing assaultive rockets against the IDF from the midst of crowded residential areas.

The thing of it is, even when astute observers, neutral or partisan alike have been able to determine that damning photographs and the narrative that accompanied them were falsified, nothing unravelled the original damage. The apprehension in the public mind of Israel victimizing those whose sole purpose is to destroy that country remains indelibly engraved in the memory and minds of a readily manipulable public. The original story sticks, it will not relinquish fiction to restore reality.

So when a French appeals court recently overturned the libel conviction of Philippe Karsenty who claimed that the France-2 TV report of the death of a young Palestinian boy, huddled beside his helpless father as Israeli troops shot the boy to death, it was a vindication too long in coming. One that will never resonate with the public for the simple reason that it will not receive anything resembling the wide international media coverage that the falsified film footage had.

Mr. Karsenty, as publisher of a media critique website, Media Ratings, stated that a media report aired in September 2000 by France-2 from Netzarim Junction in Gaza, ostensibly showing the shocking killing of an Arab youngster by Israeli soldiers represented a deliberate and vicious fiction. One that the world absorbed and condemned Israel for.

And which Arabs found useful for the purpose of instilling even more hatred of Israel from within the Palestinian population, as well as the broader Arab world. The Arab League found it useful to dedicate October 1 as the Day of Arab Children, honouring the name of the "dead boy". Iran saw fit to name 150 schools after the "dead boy", a symbol of monstrous Israeli inhumanity.

Yet the Arab father and child, feverishly attempting to protect themselves from IDF gunfire were play actors in a deliberate theatre of public relations whose purpose was to smear Israel beyond redemption. And they succeeded admirably.

On the basis of raw film footage that the court viewed that encompassed the production of the film, the court ruled that Mr. Karsenty's allegation that the clip had been staged - was a reasonable conclusion. Thus exonerating him from an earlier libel conviction brought against Mr. Karsenty by France-2, which sued him for libel.

A formal Israeli investigation indicated without a shadow of doubt that it would not have been physically possible for any Israeli soldier to have shot the boy; subsequent independent investigations served to confirm the Israeli findings. Some foreign media outlets came up with similar findings.

Yet none of this was ever reported in the media at large, that same media so eager to leap all over the film that appeared unequivocally to show Israeli inhumanity in a theatre of war. Left-wing, anti-Israeli journalists remain eager to make use of any emotion-inspiring photographs and rumours calumniating Israel.

Locally contracted Palestinian stringers, photographers, cameramen who serve an agenda not entirely commensurate with serving up truth and reality provide the wherewithal for outside news agencies to report on items of mass emotional content, irrespective of lack of truth.

News agencies from Europe to North America routinely use the work of these stringers and cameramen without any questions as to their veracity. Editors don't seem very much interested in establishing that there is no fraud involved. It's been left up to keen-eyed bloggers to separate the wheat from the chaff, the truth from febrile imagination.

"The Al-Dura lie is an assault on our ability to think, to criticize, to evaluate, and finally to reject information", said Karsenty. "Especially the right to reject information on which we base our most cherished assumptions. One of Europe's most cherished assumptions is that Israel is a vicious Nazi-like entity that deliberately murders Palestinian Arab children.

"Moreover, polls conducted in Europe have identified Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, greater than Iran and North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. The Al-Dura hoax is one of the pillars on which these assumptions rely."

In Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the country's public broadcaster, is funded with an annual budget of over $1-billion, with more in other government grants for independent production companies producing programs for CBC airing. This once-proud media corporation, designed on the template of the British Broadcasting Corporation, has followed the BBC in its left-wing, anti-Israel trajectory through its broadcasting biases.

Canadians were at one time so very proud of their very own CBC, yet it has reached such a pitifully low standing of popularity that its viewership has diminished in lock-step with the lost quality of its programming. Inclusive of news coverage whose bias is painfully evident.

It seems somehow fitting that the CBC's former head of neutral news production has retired to take up a similar position with Al Jazeera.

Volunteers of Faith

Much as it might pain those among the population who profess to no belief in the presence of a spiritual Father, it appears a reality that those who do believe, who value their faith in religion, will also go out of their way to do good deeds, to be charitable and helping and compassionate human beings. Amazing, that we cannot attain to this manner of kindly spiritual status without adhering to religious belief.

Religious groups, it would appear, make up 19% of Canada's 161,000 non-profit and voluntary organizations, according to a 2003 survey by Imagine Canada. The report demonstrates that religious organizations can count on over two million volunteers, and as a result are more likely than other groups "to have mid-sized and large volunteer complements". People respond to societal need, propelled by their belief in the Almighty.

That's powerful stuff. That faith motivates people to give of themselves, where without religious belief people are reliant on their own inbred inheritance of compassion. Does belief in religion then make us more susceptible to understanding and responding to the needs of others? Apparently so. It seems to kick-start our understanding of and willingness to help others in their deep travail.

Catholic charities in the United States are credited with providing food for 6.3 million people, along with a range of health and counselling services to 3.6 million. "People of faith have earned a place at the table by their devoted service... they walk the talk and therefore it would be very odd indeed if their values, which motivate them to do so much good, are marginalized."

Which leads to the incident that erupted into the news recently when Christian Horizons, a charity that operates 180 homes across the province of Ontario, with 2,500 employees serving 1,400 severely disabled residents, fired one of their staff for an unchristian lifestyle. Christian Horizons requires all its employees to sign a statement of moral values. The fired employee, although a devout Christian, became a lesbian.

The Ontario Human rights Tribunal informed Christian Horizons that they were not in compliance with human rights, for a group that received funding through public taxes. The homes that Christian Horizons operate provide an essential, humane and enormously helpful service to the community. Services that are not provided through any other venue.

The Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, Thomas Collins, claims that "Religious-based groups that are created and motivated by people of faith perform an enormous service for our whole community". And he is spot-on. Religious groups are involved in delivering social services from soup kitchens and homeless shelters, addiction programs, senior care and family services.

They deal with domestic violence, immigration, and employment counselling, as well as adoption services. Their mission to help those most vulnerable in society is unparalleled in scope by any kind of government service. They are unique in their purpose and they are devoted to helping those needing help in the most desperate way.

That being the case - and even if they do receive public funding - their own religious values should be respected. They should be free to hire whom they will, those who share their values and their morals, their respect for the tenets of their religion. What they believe in does not detract from the vital services they provide; indeed, they compel these people to devote themselves to service provision unavailable through other auspices.

It's quite simply wrong to impose a sterile, secular public standard on religious institutions. It's a trade-off for a hand-off. And good value, at that.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. Nor implicate myself. Amazing, isn't it, in the country of the free and the brave, the nation that values its superior system of justice for all, which steadfastly upholds the majesty of its vision of the universal declaration of human rights, it was seen as a compromise to introduce the shameful "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for the U.S. military.

Uncle Sam needs - you - but not if you're homosexual or bisexual. Thanks, but no thanks. Keep your distance. You've no skills required by the military, thank you very much. Unless, perchance, you agree to keep this your deep, dark secret well concealed. Tell.no.one. But then, what if, during the course of your active duties you happen to make enemies, and someone undertakes to cast doubt on your true-blue, red-blooded heterosexuality?

That old bugbear of someone harbouring a deep, dark secret making them vulnerable to blackmail or to dereliction of duty, has turned a new tack. The very institutional policy which permits gays and lesbians to enter the military as long as they don't advertise their gender preferences, renders them vulnerable to someone with a grudge turning them in.

And then, regardless of exemplary and/or long-term service, regardless of distinction under fire, or being singled out for praise of duty under horrendously difficult battle ground circumstances; of a certain and well-earned trajectory up the hierarchy of achievement and placement, it can all collapse into a heap of quiet accusation and hurried dismissal.

What, exactly, does it take to earn the praise and honour one deserves, without the fear that one's private life revealed will effectively destroy a career, a reputation, future aspirations? In the United States of America, no less, experiencing such creative difficulty in coming to terms with gender orientation disapproved of by religious conservatives.

Attitudinally superior to, for example, a repressive theocratic autocracy like Iran, yet the world's highest achieving democracy with its vaunted freedoms and citizen entitlements haunts and prowls on the tracks of homosexuals. And where in Iran homosexuals are hounded, imprisoned, tortured and killed, the process is more subtle in the U.S.

More, shall we say, nuanced, quietly undertaken. In the end, still viciously life-destroying. Modus operandi slightly different: end result bears unfortunate similarities, sans finality.

Take, for example, the case of Major Margaret Witt, having earned a promotion to colonel, less than year from earning a full pension. Then pouffe! a lifetime achievement evaporated. Twenty years as a U.S. Air Force nurse, promoted time and again for her unstinting work in saving the lives of wounded troops.

She was discreet about her private life. She was outstanding as a flight and operating-room nurse. In recognition of her outstanding commitment and sterling work ethic, George W. Bush awarded her a medal in 2003 for service in Afghanistan, giving her high praise for "outstanding medical care" for the injured, and for her "outstanding aerial accomplishments".

Weighed on the scale of accomplishment and justice all her dedication, her skills, her commitment came out lighter, in the military judgement than the heavy weight of her sex-gender transgression against the conservative view of public morality in private spaces. Pity, isn't it, that when the military is badly in need of skilled service people, they see nothing amiss in dismissing courage under fire for purported same-sex misconduct.

Roughly ten thousand service men and women have been dismissed from the American military because of revelations relating to their sexual orientation. Countless more remain with the military, as covert homosexuals, but overtly-capable and dedicated service men and women. They lead a discreet double life; careful and purposeful.

Major Witt's 2007 dismissal may yet see justice. Her eventual success will offer hope to the Service members Legal Defense Network, a representative group dedicated to breaking with American tradition in discriminating and harassing gay and lesbian U.S. military personnel.

As for Major Witt, her purpose in bringing a law suit in challenge of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy as a violation of her Constitutional rights to due process and equal protection, was so she could return to active duty. "I want to serve my country."

"Wounded people never asked me about my sexual orientation. They were just glad to see me there."

Fabrications by Destructive Elements

The government of Burma is well aware that a hostile world watches their every inaction, condemning the ruling junta unfairly for ignoring the needs of hundreds of thousands of Burmese survivors close to perishing from lack of food, water, medicines, shelter.

Rigorously adamant about rejecting desperate pleas from the international community to allow expert rescue teams and medical personnel to enter Burma to assist in relieving the plight of the survivors, Prime Minister Thien Sien and his cohorts remain unmoved.

This is their country to administer as they will, and if the international community considers them to be errant in their duty this is their version of events, not the ruling junta’s. They, after all, rule the country.

They should know, intimately, what the people need, and how to gain their support, not foreigners who have no idea of what the country needs and what the people enthusiastically clamour for, in support of their government.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, on a conciliatory-pleading mission to Rangoon, visited the Irrawaddy Delta to see for himself the progress the government is making on rescuing survivors, providing them with aid and encouragement, and generally proving to the Burmese people that their government is concerned for them, and working on their behalf.

Mr. Ban Ki-Moon is also preparing to meet with General Than Shwe, in the country’s new capital. Just to show they can still be friends and colleagues, to demonstrate no hard feelings at the General’s continued refusal to take urgent messages from the Secretary General over the plight of the Burmese people.

Meanwhile, cyclone survivors in Rangoon were being peremptorily ushered out of their temporary shelters for there were other, more important plans afoot for the schools. “The school will be used as a polling station. We needed people to leave.”

Leave? To go where? To hastily set-up refugee camps, where soldiers forage among the woeful inhabitants, enquiring of the presence of over-18s, to be placed on voter rolls. “The evacuees will do whatever the authorities want if they are given food”, a volunteer explained.

The government is preparing for another vote, to follow the 92.4% “yes” vote with the 99% turn-out of voters the week following the cyclone; this one to formalize their military rule. They’re prepared to accept yet another ringing endorsement by the populace eager to have their heartlessly totalitarian rule in place for the foreseeable future.

Even the dead vote in the Irrawaddy Delta. And those who are starving and suffering from the onset of disease are also eager to get out and do their civic duty, to ensure their well-being at the hands and hearts of the ruling junta. Which selflessly continues to offer them the hope for their futures in their country.

Perhaps also one should consider the hundreds of starving survivors crammed into the monasteries which have themselves been severely beleaguered by the junta; their willingness also to vote for the junta. Even the jailed and tortured monks might be coerced in the kindest possible way.

The official figures released by the Burmese regime claim 78,000 to have been killed and 56,000 missing. Disputed figures by those enemies of the junta: “destructive elements” who ply their evil trade in constructing fabrications to embarrass the junta.

And while survivors have flocked to the village voting stations - in search of scarce food - they’ll be sent packing soon as the vote has been cast. “If they fall into the habit of getting food from the people they will just become beggars, they won’t go back”, according to one government official.

“Now it is beginning of monsoon and farmers have to grow rice. They have to do what they should be doing.” And the government proudly does what it too should be doing, opening rehabilitation camps to benefit survivors - which the survivors unfortunately have had no success in locating.

They have, however, successfully found bodies remaining in trees, under houses, in the waterways. And their former sources of drinking water remain unpotable. And the hordes of starving people? More fabrications by destructive elements.

The United Nations claims - unfairly according to the shocked regime, amazed at the perfidious untruths - that a mere quarter of the 2.5 million facing disease and starvation have received aid.

Liars, all.

California School budget crisis

Please watch this video by Assemblymember Loyd Levine, and then take action.

Cheap Scoring Political Points

The Government of Ontario recently announced it would implement a new program to cover sex reassignment surgery. Such surgeries were covered at one time, but cancelled by the previous provincial Conservative government.

Ontario was kind of odd-province-out in that regard, since Alberta and other provinces have routinely paid for such operations. Now the Ontario Health Insurance Plan will pick up the tab. Not a very hefty one actually, coming out to approximately $300,000 out of a total $40.2-billion OHIP budget.

But for transsexuals, those individuals whose body doesn't come close to matching their psychological make-up, and who live with the anguish of the mind not fitting the body, this is a life-saving opportunity. It's called gender dysphoria, and is considered by the medical community to be a legitimate psychological malady.

The provincial Liberals' announcement of the change has been heralded by the medical community and those who empathize with the plight for sex-re-assignment as an overdue social commitment.

But the howls of outrage from large segments of the public, aided and abetted by the news media who have grasped the issue as yet another polarizing political-social news event, good for sales, have somewhat damped the enthusiasm of those who most need this medical intervention.

And thanks to Pierre Poilievre, Member of Parliament for Nepean-Carleton, this disaffected group has a voice in the federal parliament, threatening to cut off health fund transfers for provincial funding of health services.

Talk about kicking a weakly dysfunctional being in the head when what the issue really needs is a warm hug of reassurance from the population at large, those great majority of us who have never suffered the misery of confusion about what gender our minds and bodies represent.

And here's an interesting thought: we've been quick to embrace the singularity of gays and lesbians and the transgendered, and to accept they're due the same respect and human rights as heterosexuals. Yet we seem to think it's quite all right to jump all over those who suffer until they've undergone sex re-assignment surgery.

It doesn't cost the public purse all that much, folks. In fact, without that life-saving SRS, the mental state of the individual involved will only fester and plummet, and the cost of their psychiatric care will far overshadow the cost of surgery. That make a whole lot of sense?

If that argument doesn't work, how about this one: repressive, totalitarian, thuggish, theocratic, gay-punishing Iran sees fit to fund sex re-assignment surgery for its population of transsexuals. Sex change operations have been legal in Iran for "diagnosed transsexuals for 25 years.

No less a personage than the gloweringly autocratic, fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini, he of the Iranian Revolution, passed a religious edict authorizing such surgery.

And, as a result, in a country where homosexuality can be cured by death, there are more sex change operations carried out than in any other nation on earth, with the exception of...Thailand. Moreover, government coffers provide up to half the cost for those needful of financial help.

"Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open", according to the religious cleric responsible for gender assignment in Iran.

And we, in our liberal democracy, our enlightened social system, our Western Judeo-Christian sensibilities are shrilly cavilling at opening up OHIP to assist in the needs of transsexuals?

Whoa, give us a break...!

Government Getting It Right

When it comes to making good legislation, the Conservative government in Canada is quietly going about its efficient business of enacting new rules and regulations whose end result protects the health and welfare of Canadians.

Long past due, these responsible initiatives. When the world began to worry about the quality and trustworthiness of food and hygiene products, as well as toys and jewellery coming out of China, contaminated with people-averse chemicals, we knew we had a problem.

Well, it's not just lead-based paints on children's toys, and lead used in the manufacture of inexpensive jewellery, and rat poison in dog and cat food, and toothpaste laced with cancer-causing ingredients, but a whole raft of other issues as well.

Issues by no means emanating solely from Chinese imports. Rather, manufacturers of products based in Canada and elsewhere who have been taking short-cuts, who have seen little amiss in risking the health of the consuming public to enhance their bottom line.

So the government initiated tough new rules for toy product recalls, heavier penalties for shoddy manufacturing of common goods, and increased safety inspection protocols in defence of the consuming public.

Yet another initiative taken by the current government to identify and label as toxic chemicals elements commonly used in products such as chewing gum, cosmetics, hygiene products, and even silicone breast implants.

Eleven such chemicals (out of thousands used in various products) have been isolated, including Vinyl acetate, a carcinogen used as a base in chewing gum. Cancer-causing agents heedlessly included in products used on a daily basis by people unaware of their potentially harmful effects.

Additionally, there are some synthetic chemicals whose use may be eliminated entirely because of their potentially harmful effects on the environment. These are synthetic chemicals used in the preparation of cleaning compounds, cosmetics and shampoos, creams, lotions and antiperspirants. All in the name of protecting the Canadian consumer.

And when retailers became aware that the government was on the verge of banning polycarbonate-containing baby bottles and water bottles, the big box retailers took the initiative themselves of clearing their shelves of such potentially harmful wares. From Wal Mart to Canadian Tire, from Mountain Equipment Co-op to small retailers, these containers quickly disappeared.

Bisphenol A, linked to developmental problems in young children, will no longer be permitted in items produced for children.

And then there's the latest, long-awaited and long-overdue move to ensure that goods and products labelled "Made in Canada" really are just that. It's not just food products, but all manner of consumer goods, from clothing to household goods. If they were packaged in Canada, but produced elsewhere, or one small addition made to the product added in Canada, the "Made in Canada" label might be there.

Consumers selecting "Made in Canada" products on trust were not really deep-thinking when they bought food items with that label when the country wasn't capable of growing those products. Canada doesn't grow olives, we don't harvest cocoa beans. As Prime Minister Harper pointed out when making his announcement: "The truth is that products marked "Product of Canada" or "Made in Canada" may not be very Canadian at all.

"A bottle of apple juice could have a 'Made in Canada' label on it and be made from apples from China. Chocolate may say 'Product of Canada', but the cocoa beans come from the Ivory Coast. You may even find a 'Product of Canada' label on a box of salmon from Russia." Or China, as the case may be.

Fact is, if goods are shipped loose, then packaged here, there was no regulation that stipulated country of origin had to be stated at all. Now it's full Canadian content before that label can be slapped on, under new legislation.

Under these new regulations products are required to be domestically grown or produced to qualify for a "Product of Canada" label. A disclaimer clearly stating that some of the contents are imported must appear on products with foreign materials included, relating to goods bearing the "Made in Canada" label.

At least the public will be informed, and will be able to make choices based on information provided. It's empowering, and about time. The same holds true for Canadian producers, who will now benefit from the fact that the consuming public more eager now than ever before to buy home-grown and/or produced products will see an increase in their product demand.

About time, and thank you very much.

Middle East Refugees: Cause/Effect

So now that Palestinian Gazans have their very own representative protectors whom they have themselves, in a democratic show-down voted into power, are they out of their minds with satisfaction and happiness?

Hamas, after all, counts its strong-hold in the area of public opinion in the Gaza Strip. Support also in the West Bank, but more as a back-lash to the abject tradition of failure through Fatah. Fed up with corruption among their legislative body, Hamas seemed like the answer; unswervingly straight-up, supportive of the needs of the Palestinians.

They say what they mean and they mean what they say. And when the Hamas hierarchy declares unequivocally that their first order of business is the restoration of Palestinian land from the illegal occupiers through the destruction of the State of Israel, they mean it.

And this, most Palestinians seem more than a little comfortable with. Of course, even the Palestinian Authority's ruling Fatah have pledged themselves similarly, albeit covertly. For Palestinian indulgence, not to be divulged internationally. It is too, too inconvenient, and would portray the Palestinians and their cause in a manner other than what they continually seek to construe it as.

The Palestinians as pitiable victims of brutal Jewish conquest in a land that Islam has dedicated to Muslims, where interlopers, foreign "others", infidels and Crusaders and friends of Crusaders have no legal place other than as a fractured and slighted minority.

So, if Palestinian Gazans are so comforted by the presence of Hamas why is it that they are leaving in virtual droves? Some 50,000, confirmed by the PA prime minister, since Hamas took possession of the Gaza Strip.

Estimating also that far greater numbers would eagerly join them if they had but the required financial wherewithal. The sharp drop in international aid to Gaza as a response to the Hamas take-over has had its unfortunate impact on an already economically-marginalized population.

The religious ruling issued by the Mufti of Jerusalem for the PA, banning emigration from "the land of Palestine" has done nothing whatever to dissuade Gazans who can, from emigrating. The ruling was brought down in an attempt to hold back the flood of young Palestinians converging on foreign embassies in their desperate bid to escape the dire conditions brought upon Gaza by their Hamas saviours.

There is an odd air of familiarity about this. History re-visited. While there remains a great deal of disagreement with respect to the original flight of Palestinians from the land in 1948 after Israel's declaration of statehood, members of the Palestinian Authority have begun themselves to look history straight in the eye, rather than resorting as they've always done to the claim that they were forced out of the region, as refugees.

Refugees they did indeed become, but when they fled they harboured the belief that it would be for a brief interregnum, before returning to a liberated Palestine; the fledgling State of Israel reduced to simmering ruins, and its people dispersed. A senior PA journalist whose article was published in the PA daily Al-Ayyam has written:

"The Arabs who became refugees in 1948 were not expelled by Israel but left on their own to facilitate the destruction of Israel. This plan to leave Israel was initiated by the Arab states fighting Israel, who promised the people they would be able to return to their homes in a few days once Israel was defeated."

By no means was Israel entirely innocent of taking its own steps to persuade Palestinians to leave their land, for in some instances this was done. Sometimes by force, and sometimes by insinuating life would be very difficult for them if they remained. Yet many Palestinians, despite the severely unsettled atmosphere, stood their ground, stayed with their land, and became citizens of Israel.

Those who maintain a keen eye on the Arab media have noted, however, an increasing move on the part of Palestinians to openly recognize the part that Arab states and not Israel, played in fomenting fear, and encouraging the Palestinians to leave. The refugees who for so long remained a useful propaganda tool against Israel have outlived their usefulness, as the claims that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 belies historical reality.

Newly-recognized and -published witness accounts brought to the PA media in support of these claims of Arab conspiracy to displace the Palestinians and leave them as abject refugees, a seeping wound with which to denounce Israel in the world at large, have been emerging. As with the statement by a PA journalist in Jordan, Jawad al Bashiti, writing in Al-Ayyam on 13 May, 2008:

"Remind me of one real cause from all the factors that have caused the Palestinian Catastrophe [the establishment of Israel and the creation of the refugee problem], and I will remind you that it still exists... The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today.

"During the Little Catastrophe, meaning the Palestinian Catastrophe, the following happened: the first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the "Arab Salvation Army" came and told the Palestinians: 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission in the best way and so you won't be hurt."

And wrote Mahmoud al-Habbash, another PA journalist, in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: "...The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the Catastrophe in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events..."

And this description from a woman, Asmaa Jabir Balasimah, who also fled in 1948: "We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the Catastrophe. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours."

Again, a Palestinian viewer contacted PA Television, to say his father had told him that in 1948 the Arab district officer ordered all Arabs to leave Palestine or be labeled traitors. An Arab Member of the Knesset, hearing this, cursed those leaders.

To which the viewer continued: "Mr. Ibrahim Sarsur, I address you as a Muslim. My father and grandfather told me that during the Catastrophe our district officer issued an order that whoever stays in Palestine is a traitor, he is a traitor."

To which MK Ibrahim Sarsur (then head of the Islamic Movement in Israel) responded: "The one who gave the order forbidding them to stay there bears guilt for this, in this life and the afterlife, throughout history until Resurrection Day."

That was then, this is now. The seven hundred thousand refugees from 1948, now numbering in the millions insist on the right of return to a land they dispossessed themselves of under utterly false pretences. Joining them today are hundreds of thousands more.

The Arab countries that convinced them through whatever means to flee, had no intention of aiding and assisting them beyond the failure of their initial, then period onslaughts of Israel. Nor had they any intention at any time of absorbing them, settling them within the confines of their own borders, having implemented a failed strategy that made hapless refugees of the Palestinians.

Added to that perfidy was the brutal ouster of 900,000 Jews from Arab lands where they had resided for millennia. The once-tolerated Jews had become the 'enemy', ensuring their homes and belongings were forfeit, and they made homeless. Those Jews made their way to Israel, where they were absorbed and became Israeli citizens. They have never been acknowledged, never recompensed.

So where lies the moral responsibility of re-settlement and making amends?

Joining The Club

It's seen by so many as a prestigious club, those nations who have obtained nuclear status. A sign of coming-of-age, of arrival, of ostentatiously demonstrating one has the wherewithal; financial and cerebral to attain to that explosive status.

It begins with the aspiration to provide scarce energy for needful civil purposes; expands toward inspiration that builds upon the civil structure, expanding into dual-nuclear technology supporting nuclear armaments.

All nations seem to be drawn to military advantage. As a means of securing in the most definite way possible, respect from neighbours who might conceivably harbour the inconvenient notion of invasion, war and occupation.

Uneasy relations between neighbours become ever more fidgety with the introduction of nuclear weapons, and in many instances neighbours maintain their scrupulous borders through the reality of nuclear deterrence.

That is to say most countries headed by reasonably sane administrations value their live presence on this earth sufficiently to acknowledge that white-hot anger leading to the temptation to unleash nuclear Armageddon would end up harming them as much as their purported enemy.

On the other hand, if the leaders of some nations have a theocratically frenetic belief in salvation through death, deterrence is a moot condition.

So here is a tinder-box geography with neighbouring states in the Middle East traditionally disgruntled with one another; each attempting over generations of history to ascend to a position of hierarchy over the lesser, less-advantaged states.

Their continual game of rhetorical bombast, hegemonic moves, religious superiority and sectarian aggression is par for the course. And then, suddenly, the singular Muslim-not-Arab state comes perilously close to nuclear ownership, with full disclosure not on the horizon until uranium enrichment leads inevitably to the final step.

This is a situation that has caused a domino-effect of nervous twitches throughout the area. And allied with it, those countries whose natural endowment of oil riches enable them to aspire, initiating their own baby-steps toward civil nuclear programs.

The "civil" in the equation makes it legal and above-board. While the agenda has much greater depth. No fewer than thirteen nations have now embarked on their own nuclear energy projects in the Middle East, somewhat emulating Iran. Civil for the time being; long-range plans an entirely other story.

Iran, whose threatening presence on the world stage, presents a more imminent threat to her neighbours, has many imitators, but scant few admirers in the Middle East.

Obama on education

Three Days of Mourning

China has declared three days of official mourning for its dead. The country has mustered hundreds of thousands of emergency relief workers, experts in various fields of disaster relief, medical personnel, and soldiers of the Peoples' Army in a gargantuan effort to respond to the dreadful earthquake disaster which befell Sichuan Province.

Apart from the dire emergency involved in rescue attempts, caring for the sick and the injured, there are ongoing repeat shocks. Adding to the potential for further disaster, from displaced earth in great slides, from cracked dams and damaged nuclear plants. From threats posed by the after-effects of the upheaval; polluted water, flood potential, water- and insect-borne disease; real threats of potential health epidemics.

But China has responded to its peoples' dire travails. In a manner to equal and even outdistance that seen by other governments whose resources, experience and material wealth should have advantaged them. Despotic, dictatorial, totalitarian China; human-rights-abusing China, capable, eager and determined to demonstrate its own humanity.

Virtually absent in Burma's governing junta. Burma, Myanmar, also declared three days of mourning for its victims of the devastating cyclone that slammed into the Irrawaddy Delta. It has finally, reluctantly, assented to an international aid effort put forward by its Southeast Asian neighbours.

Almost three weeks post-Cyclone Nargis, junta leader Than Shwe is on his second tour of the disaster zone. Lest anyone have doubted that the members of the junta survived the disaster. In that country, an estimated 133,000 have been identified as dead - or missing. Still, a full-scale international relief operation is simply out of the question.

The compromise with ASEAN, Burma's neighbours - so anxious about the state of Burmese citizens coping with their struggle to survive - will permit of the immediate entry of medical teams from that source, none others. Other, eager-to-help international disaster aid workers still to be kept at arms-length.

That, despite that an estimated 2.4 million Burmese remain in desperate need of help. India, Bangladesh and China will also be permitted to send in aid workers. All those countries distressed and anxious to help the people of devastated Burma, while their leaders remain content to leave the survivors to their own desperate devices.

Those observers who have managed to elude Burmese authority report an unbelievable situation of dire need. Hunger and thirst haunt the survivors. Corpses are rotting everywhere, contaminating the area, laying the potential for dread and deathly disease among the survivors. If they don't starve first, typhoid or cholera may take them out of their misery.

A despicable regime whose flagrant incapacity to aid its desperate people, and whose unwillingness to permit other countries entry to its closed borders to undertake the responsibility they have eschewed, requires some kind of international intervention - sovereign determinism be damned.

It's Called Xenophobia

Amazing, isn't it, that the South African government which steadfastly refuses to turn on its old ally in Zimbabwe, even with the certain knowledge that thousands upon thousands of Zimbabweans are suffering from malnutrition, insecurity, political assaults, mass unemployment, runaway inflation, scarce commodities as long as Robert Mugabe remains in power, now must turn its attention to mobs of marauding South African youth victimizing Zimbabwean immigrants.

The world did get a comforting view of South African dock workers refusing to unload the Chinese registered ship An Yue Jiang, when it prepared to dock there with a hold full of armaments. that kind of compassionate solidarity expressed by workers on behalf of their unfortunate brethren in Zimbabwe was heart-warmingly welcome.

Unfortunately, a way can always be found to carry out the will of a seriously repressive state. with the callous collusion of similarly-minded people and rights-oppressive states elsewhere. One complicit turn obligates the receiver to future returns should the need arise. And that same ship, docked in Angola, was cleared of its bombs, grenades and bullets and the armaments flown on to Zimbabwe.

Where the winner of the Zimbabwe election has been unable to return to the country from his journeys across the region in pursuit of elusive support from neighbouring states to prepare for the run-off second-round poll slated for June because of an attempt by the army and the police in Zimbabwe to assassinate him. Their ongoing concern for their own security is highly dependent on the current regime's longevity.

Morgan Tsvangerai and his Movement for Democratic Change have been lobbying the Southern African Development Community to send peacekeepers to Zimbabwe, to ensure a fair run-off, and a peaceful transition of power to the winner. Government thugs loyal to Robert Mugabe have been roaming those areas supportive of the MDC, terrorizing people to "soften them up" for the vote.

And in South Africa, recognized now as the world's most violently crime-ridden country, roaming groups of young thugs in the hundreds have been targeting foreigners who have settled in the country. Machete-and-gun-bearing mobs roam the run-down parts of Johannesburg in search of helpless migrants, killing and maiming those they find.

While South African president Thabo Mbeki has announced the comfort of an investigative panel set up to "look into" the deadly xenophobic attacks, and the South African Red Cross has launched an effort to help displaced people - the estimated three million refugees from Zimbabwe who fled political repression and starvation - the opposition leader deplores the deadly assaults.

"We should be the last people to have this problem of having a negative attitude toward our brothers and sisters who come from outside", he declared, in obvious allusion to the support outlawed ANC members under Apartheid received, sheltered by neighbouring countries in their battle against racism in South Africa.

Doctors Without Borders in Johannesburg described the intensifying violence as gangs of youth raided homes in their search for foreigners. Gangs of one hundred to three hundred youth break into homes and shacks, threatening, assaulting and killing those whom they apprehend. Throwing people from balconies; setting fire to people wrapped in their belongings.

Who might have imagined the violent hatred that could be exuded against a helpless, homeless population by indigenous people who have themselves lived through the rigours of a tenuous existence against decent odds of rising above historical adversity?

Health-Averse Products

None too soon, the government of Canada has come to a laudable decision which in its prosecution and further development will help Canadians live healthier lives. It's inconceivable to begin with that government health agencies wouldn't be alert to the problems inherent in producing everyday consumer products using chemicals that prove to be inherently harmful to human health and the environment.

People do trust that government agencies tasked with ensuring the health, safety and security of the population take themselves seriously enough to protect Canadians against harmful elements in the manufacture of consumer goods used on a daily basis. We're so trusting as consumers that we take it on blind trust that government agencies oversee such matters routinely.

Yet it has taken an initiative by the current government to identify and label as toxic chemicals elements commonly used in products such as chewing gum, cosmetics, hygiene products, and even silicone breast implants.

Eleven such chemicals (out of thousands used in various products) have been isolated, including Vinyl acetate, a carcinogen used as a base in chewing gum. Cancer-causing agents heedlessly included in products used on a daily basis by people unaware of their potentially harmful effects.

Additionally, there are some synthetic chemicals whose use may be eliminated entirely because of their potentially harmful effects on the environment. These are synthetic chemicals used in the preparation of cleaning compounds, cosmetics and shampoos, creams, lotions and antiperspirants.

Six of the eleven chemicals have been noted as being toxic to human health. Those toxins are Vinyl acetate, used in food additives, paints, sealants and plastics, along with yellow and red pigment dyes, used in paints, dyes, inks and plastics. Others are used in the manufacture of electronic products, insecticides and textiles; others still in rubber and plastic manufacture, coatings and adhesives.

Incredible: a chemical normally used in paints, sealants and plastics also goes into the food we eat, as an additive. Vinyl used in the manufacture of chewing gum. Little wonder our bodies are so unbelievably tainted with toxic chemicals; we ingest them, we breathe them into our systems from our polluted environment, our skin introduces them into our systems.

These toxic chemicals have been used because they offer some identified product enhancement. Making the product more indelible, smoother, more elastic, giving a silkier texture. In other words they offer to the manufacture the ability to produce a given product that exhibits some manner of consumer-favourable trait.

This is a government initiative long overdue. Manufacturers of consumer products should long ago have been placed on alert that their products, not conforming to basic safety standards for the consuming public, would not be permitted entry to the Canadian market either through home-based manufacture, or import.

This is, however, only a start, a beginning. Much more needs to be done. There are, without doubt, other harmful chemicals commonly used in manufacturing consumer goods. The constituents of too many products accepted as safe by the public prove to be anything but.

Government agencies need to be more vigilant, more willing to impose regulations in favour of peoples' health.

But it is a start, and a very welcome one.

Reasonable Accommodation

People should exercise reason, be reasonable human beings, not expect of others precisely what they expect of themselves. Everyone has their own very particular values, priorities, and code of ethics. It isn't entirely unreasonable to suppose that most people subscribe to the basic code of humanity, to share existence with others by exhibiting at least a modicum of understanding of others. At best compassion, a sense of fairness, a need for a just environment equally entitling all.

These basic human needs may evade some individuals but by and large every human being needs the emotional support, the caring of someone. Excluding those whose basic endowment of human traits have been somehow impaired, leaving them in a permanent state of sociopathic isolation, incapable of empathizing with others, oblivious to the needs of others, unwilling to lend themselves to the human need to support the community.

In Canada, the Bouchard-Taylor commission on "reasonable accommodation" tasked by the province to conduct a series of open hearings, weigh responses, synthesize their findings and recommend solutions for a more workable, trusting environment have just released their report. Which suggests basically that the fairly homogeneous community of francophones in Quebec become a trifle more relaxed about the quite overt cultural differences of immigrants that have invaded their traditional space.

"We think it is possible to reconcile Quebecers - francophones and others - with practices of harmonization, once it has been shown that:

• these practices respect our society's fundamental values, notably the equality of men and women;
• they don't aim to create privileges but, rather, equality that is well-understood and that respects everyone's rights;
• they encourage integration and not marginalization
• they're framed by guidelines and protected against the effect of spiralling out of control;
• they're founded on the principle of reciprocity;
• they don't play the game of fundamentalism; and
• they don't compromise the gains of the Quiet Revolution."

Completely and unequivocally reasonable. The commission looked not only at the simmering problem of adjustment into society at large of Muslim immigrants, but Sikhs, and the Jewish orthodox as well. The issues of religious symbols; hijab, burkas, niqab; turbans, kirpans; skullcaps, kosher foods. And a distinct distaste emanating from those holding traditional orthodox prohibitions against public display relating to gender.

The problem is that migrating communities of cultural, religious and traditional peoples bring with them social mores and traditions that are often clearly in contradiction of equality between the sexes; infanticide, clitorectomies, polygamy/polygany, honour killings. Immigrants may also often bring with them not only societal conventions that don't work well in liberal democracies that defend human rights and egalitarian balance, but they bring also viral hostilities toward other groups.

Pluralism can and does work, it has in the past and it can continue to do so in the future. In decades past, immigrants saw fit to observe the social norms within the communities they emigrated to. They understood that if they were to succeed in fitting into their new society they would do well to conform to normative behaviours and values in their new country, and to integrate their children.

With the formalization in Canada of multiculturalism there grew an idea that cultures and traditions foreign to the country were equal in value to the native traditions of the country, and all such immigrant cultures and traditions were to be given equal value. This earned a sense of entitlement among immigrants who began to see no need to conform, to integrate, to value the host country's culture.

It isn't just Canada where this has occurred, but obviously other countries of the world. Most notably, Western, liberal democracies who for some incredibly short-sighted and absurd reason began to burnish feelings of guilt associated with centuries-past slights against others through the era of colonialism. An atmosphere of collective atonement encouraged host countries to relax expectations of new immigrants.

In the process the host culture, traditions and values became devalued, shunted aside. Western interests were to be apologized for, and made secondary to having immigrants feel comfortable in their new surroundings. We're only now beginning to understand how we've marginalized our own interests in favour of fostering pride within immigrant populations at our own expense.

It's past time that the base culture turned back into itself, welcoming immigrants to join the mainstream values and traditions of their host countries. Becoming fully integrated, becoming full citizens in every sense.