The Doha Round Of International Fuming Interests

Of all places for two countries, former allies, to air their social-political disentanglement; at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Turkey, the Muslim country with which Israel enjoys the closest confidence, has taken great moral umbrage at Israel's recent retaliatory invasion of Gaza, attempting to oust Hamas militants, or at least destroy their arsenal of rockets before they're all lobbed into Israel.

Turkey, just a relatively short while ago, voted in an Islamist government. Despite which, sound political relations were maintained, something of great importance to Israel, which desperately seeks to improve its relations with Islamic countries. However, in seeking to defend oneself against the incessant onslaught of fanatic jihadists, the reality of offending Muslim sensibilities is always a distinct problem.

Besides which, any government of any Muslim country which becomes too intolerably comfortable with Israel risks punishment from the ordinary citizen on the streets of their towns, cities and backwaters. This is a slow and tender process, one whose slender possibilities and brutal backlashes must be carefully weighed. It's one thing entirely for governments to meet and greet; another for the population weaned on hatred and suspicion to accept unquestioningly.

Israel goes out of its way to ameliorate bad feelings that result from its need to defend itself. Curiously enough, in Israel's blandishments to Turkey, the offer was made to provide the country with unmanned drones; one particular type of which has so recently been used, within Gaza, to the misfortune of Hamas terrorists.

And when Shimon Perez got into a slinging match of accusations and counter-accusations at the conference, to the dismay of the general assembly, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was infuriated, claiming his response time was half of that allotted Israel, and as such insulting to the point where he withdrew, fuming he would never return.

The business community in Turkey is not so certain that this is the language nor the journey they themselves wish to take, regardless of the position of their prime minister. And when Mr. Erdogan stormed out of the Davos conference, effectively putting on ice President Shimon Peres's overture toward reconciliation, he was playing a one-man band.

But in perfect pitch with Arab League head Amr Moussa and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon both of whom took great pains to express their disfavour of Israel's Cast Lead operation. In their debate, Shimon Peres, perhaps looking for greater understanding from Mr. Erdogan, suggested that under similar circumstances Turkey would have reacted exactly the same way.

"Do you understand the meaning of a situation where hundreds of rockets are falling a day on women and children who cannot sleep quietly, who need to sleep in shelters? ...You don't understand, and I am not prepared for lies." That kind of direct offensive obviously took Mr. Erdogan by surprise, but the offensive managed to impress the general audience, which applauded Mr. Peres's passion.

The brevity of time Mr. Erdogan was granted in his response irked him, all the more so when he was silenced by a moderator, having been enabled to eke out a mild condemnation of Israel's actions corresponding to "very wrong" and "not humanitarian" rather more diplomatic than earlier statements made slamming Israel's
“perpetrating inhuman actions which would bring it to self-destruction".

"Allah will sooner or later punish those who transgress the rights of innocents,” he thundered, calling upon Israel's expulsion from the United Nations. He also took formal steps in Turkey to establish a one-minute silence to be observed in schools, in commemoration of the deaths of Palestinian children who died in the Israeli bombings of Gaza, to further bring home his point.

When Mr. Erdogan was cut off by the moderator he said, as he left, "Thank you very much. I don't think I will come back to Davos." Predictably enough, on his return to Turkey, Mr. Erdogan was overwhelmed by thousands of exultantly pleased supporters. At the airport demonstrators bore Turkish and PLO flags, shouting slogans in support of Gazans and their stout defender of the defenceless, Prime Minister Erdogan.

Mr. Erdogan clarified his anger; it was directed against the government of Israel, not its people. "The death of civilians cannot be seen as a simple work accident", he fumed. Israel's ambassador to Ankara has his work cut out for him. Istanbul's anger is understandable, and it will cool when the light of distance and reason returns. The two countries share strategic interests and a long-standing relationship of some considerable value.

And Turkey is, in all conscience, trying to do its part in helping to establish a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Prime Minister Erdogan's first point of entry to establishing that potential, however, should be to convey to Hamas the necessity of laying down its hatred and burning desire to violently remove Israel from the Middle East, along with its almost-equal wish to eradicate Fatah.

It will be interesting to see if his passion and humanity can be mustered to the cause of achieving first, unity, then an attempt to usher in a durable peace. In the process he can avail himself of the considerable efforts exerted by Egypt toward the process, along with the desires of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and now that of the new president of the United States.

Uh, Oh, Not Again...!

In putting together the details and assigning the new principals in the new U.S. administration, the ruling Democrats and their new President Barack Obama, are fully focused on the hugely troubling and waning fortunes of what is ordinarily considered to be the most wealthy nation on the planet. Yes, it's a temporary and most unfortunate downturn in the economy, but one that requires attention at the highest level.

Also uppermost on the minds of Americans is their vulnerability to attack from viciously hostile forces, most particularly since it was brought home to them through 9/11 that disaster could be delivered directly to their doorstep and even inside the nation's living room. Paranoia ran rampant and on high alert for years since 2001; since subsided to a degree, but only to a degree. No further attacks have taken place, but Americans have been warned to take nothing for granted.

Another, new head of homeland security has been appointed, to round out the new administration's focus. And through Janet Napolitano agencies and offices that are designed to report to her as the new chief have been put on further alert. To carefully and closely identify current vulnerabilities to assist in the overall strengthening of the strategy for improved border security.

Border security. That means, the coast guard, the Transportation Security Administration, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Fearful of further attacks lest their guard be permitted to lapse, border security is to be increased even more strenuously than has previously been accomplished. There are two countries bordering the U.S.; to the south, Mexico, to the north, Canada.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, all three countries have signed on to international trade agreements that have, over the years, inextricably interwound import and export between the three countries. A further stricturing of border access can have am immense, dragging impact on trade between all countries. Since 9/11 border access has already tightened notably.

For some really peculiar reason - Americans believe, led by their media and by many of their legislators who really should know better - that what they perceive as Canada's 'porous' border admits would-be terrorists into America, and they have identified Canada and the Canada-U.S. border as a weak link in the American defence against terrorist incursion.

Facts speak otherwise, however. The al-Qaeda conspiracy to attack the financial hub of U.S. enterprise, along with the seat of government, and in the process murder thousands of Americans using their own aircraft and their own flying public as deadly missiles had no need to surreptitiously enter the United States through Canada.

They were able to enter the U.S. directly, on temporary visas. Those dedicated to the long-planned and handily-executed task had no problems entering the country directly, nor were many questions asked when they attended flight schools within the country. Despite that the CIA had prior knowledge of them, and that appropriate communication was not undertaken between that department and the FBI.

Mohammed Atta, who conspired, and succeeded in leading a tiny crew to overtake and fly an American Airlines plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center to achieve his design of martyrdom; Ziad Jarrah who piloted the United Airlines flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania, and all the others of their eleven co-conspirators who managed between them to traumatize America and send their people into oblivion, did so quite directly.

Because they could; because there was a lack of attention to oversight and intelligence, and most certainly not because of an undefended border between Canada and the United States which permitted them entry. And even though it became well enough known that none of the 9/11 jihadists had entered through Canada, even Hillary Clinton was known to repeat that canard.

In the interests of 'taking responsibility' the U.S. still looks for scapegoats, and it finds a primary one most handily, casting an ever-jaundiced security eye across the border.

The frighteningly faltering U.S. economy - which has impacted so deleteriously internationally through the so-heralded mechanism of global finance - will not be enabled to recover too speedily with the Canada-U.S. border tightening even more, as is being planned. The simple fact is there are over a million jobs in the U.S. directly related to trade with Canada.

In total, Canada exported $20.433 billion worth of goods to the U.S. while $17.349 billion worth of goods were imported in the last year, according to data derived from the U.S. Census Foreign Trade Statistics Program. Impeding the free access to trade will not help the U.S. recovery. Not only will it directly damage the interrelated production of goods used on both sides of the border, it will result in job losses on both sides as well.

And the new "Buy American" clause revealed in the U.S. stimulus bill fashioned by the Democrats and reviled by the Republicans will go a long way to offending and harming trade relations not only between Canada and the U.S. but the United States and its European trading partners. This was done before, and it lead to a severe deepening of the Great Depression.

For a new administration in the United States claiming to be committed to forging stronger and more amiable ties with its neighbours and European partners in politics, and in global trade and finance, the Obama administration is off to a sorry start.

Why is Latino and Asian History left out of California History Textbooks?

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. "
Cesar Chavez. Nov.9, 1984.

Textbooks in California are selected by the State Board of Education based upon recommendations of their Curriculum Committees and the state frameworks and standards, in this case the History /Social Science Framework for California Public Schools.
The framework is revised each 7 years. The framework, along with the standards, provides the guidelines for what is to be taught and what is to be included in the history and social science textbooks in California. In 2009, the History /Social Science Framework is up for re consideration.
It is urgent that the History-Social Science Framework be revised to provide an accurate history of the contributions of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos and Asians to the history of the state and of the nation. The current Framework reflects the historiography of the 1950’s. It was written in 1986 by senior scholars, they in turn were educated in the early 1970’s or before. It is substantially out of date.
The view of history that won out in California was crafted by neoconservative historian Diane Ravitch and supported by Paul Gagnon and former California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, among others (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). Gary Nash of UCLA was a participant in the later effort to establish national history standards.
The 1987- 2005 Framework expanded African American, Native American, and women’s history coverage but remains totally inadequate in the coverage of Latinos and Asians. The only significant change between the 1985 and the 2005 adopted Framework was the addition of a new cover, a cover letter, and additions of photos such as of Cesar Chavez . Latinos currently make up 48.1 percent of California’s student population and Asians make up 8.1 %.

The dominant neo conservative view argues that textbooks and a common history should provide the glue that unites our society. Historical themes and interpretations are selected in books to create unity in a diverse and divided society. This viewpoint assigns to schools the task of creating a common culture. In reality, television and military service may do more to create a common culture than do schools and books.
Conservatives assign the task of cultural assimilation to schools, with particular emphasis on the history, social science, and literature curricula. Historians advocating consensus write textbooks that downplay the roles of slavery, class, racism, genocide, and imperialism in our history. They focus on ethnicity and assimilation rather than race, on the success of achieving political reform, representative government, and economic opportunity for European American workers and immigrants. They decline to notice the high poverty rate of U.S. children, the crisis of urban schooling, and the continuation of racial divisions in housing and the labor force. In California they decline to notice that Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos as well as Asians contributed to the development of this society.
This consensus conservative viewpoint history dominates textbook publishing in California , but these partial and incomplete histories do not empower students from our diverse cultural communities. By recounting primarily a consensual, European American view, history and literature extend and reconstruct current White supremacy, sexism, and class biases in our society. When texts or teachers tell only part of the story, schools foster intellectual colonialism and ideological domination (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995).
As citizens of California we have an opportunity to insist that California history, and the nation’s history, be accurately taught in the schools. The process begins with revisions to the History/Social Science Framework for California Schools. The other way to achieve this long overdue revision is to pass legislation requiring revision. We should not be writing history by passing legislation. Rather, the History/Social Science Framework Committee should perform the tasks of revision with care. Their first meeting is Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009, in Sacramento.
More to come on this topic.
Duane Campbell

Stewing, Together

You can please some of the folks some of the time, but never all of them, all of the time. It's hard to define who is the most obnoxious, however, of the Conservative government's critics; Jack Layton, leader of the federal New Democratic Party, or Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. Of course there's always the redoubtable leader of the Bloc Quebecois, Gilles Duceppe, but let's confine ourselves to those who purport to support, defend and value Canada.

Jack Layton has surely tried the patience of all Canadians, with his ideology-driven strictures against reasonable accommodation. His benighted accusation of overlooking the needs of the working poor and society's vulnerable while the government is struggling to bring the country back into financial health is ill placed at an ill time in history.

The budget, in fact, has addressed all those issues and more; from social housing, to employment insurance, assistance for seniors and taxpayers, and job re-training. Mr. Layton's avowed determination, along with his taciturn sidekick, Gilles Duceppe, to contest the Conservative government budget sight unseen, labels him a failure as a leader. We expected no better from Mr. Duceppe.

As for Danny Williams, despite that he magnanimously declared ever so recently that his personal campaign to undo Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a thing of the past, and that he was adult enough to behave like an elected official, he has reverted to invective-spouting form. Newfoundland and Labrador has joined the ranks of the 'have' provinces, and as such no longer qualifies for equalization payment.

Which burns Mr. Williams to a writhing crisp of fury. His newly-rich province still receives one and a half billion over the next three years, another $2-billion as a "signing bonus" and remains the second resource-wealthiest province in the country. Alberta and Saskatchewan aren't tearing their hair out in grief over equalization.

Mr. Williams characterizes the prime minister as "vindictive" and "nasty", blaming him for cutting Newfoundland out of the money it no longer has any reason to collect, because of the premier's "anybody but Conservative" campaign during the last federal election. Which successfully left Newfoundland and Labrador without a single representative in the governing caucus.

How's that for bile choking you to death? And then blaming the host for forcing you to eat more than you could swallow?

Well, did I forget Jean Charest? He's squirming with annoyance that under the new funding formula Quebec will 'lose' roughly $770-million over two years in equalization, the balance now credited to suddenly-have-not Ontario, pleasing Ontario's premier no end. Mr. Charest is suffering from amnesia; under the Conservative government his province has seen equalization rise by a whopping 74%.

There's no game like politics, and no entertainment quite like venting spleen.

The Limiting Incidentals

It has become chic for the beautiful people, the wealthy and the privileged to hie themselves off for holidaying and partying to exotic parts of the world, like the Arabian Peninsula. Dubai, for example, like many others of the oil-rich sheikdoms, has built wondrous playgrounds around soft sand, sparkling seas and warming sun to entice moneyed visitors to their palatial hotels and comfortable services.

It's the place to be, to enjoy life's special moments, to see and be seen, to flaunt one's sophistication and lifestyle, and to indulge fantasies of beauty and pristine environments. Yes, those pristine environments. There were that, once. In the process of planning, designing, funding and building these monumentally gorgeous hotels placed on prestigious and fabled shorelines, something has gone awry.

The wealthy entrepreneurs who have been further monetarily advantaged by their ownership of these grand getaways have indulged in the pedestrian carelessness of most such businesses, in their philistine treatment of those countless people engaged to provide the vital and comforting services to their wealthy clientele.

The tales of exploitation and woe of service people brought into the sheikdoms are well enough known. These are not people indigenous to the area, but rather those who have been encouraged to travel to the Gulf States as servants to the wealthy and the privileged. Poor people from other places in Asia, and particularly from the Philippines.

As it has been with truckers working there, originally from southeast Asia, performing work that no one born in Dubai would descend so low as to humiliate themselves with such vulgar work as hauling sewage. The truckers, engaged to carry human waste are charged with emptying their tanks to a sewage treatment plant which is a long drive into the desert.

The long drive is complicated by long queues, so the truckers decide instead to empty their tanks into storm drains, emptying into the ocean. Those drains are meant to carry run-off from the rainy season. Certainly not the offal of human waste, nor the effluent from industrial areas. Yet this is exactly what has occurred.

The truckers say they are paid by the truckload. "We are paid so poorly, we have no other choice", said one driver, but to illegally dump the contents of the city's septic tanks and waste from cement, paint and furniture factories. The result of which has been an unpalatable and richly grim reek pervading the shoreline, presenting a real health hazard.

"It's a cesspool. Our tests show too many E. coli to count. It's like swimming in a toilet" claims the manager of the Offshore Sailing Club, which has undertaken to post warnings, and been forced to cancel sailing regattas. The pristine waters have turned a muddy brown colour, with an unbearable stench for emphasis.

City authorities are scrambling to undo the public relations debacle that has resulted. They promise to build another sewage pit to assuage the problem, and claim that their clean-up efforts to date have resulted in safe-standard water samples. That independent tests commissioned by private interests contradict.

Life for the rich, the famous, the celebrities and the idlers in the international community is becoming more tediously difficult all the time.

Our Raucous House?

Canadians are tut-tutting the state of shrilly verbal partisanship in their Parliament. We bemoan the fact that verbal shafts and virtual insults are bandied back and forth in the House of Commons, between the Conservative government Members of Parliament and the opposition members of the House. How undignified, how unworthy, how juvenile and absurd. High School students in the visitors' gallery are appalled.

And then there is South Korea's National Assembly, the country's seat of government. Where members of the Grand National Party had very recently taken steps to physically barricade themselves for a vote without the nuisance of any interference from the opposition. An opposition that was determined to storm the committee room.

Things got a little out of hand. Hoping to delay a vote they didn't agree with, opposition legislators and their aides struggled their way past security guards to hammer through the closed committee room door where the ruling party was assembled for their vote, exclusive of the opposition presence. A peculiar version of democratic action, to be sure.

The opposition, having none of it, shattered glass windows, and discovered they were still blocked from entry, by a discomfitting and unmovable mountain of furniture shoved up against the entranceway. The defenders of their right to vote unmolested by the inconvenient presence of the opposition, attacked through the shattered door with fire extinguishers.

Actually, someone from among the opposition legislators had had the presence of mind to bring along not only hammers which others had brought along, but a chainsaw. The better to penetrate through the stubborn door, allowing entry to the furious locked-outs. Lawsuits over resulting assaults are pending.

On another occasion, the opposition found themselves facing 200 armed security officers storming the human blockade they had formed as minority politicians insisting on entry into the rotunda of the assembly building. In the melee dozens of outraged parliamentarians were injured and then hospitalized.

In Taiwan, legislators' battles in their hallowed halls of governance have been marked by wrestling, throwing of shoes, pulling of ties, and tossing of microphones, lunch boxes and books. At one point a politician decided instead of eating crow, to chew up and swallow the draft of newly-introduced legislation he took a disliking to.

The umbrage and partisan catcalls and insults flung about in Canada's sober House of Commons during Question Period are indeed a matter of public concern. As was the recent attempt by the three opposition parties to sideline the democratic process as it is practised in Canada, by attempting to usurp the authority of the duly elected government.

Politics are like that everywhere I guess; the passions of the day drive otherwise sane people to distraction, to temporarily lose sight of the reason they've been elected - to best serve the interests of their constituents, of the population of the country, not to hoist their rigid political ideologies upon the populace.

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper exercised a bit of juvenile partisanship that came back to slap him in the face. Sometimes even the most experienced, intelligent and fundamentally decent people need to have their egos brought back to reality. It's hoped he's learned his lesson, and will exercise mature restraint in future.

As for the South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, he is blushing "with shame" at the absurd antics of his colleagues. "It was as if the hammer that smashed down the conference room door also pounded the democracy of Korea, as well as my head and heart" he said.

Doubtless. One must, perforce, have some compassion for these sober-minded yet childishly fallible people whom we elect to represent our best interests. Sigh.

Repeat After Me

"We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

Loftily eloquent, confident words of determination issued during the inaugural address of President Barack Obama. Of course, he also offered an open mind and open hand to those who nominally present as antagonists, but who may find it within themselves to be amenable to reason. Not so much, obviously, the fanatical jihadists who have successfully targeted a previously unwary America, but that great expanse of others uncertain where they fit in the general scheme of suspicion and blame.

This a resolute man of great integrity, a man of forceful imagination and intelligent design. So recently invested into the great and cumbersome burdens of his office, yet so willing to immediately take up the duties of that office. Expanding on the manner in which his soaring rhetoric, unqualified as it was, as lacking in details as it was, enthused and liberated the minds and expectations of the American electorate.

He has begun his agenda with a flourish, and initiated his international diplomacy straight off. Assigning difficult duties to those in whom he has invested trust to further his vision and his ideas and his political and social values. Encouraging his people to have trust and remain patiently optimistic. Visiting, in early February, his closest geographic neighbour. And appearing on Al Arabiya television for an acquainting interview.

He aspired, he said, to convince both Americans and Muslims around the world that they have mutual interests. "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives", he informed Al Arabiya's Washington bureau chief, Hisham Melhem.

Conversely, complementarily, "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name." He plans to extend his international travel itinerary to include an as-yet-unnamed Muslim country to further make his point.

He has a certain familiarity with Islam, in the first person. It was the faith of his father, and remains the faith of his distant relatives, still living in Kenya where his father was born. And during his childhood years, Barack Hussein Obama, the child of two vastly different worlds, lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world.

President Obama addressed the situation in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians, stressing his belief in the mission that his newly-appointed emissary has been tasked with; emphatically searching for viable solutions to bridge the pernicious gap between the two solitudes. "What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating...".

And then he boldly asserted that he rejects the belief that Israeli settlements and other construction in the West Bank impedes the potential of moving the file toward a peace settlement forward, toward a two-state solution. As for Iran, while acknowledging that the Islamic Republic had "acted in ways that [were] not conducive to peace and prosperity" he is prepared to speak with them, too.

Now then, could a more generously spirited and clear offering to engage in civil discourse with a view to finding solutions to the seemingly insoluble antagonisms between the values and mores of two vastly different empires be more emphasized and appear more promising?

Highlighting The Budget

* $12-billion to be spent over two years on infrastructure projects.
* Employment insurance benefits to be extended by five weeks.
* $1-billion for social housing the next two years; for seniors, disabled and reserves.
* 190,000 jobs to be created.
* Personal taxation exemptions increased.

And more, much, much more. A little something in there for everyone, from businesses to municipalities, home renovations to an increase in child tax benefits. This far-reaching budget, crafted to incorporate suggestions and recommendations from financial experts and opposition political parties, resulting from consultations as Conservative Members of Parliament fanned out across the country for public intake, attempts to satisfy as many of the country's needs at this critical time as possible.

It represents a sincere attempt on the part of the Conservative-led government of Stephen Harper to offer assistance to forestry, mining, fishing, scientific research, job retraining, culture, recreation, and municipal infrastructure. It presents less as a conservatively prudent undertaking, than a liberal attempt at a scatter gun approach to crisis management. As such, it was hardly likely that Michael Ignatieff could find any reason to reject the budget.

Although he has grandiosely put the government, and more particularly, his nemesis Stephen Harper, on notice. The Conservatives, through the good and kindly graces of the Liberal Party of Canada, may consider themselves to be in a probationary period of tentative trust. To be revoked, in fact, at any future time that the Liberals - and most particularly, their intrepidly forceful leader finds suitable.

The government has been generously given this grace period, but they must report back in several months' time to their Liberal superiors - oops, cautious supporters.

As for the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois; well, the public was already placed on notice that irrespective of what appeared in the budget, it would not be graced with the support of those two parties. Ideologues of the left have made it abundantly clear in their stated ire; it is their party, and their agenda that comes first, it is emphatically not the furtherance of the country that motivates them.

Any forward-looking momentum to encourage optimism in the country and bring opportunity and trust back where it belongs to help recovery that appears in the budget is damned with praise so faint it evaporates into condemnation. The Finance Minister simply has not gone far enough, wide enough, deep enough, to incur sufficient expenditures to satisfy Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

The spending stimulus, landing Canada back into deficit territory, and boosting our national debt; the bane of any conservative economist's mindset, is too tentative, too modest, too lacking in merit. Aren't we fortunate they're not in the driver's seat? Ah, there lies the crux of their ire.

Economic Stimulus and the schools

January 28, 2009
Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education

By SAM DILLON The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.

The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.

Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.

Responding in part to a plea from Democratic governors earlier this month, Congress allocated $79 billion to help states facing large fiscal shortfalls maintain government services, and especially to avoid cuts to education programs, from pre-kindergarten through higher education.

Obama administration officials, teachers unions and associations representing school boards, colleges and other institutions in American education said the aid would bring crucial financial relief to the nation’s 15,000 school districts and to thousands of campuses otherwise threatened with severe cutbacks.

“This is going to avert literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday.

Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the House education committee, said, “We cannot let education collapse; we have to provide this level of support to schools.”

But Republicans strongly criticized some of the proposals as wasteful spending and an ill-considered expansion of the federal government’s role, traditionally centered on aid to needy students, into new realms like local school construction.

Critical Courtesy

In an exhibition of sweet civility and courtesy the Bush administration went out of its way to be helpfully useful to the incoming Obama administration. Staff at the White House were instructed to extend themselves on behalf of the incoming Democrats. Laura and George W. Bush extended personal warmth and welcome to Michelle and Barack Obama in introducing them to their new quarters.

The transference of authority and the grace of courtesy extended were comforting and bespoke of great civility. A kindness nicely reciprocated when, after the solemn, joyful and auspicious inauguration of the 44th president of the United States of America, the new president and his new vice-president and their spouses went out of their way to extend the courtesy of farewell to the departing Bushes.

All the more notable because the day was fraught with tensions of the nation's business requiring attention, while at the same time, the nation celebrated its great good fortune in anticipation of a brand new future offering hope and security. America's neighbours look on in the hope that some of that good feeling may come their way, too.

As a result of the growing apprehension of risks to both countries from terrorism, and the illegal importation of banned substances and questionable products, it would be wise for the two countries' leaders to appoint high-placed officials to launch or re-launch a special partnership reflective of the comfort of relationship of two close and trusting neighbours.

Trusting? Well, perhaps not so much, of late. Passport and entry regulations, border delays, mandatory cargo data requirements and newly instituted border inspection-provision costs have burdened both individuals and businesses alike in both nations. Tourism from the U.S. to Canada has withered, as authorities in the U.S. point to Canada as the potential link from which terror suspects may invade their border.

That suspicion is injurious on many levels, not the least of which is our shared past history, where Canada has demonstrated time and again, her liking for and support of American values, while clinging to her own. And then there's the extremely vital subject of cross-border trade. Roughly 75% of Canadian exports make their way across the border to the U.S.

Employing hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and the reverse is also true; millions of American jobs are dependent on the long-standing free and open trade agreements between the countries. Canada exists as the largest foreign market for the U.S.; taking in roughly one-fifth of all U.S. exports, exceeding those going to the combined EU-China market.

The two countries also collaborate on intra-industry projects. The North American automobile industry is intertwined between the two countries, benefiting both greatly. We've thrived economically, on our mutual dependence. And then, security issues raised the misery of shuttering the borders to delays and passports and additional entry regulations.

We can do a whole lot better than what currently prevails. Common courtesy, one country to the other demands it, as close neighbours. Trust and civility can and should be restored. Homeland Security has proven to be the bane of our co-existence. Time to look for alternate, viable options.

Trust This Man?

How perfectly inconvenient, how incredibly awkward. Best to simply set it aside. People will forget. Certainly he has been forgiven by the administration. An unfortunate lapse, nothing more. Strange how it is that when candidates for high office are subjected to close scrutiny something awkward is invariably revealed.

Casting the dim light of lack of prudent behaviour on their otherwise-sterling reputations.

A senior Treasury official with inside knowledge of everything financial succumbing to the kind of absent-minded forgetfulness that had him "completely unintentionally" make an error in his tax assessment, by withholding taxes due on U.S. payroll taxes.

While, no less, he was employed at the International Monetary Fund. That old adage of the physician's inability to heal himself, never more poignant.

But of course this is an unfortunate instance of a high-powered, highly-remunerated elite professional taking the opportunity to avail his bottom line by overlooking the need to submit required taxes to the very Treasury he had a hand in administering.

How inconvenient can things get, after all? A mere $34,000 thought to be worth that heartache?

What heartache? All is forgiven, forgotten; never happened. He's reimbursed the Internal Revenue Service. And now he will undertake his mission to which he has been sworn through the oath of office administered at the Treasury Department, to supervise the Internal Revenue Service.

Wonder if he is skilled at picking locks, too?

Economic crisis and the schools

Where We Stand _CTA.

January 15, 2009

California schools and students are suffering, and local school districts are already at the tipping point. The $3.5 billion in cuts made last year have led to larger class sizes, more than 10,000 layoffs of teachers and other education support staff, and the further elimination of art, music, and career technical education programs. Some schools have even shut down their libraries. The governor’s latest budget proposal would just make things worse.

The Governor’s proposal to cut an additional $10.8 billion over the next 18 months is an irresponsible assault on California’s students and schools. And adding further insult, the governor is redefining Proposition 98, the state’s minimum school funding law, to take $7 billion from our schools that would never be repaid, in direct violation of the constitutional guarantee. Lawmakers need to raise revenues and solve California’s budget problem without further detrimental cuts to an already underfunded public school system.

These additional cuts will further devastate schools and colleges, causing thousands of additional layoffs, even larger class size increases, more program cuts, and possible school closures. Some local schools are talking about increasing all class sizes to 40 students, while others are planning to eliminate all sports programs. The cuts proposed by the Governor will totally change public schools in California as we know them, robbing our children of a well-rounded education and leaving an academic scar on an entire generation.

It’s long past time for lawmakers to stop playing partisan politics and pass some revenue increases. Investing in public education is the best investment we can make in the future of our children and our state. We warned the Legislature last year that relying on more borrowing would just make the situation worse – and it has. Every day they don’t take action, our kids pay a bigger price.

Education Week recently released a report that shows California has dropped from 46th to 47th in per-pupil funding, and lags behind the national average by $2,400. Those figures don’t even include the latest cuts or indicate where the state would be ranked under the governor’s new proposal. Lawmakers should be working to improve support for students, not making things worse.

The governor’s proposal to cut the school year by five days does nothing to improve student learning. California students cannot continue their recent progress if the state takes away important instruction time. The governor’s proposal hurts students in poorer communities most by eliminating all funding designed to help lower-performing schools.

CTA opposes any changes to the state’s successful Class Size Reduction program. Smaller class sizes are key to improving student learning, especially for ethnic minority children and English learners. The governor’s proposal for complete and permanent “flexible” use of all categoricals is simply encouraging school districts to rob Peter to pay Paul. The fact is, flexibility without adequate funding provides false hope that schools can do more with even fewer resources.

The use of deferrals and accounting gimmicks in the Governor’s proposal further shortchanges schools this year and will lead to cash flow problems for school districts. It pushes the problem down the road and does nothing to address the need for new and reliable revenue sources for public schools.

For our community colleges the proposed cuts could reduce enrollment by at least 5 percent, force community colleges to turn away nearly 263,000 students, and seriously impact thousands of unemployed Californians who recently enrolled to seek training for new jobs.

The Governor’s proposed 10 percent cut to the UC and CSU systems would be devastating. The California State University announced the cuts will force CSU campuses to turn away at least 10,000 students who apply for admission next fall. It is the first time that the nation's largest four-year university has officially endorsed a system-wide concept of refusing admission to eligible students.

We've Been Stimulated

Ah, the budget, there it is in all its spendthrift glory. No complaints, not really. Who could logically criticize funding vitally important items that this country requires to ensure it remains of sound mind and stout body? A hearty sum of $7-billion allocated for our crumbling bridges, potholed highways, worn out public buildings. Good, very good.

Another $2-billion for low-income housing. The better to resurrect our honour and our pride as a country that provides for all its citizens. Job re-training has taken another $1.5-billion of the nation's treasury and it's a necessary down payment on the future of our workers, our productivity, our gross national product, our ability to fend for ourselves.

Communities within this great country so adversely affected by the downturn in fortunes of our natural resources in forestry and mining, along with our agricultural sectors - feeding this great hungry nation, providing staples to be shipped abroad to feed the world's hungry - another $1-billion. Doesn't seem all that much for such a broad and vital purpose.

Guess the finance minister thought so too, because in his great wisdom he allocated another $550 for agriculture, and hurray for him and for us, as well. Canada's farmers and agricultural conglomerates get down to basics. What does it avail a country if it cannot provide the gustatory wherewithal through which its people can thrive?

Tourism, let us not forget tourism, enticing the world to witness first hand the geographic spread and depth of this great country, second in size world-wide to none but one. From our tidal basins, to our ocean seascapes, our great tracts of undisturbed forest to our frozen North, our endless Prairies and Rocky Mountain heights; come and visit - $300-million for tourism projects.

Poor old Ontario - so long the engine of prosperity for the country, and still in its enfeebled state due to manufacturing closures, responsible for 40% of this country's wealth - it too gets a nod. From pride in place to penance of penury. The federal government, in its budget, recognizes the province's bitter travails, and gives it $250-million for regional economic development.

A nod at that old adage that man does not live by bread alone. We require sensory and aesthetic stimulation, to remind us of who and what we are as a people. Our culture, our artistic endeavours in the literary, music and plastic arts require constant nourishing lest they shrivel and vanish through the misery of neglect; to the cultural sector, $160-million!

And more, oh so much more, no need ignored, no sector passed by. A lot of sweet, a little bit of sour; municipalities and provincial governments will be enticed, nay, expected, to pony up their share. So the taxpaying middle class who will see some relief in the federal budget will on the other hand see that relief absorbed by higher municipal taxes; easy come, easy go.

The NDP and the Bloc foam and fulminate, agitating for projects left behind, but then nothing would quite satiate their need to tax and spend, and their support is at best minimal, overall. Fully 57% of Canadians applaud this budget. Michael Ignatieff, take heed.

Speech From The Throne

There it is, Michaelle Jean, Canada's Governor-General has delivered the most brief of all possible speeches, an incidental introduction, a frontispiece to the Conservative budget to be unveiled tomorrow afternoon. The speech has been parsed by pundits just as the budget will be, and no one has yet mentioned its last line, a reference to the Almighty.

"Honourable members of the Senate, members of the House of Commons: As you unite in common effort and in common cause, may Divine Providence be your guide and inspiration."

This is as it should be, reflecting Canada's Christian-majority heritage, despite the official separation of Church and State. Yet, it will not be Divine Providence that will guide and inspire the Leader of the Opposition and the surly leader of the NDP, but a partisanship and bitterness as deep and sharp as that they attribute to the current prime minister, Stephen Harper.

This is decidedly not as it should be. If indeed Canada is facing a dire economic slump as the pundits, the financial community, the news media and the parliamentary opposition claims, then would it not make eminently good sense, should Canadians not expect, that all our political parties put aside their selfish partisan jibes and thrusts and work together to pull a practical and purposeful plan to action?

Obviously, not to be. Maturity keeps eluding our feisty parliamentarians with such short memories they handily forget what the electorate put them into office for. The surly insistence of the leader of the NDP that his party has no intention of voting for the Budget, sight unseen; regardless of what it contains speaks volumes of his anxious ambition set in further bitter abeyance.

He speaks the royal "we"; that "we" have lost trust in the Conservatives. As though Canadians have invested in him the authority to speak for all of us. He must learn to restrain himself, to speak only for his own ambition, sad-sack Jack Layton. Fact is a recent poll appears to establish that 44% of Canadians feel Stephen Harper is their first choice to lead Canada out of its recession.

And while Jack Layton speaks so censoriously of Stephen Harper's "my way or the highway", as he so eloquently puts it, it is Mr. Layton's refusal to contemplate or consider the line items in the upcoming Budget already released for public awareness that marks him as the intransigent one, refusing to support a financial paper that promises to give weight to all those areas of need he espouses himself.

As for the saviour of the Liberal Party of Canada, his sneeringly facile barbs at the trustworthiness and humanity of the prime minister is less an issue of cerebral acuity for one celebrated as an intellectual, than spuriously feeble bites reminiscent of partisan spite, a condition which he has so lavishly attributed to Stephen Harper. He holds no monopoly on wishing to govern well and wisely, and acceding to the needs of the vulnerable within this society.

Mr. Ignatieff's excessively coy treatment of his responsibility with respect to the Budget is rather pitifully transparent. As a break from tradition - matching, one supposes, that of the Harper government audaciously revealing tidbits from the Budget - Mr. Ignatieff insists on the need to closely parse that document before committing to its support. A thinly veiled manipulation of the process to create an aura of suspense and control.

That he will not rush into rashly supporting the document is understandable, given the lesson of previous Liberal leader Stephane Dion's railing against government initiatives while supporting them when put to the test. His humiliations will not be visited upon Mr. Ignatieff. He's in control. In reality, political caution bespeaks the better part of valour expressed.

And caution influences action. Sit tight, await opportunity. And that time is not just yet. Not while the sitting government faces a perceived economic emergency that may not be ameliorated on the near horizon. Let them stew, while the Liberals continue to re-build their base, treasury and support, then step in to rescue the country when it's on the cusp of recovery.

All the while excoriating the Conservatives for leaving an unprincipled mess for generations to come to contend with. Oh, and of course, it has been the Liberal prodding that the government act swiftly, decisively, and generously impacting the bottom line to produce a whopping deficit that will enable them later to scorn the action that government took.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ignatieff indulges in the theatrics of labelling the prime minister untrustworthy, changing tactics, abandoning earlier stances to accept other, alternate ones reflective of a changed global fiscal environment. The classic example of the pot calling the kettle black; Ignatieff has changed his positions on so many issues, it ill behooves him to mock Stephen Harper.

But this is only the prelude. Wait for tomorrow. Ah, the suspense of it all.

Getting Accountability Right

Getting Accountability Right

By Richard Rothstein
The federal No Child Left Behind Act has succeeded in highlighting the poor math and reading skills of disadvantaged children. But on balance, the law has done more harm than good because it has terribly distorted the school curriculum. Modest modifications cannot correct this distortion. Designing a better accountability policy will take time. We cannot and should not abandon school accountability, but it's time to go back to the drawing board to get accountability right.

The first step is to understand today's curricular distortion. It has arisen because No Child Left Behind holds schools accountable for only some of their many goals. When we demand adequate math and reading scores alone, educators rationally respond by transferring resources to math and reading instruction (and drill) from social studies, history, science, the arts and music, character development, citizenship education, emotional and physical health, and physical fitness.

This shift has been most severe for the disadvantaged children the law was designed to help, because they are most at risk of failing to meet the math and reading targets. But they are also most at risk of losing curricular opportunities in other domains. In these other areas, NCLB has widened the "achievement gap."

President Barack Obama has vowed to correct this distortion. He has noted that NCLB "has become so reliant on a standardized-test model that ... subjects like history and social studies have gotten pushed aside. Arts and music time is no longer there. So the child is not having the well-rounded educational experience I benefited from and most in my generation benefited from." We must change No Child Left Behind, he has said, "so that the assessment is one that takes into account all the factors that go into a good education."

Although some Democrats and Republicans want to ignore the law's goal distortion, observers with varying policy perspectives share the new president's view that NCLB requires a radical reconsideration. The Center on Education Policy, headed by Jack Jennings (formerly an aide to Democrats on the House education committee), has publicized the loss of instruction in social studies, science, the arts, and physical education, especially for disadvantaged children. Chester E. Finn Jr. and Diane Ravitch, who served as federal education officials in Republican administrations, complain that present policy means only "top private schools and a few suburban systems will stick with education broadly defined." While rich kids study a wide range of subjects in depth, they write, "their poor peers fill in bubbles on test sheets." There is a "zero sum" problem, Finn and Ravitch say, because "more emphasis on some things ... inevitably mean[s] less attention to others."

Yet public discussion of the law's upcoming reauthorization focuses almost entirely on correcting flaws in math and reading measurement: substituting "growth models" for fixed levels, modifying the 2014 deadline for attaining student proficiency, standardizing state definitions of proficiency, modifying "confidence intervals" in reporting. While these steps may improve the sophistication of math and reading data, none addresses the goal distortion caused by exclusive accountability for basic skills.

Designing accountability tools that require satisfactory performance across a balanced set of outcomes requires a significant federal research-and-development effort, which could build on prior experience. When the National Assessment of Educational Progress was developed in the 1960s, it measured a broad range of cognitive and noncognitive knowledge and skills. NAEP abandoned that breadth when its budget was slashed in the 1970s, however, and never restored it.

To see whether students learned to cooperate, for example, the early NAEP program sent trained observers to sampled schools. In teams of four, 9-year-olds were offered prizes (such as yo-yos) for guessing what object was hidden in a box. Students could ask yes-or-no questions, but all team members had to agree on each question asked. NAEP rated the students on whether they suggested new questions, gave reasons for viewpoints, or otherwise demonstrated cooperative problem-solving skills. It then reported to the nation on the percentage of children capable of cooperative problem-solving.

For teenagers, NAEP assessors provided lists of issues about which young people typically had strong opinions. Students had to collaborate in writing recommendations to resolve them. For 13-year-olds, lists included topics such as whether they should have curfews for getting home, and for 17-year-olds, the age eligibility for voting, drinking, or smoking. NAEP rated students on whether they took clear positions, gave reasons for viewpoints, helped organize internal procedures, and defended another's right to disagree.

Early NAEP understood that teaching civic responsibility involved more than having students memorize historical facts. So in 1969, during the era of the civil rights revolution, the assessment asked teenagers what they felt they should do if they saw black children barred from entering a park. NAEP reported that 82 percent of 13-year-olds and 90 percent of 17-year-olds knew that they should do something constructive, such as tell parents, report it to a civil rights or civil liberties organization, write letters to the newspaper, or take social action such as picketing or leafleting.

The early version of NAEP also assessed 17-year-olds' ability to consider alternative viewpoints, by asking them to state arguments both for and against a heated public issue of the time, such as whether college students should be drafted. It asked 9- and 13-year-olds if something reported in a newspaper might be untrue. It also asked teenagers if they belonged to any nonschool clubs or organizations; interviewers followed up with questions to verify answers' accuracy.

To assess commitment to civil liberties, NAEP asked teenagers if someone should be permitted to say on television that "Russia is better than the United States," that "some races of people are better than others," or that "it is not necessary to believe in God." The assessment reported the discouraging result that only a small minority of the teenagers thought all three statements should be permitted.

The early NAEP program also assessed personal responsibility. Seventeen-year-olds were asked what to do if, when visiting a friend, they noticed her 6-month-old baby was bruised. The correct answer was "suggest that your friend call her baby's doctor." Incorrect choices included "ignore the bruises because they are none of your business." A follow-up prompt said that at a later visit, bruises remain and "you are now suspicious that your friend may have hurt the baby." Students were asked what to do now. The correct choice was "call the local child-health agency and report your suspicions."

Certainly, if school systems were evaluated by such results, not simply by math and reading scores, incentives would shift. National reporting of low scores on the civil liberties questions, for example, could spur demands that schools do a better job on citizenship; then, the incentive to drop cooperative learning in favor of test prep in math and reading would diminish.

Designing a new accountability system will take time and care, because the problems are daunting. Observations of student behavior are not as reliable as standardized tests of basic skills, so we will have to accept that it is better to imperfectly measure a broad set of outcomes than to perfectly measure a narrow set. We will have to resolve contradictory national convictions that schools should teach citizenship and character, but not inquire about students' (and parents') personal opinions. To avoid new distortions, we'll need to make tough decisions about how to weight the measurement of the many goals of education.

The time to start on these difficult tasks is now, but the new administration won't have to begin with a blank slate. Looking back at the early National Assessment of Educational Progress can start us on a better path.

Richard Rothstein (riroth@epi.org) is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute. This article summarizes an argument from his recent book, co-written with Rebecca Jacobsen and Tamara Wilder, Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (Teachers College Press).
Published in Ed Week.

Unfortunately legislators and media writers have too often accepted claims of accountability rather than serious study of accountability measures. This year the California Legislature and the Governor provided $10 million for accountability in Teacher Performance Assessment. The TPA/PACT process is neither valid, nor reliable. However, since it goes under the frame of accountability it has been funded even while schools are cutting classes, increasing class sizes and closing schools.
To read more about the problems of TPA/PACT go to http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/

Its time to take over the banks : Baker

"The banks have stolen enough. It's time to take them over."

by Dean Baker
Huffington Post
1/25/09

Hold onto your wallets. The bankers are coming bank for more money.
They burned through the $350 billion that we gave them in the first
round of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and they are worried
that even the second $350 billion will not be enough money to keep
them solvent. The selective leaks from Treasury tell us that the banks
will need far more money to cover their bad debts.

The latest story is that the banks want to sell us their bad assets at
above market prices, which was the original plan that Treasury
Secretary Paulson proposed, except the banks want to push off their
junk on an even bigger scale. In one version, the government would set
up a Resolution Trust-type corporation (RTC), like we did with the
bankrupt Savings and Loans in the 80s, which would hold all the
garbage and then gradually resell it to the private sector to recover
a portion of what the government paid.

This is a reasonable course, except there is one big difference
between what we did with the S&Ls in the 80s and the leaked plan being
floated. The S&Ls were taken over by the government and then resold to
the private sector. These were bankrupt institutions that were put out
of business. The stockholders were wiped out, which is what is
supposed to happen to stock holders when their company goes bankrupt.

But this is not what happens in the plan being discusses. In this
plan, the taxpayers just do the banks the great favor of paying above
market prices for their junk so that we can relieve them of the burden
of their past mistakes. The taxpayers get to eat the losses and the
bank executives and their shareholders go on their merry way.

These folks are not market fundamentalist types. The Wall Street view
of the world, and apparently the view of at least some people in the
Obama administration, is that the government always is there to help a
bank or banker in need.

The idea that we would give one more penny to this crew that has
wrecked the economy should make taxpayers furious. There is a
legitimate public interest in keeping the banks operating; a modern
economy needs a well-operating financial system. But, there is zero
public interest in rewarding shareholders and overpaid banks
executives.

These executives bankrupted their banks and brought the economy down
with them. They belong in an unemployment line not collecting
multi-million dollar paychecks in their designer office suites.

The obvious answer is to take over the insolvent banks, just as we did
with the insolvent S&Ls. The government should form an RTC as we did
in the 80s, which would dispose of the assets over time, collecting as
much money as possible for the government. The bankrupt banks would be
restructured and sold back to the private sector as soon as their
books were straightened out. The point of the exercise is not have the
government run the banks, the point is to keep the financial system
running without giving even more money to the richest people in the
country.

This is the only reasonable solution to the mess that the bankers have
created. The other solutions are simply efforts to transfer dollars
from hardworking taxpayers to overpaid and incompetent bank
executives. It is hard to believe that anyone would take it seriously,
if not for the enormous political power of the Wall Street gang.

It's too bad that the Republicans' anger over giving tax breaks to
workers who did not pay income taxes does not extend to giving tax
dollars to Wall Street banks who have wrecked our economy. Where are
the anti-government conservatives when we need them?
__._,_.___

Speak Up, Can't Hear You....

World Vision in Africa has been forced to suspend their emergency feeding program for thousands of malnourished children in Democratic Republic of Congo, close to its border with Uganda. "People have suffered enough" said one of its representatives. "The real fear now is that, once the fighting starts, there will be retaliation against the local population."

Well, in fact, in Congo the fighting never seems to stop. There are so many factions with their brutal militias exploiting the country. One faction comprised of Hutu tribespeople, out to exact revenge against their Tsutsi rivals, and the Tutsi faction, fighting in their self defence against the Hutu militias. People are tortured, murdered, women raped, and children, if not slaughtered, taken for slaves.

The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, Hutu rebels who fled Rwanda in 1994 after the Tutsi-led government finally gained control, in the wake of the horrendous slaughter of Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) in what the world has labelled a genocide, operate in the Eastern DRC, preying on the Tutsi population there.

The National Congress for the Defence of the People, representing Congolese ethnic Tutsis, supported by the Rwandan government, and fighting to defeat the FDLR is also present and active in Congo. The dreaded Lord's Resistance Army under the insanely vicious Joseph Kony fighting to establish a theocratic state based on the Old Testament's 10 Commandments, along with tribal tradition is the bane of the region.

And then there are the local Congolese militias, the Mai Mai - collaborating with the FDLR in inciting hatred against the Congolese Tutsi communities - whose end purpose is to destroy the Tutsi population. Attempting to do battle with all of these militias is the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose soldiers have proven incapable of mounting a defence, and members of whom have embarked on their own violent rampages against the population.

The United Nations has installed 17,000 peacekeepers - the largest such installation worldwide - in the region, to try to protect the population. Despite their presence, the militias have managed to murder thousands, forcing over a million people to leave their homes in the last several years. The government of Congo, having now invited thousands of Rwandan troops to cross the border to assist it in rousting the rebels is preparing for large-scale battle.

Aid workers on the ground await the fighting, knowing they will be tasked with trying to assist hundreds of thousands more people, and anticipating aid delivery disruptions to the million people who already depend on them. A month earlier Kinshasa had invited Ugandan troops to join a military task force against the LRA. They succeeded in scattering the Lords Resistance Army into groups who went on to pillage, murder, rape and kidnap children, kept in thrall as child soldiers.

The Lords Resistance Army has since gone on to murder countless others, beating villagers to death with clubs or hacking them with machetes. A Roman Catholic church packed with people was put to the torch. In another village all the boys and men were beaten to death, the women and girls raped before their skulls were crushed. The elusively evil Joseph Kony of the LRA is being sought, desperately.

While all this vile destruction of human lives is ongoing, the international community seems more than a little disinterested. Where is the clamour from among the global public to protest the violence, the misery, and the atrocities? Like the situation in Darfur, Sudan insisting it has the right to do as it will with its citizens, and Robert Mugabe happy to have his Zimbabweans die of cholera and starvation, the world is mute.

Why the double standard, where outraged protesters march against the State of Israel's purported illegal conduct in their military invasion of Gaza to stop Hamas from its continued predations on Israel? What's that? Louder please, I'm having trouble picking up your signal.

Mutualities

Neighbours, generally on good terms, with an invisible fence between their properties. They have had their differences of opinion, but generally make a mature effort to restrain their less neighbourly attitudes from forcing a distance between them unwarranted by mutual need and recognition. One, suffering a grievous injury, went so far as to blame his neighbour for having been too accommodating to the entity that injured it, but without true cause.

The result of which that invisible, extremely porous fence through which each had in the past flowed from one property to the other to visit and exchange pleasantries, has since been electrified with suspicion. And each neighbour, still yet accustomed to visiting with gifts and offerings in hand, has had to cool their heels before crossing the fence, while agents of one neighbour or the other, poked about at the gifts and offerings to determine their innocence and bless entry.

Fables often flow from reality. Canadian-American relations ebb and flow, from comfortable to prickly. The free flow of trade, goods and services, let alone that of curiosity and tourism has been impeded of late between the two countries. It's a fairly one-sided affair, with Americans having convinced themselves that Canada's perceived less stringent immigration procedures pose a risk to the United States, permitting the entry of those with malignant purposes.

It's understandable to a degree, as is the constant bickering over trade matters, with one side striving to discount any advantage the other might seek to mount, favouring a trade balance that the other considers unfair. If human siblings, on a micro-scale quibble constantly, little wonder that nations indulge also, on a macro-scale of inter-related relationships between two equally-endowed countries. The more populous, more prosperous of which will always have the advantage.

And now that another president has been installed in the United States, Canada is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to impress itself as a reliable and likeable neighbour. President Obama has done Canada the great favour of receiving him, in his first foreign trip in a series of such visits abroad for the purpose of introducing himself, his administration and his agenda to international partners in trade, development and an orderly world.

This will mark Canada's opportunity to make a fresh start with a new administration in Washington. Much is expected of Canada's prime minister, to himself make a good impression on the new president. They will speak primarily of trade, climate change, the global economy and their shared military policing challenges in Afghanistan. And they will speak of Canada's vast energy resources, at the service of American energy needs.

The two countries have much, though not too too too much in common. While Americans think of Canada as a pale reflection of their own society with like values and priorities reflective of their own culture and traditions, Canadians remains adamant that, while admiring much of what the United States has produced in science and entertainment and what its overall human values stand for, there is a wide separation between some values and some priorities.

What there can be no argument about, however, is that we are sufficiently alike to understand one another far better than we do; that our mutual interests bind us together in trade and commerce on a shared continent; that our contiguous border and close geographic proximity mitigate against hostility, and urge toward friendship.

With The Stroke of a Pen

In 1973 the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion, permitting that country the status of the least restrictive abortion laws in the world. A majority of Americans, some 54%, support a woman's right to control the issue of her body, under certain circumstances. A minor position, backing a total ban on abortion, is strenuously upheld by 17% of the population. And a committed 28% of Americans believe abortion should be available to women under any circumstances.

That's an overwhelming vote of confidence in women's need and ability to distinguish for themselves the manner in which they wish to conduct their lives. To have control over their destiny to a certain extent; certainly when it comes to motherhood. When all else fails, and the best laid plans go awry, with the occurrence of an unwanted pregnancy, most women, wherever they live in the world, prefer to order their lives as they wish to, not how some within society wish them to.

Under a series of Republican administrations, most notably beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, women's choices were decisively narrowed by an edict of state, extending to other countries of the world whose women are far less able to take alternative routes to achieve their goals. The United States funds family planning assistance programs overseas to the extent of roughly $400-million annually.

However, President Reagan's administration in 1984 instituted a ban on funding for groups that also provided abortion services or counselling abroad. No U.S. government funding would be extended for family planing services to clinics or groups offering counselling or services that would abort a pregnancy, and that policy extended to funding from non-U.S. government sources.

The result was a shameful reduction in health care for women living in some of the poorest countries of the world. This policy was remediated by the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton, allowing the free flow of funding for family planning, inclusive of counselling for abortion, reclaiming for women the right to make those choices for themselves, within the international community.

And it was a policy that George W. Bush swept into the dustbin, reinstating the earlier Republican ban on family planning funding that was linked to pregnancy-cessation services. The pendulum has once again swung back to the Democratic position of supporting women's right to choose. "With a stroke of a pen, President Obama has lifted the stranglehold on women's health across the globe", enthused the U.S. president of Planned Parenthood.

Women who were deprived of contraception and allied health services in undeveloped countries who were forced to resort to the painful and fearsome exigencies of back-alley abortions all too often resulting in the agony of botched operations and death, have once again been rescued. Countries like Ethiopia and Lesotho are once again free to offer comprehensive and integrated health-care services to women suffering from AIDS/HIV.

It is tellingly significant that the one issue for which the late unlamented presidency of George W. Bush has received plaudits, the massive funding of AIDS/HIV remediation throughout Africa, had its own very conservative hiccough to unalloyed success. In that a qualifier existed for access to funding; that along with the work associated with AIDS/HIV assistance, those receiving aid be counselled toward sex abstinence.

Predictably, the anti-abortion agitators like the American Life League are furious. "We've got a president who is rabidly in favour of abortion even though he says he's not. I think it's a horrible tactic to take toward Third World countries if the best we can do for them is provide organizations with the money needed to perform abortions on their children. It's an outrage", fumed the American Life League's president. So who is rabid?

Republican lawmakers mourn the reassertion of a woman's right to choose by characterizing the decision as "a divisive action". They are not acting divisively, however. Another claims to be "saddened by this decision and the lives that will be lost because of it". Mourning the loss of children born to mothers unable to adequately care for another child, yet not the loss of life occasioned by women desperately undergoing unsterile, underground operations that will end their lives.

Perception is the eye of perspective, truth and reality mangled by politics and passion.

Mercy Killing?

Is it to be considered as merciful to allow a brain-dead woman's body to be kept quick? Her condition knows no salvation. Her body is being medically, scientifically, halted from corrupting, but it is a hollow shell, and has been for the past 17 years. An agony to her family, who wish nothing better for their beloved child than to bury the past, to no longer have to face the anguish of her artificial presence, a rebuke to their ability to end their suffering and the charade of her fictitious existence.

Eluana Englaro lost her life for all practical purposes, in a car accident that occurred seventeen years ago when she was a vibrant 20-year-old. She has been in a coma ever since. She, like all such victims of tragedy whose consciousness and soul evaporates into nothingness never to resurface, bears no physical resemblance to the blooming young woman she once was. Her father has been attempting for the past ten years, to have life support withdrawn, to allow her the final dignity of burial.

In predominantly Roman Catholic Italy some regions of the country had offered to step in and allow her to expire when Milan, capital of Lombardy, the second largest city close to where Ms. Englaro remains hospitalized refused to permit hospitals under its jurisdiction to comply with her family's request. However, even they have been forced to withdraw their offers of assistance, under pressure from Italy's minister of health.

Maurizio Sacconi, the health minister, warned subsidized state hospitals that they would face "unimaginable consequences" were they to suspend life support for this poor woman. More to the point, the Catholic Church is fierce in its resistance toward any form of euthanasia, and has pointedly warned against halting the artificial feeding of the now-37-old woman. The Archbishop of Turin, Severino Poletto, said that to do so would clearly represent an act of euthanasia.

Clearly, it is not to be seen as an act of compassion.

Now the governor of Piedmont is prepared to disregard the objections of government officials to assist the family of Eluana in their search to end this travesty of prolonged death in the guise of protecting the sanctity of human life. As a consequence, the daily newspaper of the Italian Catholic Church has accused the court which ruled in the family's favour to have her life support system removed, of "necrophilia".

The Church will most certainly disallow a religious funeral for the young woman, further exacerbating her family's pain and sorrow.

Geert Wilders, "Fitna"

In a recent art exhibition initiated by the current Czech Republic presidency of the European Union, Holland was depicted as a country drowning in the enveloping seas, with the only visible sign of habitation, the tops of mosques. Holland, like much of Europe, has been inundated by emigrants leaving Arab and Muslim countries. These new citizens of Europe have kept their customs, traditions and religion intact. They have not exactly found Paradise in their new countries, since they have suffered more than their share of discrimination.

On the other hand, their inability or unwillingness to assimilate into the larger society, partially due to their singularity and their wish to preserve their identities, and partly because there have been no workable state-sponsored efforts to bring them into the community at large, to offer them equal opportunities in education and in the workforce, they remain isolated, resentful, averse to many of the values and social mores of the indigenous population.

That apartness has bred gigantic problems, such as the outflow of violence from the banlieues of France, such as terrorist attacks in Britain and Spain, such as assassination attempts - and successes - of parliamentarians in European countries alarmed at the presence of what appears to be a growing population of immigrants whose fecundity has overtaken that of the shrinking indigenous population, and whose insistence on sharia law having equal value to the laws of the land lead to general fear and condemnation.

The Dutch far-right parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, whose pronouncements of Islam as being comparable as a religion to the ideology of Nazism has earned him no friends among Dutch Muslims who abhor and deplore what they view as unforgivable and unfair hate-mongering. Now a Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to place him on trial for inciting hatred. "The contested views of Wilders constitute a criminal offence", claimed the Amsterdam appeals court.

Mr. Wilders's 17-minute film, "Fitna" caused outrage, condemnation and riots in the Muslim world, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon characterized it as "offensively anti-Islamic". Months earlier, the prosecutor's office had equivocated; while "Fitna", they said, was offensive to Muslims, the film, in their opinion, did not warrant action as a punishable offence. Mr. Wilders's remarks were made openly, in the context of public debate.

But there's a chill in most free-speech-celebrating democratic societies, particularly of late, where the hallowed, basic right of freedom of speech is clashing head on with those within society who argue that some areas of expression and apprehensions should be prohibited on the basis that their public airing compromises public safety and security, and leads directly to malicious discrimination of the described group. Freedom of expression is permitted, claims the prosecution "provided that it is proportionate".

There goes that word again. "Proportionate", like the verities of basic human values that some insist must be viewed through the lens of cultural differentiation, is a debatable value. Mr. Wilders's statements and his film are now to be viewed, under Dutch law, as being tantamount to hate speech. He is charged with creating and inciting to hate and grief among a segment of the population. For his part, Mr. Wilders claims the judgement marked "a black day" and constituted "an attack on the freedom of expression".

His country and its citizens, opposed to the "Islamization" of the Netherlands will, effectively be on trial with him. "Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?", he asks, poignantly. The issue is polarizing, pulling people of a left-leaning bent to deny he speaks for them, while those in the middle, on the right, worry about the friable nature and character of their traditions, their country, becoming irreversibly altered.

Mr. Wilders's film reflects some selections from among the 114 chapters of the Koran, along with newspaper clippings of video depictions of Muslim acts of hatred and violence. These are not difficult to come by; one need only recall the reaction of the Muslim world to those infamously impish Danish cartoons. Indeed, a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, carrying a bomb on his head is included, certain to inflame the incendiary wrath of Muslims.

The 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, the Madrid train bombings, inclusive of lurid shots of victims; young Muslim girls mouthing the "Jews are apes and pigs" trope beloved of fanatical Islamists, because this is what Allah teaches in the Koran; an interview with Theo van Gogh's assassin, where he avers he would repeat the grisly murder if the opportunity were given him again. These incidents are not figments of anyone's imagination. Though they do represent, we would hope, a minority of Muslim-approved thought and action.

The riots that ensue whenever information is spread that Allah or The Prophet have been blasphemed in the West are undeniable occurrences. The fact that in the West nothing is sacrosanct, and everything can be discussed in a free and open society simply does not reflect the Muslim reality. The hypocrisy that Islam must never, under any circumstances, despite any provocations, be criticized, neither its tenets nor its signal and holy symbols, while Muslims can and do feel free to slander other religions and cultures, is also an unfortunate fact.

As leader of the Dutch Freedom party, with nine seats in parliament, it is unfortunate beyond mere words in the order of disastrous, that matters have descended to this low order. The VVD liberal opposition party announced that it was "alarming" that a politician could be prosecuted for his statements (representing his views). While the Labour party, part of the governing coalition, eagerly awaits a definitive ruling.

When it is brought down, regardless of what the ruling may state, no one will be satisfied, and no one, no side in this volatile and divisive issue, will feel vindicated nor complacent; nothing will have been resolved. While much may have been lost.

News of the World, January 2009

EUROPE:

"Europe is getting pounded by a tidal wave of bad economic news that has prompted warnings of a frightening rise in civil unrest. Top politicians in Europe are so rattled by the prospect of growing protests that they have arranged an emergency leaders' summit in March to deal with growing tensions. Earlier this week, riot police were needed to rescue Iceland's Prime Minister Geir Haarde, when his limousine was pelted by eggs and drink cans hurled by protesters. Thousands of protesters have participated in sometimes-violent street demonstrations in Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Greece in recent weeks."

VATICAN CITY:

"Pope Benedict XVI is understood to be preparing to cancel the excommunication of four traditionalist Catholic bishops, including one who believes that the Holocaust never happened and that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth. The Pope has already signed the decree lifting the excommunication of the four bishops of the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X, according to well-sourced reports in the Italian media. One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, a British former Anglican Old Wykehamist and Cambridge graduate, said in a Swedish television interview this week: 'There were no gas chambers.'"

CHINA:

"A Chinese court has handed down two death sentences in the melamine tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children and made 300,000 more ill, last summer, but judges spared top executives of Sanlu, the company that produced and sold the poisonous baby formula. Zhang Yujun, who had made and sold more than 600 tonnes of "protein powder" laced with melamine and Gent Jinping were sentenced to death for producing melamine, a chemical used in plastic, mixing it with milk powder and selling it to Sanlu. They will likely be executed quickly, as is the custom in China."

MIDDLE EAST:

"Israel will allow journalists free access to the war-battered Gaza Strip, a statement from the defence ministry said. The Erez crossing will be open all days except Saturday. Israel had barred journalists from Gaza during its 22-day war on the Hamas rulers of the enclave."

"Four Palestinians were injured when two tunnels used by smugglers collapsed on the border between Egypt and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, an Egyptian security official said. Israel charges that Hamas gets weapons through tunnels that run under the Rafah border. Scores of tunnels used by Palestinians and Egyptians to smuggle contraband into the territory, have collapsed in recent months, killing more than 40 people."

AUSTRIA:

"The trial of Joseph Fritzl, accused of holding his daughter captive as a sex slave over 24 years, during which she bore seven of his children, will begin on March 16, an Austrian court said. The trial will last about a week, but no date has yet been set for the verdict. The beginning of proceedings will be open to the public and media but later access will depend on further developments.

IRELAND:

"An Irish woman who forced a teenage son to have sex with her four times over a six-year period and abused and starved five other children in a rat-infested bungalow was jailed for seven years yesterday. 'I can safely say that I was the worst mother in the world and I'd turn back the clock if I could, but I can't', the 40-year-old woman was quoted as saying. She was given seven years and concurrent sentences of six years on counts of carnal knowledge, incest and wilful neglect."

INDIA:

"A paratrooper in a remote mountainous area of India's troubled northeast went on a shooting rampage, killing six of his own unit after an altercation, security officials said. The incident took place in Manipur state's Ukhrul district, about 90 kilometres from the capital, Imphal, where the country's oldest paramilitary force, the Assam Rifles, is deployed for anti-insurgency operations. Security forces launched a massive search operation in the mountains after he escaped with automatic weapons and ammunition."

SRI LANKA:

"Nearly 100 civilians have been killed in artillery exchanges between Sri Lanka's military and Tamil Tigers, a top government official working in the area controlled by the rebels said. Sri Lanka's military has boxed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam into an area of less than 400 square kilometres after the most successful campaign so far in the 25-year war and is aiming to deliver a final blow to the last rebel stronghold, the port of Mullaitivu."

ZIMBABWE:

"The cholera death toll in Zimbabwe has soared to 2,755, with 48,623 people suspected of being infected, according to new world Health Organization statistics. The numbers show a sharp rise in fatalities and new infections from statistics published earlier. The UN's humanitarian co-ordination office said in Geneva that preventive measures were not working and that a growing number of deaths were occurring beyond the reach of health workers in rural areas."

CONGO:

"United Nations peacekeepers in Congo demanded yesterday to be given a role in joint military operations by Congolese and Rwandan armies against Hutu rebels, saying they feared for civilians otherwise. The UN force in Congo has been largely excluded from the operation, in which more than 3,500 Rwandan soldiers crossed into Congo to advance on rebel strongholds in North Kivu province. Fears for civilians are high because the Hutu rebel group has turned on them in the past. The UN's 17,000-strong force has worked with Congo's army, but co-operation soured recently due to accusations of abuse by Congolese forces. Human rights groups have accused the army of rape and pillage, notably in defeats by Congolese Tutsi rebels last year."

RUSSIA:

"The European human rights court yesterday ordered Russia to pay $300,000 to the families of five Chechens whose relatives say they were abducted by Russian soldiers and a sixth who was found dead. The court unanimously ruled that Russia violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the victims' right to life, the right to an effective investigation and the right to effective remedy."

UNITED STATES:

"Making his first extensive comments on the Middle East crisis, President Barack Obama yesterday outlined actions that Israel and Hamas must take to ensure a 'durable ceasefire' in the region. "Hamas must end its rocket fire, (and) Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza", Mr. Obama said. Mr. Obama said that the U.S. "will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror." For Hamas to be a "genuine party to peace", Mr. Obama said the group must "recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements."

Getting To Work

The man isn't losing any time. One might think he would be exhausted, mentally, physically, but obviously not. He remains serene of countenance, with an assured determination to begin constructing the new reality of his administration. The re-administration of the oath of office, a blip on the duties of the day. Speaking to the four Mid-East leaders to assure them he's prepared to make his mark there.

Freezing White House salaries to demonstrate to the public that their pain is being shared. Beginning the first phase of implementing U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. He's already reached beyond mere symbolism into the hard core of his office. The installing of new rules governing lobbying. He's out there, front and centre, and his audience is gape-mouthed and hopeful.

His silver tongue will perforce be required to practise the transparency of which he speaks. Surrendering the coveralls of vagueness to the precise language of details. He has promised an open and transparent government, in stark contrast to the administration he succeeds. Not many doubt his promise to waft a fresh air of frank openness, for he has promised he will have nothing to hide.

It may seem a trifle incongruous that a man who has come to office with the promise of a clean sweep, a new and open government, one which eschews the practises and performance of the previous Republican-led administration, has chosen to welcome into his inner Cabinet men and women who have been closely aligned with the discredited policies of the Bush administration.

But, among other items of primary significance, President Barak Obama, while he was yet Senator Obama, indicated that he valued inclusiveness, that he would make it a personal mark of his administration to go beyond partisanship, that he would select from among his country's brightest and most promising, for the greater good of the country.

We're staying tuned. To assess the value of his appointments to his administration's avowed intent. To reach conclusions with respect to his ability to somehow wrest his country away from financial ruin, back into its position of world economic leadership. To bring international respect back from the depths to which it has plunged through pride and unilateralism.

There is little doubt in the public mind that he will manage, somehow, over a respectable period of time, to achieve much that he has promised. The extent of his success, and the results obtaining from it are yet a long way into the future. But the thing of it is, the country has fallen so low that it has nowhere to go but up. And with the goodwill extended toward this man, and the eager willingness of his fellow lawmakers, much can be accomplished.

Time will elapse, the tides will swell and ebb, and the world awaits Barak Obama's trials, errors and successes.

Canada's Economic Stimulous

Canada's Minister of Finance is set to bring down a new budget for the country. A most important document this will be, given the potentially straitened economic circumstances hovering over Canada, mostly through the impact on our trade with other countries, most notably the United States, no longer in quite the same position as it was formerly, to import Canada's goods and services.

Commodities, particularly energy, yes, of course. Canada is the world's seventh-largest oil producer, possesses the second-largest proven reserves. We rank third in natural gas production, first in the production of hydroelectricity, and first in uranium. Pity that all those commodities are now facing a relatively low-dollar trade advantage, but that is cyclical, and will rebound.

Our financial institutions are in fine shape, our employment statistics still show us at close to full strength, despite the dwindling jobs in our vital logging, fishing, and manufacturing sectors. There are even some financial analysts so bold as to aver that Canada will manage to avoid the depths of a recession, that we're already in recovery mode.

Still a deficit is forecast for the coming years, largely imposed by frantic soothsayers called financial experts stampeding government into emergency measures to extend credit here, there and everywhere, and discharge government obligation to uphold the economy. Extending funding for infrastructure renewal is excellent. For failing corporations whose own lack of acumen in business basics, not so much.

We may still have a surplus of $6-billion for the last fiscal year before we go into deficit overdrive. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has promised tax relief, and that may come through in the form of permanent tax cuts. The Conservatives, as a minority governing body, have managed to retire $37-billion in debt since 2006.

Which stands in danger of being wiped out in one fell swoop if the decision is made to extend excessively-generous government initiatives not really required to boost the economy at all. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments managed to retire about $105-billion over an 11-year period. The federal debt is about $457-billion, representing the lowest in the G7.

We're in good shape. No need to panic. No need, other than for political manoeuvring for Liberal leader George Ignatieff to promise that if Prime Minister Harper isn't sufficiently attuned to Mr. Ignatieff's idea of what Canada needs at this juncture, in the budget, he's on notice that the budget will be rejected. Consultations have taken place; they will be taken into account.

Rest easy. True, we don't need an election. But nor do we need a Liberal leader who feels it incumbent on himself to pronounce that he has the option of leading a coalition government, bringing down the current government. He isn't keen on an election, would prefer to bypass the democratic process, and still avail himself.

He's becoming altogether too comfortable foregoing the democratic process; it worked very well indeed for him, in the last instance, when he ascended to the leadership without the annoying process of a democratic vote. Canadians don't appreciate his pompous statement that "The choice is up to Mr. Harper. It's up to him to make the right decision, and up to me to decide if he made it."

Matter of fact, it is up to the electorate. Back to basics. This is a democracy. Have a need to govern? Undergo the democratic electoral process. Assess the budget reasonably, stop throwing inconsiderable weight around. Grow up.