More Trickle-Down Effects On Civil Liberties & Labor Abuses

School Plans To Fire Newspaper Teacher

Indiana schools are now in the business of censorship by way of abusing the teachers and ignoring the fundamentals of a journalism curriculum.

WOODBURN, Ind. -- A high school journalism teacher will fight administrators' efforts to fire her over a conflict that began when the student newspaper published an editorial advocating tolerance for homosexuals.

Man, oh man! This stuff is hot on the agenda of the ultra-conservatives in this Red State located smack-dab in the middle of the Bible Belt that breeds the Christian Right and those politicians willing to serve their whims. Forget free speech issues, the civil liberties of students to express a view on a matter that is in the news on almost a daily basis, or even the idea of plain old-fashioned censorship... this stuff is straight out of Nazi Germany. How dare these students editorialize the issue of tolerating homosexuals in our society! How dare a teacher allow such a thing!

Teacher Amy Sorrell received a letter Thursday saying that the East Allen County School Board would consider firing her for insubordination and other misconduct when it meets May 1.

The letter accused Sorrell of failing to follow directives from Woodlan Junior-Senior High School Principal Ed Yoder regarding the school newspaper, altering the newspaper class curriculum and engaging in a campaign to falsely portray the district and Yoder as intolerant.

"The journalism program at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School would be better served by replacing you with a teacher willing to work collaboratively with, not in conflict with, the building administrator in carrying out the prior review curriculum requirement for school-sponsored publications," the letter said.

Is everyone reading the code words properly? What these administrators are really saying is that this journalism teacher allowed the students to voice an unpopular view using school resources and she had been warned--if not ordered--to keep these kids in line. Then, of course, the kids were astute enough to notice a trend of viewpoints offered by the school's upper echelon of administrators that did not necessarily paint a good picture of them, their entrenched ideology or the way they run roughshod over the faculty and students.

But isn't it the job of a journalist to take note of what doesn't seem quite right? Isn't it the job of a newspaper--even a school newspaper--to report and editorialize the issues manifesting in our society, including when they manifest in the school or the community surrounding the school? Isn't it the job of a journalism teacher to teach the independence of the press? Isn't it a part of any journalism curriculum to use the newspaper to explore issues, dilemmas and contrasting views?

What part of the student's editorial violated any standard of journalism? What part of the editorial violated the ethical principles of journalism? It appears that the only thing that was erroneous in this incident is the censorship and fascism that is being exercised by the school administrators.

Sorrell, who was placed on paid suspension last week, will seek a public hearing before the School Board to discuss how she has been treated by district officials, said Jack Groch, an Indiana State Teachers Association representative.

Once again we see an entrenched strategy of blaming someone for the problem than genuinely taking a look at the issues and trying to work out a fair, just and workable solution. But what can we expect when the entire State of Indiana kowtows to the Christian Right... and what can we expect when we the people let them?

"I think the charges are trumped up," Groch said.

NO! Say it isn't so! An educational administrator and/or system trumping up charges as a response to the expression of an unpopular view? It could not happen in this day and age... Could it? And blaming a teacher for the views of students could not happen in a school that has standards and a fair curriculum, could it?

Sorrell said she has difficulty accepting the charge that she improperly had students study court cases regarding the First Amendment rather than produce a newspaper this month. "I just have a really hard time accepting that First Amendment cases are against the curriculum," she said.

When I was in college I wrote for the college newspaper. Several of my courses in college addressed the issue of the First Amendment in terms of the press and media. Since then I have written for several local newspapers in the communities where I have lived. Additionally, I have served on community advisory boards for the Washington Post (via computer), a newspaper in Nashua, New Hampshire, and a newspaper published on the North Shore of Boston. In all of those experiences there were issues and questions about how the First Amendment affected the reporting of news and the production of editorial views. Even in the text of the First Amendment the matter of Freedom of the Press is directly addressed. Since I have certification as a teacher of Communications and Performing Arts from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which includes journalism as a subject matter, I know that the study of the First Amendment and many of the court cases surrounding it are standard fare for every curriculum covering the media, journalism, editorials and more. Sullivan v. Times comes to mind immediately, but the list of cases deciding issues about freedom of the press--which is essentially journalism--is long and decisively a necessity when teaching, learning or practicing news reporting, editorial writing or publishing reviews.

Officials in the school district east of Fort Wayne are confident in their decision, Assistant Superintendent Andy Melin said. "If the administrative team did not fully believe that this was the appropriate action, it would not be taken," he said.

Bovine excrement in extremis!

After the editorial ran in the Woodlan Tomahawk's Jan. 19 issue, school district officials told Sorrell and the newspaper's staff that the principal would need to approve all content before future issues were printed.

Unfortunately, most court cases involving student newspapers allow the school to rule on what can and cannot be included in a newspaper where the school supplies the resources for the students. The courts have essentially said that the school is the publisher and bears the ultimate responsibility for content. However, I believe those rulings are in error because they undermine the First Amendment Rights of the students. Of course, the students could meet independent of school, create an online space for publishing their news and views, and the school would have nothing to say about what is published as long as the students adhered to the ethics, standard and laws affecting journalism... But since the school doesn't believe that teaching such standards, ethics and LAWS, the students might not fare so well in this endeavor.

Some students quit the newspaper staff after Sorrell was suspended and Yoder told the class that it must resume publishing the school paper and print a district policy naming the principal as the publisher.

It seems to me that ordering students to resume publishing under these conditions doesn't say a lot for the manner in which the students are regarded by the educational administration... and it smacks of fascism... and perhaps it's also an indication of the quality of education being offered in that school system... Ooops! There goes the scholarship offers for those kids!

Sophomore Megan Chase, who wrote the editorial, said she expected many students and others to attend the School Board meeting in support of Sorrell. "It's not fair. She never did anything wrong," Chase said. "I didn't think they would actually do it."

Instead of teaching these kids the difference between right and wrong, this incident will teach them about cognitive dissonance and the failure of our leaders to adhere to the standards embodied in our Constitution. Is it any wonder why we have so many people disenfranchised in our body politic? After all, we begin training them to be apathetic, disillusioned and disenfranchised in our schools.

Day Laborers, Illegal Aliens & Immigration

In Defense of Day Laborers

As I have written before, our entire history of immigration policy has been munged because it has been primarily a political tool and an institutionalized instrument of racism. But the argument coming from this NY Times editorial doesn't quite get it either.

In cities and suburbs across America, the confluence of homes, big-box stores and striving immigrant men has created an informal, often unruly job marketplace that has survived every effort to ban it or harass it out of existence.

This market, of Latino day laborers, is hardly the only manifestation of the shadow immigrant economy, but it is the hardest to ignore. These are the immigrants whom localities seem the most desperate to subdue, usually with laws against loitering and job solicitation. A Los Angeles suburb, Baldwin Park, is the latest of dozens to tackle the problem, with an antisoliciting bill written broadly enough to cover cookie-selling Girl Scouts but really meant for the Latino men at Home Depot.

It is significant that we admit there is an underground economy, a shadow immigrant world, and an entire class of people we choose to not only ignore, but also mistreat by way of our laws, policies and practices. Indeed, we could make the argument that our own actions have created a majority of the immigration problems we currently face. Certainly the blind eye we have turned toward migrant workers, immigrants that over-stay their visas, and the entire issue of illegal immigration. Even more convicting of our own policies and practices is the blind eye we have turned toward those that have deliberately, as well as through omission, exploited the underground workers among us. But we are a nation accustomed to exploiting workers, even after our predecessors fought hard to establish unions and pass laws to protect workers.

Such crackdowns are constitutionally dubious and usually fail, and some lawmakers are having doubts about them. Last week, on Long Island, the Suffolk County Legislature defeated a bill to drive away day laborers by forbidding them to “obstruct” county roads. The majority understood that the dimly reasoned measure would have simply diverted workers and contractors’ trucks onto other roads while inviting civil-rights lawsuits. It would not have reduced the population of day laborers the least bit.

This is the same approach used to bury the homeless populations in various cities and states. The rationale is that if we ban the problem, the problem does not exist, or at least it will go away from our own backyards. The NIMBY approach has never worked and we know it. Almost every attempt to use this type of stop-gap measure has failed and has faced constitutional challenges... and failed those challenges as well. Far be from our worthy political leadership to seek out genuine solutions rather than entertain all sorts and forms of denial.

It was a good outcome for a bad bill, but the county is still stuck where it has been for years — wondering how to handle a volatile mixture of men and trucks in a suburb that wishes they would go away. A good next step for Suffolk would be to come around to a solution that other communities have tried, with generally positive results: a hiring site.

I do not agree that there was a good outcome, but I do agree that the bill was a bad solution strategy.

One can oppose illegal immigration and still approve of hiring sites, places where laborers can find shade, toilets and a safe place to negotiate jobs with contractors and homeowners. The most obvious reasons are crowd control and traffic safety.

I disagree. Either we are going to immerse ourselves in the fascist policy of excluding those we do not approve of because of their origins and reasons for entering--and staying--in our country, or we are going to find a genuine solution that will be fair, just, non-discriminatory, and preserve our nation's borders. In this case we have an either-or dilemma: either we are fascist, racist and evil, or we are just and will seek out a just solution. Compromise may be the way of the politician, but it is sometimes a path toward evil as well.

But an equally compelling reason is that hiring sites impose order on free-market chaos. An unregulated day-labor bazaar wallows in the mud flats of capitalism, benefiting sleazy contractors and fostering rock-bottom wages and working conditions for all laborers, legal or not. Hiring sites that register and monitor contractors and laborers can hold them all to account. Employers who undercut competitors and rob workers will find it hard to return to a well-established hiring site, and drunks and belligerents among the laborers will be pressured to toe the line. These places are sometimes called “shape-up sites,” an apt term in more ways than one.

Order is a step toward justice, but it is not justice in and of itself. The argument made in this editorial is not just.

Some lawmakers have gotten over the notion that hiring sites are gifts to illegals, and have concluded that approaching day laborers as community members, with rights and civic responsibilities, is smarter than ranting about them as pests. It is heartening that some local officials are willing to confront the realities of a flawed immigration system and to work responsibly to lessen its troublesome side effects.

How is it that politicians always see a blaming-the-victim strategy as a gift to those being oppressed? Everyone needs to read William Ryan's "Blaming the Victim."

Then there are those who hold out hope that with just one more crackdown, one more ticketing blitz, the men who make our suburbs gleam will take their sweat and muscle elsewhere and leave us alone to tend our homes and hedges by ourselves. Government officials on Long Island, as elsewhere, have tried stiff-necked hostility to day laborers, and have reaped years of failure. They should consider hiring sites as the next, positive step — one that promises not only to be practical and humane, but also effective.

My grandmother used to tell me that the definition of insanity was repeating the same mistake over and over while expecting different outcomes. It seems to me that the current approach to illegal immigration fits within that definition.

A View Of Arkansas

I’ve been on vacation over the past few weeks, visiting my wife’s relatives in Arkansas. We may even be considering a move down to this region because there are a lot of teaching jobs available, as well as opportunities for my wife as an accountant.

But there are a lot of things that bother me about this region. One of the first things is the deeply ingrained racism. It is not a racism that I am accustomed to because it is blatant, overt and permeates everything down this way. The white folks down here use the word “nigger” so often that I do not believe they know how often they use it. Even when they say “blacks” it is obvious that they mean “nigger.” But the prejudice and racism down here is a two-way street. The blacks in this region are rather militant in a passive aggressive way. The attitude that is presented by the vast majority of blacks I have met down here is one of entitlement, resentment and revenge. The behaviors of blacks in this area are not outright aggressive, but passive aggressive. But their behavior and racism is as obvious as the behaviors and racism of the whites.

The other thing I have found to be present is a sense of passive aggressive politeness. That sounds weird even as I type the words. But it is truly present. People offer manners here as a way of getting around being ignorant, intrusive and outright rude. Driving in a parking lot is a good example of this phenomenon. People will drive up the wrong way of a clearly marked lane in a shopping plaza, wave to you as they are obstructing traffic and creating a driving hazard. If you say something about it, your comments are dismissed, you receive a nasty look, or someone confronts you with a comment that might not seem rude in other parts of our nation, but would certainly be considered rude down here.

This passive aggressive politeness plays out in the way people work around here as well. White folks are polite to one another in most cases. But their politeness toward people of color is less cordial, more rigid and has latent content. The same is true of the black folks. Politeness is laced with some intense hatred hidden behind the norms of Southern manners. Everyone calls each other “Miss” or “Mister” something, but this is a pro forma approach in a lot of cases, perhaps even the vast majority of cases. The way workers are treated here, like elsewhere, depends a lot upon the relationship between the individuals. However, there are some unwritten, but very obvious, rules of conduct that operate between subordinates and supervisors, as well as between whites and blacks. A boss is allowed to yell at a black worker in most cases. This yelling is not directed at the person per se, but at getting attention, with the presumption that the black worker is too ignorant, too pre-occupied, or too distracted to be spoken to in an otherwise acceptable manner. Such is not the case for most white workers, even though they may offer the same reluctance, ignorance and passive aggressive response.

A good illustration of this is the way my wife’s uncle addresses two different workers. The first worker is a black man that has been in his employ for years. My wife refers to him as “Mister” and remembers him from years of working for her uncle. But my wife’s uncle refers to him by his last name—not his first name as he does a white person working for him—and often yells orders at him. My wife’s uncle complains that this man is not reliable because he does not always have transportation, does not always comprehend instructions, but he admires this man’s hard work when he is on the job. While it is reported that this man, and another of the black employees hired by my wife’s uncle, are sometimes not available because they take their daily pay and use it to go on a drinking binge, it strikes me that my wife’s uncle is harping on this older black man for not showing up or not being available for reasons of either poverty (i.e. lacking transportation) or an illness (binge drinking as a form of alcoholism).

The other worker is a white man who works for my wife’s aunt, but also does work around the family home installing cabinets and such. While this white man is significantly more skilled than the black man, he is a lazy worker, always seeking to take an easy alternative rather than do a job in the best, highest quality manner. He also is unreliable in that he often promises to show up to do work and doesn’t because he is off on a weekend binge or recovering with a hangover. He has yet to show up on time in all the visits that I have made to my wife’s uncle’s home.

But the difference in the way this white man is treated versus the way he treats the black man is striking. The white man is almost never spoken to in a raised voice. If my wife’s uncle is peeved at him, he will vent his frustration in front of the family, but he does not yell at this man. Despite this man being as unreliable as the black man, he does not call this man a “nigger” when the original meaning of the word might certainly apply. The black man is treated with an almost automatic disdain, despite years of working for my wife’s uncle.

But at the same time, my wife’s uncle pays his black workers a better wage than most other contractors in the area, takes his men to lunch, and is taking one of his “nigger” employees to a short vacation to a casino in another state. While he isn’t paying for the man’s gambling, the room is paid for as a benefit of my wife’s uncle’s frequently flyer/high roller status at several casinos. This speaks to an ingrained racism that is both inherently evil, creeping into the social fabric in almost every encounter between blacks and whites, and the source of so much cognitive dissonance, even among those that participate in it fully.

Silence is another passive aggressive tool down this way. Silence is used very effectively as a tool for shutting down a conversation. Family matters are often dealt with by using silence. Often this silence is accompanied with looks: either a look away from the engaged parties of a conversation or a stare that chastises the speaker that is out of turn or the others want to shut up.

Confrontation is a tactic used primarily in a gathering of men. It is often the equivalent of a pissing contest with the goal of showing others that the confrontational person is better, smarter, more experienced or more willing to stick to his guns. Southern women seem to confront others with smart-ass comments rather than a direct approach.

Gossip is a major social phenomenon down this way. In fact, it is very much institutionalized in the social structure. In every little town there is at least one person—often a person with so many problems that everyone takes pity on them—that fills the role of reporting on everything that occurs, often with embellishment and a great deal of inaccuracy. The vast majority of people coming into contact with such a person will offer condemnation of this behavior, but will pass along the gossip anyway. The passing along of gossip will often be accompanied by an explanation that the information was provided by the “village gossip” and a behind-the-back condemnation of that very person, but the entire process is so much a part of the culture that it isn’t even given a second thought.

At the same time—and this is very confusing—not a person down here would hesitate to come to the aid of someone in need. Even folks that have a history of misbehaving are offered support in times of need. It is a strange mixture of charity, community and nastiness.

The profound poverty of this region also strikes me hard. It smacks you in the face when you see it. There is little in the way of economic development in the region. Lee, Monroe, St. Francis and other surrounding counties of Arkansas are struggling with providing the very basics of life. The poverty is written on the streets of the local communities. Cities and towns in this area are blighted with empty buildings and closed shops. There is very little in the way of higher education throughout the entire northeastern section of Arkansas, especially in the counties aforementioned. The gap between those that have and those that have not is profoundly obvious down here, even though most of the “haves” do not have all that much compared to those that are profoundly wealthy in places like New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, etc.

Then there is the “hillbilly” nature of things down here. Almost every home in the region has some form of junk pile on the premises. Even my wife’s aunt and uncle, who would qualify as being among the “haves” down here, have a hole dug on their property just for dumping junk. The difference between my wife’s relatives and the more obvious hillbillies is how and where such junk is handled. My wife’s relatives have the decency to dig a hole and eventually bury the junk. A good number of folks down here have their junk strewn across their property. A few even take the time to decorate their house and their junk for the major holiday celebrations, including Christmas, Easter and Halloween.

The amount of junk being stored on the premises of so many down here is phenomenal. Old abandoned, quite dilapidated houses and other structures, including abandoned trailer homes, as well as modular houses, are often on the same lot as a newer brick (or partially brick) structure. Log cabin style homes are popular as vacation or retirement homes along the lakes and in regions where hunting and fishing are the main pre-occupations of the community. But even there, the home owners seem content to store junk, allow “stuff” to be strewn about and crap to pile up in places where it is obviously a health or safety hazard.

Another concern of mine is food. My wife and I are accustomed to eating out on occasion, especially at places that offer quality and quantity. The problem is that, beyond family fare offered at family gatherings, church socials, funerals and weddings, there isn’t much in the way of good restaurants. There is SONIC, which almost has a monopoly on the fast food market in this area. In neighboring states, and in Memphis (about 75 minutes away) and in Little Rock (about 2 hours away), there are some fine eateries, but almost nothing local. My wife and I stopped in Sikeston, MO to eat at Lambert’s Café (“home of the throwed rolls”) for a meal that would satisfy anyone, but between there and here there was almost nothing noteworthy as fine fare.

Even grocery shopping for food to cook at home is a bit of a strain because none of the more gourmet or gourmand supplies are to be found in the local supermarkets (a misnomer in this area), not even Wal-Mart Super Centers. We went looking for ricotta cheese to make lasagne for the family the other day and no one in the store ever heard of it. I realize Italian cuisine may be an uncommon experience for many in this area, but at least Wal-Mart employees should be familiar with ricotta. We will never find any Indian cuisine supplies in this neck of the woods. We can almost assuredly be expected to surrender our taste for Arabic and Middle Eastern cuisine, especially if we want kibbee, mousaka, anything made with lamb, or even a good rendition of pita bread.

Then there is the fact that the nearest grocery store is at least 20 miles away from every one of my wife’s relatives’ homes. More often than not, that grocery store is a Super Wal-Mart. Of course Wal-Mart is a place of worship and recreation down here. Despite the fact that Wal-Mart has a reputation for treating workers, communities, competitors, existing merchants and its suppliers with disdain and offensive disregard for integrity, Wal-Mart is still held in high regard because its prices are within the tolerance of the average household purse. Even the more well-off shop at “Wally World” because the prices beat any of the competition. It is here, in the bosom of Sam Walton’s own home state, that Wal-Mart best demonstrates its own propensity for taking full advantage of its market position and its penchant for treating all of society in an inherently evil, greedy manner.

On the other hand, barbecue down here is tremendous and relatively cheap. Barbecue is a passion shared and debated by many in the region. My wife’s relatives all prefer Craig’s BBQ in DeValls Bluff, located about halfway between West Memphis and Little Rock. Craig’s has been featured in Time Magazine as one of the best barbecue places in the Mid-South and offers pork, beef or country-style ribs drowned in a sauce with a bite and a burn. Myself, I prefer a sauce with a bite, a little burn and a little sweetness. I would even prefer a sauce with a bit of a vinegar tang. In fact, when my wife insists upon using Craig’s sauce at home, I usually doctor it with some spices of my own choosing and enough honey, sugar or vinegar to make the sauce tolerable to my palate… much to her dismay.

Pizza down here, however, is not likely to exceed the quality offered by Pizza Hut (yuck!). Coming from the Chicago area at this time in my life, where pizza is one of the regional offerings of excellence, I will miss good take-out pizza. Even good family-style diners and cafes are wanting down here. Where we live there are several that serve breakfast all day and offer a hell of a lot of decent menu choices for a very reasonable amount of money. In the local village where my wife's relatives live (it’s too small to be called a town) there is a small store that offers some fast food (fried catfish, fried chicken, fried bologna sandwiches, some breakfast fare and the like), but has some of the weirdest hours I have ever seen. It closes at 2:00PM on Saturdays and has been known to open for only a few minutes on Sundays. Of course, it is run by one of my wife’s relatives.

My wife and I have managed to build a bit of a reputation for cooking because we offer pizza resembling Chicago-style offerings and Italian cuisine—lasagne, spaghetti, or other pasta dishes—that are not otherwise found in the vast wilds of Arkansas. Since some of her relatives that have moved down here from the Northwest Indiana regions, they really appreciate our efforts because they miss the fare offered in Chicagoland.

However, I am a square peg down here. Not only am I a Yankee who is originally from Boston, and has lived all over the US and several parts of the world, but I have political ideas that do not sit well down here. I believe it is right—and even my duty—to speak out against mediocrity, evil done by those that lead us, as well as the entrenchment of the Christian Right. The area where my wife wants us to move is the breeding grounds for the most deeply entrenched political and religious right members of our society. There is a church of some kind—usually some form of Baptist, Church of God, Pentecostal, “Bible Church” or Church of Christ—on every corner. Marianna, the county seat for Lee County, has more churches than stores or businesses. If you were to fire off a slingshot or hit a baseball foul, you would be likely to hit a church every time.

Plus, I do not have any friends here. My wife’s family are fine folks and very loving, but I do not have the kind of support and stimulation I need to sustain me. There are no libraries nearby, and those that are available are poorly supplied with resources. Several of the local libraries, including the county library, do not have computers for patron use. In fact, the library for Lee County located in Marianna just got their computer system and are just now updating their shelves so that a computerized check out and tracking system is available. Despite the need for a book mobile outreach, there is nothing of that kind here. The books available at the libraries I have visited are, for the most part, at least 30 years out of date.

The school systems are equally antiquated. Many do not have computers for faculty or students. Football and basketball are more important considerations than curriculum, library accessibility, or education. The achievement record for the schools down this way is miserable. Teaching here will be a challenge, especially because of the racism and politics based on that racism. The expectations of success are held at the lowest levels. It is expected that the blacks in the community will never amount to anything of great value and most whites are more or less doomed to working two or three jobs. The general attitude is that anyone worth anything will work like a dog—an under fed and maltreated dog—for anyone willing to offer a job, even if it means being treated poorly, suffering low wages, and being at the beck and call of whomever has the money to write the checks. I do not think that these folks—white or black—recognize that they are creating self-fulfilling prophecies and enabling the larger corporate entities in this state and region—as well as the politicians that run the show out of Little Rock—to screw them over.

The towns and cities (huh!) in this region are predominantly dependent upon one or two major employers. When such an employer goes under, decides to move, or suffers losses, the entire community and region loses as well. In the wake of these failures and dependencies, opportunists abound. Once such case is a large agricultural concern in the region. The owner of this concern is actively using every influence to manipulate the US Army Corps of Engineers, the grain farmers in the region and those towns seeking to rebuild after decades of economic losses to his advantage by promoting the dredging of the White River to allow a renewal of barge traffic. Of course this might offer the benefit of a few jobs. It will also produce water resources for some of the farmers on the north and west sides of the river, where so much water has been diverted from the naturally occurring aquifers that the land no longer holds rain water long enough to support the rice, wheat and corn crops that these farmers grow. But at the same time the dredging and diversion of water will ruin habitat for fish, fowl, birds and mammals for hundreds of miles in the region and especially along the White River.

The devastation to the natural aquifers is illustrated by a discussion held over a fish-fry outing at one of my wife’s relative’s house situated on a popular lake among the fishing and hunting crowds. It was discussed that a local farmer had forty six-to-ten inch wells on a 6,000 acre parcel of farmland. These wells are used to irrigate crops, especially rice and corn. Since the ground here is mostly sand and clay—and more clay than sand—this water does not re-enter the aquifer in large quantities. The water is either drained using man-made equipment and designs, runs off into ditches and streams, or evaporates and is carried off to parts unknown by the prevailing winds in the region. Additionally, these farmers fertilize and spray insecticides, which results in a contamination of the water and land.

Although most commercial corporate farmers would not consider 6,000 acres a lot of farm, it is a significant amount of land down here. If you multiply the practices of the farmer described above by the hundreds working and living in the parts of Arkansas east of Little Rock, the damage to the environment is tremendous. But the environment is the least concern down here because of the profound poverty, the subsistence hand-to-mouth living that most people experience, and the lack of opportunities available within 150 miles in any direction.

The politicians in Little Rock have a lot to answer for in the whole of Arkansas, but all the more so in the northeastern counties of the state. But so, too, do the local community leaders and the churches of the region. One would think that with all the power, influence and access to the people that the churches have in this region, more could be done to resolve the problems and invigorate the economy with new opportunities. One would think that the vital natural resources of the region would be protected. It would also seem logical that the key to economic renewal in the region—the education system—would receive more attention and support… and please note that I did not say money.

But such is the way of Arkansas. I managed to take a lot of pictures that illustrate many of the contrasts that I describe here, but pictures are worth a thousand words and it would take thousands of pictures to completely illustrate the truth of Arkansas… but I suspect that Arkansas is only different from the rest of the nation in the way its poverty and contrasts are manifested, not in the realities that families experience as a result of the screwing over our leaders and corporations are providing us everywhere.

We Are Now Importing Our Higher Education Opportunities

India Attracts Universities From the U.S.

For the past three decades our colleges and universities have been actively seeking foreign students--especially those coming from the elite and wealthy classes from the Middle East, Far East and in between--rather than providing space for our own students. The rationale for doing so was originally posed in altruistic lofty goals of sharing the world through education. But that has not proven to be the real rationale at all. The real rationale has been greed.

That's right, greed! Take the big Ivy League schools for example. All of these institutions share a not-for-profit status in our society under the rationale that such educational institutions are good for society. All the while these institutions are enjoying a tax-exempt status--even exempt from property taxes in some states--they are amassing fortunes in terms of real estate, endowments, grants and donations. Much of their wealth has been derived from the influence of their alumni who end us holding high office, attaining significant wealth, and feel a duty to support their alma mater.

But in America this duty to an alma mater is experiencing a significant waning. Alumni are no longer feeling the pull on their wallets and purses to donate to such institutions. Part of the reason most Americans are disillusioned with donating to their alma mater is that these filthy rich institutions are still charging $20,000 per semester for classes, with additional charges for room and board. When an institution like Harvard, which got its start as a publicly supported institution and required students to be a resident of Massachusetts, charges $40,000 or more for what amounts to seven months education (considering all the breaks and the split of the semesters), a lousy room and cafeteria food, an alumni might get the notion that Harvard--or any other Ivy League institution--has already taken its share of wealth from the student and his family.

Then, too, many taxpayers might get the notion that donating to these institutions--even the lesser known institutions--isn't necessary, or even moral, when a goodly portion of the tuition, fees, room and board are paid by federal and state grants paid for by the taxpayer. Even the state schools have gotten into the game of gouging. In fact, many state schools could do with a serious audit as to how they spend the money supplied to them by financial aid, operational funding and block grants.

But the biggest insult--and not because of offering education to others--occurs when these filthy rich institutions start marketing schools to places where there are already educational opportunities, and to the elite classes in those places, only to tap into more immediate money and to fill the gap that they themselves are creating by their disregard of the American educational system and our own students.

If these institutions were reaching out to provide needed educational opportunities to those that really needed it, we might not argue with the premise of moving our resources overseas.

Of course, the article addresses the efforts of Carnegie-Mellon, but it does make the case that American institutions making the move to include India under its domain will have to have waivers on caps regarding fees, tuition and salaries. Gee, imagine that.

It was an unusual university entrance interview.

Late one recent evening here in steamy southern India, Vijay Muddana sat in a mercilessly air-conditioned room, leaning forward in his chair and talking to the wall. There, projected on a screen via videoconferencing equipment, were administrators from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where an early morning snowstorm had caused a power failure, delaying the interviews by an hour. The Indians found it funny that even in Pittsburgh, there were power failures.

Mr. Muddana, 21, was among a dozen ambitious young Indians hoping to get a graduate degree in information technology offered jointly by Carnegie Mellon and a small private college here.

The exchange was one of the many ways in which American universities, eager to expand to markets abroad, are training their sights on India. Some 40 percent of the population is under 18, and a scarcity of higher education opportunities is frequently cited as a potential hurdle to economic progress.

The American universities are just testing the waters, because the law here is still vague on how foreign educational institutions can operate. But that may soon change.

[The Bush administration’s envoy for public diplomacy, Karen P. Hughes, is visiting India this week with a half-dozen American university presidents to promote Brand America in Indian education. The United States wants an easing of rules under a draft law on foreign investment in Indian education, which is to be introduced in Parliament in April.]

If the law is approved, foreign institutions would be exempt from strict rules that currently apply to all government-accredited universities in India on fees, staff salaries and curriculums. The government has already proposed setting up an expert committee to review the standards and reputation of foreign universities that want to establish independent campuses here.

The growing American interest in Indian education reflects a confluence of trends. It comes as American universities are trying to expand their global reach in general, and discovering India’s economic rise in particular. It also reflects the need for India to close its gaping demand for higher education.

Among Indians ages 18 to 24, only 7 percent enter a university, according to the National Knowledge Commission, which advises the prime minister’s office on higher education. To roughly double that percentage — effectively bringing it up to par with the rest of Asia — the commission recommends the creation of 1,500 colleges and universities over the next several years. India’s public universities are often woefully underfinanced and strike-prone.

Indians are already voting with their feet: the commission estimates that 160,000 Indians are studying abroad, spending an estimated $4 billion a year. Indians and Chinese make up the largest number of foreign students in the United States.

Madeleine Green, vice president for international initiatives at the American Council on Education, calls India “the next frontier” for American institutions, many of which have already set up base in China.

“The pull factor is the interest of India and the opportunity that India now presents,” she said. “The push is from American institutions saying, ‘There’s a world out there and we need to discover it. It’ll make our grads more competitive.’ It’s part of their push to internationalize.”

At the moment, however, instead of setting up satellite campuses as was done in China, Singapore or Qatar, most American institutions are opting to join hands with existing Indian institutions.

Columbia Business School, for instance, started a student exchange program earlier this year with the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad. The institutions teamed up to write case materials devised to teach American students about doing business in India.

“For us it’s market access; for them it’s access to a bigger business school,” said R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School.

Columbia is the latest of several foreign business schools to tie up with the Ahmedabad campus, reflecting what its director, Bakul Dholakia, sees as a growing appetite to train future executives about India. “Companies out there need managers now who have a unique Asian perspective,” he said.

The Americanization of Indian education is following a variety of approaches. Champlain College, based in Burlington, Vt., runs a satellite campus in Mumbai that offers degrees in one of three career-oriented subjects that college administrators have found to be attractive to Indians: business, hospitality industry management and software engineering. A 2005 study commissioned by the government found at least 131 foreign educational institutions operating in India at the time, a vast majority offering vocational courses.

However, Champlain’s degrees are not recognized by the Indian government, something that is still typical here. One government official who looks after private education estimated that at least 100,000 students graduated from entirely unaccredited private institutions. The study found that students did not consider unaccredited college degrees to be a hindrance to getting jobs in the private sector.

California State University, Long Beach, has agreed to help start American-style, four-year degree programs at state-run Lucknow University in northern India. Its vice chancellor, R. P. Singh, said the California institution would help draft the curriculum and train faculty.

Cornell University, whose president is among the American university officials visiting India in recent months, is seeking to expand research collaborations, particularly in agriculture and public health.

Rice University envisions faculty and student exchanges, particularly in technology. “What’s in it for us is opportunities for our students, opportunities for our faculty in terms of research collaboration,” said David Leebron, the university president, who was in India in February. “At this stage we think we are best served by developing partnerships with Indian institutions.”

For its part, Carnegie Mellon offers its degree in partnership with a small private institution here, the Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar School of Advanced Software Engineering. Most of the course work is done at relatively inexpensive rates here in India, followed by six months in Pittsburgh, at the end of which students graduate with a Carnegie Mellon degree.

The arrangement circumvents most of the usual Indian government restrictions. The curriculum is devised in partnership with Carnegie Mellon, and students are chosen jointly by faculty from both schools.

There are no affirmative action requirements for student admissions, as there are in accredited colleges. Fees are not regulated by the state. It is expensive by Indian standards, though nearly all of the students are subsidized by scholarships financed by Shiv Nadar, the college’s founder and chief executive of HCL Technologies, one of India’s leading technology companies.

The applicants on the recent evening in Chennai were eager to please the gatekeepers from Pittsburgh. They addressed them politely with a series of “yes, sirs.” Asked what they could contribute to Carnegie Mellon, some of them became flummoxed. One young man said he wanted to develop software designed for the “global citizen,” by which he meant a way to transfer money across continents using a mobile phone.

Mr. Muddana, who had a bachelor’s degree in information technology and had spent the past eight months as a software developer for an Indian firm, said he saw the program as a cost-effective ticket to an American degree and a chance to work for a few years in the United States.

His father, he said, failed to grasp his ambitions. Why would he quit a secure, well-paying job to go back to school, his father wanted to know. Mr. Muddana said his father taught at a government school in a rural district in neighboring Andhra Pradesh State. He earns today roughly what his son makes fresh out of college. Mr. Muddana said his father was bewildered by his dreams and by how much it would cost to get a master’s degree.

“He’s presently thinking only of the investment,” Mr. Muddana said, “not the outcome.”

Correction: March 31, 2007

An article on Monday about efforts by American universities to expand to India and other countries misstated the name of an Indian educational institution that is in a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to offer students a Carnegie Mellon degree. It is the Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar School of Advanced Software Engineering — not the Shri Shiv Shankar Nadar College of Engineering.

Seeking Educational Nirvana

Failing Schools See a Solution in Longer Day

I have long been an advocate of changing the way we teach our children. Our school day is shorter than the school day in 75% of the industrialized world. Our curriculum over-emphasizes the social components of school through sports, clubs, pep rallies and extra-curricular activities (not that these are unimportant, but they are over-emphasized over academics). Our school calendar is still based upon an agricultural society that doesn't exist, not even in the rural areas of our nation.

With the advent of farming machinery, the need for the school breaks for planting, tending and harvesting crops is no longer necessary, yet we continue to use the agrarian calendar that was formulated in the late 1800s. Other, more competitive, nations have school years that are structured around the way the particular society works. We also have a calendar that demands breaks around the religious holidays of Christianity, which places some significant restrictions on how the school year can be divided. While it is important to allow for religious and cultural celebrations, the entire society doesn't necessarily revolve around those celebrations. Allowing for these celebrations is not the same as centering the schedule around these events.

We also need to include Saturdays into our school schedule. Other nations--especially those that are beating our standards and achievements in education--use Saturday as a regular school day. In my view, Saturdays are more in tune with remedial assistance, additional advanced placement classes, organized and intramural sports, community involvement and professional development. We currently endure too many interruptions to the academic schedule in deference to sports and physical education. Additionally, many students are involved in external physical activities that are far superior to the traditional gym class, but are not given credit or recognition for that form of physical education. Example of this dynamic includes students enrolled in formal martial arts, skating, gymnastics, tennis, golf, cycling, skateboarding, dance, swimming or other programs that require an overall commitment and dedication that far exceeds any requirements of the traditional gym class. More often than not, students enrolled in these external programs are not provided credit, accommodation or recognition of their dedicated and committed efforts in these programs, despite the fact that the fitness regime exceeds anything offered by school.

In my view, the school should become the community center for these activities, forming partnerships with well-established providers of these courses, with curricular support and oversight, and these activities are scheduled after the academic regimen is fulfilled. In this model a high school or middle school student attends academic classes from 7:30 AM until 3:30 PM (or some similar time frame) and then is allotted 1.5 to 3 hours for some form of committed, school-based physical training and activity. Traditional sport programs--including football, soccer, basketball, baseball, softball, hockey, field hockey, track & field--are included in the physical education curriculum. Additionally, dance, gymnastics, cheer leading (in its modern competitive form), Judo, Aikido, tennis, golf, swimming, hiking, cycling and other physical activities that fulfill the requirements of physical education are included.

Those physical education requirements include 1) developing an understanding of exercise; 2) developing an understanding of fitness; 3) an understanding of body structure and function in exercise and fitness; 4) an understanding of injury prevention and care; 5) an understanding of the role of physical activity and sport in society; 6) an understanding of the rules and formal structure of a sport or fitness activity; and 7) an understanding of the fitness, physical activity and sports options available in society.

Additionally, I believe the physical education portion of a curriculum can be achieved by having students enroll in activities that occur outside of the academic activities. Gym classes, physical education, sports and fitness programs need to be worked into the daily schedule in such a way as it promotes a lifelong commitment to fitness, not merely a class that we force our children to endure. We need activities available after the academic activities are complete, are acceptable to the participants, are developmentally appropriate for each participant, and are available on a year-round basis.

But the problem is that most educators, policy makers and politicians think that merely lengthening the day, extending the school year, and setting standards that can be measured by standardized testing is the answer to the problems in our educational system. But the real problem with our education systems stem from the fact that we do not collectively value education. We do not understand education, so we do not value it. We see education as a means for obtaining work. The emphasis in our education systems is to lead students to a job or, better still, a career. We teach our children that our jobs define us, that the boss is almost always right, and that by working hard for our employers that we will succeed. In essence, we set up our children for failure because we lie to them. We do not offer them opportunity. We do not prepare them for critical thinking. We do not challenge them to genuinely seek out opportunities to improve the world and the human condition. We do not understand that it is through education that we can improve our world, our nation, our state, our town and our community.

We do not understand the greatness for which we were destined. We also do not understand that we have choices. Because we do not understand all of this, we spend our time, money and energy on destruction, separation and emphasizing our differences and disputes... and we end up being led around by our collective noses as if we were sheep or cattle, rather than the only creatures on earth that have the capacity for reason, spirit and greatness that we have. It is because of our denial of education and the resulting sense of hopelessness that we breed that we pollute our world, engage in unnecessary conflicts and work toward competing interests rather than collective cooperation, harmony and success for all creation.

Imagine a world like that illustrated in the Star Trek series of dramas. Imagine that every person was able to pursue their own special purpose and interests in life. Imagine the greatness that could be achieved if education were a focus of our society and we were let loose to fulfill the greatest possible potential. Imagine a world where science could be focused on feeding the hungry, creating new forms of agriculture, non-polluting forms of energy, new methods of medicine, where politicians actual worked toward good purposes rather than greed... just imagine.

There have been times in my life where I have been overwhelmed by the world's focus on things other than what I really understood. I have experience great spiritual pain because I cannot fulfill all of my potential. But what has kept me going is the realization of the greatness the world can achieve.

We see glimpses of greatness every day, but we tend to ignore them. We see such greatness when we see a toddler struggle with a cognitive puzzle, conquering it and experiencing the "eureka experience." We see this greatness when we see kids--children who still see the wonder in the world--reach out in an enterprising way to offer a small solution to some social problem. We see such greatness when an advocate provides a blanket to a homeless person on a cold winter day. We saw such greatness in the post-Katrina effort of volunteers and dedicated workers to save lives, homes and dignity. We see such greatness when we do what is beyond of self-interest and serves the greater good.

I firmly believe that such greatness is only achieved through an educational approach that teaches not only the rigors of the "Three R's," but also the awe and wonder of the world, the awe and wonder of humanity, the awe and wonder of all creation, and our responsibility to respond to the awe and wonder in the world by taking positive, caring, compassionate and loving steps to preserve that awe and wonder in each and every one of us... preserving it by establishing and maintaining the universal connection and attachment that we have for each other.

Given that such teachings are inherent in almost every religion of the world, it is stupefying that we rely on these religions to separate us into competing ideological groups that emphasize our differences, conflicts and self-interests. The root of all evil is the greed that comes from losing that awe and wonder we have as children. Some of us lose it by the time we are seven or eight years old. Some of us lose it in our teen years. Some lose it as late as young adulthood. We would have a different world if we worked at keeping it.

The article that prompted this post looks at making the school day longer. That solution will only work if every educator in every school changes their approach to education and brings awe and wonder to every day in the classroom, and that eventually translates into people leaving school with that sense of awe and wonder fully intact.

States and school districts nationwide are moving to lengthen the day at struggling schools, spurred by grim test results suggesting that more than 10,000 schools are likely to be declared failing under federal law next year.

In Massachusetts, in the forefront of the movement, Gov. Deval L. Patrick is allocating $6.5 million this year for longer days and can barely keep pace with demand: 84 schools have expressed interest.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York has proposed an extended day as one of five options for his state’s troubled schools, part of a $7 billion increase in spending on education over the next four years — apart from the 37 minutes of extra tutoring that children in some city schools already receive four times a week.

And Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut is proposing to lengthen the day at persistently failing schools as part of a push to raise state spending on education by $1 billion.

“In 15 years, I’d be very surprised if the old school calendar still dominates in urban settings,” said Mark Roosevelt, superintendent of schools in Pittsburgh, which has added 45 minutes a day at eight of its lowest-performing schools and 10 more days to their academic year.

But the movement, which has expanded the day in some schools by as little as 30 minutes or as much as two hours, has many critics: among administrators, who worry about the cost; among teachers, whose unions say they work hard enough as it is, and have sought more pay and renegotiation of contracts; and among parents, who say their children spend enough time in school already.

Still others question the equity of moving toward a system where students at low-performing, often urban, schools get more teaching than students at other schools.

And of all the steps school districts take to try to improve student achievement, lengthening the day is generally the costliest — an extra $1,300 a student annually here in Massachusetts — and difficult to sustain.

The idea of a longer day was first promoted in charter schools — public schools that are tax-supported but independently run. But the surge of interest has been spurred largely by the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires annual testing of students, with increasingly dire consequences for schools that fall short each year, including possible closing.

Pressed by the demands of the law, school officials who support longer days say that much of the regular day must concentrate on test preparation. With extra hours, they say, they can devote more time to test readiness, if needed, and teach subjects that have increasingly been dropped from the curriculum, like history, art, drama.

“Whether it’s No Child Left Behind or local standards, when you start realizing that we’re really having a hard time raising kids to standards, you see you need more time,” said Christopher Gabrieli of Massachusetts 2020, a nonprofit education advocacy group that supports a longer school day. “As people are starting to really sweat, they’ve increasingly started to think really hard about ‘are we giving them enough time?’ ”

Still, some educators question whether keeping children in school longer will improve their performance. A recent report by the Education Sector, a centrist nonprofit research group, found that unless the time students are engaged in active learning — mastering academic subjects — is increased, adding hours alone may not do much.

Money also has proved a big obstacle. Murfreesboro, Tenn., experimented with a longer day, but abandoned the plan when the financing ran out, said An-Me Chung, a program officer at the C. S. Mott Foundation, which does education research. Typically, she said, lengthening the school day can add about 30 percent to a state’s per-pupil spending on education.

Given that expense, New Mexico is acting surgically. The state is spending $2.3 million to extend the day for about 2,100 children in four districts who failed state achievement tests. The money, $1,000 a student, goes for an extra hour of school a day for those children, time they spend on tutorials tailored to their weaknesses in math or reading.

Karen Kay Harvey, an assistant secretary of education for New Mexico, said that the state could not afford to do more. Adding the equivalent of one extra day of school a year for all students could run from $3 million to $5 million, she said.

Still, in many districts across the country, the trend has taken hold. In Miami, 39 schools that are farthest behind have added an extra hour to the school day, as well as five days to the school year. In California, the small West Fresno district, with some of the lowest test scores in Fresno County, added an hour more of school a day for students in the fourth to eighth grades.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the education committee, supports the idea of longer school days and is proposing $50 million a year, to rise to $150 million by 2012, under No Child Left Behind to train a corps of 40,000 teachers to help schools redesign academic content for those extra hours.

Though the trend could accentuate the differences between poor and middle-class students, with low-income students forced to spend longer hours behind their desks, Ms. Chung noted that middle-class children “basically have their own extended day that their parents have put together for them.” The virtue of the extended day, educators say, is that it forces children who might not otherwise attend voluntary after-school programs to spend time on studies.

In Massachusetts, schools in that state’s pilot program, teachers have received a 30 percent raise for their extra work. But pay is not the only issue for them.

In Lowell, Mass., for example, teachers balked at the district’s original plan to participate, saying they were too tired at the end of the day for extra work and had their own obligations at home.

Lowell parents also opposed the plan, concerned that longer days would be too taxing for children, especially the younger ones. Parents also feared their children would have to walk home in the dark and said that a longer day would cut into family time, said Karla Brooks Baehr, the school superintendent.

The district shelved the plan and developed an alternative proposal that gives students and teachers more freedom to choose the days they will stay late, and offers a range of activities along with core academics, including tutorials and swimming.

The Massachusetts schools that were awarded the state grants have grappled with ensuring that the extra time helps raise achievement. At many, officials say the program has been a success.

At Matthew J. Kuss Middle School here in Fall River, the time has bolstered instruction in reading, math and science as well as opening the way for electives in art and drama, forensics, karate and cooking — “the fun things for kids,” said Nancy Mullen, the principal — that had been pared away as the school’s standing fell.

So far, attendance is up and lateness is down, two areas that helped fuel the state takeover two years ago of Kuss, Massachusetts’s first school designated as chronically failing. “The students are more engaged in school,” Ms. Mullen said.

At the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School in Cambridge, Mass., where all students learn Mandarin, educators doubled the time spent teaching reading in the elementary grades to three hours a day. They used a method called Literacy Collaborative, which weaves lessons in reading and writing into other subjects, like social studies.

One recent morning, Joan Kerwin, a literacy coach, spent a half-hour with a fourth-grade class discussing a composition by one of the students, Kibir Uddin, who wrote about the thrill of receiving an honors certificate, describing the special paper it came on.

“ ‘The bumps looked like gems and rubies,’ ” Ms. Kerwin read from the essay. “He took that emotion,” she explained to the class, “and put it into exact language.”

It was the kind of lesson, teachers said, that would have been impossible with a shorter day.

At Kuss, students who were having trouble learning fractions built a scale model of a house from architectural drawings. Stephanie Baker, who teaches cooking, has posters around her room with math problems drawn from previous years’ state exams that she incorporates into her classes.

“I know I’m working longer hours,” said Ms. Baker, who wore a white toque, as the aroma of teacakes students had baked wafted from her room. “But this has been the most rewarding year I’ve had in 29 years of teaching.”

Many parents in Fall River said they were pleased by the commitment a longer schedule signaled, reasoning that more hours meant more chances for their children to succeed.

Some parents in this working-class community, like John Chaves, father of a seventh-grader, Mindy, said they supported more time at school simply because so few are home earlier to welcome their children. “We’re never home at the time that they’re home, so at least we know where our kids are,” Mr. Chaves said.

Mindy is studying guitar and forensics after school. “Today,” her father said, “she came home saying that men have a bigger forehead than women. She never used to do that.

“I ask, ‘Where are you learning this stuff?’ ” Mr. Chaves continued.

“ ‘Forensic class,’ she tells me. ‘I love it.’ ”

The Trickle Down Approach To Civil Liberty Abuse

City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention

The reality of the PATRIOT ACT, the NSA warrantless spying programs (note the plurality), the Post 9-11 era of extremism and the growth of fascism in the name of--but not really for--national security, and the countless failures of our governmental entities to take genuine steps to protect us and our civil liberties, is clearly illustrated by the fact that local and state law enforcement officers are once again--just as was the case for over 30 years during the Cold War--using political justification, homeland security and unreasoned paranoia to create a fascist state of existence in our country... at all levels of operation.

Of course, the head of NYC's terrorism prevention efforts has gained national attention for the job being done, the NYPD has received accolades for its surveillance efforts in pursuit of preventing another terrorist attack, and former Mayor Guilliani is still receiving high praise for his reaction--and the work of so many others rather than Rudy--for being in the right place at the wrong time.

How many more police departments and law enforcement agencies are involved in such surreptitious programs that are clearly politically motivated, and clearly in violation of our civil liberties? But we have an entire commission of five people protecting us from such abuse, right? So why is it that when push came to shove regarding our civil liberties these "commissioners" caved in on our liberties?

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.

In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police departments in other cities. A police report on an organization of artists called Bands Against Bush noted that the group was planning concerts on Oct. 11, 2003, in New York, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Between musical sets, the report said, there would be political speeches and videos.

“Activists are showing a well-organized network made up of anti-Bush sentiment; the mixing of music and political rhetoric indicates sophisticated organizing skills with a specific agenda,” said the report, dated Oct. 9, 2003. “Police departments in above listed areas have been contacted regarding this event.”

Police records indicate that in addition to sharing information with other police departments, New York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe.

The operation was mounted in 2003 after the Police Department, invoking the fresh horrors of the World Trade Center attack and the prospect of future terrorism, won greater authority from a federal judge to investigate political organizations for criminal activity.

To date, as the boundaries of the department’s expanded powers continue to be debated, police officials have provided only glimpses of its intelligence-gathering.

The Illustrated Failure Of A Presidency... And Of A President

The President’s Prison

George Bush does not want to be rescued.

That is because George W. Bush is so egotistical, so self-involved, and so immune to the sense of reason that God gave a rock that he cannot fathom the reality that he, and his presidency, is in deep piles of manure, sewerage and slurry. He refuses to take note of reality because he definitively believes that God has chosen him to lead this nation. The problem is that he has failed to lead this nation. He has violated our Constitution and only has his fellow GOP members of the extremes, and the failure of the Democrats to choose a leader with some sense of ethics, to thank for not being called to task via the impeachment process. Since Dubya acts like a spoiled child, thanks to the way George H. W. and Barbara Bush failed to provide him with any sense of social awareness and compassion, the fact that he is in trouble doesn't register in his small-minded view of the world. Since we have failed to hold him accountable, he continues to thumb his nose at Congress, despite the growing disdain for him and his presidency, and the repeated calls for accountability from the general public and those with a set of balls in congress (very few in number).

But his lack of awareness, lack of acknowledgment, lack of ethics, and delusions of specific calling from God, is ruining our reputation and standing in the world. In my years of training in martial arts I was impressed by a poster my sensei displayed on the wall. It read:

Now Put It Back: A young girl and her father were walking through a garden. The young girl picked a flower and asked her father to admire it. After a few moments of admiration, she turned to her father and asked him to put it back. Your reputation is a lot like the flower; once it is damaged it is almost impossible to restore.

George W. Bush could have learned a thing or two from my sensei.

The president has been told countless times, by a secretary of state, by members of Congress, by heads of friendly governments — and by the American public — that the Guantánamo Bay detention camp has profoundly damaged this nation’s credibility as a champion of justice and human rights. But Mr. Bush ignored those voices — and now it seems he has done the same to his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, the man Mr. Bush brought in to clean up Donald Rumsfeld’s mess.

First, I want to acknowledge that Robert Gates may be the first person in the entire history of the Bush administration to have the integrity and sense of ethics to actually tell his boss the truth and then stand behind it. General Colin Powell came close to doing so, but then fell back on his military training that dictates one does not question the judgment of the superiors. What Powell forgot is what every field commander knows, instinctively and by experience: sometimes the orders and actions coming from up the chain of command does not reflect the situation in the field. In other words, the top echelon of command doesn't often know its ass from its brass.

Gates may also be the smartest of all of Bush's cabinet members in that he has brought his views out into the open with media coverage. When Powell spoke to the problems in the Bush Doctrine, the invasion of Iraq, and the handling of international affairs, he did so in private, as most generals, cabinet secretaries, special White House advisers, and professionals would do. But Gates recognized that this "professional approach" has not worked to date and only media pressure has gotten any palpable results from the brain-dead leadership offered by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gonzalez, Chertoff, et al. So he has, without being disrespectful or unprofessional, brought the issues he needs attended to out into the public view... which may or may not get Bush's immediate attention, but will bring to bear the negative media attention that Bush and his gang of fascist thugs, and the PR machine supporting them, have responded to in the past.

Thom Shanker and David Sanger reported in Friday’s Times that in his first weeks on the job, Mr. Gates told Mr. Bush that the world would never consider trials at Guantánamo to be legitimate. He said that the camp should be shut, and that inmates who should stand trial should be brought to the United States and taken to real military courts.

Again, I have to commend Secretary Gates for being astute enough to appropriately assess the situation and address it almost immediately upon taking office. It is just too bad that Bush is not bright enough, or aware enough, to see the only gem--however hidden from the rest of the world--that might exist in his entire administration... or his presidency.

Mr. Bush rejected that sound advice, heeding instead the chief enablers of his worst instincts, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

I have to admire an editorial that speaks volumes of truth!

Their opposition was no surprise. The Guantánamo operation was central to Mr. Cheney’s drive to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress and the courts, and Mr. Gonzales was one of the chief architects of the policies underpinning the detainee system.

Considering that this has been the team, along with the ultra-conservative extremists Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, that has led our nation, and Bush's presidency, to such a deep degree of disgrace, we need to really re-assess who it is that we elect into office at all levels of government, especially within our executive and legislative branches of the federal government. Given the candidates that have thrown their hat in the ring for the presidential race of 2008, we are not being offered a lot of choices in this regard. But we can definitely do better than what we have now, regardless of what idiot, despot or manipulative bastard we elect... and that brings us to the need to change the way we fund campaigns, choose candidates and eliminating the electoral college.

Mr. Bush and his inner circle are clearly afraid that if Guantánamo detainees are tried under the actual rule of law, many of the cases will collapse because they are based on illegal detention, torture and abuse — or that American officials could someday be held criminally liable for their mistreatment of detainees.

Like the rest of the world, the officials and officers of the US government need to be just as accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity and responsible on a national and international basis. Because we are a super power founded and based on certain principles, including the principle of establishing justice (as outlined in the Preamble of our Constitution), we have a higher level of responsibility than other nations. And if we expect the other nations of the world to adhere to sound reason, principles of justice, foundations of human rights and work toward making the world a better place, we certainly have an obligation to adhere to at least the same standard. But those of us that have lived the role of older sibling know that our parents held us to a higher degree of responsibility: that of setting the example for our younger, less capable, less experienced siblings. How much more so do we have such an obligation when we are the standard bearer of democracy and a nation proclaiming itself to be believers in God? For a "believer" to hold our highest office and act in a hypocritical manner--especially to the degree that George W. Bush has exhibited--undermines our standing, our principles and our authority to speak on world issues.

It was distressing to see that the president has retreated so far into his alternative reality that he would not listen to Mr. Gates — even when he was backed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, like her predecessor, Colin Powell, had urged Mr. Bush to close Guantánamo. It seems clear that when he brought in Mr. Gates, Mr. Bush didn’t want to fix Mr. Rumsfeld’s disaster; he just wanted everyone to stop talking about it.

The problem is not one of retreating into an alternative reality, it is one of never leaving the fantasy reality that they believe exists, including the belief that God has anointed Bush and company to lead us into their reality:

"George [W.] Bush was not elected by a majority of voters in the United States. He was appointed by God" - General William Boykin

Coming from another of the anointed like Boykin, how could Bush not believe himself to be the anointed leader of the new promised land?

If Mr. Bush would not listen to reason from inside his cabinet, he might at least listen to what Americans are telling him about the damage to this country’s credibility, and its cost.

Since none of Bush's immediate or extended family is in danger of being blown to bits by an IED, or suffering from the lack of proper care from military and/or VA hospitals, he doesn't care about what other Americans are saying. Since he has held a silver spoon in his mouth since birth, and his family is making money off the price gouging proffered by the oil industry and their OPEC partners (especially the Saudis), and he will never have to worry about another bill over the rest of his life, George W. doesn't need to be concerned about the issues that face the average American, the poor, or those with their boots on the ground in combat areas. The dead, injured and disabled are nothing more than a means to an ends to Bush and company.

When Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — for all appearances a truly evil and dangerous man — confessed to a long list of heinous crimes, including planning the 9/11 attacks, many Americans reacted with skepticism and even derision. The confession became the butt of editorial cartoons, like one that showed the prisoner confessing to betting on the Cincinnati Reds, and fodder for the late-night comedians.

What stood out the most from the transcript of Mr. Mohammed’s hearing at Guantánamo Bay was how the military detention and court system has been debased for terrorist suspects. The hearing was a combatant status review tribunal — a process that is supposed to determine whether a prisoner is an illegal enemy combatant and thus not entitled in Mr. Bush’s world to rudimentary legal rights. But the tribunals are kangaroo courts, admitting evidence that was coerced or obtained through abuse or outright torture. They are intended to confirm a decision that was already made, and to feed detainees into the military commissions created by Congress last year.

The omissions from the record of Mr. Mohammed’s hearing were chilling. The United States government deleted his claims to have been tortured during years of illegal detention at camps run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Government officials who are opposed to the administration’s lawless policy on prisoners have said in numerous news reports that Mr. Mohammed was indeed tortured, including through waterboarding, which simulates drowning and violates every civilized standard of behavior toward a prisoner, even one as awful as this one. And he is hardly the only prisoner who has made claims of abuse and torture. Some were released after it was proved that they never had any connection at all to terrorism.

Still, the Bush administration says no prisoner should be allowed to take torture claims to court, including the innocents who were tortured and released. The administration’s argument is that how prisoners are treated is a state secret and cannot be discussed openly. If that sounds nonsensical, it is. It’s also not the real reason behind the administration’s denying these prisoners the most basic rights of due process.

In other words, Bush lied, our troops have died, and detainees have been denied basic human rights and justice.

The Bush administration has so badly subverted American norms of justice in handling these cases that they would not stand up to scrutiny in a real court of law. It is a clear case of justice denied.

Which is why the Bush administration doesn't want any of these folks to see a real court... it would expose the hypocrisy, frailty and deception that is the Bush presidency and administration.

Utilities, Manufacturers, Big Business & Pollution In Indiana

Utilities Behind Pollution Increase

Increases in pollution from Indiana's coal-fired power plants sent the state's overall toxic releases up nearly 5 percent in 2005 despite efforts by manufacturers to reduce their emissions, state and federal environmental officials say.
So much for our efforts to reduce emissions by testing our vehicles and instituting "voluntary" controls on factories and mills in the region. And so much for the idea of "clean coal" being pushed by the Bush administration and the majority of GOP members of congress.

MYTH: There is a "clean coal" and we have the technology to make coal-fired power plants clean, effective and economical.

FACTS: All coal burning produces TOXIC by-products and emissions which are harmful to all mammals, reptiles and birds. It pollutes our air, water and produces acid rain. Greenhouse gases are also produced and contribute to global warming. Coal mining is a dangerous profession BECAUSE the coal company lobbyists have, much like the oil company lobbyists, circumvented the process laid down by our founders and greased the palm of so many congress critters to deny basic safety equipment (i.e. effective breathing apparatus) and more stringent mining safety regulations. There is no such thing as a "clean coal" only a coal that produces LESS POISON... but still produces TONS of toxicity and pollution. We should be seeking alternative technologies and renewable resources.

IDEAS: We could use our organic wastes (i.e. garbage) as the base for producing ethanol and/or methane. The vegetable matters thrown away by our families, the chaff and waste products of farming, and the old vegetables from our grocery stores could be collected and processed for ethanol fermentation. The by-product fibers and sludge created from this processing could be used as the foundation for compost (adding other organic material like leaves, brush and certain livestock waste products [horse manure, poultry manure, or other "hard" manures]) and renewal of our top soil, gardens and farmlands.

The protein waste products, like leftover cooked meats and fats from households, waste products from meat packers and slaughterhouses, pig and cow manures [soft manures] from farms, restaurant fat and protein wastes, etc., could be collected and used to produce methane gas. This gas could be collected and used in place of (or in combination with) LPG and/or natural gas (in modified burners) for heating and cooling in both residential and commercial settings. Since methane is a clean burning fuel (in comparison to oil, LPG, gasoline, diesel, or coal) and produces 2 molecules of water for every 1 molecule of CO2, it can be easier to "clean" in smoke stacks and especially in the production of electricity at gas-burning plants.

In areas where the temperature remains over 50 degrees (F) over 6 months of the year, we can provide SIGNIFICANT incentives for installing solar panels on roofs and in empty lots to collect and use electricity, as well as provide a secondary source of water heating in residential settings (both electricity and water heating can be accomplished if the panels are configured properly).

In communities and neighborhoods with over 100, but less than 1000, housing units, a single windmill strategically placed could provide enough electricity to remove an entire rural community off the electrical service grid 8-10 months out of the year and a section of an urban community off a metropolitan city's electrical service grid 5-9 months out of a year. Additionally, the mechanical action of a windmill can pull "double duty" by operating a mechanical aerator for local ponds and water reservoirs for the purposes of adding oxygen to prevent stagnation, bacteria production (reducing the need for excessive chlorination) and movement that promotes natural cleansing processes in a water reservoir's ecosystem. Such a system could also be used in aquaculture, such as a "fish farm," for producing farm-raised fish in our own regions and markets. The use of windmills for these uses are growing in Europe, especially in Norway, Denmark, Germany and England... and a windmill produces no toxicity, no excessive greenhouse gases and no smog.
Northwestern Indiana's Lake County, with its industrial base, ranked as the seventh most toxic county in the nation, with releases of 50.3 million pounds of chemicals -- or 20 percent of the state's total output -- in 2005, according to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Overall, Indiana ranked fifth worst among states in the amount of toxic chemicals released into the air, water and land. The annual survey tracks nearly 650 chemicals, including many linked to cancer and other serious health problems, but does not include some sources of pollution such as automotive emissions.

In my younger days, if I brought home a report card reflecting this degree of failure and poor performance, my parents would have done more than ask me to voluntarily restrict my pollution-producing activities. There would have been some serious regulation and intervention imposed by the governing authority. Yet, in our state and nation, we are fooled by the propaganda offered by the big polluters into believing that any effort to significantly restrict the release of pollutants--especially the most toxic and/or harmful substances--would seriously injure our economy. Tell that to Nippon Steel, which is currently out-performing US steel producers not only in production and sales, but also in regard to reducing the pollution their steel industry dumps into the air, land and water (but of course, the Japanese signed on to the Kyoto accords).

The same song and dance is being sung regarding our tax structure. Bigger corporations are always crying foul about the taxes they are required to pay, crying that US taxes make it harder to compete. But, as David Sirota states in his recent book, Hostile Takeover, our big businesses are paying a de facto tax rate of 5 percent while the vast majority of Americans are paying between 28-42% of their income to state and federal taxes, without the benefit of major tax shelters, loopholes, deductions and obstruction of auditors:

"Yes, it is true, the official corporate tax rate in America is 35 percent. It is also true, however, that because of lax enforcement, loopholes, and evasion, most corporations never come close to paying that rate. As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2004, 94 percent of major corporations pay less than 5 percent of their income in taxes. Because of this, corporate tax payments in the United States are at their second lowest level in sixty years. In all, the actual corporate tax rate (as opposed to the official one) is lower in America than in every other industrialized country other than Iceland. Put another way, unless your company studies subartic volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or can't survive without the music of Bjork, there is no better place in the industrialized world than this country to base a corporation intent upon evading taxes." - David Sirota, "Hostile Takeover" : page 31

If Big Business is busy peddling the lies about taxation being so burdensome, what makes us think that they are not peddling similar lies and propaganda about the cost of reducing and/or preventing pollution? If these same big businesses are so busy crying poor mouth when it comes to dealing fairly with workers and wages--all the while posting huge record profits and awarding top executives windfall bonuses and retirement packages--what evidence is there that they are telling the truth regarding the costs?

The data showed manufacturers in the state decreased toxic pollution by 1.6 million pounds, but electric generating facilities increased toxic releases by 7.4 million pounds, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). Utilities accounted for 45 percent of the state's total toxic releases while manufacturers accounted for 53 percent of the total. IDEM Commissioner Thomas Easterly said the data from the Toxic Release Inventory helps his agency better understand trends in toxic releases.

"Examining TRI data and talking to the source helps IDEM understand the reasons behind increases and how we can help sources integrate pollution prevention practices," he said.

One has to wonder what schools, college or training institute produced such a wonderkind like Mr. Easterly. The IDEM and TRI data, as well as data by other researchers and research agencies, have been pointing out the same trends and facts for over 40 years. It would appear that being the commissioner responsible for reading, understanding and responding to these data and facts requires an "ostrich with his head in the sand" approach to the job. The statement that Easterly makes here appears to suggest that the data, trends and facts are news to him. But we have to ask how this could be news when almost every legitimate study over the last 50 years has demonstrated that we are polluting our environment and the vast majority of those pollutants are coming from our use of fossil fuels and other chemicals we pour into our environment by the ton on an hourly basis. The average intelligent American doesn't need a cartoon anvil to drop on their head to arrive at the insight that we are doing a crappy job of dealing with the pollution our major corporations are dumping into and onto our earth. The average seventh-grader can tell that our industries are polluting our world without the benefit of either the IDEM or the TRI data sets. Why does it take our government officials so long to realize what the rest of us recognize as a "no brainer"?

IDEM spokesman Rob Elstro said the increase in toxic releases by utilities was caused by three factors: an increase in the amount of power generated, changes in the blends of coal burned, and a revision in how toxic emissions at power plants are calculated.

This is what David Sirota calls the "purchase of our government officials" by the big businesses that buy and sell access to our governmental leaders, which in turn co-opts these leaders and officials into selling the propaganda and public relations campaigns of the big corporations to the public. Elstro's statement, brief as it is, is a PR setup for us to swallow the real pill... nothing will be done to effectively force these utilities to reduce their reliance on polluting fuels and technologies to produce the power we use, because the utility companies do not want to give up any of the record profits they are making. Requiring a utility company to add new technology to reduce pollution, change fuels or employ "greener" technology is just as easy as telling consumers to conserve, buy "Energy Star" appliances and reduce consumption. And doing so would save more power, reduce more pollution and decrease our reliance on fossil fuels (including Middle Eastern oil supplies)... but might also reduce their profits (not due to the changes but due to reduced consumption of their services and supplies)... so it will not be done. More importantly, doing so would reduce the willingness of these corporations to "give" their money to the politicians... and they do not want these corporations to stop that money train.
I STRONGLY URGE ALL OF YOU TO READ DAVID SIROTA'S BOOK: Hostile Takeover!

The update in the way utilities calculated emissions resulted in more accurate emissions reporting, Elstro said. However, an IDEM announcement said the increase was mostly due to increased power production and the type of coal burned.

Huh! Elstro's lie is revealed! Proof that my claim--and David Sirota's claim--that the corporate PR spin machine is genuinely present in the way our own officials present issues, problems, data and information to us is valid. Anyone want to bet that Elsto got a set of marching orders from his superiors or someone in the chain connected to the money flowing to some politician? I know what side of that bet I would want to be on, but you decide for yourself.

Vectren's A.B. Brown power plant in Posey County reported an increase of more than 214,000 pounds while its F.B. Culley generating station in Warrick County reported a 10,800-pound increase.

Vectren spokesman Mike Roeder said power generation rose from 6.51 million megawatt hours in 2004 to 7.24 million megawatt hours in 2005. "One of the issues that we constantly struggle with is our customers are using more energy. We are working very hard to try to do the right thing in environmental stewardship and leadership. It's a balancing act," he said.

Duke Energy's Gibson Station near Princeton showed an increase of more than 1 million pounds. Spokeswoman Angeline Protogere said the addition of other pollution controls at the plant contributed to the higher levels of other pollution reported. She added the burning of more coal to generate more electricity also played a role.

In Lake County, Mittal's Indiana Harbor East facility in East Chicago released 25.7 million pounds of toxic chemicals, a more than 10-fold increase from 2004, the EPA reported. Indiana Harbor East ranked second on the list of Indiana polluters, behind only Nucor Steel in Crawfordsville, and 16th nationwide.

Here in Northwest Indiana, we are so happy to have any of the steel mills producing again that we don't seem to mind the pollution and contamination that they are producing. Work is always presented to us as an "either or" dilemma whenever anyone raises the issue of industrial contamination of our air, water or land. But--and this is a huge BUT!--such doesn't have to be the case. Employing cleaner fuels, cleaner technologies and newer methods can actually produce more jobs... just not the same jobs that we once knew and appreciated. Imagine jobs centered around making sure that industrial pollution is reduced and/or completely mitigated. Imagine an entire industry born out of the need to reduce, eliminate and/or remediate the industrial pollution that has contaminated our region since the 1830s. While it is true that remediation of pollution, such as reclaiming industrial brown fields, is an expensive proposition, reducing and/or eliminating pollutants is cost effective and produces jobs. We do not have to buy into the jobs or pollution dilemma presented to us by the big businesses that have been lying to us and manipulating us for over a century. Nor do we have to elect, or condone, the corporate buyout of our government by those who consistently grease the palms of the politicians and grease the wheels of the government process in such a way that it derails government from its most vital obligations of promoting our general welfare... that is OUR welfare, not the welfare of big money and/or big business.

But all of you are big boys and girls who can examine an issue and arrive at your own conclusions. By the way, this particular news report and analysis involved Indiana, but it is reflected all over the United States, in every community I have ever visited or resided. The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. So it is with corporate behavior and political corruption.

Fish Tainted, Utility's Lake Closes

As if we needed further evidence of the pollution that the last article addressed, now comes a story about a utility contaminating a man-made lake and the soils surrounding it. While the cause of such pollution is identified as unknown by the state and the utility, the reporter filing this article is astute enough to note that the very process of running an coal burning electrical plant can produce large quantities of selenium, as noted and reported by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

One would think that, if selenium is known to exist in natural rock and soil, that before a man-made lake was dug and lined, some testing of the soils and the rocks used to line the lake would have been tested for a baseline presence and the potential for seepage into the environment. Certainly the Indiana DNR, IDEM or the US EPA should have required such testing and some sort of prevention, should it not? But as noted above, Indiana is so desperate to bring business and jobs--any business and any jobs--into the state that it will overlook any damage, pollution or harm done to the environment as long as a tax base, a certain number of jobs and a certain amount of political fodder is gained.

A lake at a southwestern Indiana power plant was placed off-limits to anglers because high levels of selenium were detected in fish.

Fishing will not be allowed in the 3,000-acre manmade Gibson Lake that provides cooling water for the coal-fired Gibson Generating Station west of Princeton, pending a study of the fish and water quality, said Duke Energy Indiana spokeswoman Dawn Horth.

"We don't know exactly the source of the selenium," she said, noting it was detected in fish tissue but not in the lake water. "Selenium is biocumulative; that is, it's within the food chain for the fish."

The selenium may have come from limestone used to line the lake, she said. Selenium dust can also be produced by burning coal, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The company in Princeton, 30 miles north of Evansville, will work with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to find the source of the selenium, Horth said.
Selenium is a naturally occurring mineral found in rocks and soil. At high levels, it can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Long-term exposure can cause hair loss, brittle nails and numbness.

Horth said preliminary data indicate selenium levels in Gibson Lake fish are below the EPA's recommended guidelines for recreational fishing, but higher than levels recommended for people who rely on fish for subsistence or as a primary part of a regular diet.