The student-loan scam

Related
Insider aid at universities
Colleges shouldn't share the wealth with lenders providing student loans.
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Under a Republican Congress, for-profit lenders pursued their own interests -- often with the help of colleges.

By Stephen Burd, STEPHEN BURD, a fellow at the New America Foundation, was a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

April 10, 2007

AFTER 15 YEARS of reporting on the student-loan industry, I didn't think much could surprise me. But even I was shocked last week when I discovered Securities and Exchange Commission documents revealing that financial aid directors at three prominent universities — as well as a senior official at the U.S. Education Department — each had significant personal investments in a private student-loan company

What possibly could have motivated these officials to take tens of thousands of dollars in stock options from Student Loan Xpress? Has the whole student-loan business become so corrupt that they failed to see the conflict of interest?

If so, Washington is most to blame. For the last seven years, federal officials have turned a blind eye to problems with the companies that participate in the government's student-loan programs.

When it came to power, the Bush administration — with its reverence for the private sector — rewarded loan industry officials and lobbyists with prominent positions throughout the Education Department. Meanwhile, lenders such as Sallie Mae have showered Republican congressional leaders with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions each campaign cycle. "Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands," Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), a top recipient of that campaign cash, once famously told a gathering of student-loan providers.

The cozy relations that developed among the Bush administration, the Republican-led Congress and the lenders have left the loan industry essentially unregulated. Some observers liken it to the Wild West: Lenders and colleges pursue their own self-interest with little regard for students or taxpayers.

Every company wants to be a college's "preferred lender," competing fiercely to get on such lists. But the dirty little secret of the guaranteed student-loan market is how concentrated it is: Only 32 lenders hold 90% of the loan volume. What's more, the Education Department has found that at about 300 colleges, one lender controls 99% of the loan volume — essentially holding a monopoly on those campuses.

Any company trying to break into the market has to rely on unconventional means. Some upstarts have promoted revenue-sharing arrangements, in which colleges get a cut of each loan that their students take out. Established lenders, worried about losing market share, have taken up similar kickback practices. One of the most egregious schemes is called an "opportunity pool," which was pioneered by loan giant Sallie Mae. Here's how it works: A lender hands a college a fixed amount of private loan money that the institution then can lend to students who otherwise wouldn't qualify for loans because of credit problems. These are private loans — ones that typically come with higher interest rates and fewer consumer protections. In return for the "opportunity pool," the college makes that company its exclusive provider of federally backed loans.

Soon after Sallie Mae started its Opportunity Loan Program in 2000, some of its competitors questioned whether it violated the provision of the Higher Education Act that bars lenders from offering inducements to colleges "to secure applicants" for federal loans. They brought their complaints to the Education Department's inspector general, who wrote a memo to department leaders urging them to examine "opportunity pools." Department officials, however, refused to take action, insisting that the loan industry should regulate itself. Many lenders took that to be tacit approval of the deals. As a result, other companies, such as Citibank, started offering similar arrangements.

Giving credit-unworthy students high-interest private loans is a recipe for disaster — a disaster that the department could have stopped. Loan industry officials acknowledge that these deals are "loss leaders," meaning the companies are willing to absorb some defaults in exchange for a greater presence on a campus.

Recently, as outrage over these types of deals has grown and the Democrats have gained control of Congress, the Education Department has had a change of heart. Officials are considering more heavily regulating how colleges choose lenders to recommend to their students. For example, the agency may require financial aid administrators to include at least three choices on their "preferred lender" lists.

The department's proposals, which are being contested by lenders and aid administrators, are welcome but unlikely to go far enough. Instead, policymakers should consider a complete overhaul of the federal student-loan programs so that college aid administrators are no longer in the business of recommending favored lenders.

If there can be a lendingtree.com for home mortgages, there can be one for student loans too. Lenders should bid for student-loan business. Students would get cheaper loans. And there would be fewer incentives for the kind of unseemly activity that has been coming to light.

The true story of free speech in America: Systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues

Robert Fisk

This systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in schools

Published: 07 April 2007

Laila al-Arian was wearing her headscarf at her desk at Nation Books, one of my New York publishers. No, she told me, it would be difficult to telephone her father. At the medical facility of his North Carolina prison, he can only make a few calls - monitored, of course - and he was growing steadily weaker.

Sami al-Arian is 49 but he stayed on hunger strike for 60 days to protest the government outrage committed against him, a burlesque of justice which has, of course, largely failed to rouse the sleeping dogs of American journalism in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

All praise, then, to the journalist John Sugg from Tampa, Florida, who has been cataloguing al-Arian's little Golgotha for months, along with Alexander Cockburn of Counter Punch.

The story so far: Sami al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian, was a respected computer professor at the University of South Florida who tried, however vainly, to communicate the real tragedy of Palestinian Arabs to the US government. But according to Sugg, Israel's lobbyists were enraged by his lessons - al-Arian's family was driven from Palestine in 1948 - and in 2003, at the instigation of Attorney General Ashcroft, he was arrested and charged with conspiring "to murder and maim" outside the United States and with raising money for Islamic Jihad in "Palestine". He was held for two and a half years in solitary confinement, hobbling half a mile, his hands and feet shackled, merely to talk to his lawyers.

Al-Arian's $50m (£25m) Tampa trial lasted six months; the government called 80 witnesses (21 from Israel) and used 400 intercepted phone calls along with evidence of a conversation that a co-defendant had with al-Arian in - wait for it - a dream. The local judge, a certain James Moody, vetoed any remarks about Israeli military occupation or about UN Security Council Resolution 242, on the grounds that they would endanger the impartiality of the jurors.

In December, 2005, al-Arian was acquitted on the most serious charges and on those remaining; the jurors voted 10 to two for acquittal. Because the FBI wanted to make further charges, al-Arian's lawyers told him to make a plea that would end any further prosecution. Arriving for his sentence, however, al-Arian - who assumed time served would be his punishment, followed by deportation - found Moody talking about "blood" on the defendant's hands and ensured he would have to spend another 11 months in jail. Then prosecutor Gordon Kromberg insisted that the Palestinian prisoner should testify against an Islamic think tank. Al-Arian believed his plea bargain had been dishonoured and refused to testify. He was held in contempt. And continues to languish in prison.

Not so, of course, most of America's torturers in Iraq. One of them turns out to rejoice in the name of Ric Fair, a "contract interrogator", who has bared his soul in the Washington Post - all praise, here, by the way to the Post - about his escapades in the Fallujah interrogation "facility" of the 82nd Airborne Division. Fair has been having nightmares about an Iraqi whom he deprived of sleep during questioning "by forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes". Now it is Fair who is deprived of sleep. "A man with no face stares at me ... pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It s a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realise the screams are mine."

Thank God, Fair didn't write a play about his experiences and offer it to Channel 4 whose executives got cold feet about The Mark of Cain, the drama about British army abuse in Basra. They quickly bought into the line that transmission of Tony Marchant's play might affect the now happy outcome of the far less riveting Iranian prison production of the Famous 15 "Servicepersons" - by angering the Muslim world with tales of how our boys in Basra beat up on the local Iraqis. As the reporter who first revealed the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa in British custody in Basra - I suppose we must always refer to his demise as "death" now that the soldiers present at his savage beating have been acquitted of murder - I can attest that Arab Muslims know all too well how gentle and refined our boys are during interrogation. It is we, the British at home, who are not supposed to believe in torture. The Iraqis know all about it - and who knew all about Mousa's fate long before I reported it for The Independent on Sunday.

Because it's really all about shutting the reality of the Middle East off from us. It's to prevent the British and American people from questioning the immoral and cruel and internationally illegal occupation of Muslim lands. And in the Land of the Free, this systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in the country's schools. Now the principal of a Connecticut high school has banned a play by pupils, based on the letters and words of US soldiers serving in Iraq. Entitled Voices in Conflict, Natalie Kropf, Seth Koproski, James Presson and their fellow pupils at Wilton High School compiled the reflections of soldiers and others - including a 19-year-old Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq - to create their own play. To no avail. The drama might hurt those "who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak", proclaimed Timothy Canty, Wilton High's principal. And - my favourite line - Canty believed there was not enough rehearsal time to ensure the play would provide "a legitimate instructional experience for our students".

And of course, I can quite see Mr Canty's point. Students who have produced Arthur Miller's The Crucible were told by Mr Canty - whose own war experiences, if any, have gone unrecorded - that it wasn't their place to tell audiences what soldiers were thinking. The pupils of Wilton High are now being inundated with offers to perform at other venues. Personally, I think Mr Canty may have a point. He would do much better to encourage his students to perform Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, a drama of massive violence, torture, rape, mutilation and honour killing. It would make Iraq perfectly explicable to the good people of Connecticut. A "legitimate instructional experience" if ever there was one.

Department of Education Committee Members Asked to Drop ABA as Law School Accreditor

SHERWOOD ROSS ASSOCIATES
March 29, 2007
From: Sherwood Ross
sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

Background:

On June 27, 1995, the Justice Department filed a complaint charging the American Bar Association with fixing law professors’ salaries and other Sherman Anti-Trust violations. Justice found ABA had furthered “the self-interest of professors instead of improving education” and ABA signed a consent degree pledging to stop the violations but has not lived up to that pledge.
Now, Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law, Andover, is asking two leading members of the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee to get ABA to reform or to lose DOE recognition.

Dean Velvel is a leader in the effort to make a legal education accessible to Americans of all races and income groups. “National Jurist” magazine describes him as “a modern day crusader” and “one of the most influential people in legal education over the last 15 years.”

News release follows. Dean Velvel may be reached at (978) 681-0800.
Ross Associates, Media Consultants to Massachusetts School of Law
102 S.W. 6th Avenue, Suite 403, Miami, FL 33130 (305) 205-8281

Law School Dean Calls For ABA To Lose DOE Recognition
As An Accreditor, And Says DOE Staff Is Incompetent

Two influential academic experts have been called upon to require the American Bar Association to either change its law school accreditation system or lose federal recognition from the Department of Education (DOE). The call came from Lawrence Velvel, the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law. It was addressed to Lawrence DeNardis, the former President of the University of New Haven , and George Pruitt, the President of Edison State College in Trenton, New Jersey .

DeNardis and Pruitt are leading members of the DOE’s powerful National Advisory Committee (NAC). That Committee makes recommendations to the Secretary of Education on whether an accrediting body should retain or lose federal recognition.

At an NAC hearing on December 3, 2006, DeNardis and Pruitt both made extensive comments criticizing the ABA for long failing to follow the law. DeNardis, who led the NAC’s discussion of the ABA, said he could not understand why a body “that prepares practitioners of the law, has such a difficult time complying with government regulations and policies.”

Pruitt, who has been criticizing the ABA without result at NAC hearings since 1996, said “I want to echo the comments that Larry DeNardis made about the frustration that we have on this committee” regarding the ABA’s longstanding failure to follow legal rules “that the rest of us have to live with.” This failure to follow the rules is by a group that has a “powerful monopoly to totally control within [the legal] profession.” (An exercise of this monopoly power led, eleven years ago, to the ABA being found in violation of the federal antitrust laws.)

The unhappiness of the NAC with the American Bar Association’s longstanding failure to follow the law caused the Committee to recommend to the Secretary only an 18 month, interim renewal of recognition of the ABA, rather than the usual five year recognition.

Making plain that he considers the DOE’s permanent staff to be incompetent, Velvel said that for years the staff has ineptly failed to question the ABA’s high cost “input” rules -- rules no longer followed by any other accrediting body than the ABA. (Numerous other accreditors of professional schools, which do not use the “input” rules used by the ABA , are listed below.) The ABA’s input rules have been a major factor in law school tuitions jumping by 267 percent since 1990, so that half of the nation’s 190 ABA schools now charge more than $25,000 per year in tuition, with almost one quarter, or 46, charging over $30,000 per year. High tuitions have priced working class whites and minorities out of law school and the legal profession.

The use of costly input rules that have this exclusionary effect is directly contrary to Congress’ desire that accrediting bodies instead use “output” rules that measure student learning, and that higher education be made available to African Americans, Hispanic Americans and other minorities, says Velvel.

The ABA’s input rules, Velvel told DeNardis and Pruitt, demand very large, extremely expensive full time faculties, minimize the allowable number of far less expensive adjunct faculty members who are expert lawyers and judges, require very low teaching loads for full professors, require plush physical facilities, demand large, very expensive hard copy libraries though most needed materials are available on-line, and require high scores on the Law School Admissions Test (the LSAT). Curiously, the ABA also has a rule saying that law schools need not provide students with courses that will teach them the practical skills they will need to practice law. Velvel said that not only does no other professional school accrediting body use the expensive input rules used by the ABA, but some of them, again unlike the ABA, do quite properly require that students be taught the practical skills they will need to practice their profession.

Velvel also assailed the DOE staff for incompetently failing to uncover that the ABA uses secret rules that make its written rules even worse. This failure has existed for years even though DOE was warned of unlawful secret rules as long ago as 1996. Recently, by pure accident, the staff uncovered a secret policy about bar passage rates. But there also are secret policies about student/faculty ratios, plush buildings, low hours of teaching, and high LSAT scores.

The ABA’s high cost rules, and the excessive tuitions they cause, have contributed to a declining number of minority persons in law school, as has the secret requirement of high LSAT scores. The latest available figures show that, due to declines, only 6.6% of law school students are African Americans and only 5.7% are Hispanic Americans. As well the latest figures show that only 3.9% of the legal profession as a whole is African American, and only 3.3% is Hispanic American.

Velvel told DeNardis and Pruitt that the ABA is able to monopolize law school accreditation because it has persuaded most state supreme courts to allow only graduates of ABA schools to take bar examinations. The courts do this even though the ABA’s rules are keeping African Americans and Hispanic Americans out of law school and even though an increasing number of state Justices are themselves of African American or Hispanic American. The state Justices, almost all of whom know little or nothing about the ABA’s accreditation rules, rely heavily on the fact that DOE recognizes the ABA as the accreditor for law schools.

Velvel said that, in view of the ABA’s long failure to follow the law, and the enormous social harm being done by accreditation rules that keep all but the upper middle class and the wealthy out of law schools, the DOE should withdraw its recognition of the ABA, which it would have to do if the staff inquired thoroughly into the facts of ABA accreditation. Velvel urged DeNardis and Pruitt to insist on competent, thorough staff work instead of the miscreant negligence that for at least 15 years has marked the staff’s efforts toward the ABA .

Listed below are some of the professional school accrediting bodies that do not use the type of input rules used by the ABA. Also, if you would like a copy of Dean Velvel’s letter to Messrs. DeNardis and Pruitt, please contact Lawrence Velvel at (978) 681-0800 or Velvel@mslaw.edu.

Professional School Accrediting Bodies

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing/Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education; The Council on Chiropractic Education; The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education; The American Psychological Association - Committee on Accreditation for Doctoral, Internship & Post-Doctoral Residencies; The Commission on Dental Accreditation of the American Dental Association; The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education - Standards for Professional Development Schools; The Council on Education/American Veterinary Medical Association; The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools - Business Schools; The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; The American Association of Colleges of Nursing/Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education; The Council on Chiropractic Education; The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education; The Council on Education/American Veterinary Medical Association; The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools - Business Schools; and The American Psychological Association – Committee on Accreditation for Doctoral, Internship & Post-Doctoral Residencies.

Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush's Prized 'No Child' Act

By Jonathan Weisman and Amit R. Paley

Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 15, 2007; A01

More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate -- including the House's second-ranking Republican -- will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.

For a White House fighting off attacks on its war policy and dealing with a burgeoning scandal at the Justice Department, the GOP dissidents' move is a fresh blow on a new front. Among the co-sponsors of the legislation are House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a key supporter of the measure in 2001, and John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Bush's most reliable defender in the Senate. Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House GOP's chief deputy whip and a supporter in 2001, has also signed on.

Burson Snyder, a spokesman for Blunt, said that after several meetings with school administrators and teachers in southwest Missouri, the House Republican leader turned against the measure he helped pass. Blunt was convinced that the burdens and red tape of the No Child Left Behind Act are unacceptably onerous, Snyder said.

Some Republicans said yesterday that a backlash against the law was inevitable. Many voters in affluent suburban and exurban districts -- GOP strongholds -- think their schools have been adversely affected by the law. Once-innovative public schools have increasingly become captive to federal testing mandates, jettisoning education programs not covered by those tests, siphoning funds from programs for the talented and gifted, and discouraging creativity, critics say.

To be sure, key lawmakers would like to reauthorize the law this year. Ranking Republicans on the House and Senate education committees are pushing for a renewal. And key Democrats, including Rep. George Miller (Calif.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), the chairmen of the House and Senate committees responsible for drafting an updated No Child Left Behind Act, are strong supporters, although they want large increases in funding and more emphasis on teacher training and development.

Still, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), author of the new House bill, said the number of Republicans already backing the new measure exceeds the 41 House Republicans and Democrats who voted against the original legislation in 2001. Of the House bill's co-sponsors, at least eight voted for the president's plan six years ago.

"President Bush and I just see education fundamentally differently," said Hoekstra, a longtime opponent of the law. "The president believes in empowering bureaucrats in Washington, and I believe in local and parental control."

As Congress considers reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, the GOP rebellion could grow, conceded Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee and a key ally of the president on the issue. "It was a struggle getting it passed last time. It'll be even more of a struggle this time," he said.

Under Hoekstra's bill, any state could essentially opt out of No Child Left Behind after one of two actions. A state could hold a referendum, or two of three elected entities -- the governor, the legislature and the state's highest elected education official -- could decide that the state would no longer abide by the strict rules on testing and the curriculum.

The Senate bill is slightly less permissive, but it would allow a state to negotiate a "charter" with the federal government to get away from the law's mandates.

In both cases, the states that opt out would still be eligible for federal funding, but those states could exempt any education program but special education from No Child Left Behind strictures.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said that advocates do not intend to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act. Instead, they want to give states more flexibility to meet the president's goals of education achievement, he said. As a House member in 2001, DeMint opposed No Child Left Behind when it first came to a vote, but he voted for it on final passage.

"So many people are frustrated with the shackles of No Child Left Behind," DeMint said. "I don't think anyone argues with measuring what we're doing, but the fact is, even the education community . . . sees us just testing, testing, testing, and reshaping the curriculum so we look good."

Parent unrest in places such as Scarsdale, N.Y., and parts of suburban Michigan could affect members of Congress. Connecticut has sued the government over the law, while legislatures in Virginia, Colorado and heavily Republican Utah have moved to supersede it.

Republican lawmakers involved in crafting the new legislation say Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and other administration officials have moved in recent days to tamp down dissent within the GOP. Since January, Spellings has met or spoken with about 40 Republican lawmakers on the issue, said Katherine McLane, the Education Department's press secretary.

"We've made a lot of progress in the past five years in serving the children who have traditionally been underserved in our education system," McLane said. "Now is not the time to roll back the clock on those children."

But so far, the administration's efforts have borne little fruit, Republican critics said.

"Republicans voted for No Child Left Behind holding their noses," said Michael J. Petrilli, an Education Department official during Bush's first term who is now a critic of the law. "But now with the president so politically weak, conservatives can vote their conscience."

Report Criticizes Failure to Police Bias in Federal Reading First Program

February 23, 2007

The U.S. Department of Education “did not adequately assess issues of bias and lack of objectivity” during the early days of the Reading First program, according to a report issued on Thursday by the department’s inspector general.

The report is the latest in a series of critical accounts of Reading First, a $900-million-per-year component of the No Child Left Behind Act (The Chronicle, February 2). The Reading First program, which provides grants to improve reading instruction in low-income schools in kindergarten through the third grade, places more restrictions on local districts than did many previous federal education programs. States and districts may spend their Reading First grants only on textbooks and other products that are “in alignment with” five major elements of effective reading instruction that were identified in a 2000 report issued by the National Reading Panel, a federally financed committee of scholars.

According to Reading First’s admirers, those prescriptive rules have been crucial to the program’s success. Critics, however, have complained that the department and its contractors have sometimes crossed the line by appearing to require the use of specific commercial products, in violation of the Department of Education Organization Act, which forbids federal officials to exercise “direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum or program of instruction of any school or school system.”

The new report, for example, declares that a Reading First handbook distributed to state officials in late 2002 “appeared to promote” an assessment tool known as the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or Dibels, which was created by a pair of scholars at the University of Oregon. A commercial version of Dibels, which is sold by Sopris-West, a Colorado company, has been widely purchased under Reading First. (A noncommercial version may also be downloaded free from the scholars’ Web site.)

The new report also notes that several scholars affiliated with Reading First’s three “technical-assistance centers” — which are located at Florida State University, the University of Texas, and the University of Oregon — had simultaneous relationships as authors or consultants for commercial publishers whose products have been purchased under Reading First.

The report does not name the scholars, and it does not allege that they actually pressured states to purchase their own products. The report declares, however, that the department should have taken those superficial conflicts of interest more seriously. “Without an adequate assessment of bias and lack of objectivity for individuals proposed to perform department contract work,” the report reads, “the department could be placed in a situation where the public could reasonably question and perhaps discount or dismiss the work performed simply because of the existence of a potential bias.”

Within the next several weeks, the inspector general is expected to release a more detailed report about the Reading First technical-assistance centers, which were created under a federal contract with the New Hampshire-based RMC Research Corporation. The Government Accountability Office is also expected soon to release an investigative report on the administration of Reading First.

Posted on Feb 23, 06:44 AM | Permalink |

Torture and the Future

University of California, Santa Barbara

Perspectives from the Humanities

Critical Issues in America, January 2007 - June 2007

This series of events addresses the critical issues surrounding the use of torture by the most powerful democracy in the world. The series will focus on four areas: the devastating effects of torture conducted by democratic societies on the concept and practice of democracy; the consequences of state-sanctioned torture on the principles and practices of scholarship and education; the role of mass media in the increasing acceptability of the use of torture; and the relationship between torture used in US-run prisons abroad, and human rights violations on American soil. The series features scholars whose work on torture and human rights effectively crosses the disciplinary gap between the humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, activists and lawyers whose work is committed to an ethics and politics of response and resistance.

View Press Release

Main Page | Project Description | Events/Lectures | Coordinators | Links | Giving | Contact

Zionism Keeps Israelis and Palestinians Apart

Andover High School

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
January 16, 2006

In hundreds of presentations we did at Middle Schools, high schools, colleges, universities, and elsewhere, this was only the second time we were "disinvited." We want to thank the teachers who invited us and the hundreds of students who worked diligently to make sure they hear us. The events went very well at the classes and we received countless positive emails from students, teachers, parents, and community members.

The Wheels of Justice brings eyewitness accounts to occupations in Iraq and Palestine. Our speakers come from various political backgrounds; the only requirement is that they support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and support nonviolence as an alternative to war and injustice. We also recognize that to achieve peace anywhere in the world, the root causes of injustice, racism, and oppression must be addressed. We also have speakers who are Jewish and even Holocaust survivors (e.g. 80 year-old Hedy Epstein).

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) led the effort to describe us and teachers who invited us as "anti-Israel" or even "anti-Semitic." In 1980, the ADL covertly distributed a 21-page booklet containing "background information on pro-Arab sympathizers active on college campuses." Later the ADL was fined and signed a statement pledging not to engage in spying and collecting information after federal investigators found that ADL had paid investigative police officers to gather information on Arab Americans and African Americans active in the movement against apartheid South Africa (see http://www.counterpunch.org/adlspying2.html).

But the ADL is not the only well-funded groups attempting to recruit Jews to support dubious agendas by attacking anyone who dares to speak out. For an understanding of these attempts to silence free speech on this issue in Congress, in the media, and at college campuses, people should read Congressman Paul Findley's book "They Dare to Speak Out."

We have significant history and experience working with Israeli Jews and other Jews collaboratively on peace projects. Yet, a vocal minority insists that if you do not support Zionism as a segregationist ideology, you are automatically "anti-Semitic" (or if Jewish "self-hating Jew"). This defamation is not only false, but is also dangerous. (I prefer the more accurate term "anti-Jewish" rather than "anti-Semitic" because many Jews are not Semites (e.g. European Ashkenazi Jews or Ethiopian Jews) and most Semites are not Jews - for example, Palestinians. But the term, initially coined by a racist German anti-Jew, is now so common so I use it here.)

Zionism is a colonial political movement with adherents among people of various religions, including Christian Zionists. Judaism on the other hand is one of the three great monotheistic religions. Most Jews are anti-Zionist, non-Zionist, or post-Zionist (as are most Christians and Muslims). Using the term anti-Semitic is wrong but also dangerous, because it cheapens and mocks the memory of all those who suffered truly because of their religion. It is also instructive to read books like those by Jews such as Norman Finkelstein (whose parents are survivors of Nazi atrocities), Lenni Brenner, Naeim Giladi, Israel Shahak and others about why Zionism is a mirror image of other segregationist ideologies.

So far we spent over $400 billion of our taxes to occupy Iraq for control of oil and other Zionist plans to reshape the Middle East, and over $1 trillion to support the Israeli government (highest recipient of U.S. aid, we gave it more than we gave to Africa as a continent). Yet, one-third of Israeli children live below the poverty line, while Israel is using billions of our tax money to ethnically cleanse and oppress the native Palestinians. Love of Israel becomes meaningless if it does not mean changing life for the better for these Israeli children (and millions of Palestinian children). Only a public outcry would force the U.S. government to change its policies of supporting oppression despite the strong lobbies in Washington. That is why groups like ADL attempt to stifle debate and any exposition of the truth. The attacks on President Jimmy Carter for his latest book on Israeli apartheid, like the attacks on Andover High School, are symptomatic.

Israel is the only country in the world that does not define itself as a country of its citizens (Jews and non-Jewish citizens). It defines itself as a country for and by the Jewish people everywhere. Every Jew in the world is considered as a national of the state whether they want it or not (part of 'Am Yisrael). Any Jew including converts can go there, get automatic citizenship and live on Palestinian lands while Palestinian refugees are not allowed to return simply because they are Christian or Muslim. Further, no other country has supra-national entities that are more influential in shaping policies than its national institutions (e.g. ADL, Jewish National Fund, Jewish Agency and World Zionist Congress).

Israeli artists declared in 2002: "If the state of Israel aspires to perceive itself as a democracy, it should abandon once and for all, any legal and ideological foundation of religious, ethnic and demographic discrimination. The state of Israel should strive to become the state of all its citizens. We call for the annulment of all laws that make Israel an apartheid state, including the Jewish law of return in its present form." That desire to improve one's country represents the ultimate love of country/patriotism, rather than the reflexive parroting of propaganda and blaming the victims of those policies (whether in Andover or Palestine). The same applied to U.S. citizens who spoke for civil rights, to end the war on Vietnam, to end support for apartheid South Africa and more recently to end support for the war on Iraq and on Palestine.

The school principal said to those who tried to disrupt the meeting in Andover: If we can't make peace here, how do we expect them to make peace there? Thus, we again urge those who consider themselves our opponents/enemies to agree to civic public dialogue. Our contact information is available on the Web.

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Christian Palestinian American and coordinator for the Wheels of Justice bus tour and author of "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle." His Web site is www.qumsiyeh.org.
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Zionists Vs Truth -The Wheels of Justice Battle for Andover
By Joe Carr, 6 January, 2007
http://lovinrevolution.org/beta/?q=node/36

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From Hasan Fouda

Wheels of Justice prevailed and Zionist attempts as silencing failed in Andover, Massachusetts high school last Friday January 5, 2007.

As some of you know, the wheels of justice spoke at more than 200 high schools nationwide without incident. We were invited by social studies teachers from Andover, Mass high school to speak to their classes and were scheduled to speak on October 27, 2006. However, pressure from local Zionists led the school principal to cancel our appointment. The honorable teachers were indignant, and with the involvement of the local ACLU sued the school for interfering with their professional judgment as educators and for limiting free speech. The school principal and superintendent decided to reschedule our talk to Friday January 5, 2007. They also offered to pay the cost of transportation for our speakers. They hired a lawyer and held several meetings with representatives of ADL and other Zionist groups and to
accomdate them as much as possible decided to.

1. Send a note to every parent to provide an opportunity for their kids to be excused from attending our supposedly subversive presentation, if they so desire. It is remarkable that not a single parent opted to excuse their child from attending.

2. Held school sessions, by outside consultants, one week before our presentation about the constitutional guarantees of free speech. (We were described as a pro Palestinian anti Israeli group!)

3. Assign two “neutral” adult observers from the community to attend every one of our class presentations. No other adults were allowed.

4. Invite two Zionist professors from Harvard University to speak to the students two weeks after our presentation to rebut our information.

5. In another concession, we were also asked to repeat our presentations in the evening in a public event at school so that everyone will know what we told the students (and of course for the Zionists to help plan their rebuttal). We happily agreed to all this.

Despite the above, the Zionists were not satisfied. They continued to complain and engage in a campaign of smearing the teachers and wheels of justice. They also threatened the day before the talk to file for a court injunction to prevent our talks. Much of that was covered by the local media including a front-page feature article the morning of our presentation. See the links below for media coverage. Note the one sided coverage of all the hoopla; none of the so-called journalists saw it fit to contact us and ask for our comments. Also, the ADL provided each student with packets of misinformation and talking points to “prepare” the students for our appearance.

All the media coverage and manufactured controversy backfired and helped us raise awareness of what is going here and in Palestine–Israel. The students were quite attentive and engaging. Some read questions and comments from the ADL prepared material, which we were only happy to clarify. Many of the students thanked us sincerely for
the new information and were quite appreciative. I spoke about the Jews, Moslems and Christian people of conscience who are working together in Palestine –Israel and also on ICAHD work opposing house demolition and showed a 4 minutes video on resisting house demolition. The other presenters were noted Palestinian activist and author Mazin Qumsiyeh who introduced the concept of the wheels of Justice effort and provided a general overview of the situation in Israel-Palestine. Also presenting was, Joe Carr a young activist and Musician. Joe was an ISM volunteer who spent a lot of time in Palestine. He was demonstrating with Rachel Corrie when she was mercilessly killed by an Israeli
bulldozer and was also next to Tom Hurndall when he was shot by an Israeli sniper. Tom later died as a result of his injury. Joe Carr
was also in Iraq as a volunteer for the Christian Peace Makers team. Joe’s report on the events in Andover is reproduced at the end. See
also his web site lovinrevolution.org/beta/?q=node/36

From our perspective, the evening public presentation was also a great success. More than 300 people attended including many parents and many others who do not normally attend peace and justice talks. There were also a great many supporters and a large contingent of Zionists. The Zionists wasted more of their time and money. They distributed handouts smearing the teacher’s leader and accusing him of anti-Semitism. They also distributed many papers full of the typical ADL misinformation (Israel a democracy, no apartheid, disputed not occupied, etc.) Inside the presentation they made complete idiots of themselves by heckling, shouting interrupting and then fought among themselves with some aiming to disrupt and others shouting that they needed to know what we presented to the students. Even the principal who strove to accommodate every one had to admonish them for not making a good example for the students and the irony that the students behaved a lot better than the adults. We finished all of our presentations but during the question and answer period the heckling continued and the principal decided to end the program. Many many
people, including some students were so marvelous and so appreciative. Many stayed with the three us of for over an hour to express their gratitude, ask questions and apologize for the behavior of Zionist members of their community. We also received an invitation to speak again at a local church in the area which we are happy to schedule.

The heroes of the story are the high school teachers who stood their ground, were true to their principles and refused to be intimidated. The leadership of teacher Ron Francis, who is also the leader of divestment campaign in Somerville, was really inspiring. Members of the local peace and activist community also came together and lobbied
for peace and justice, for decency and fairness.

It is instructive that all the hysteria was about hiding the truth in Palestine-Israel. No one minded that we also criticized the U.S. government over the conduct of the war on Iraq.

For more information on the Wheels of Justice program go to http://www.justicewheels.org/

Hassan
===============
Mazin Qumsiyeh on Andover issue

I just wanted to expand on a few issues beyond what Joe covered (although I disagree with Joe's characterizations in many areas including what the principal did and why). We normally have four people: a bus manager, a bus driver, and two speakers. The physical bus could not come back to the school (it was in the Boston/Andover area giving talks in November) and now it is in Arizona. We had three people at this high school:

We gave introduction to the bus and where we have been. The bus speakers are all volunteers and we spoke at hundreds of middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities around the country. The bus supports the universal declaration of human rights and supports non-violence. We believe that to address violence (that kills far more native people than occupiers and colonizers) we must address the root causes of injustice, discrimination and racism. I then spoke of the Israel/Palestine situation by highlighting my own experiences, the destruction and ethnic cleansing of 530 Palestinian villages and towns between 1947-1949) and the subsequent nearly six decades of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and theft of land. The shrinking areas allocated to Palestinians now constitute less than 12% of historic Palestine. Zionists flinched when I showed President Carter's book cover on Israeli apartheid.

Dr. Hassan Fouda then spoke about non-violent resistance and showed many examples of people of various faiths and backgrounds working together for peace (Internationals, Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc). Here are just two examples of groups mentioned by Hassan:

Breaking the silence: Israeli soldiers explaining the orders they are given and giving testimonies of the acts they or their comrades committed in the occupied areas (http://breakingthesilence.org.il/index_e.asp)
Bereaved Parents Circles: Israelis and Palestinians who lost relatives and who chose to grieve and work together for peace rather than for vengeance (http://www.theparentscircle.com/)
Israel Committee against Home Demolitions (http://www.icahd.org/eng/)

Hassan explained the long history of home demolitions and that Israelis do this to expand settlement areas on the richest Palestinian lands. He also showed a moving clip of an Israeli Jew (Jeff Halper) pleading with Israeli soldiers in hebrew not to demolish a Palestinian home by telling them that the Israeli laws they are implementing are unjust and should not be obeyed; parallels to the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany.

Joe Carr spoke of the atrocities committed in Iraq since the American occupation of 2003 (and before, US led sanctions killed over ½ million Iraqi Children). An excess Iraqi death toll of 655,000 Iraqis in 3.5 years constitutes genocide. He also spoke of the loss of three of his friends: Tom Fox (a member of Christian Peacemaker team who was killed in Iraq), Rachel Corrie (killed by an Israeli soldier driving a US made and paid-for Caterpillar bulldozer) and Tom Hurndall (shot by an Israeli sniper using a US made/paid for gun while Tom and Joe and others were helping Palestinian children in an area where snipers specifically targeted them).

The students and teachers were extremely interested and asked pertinent and good questions in the four presentations we made. In the evening, we were asked to do a public presentation. The Zionist movement was recruited from even nearby towns and cities (one of them in asking the question did not even know where he was). But there was even more people who are supportive of peace and justice (thanks to Meerimack Valley Peace community and others). The Zionists tried to shout the presentation down. One person stood and told them it would be good for their cause to “hear what we told the students”. This did not make a big difference and halfway into the Q&A session, the principal called the meeting off. People continued to mill around and engage in conversations. Some of the books we had on the wheels of justice table were stolen while people were busy talking to each other.

They tried various (and expected) strategies to intimidate, silence, discredit, shoot the messenger etc. They had the usual few bad cops and a couple of “good cops” to effect the desired change. All has parallels in Zionist history (1.5 million cluster bombs in Lebanese civilian areas this summer to leave a message while Peres talks as the "good cop"). They were getting frustrated and angry that most of their tricks did not work (and if anything backfired), as people do not like to pushed around/bulldozed. Similarly in Iraq, Lebanon and in Palestine, things are not quite working well for the agenda of apartheid and racism. The more aggressive and violent they are, the poorer they perform to achieve their own objectives of control whether in Iraq, Palestine, or Andover. I personally believe this is because of their biggest Achilles’ heel: that they think in racist/tribalistic fashion (us here them there as Rabin put it) and are trying to push other Americans to do the same. To them “the other” cannot be human or humanized (let alone have self-determination) or even engaged with in a civil way. Early Zionist founders said it very clearly in the late 19th century and early 20th century "We want to be feared not loved".

Despite repeated efforts to explain that we are three people with different backgrounds and different political outlooks, they still kept insisting that this is somehow a tribal conflict (we and the teachers who invited us were labeled as “pro-Palestinians” “anti-Israeli”, and even “anti-Semitic”). Despite our talk clearly showing the diversity of groups and people in that part of the world, they ignored all of that and pushed ahead as if the struggle is between Israelis and Palestinians (if it is binary, it is actually between those who support human rights and international law and those who don’t).

Of course I continue to challenge Zionists to public debates (most of them refuse). I am willing to travel for such debates with any leading Zionists (already covered Morton Kline of ZOA, David Harris of AJC, and a few others). Truth after all should be visible and the more light one sheds on things, the more the lies will get exposed. (the religions and non-violent philosophies WE follow teach us to hate the bad deeds but not the misled humans who do the bad deeds). We will continue to speak truth to power without hate or malice to anyone. The Wheels of Justice keeps rolling. Stay tuned.

PS: not one of the students opted-out of our talks (even the children of the the tiny minority of parents who demanded that option).

Here are some of the stories about our appearance. I put these in approximate order of unfairness (slightly unfair progressing to totally outrageous/hogwash):
BTW Isn't it amazing that the Eagle Tribune wrote four articles on this "controversy" denouncing us without ever interviewing one of the people from the Wheels of Justice bus tour??!! Write and call them if you are outraged.

Originally appeared in the Eagle Tribune

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/12/14/students_will_hear_disputed_speakers/
http://plus.eagletribune.com/cgi-bin/story.pl?fzgpmzbzbtltmvf08090705060402O3010305+fzgpmzbzbtltmvf0809070506040203010305+fzgpmzbzbtltmvf08090705060402O3010305+-sec-News+fn-fn-policies.cs-20070114-fn+leadstory+page%3D0
http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=2082
Middle East forum cut short as hecklers drown out speakers By Crystal Bozek , Eagle-Tribune January 06, 2007 http://www.eagletribune.com/local/local_story_006094545
Superintendent: Wheels of Justice visit is 'reasonable' By Colin Steele , January 05, 2007 http://www.eagletribune.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_005120446
FOX video is here
http://www.andovertownsman.com/news/20070111/FP_001.html
http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_story_004120420
http://www.eagletribune.com/local/local_story_341120458?page=2
http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2006/10/naomi_federland_1.html
Protests, injunction threatened against pro-Palestinian speakers.http://www.eagletribune.com/local/local_story_004094558

And here are Zionist ratings (unrated :-); "Opinion" is too kind a word since most of these folks parrot others in the Zionist/racist camp and cannot come up with their own opinions:
http://www.eagletribune.com/puopinion/local_story_004094620
http://www.nysun.com/article/45006?access=551900
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=486965
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=484085
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=483715
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=480335

Aux Barricades! : MAUREEN DOWD

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Aux Barricades!

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: January 17, 2007

It’s unnerving to be tutored by an educator in chief who is himself being tutored.

Being president can be really, really hard.

“Sometimes you’re the commander in chief,” W. explained to Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes.” “Sometimes you’re the educator in chief, and a lot of times you’re both when it comes to war.”

President Bush has been dutifully making the rounds of TV news shows, trying to make the case that victory in Iraq is “doable.” He thinks the public will support the Surge if he can simply illuminate a few things that we may have been too thick to understand. For instance, he says he needs to “explain to people that what happens in the Middle East will affect the future of this country.” Yes, Mr. President, we get it.

He also told Jim Lehrer last night that in 20 years, radical Shiites could be warring with radical Sunnis and Middle Eastern oil could fall into the hands of radicals, who might also get weapons of mass destruction.

So after scaring Americans into backing the Sack of Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D., now he’s trying to scare Americans into supporting the Surge in Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D.

So many deaths, so little progress.

--MORE--

Learning to Keep Learning: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Learning to Keep Learning
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 13, 2006

Our education system should be focused on producing more workers — from the U.P.S. driver to the software engineer — who can think creatively.

I recently attended an Asia Society education seminar in Beijing, during which we heard Chinese educators talk about their “new national strategy.” It’s to make China an “innovation country” — with enough indigenous output to advance China “into the rank of innovation-oriented countries by 2020,” as Shang Yong, China’s vice minister of science and technology, put it.

I listened to this with mixed emotions. Part of me said: “Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a government that was so focused on innovation — instead of one that is basically anti-science.” My other emotion was skepticism. Oh, you know the line: Great Britain dominated the 19th century, America dominated the 20th and now China is going to dominate the 21st. It’s game over.

Sorry, but I am not ready to cede the 21st century to China yet.

No question, China has been able to command an impressive effort to end illiteracy, greatly increasing its number of high school grads and new universities. But I still believe it is very hard to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google — which for me is a proxy for curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want. You can command K-12 education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will take China only so far. China will have to find a way to loosen up, without losing control, if it wants to be a truly innovative nation.

But while China can’t thrive without changing a lot more, neither can we. Ask yourself this: If the Iraq war had not dominated our politics, what would our last election have been about? It would have been about this question: Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work — if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?

--MORE--


REBUTTAL

Dec 13, 2006

The Great Lie: Education Will Save Us

By Jonathan Tasini

Over and over again, the people of our country hear that the solution to inadequate wages, disappearing heath care, vanishing pensions, and staggering personal debt is quite simple: get educated. It may sound right but it's utterly phony.

Hardly a day goes by when politicians or pundits don't slip in a plug for a "smarter" workforce. Today, Thomas Friedman steps up with his own non-reality-based observations. The most astounding part of Friedman's column, which muses about China's education system versus our own, comes when he asks: "Ask yourself this: If the Iraq war had not dominated our politics, what would our last election have been about? It would have been about this question: Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work -- if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?"

Tasini's diary :: ::
Yes, that should be the question. But, Friedman's answer is remarkable, though probably only to people who live in the real world. "In a globally integrated economy, our workers will get paid a premium only if they or their firms offer a uniquely innovative product or service, which demands a skilled and creative labor force to conceive, design, market and manufacture -- and a labor force that is constantly able to keep learning," he writes.

Yes, employers around the world are moving work around the world in search of the lowest wage possible--thanks in large part to so-called "free trade," which Freidman has been flogging for years in his column. Wages, not skills or education, are the most important issue facing workers throughout the globe. The disparity is so huge that American workers, no matter how smart they get, will never be able to compete against workers in other countries--unless, of course, Americans are willing to accept a drastic decline in their standard of living.

Democrats have fallen into this trap, too, because it sounds so easy. One of my absolute favorite Democrats, Rep. George Miller, appeared last night on CNN's Lou Dobbs, to talk about the party's plan to cut interest rates in half for college financial assistance. He said, "Well, our priorities are to have a high-quality public schools for our children to make sure that they have access to an affordable college education, that they can then go on to a competitive workplace in this globalized world and they can fully participate in that workplace with fairness in the work place, and then, at the end of the day, they can secure their pensions and their retirements and their dreams."

Though I've written repeatedly over the years about education as a phony solution, I also understand its allure. First, it appeals to our inner child because, after all, so many of us were told, throughout our school years, that if you didn't do your homework, you wouldn't get into college.

Second, and perhaps more important, it's an easier solution to grasp. Most of us still think of China and India and other "Third World" countries as places where massive plants turn out lower-skilled products (assembly-line electronics, clothes and other durable goods). Heck, people assume, let them have that work and we'll just fatten up our brains and corner the market making the higher-end stuff like airplanes and biotechnology products.

Surprise. China is well on its way to making products up and down the skill level--at a fraction of the labor cost. In his book "The Chinese Century," Oded Shenkar writes, "China's goal, and that of its government is not merely to catch up with the major industrialized powers but to overpass them. No other developing country has sets its sights so high, and none...has laid such a detailed road map to take it there."

Third, focusing on education means you don't have to wrestle with the real challenge: corporate power. Offering cheaper education (personally, I advocate a free, four-year education for every person willing to work their first post-graduation year for a non-profit community group) is a whole lot easier than putting an end to so-called "free trade," imposing some community investment demands on the flows of capital and demanding worldwide minimum standards that end the most ferocious competition based solely on wages.

Education is a wonderful thing. Learning new ideas nourishes the human mind and keeps our spirits alive. I'm all for teachers and schools.

But, education is a cruel lie if it becomes the answer to the challenge of global competition. It's insulting to workers to feed them the line that they are just too dumb to get a fairly compensated job. It isn't their fault. And until we are willing to confront corporate power, people may hang diplomas on their walls of their homes even if they can't feed their families.

Rabbis forbid using schoolbooks with map of pre-1967 lines

Last update - 19:41 05/12/2006

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

An organization of right-wing rabbis on Tuesday issued a Halakhic decree forbidding students from using schoolbooks featuring maps of Israel which include the pre-1967 Green Line border, Israel Radio reported.

The decree came in response to Education Minister Yuli Tamir's decision on Tuesday to add the pre-1967 borders to all new editions of textbooks.

Tamir defended the decision as the only way to teach students the basis of the region's politics, but her order came under fire from a number of right-wing groups.

Chairman of the National Union-National Religious Party Zevulun Orlev criticized Tamir's decision, saying she was imposing her "Peace Now" ideology on the ministry.

Tamir said Israel could not demand of its Arab neighbors to mark the June 4, 1967 borders, while the Israeli education system erased them from its textbooks and from children's awareness.

MK Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), formerly the Director-General of the Education Ministry, also criticized Tamir, saying that she does not possess the authority to issue such an order.

"The education minister in not permitted to interfere with the content of textbooks, and should also have consulted the other members of the Knesset before making such changes," Tirosh said Tuesday.

Professor Yoram Bar-Gal, head of Geography and Environmental Studies at Haifa University, said Tamir's directive to bring the Green Line back to the maps would be hard to follow. He said that most of the textbooks are issued by private publishers who would not be keen on changing the plates at their expense.

Two years ago Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a lecturer in language and education at Hebrew University, published research on six study books that had been published after the Oslo agreement. Some of these books were officially endorsed by the Education Ministry. Many teachers adopted other books even without the ministry's approval.

Her main findings included the disappearance of the Green Line and Arab cities in Israel from the maps in these books, and their presentation of sites and settlements in "Judea and Samaria," rather than in the "West Bank," as an integral part of Israel.

Public Schools Rewarding Perfect Attendance With Chevies

Friday, December 1, 2006 Last modified Thursday, November 30, 2006 8:12 PM PST

Some schools offer cars, trucks to students for good attendance By: MEAD GRUVER - Associated Press CASPER, Wyo. -- Sixteen-year-old Kaytie Christopherson was getting ready to do her homework on a Friday when she got a call that made a big improvement in her life: She had won a brand-new pickup truck for near-perfect school attendance. And not just any truck, but a $28,000 Chevrolet Colorado crew cab, in red, with an MP3 player. Freedom comes standard. "I take it everywhere. To work, school. I don't know, anything I do, I have it out with me," the high school junior said. "I pay attention to where I park it, though." Public schools commonly reward excellent attendance with movie tickets, gas vouchers and iPods. But some diligent students like Kaytie are now hitting the ultimate teenage jackpot for going to school: They have won cars or trucks. School districts in Hartford, Conn.; Pueblo, Colo.; South Lake Tahoe, Calif.; and Wickenburg and Yuma, Ariz., are also giving away vehicles this school year. In most cases the car or truck is donated by a local dealership, and the prizes typically are awarded through drawings open only to students with good attendance. So does bribing students with the possibility of winning a car or truck actually get them to think twice about staying home from school? Some educators think so, and say their giveaways have boosted attendance. But the evidence is not clear-cut. Katyie -- who has a 4.0 average at Natrona County High, Dick Cheney's alma mater -- won her truck last spring, in the school system's first such drawing. But she said that was not what motivated her to keep up her attendance; she just didn't want to fall behind. District attendance officer Gary Somerville said he hopes to raise attendance and also reduce the district's 29 percent dropout rate, which he blames in part on Wyoming's booming gas-and-oil industry. "These kids can go out and earn $15, $16, $17 an hour swinging a hammer. It's kind of hard to keep them in school past their 16th birthday," he said. Hartford has been holding a drawing -- for either a car or $10,000 -- for the past six years. Five of those times the winning family chose the money. "I can't tell you that it's increased attendance," district spokesman Terry D'Italia said. "But what it has done over the years is just kept a focus on it and kept it at the top of kids' minds." Jack Stafford, associate principal at South Tahoe High School, said attendance increased slightly last year, the first year the school system gave away a car, and is up slightly so far this year. He said changing times call for such incentives. "My mom had the three-B rule: There'd better be blood, bone or barf, or I was going to school," Stafford said. But "that's not the case now." Kaytie's district is giving away a blue 2007 Chevy Colorado crew cab this year. It is being displayed at football and basketball games and will be parked at the mall over the holidays. "The kids all come around and say, 'Man, that's the truck I'm working for,"' Somerville said. Only 98 of Natrona County's 3,200 sophomores, juniors and seniors were eligible for last year's drawing. They were allowed only one excused absence, and no unexcused ones. Districts have a lot to gain and little to lose by holding car drawings. The vehicles are usually free. And in Wyoming, even a one-student increase in average daily enrollment means another $12,000 in state funding for the year. If not for the giveaway in Casper, Kaytie might be driving the family's broken-down 1987 Buick LeSabre with peeling blue paint. "I would have had such an awful car," she said.

How Teens Frustrate Military Recruiter's (and School Collaborators') ASVAB Scam

Teens Frustrate Military Recruiter's ASVAB Scam

With MySpace.com bulletins and a handful of homemade flyers, two teens have struck a blow against the American Warfare State, Lindale, Georgia Division.On a Friday afternoon the 17th of November, 17-year-old high school seniors Robert Day and Samuel Parker decided to act after Day overheard some teachers at Pepperell High School saying that first thing Monday morning the school’s juniors would be made to take the ASVAB military aptitude test.

Often administered under the guise of a career aptitude test, the ASVAB’s purpose is to better equip the State to prey on young people tricked or pressured into taking the test. According to Debbie Hopper of Mothers Against the Draft, it is often given under the pretext of being a “career placement” test. (In some cases it has in fact been used that way, no doubt in an attempt to legitimize what many Americans regard as not legitimate: the use of government schools as military recruiting grounds.)

The school board answered a concerned email from Parker’s mother with a suggestion that the test is not mandatory but “customary.” Sane Americans might ask, “Where, in Prussia?”
Though he would not be made to take the test, Day confronted the high school principal, Phil Ray, in defense of students younger than himself, and was told that the test was mandated by federal law. Day says he already believed that to be false, since he remembered the test being given only to the kids actually trying to join the military the year before. Regardless, the principal dismissed his objections. The juniors who were to be tested for their military “aptitude” were not to be told before the weekend.

Principal Ray did not return repeated calls to his office.

Not easily deterred, Day and Parker decided they would do what they could to “warn” the juniors themselves. They talked to a few kids at the end of school Friday afternoon, and over the weekend sent out more than 20 messages to MySpace bulletin boards discouraging cooperation. Arriving early Monday morning, Day and Parker picked out spots soon to be populated with kids waiting for the bell to ring, and with the help of some others who quickly volunteered, rapidly distributed their 200 homemade fliers to some and also spoke to many others, encouraging all to refuse to report to the cafeteria or to sabotage the test – either by ripping it up or filling in false information.

One of the military recruiters present attempted to snub their efforts, claiming the No Child Left Behind Act allows access to all of their information anyway, and so they might as well take the test.

Journalist and author James Bovard says the NCLB does indeed “roll out a red carpet” in terms of empowering the military to demand school records, but says that the ASVAB is far beyond what even it allows. The pushing of this military aptitude test, Bovard says, is “typical of how government guides kids – to an early funeral.”

Despite the recruiter’s interruption, Parker says that he, Day and their volunteers made sure every junior who may not have wanted to take the test had a chance to hear them explain its purpose and to understand that it was not mandatory.

They estimate that about half of the school’s juniors refused to even leave their regular classes to report to the testing site in the school’s cafeteria. Some of the teachers, apparently learning about this at the last minute like most everyone else, and confused as to the nature of the proceedings, insisted that their students at least go to the cafeteria even if they did not mean to cooperate with the military. Once they were there, the kids were informed that anyone who showed up in the cafeteria would be made to take the test.

The old lunch room Catch-22.

Some of the students decided to deliberately fill in faulty information. Perhaps that will go on their permanent record instead. “Look kid, we’re looking for test-refusers just like yourself. Do you have what it takes?”

The soldiers told the students that if anyone ripped up their test, then all the tests, including those belonging to the one-third or so of the kids who actually wanted to take it and receive their scores, would be thrown out. This bit of blackmail apparently worked on the kids who had reluctantly taken it, as no one physically destroyed their tests. Day and Parker estimate that less than a third of Pepperell’s juniors went along with their government’s scheme.
The high school counselor, Ms. Nixon, made it clear to the juniors that she was very disappointed in them for embarrassing principal Ray, but so far, no punishments have been handed down.

All in all, Parker and Day said they were pleasantly surprised by the help and encouragement of kids who they thought would not have cared at all.
We could all learn from their example.

Posted by Scott Horton

http://thestressblog.com/2006/11/24/teens-frustrate-military-recruiters-asvab-scam/#comments

University students targeted for arrest in northern West Bank

(Jenin) Ali Samoudi

Tuesday, 21 November 2006


“My son was arrested without reason and has lost his academic future,” Salah Tawfiq Zaid said of his son. Israeli forces detained the western Jenin village university student on 14 November.

He explained on Tuesday that Israeli forces have recently stepped up the campaign against students in the northern West Bank, subjecting them to detention, beatings, and interrogation. Sources in the Palestinian Prisoner Society reported today that Israeli forces arrested 20 university students in November.

They were taken to the Israeli military installation in the northern West Bank's Salem without disclosing a reason for the arrests.

Nineteen year old Zaid was arrested at the Zatara Checkpoint without cause, reports his father. In the presence of eyewitnesses Israeli forces took the Ramallah Teacher's College student. “He was in a car, which the soldiers stopped. They inspected it, checked identities, and then detained my son. They searched and questioned him, and then took him to a nearby military camp,” Zaid's father told PNN.

“We learned from the Palestinian Prisoner Society lawyer that Zaid was transferred to the Salem detention center in western Jenin where he is currently languishing. The Israeli police and investigators told the lawyer that Zaid will be held without charge.”

Zaid's story is representative of those of northern West Bank students in the past weeks. His father continued, “The occupation forces will not release him despite the fact that his arrest was based on nothing other than wrong place at the wrong time. There are no charges and he does not belong to any political party. His academic future is at risk.”

Nablus' An Najah University student Mahmoud Rushdie was arrested at a flying checkpoint on the road between the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin. He was not charged with anything but still the Israeli forces refuse to release him. Instead he joins the hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners being held without charge or trial in Israeli prisons.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society is calling for international intervention as more students fear the trip to universities.

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1050&Itemid=30