Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Real Educational Reform

The assault on teachers unions has historically driven educational reform in North America. The claim that our education system is failing due to bad teachers, bureaucratic public education etc. has led the move towards so called market reforms in education; merit pay and charter schools to name two favorite right wing bugaboos.

However the reality is that in North America public education is generalized unless you are destined to go to university. Graduating from High School gives you a generalized diploma, worth nothing to employers. If you qualify as a potential candidate for a university education you get put into that track. That high school diploma is not generalized, and allows you to enter university post secondary education, if you can afford it.

All other forms of post secondary education; college and trades education, which actually educate/train students for the world of work are not tracked. They are in Europe and Asia which is why they beat out our students. Its not a matter of knowing more math or science but of having access to educated embedded job learning, apprenticeship opportunities beginning in high school and transitioning to post-secondary technical schools.


What’s the problem? The fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized society that relies so heavily on its higher education system to help young people get from the end of compulsory schooling into the workforce with the knowledge and skills to be successful in today’s economy. Despite the fact that nearly all young people now say that they want to go to college and that increasing percentages of high school graduates are in fact enrolling in college, our college completion rate is stuck at about 40 percent. Many organizations are now focused on the challenge of how to increase our college completion rate and have set a very aggressive target of 55 percent by 2025.

But even if this very ambitious improvement goal were to be reached, what is our strategy for getting the other 45 percent of young people the skills and credentials they will need to get launched on a career path that can enable them to earn a family-supporting wage and lead a productive life? This is the big question our report raises, and that you barely acknowledge.

In our search for answers, we draw heavily on two recently published Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) studies that bring important international evidence and experience to bear on the problem we cite, but you never even acknowledge this major section of our report. We point out that throughout Northern Europe from the age of 16 between 40 and 70 percent of young people enroll in programs that combine classroom and workplace learning, have significant employer involvement, and prepare students for careers in a wide range of occupations, not just the traditional trades.


SEE

Obama Embraces Neo-Con Agenda

Friday, June 29, 2007

CIA Conspiracies Are Real


After decades of denial the CIA finally is forced to out itself. Of course we knew of many of these things thanks to the work of those who were often labeled 'conspiracy theorists' like Jack Anderson and later Mae Brussel.As this editorial points out there is no difference between the CIA of the past transgressions and the CIA of today.

Editorial: CIA abuses aren't history

The CIA calls them "the family jewels," which make the documents sound like something precious. On the contrary, they are a shameful record of decades of embarrassing missteps and outrageous abuses of power by America's spies.

The documents, released this week, provide new details on CIA activities in the 1960s and 1970s, many of them previously uncovered. They tell of assassination plots, both successful and not, of domestic wiretapping operations, the infiltration of antiwar groups and mind control experiments.

From this distance documents can seem comical, but nonetheless disturbing. The CIA partnered with the mafia in repeated attempts to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro, and the mafia expected favors in return. Thus, we had CIA agents bugging the hotel room of comedian Dan Rowan to determine if the "Laugh-in" star was sleeping with a mob boss's girlfriend. As John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy - who approved the attempts on Castro's life - and the nation soon learned, assassination is no laughing matter.

The CIA released the documents - which remain heavily censored, indicating there are still some sins officials don't want to confess - in an attempt to score points for candor. "I firmly believe that the improved system of intelligence oversight that came out of the 1970s gives the CIA a far stronger place in our democratic system," CIA director Michael Hayden said in releasing the documents.

He should tell that to a judge in Italy, where 25 CIA agents are being tried in absentia, charged with kidnapping an Egyptian cleric. The trial, now recessed until October pending the appeal of a ruling, is a test of the agency's "extraordinary rendition program." He should ask the more than 100 terror suspects held since 2002 in the CIA's secret prisons overseas, subjected to interrogation techniques often described as torture.

- Romanian lawmakers have pulled out of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) to protest against a Swiss investigator's report that said Bucharest hosted CIA secret prisons.

CIA Remains Secretive About Current Acts


While the CIA is lauded for releasing 700 pages documenting some of its most egregious 1950-1970 abuses, critics say the US spy agency remains secretive about its current controversial activities. "We don't know everything that's going on today. But it seems to me there's already enough evidence to conclude that things are not so different today," said David Barrett, political scientist at Villanova University, author of a 2005 book on the CIA and Congress in the 1940s and 1950s, speaking to the New York Times. -Capital Hill Blue

Documents show 30-year-old skeletons in CIA closet

Little-known documents made public Thursday detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago - wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more.

Much of the decades-old activities have been known for years. But Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, said the 1975 summary memo prepared by Justice Department lawyers had never been publicly released. It sheds light on meetings in the top echelon of government that were little known by the public, he said.

Blanton pointed to more recent concerns, such as post-Sept. 11, 2001 programs that included warrantless wiretapping.

"The resonance with today's controversies is just uncanny," he said.


On the Net:

The documents can be found at: http://www.nsarchive.org


CIA Document Dump Just Confirms Kissinger's Dark Rep

The recent release by the CIA of documents concerning the agency's illegal surveillance of Americans and involvement in the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Salvador Allende of Chile, and Patrice Lumumba of Congo, as well as assassinations plots against Fidel Castro, prove what authors and scholars have already concluded about the agency. Most noteworthy is the involvement of Henry Kissinger in giving the green light to Turkey's invasion of Cyprus.

The links between Kissinger and Turkey formed a long lasting relationship between Kissinger and the Israeli Lobby in the United States, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Turks, particularly the links between AIPAC and the American Turkish Council and individuals like Richard Perle, Marc Grossman, and Douglas Feith. That relationship was exposed with revelations stemming from information divulged as a result of the FBI's firing of Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds and the concentration of the Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA front company on weapons of mass destruction and the Turkish nexus to nuclear materials trafficking from the former Soviet Central Asian states.

ACLU Sues for Patriot Act Documents from CIA and Pentagon


Of course the CIA has still not revealed what it knows about the JFK Assassination.

More than 40 years after he was fatally shot in Dallas, researchers have added fresh fuel to the speculation over who was involved in the assassination of President John F Kennedy by claiming the original bullet analysis was flawed and cannot rule out that a second gunman was involved.

Using new scientific techniques not available to previous researchers and analysing bullets from the same batch purportedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald, the team has argued that it cannot be assumed that Oswald was the only assassin involved. While they do not claim evidence to prove a second gunman participated, they say the original fragments of the bullets recovered from the scene of the shooting should be re-examined.


And they also didn't reveal what they know about UFO's.

Because that would lead to disturbing questions about the Weaponization of Space.


SEE:

The Misuse of Acid

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

Irans Nuclear Program Is A CIA Oops

CIA Secret Flights in Canada



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Back In the USSA

As the Anarchist Sci-Fi writer Mack Reynolds used to posit in many of his novels the difference between the KGB and the CIA was the difference between the Military Industrial Complex in America and the Military Industrial Complex in the USSR.

Today that difference has all but disappeared. As old enemies now become clients in the privatized world of secret rendition. Secret CIA jails hosted by Poland, Romania: watchdog

See:

Lagrange 5


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
, , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , , , ,