Students Are Not Rats

“I prefer to die than to live like a rat,” said Charlie Hebdo’s top editor Stéphane Charbonnier, in regard to life without free speech.   

            In America, free speech is a defining feature of our political conscience.  

A poll of high school students and teachers by the John S and James L Knight Foundation found that while 24 percent of students thought the first amendment was overreaching, “65 percent of the students who see digital news on a daily basis agreed strongly that people should be able to express unpopular opinions,” according to an article on The Guardian.

            Yet the free speech of American high school students is constantly up for debate. When will we find the line that separates freedom of expression from communication with intent to incite violence? 

            This question was raised once again on May 5^th, 2010 when a group of high school students wore t-shirts displaying the American flag to school on Cinco de Mayo.

            The principal required the students to either turn their shirt inside out or go home. The students proceeded to go home, and their parents filed a lawsuit against the school for violating the right to free speech.

            After San Francisco Federal judges ruled in favor of the school principal, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, according to The Los Angeles Times.     

So far the Supreme Court has ruled that students have the right to wear black armbands in protest of a war (Tinker v. Des Moines) and that students, in order to communicate a political message, may use particular offensive words (Cohen v. California).

However, if the any of the above actions could cause harm to others, the right is taken away (Schneck v. United States).

            Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to take the case. By their refusal the court is supporting, by omission, the San Francisco court’s decision that the principal had legal justification to restrict the student’s free speech right because “The Live Oaks High School south of San Jose had seen at least 30 fights between white and Mexican American students,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

            This is just one scenario among many; sometimes the courts make the right decision, and sometimes they don’t.

            It’s up to us to make our voices heard in support or in protest. Join the conversation at The Los Angeles Times or sign-up for the ACLU newsletter to get involved.

Is Consensus Building Overrated?

           Today as world governments clashing violently and peacefully, internally and externally, three countries highlight the internal struggle: Great Britain, France, and United States.

The relationship between the current U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama appears to be permanently fried. The battle lines were drawn months, perhaps even years, ago, but the political battle turned particularly ugly this week.

47 Republicans openly told Iranian leaders that any treaty made with the current administration could be challenged by the next U.S. president and by Congress.

        Obama and other Democrats “accused Republicans of undermining the president’s authority to carry out foreign policy,” according to The Hill.

“…They [Republicans] have decided that as long as he [Obama] holds the office of the presidency, it’s no longer necessary to respect the office itself,” wrote Paul Waldman on the Plum Line, a Washington Post blog.

Consensus building seems completely impossible at this point.

In France, the rift between President François Hollande and the Socialist Party has widened drastically with the introduction of new economic policy called Macron Law.  

“Opposition from the president’s own party was so fierce that Mr. Hollande invoked special constitutional powers to bypass the National Assembly, the first use of that maneuver in nearly a decade,” wrote the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron, a French Economy Minister and the designer of Macron Law, is calling for the French and German governments to, essentially, collaborate and produce similar economic policies, according to the Wall Street Journal. If Mr. Hollande continues down the path that Mr. Macron suggests, can the president hope to reconcile the Socialist Party to the new economic scene?

The recent failed no-confidence vote should not exactly reassure Mr. Hollande, as “it underscored the divisions laid bare by the French President’s decision to shed the consensus-building style that swept him into office,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s a different story on the other side of the channel as Britain gears up for a parliamentary vote in May.

As the minority parties grow in popularity, polls show support for the Green party rose from 1% to 8%, the parties demonstrate a willingness to work together that is unseen in the aforementioned administrations.

“We [the Green, UK Independence, Separatists Scottish National and Liberal-Democrat parties] prefer a so-called confidence and supply arrangement, whereby we would give support to whoever was on number ten on certain big issues, including the budget, in return for getting some of our key priorities brought in and for being able to vote freely on a whole range of other issues,” Rupert Read, a Green party candidate, told The Economist.

Ask yourselves, as I hope the U.S. and French governments have asked themselves, how dangerous is it to present a fractured government to the world? Is their position really so important that it cannot be partially sacrificed for the sake of a united front?

College Acceptance Begins in Preschool?

Kindergarten College Application work sheet from ms.preppy.blogspot.com

Every child’s life, from K-12, is about getting into college; the way to do that is test, test, test. Right?

That is true according to school boards and teachers across the country.

 “We need to ask them, ‘How will you get there?’ Even if I am teaching preschool, the word ‘college’ has to be in there,” Kelli Rigo, a teacher at Johnsonville Elementary School in North Carolina, told the New York Times.

Ms. Rigo has her 1^st grade students create their own college applications, which are then displayed in the classroom.

Steven Gilhuley, a principal at Howard T. Herber Middle School in Malverne, wants his students to not be nervous about the SAT, according to the New York Times. That means starting the SAT conversation at age 6 or 7. Elementary and middle school children in Malverne, N.Y., learn SAT vocabulary in the morning and keep a vocabulary notebook.

Not everyone agrees with the heightened emphasis on college preparation. Middle and high school students and parents, even a few educators, are protesting the new PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career) test.

“There was ‘no doubt’ children were being tested too much,” Salvatore Goncalves, superintendent of the Bloomfield School District, N.J., told the New YorkTimes.

Hundreds of high school students in New Mexico agreed with Mr. Goncalves; students held protests against the newly implemented PARCC exam on Monday, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Students held signs with slogans such as “I am more than a test score,” “Say no to PARCC,” and “Why take a test everyone is going to fail?”

If your child is enrolled in a public school, or you are that child, it’s up to you to take a stand. Do twelve years  need to be devoted to getting into college? Or is that putting too much unnecessary stress on elementary kids?

WHAT is Putin doing...And can the Ukraine financially last long enough to find out?

The Ukrainian conflict began exactly one year ago today; politicians and political analysts are still undecided about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s end goal. Whatever his plan, Putin appears to being winning.

 Only a few days ago in Debaltseve, Ukraine, yet another cease-fire fell through between Ukrainian forces and the Russian-backed rebels, this time lasting only 40 minutes, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It is not clear who first violated the cease-fire; both sides blamed the other. Putin demanded that, as the outskirts of the town were controlled by rebels, Ukraine retreat from the area; Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko disagreed, arguing that his forces were in control of the area, and called for the rebels to respect the cease-fire agreement.

Last week Putin won as separatists reclaimed Debaltseve.

 “Western officials said the continued fighting could indicate that Mr. Putin favors a simmering conflict – one that he can ignite at any time to impede Ukraine’s attempts to move toward the North Atlantic Treaty Association,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

However, the head of Russia's independent Council for Foreign and Defense Policy think tank Sergei Karaganov believes that Putin’s aims are more serious than simply preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.

“After winning the Cold War, the whole of Europe is losing it now….And it is entering the next phase of international relations disunited, again on the verge of confrontation or even a major war,” Karaganov wrote for the Russian newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

            What will Putin do? Apparently, only time will tell....Preferably before the Ukraine goes bankrupt.

Protect the Internet

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That could be the future of the internet. What? How? Why?

The Federal Communications Commission is voting to keep or limit “net neutrality” on February 26^th, 2015. Net neutrality is the idea that no company can pay, or be required to pay, an Internet Service Provider (I.S.P.) more to deliver their content faster to users like you and me.

For example, with net neutrality Youtube cannot pay an I.S.P., like Comcast or Verizon, to be in an “internet fast-lane” so that their video will load quicker than your tumblr. blog.  

            While on the surface the issue of net neutrality can appear trivial, but that is far from the case. Threatening net neutrality also threatens entrepreneurship and limits freedom of speech.

“Who gets to go fast and who gets to go slow? If my message comes to you really slowly, another person’s message comes quickly and directly. Who’s going to be heard? That has implications for democracy, for commerce,” said media columnist David Carr in a New York Times video.

            If net neutrality was taken away, start-up companies, non-profits and other small businesses would not have the money to pay for “fast-lane” access.

            Click here to sign the ACLU petition and make your voice heard to the F.C.C.

Global Cultures Reacting to Terrorism

            While across the globe terrorist activities are prompting pro- and anti-Islam protests, Australians alone have reached out to support its Muslim community.

            In France, Parisians have come together in a show of solidarity after the terrorist attack in early January. “Je Suis Charlie” posters were everywhere after Al Qaeda jihadists killed 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris.

            “They’ve killed 12 people, maybe more, but they haven’t killed the French soul or the French people,” Isabelle told the Wall Street Journal.

            The attack encouraged a different reaction in Dresden, Germany. An anti-Islamic group, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (a.k.a. Pegida), say the attack supports their position (bloomberg).

            Since October Pegida has called for “limiting asylum rights and says radical Islam threatens to overrun Western culture” (WSJ). The German government is has asked for Germans to not join Pegida; “Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly condemned the movement as hateful” (WSJ).

This week in Chechnya, a Russian province with a Muslim majority, “Hundreds of thousands rallied in the capital of Chechnya on Monday after the Kremlin-backed leader there declared a holiday to denounce the French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad” (WSJ).

According to Russian officials, the rise of the Islamic State and other Islamic terrorist activities can be blamed directly on the West. The Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has even accused the CIA of controlling the Islamic State (WSJ).

Only in Australia has the populace actively reached out to the Muslim community. After a terrorist that may have been affiliated with the Islamic State held 17 hostages in a café in Sydney, Australia, thousands of Australians offered to accompany Muslims in traditional clothing. “The hashtag #IllRideWithYou was used more than 250,000 times on Twitter” before the hostages were rescued by police (New York Times).

What can we do to encourage Australia’s response worldwide?

Iraq & Afghanistan: Did We Do Well?

The U.S. government experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan are fragile and slowly improving but violence is rising as American and NATO troops are recalled in the two countries.

After toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the U.S. redesigned the country’s government, even rewriting the Constitution. Some things have improved under the disputed democratically elected governments. Others have not.

“Since the 2011 U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, sectarian and ethnic divisions have widened,” according Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs.

These divisions have created fertile ground for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and also for the return of sectarian militias that plagued Iraq in 2006 and 2007, according to The New York Times and Katzman.

The Iraqi military has struggled to successfully confront ISIL as the country grows continually more divided.

After the September 11 terrorist attack, the U.S. government launched what would become a 13 year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Sunday, December 28th, President Barack Obama officially ended that war.

During those 13 years NATO forces successfully cast down the Taliban regime and, with the help of the United Nations, reformed the Afghani government.

Despite lacking a leader of the Defense ministry, high desertion rates and “an unprecedented terrorism campaign in the capital” by the Taliban, The Washington Post reported that the majority of Afghans have confidence in their national army.

Foreign Policy reported that “the Taliban is poised for a comeback with a recent surge in violence in Kabul and around the country. There are concerns that Afghanistan’s military and fragile political institutions will crumble as the United States leaves.”

You decide; was the U.S. successful in Iraq and Afghanistan?