Tag Archives: charter schools

Ditching schools to make American Taliban enclaves in Colorado Springs

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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.- While secularist crusader Richard Dawkins was delighting evangelical atheists at a nearby college campus, addressing how the charter school movement is subverting public education with religious indoctrination, the local District 11 school board was selling off another two primary schools –to charter school privateers! Flipping moribund neighborhoods to the Christian Soldiers.

Is privatizing schools better than selling the properties to real estate developers? Communities need their schools. But yesterday’s decision means the neighborhoods of Jefferson Elementary and Irving Middle School will encircle Christian madrases, centers not of learning but militant god-on-our-side imperialism. The schools were closed in 2009 due to alleged declines in enrollment. If charter entrepreneurs succeed with their revival tent schools for dummies, they’ll turn more Springs neighborhoods into klan xenophobe enclaves.

Who wants to raise their kids around Xbox/drone suicide bombers in training, beside American Idiot parents? They recoil at the Taliban, its madrasa schools and suicide bombers, extremist misrepresentations of Islam. But in the West, Christian zealots are the norm, technology perhaps obscuring their imbecility, fighting for Our God and disposing themselves into the trash heap of war. Now Colorado Springs has two more soldier fodder incubators.

As per usual, Colorado Springs monied class is unrepentant, gaga for GW Bush

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Bush is a criminal, you moronsYep, they turned up in their orange tans, diamonds, black gowns and shiny SUVs, to support Christian charter schools and honor “God Bless Him” George Dubya Bush. This was my favorite sign from the protest.

CH2M pushes UAE Masdar as model PRT

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In writing about the recent PPSBN Sustainability conference, I failed miserably to highlight the keynote speaker Nancy Tuor, who represented CH2M Hill as a model green corporate citizen. Ms Tuor, the “Group President and Executive Sponsor for Sustainability” at CH2M Hill, had headliner status at the conference because she is Program Manager on the MASDAR ‘Green’ City development in the United Arab Emirates, a smoke and mirrors project if ever there was, and it’s smoke from burning oil.

According to the program for this week’s conference in Colorado Springs:

CH2M HILL is the delivery partner for the first phase of the MASDAR development, a carbon-neutral and zero-waste sustainable city nestled in the heart of Abu Dhabi—the first major hydrocarbon producing nation.

First, a sustainable city built on income generated by fossil fuel is an oxymoron. Second, UAE’s efforts appear to be centered on securing the technological rights to new sources and practices before their monopoly on oil expires.

MASDAR is a comprehensive Abu Dhabi government program to address the issues of sustainable energy sources and environmental practices. The program is focused on developing and commercializing advanced and innovative technologies in renewable, alternative, and sustainable energies.

In other words, their definition of sustainable is much like the military’s, they want to sustain their profits.

Minneapolis Confidential‘s Ken Avidor contacted NMT about another outlandish aspect of CH2M’s green charade in Masdar. It relates to an announcement which Nancy Tuor made at the conference:

MIST delays impact PRT schedule. At a sustainability conference in Colorado Springs on November 3, 2009, Nancy Tuor, CH2M Hill’s program manager for the MASDAR ‘Green City’ in the United Arab Emirates, announced that the personal rapid transit (PRT) system will open to public use in about six months.

It seems a central showpiece of the Masdar development is a Personal Rapid Transit system which always fails to materialize. As Avidor writes:

You may have seen blog posts and news stories about a “sustainable” city in the United Arab Emirates called Masdar. One of the supposed “green” features of the Masdar project is a “Personal Rapid Transit” (PRT) system. It turns out the PRT system is a joke… but what do expect from a country where a prominent royal family member tortures people and has it all documented on video.

One of Avidor’s astute readers makes the point that the US tortures people, and documents it on video as well. So much for that dig at UAE, but Avidor’s central criticism stands. PRT projects worldwide are being lauded with out merit, but of critical relevance, PRTs are being used as stalking horses to thwart the finite budgets which metropolitan regions have for mass transit.

Interestingly, Avidor’s blog posts are being dogged by two detractors who can’t sing praises enough for PRTs. Maybe they’re new technology freaks who want to see Jetsons fantasies in their lifetimes. Maybe they believe the argument against mass transit, that contemporary man doesn’t want a community experience when he commutes. If they aren’t PRT industry shills, they should at least concede that no number of personal pods will accommodate the masses. They’re luxury hogs who don’t want to share the ride.

As cars sank the trolleys, so could PRT smoke and mirrors sink trains and subways. But the rich man has no need for mass transit. Why not get the taxpayers to fund something that will be available to only he: personal transit. Where there’s no room for the masses. It’s the same strategy the rich use to fund their charter schools at the expense of public schools.

Where the rich are fleecing the needy, you can always count on Colorado Springs to sign on.

Barack Obama is your president

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Does the presidential plane say NIGGER?COLORADO SPRINGS- The superintendent of District 12 schools announced Friday that Barack Obama’s address to schoolchildren on Tuesday will not be shown in his district’s schools. I’m no defender of this president, but I have to ask, what possible rationale could excuse such disrespect? It’s probably too easy to decry racism, so what’s left?

Personally, of course, I could imagine steering schoolchildren clear of George W. Bush. Old President Bush had a 13% or so approval rating. Foreign leaders dismissed him as a moron. It was whispered that he’d resumed drinking, and it was common knowledge that he’d been a cocaine user until his forties. George Bush was no example for impressionable youth. What parent could hold him up as a role model, other than the town drunk or village idiot who was not to be emulated? But I’m certain the same schools just a year ago would never have crossed that president.

Setting aside his surprising political turns, Barack Obama projects inspiring leadership qualities. He speaks intelligently with attentiveness and compassion. His message to children is to be one of encouragement in the hard times ahead, dealing with the increased imperative of higher education. Recent generations have been growing successively nihilistic. Perhaps the economy’s turn is an appropriate occasion for a president to address our nation’s kids. We like to call them our future.

Bush gave our schools the disastrous NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT which completely degraded public schools and ushered the calls for privatization of education under the guise of Charter Schools. In Colorado, Bush’s measure prompted the CSAPs, which hobble teachers by requiring classes to focus on passing standardized tests, instead of teaching broader lessons. Bush’s act also guarantees that military recruiters have access to the personal records of our children at their most vulnerable, to more easily prey upon them when they are rebellious teens. Bush was no friend of schoolchildren.

Election button 2008Obama on the other hand won a decisive victory in November, and no small number of his supporters were young children. Many teachers were pushing for Obama and his promise of hope, in the midst of a culture of pessimism sowed by George W. and his destructive agendas. Bush waged war against everything schoolchildren are fostered to care about. Obama’s campaign represented salvation for our planet. How now are school administrators prepared to extricate the students from their own personal rapport with the new president?

To quote a favorite Twit, Badbanana:

Obama is going to address the nation’s schoolchildren? One good fart joke and the Democrats control Congress for 60 years.

We know of course the high pitched extremists groups whom the superintendent thinks he is placating. They are the Teabaggers and Birthers who reject Obama as president. “He’s not my president” they say. They learned the phrase from their adversaries who protested the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, but never understood its meaning. Obviously they have nothing to teach children about the workings of democracy.

At the recent health care town hall hosted by Congressman Doug Lamborn, I had a chance to witness these Birthers, so named because they reject Barack Obama’s birth certificate. They are so certain that Obama will be discovered to be foreign born and will thus be stripped of the presidency. “Three More Months, Three More Months” they countered, while progressive citizens were chanting for health care reform.

Ed Bircham of Bircham Office ProductsLocal wing nut business owner Ed Bircham was dancing a jig singing “Ho Ho, Obama’s Got To Go, Ho Ho.” Egged on by KVOR djs and unabashed gay-bashers, Ed Bircham repeated his calls for Obama’s removal from office.

Incredible. Obama hasn’t done anything yet –which is my complaint– so what have the teabaggers against him? It’s patently absurd, if it wasn’t so obviously bigoted. “No Country For Old Bigots” I yelled.

Actually I joined local NAACP leader James Tucker in interjecting “Obama Is Your President” between Bircham’s call for his ouster. “Respect Your President” we found ourselves saying, even as I knew that I would not hold myself to such restraint. On the other hand, my opposition to President Obama has nothing to do with his skin color. On what principles do these white men disagree with Barack Obama, except that they’re not about to show deference to a nigger?

Lacrosse fought & equipped by warriors

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Warrior Sports
Need another tipoff that the sport of lacrosse is early combat training? The leading equipment purveyor is Warrior Sports.

This photo was taken at the 2009 Jamboree in Denver Colorado, where teams of little white boys converged to declare state champions. The sea of white was interrupted by a single black team, a girls team, I conjecture because women’s lacrosse is played more like field hockey, necessitating much less protective gear. From sticks to heads, to helmet, to Kevlar, every element of Lacrosse gear had a starting price of $120, going up.

Schools don’t have budgets to support both football and lacrosse armature. Lacrosse leagues are sort of the charter schools of youth sports: only those with disposable incomes need apply. If African American youth dominate you school sport programs, why not take you Anglo-Saxon tykes to fields where they can dominate each other without a challenger’s interruption? But I digress.

Lacrosse is for tots who already harbor an innate itch to thrust handguns forward, but have to be taught that, in every useful gunfight save those of James Bond, standard issue is an assault rifle, which necessitates both hands, and best represented in early boot camp as its earliest belligerent incarnation: the stick.

Kids like lacrosse because they get to swing their sticks at others with wild abandon. It’s especially fun, I’m told, when you really hate your opponents.

Barack pledges to continue Republican Dunce Plan for privatizing Public Schools

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test pencilThe Democrats pledged today to keep the Republican implementation of ‘No Child Left Behind’ intact, and as a result the nation’s corporate media is aglow celebrating the supposed great wisdom of Barack’s not so new Education Dunce Plan. Key points of Obama’s speech outlined that he would continue the previous efforts of the Republican dismantling of the public education system in our country, and continue the privatization of schools. Let’s take a look at what was encouraged in Obama’s speech…

1) More charter schools, less public ones. This is the key element of the previous run Republican plans to privatize education for young kids. It means less secular education, and more religious. It means money will go to make public schools nastier so that parents then feel obligated to move their kids into the religious and/or corporate ‘charter’ ones.

2) More testing of teachers to see if they are onboard this privatization program. If not, they get the axe under the guise of personally not meeting standards. They call this a ‘merit standard’ where teachers teaching in more difficult circumstances will get increased pressure, less administrative support than the already negligible support they are receiving, and more pressure from the top to perform (read conform). This is a measure by Barack to break the teacher’s unions, who are and would continue to be the strongest bloc opposed to further privatization of US education.

3) Yet more nonsensical ‘testing’ time for kids in place of actually educating them. More CSAP (as the Fed Mandated standardized testing is called here in Colorado) for the parent saps that think that Barack is doing something different now. Note*** each state has their own name for these Fed mandated tests, though they are basically all the exact same. Scientifically, one can measure and see that this mandatory testing has solved none of the US educational problems since its implementation by the Bush Klan, but there is no science behind this mandatory testing anyway. Still Barack wants to do more of it on your kids.

As usual, there is a lot of prettification of this reactionary agenda by the Democratic Party, most of it with $$$$$ signs attached to some promised trinkets ahead. We’d be donkeys with dollar signs hanging in front of our snouts to buy this stuff, wouldn’t we? Unfortunately, the Democratic party voters often are literal dumb donkeys when it comes to getting on board this sort of dressing up of Republican ideas done for them by their DP polis.

To see an example of the corporate daily press sell of this further privatization plan of Barack Obama for public education, go to Canada’s most important paper and read their editorial cheerleading- Obama’s revolutionary reform of U.S. education. And for some ‘read it and weep’ commentary, go see how even supposed American commies are even pushing for this Republican reaction posing itself as now Barack’s new reform… Read the People’s Weekly World opinion piece stupidly celebrating what is being proposed by the Democratic Party for America’s exploited kids- Obama admin. tackles comprehensive education reform

Of course these ‘commies’ are people who many of them for decades were subjected to standardized testing by Supreme Comrades, Joseph Stalin et al. What can one really expect from such nitwit supporters of the Democratic Party as the minuscule American Communist Party membership is? ..lol

Obama’s slam Duncan of public education

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arne duncanIt seems that the ‘Change’ President and basketball player, Barack Obama, has picked another Basketball jock like himself to head up National Education policy? In choosing Arne Duncan for the post, Barack Obama slam Dunkan-ed the Chicago community organizing group, Parents United for Responsible Education, with an Aspen Institute prodigy who specializes in closing down public schools and then reopening them as privatized ‘charter schools’.

No wonder Pastor Rick Warren will be at the Inaugural Ceremony performing for BO, because this is the favored program of the Religious Right that would have religion put back in schools forcefully, using public tax monies to get it done. Barack is on board this program, and so is Harvard Basketball jock Arne.

Who is this Arne really? He is a guy who has never been a teacher, and get this! … he has a degree in Sociology! That would get me and you a job at about $13/hr, but Arne got his Sociology Degree at Harvard. Add some extra points, because he paid some extra dollars for that degree. PLUS, he’s added on some honorary credentials from other elite outfits, too, including a ‘Doctor of Laws’ degree from Lake Forest College. Wkipedia tells us that Most (if not all) U.S. universities that award the degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.), award it only as an honorary degree. Read…. big shots are given it for free, this degree.

But that would not be enough alone to have gotten Barack Obama to pick the guy for Education Boss. The fact is, that Arne Duncan was one of Harvard’s greatest basketball Stars! Oh the alumni! Oh, and there’s more! Arne plays BB games with Barrack in Chicago! Never has cronyism been so narrowed!

The impact of Obama’s slam dunk of public education with this sorry choice of exHarvard BB Star Duncan, is more than just an indication of how Barack Obama wants to do yet more with the ‘No Child Left Behind’ sort of privatization mish mash of the Dubya years, but is also an indicator of how little real public heath care we shall see in the cards in the years ahead. After all, if you think that privatizing public education is a good thing, then it is not going to mean that this ‘Change’ BB Dude will be ready to change the already privatized American Health Care System for the better either. No way! He’ll just put a basketball jock, this time from Yale, perhaps?, in charge of Medicine. First the Boss would have to be vetted by the Aspen Institute or some other elite ruling class money laundering outfit like them though. Then slam dunk Health Care. It looks deadly.

Yes, it’s going to be corruption as usual in the Education Department and one doesn’t need a Sociology Degree to figure that one out from this choice. Good luck, Kids! 2+2=4 and Barack Obama is bouncing people around in court. It’ll be a real public education for all of us very soon, and could it get much worse? Social Security on the chopping block anybody?

Thank you Obama’s Reverend Wright

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What a fantastic development, to have Barack Obama unmasked still early into the election, bursting the giddy bubble which his fans regard as the change Obama offers from Centrism/Neoliberalism/Neoconartistry. Obama is not only denouncing Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s statements. Obama is now telling Americans over-regulation is a problem, Obama is endorsing charter schools, Obama is conceding that some Republican policies are preferable to those of Democrats…

Can you dispute any of the pronouncements of Obama’s Reverend? Even rephrased by critics, I found these criticisms are unassailable, if uncomfortably spirited. Here they are presented in an accusatory article on Barack Obama: WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN?

Racism is alive and well. Racism is the American way.

Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run.

No black man can ever be President.

No black woman will ever be considered for anything outside of what she can give with her body.

America is still the number one killer in the world.

We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training professional killers.

We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.

We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.

We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly

We started the AIDS virus, and now that it is out of control we still put more money in the military than in medicine. More money in hate than humanitarian concerns.

We are selfish, self-centered ego egotists, who are arrogant and ignorant.

The second to last statement may be extreme, but what’s to argue? Whether CIA labs produced an AIDs virus to arrest the exploding populations of Africa, or whether our exploitive capitalism / polluting industrialism / callous militarism / usurious enslavement systems precipitated the genocide over lands from which the developed nations need resources but not people, are either less murderous?

One could split the same hairs about 9/11. Whether our government colluded with the hijackers to facilitate/exacerbate a false flag attack against the first world, or whether our world trade banking policies finally so enraged its victims to goad their desperate symbolic strike on our WTC, are we any the less responsible?

Reverend Jeremiah Wright is absolutely right about all these points. In the tradition of MLK not by coincidence. Barack Obama is being compelled by the corporate mainstream to distance himself from what the American public knows are truths, and all the better. Those of us who know we need a change can see that Obama isn’t going to be it.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.

We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”