MEDIA ROOTS – Several hundred psychologists, as well as numerous psychological associations around the
country, are united in calling for the annulment of the American Psychological
Association’s report on
Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). The 2005 report is an APA endorsement of the highly suspect intelligence-gathering
procedures used in US military detention sites such as Guantánamo Bay and
Bagram, Afghanistan. The demand for its immediate suspension and
public review is called not by the APA Board or Ethics Committee, but by its
general membership as well as several scholar-activists such as Daniel Ellsberg
and Noam Chomsky.
Flaws in the PENS process have been apparent from its
inception. The creation of a presidential task force consisting of nine psychologists was specifically
assigned to adopt the official psychological guidelines for interrogation by US
intelligence agents. Unfortunately, the task force was composed primarily of
psychologists already working within the military and intelligence communities, and
many have been involved in instances of suspected prisoner abuse. Additionally, PENS
was never offered for discussion among the APA membership, the press, or the
general public, and it was approved in a highly suspect emergency vote that deviated
from standard APA procedures.
The closing of Guantánamo Bay is on hold, and Bagram is
expanding in size to incarcerate up to 5,500 suspected ‘terrorists’ by the end of 2012. Both detention sites do not offer detainees due process as outlined in the
Constitution and violate international laws, such as those outlined in the Geneva Conventions. As these criminal gulags continue to operate unabated, psychologists
worldwide are becoming increasingly aware that the APA was simply used as a promotional propaganda tool by the White House in order to justify its rendition and torture program.
MR
***
COALITION FOR AN ETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY – Over the decade since the horrendous attacks of
9/11, the world has been shocked by the specter of abusive interrogations and
the torture of national security prisoners by agents of the United States
government. While psychologists in the U.S. have made significant contributions
to societal welfare on many fronts during this period, the profession
tragically has also witnessed psychologists acting as planners, consultants,
researchers, and overseers to these abusive interrogations at Guantanamo Bay
Detention Center, Bagram Air Base, CIA “black sites,” and elsewhere. Moreover,
in the guise of keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective,”
psychologists were used to provide legal protection for otherwise illegal
treatment of prisoners.
The American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2005 Report of the
Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security
(the PENS Report) is the defining document endorsing psychologists’
engagement in detainee interrogations. Despite evidence that
psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task
Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping
interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.” With this stance,
the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the
sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices
contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be
the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged.
MEDIA ROOTS — With governments,
citizens, and activists worldwide increasingly relying on the internet, the environment the
internet fosters is a hotly contested issue.
Last summer, the United Nations declared that disconnecting people from
the internet was a human
rights violation and against international law. Considering internet access as a human right
and witnessing the vital contribution it has played in the Arab Spring and Occupy Movements,
the sanctity of preserving a free and open internet, or net neutrality, can’t
be understated. Even the U.S. military
recently acknowledged the critical role of cyberspace by including the digital
domain in its latest concept of “full spectrum dominance.”
As humanity’s relationship with the
burgeoning information age matures, threats to a free and open internet
continue to proliferate. Indeed, when the
printed press, radio, TV, and every other technological innovation, which have promised
to revolutionize public access to a diversity of information, were developed, they’ve
faced consolidation, monopolization, and the resultant transferences of power
and control into few hands. Now, potential
predators stalk the digital realm; and they have been revealed as SOPA, PIPA
and ACTA.
SOPA, PIPA and
ACTA all generally share the same goals which are to ostensibly protect
trademarks and intellectual property, while fending off counterfeiting and
pirating. SOPA and PIPA are U.S. pieces
of legislation, while ACTA is a transnational agreement. After recent public outcries, internet users
defeated an attempt to pass SOPA and PIPA on Capitol Hill. However, SOPA will be resurrected soon. Meanwhile, countries around the world
vigorously protest the enactment of ACTA.
What’s the significance of these acronyms on our digital routines? Let’s break each one down individually and
have a closer look.
PIPA: Protect IP Act – Preventing
Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property
PIPA’s stated
goal would have given the U.S. government and copyright holders additional
capabilities to restrict access to websites involved in copyright infringement
and the distribution of counterfeit goods.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) originally introduced Senate Bill 968 on May
12, 2011, but the motion to proceed with the legislation was withdrawn January
23, 2011.
The most controversial
aspect of the bill would have enabled Domain Name System (DNS) blocking and
redirection. DNS serves as the virtual
yellow pages of the internet. By
blocking and redirecting DNS, this essentially tears entire pages out of the
phone book, creating an incomplete version, no longer compatible with the rest
of the world. In this scenario, a simple
search for a site would yield a message stating the site no longer exists.
SOPA: Stop Online Piracy
Act
SOPA (H.R. 3261) is the
sister bill to PIPA in the House of Representatives. SOPA was introduced by U.S. Representative
Lamar Smith (R-TX). Its legal aim was to
provide law enforcement agencies greater online jurisdiction to prevent
violation of copyrighted intellectual property and the creation of counterfeit
goods.
“This bill would
establish a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department
[DoJ] determines to be dedicated to copyright infringement. The DoJ or the copyright
owner would be able to commence a legal action against any site they deem to
have ‘only limited purpose or use other than infringement,’ and the DoJ would
be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain
name services block access to the targeted site. It would also make
unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty
up to five years in prison.”
The bill’s
inherent dangers would have allowed the U.S. government and private companies to
arbitrarily incapacitate websites, thus threatening freedom of speech. Furthermore, thousands of websites would have
been jeopardized based on their user-generated content, which in turn,
frequently relies on copyrighted material.
Following the SOPA Blackout Day on January 18th, Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) rescinded
H.R. 3261’s vote on January 24, 2012.
This brief video offers a concise explanation of SOPA.
The battle for
online freedom plows ahead, in light of a new bill
originating in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs
Committee. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT),
who chairs the Committee, is engineering the latest attempt to widely expand
authority by Executive Branch departments over the internet. The debut of this new cybersecurity bill is
expected today, February 16, 2012.
Details of the cybersecurity bill have not been revealed, a result of
the legislation’s crafters meeting behind closed doors. Theories
abound that the bill, which has benefited
from bipartisan support, would grant the Department of Homeland Security
expansive new powers to regulate and stake out the internet under the pretext
of cybersecurity. However, the
persistent attempts to pass such legislation adversely impacting free speech and
the flow of information must be questioned.
Large amounts of financial contributions to politicians, as well as dubious connections, may indicate that a broader agenda is at work.
Supporters of
SOPA and PIPA will likely vigorously lobby for the new cybersecurity bill to be
passed. Backers of this type of
legislation read like a who’s who
list of Hollywood industry bosses. From
the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) to the RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America), major Hollywood power brokers angle to protect their
interests. A total of 161
entities have stumped for the passage of
SOPA and PIPA. Besides the MPAA and
RIAA, they include the AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
Comcast, Disney, and Sony. Based on some
of the groups in favor, the entire matter appears to be a pet project of the
Democrat Party. This comes as no
surprise when considering who the vanguard of Hollywood intellectual property has historically been.
Chris Dodd has made it his mission to crusade in Washington D.C. on
behalf of Hollywood under the pretext of copyright protection legislation. Dodd is the perfect bridge between Hollywood
and the Beltway. On March 1, 2011, Dodd
was chosen as chairman
of the MPAA. On the side, he also lobbies for an
organization called Creative America.
“…everyone in
the community recognizes what a grave threat content theft poses to our
livelihood and creativity – that thieves are making millions of dollars
trafficking in stolen film and television while our jobs, pensions and
residuals continue to decline.”
Some of the
groups involved with Creative America
include the CBS Corporation, NBC Universal, the Screen Actors Guild, Twentieth
Century Fox, Viacom, and Warner Bros. Entertainment. A simple search into Dodd’s previous career
uncovers much cozier ties to D.C.
Dodd has enjoyed
over three decades as a senator and has the distinction of being Connecticut’s
longest serving senate member. He’s one of the
most recognizable Democratic senators of years past, with posts on the Committee
on Foreign Relations, the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and
the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. However, his post-political career has proven
quite lucrative. According to sources,
Dodd rakes in a $1.5 million salary as chairman of the MPAA. The appointment of Dodd to head the MPAA
might be the biggest coup Hollywood has had in years.
Further evidence
from Dodd himself reinforces this as he
threatened to cut off financial contributions from Hollywood to politicians who
did not support SOPA and PIPA. The
pipeline of sizeable contributions from Hollywood going to politicians is a
healthy one most on Capitol Hill would prefer to preserve.
Democrat Senator Harry
Reid has also asserted himself a champion of SOPA and PIPA legislation. He has brought various versions of the bill
to the Senate floor and may be bound to three and half million vested interests
to pass the legislation; Reid was the beneficiary
of $3.5 million from SOPA and PIPA
advocates during the last campaign cycle. Although donations to Reid stand out by far,
other elected officials supporting the legislation have received contributions,
too: Democrat Chuck Schumer ($2.6 million), Democrat Kirsten
Gillibrand ($2 million), Democrat Barbara Boxer ($1.4 million), and Republican Michael Bennet ($1
million). Clearly, millions of reasons
jeopardize maintaining a free and open internet. One of those reasons is another piece of
little known legislation, called ACTA.
ACTA:
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
ACTA protests
have flashed across Europe over recent weeks.
Anti-ACTAvists have sprung up
from the Netherlands to Germany to Poland and many other countries throughout
Europe. The contentious nature of ACTA attempts
to normalize an international legal framework that enforces intellectual
property rights, but also endeavors to target counterfeit goods and even generic
medications. On October 1st,
2011, Australia, Japan, Canada, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea,
and the United States signed the agreement.
At the start of 2012, the European Union and 22 of its member states
ratified ACTA, bringing the total signatories to 31.
Battle lines
have been drawn and two organizations are standing toe to toe—the MPAA and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF). According to
the EFF, “[…] copyright industry rightsholder groups have sought stronger
powers to enforce their intellectual property rights […] to preserve their
business models.” This sentiment
essentially drives to the heart of the debate, one which also includes SOPA and
PIPA. Those opposed to restricting the
internet view these efforts as a veiled and desperate attempt at trying to
preserve an atrophying business model, being rendered obsolete by the age of digital
file sharing. This sentiment has
galvanized many who sense that the true reason the public digital domain is under
siege is in attempts to undermine free speech and democracy. Due to what’s at stake, emotions have run
high. U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has called it
“more dangerous than SOPA.” Popular
opinion likely agrees with Issa, but is the truth harder to discern?
A lot of misinformation
swirls around ACTA. The hacktivist group Anonymous shares some
of the blame. A popular video
produced by the amorphous, hacktivist collective shines light on ACTA’s
pitfalls. But is the hit piece video
accurate? According to ArsTechnica.com,
there are four dubious claims that Anonymous makes: ISPs will monitor all your data packets, ACTA
obliges its member countries to assent to the worst features of SOPA and PIPA, generic
drugs will be banned and seeds will be controlled via patents, and ISPs will be
constantly required to scour their servers for even the smallest bits of
copyrighted material. The Anonymous
video, which includes a qualifying disclaimer at the outset, has been widely
embedded in articles online and reached nearly one million views. Anonymous noted, “This video may not reflect
the recent changes within the ACTA text.
However, it will give you an idea of what ACTA is about and why the
internet should fight it.” And, of
course, after sorting any conflicting claims, ACTA still deserves a thumbs-down
verdict. We also bear in mind internet
censorship, freedom of speech restrictions, loss of net neutrality, domestic
surveillance, and civil rights erosions and police state repression have already
been ongoing issues plaguing the U.S. ACTA
would simply codify existing repressive policies for people in the U.S. under
the pretext of opposing counterfeiting.
ACTA is a poorly
crafted agreement and simply bad. ACTA’s
basic criticisms are threefold: the agreement’s designers are not
democratically elected nor accountable, the ACTA negotiations were held in secret, and there was no discussion held in a public forum. ReadWrite
Enterprise does a fine job laying
out ten reasons why ACTA fails.
Furthermore, even though ACTA probably won’t change U.S. law, it would
lock us into a constrictive legal space in an area of law that changes
rapidly. Much like activists around the
world can now respond more quickly to police brutality and government tactics
of repression thanks to the internet, file sharing enthusiasts are finding new ways to
circumvent internet censorship just as quickly.
The Internet Can’t Be
Bound and Gagged
Already the hive
mind of the internet has developed a solution to undercut potential censorship
attempts. Many people are unaware the
internet exists similarly to an iceberg; only a small portion of it is visible
to the average user. A significant
amount of the internet lies hidden in an area called the deep web. The deep web lies
obfuscated to the armchair web surfer due to an inability to access it by simply
typing it into a search engine and accessing it.
For example, the deep web does not employ the use of meta tags or DNS
and blocks search engines, among other characteristics, making navigation there
challenging. In this secretive
environment, hackers have been diligently working on a new protocol calledTribler.
Tribler
works in a similar fashion to other BitTorrent clients except that when search
results are produced, they aren’t procured from a central index, rather they
are directly produced from other peers.
According to TorrentFreak,
“Downloading a
torrent is also totally decentralized. When a user clicks on one of the search
results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts
immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses
regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also
continue downloading when a central tracker goes down.”
This type of
decentralized structure would allow users to create ‘channels’ amongst
themselves and make Tribler an
indomitable force, making neutralization by censors extremely difficult. Tribler
will make it “impossible
to shut down unless the whole Internet goes down with it.” This will come as excellent news to millions
of people witnessing attempts to stifle internet freedom with ACTA, SOPA, PIPA,
and ongoing attacks on net neutrality.
The race to control
the internet rages on, but developments like this beg the question: Does the
internet adapt and evolve too quickly for elected officials to harness it? This brings to mind Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Some things can just never be
caught. However, U.S. voters continue
to support the two-party system, which continually abandons them whilst
representing corporate interests. Time
will tell.
MEDIA ROOTS — Various official claims of military victory and success have been
pronounced as the continuing occupation of Iraq by U.S. mercenaries festers and
causes misery for Iraqis.
Even after having allegedly withdrawn all U.S. troops from the country, the Pentagon wants
another $3 billion of taxpayer money for its imperialistic adventures, despite the astronomical
costs already incurred.
MR
***
RT— The American public has been
told that the Iraq War is a thing of the past. Even still, the US Department of
Defense is asking the federal government for almost $3 billion for “activities”
in a country that they shouldn’t be in.
The last US troops were supposedly withdrawn from Iraq just before 2012
began, but after years of a war that abruptly ended this past December, the
Pentagon still wants billions to continue doing…something in Iraq.
According to the latest budget request, the DoD think around $2.9 billion
should cover the cost of “Post-Operation NEW DAWN (OND)/Iraq Activities.”
In a report published Monday by Wired.com, they acknowledge that the funding
that the Pentagon wants now is almost as bizarre as the war itself. For nearly
$3 billion, the DoD says that will be able to afford “Finalizing transition”
from Iraq. Only two months earlier, however, President Obama celebrated the end
of the Iraqi mission. At the time, some critics called the ending of the war as
more of a catapult for Obama re-election campaign than anything else. Now with
the revelation that the US Defense Department still wants billions for a war
America is told it isn’t fighting, the alleged ending of Operation New Dawn
seems just as questionable as its mysterious beginning.
On the bright side, it might be easier to foot the cost of this make-believe
war than you would think. Suspiciously, the Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction announced in January that upwards of $2 billion that the US was
holding onto for Iraq had mysteriously disappeared.
MEDIA ROOTS —Americans currently suffer from one of history’s most successful propaganda campaigns. We are often distracted, numbed and herded into behaviors, thought patterns and policies that don’t serve our own interests, much less the interests of an endangered democracy.
Too often we are unconsciously manipulated by advertising ploys. As a result, Americans succumb to the mundane: to mindlessly consume while paying attention to reality television. Little do we realize how we are being controlled and steered away from actively participating in our democracy.
Occupy Wall Street fights for the freedom that many of us are too apathetic to protect as we occupy our couches in front of our TV sets. However, there are cracks appearing in the foundation beneath The Powers That Be, and if we are to seize this as an opportunity to better humanity, it will require adapting to an entirely new mindset. First, however, we must seek to fully understand how we got here.
Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform gives an excellent analysis to some of the complex issues plaguing American society, culture, and politics.
MR
***
The Burning Platform — The erroneous notion that Americans have a choice between two political parties that offer distinct and clear opposing policies addressing the major issues facing our country is still perpetuated by politicians and the corporate media. It is untrue, as we have seen the Obama administration employ the same repressive methods instituted by the Bush administration. Military spending rises. Wars of choice proliferate and grow. Obamacare is virtually identical to a plan created by the leading GOP presidential nominee. Further restrictions, regulations and laws are put forth to keep the masses controlled, sedated and fearful. The governing elite and their propagators of misinformation are again formulating a false storyline to convince the easily fooled ignorant public that a sovereign country 7,500 miles from our shores is actually a threat to their lives. While our government has already committed acts of war against Iran (sanctions, assassinations, cyber warfare, and using drones to spy), the public is being worked into a bloodthirsty frenzy of nationalism. Bipartisanship worked so well with Iraq. How could it possibly go wrong with Iran?
In the last six months cracks have begun appearing in the fascist façade masquerading as a democratic republic. The rise of the Occupy Movement, increasing pain and discontent among the middle class, a small but vocal irate minority utilizing the internet to organize, inform and spread knowledge, and the growing support among the liberty minded for Ron Paul’s candidacy are the opening salvos in a coming revolution. The volleys being traded between the forces of the American aristocratic elite and the leading forces of this revolution are only the opening shots on par with Bunker Hill. The oligarchs have won the initial skirmishes with the Occupy Movement through their control of superior mercenary fire power and ability to falsify the message and nature of the protestors. The corporate mass media propaganda machine convinced an apathetic, non critical thinking public the protestors were nothing but dirty, lazy, college students looking for government handouts organized and led by George Soros. Journalist Robert Fisk reveals the true nature of the protests and rage:
“And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against “governments”. What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people’s power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of “experts” from America’s top universities and “think tanks”, who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalization rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people’s wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.” – Robert Fisk, Bankers are the Dictators of the West
The mounting desperation of the oligarchs is palpable. They have circled the wagons as one of their leaders – Jon Corzine – was caught stealing $1.2 billion directly from the accounts of his customers after making reckless bets that went wrong and bankrupted his firm. The Department of Homeland Security coordinated brutality unleashed upon peaceful protestors in cities across America opened the eyes of more people to the approach of an increasingly oppressive state. The media lapdogs have come out in force with an organized smear campaign designed to derail the presidential campaign of Ron Paul, the only candidate talking about real change and a real downsizing of the American empire. Ron Paul’s platform of liberty, freedom, non-interventionism, sound money, and a government not controlled by bankers and corporate interests is anathema to the ruling elite of both parties. A vote for one of the hand selected candidates offered by the moneyed interests is simply a vote for the special interest status quo. As our economic system becomes more saturated with debt by the day a tipping point approaches.
MEDIA ROOTS — For those born with melanin or a mind critical of the establishment, throughout the education system and beyond, ethnic studies have offered crucial perspectives from which to contextualise ethnic tensions within the U.S. and its caucasian dominant monoculture.
Yet, Arizona continues to build its legacy of intolerance against immigrants and people of colour. In 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer caused a national uproar when she signed SB 1070, the nation’s most stringent immigration bill to date, which requires citizens to always carry proof of documentation and grants the detention of any suspected illegal immigrants. Additionally, State Superintendent Tom Horne opposed academic freedom in invoking the HB 2281 ban of ethnic studies that same year, bemoaning the Tucson Unified School District’s progressive material.
More recently, his successor, State Superintendent John Huppenthal, “who campaigned in 2010 on the promise to ‘stop la raza,'” has taken up the torch against ethnic studies in Arizona. Last week, the Tucson school district voted to “suspend the district’s acclaimed Mexican American
Studies program due to a state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.” Along with the course being suspended, all the affiliated books are now officially “banned” from the school system.
Similarly, Texas has engaged in thought policing books in schools and prisons in recent years. As we assess the state of the nation, neoliberal and neoconservative factions within Government further tighten the grip on society’s flow of information and academic freedom, stifling the evolutionary progress of its citizenry.
MR
***UPDATE
According to The San Fernando Sun, the school district is denying the allegations. “Nothing we ever sent (to the district) said they ever had to ban
books,” said Arizona Department of Education spokesman Andrew LeFevre.
“The superintendent (Huppenthal) is a huge believer against censorship.”
However, last week students said the books were seized from their
classrooms and out of their hands, including a book of photos of Mexico.
Crying, students said it was like Nazi Germany, and they were unable to
sleep since it happened…
Some teachers were told to turn in the books that have not been
banned. Based on the reading list of the MAS courses, that comes to over
80 books removed or confiscated from every classroom.
Sean Arce, former head of the now dismantled Mexican American Studies
program, thought the district’s statement was a distinction without a
difference saying, “The district administrators went in and boxed up
those books and are housing it in a depository. So to me, it’s
definitely a ban.”
DEMOCRACY NOW! — In news from Arizona, Tucson school district officials have released an initial list of books to be banned from the school system following last week’s vote to suspend the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program due to a state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies. The banned books include Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson; Shakespeare’s play The Tempest; Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire; Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña; and Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by F. Arturo Rosales. Salon.com reported teachers have also been informed to stay away from any books where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes.”
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
***
SALON — As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today. According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books “will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.”
Facing a multimillion-dollar penalty in state funds, the governing board of Tucson’s largest school district officially ended the 13-year-old program on Tuesday in an attempt to come into compliance with the controversial state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.
The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook “Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years,” which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko. Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.
Other banned books include “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by famed Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo Acuña, two books often singled out by Arizona state superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who campaigned in 2010 on the promise to “stop la raza.” Huppenthal, who once lectured state educators that he based his own school principles for children on corporate management schemes of the Fortune 500, compared Mexican-American studies to Hitler Jugend indoctrination last fall.
An independent audit of Tucson’s ethnic studies program commissioned by Huppenthal last summer actually praised “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,” a 40-year-old textbook now in its seventh edition. According to the audit: “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos is an unbiased, factual textbook designed to accommodate the growing number of Mexican-American or Chicano History Courses. The auditing team refuted a number of allegations about the book, saying, ‘quotes have been taken out of context.’”
MEDIA ROOTS – Several hundred psychologists, as well as numerous psychological associations around the
country, are united in calling for the annulment of the American Psychological
Association’s report on
Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). The 2005 report is an APA endorsement of the highly suspect intelligence-gathering
procedures used in US military detention sites such as Guantánamo Bay and
Bagram, Afghanistan. The demand for its immediate suspension and
public review is called not by the APA Board or Ethics Committee, but by its
general membership as well as several scholar-activists such as Daniel Ellsberg
and Noam Chomsky. 
MEDIA ROOTS — With governments,
citizens, and activists worldwide increasingly relying on the internet, the environment the
internet fosters is a hotly contested issue.
Last summer, the United Nations declared that disconnecting people from
the internet was a 
MEDIA ROOTS — Various official claims of military victory and success have been
pronounced as the continuing occupation of Iraq by U.S. mercenaries festers and
causes misery for Iraqis.
MEDIA ROOTS — Americans currently suffer from one of history’s most successful propaganda campaigns. We are often distracted, numbed and herded into behaviors, thought patterns and policies that don’t serve our own interests, much less the interests of an endangered democracy.
MEDIA ROOTS — For those born with melanin or a mind critical of the establishment, throughout the education system and beyond, ethnic studies have offered crucial perspectives from which to contextualise ethnic tensions within the U.S. and its caucasian dominant monoculture. 