Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies in Public School

Posted on May 18, 2010 by abby

ALTERNET– Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in Arizona’s public school classrooms, but a new law signed by Governor Jan Brewer Tuesday makes it illegal for these students to learn about their heritage in school. HB 2281 prohibits schools from offering courses at any grade level that advocate ethnic solidarity, promote overthrow of the US government, or cater to specific ethnic groups—regulations which will dismantle the state’s popular Mexican-American studies programs.

Much like Arizona’s new immigration law, this ethnic studies ban is political interest dressed up to look like education reform. The bill was passed largely because of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s personal distaste for the Tuscon Unified School District’s Chicano studies program, in which 3 percent of the district’s 55,000 students participate. He has been hell-bent on squashing the program ever since learning several years ago that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told Tucson High School students that “Republicans hate Latinos,” the Associated Press reports.

“Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds,”…

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Shocking Figures From America Shows Bee Catastrophe

Posted on May 8, 2010 by abby

THE GUARDIAN– Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country’s estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed “Mary Celeste syndrome” due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. “We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies,” said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS’s bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the “irresponsible use” of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE’s director-general, warned: “Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster.”

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Written by Alison Benjamin

Photo by Abby Martin

Malcolm X Killer Thomas Hagan Released After 44 Years

Posted on May 6, 2010 by abby

TIMES NEWSLINE– Thomas Hagan, 69, the sole confessor of Malcolm X killing has finally been granted parole. He was released Tuesday at 11 a.m. from minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility.

Since 1984, he has appealed to the parole board 14 times and each time his appeal has been turned down. His plea for freedom was based on the request to go back to his family and become a substance abuse counselor.

In his appeal to the Parole Board on the 3rd of March he said, “I have deep regrets about my participation in that,” “I don’t think it should ever have happened.” Hagan,69, will finally be released on Wednesday.

He was found guilty of killing Malcolm X and was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment after his trial in 1966. However, he has been in a full-time work release program that gave him the opportunity to live with his family five days a week and report to the prison for two days.

His release was conditional of the fact that he would secure a job and support his children and also abide by curfew. He also had to undergo random drug tests during his stay outside the prison. Hagan was pronounced guilty of killing Malcolm X who was known as the leader of the Nation of Islam for whom whites were “blued eyed devils”. In his latter part of life Malcolm had a change of opinion about the whites and also feared an attack on his life from the nation of Islam because of his views.

Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational center is now housed at the same ballroom where he was killed. The Chairman of the Board Zead Ramadan said, “I personally find it strange that for a couple decades any person convicted in the assassination of such an iconic figure would be allowed such leniency,”

Malcolm X was on the dais of Audubon Ballroom with his wife Betty when he was fired at by the assailants. He was 39 at the time of his death. “Minister Malcolm was slaughtered like a dog in front of his family,” A. Peter Bailey, one of Malcolm X’s closest aides, told The New York Times on the 40th anniversary of the killing. His was killed soon after he accused Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad of infedility and left them.

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One in Every 100 Americans Are in Jail

Posted on May 5, 2010 by abby

POST GAZETTE– Pennsylvania had the largest prison population growth in the Northeast last year, part of a national trend of proliferating prison populations in which more than one in 100 American adults now is incarcerated, according to a study released yesterday by the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project.

In spite of the sobering statistics behind the highest imprisonment rate in American history, the report concluded that efforts to reduce incarceration and recidivism have proved effective in some states.

“We’ve crossed this statistical and psychological threshold, but we don’t have to keep heading down this path,” said the project’s director, Adam Gelb, in a news teleconference.

Pennsylvania added about 1,600 prisoners to its state prison population in 2007 — a 3.7 percent increase from the previous year – and totaled 46,028 on Jan. 1. While that was the highest numerical growth in the Northeast, it was far behind increases in Florida’s and Georgia’s incarcerations, which grew by 4,447 and 2,413, respectively.

Texas’ prison population – 171,790 – is the nation’s highest, according to the study.

The study concluded that much of the growth in prison populations has to do with “a wave of policy choices that are sending more lawbreakers to prison and, through popular ‘three-strikes’ measures and other sentencing enhancements, keeping them there longer.”

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said it has a lot to do with politics. In the early ’80s, Dr. Blumstein predicted that the prison population in Pennsylvania would continue to rise until the end of the decade and flatline at about 8,000 inmates.

Today, there are about 46,000 inmates. What he did not anticipate, he said, was a dramatic shift in the political paradigm in the early ’90s that led politicians to push for stricter penalties for all offenders, bloating the prison population.

“The political system took over,” he said. “As the public became increasingly concerned about crime, the politicians and particularly the Legislature responded by instituting a variety of tougher legislation such as mandatory minimum sentencing.

“It doesn’t necessarily work in reducing crime but it did work in satiating the public,” he said.

The study included some startling statistics.

Men are about 10 times more likely to be incarcerated, but the female population is growing at a faster rate. The study also found that age limits jail time. One in every 53 people in their 20s is in prison, but above age 55 that falls to one in 837. Even so, between 1992 and 2001, the number of state and federal inmates aged 50 and older rose from 41,586 to 113,358, a jump of 173 percent.

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Article written by Moriah Balingit

CNN Poll- 52% Say Obama Shouldn’t Be Re-elected

Posted on May 3, 2010 by abby

THE HILL– 52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll.

44 percent of all Americans said they would vote to reelect the president in two and a half years, less than the slight majority who said they would prefer to elect someone else.

Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Four percent had no opinion.

The reelection numbers are slightly more sour than Obama’s approval ratings, which are basically tied. 49 percent of people told CNN that they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, while 50 percent disapprove.

Still, the 2012 election is still a long way’s away, with this fall’s midterm elections looming large. Republicans are hoping to make inroads into Congress, while Democrats are hoping to hold onto gains won in the 2006 and 2008 cycles.

Respondents to CNN were split at 46 percent as to whether they preferred a generic Republican or Democratic candidate in this fall’s elections.

At least one retiring lawmaker is confident Obama will sail to reelection, with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) predicting Monday the president would win “overwhelmingly” in 2012.

The CNN poll, conducted Feb. 12-15, has a three percent margin of error.

Photo by Flickr user US Army