1 Solidarity Statement Concerning Guatemalans in Detention after ICE Raid in Postville, Iowa -- amalia anderson, Carlos Ariel, Axel Fuentes, Reginaldo Haslett Marroquín, and Ana Nájera Mendoza, 2 Re: A Progressive Case for Educational Standardization -- j crawford 3 Re: Conyers Mounts Opposition to Iran Attack -- David Pease 4 RE: A Last Chance for Civilization -- Art Hoffmann 5 Re: "Namely the state of Israel" -- Peter Belmont

From: amalia anderson, Carlos Ariel, Axel Fuentes, Reginaldo Haslett Marroquín, and Ana Nájera Mendoza, Subject: Solidarity Statement Concerning Guatemalans in Detention after ICE Raid in Postville, Iowa Date: May 14, 2008

"No one should be subjected to arbitrary arrests, detention or exile". ...

[Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and for George H.W. Bush, and is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. -- moderator]

Pity Party

By PEGGY NOONAN May 16, 2008 The Wall Street Journal

Big picture, May 2008:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a de...

The Working Class is Back. And Guess What. It's White.

Carl Bloice Thursday, May 15, 2008 BlackCommentator.com

After decades of the major media's refusal to link the word "working" with "class," the print pages and airwaves are now alive with talk about the conditions, aspirations and views of working people. Journalists, who only a few weeks ago would have scoffed at the mere mention of there being a "working class." are now throwing the term around with abandon. The problem is that it being employed to only cover part of that class; African American, Latino, Asian and Native American working people are somehow being left out of the demographic equation.

Up until quite recently there was only the "middle class." The term always defied precise definition. In contemp...

Will Gay Marriage Doom the Democrats?

Joan Walsh Friday May 16, 2008 09:05 EDT

The day the California Supreme Court chose to strike down the state's ban on gay marriage just happened to be my daughter's last day of high school classes; she graduates next week. Forgive me a little nostalgia, even sentimentality: Almost four years ago, when she was just a freshman, I wrote about her showing up to school still wearing her "Kerry-Edwards" button the day after the election, and being crushed to hear teachers and classmates say that Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision to legalize gay marriage doomed the Democrats that year. (I was hearing the same thing from some people at Salon.) "How can people who support marriage oppose gay marriage?" she asked me.

Four years later, just as...

Obama - The WorldBeat Album

Posted on April 09, 2008 in Current Affairs

One of the most exciting and progressive aspects of Senator Barack Obama's candidacy is the incredibly wide range of people he continues to energize and inspire. He has become a true world figure now. One way this can be seen is in the music Obama is inspiring globally. Here is a sampling of some of the tastiest worldbeat music currently being produced as tributes to the hope Barack Obama is bringing to people everywhere.

Track 1: Mighty Sparrow - 'Barack the Magnificent'

First up from Trinidad, is Mighty Sparrow, the Calypso King of the World, whose career spans over five decades and whose music spans the globe.

Barack the Magnificent

The respect of the world that w...

India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Strengthens its Commitment to Democracy

BuaNews (Tshwane) May 12, 2008

allafrica.com

Pretoria

The "strategic alliance" that is the India-Brazil-South Africa trilateral axis is now more than simply a dialogue but a "privileged relationship" favouring a world where democracy will prevail not only in its political manifestation but also on social and cultural levels, writes Shaun Benton.

This is according to the Foreign Minister of Brazil, Celso Amorim, who joined South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee at the fifth IBSA Ministerial Commission meeting at Somerset West in Cape T...

GOP Cancer: Party Could Lose 20 More Seats John F. Harris and Josh Kraushaar

Politico May 14, 2008
www.politico.com

For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all that sick: a bit under the weather; actually feel better than I sound; should be up and about any day; thanks for asking.

Suddenly - belatedly - all pretense is gone.

The Republican defeat in Tuesday's special election in Mississippi, in a deeply conservative district where, in an average year, Democrats cannot even compete, was a clear sign that the GOP has the political equivalent o...

School Recruiting Could Violate Int'l Protocol

By Jim Lobe IPS-Inter Press Service
www.ipsnews.net

WASHINGTON, May 13 (IPS) - Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

The 46-page report, "Soldiers of Misfortune", which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, also found that the U.S. military di...

El Salvador:

Interview with FMLN Presidential Candidate Mauricio Funes (Part I)

Amanda Shank Upside Down World May 13, 2008
upsidedownworld.org

Mauricio Funes steps into the hotel surrounded by his campaign staff and supporters. Earlier in the afternoon in the hot Central Plaza of San Miguel, he was greeted with cheers, chants, and fireworks by eight thousand supporters donning FMLN red.

Amid the excitement and exhaustion of El Salvador's presidential campaign, where the FMLN has a strong possibility of breaking the right wing ARENA party's 19 year grip on power, Funes searches the hotel lobby for his wife. Vanda Pignato checks her watch, 10pm, and suggests that ...

A Progressive Case for Educational Standardization

How not to respond to the Spellings report.

By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein Academe Online May/June 2008
www.aaup.org

Standardizing Critical Thinking

In the responses from higher education to the 2006 report of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education, one particular argument is made over and over again: that educational standardization of the sort implicitly called for in the report is neither possible nor desirable. According to this argument, the standardization entailed by the repor...