Protecting students from intrusive school social surveillance

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Thanks to my State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem for pushing legislation in Massachusetts to protect elementary, secondary, and tertiary public school students from intrusive social media surveillance by school administrators — and for being proactive on this before it becomes a big problem, as it inevitably would without legislation.

No student should have to turn over their passwords and login info to their school just to be permitted to get an education. We cannot develop a healthy, independent, and democratic civil society if students face omnipresent surveillance that discourages them from branching out in their views during a formative period.

I also believe such online monitoring could have a chilling effect on young people being able to examine and test their self-identity, particularly in less welcoming communities.

While students and children do not always have full and unlimited rights, they must retain a reasonable right to privacy. That principle doesn’t change just because technology does.

Rwanda hit squads keep targeting hit squad whistleblowers

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

“Rwandan officer who leaked assassination-list evidence becomes a target” – The Globe and Mail

The U.S. State Department warned former Rwandan Major Robert Higiro of a “credible” threat to his life (while residing in Belgium) after his evidential participation in efforts to stop the current Rwandan regime from continuing its global hit squad operations against critics and opposition figures. (This has been an ongoing crisis for many years now.)

Interesting to watch the U.S. State Department finally cooling significantly on its past enthusiasm for the Kagame regime in Kigali, Rwanda — in large part due to Kagame’s bid for an infinite presidency.

Eritrea joins Saudi Arabia’s Yemen war after inducements

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Sanction-laden Eritrea is expected to receive a huge cash and fuel payout from Saudi Arabia for the use of Eritrean air space, an air base, a seaport, and 400 troops in Yemen, according to a report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.

The country is just a short hop away from southwestern Yemen. Neighboring (and opposing) Ethiopian media reacted very negatively to the report. The findings were summarized as follows:

Recent reports show that Eritrea is officially involved in the Yemeni crisis allowing the Saudi-led Arab coalition to use its Assab port, airspace and territorial waters in fighting the Houthi rebels.

 
Eritrea now joins fellow African states Sudan, Egypt, and Morocco in the Saudi quagmire in Yemen, along with several Gulf states.

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U.S. Government-funded childcare during WWII

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

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Who Took Care of Rosie the Riveter’s Kids? – The Atlantic:

During World War II the United States government operated a far-reaching, heavily-subsidized childcare program—the likes of which Americans haven’t seen in the seven decades since.
[…]
Established in late 1942, emergency nursery schools became the tool to relieve anxious mothers and keep raucous children at bay. Funded through both federal and local money allocated by an amendment to the Lanham Act, a 1940 law authorizing war-related government grants, childcare services were established in communities contributing to defense production. These programs reorganized one kind of domestic labor—child-rearing—to enable another kind: paid labor in the domestic economy that helped fortify America against its foreign enemies.

The scope of the program was enormous. Daycare centers were administered in every state except New Mexico. Between 1943 and 1946, spending on the program exceeded the equivalent of $1 billion today, and each year, about 3,000 childcare centers served roughly 130,000 children. By the end of the war, between 550,000 and 600,000 children are estimated to have received some care from Lanham Act programs. (Still, the demand for childcare was barely tapped. The Department of Labor estimated that each year, Lanham funds made it to only about 10 percent of the children in need.) By one historical account, the government had a hard time amassing a sufficient staff.

 

November 18, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 151

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Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.

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Topics: Big Ideas for Reforming American Governance — A Better Education Reform Movement and Right to Housing. People: Bill, Kelley, Nate. Produced: November 15th, 2015.

NOTE: No show next Wednesday due to the Thanksgiving break. Don’t miss our December 2nd episode.

Episode 151 (52 min):
AFD 151

Discussion Points:

– What might a better, less top-down version of an education reform movement look like?
– How can we fund public schools more effectively and fairly?
– Should there be a constitutional right to housing?

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Refugee entry is not a vector for terrorists

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Yesterday we spent the day hearing from governors and other politicians, in both parties, lie about the terrorism “risks” of refugees being settled in their states.

It’s an exaggerated concern fomented by cynics and people utterly unfamiliar with the screening process. If terrorists want to attack the US they will seek alternate entry (e.g. illegal entry or various visas with less screening) or they are already here. They aren’t coming through the refugee screening process which barely lets anyone in as it is and requires extremely intensive interviews.

I knew all of that well before this latest controversy based on what I had already spent months researching for The Globalist.

It is very difficult, as this new Huffington Post article explains, to become a refugee in the United States and the vetting is detailed. There are basic identity checks and biometrics, then there are in-person interviews in the staging-area countries, then there are health tests, then there is verification of biographical information, database cross-checks, and if you are approved there is supervision and guidance by the government upon resettlement. It’s a very long process.

The odds of a random jihadist making it through that process without breaking or being caught are basically nil, which is why they would find a different way to get here, if they really wanted to.