América del Sur/Argentina/Mayo del 2017/Noticias/http://www.infogremiales.com.ar
La CTA de los Trabajadores que conduce Hugo Yasky propuso este miércoles realizar una movilización junto a los organismos de Derechos Humanos en repudio al fallo de la Corte Suprema de Justicia que declaró aplicable el beneficio del 2×1 para los condenados por delitos de lesa humanidad.
La central obrera calificó el pronunciamiento del máximo tribunal como “un retroceso sin precedentes en las políticas de Estado en materia de Memoria, Verdad y Justicia”.
“La CTA se suma al clamor de los organismos de derechos humanos y manifiesta públicamente su decisión de marchar junto a ellos para condenar esta ofensiva contra los derechos ciudadanos de los argentinos”, planteó en un comunicado.
La central repudió el fallo y dijo que “tiene sus antecedentes inmediatos en la decisión judicial de otorgar la prisión domiciliaria al genocida Miguel Etchecolatz y, pocos días después, en el llamado de la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina a la reconciliación de la sociedad con los genocidas”.
América del Norte/EEUU/Mayo del 2017/Noticias/https://theconversation.com
Editor’s note: The 2016 election brought student activism back into the spotlight. No student activist organization in U.S. history has matched the scope and influence of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the national movement of the 1960s. We asked Todd Gitlin, former president of SDS (1963-1964), professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, and author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage for his perspective on this renowned organization and the state of student protest today.
1. What were the goals of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) when it started?
SDS wanted participatory democracy – a public committed to making the decisions that affect their own lives, with institutions to make this possible. Its members saw an American citizenry with no influence over the nuclear arms race or, closer to home, authoritarian university administrations.
The organization favored direct action to oppose “white supremacy” and “imperial war,” and to achieve civil rights and the radical reconstruction of economic life (i.e., the redistribution of money into the hands of African-Americans in order to fight racism). SDS was increasingly suspicious of established authorities and looked askance at corporate power. But there was no single political doctrine; for most of its existence (1962-69), SDS was an amalgam of left-liberal, socialist, anarchist and increasingly Marxist currents and tendencies.
Several hundred people affiliated with the SDS race through the Los Angeles Civic Center in a 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam war.AP Photo/Harold Filan
From 1965 on, it was focused chiefly on opposing the Vietnam war. After 1967, SDS became partial to confrontational tactics and increasingly sympathetic to one or another idea of a Marxist-Leninist revolution.
2. How did SDS grow so quickly, from fewer than 1,000 members in 1962 to as many as 100,000 in 1969?
Tom Hayden, president of SDS from 1962 to 1963.AP Photo
The organization was launched with a stirring manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, and a leadership that was passionate, visionary, energetic, stylish and thoughtful.
Unlike most left-wing radicals and manifestos of the time, the Port Huron Statement was forthright and not riddled with jargon, thus its opening sentence:
“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”
SDS, in language and spirit, spoke to a widely felt need for a New Left that was free of the dogmas about “class struggle” and a “vanguard party” that prevailed in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
Its growth was helped along by a structure that, for many years, was flexible enough to encompass diverse orientations and styles of activism. Its volcanic growth after the 1965 escalation of the Vietnam War was made possible by its combination of zealous idealism and pragmatic activity that made sense to students – protests, demonstrations, sit-ins and marches.
3. Why did the SDS effectively dissolve in 1969? Were the Weathermen (the militant radical faction of SDS) to blame?
Poster from the 1969 Days of Rage demonstrations, organized by the Weathermen faction of SDS.SDS-1960s.org
Under the pressure of the Vietnam War and black militancy in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s assassination, SDS’ leadership factions adopted fantastical ideas, believing they were living in a revolutionary moment. The Weathermen were the most ferocious, dogmatic and reckless of the factions. Inspired by Latin American, Southeast Asian and Chinese revolutionaries, but heedless of American realities, they thought that by stoking up violent confrontations, they could “bring the war home” – force the U.S. government out of Vietnam to deal with a violent domestic revolt.
On March 6, 1970, a dynamite bomb they were building in New York City – intended to blow up hundreds of soldiers and their dates at a dance that evening – went off in their own hands, killing three of their own number. The Weather Underground (as the faction now called itself) went on to bomb dozens of government and corporate targets over the next few years, but the group was incapable of leading a larger movement: Though there were no further casualties after the 1970 explosion, the vast majority of SDS’ members were put off by the Weatherman violence. As the Vietnam War came to an end, no student radical organization remained.
4. What is the chief legacy of SDS?
SDS tried many tactics in its effort to catalyze a national radical movement. It was multi-issue in a time when single-issue movements had proliferated: hence, the SDS slogan “the issues are interrelated.” With community organizing projects, it tried to create an interracial coalition of the poor; it launched civil disobedience against corporations like the Chase Manhattan Bank, which was seen to be supporting the South African apartheid regime; it helped launch the most effective antiwar movement in history; it incarnated a generational spirit that was both visionary and practical.
SDS also engendered second-wave feminism, though sometimes in a paradoxical fashion. Many female members felt both empowered and thwarted – they gained skills and experience in organizing, but were angered by their second-class status in the organization.
But SDS’s confrontational tendencies from 1967 onward bitterly alienated much of its potential political base. In my view, the group’s romanticism toward the Cuban, Vietnamese, and Chinese revolutions – and its infatuation with the paramilitary Black Panther party – flooded out its common sense and intellectual integrity.
5. How has campus protest changed since the days of SDS?
Many changes that SDS campaigned for came to pass. Student life loosened up and became less authoritarian. In the decades since, students have taken on issues that were not raised – or even recognized – 50 years ago: climate change, sexual violence and racial subordination through the criminal justice system. On the other hand, campus protest is dominated by single issues again, as it was in the period before SDS. Much of the current issue-politics rests on an assumption that racial, gender or sexual identity automatically dictates the goals of student activism.
I also believe that student protest has become far more modest in its ambitions. It has abandoned extreme revolutionary delusions, but at some expense. It has failed to build a tradition that’s serious about winning power: Students are content to protest rather than work toward building political majorities and trying to win concrete results.
I feel that student protest today often confines itself within the campus and fails to sustain organizing outside. As the right threw itself into electoral politics, student activists largely dismissed the need to compete. As a result, students of the left face the most hostile political environment in modern times.
Oceanía/Austarlia/Mayo del 2017/Noticias/https://theconversation.com/
The ability of journalists to report without fear is under threat from mass surveillance and data retention.
Released this week, my UNESCO report Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age shows that laws protecting journalists and sources globally are not keeping up with the challenges posed by indiscriminate data collection and the spill-over effects of anti-terrorism and national security legislation.
Examining legal changes to how sources are protected across 121 countries between 2007-2015, I found that calls, text messages, and emails made in the process of reporting are increasingly exposed. In particular, they can be caught up in the nets of law enforcement and national security agencies as they trawl for evidence of criminal activity and terrorism, and conduct leak investigations.
Source protection laws should be updated to protect the online communications of journalists and whistleblowers.
If we do not strengthen legal protections and limit the impact of surveillance and data retention, investigative journalism that relies on confidential sources will be difficult to sustain.
New technologies, new problems
Now that simply using mobile technology, email, and social networks may result in a person being caught up in state and corporate surveillance and data mining, the laws protecting sources and journalists are being seriously undermined.
The study found that source protection laws globally are at risk of being:
trumped by national security and anti-terrorism legislation that increasingly broadens definitions of “classified information” and limits exceptions for journalistic acts
undercut by surveillance – both mass and targeted
jeopardised by mandatory data retention policies and pressure applied to third party intermediaries to release data which risks exposing sources
outdated when it comes to regulating the collection and use of digital data, such as whether information recorded without consent is admissible in a court case against either a journalist or a source; and whether digitally stored material gathered by journalistic actors is covered by existing source protection laws, and
challenged by questions about entitlement to claim protection – as underscored by the questions: “Who is a journalist?” and “What is journalism”?
These threats suggest lawmakers need to think differently when it comes to protecting press freedoms.
In the past, the main concerns of courts and lawmakers was whether a journalist could be legally forced to reveal the confidential source of published information or be the subject of targeted surveillance and search and seizure operations.
Now that data is routinely intercepted and collected, we must find new ways to protect the right of journalists to withhold the identity of their sources.
The Australian metadata threat
Australia’s experience with mandatory metadata collection shows how complicated the question of journalist-source protection can become in a digital era.
This breach was possible because of the country’s mandatory data retention law, which requires phone and internet companies to preserve user metadata for two years, even when there is no suspicion of a crime. This includes information such as when a text message was sent and who received it, but not its content.
Advocates of long-term metadata retention, like Australian Attorney General George Brandis, have insisted the law poses no significant threat to privacy or freedom of expression. When the legislation was enacted in March 2015, it included an amendment that requires government agencies to seek a warrant to access journalists’ communications with sources in certain cases.
Then-Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Attorney-General Senator George Brandis during a press conference introducing the metadata legislation in Canberra, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014.AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Transparency, however, is not required. Revelation of the existence (or non-existence) of such a warrant is punishable by a two-year jail term. At no point are journalists nor media organisations advised of such an intervention, and there is no opportunity for them to challenge the issuing of a warrant.
In the face of these threats, journalists can take steps to protect their online security and ensure sources have ways to contact them securely. Yet even when they encrypt the content of their source communications, they may neglect the metadata, meaning they still leave behind a digital trail of whom they contacted. This data can easily identify a source, and safeguards against its illegitimate use are frequently limited or non-existent.
Australia’s Press Council chair, professor David Weisbrot has said mandatory data retention legislation risks “crushing” investigative journalism:
I think that whistleblowers who are inside governments or corporations will definitely not come forward because their confidentiality and anonymity will not be guaranteed. If they came forward, a journalist would have to say ‘I have to give you some elaborate instructions to avoid detection: don’t drive to our meeting, don’t carry your cell phone, don’t put this on your computer, handwrite whatever you’re going to give me’.
Australia’s metadata experience shows how legal protections that shield journalists from disclosing confidential sources may be undercut by backdoor access to data.
This also applies to information collected by internet service providers, search engines, and social media platforms. Such companies can, in some circumstances, be compelled by law enforcement to produce electronic records that identify journalists’ sources.
In an interview for the UNESCO study, Privacy International legal officer Tomaso Falchetta said
There is a growing trend of delegation by law enforcement of quasi-judicial responsibilities to Internet and telecommunication companies, including by requiring them to incorporate vulnerabilities in their networks to ensure that they are ‘wire-tap ready’
“Creo que la gente de este país ya ha tenido suficiente con los expertos”- Michael Gove, anterior Secretario de Estado de Educación del Reino Unido.
No se puede negar que las evidencias y aquellos que las aportan están en el punto de mira de la opinión pública. La palabra “post-verdad” se ha vuelto tan frecuente en nuestra discusión cotidiana sobre política que el Diccionario Oxford de inglés la ha declarado su palabra del año 2016. Las evidencias o “hechos” están siendo reemplazados cada vez más por creencias tan profundamente arraigadas que muchos políticos las consideran verdades a pesar de que no haya evidencia que las sustente ni prueba suficiente que las contradiga.
Esta lógica nos lleva inevitablemente a la pregunta: ¿Se puede mantener un sistema educativo solo con creencias?
En primer lugar, es importante reconocer que las creencias siempre importan en el diseño de las políticas, incluso cuando uno se esfuerza por atender a los hechos. Algunos estudios sugieren que a veces las personas ignoran las evidencias que no cuadran con su visión del mundo, y en su lugar se centran en los “hechos” que confirman sus expectativas o creencias.
Un ejemplo de efecto negativo en la educación es la práctica continua de la repetición de curso en varios países de la UE pese a investigaciones claras y sustanciales que sugieren que, a largo plazo, los estudiantes que se quedan por detrás de sus compañeros continúan teniendo dificultades académicas y son más propensos al abandono escolar temprano que los estudiantes que siguen en la escuela con su grupo de edad.
Por lo tanto, si estamos sujetos a esos sesgos cognitivos de todas formas, ¿significa que deberíamos tirar la toalla y dejar que nuestras creencias campen libremente por los sistemas educativos?
Por mucho que algunos políticos prefieran los sistemas educativos basados en creencias, hay buenas razones para destacar la necesidad de considerar la evidencia con seriedad:
La evidencia puede arbitrar cuando las convicciones sociales son contradictorias. Durante las últimas décadas, las sociedades europeas se han vuelto más diversas debido al aumento de la migración y existe más diversidad de creencias sobre cómo debería ser el sistema educativo. La educación se encuentra en una situación particularmente complicada porque se relaciona directamente con los valores de la sociedad y de nuestros hijos.La evidencia proporciona una base para conciliar estas diferencias porque rompe grandes conceptos abstractos en unidades más pequeñas. Esto permite una discusión política basada más en criterios tangibles que en emociones y creencias. En consecuencia, la evidencia ayuda muchísimo a facilitar los sistemas democráticos y disminuir los debates antagónicos.
Al menos intentar mirar a la evidencia podría mitigar los efectos negativos de basar la política únicamente en creencias, por muy arraigadas que estén. Si no, los problemas no resueltos que han sido dejados a un lado se acumularán y, al final, darán lugar a una situación en la que el sistema no se ocupe de las necesidades sociales. Por lo tanto, el diseño de las políticas debería tratar de prestar atención a la evidencias para obtener los mejores resultados posibles.
Por suerte, las cosas no parecen ser tan graves en Europa, al menos todavía no. Un informe reciente de Eurydice afirma que los legisladores de la educación en Europa suelen “utilizar” una amplia gama de investigadores, institutos públicos u otros organismos que les aportan evidencia en el diseño de las políticas educativas.
Sin embargo, incluso si se está generando evidencia, el reto para los que la aportan sigue siendo convencer a los políticos, funcionarios y demás expertos para que la tengan en cuenta.
Pero con el solo hecho de insistir en la necesidad de evidencia, si no se tienen en cuenta las estructuras sociales que respaldan su creación y proliferación, resulta difícil llegar a curar todos nuestros males sociales y políticos. No obstante, los legisladores harían bien en seguir el consejo de Bertrand Russell:
“Cuando estás estudiando cualquier asunto, o considerando cualquier filosofía, pregúntate cuáles son los hechos y cuál es la verdad que los hechos confirman. Nunca te dejes desviar, ya sea por lo que deseas creer, o por lo que piensas que tendría efectos sociales beneficiosos si se lo creyera”.”
Oceanía/Australia/Mayo del 2017/Noticias/https://theconversation.com/
What does climate change look like in Australia? Are we already seeing our landscapes shift before our eyes without even realising it?
Perhaps thought-provoking art can help us come to terms with our changing world, by finding new ways to engage, inform and hopefully inspire action. For hasn’t art always been the bridge between the head and the heart?
With that aim, the ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017 festival, organised by CLIMARTE, features 30 specially curated exhibitions running from April 19 to May 14 in galleries across Melbourne and regional Victoria, following on from their previous award-winning festival in 2015.
Changing landscapes
One of the festival’s exhibitions is Land, Rain and Sun, featuring more than 100 landscapes dating from the 19th century to today, curated by gallery owner Charles Nodrum and captioned by us to offer a climate scientist’s perspective on the works. We also collaborated with CLIMARTE directors Guy Abrahams and Bronwyn Johnson to bring the idea to life.
The exhibition, featuring Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, James Gleeson, Eugene Von Guerard, Louis Buvelot, Russell Drysdale, Fred Williams, Michael Shannon and Ray Crooke, is designed to help start a conversation about what climate change might look like in Australia.
Curating an exhibition of artworks as seen through the eyes of a climate scientist poses a challenge: how can we help make the invisible visible, and the unimaginable real?
As we sifted through scores of artistic treasures, there were a few works that confronted us in unexpected ways. The first was Cross Country Skiers, painted in 1939 by renowned South Australian artist John S. Loxton. It depicts the Victorian High Country heavily blanketed in snow, as two skiers make their way through the beautiful wintery landscape.
John S. Loxton, Cross Country Skiers, Victorian High Country, c. 1935. Watercolour on paper.Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided
When we saw this image, we realised that in decades to come this work might be considered a historical record, serving as a terrible reminder of a landscape that vanished before our eyes.
The Australian ski season could shorten by up to 80 days a year by 2050 under worst-case predictions, with the biggest impacts likely to be felt at lower-elevation sites such as Mt Baw Baw and Lake Mountain in Victoria.
As temperatures continue to rise, our alpine plants and animal communities are in real danger of being pushed off mountain tops, having nowhere to migrate to and no way of moving from or between alpine “islands”.
James Gleeson’s surreal apocalyptic painting Delenda est Carthago is a provocative work that got us thinking about a future marred by unmitigated climate change. The title refers to Rome’s annihilation of Carthage in 149 BC. According to the ancient historian Polybius, the conquering Roman general, Scipio Aemilianus, famously wept as he likened the event to the mythical destruction of Troy and to the eventual end he could foresee for Rome.
James Gleeson, Delenda est Carthago, 1983. Oil on linen.Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided
As climate scientists, we are disturbingly aware of the threats to society not only here in Australia, but all over the world. Unmitigated human-induced climate change could potentially see the planet warm by more than 4℃ by the end of the century.
In Australia, inland regions of the country could warm by more than 5℃ on average by 2090. In Melbourne, the number of days over 40℃ could quadruple by the end of the century, causing extreme heat stress to humans, wildlife, plants and infrastructure, especially in urban areas.
Warming of this rate and magnitude is a genuine threat to our civilisation. Gleeson’s artwork made us consider that the unimaginable may happen, as it has in the past.
On a more optimistic note, Imants Tillers’ work New Litany highlights the importance of communities taking a stand for environmental protection. Over our history Australians have fought against logging of native forests, nuclear power, whaling, and for the restoration of dammed river systems like the Snowy.
Imants Tillers, New Litany, 1999. Synthetic polymer paint and gouche on canvas.Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided
The recent March for Science is a reminder that the stakes are now higher than ever before, and that many people really do care about the future.
The science is telling us that our climate is changing, often faster than we imagined. The range of CSIRO’s latest climate change projections reminds us that the future is still in our hands. We can avoid the worst aspects of climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we need to act now.
Art has always been a powerful portal to understanding how we feel about our world. Let’s hope it helps safeguard our climatic future.
Por medio de la presente envío los cuatro primeros CUADERNOS PEDAGÓGICOS diagramados por CENAMEC. Los mismos ya se encuentran disponibles para su descarga en la página web Araguaney.
The Easter holidays are over – and the long wait for the more generous summer break begins. In just a couple of months, schools will break up, air fares will rise, beaches will be busy and the cost of a family holiday will multiply. So surely it makes sense for parents to be allowed to take their children out of school during term time?
That is the appealing option that prompted one irate father to take his legal case all the way to the Supreme Court to establish a ruling earlier this year. Jon Platt, a British businessman, had been fined £120 after he took his daughter to Walt Disney World during school term.
The resulting (and popular) debate centred on whether parents know what is best for their child – or at least that they know better than the state.
The argument for parental authority over school attendance is initially compelling. Travel can be an important and valuable experience for children. It gives them a break from school work, allows for time together as a family, and can no doubt be educational. Schools and education authorities argue, however, that missing school has a negative impact on academic progress.
School’s out for Mr Platt.PA
Parents and children have an important connection to each other that involves responsibilities and benefits. So an assertion of parents’ rights might seem to make sense.
Parents are expected to know what is best for their child and act appropriately. If so much responsibility for children is placed on parents then surely parents should be allowed some flexibility in how they perform their role? Mothers and fathers could feel justified in joining with campaigns like the one orchestrated by “Parents want a say” to argue that if their children are not suffering then the state should reduce its interference in the private sphere and support parental authority.
Cultural education.Abi Skipp/Flikr
So was Platt right to think that he should be able to take his daughter on holiday when he likes? He had argued that his child, then seven, had a school attendance record of over 90% – high enough to fulfil the legal requirement of “regular” attendance to ensure she was getting a good education. In other words, it might be justified for the state to intervene if there was strong evidence of an adverse effect on the child because of poor parenting decisions. But where there is no evidence of this, parents should be allowed to act as they deem fit. He told a newspaper: “Quite frankly, parents need to decide for themselves.”
But there is a good argument that they shouldn’t be allowed to decide – not because of the claim that schools know the needs of children best. But that selfish individualism should be challenged.
A lesson learned
It may not matter to your child if they miss a few days of school – but it will have an impact on others. Teachers are expected to ensure that children catch up with work they have missed which means less attention on the majority. If significant numbers of children are absent (as might be the tendency if parents take a few extra days around formal holidays) then the problem multiplies.
If you are the only parent who takes their child out there may be little ill effect, but if others start to do the same then the consequences escalate. Recent research by political philosophers on the rights of parents has argued that these need to be limited so that individuals cannot significantly advantage their own children over others, and that is what these parents are doing.
It could be argued even more forcefully that the benefits of your own child are marginal compared to the negative impact on other children. So the best reason for not taking your child out of school to go on holiday isn’t about the risk of educational disadvantage they face, or that it is going against government rules. It is that parenting shouldn’t be about seeking to confer an unfair advantage for your child over others.
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