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Iraqi Man Removed From Southwest Flight for Speaking Arabic

América del Norte/EEUU/Abril 2016/Autor: Justin Salhani/ Fuente: readersupportednews.org

Resumen: Un joven estudiante de UC Berkeley, 26 años de edad, refugiado iraquí, llegó a los Estados Unidos en 2002, cuando su padre diplomático murió. Ahora el senior en la Universidad de California Berkeley estaba en Los Ángeles para asistir a una cena en el Consejo de Asuntos Mundiales de Los Ángeles, un evento que también asistió el secretario general de la ONU, Ban Ki-moon, cuando fue removido de un vuelo de Southwest Airlines a raíz de que habló en árabe estando a bordo de la nave.

A UC Berkeley student says he was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight earlier this month after speaking Arabic on board.

Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a 26-year-old Iraqi refugee, came to the United States in 2002 when his diplomat father was killed. Now a senior at UC Berkley, Makhzoomi was in Los Angeles attending a dinner at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, an event that was also attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

While on the plane, he called his uncle to tell him about the dinner and ended the phone call by saying “inshallah” — a common term used in Arabic that translates to “God willing.” But after he hung up, he noticed a female passenger eyeing him suspiciously. The passenger reported Makhzoomi, who was then removed from the flight and searched.

“The way they searched me and the dogs, the officers, people were watching me and the humiliation made me so afraid because it brought all of these memories back to me. I escaped Iraq because of the war, because of Saddam and what he did to my father,” Makhzoomi told the Daily Californian. “When I got home, I just slept for a few days.”

The FBI questioned him because the passenger thought he had said “shahid,” which translates to martyr, instead of “inshallah.” They then informed him that Southwest would not fly him back to Oakland, even though he was a Southwest premier rewards member. Although Southwest called Makhzoomi the following Monday to inform him that his status was clear to fly, the airline didn’t offer any apology.

“I don’t want money,” he said. “I don’t care about that. All I want is an apology.”

Makhzoomi is the latest person to be removed from a flight due to a fear of Islam. In fact, simply having a Muslim name can arouse suspicion from airlines or fellow travelers. There have been numerous incidents of Arab or Muslim passengers removed from planes for “suspicious activity” since the Paris attacks late last year.

“In November, four passengers of Middle Eastern descent were removed from a Spirit Airlines flight for ‘suspicious activity’ — a claim that revolved around one of the passengers viewing a news report on his phone,” ThinkProgress reported in January. “Later that month, two Palestinian-Americans were barred from boarding a plane in Philadelphia when a fellow passenger complained the pair made her uncomfortable because they were conversing in Arabic.”

This discrimination extends beyond just Muslims, as Sikhs have also come under scrutiny while flying. One particularly noticeable case occurred when Sikh American actor, model, and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia — famous from appearing in Wes Anderson movies — was barred from a flight for refusing to remove his turban.

These incidents have noticeably occurred more frequently since the nation’s attention turned to the Paris attacks.

“Since 9/11, we’ve seen a steady increase in anti-Muslim bias and dissemination of fear about Muslims in the United States. That trend has really spiked during this current electoral season,” Charles Hirschkind, a professor at UC Berkley with a focus on Islam and the Middle East, told the Daily Californian. “Candidates have said things like Muslims should not be allowed to immigrate to this country. …All of these kinds of statements really ramp up both the level of fear and also the level of bias and prejudice and racism that Muslims face.”

Southwest issued a statement saying the airline “regrets any less than positive experience on board our aircraft.”

Fuente de la noticia: http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36357-iraqi-man-removed-from-southwest-flight-for-speaking-arabic

Fuente de la imagen: http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs20/020672-southwest-airlines-041616.jpg

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Black student leader disinvited from AIPAC for opposing Hillary Clinton

 

The powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC has disinvited a youth leader from a major Black civil rights organization from its annual conference.

Da’Shaun Harrison, 19, is the vice president of the NAACP chapter at Morehouse College, the historically Black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, from which Martin Luther King Jr. graduated.

Harrison had his invitation to attend the conference revoked after AIPAC learned that he participated in an October protest against Hillary Clinton and that he supports Palestinian rights.

For years AIPAC, the most influential arm of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, has been recruiting students from historically Black colleges in an effort to counter growing support for Palestinian rights among young people of color.

Presidential frontrunners, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom are scheduled to speak at AIPAC’s conference, have attracted protests on the campaign trail from young Black activists involved in the movement to end state-sanctioned racial violence.

Harrison spoke to The Electronic Intifada about how AIPAC rescinded his invitation.

Based on Harrison’s account, it appears AIPAC is protecting Clinton and Trump by probing the activist histories of its Black student recruits, effectively shielding the candidates from the risk of dissent.

AIPAC has been similarly diligent in ensuring its conference is free of reporters critical of Israeli policy, as several openly adversarial journalists, including this writer, have been denied press credentials without reason.

In striking contrast, there are no reports of AIPAC subjecting members of pro-Israel Jewish groups to preemptive bans despite their publicized plans to protest Trump during his AIPAC speech.

AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment about Harrison’s exclusion.

Interrogation

Harrison says he was invited to AIPAC by an acquaintance from the Georgia chapter of the NAACP, who reached out to student leaders at historically Black colleges in the area on AIPAC’s behalf.

Harrison is well versed on the question of Palestine and is critical of Israel’s denial of Palestinian freedom, positions he credits to studying under intellectuals including Marc Lamont Hill, a Morehouse professor of African American studies who has been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights.

Harrison said that after reflection, he decided to accept AIPAC’s invitation and use the free trip as an opportunity to challenge his pro-Israel peers “on what it means to be Black students who are against racial injustices against ourselves” while being “pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian.”

His plans came to a crashing halt on Thursday when he got a phone call from an AIPAC representative interrogating him about his intentions.

Harrison declined to name the AIPAC representative, saying, “I don’t want this to be about an individual. This is about an establishment that openly backs the genocide of Palestinians and denies folks access to their conference due to opposing thoughts and fears.”

According to Harrison’s recollection, the AIPAC representative told him, “I heard from various people here that you have opposing views with Ms. Clinton and that you were a part of a group who disrupted her.”

Harrison was alarmed to learn that the man had apparently called his school and the NAACP acquaintance who invited him to the conference, asking probing questions about his activism.

“That’s just weird,” Harrison said.

He felt as though he was under surveillance.

Citing the protests at Trump’s campaign rallies, the AIPAC representative went on to ask Harrison if he intended to disrupt any of the presidential candidates attending the conference.

All presidential contenders are scheduled to speak at AIPAC except for Clinton’s Democratic Party competitorBernie Sanders, who turned down the group’s invitation to appear in person.

AIPAC rejected Sanders’ offer to speak via video link, despite the fact that it has allowed other presidential candidates to do so in previous years and will allow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do so so this year.

While Harrison insisted he had no intention of protesting, for the sake of transparency, he noted that he supported Palestinian rights and the conference was not going to change his mind. He was simply going for the experience, not to protest.

The AIPAC representative told Harrison he needed to consult with his colleagues. A few minutes later he called back to tell Harrison it was best that he not come to the conference, though he awkwardly extended an invitation for Harrison to participate in a future propaganda trip to Israel.

“I laughed and said I think this is very silly, me not being allowed to be in a space because of a disruption that has nothing to do with this conference,” Harrison said.

Protesting Hillary

“There’s no reason that Hillary Clinton should be at AIPAC while Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are there as well,” Harrison told The Electronic Intifada.

“Actually, I don’t think there’s a big difference between Hillary and Trump,” he then added. “Trump represents 1960s racism and she represents today’s quiet racism.”

It was this disdain for Clinton’s record on race that spurred Harrison to help organize the protest that got him disinvited from the AIPAC conference.

Back in October, during a campaign event in Atlanta, Harrison joined with a coalition of Black student activists from historically Black colleges called AUC Shut It Down to confront Hillary Clinton about her atrocious record on criminal justice.

“The Hillary action came from a group of us understanding her track record of advocating against Black and brown folks via the death penalty, three-strikes rule, mass incarceration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Harrison said.

“Black Lives Matter has become a prop in this election,” Harrison added, referring to the protest movement that arose after a series of high-profile police and vigilante killings of young Black men and women.

“Black pain should not be exploited or capitalized on, yet Hillary has been using the moms of Black teens who have been shot and killed as an endorsement,” he said.

The students expected to receive overwhelming support from those in attendance, but the opposite happened.

The room was incredibly hostile. Police tried to drag them out as “Hillary supporters were in our faces shouting at us to let her speak,” Harrison said.

But that wasn’t the worst of it for him.

“What hurt most,” Harrison said, was seeing Representative John Lewis of Georgia “trying to physically remove us. When he recognized we weren’t going to leave, he went and stood behind Hillary to show his support for her.”

Lewis’ prominent leadership role in the civil rights movement as a student, including organizing the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches alongside Martin Luther King Jr., was depicted in Ava DuVernay’s award-winning 2014 feature film Selma.

“You’re raised to see John Lewis as a civil rights icon,” said Harrison. “We did the same thing he would have done in his time. So to see him go against us, it was eye opening, but also very hurtful.”

The backlash from Clinton supporters after the action was punishing, with some students receiving death threats, according to Harrison.

Until the AIPAC debacle, Harrison assumed the backlash was behind him. But it turns out that protesting the former secretary of state, much like protesting Israel, may come with long-lasting consequences.

Originalmente publicado en

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/black-student-leader-disinvited-aipac-opposing-hillary-clinton

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¿Qué se esconde tras del debate entre la educación pública o privada en Australia?

La escuela australiana afianza la desigualdad

Prof. Jesús Campos G.

Reportaje, Australia, 11/2/16

Segregación académica y económica son apenas dos, de los muchos, temas que se abren paso en las actuales discusiones sobre la realidad que subyace en el entorno educativo australiano, superando la tradicional y estereotipada pregunta referida a: ¿Qué es mejor entre la educación pública o privada?. Justamente son los argumentos que discurren en un artículo publicado en “brisbanetime.com.au”, trabajado a dos manos por los jóvenes estudiantes preuniversitarios Rizina Yadav y San Wolfe, titulado “Australian Schools are Entreching Division and Inequality” [1].

Los autores desnudan una cruda situación que emerge anualmente, cuando culmina el año escolar, a raíz de la publicación de los resultados obtenidos de los puntajes estudiantiles, en donde las escuelas del estado de Queensland son divididas por la clasificación (ranking) entre los estatus de pública o privada, por citar un caso.

Enmascarados sobre lo que ocurre cada vez que se analizan tales resultados de las posiciones estudiantiles, se observa que la diferencia entre los estudiantes que lograron los mejores lugares en sus calificaciones no son significativos, si se considera la procedencia de ellos, bien sea si provienen de escuelas privadas y católicas, o de escuelas públicas. Entonces cuál es el análisis que se debe realizar sobre los problemas tangibles de la sociedad australiana en el marco educativo, y que son distraídos con la discusión relacionada con la comparación entre escuela pública o privada.

El problema más llamativo tiene que ver con la discriminación que se registra a los estudiantes en las escuelas australianas. Muestra de ello es la siguiente clasificación de planteles: existe una categoría llamada escuelas independientes las cuales discriminan a los estudiantes por los ingresos y riquezas familiares del estudiante, también existen la escuelas selectivas las cuales filtran estudiantes sobresalientes por su talento académico, otras escuelas son llamadas escuelas integrales públicas que tienen el criterio de seleccionar estudiantes dependiendo de la zona geográfica donde viven y las escuelas situadas en zonas de altos ingresos que solo atraen a los “mejores” estudiantes. En consecuencia, de acuerdo al artículo de Yadav y Wolfe, estudiantes del mismo nivel socioeconómico son educados en escuelas seleccionas, con las ventajas y las desventajas propias que dependen de las zonas en donde y en como estas se encuentren.

Lo anterior es recogido, según los autores, de un reporte elaborado por Australian Council for Educational Research, el cual encontró un profundo crecimiento de la división entre las escuelas secundarias de Australia entre el año 2000 y el 2012, y todo indica que la curva va en crecimiento.

En tal sentido, los autores señalan que la segregación escolar va en detrimento de la mejora de nivel académico estudiantil y a la cohesión social, incrementando la inequidad entre estudiantes ricos y pobres, haciendo a un lado la rúbrica australiana en la que este país se compromete a la tener una educación de calidad y de igualdad de oportunidades para todos.

Más recientemente la inequidad australiana quedó reflejada en un trabajo publicado con el nombre de “New Estimateds of Intergenerational Mobility”, producido para el NSW Department of Education, el cual encontró que la movilidad social en Australia está restringida por los ingresos familiares, los cuales juegan el rol más importante, en contraste al talento o a la habilidad intelectual que pueda demostrar algún estudiante en particular.

Lo que parece ser un problema reciente y novedoso en Australia, a raíz de los estudios publicados por diferentes investigaciones locales, no deja de ser un hecho aislado que se ha estado creciendo en otras latitudes, con mayor o menor nivel de complejidad. Acerquémonos a América Latina y revisemos con detenimiento lo expresado por Ernesto Treviño, Felipe Salazar y Francisca Donoso, en su trabajo “¿Segregar o incluir?: Eso no debería ser una pregunta en educación”[2], publicado en Revista Docencia, Chile, el cual arranca con una sentencia lacónica: “Chile tiene uno de los sistemas escolares más segregados del mundo debido a un conjunto de políticas educacionales y de vivienda que distancian a los distintos grupos sociales”. Revistiendo a Chile como el caso más emblemático de discriminación y segregación estudiantil en Latinoamérica, gracias al periodo Pinochet, pero sin ser el único en la región.

¿Es acaso esto un proceso casual o forma parte de un movimiento derivado de las políticas con que el neoliberalismo ha trazado sus directrices en las naciones del mundo?. Pues parte de la respuesta a esta interrogante se puede encontrar en una disertación elaborada por Susana López Guerra y Marcelo Flores Chávez titulada “La reformas educativas neoliberales en Latinoamérica”[3], divulgado por la Revista Electrónica de Investigación Educativa (REDIE), México, en el que puntualiza: “Naomi Klein ha estudiado el interés del empresariado por participar en la organización de las escuelas. Esta autora identificó como en Estados Unidos, desde finales de la década de los ochenta del siglo XX, las grandes corporaciones consideraron la incorporación de una gran masa de población juvenil –concentrada en las escuelas–, al consumo de sus productos. Eliminaron la frontera de la educación con la publicidad y, de esta manera, las escuelas se convirtieron en grandes centros publicitarios con anuncios y carteles exhibidos de manera constante y permanente a los alumnos para promover sus productos –tanto en forma impresa, como por medio de los programas computacionales introducidos en los equipos que donaron a las escuelas–. Transgredieron la privacidad de los jóvenes, exploraron sus intereses y pautas de navegación en la Internet, para inducir el consumo de productos ya existentes o para crear nuevos de acuerdo con lo ‘investigado’. Las grandes compañías de ese país reactivaron el consumo sobre este sector en la década de los noventa.” Las estructuras impuestas por sociedades que privilegian el consumo aceleran los procesos relacionados con las divisiones y las desigualdades en la escuela.

Este fenómeno se generalizó y, de acuerdo a López y Flores, sus principales actores fueron “… El Diálogo Interamericano (DIA) y el Centro de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo Internacional (CINDE), así como sus patrocinadores: United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), AVINA Foundation, The Tinker Foundation, GE Found, Global Development Net Work y otros”. Por tanto, ya no causa sorpresa encontrar las desviaciones que se manifiestan en Australia y en gran parte de los países que han sido tocados por estas políticas.

Sería interesante tomar en cuenta, entonces, lo que plantea Yadav y Wolfe al final del artículo, en donde la lucha debe orientarse a “mejorar a la educación holísticamente”.

[1] http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/ignore-the-distractions-its-the-educational-outcomes-that-really-matter-20160209-gmpg0b.html
[2] http://www.revistadocencia.cl/pdf/20111216122143.pdf
[3] http://redie.uabc.mx/redie/article/view/122/1069

Foto cortesía brisbanetime.com.au

 

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