Skip to main content

tv   Breaking the Set  RT  October 15, 2013 2:29pm-3:01pm EDT

2:29 pm
million people in a very short amount of time which begs the question if the indian government can effectively manage a logistical nightmare and one of the poorest regions on the planet why can't the greatest country in the history of the world do the same just reckon back to the horrific response to hurricane katrina in two thousand and five see bush and his female cronies took there's so we've asked time to respond as water flooded into the poorest parts of new orleans and mississippi killing over eighteen hundred people but you don't even have to look back that far to see serious issues with this country's disaster management just last year a category three hurricane sandy destroyed wired so was of the eastern seaboard and killed two hundred eighty five people more than ten times the casualties we just saw with india's cycle on the equivalent of what's a category four hurricane so instead of investing in a world policing maybe this country should take a cue from india and invest more in the safety of its own people.
2:30 pm
in the book. it was a. very hard to take that. lightly have you ever had to act with the terror threat they're looking. to cut. in an unprecedented move to privatized learning the chicago education board voted to close fifty public schools and made the sear now many of these shows. schools
2:31 pm
are being replaced with charter schools and majority of laid off teachers exchanged for private contractors one of the foundational players in this push is the joyce foundation an organization that has served as the middleman for policymakers to finance education reform in the state of illinois but it's also policy with ties to the very tip top of the u.s. government see barack obama sat on the joyce board for eight years along with former senior presidential adviser valerie jarrett and other democrats have slammed the bush's failed no child left behind program obama's implemented virtually the exact same concept of standardized education with race at the top. it's a notion spearheaded by the former c.e.o. of chicago public schools and current secretary of education arne duncan but the affiliation between the white house and the chicago public school system doesn't stop there chicago mayor no bomb is former chief of staff rahm emanuel is mimicking race at the top education policy on a city wide level according to press news the joyce foundation has already spent
2:32 pm
one hundred thirty six million dollars on education reform between one thousand nine hundred five and two thousand and twelve and looting twenty four million dollars for the charter program teach for america why well hiring nonunion teachers for charter schools is much much more cost efficient contractors work cheaply and early in the job for a couple of years with less chance for tenure and benefits even diane ravitch former u.s. assistant secretary of education has said chicago's school policy is not an education development plan it's an economic development plan c ravitch says the push for charter schools promote standardization a method that's completely destroying education. in the past the democratic party has fought the corporate takeover of public programs especially in the realm of education and under current meal liberalism the battle is being waged on behalf of the corporations so the democrats leading the charge. who will be left to fight for
2:33 pm
the future of american schools well i spoke to someone earlier who believes that the next phase of the corporate takeover of public education is automation out and bessie is an assistant professor in college and recently wrote an excellent article article for truthout about the commodification of students and schools i first asked him of robots taking over the role of teachers is a real possibility and here's his response. well. if you go to south korea they already actually have literally a teaching robot and not this is not just my paranoid fantasy it's called mt as an english teaching jockey and it was put into its should be by the end of this year in every south korean kindergarten classroom by the end of two thousand and thirteen helping the teacher teach and it was designed they couldn't get enough english teachers to teach and it's far cheaper eighty five hundred dollars for enqueue in south korea whereas a human being let's say you know we have to pay that human being a living wage then maybe they need health care i imagine south korea they give
2:34 pm
people healthcare unlike here and you can imagine that that would be very tempting from the business model mentality that has taken over the education reform movement to find a way to replace teachers robots there been any more negative consequences associated with having these already implemented through the gardens again in south korea we don't see any consequences yet as this has not been a role but we do see in america where we don't have robots we have teachers being forced to act like robots to follow these algorithms to teach to the standardized test and we know very well under no child left behind obama is right the time policies that teaching to the test turning teachers into robots by making them follow algorithms inevitably disenfranchised and to humanize the teacher and disenfranchises into humanizes children it's kind of marrying the kids' behavior into those pawlenty and conditioning where they they learn in a certain setting and due to rewards. it is just all kind of automated there is
2:35 pm
the future and if we do not stop this kind of standardization and privatisation of the education industry it is the future that we're going to see and what's the danger of thinking of children as just another thing on a conveyor belt churned out by corporate america the corporations are now sub contracting with the public sector just like you see in the military industrial complex so as a case in point charter schools charter schools by charter advocates are widely called public schools where they get public money they're authorized by the public but they're run by either non-profits or corporations they have a contract with the government they are contractors not unlike that who hired edward snowden the government contractor and this is a credibly lucrative it's an incredibly lucrative field which is made more lucrative by all of these standardized tests and we can see that we in america we score so coralie on these tests supposedly nobody tells you america has been
2:36 pm
scoring poorly on these tests forever right and we still have been destroyed economically back to my point the encroachments industry on education has never been more severe and what we're seeing for example is the charter schools are taking away from the public schools it's not just supplying hands as you see here it's actually taking over the classroom automation is the next step in that just like when you privatized any sector private industry private contractor wants to cut costs they want to keep costs low so charter school looking to be competitive is obviously if they can if they can save money by for example at a computer teach students rather than a teacher wow they've got more bang for their buck at the end of the day the consequence of having industry encroach upon the journey of education the institution of education rather than the industry the problem that you alternately end up seeing if you define education too narrowly education only be. about test
2:37 pm
scores only becomes about what obama is called cradle to career pipeline not to cradle to democracy pipeline not the cradle to citizenship not the cradle to self put pipe white or humanitarianism or empathy so the issue is that when we have shareholders and wall street and corporations running our schools and turning into an industry schooling only becomes school and not education and our children and our democracy are is the negative externality as you would say already i think thirtieth in the world in terms of education sort of all those kind of autumn i's standardise path is just really shocking when we see that it already doesn't work out and then lend that you know highly personalized education with kids and they're the best education system in the world i mean it's time to learn something from these countries that are doing it right out in the let's move on to something that you've studied extensively with project censored and elsewhere about the main players who are kind of pushing this global education reform movement who are they and what do they have to gain from privatizing education great question first of
2:38 pm
all notice that accurate is accurate in global education reform movement stands for germany which is invented by a finnish educator pasi sahlberg who i had the opportunity to talk to last year about what they do and what he told me as i told you last time of the program is that finland really export the greatest bottles from america which are project based learning creativity group work now the funny thing is as you just said you know we're thirty years in the world if you look at finland there are far richer countries than we are they have far less diversity socio economically and otherwise we have a twenty two percent childhood poverty rate and in america we educate everybody and like many of these other countries like china is looked up to as this great educational superpower but guess what they don't try to educate everybody we do it in the richest schools in america you'll see that they do just what they do in finland right if you go under which rules you're going to see project based learning you're going to see small class sizes you're going to see. creativity and
2:39 pm
standardized tests are determining whether they get funding or not they have up to date books technology is part of their curriculum where i worry most is there which kids will never have to deal with automation having the rich kids will never get their parents will never ever allow them to be taught by in here or via computer they'll want a real human teacher they don't want to knock out right they're going to want a human being and so my worry is is in these poor schools where the kids don't have the resources will say ok well we can't afford real teachers because you know their pensions are to our human future is going to do to all they unionize and make things difficult so i'd rather just have an operating system run this that will make sure we follow the program and this kind of logic makes sense for a bifurcated system where we have the people that create things the one percent and their children get to have a great education if you're going to be leaders and thinkers thinkers and main actors in their lives whereas the poor children are given automation and standardisation and taught to follow what the leaders say and so i think again the
2:40 pm
upper tiers of american society get those schools that finland has and perform as well as fenlon or better on standardized tests whereas our poor children i think they deserve to have the same kind of small class and grade of education that the rich children get have about a minute left but i can't let you go without getting your point on this adjunct professor is it an issue that i just learned about really shocking talk about how it's possible the graduate level professor is making not much more than minimum wage and is even guaranteed a job semester by semester well i was an adjunct professor before i became tenure and it's really stressful if your class doesn't make you lose that income your role is some tenuous and i was somebody to that i went through a serious medical illness when i was on in this position in adjunct and i was so afraid god if i lose my job i lose my health insurance it's a very frightening position to be in and the adjunct ization is very much the raise the bottom in education instead of the race to the top it's about trying to cut
2:41 pm
costs get as much bang for the buck as possible right that's what it's about we don't want to hire this tenured professor that costs all this money that does research and compete with students we want to. give as little commitment to our teachers as possible and make it as cheap as possible so automation the adjunct to vacation charter schools all of these in standardization are all part of the same journey package school education form which is tempting to outsource and robo source just like every other manufacturing industry that adam bessey extremely important topic as a professor down the valley college truthout contributor and contributor to project censored thank you so much for your time. the mainstream media this is the point and i'll call them after the break. torch is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred towns and
2:42 pm
cities of russia. relayed by georgian dozen people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air sea an outer space. a little victoria tree left. on r t r g dot com.
2:43 pm
it's a. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll researcher.
2:44 pm
i'm sure by now you've heard about the bravest girl in the world. a lot has become a global symbol a stand against the taliban terrorists malala has been called the bravest girl in the world advocate for girls and access to education worldwide is the youngest person ever to be nominated for a nobel peace prize her new book is called i am a lot the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the taliban well our use of the sixteen year old pakistani girl who survived bullets for insisting that all girls deserve an education in so many ways she is just a child turned gladiator and she's now sixteen year old malala yousafzai has been a favorite topic across the corporate media airwaves so after the taliban
2:45 pm
prohibited women from attending schools in northwestern pakistan this teenage girl continued to fight for the right to education because of her activism malala was shot in the head by members of the taliban it was a horrifying assault that should have killed her and iraqi. and now serves as a global symbol of the fight against radical islam and look i'm not here to argue against this one's bravery she's obviously incredible young lady and everyone should heed her message of education for all however i. as the corporate media uses her as a prop to promote the war on terror narrative part of that message has been conveniently omitted is the malawi i had an intimate visit with the first family last friday and in a subsequent press release the white house stated how obama wanted to thank her for inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls' education in pakistan except that's not all they talked about similar spoke at the president about a dire issue facing her country drone strikes in contrast to the official white
2:46 pm
house statement released one of her own and it she said i expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism innocent victims are killed in these attacks and they lead to resentment among the pakistani people if we refocus efforts on education will make a big impact while this young woman went head to head with the drone king and pointed out what obama consistently chooses to ignore because the white house forgot to mention that part of the conversation because paying attention to the fact that drone strikes only create more hatred and resentment toward the u.s. doesn't serve the official narrative acknowledging the failure of drones and began to undermine the notion that these machines are the smart way to fight terrorism so over the past ninety years pakistan has been hit by these killer robots at least three hundred and seventy six times killing anywhere between four hundred to one thousand civilians two hundred of which children and these numbers are a conservative estimate but the establishment doesn't just want to be in the dark
2:47 pm
about what drones are doing around the world so the state department is actually going to great lengths to suppress this information case in point. akbar is the attorney for the british human rights group reprieve and has over one hundred fifty clients who are survivors of drone strikes a short while back akbar and some of his pakistani clients were invited by members of congress to testify at an unprecedented drone hearing on capitol hill however that hearing never happened. akbar's still been prevented from entering the u.s. although he's had no problems with visas in the past. as it's pretty clear what's going on the u.s. has no shame in using people as tools for propaganda to demonize the enemy and to promote war when it comes to real justice government officials are actively suppressing the voices speaking out against the other form of terror because we all know that if the law was a survivor of a u.s. drone strike instead of a taliban gun shot we would never even know her name instead of being paraded
2:48 pm
around the media circuit she would just be another number lost in the paperwork of collateral damage. one tunnel bay prison be approaching its last days according to some recent actions by the us government indicate that we may be getting closer to fulfilling obama's two thousand and eight promise last tuesday secretary of defense chuck hagel appointed a special envoy to oversee the closing of gitmo and just one day later the pentagon confirmed that it's beginning the process of green indefinitely detain prisoners who have already been cleared for release that's over half of one hundred sixty four detainees so with the hunger strike declared over and things finally looking out for one ton of the inmates are we finally seeing a realistic effort to shut down this facility or is this just another empty gesture or to correspond on the stasi a church going to just took
2:49 pm
a trip to guantanamo bay to gain some insight on what life is really like there and what the potential future holds for the inmates thank you so much for coming on we know hard it is to travel to cuba how hard is it to get to know as a journalist well abbie you know after just a few months clearance checks and getting our papers in order and credentials we were actually hop and skip away from guantanamo as it turned out from new york city a quick flight to florida and then an hour and a half flight to get where you would have thought it would be. as complicated as it is to get to cuba but because this is a military u.s. base and not really officially governed by the cuban government it was it was much much easier than we expected and i would imagine that it's a pretty controlled environment there to talk about your experience were you able to get the access that you wanted well the trick with the way media is handled on the ground is that every single day you think you are you're getting amazing access to all of the amazing places but at the end of the day you kind of stop and say to yourself like what is that and we're not going to see more because there's plenty
2:50 pm
of tours organized for the media and you go to you know see the cells and you go to see some of the camps and you go to see even the library of the detainees but at the end of the day you say to yourself wait we would like to see a little bit more of the detainees and that's unfortunately something that is being very restricted in these days abbie this is what a commander of the joint task force in get low sent to us in terms of why we're not seeing as much as of the detainees as we hoped we would. get pretty consistent over the last several years with you know how transparent we are with the detainees and putting them on still out of respect for them and. using them as. you know. you know. making some kind of curiosity you know thing like that we don't want to do that so they're saying they're transparent but you know there are releasing a video of the prisoners like a glaring contradiction there i know that you did interviews with
2:51 pm
a lot of residents on the military base as well i thought it was really fascinating is i didn't realize that people were actually just really living there a lot of families of soldiers of course i guess that that's obvious when you think about it talk but i caught any of the people living on the base as opposed to in the prison well you know abbie this is also for us it was one of the most fascinating things too because you do expect this to be you know a very kind of dark place but in reality it's like kind of day and night the area where all the resident. so the locals and the people serving there live you know with the mcdonald's and the subway and the starbucks said these beach areas and these fantastic gyms and workout places people are you know having a blast living there certainly but then you go to to the area where where the actual camps are and certainly you know we have this wonderful place for the people working there literally in the backyard of one of the most controversial prisons or the most controversial prison of the united states. and you know we hear and see so
2:52 pm
little of what the conditions actually are with any given us i know you said that there's a mcdonald's there's there's a lot of things outside of the people living there i mean some journalism representatives that said that it's club med for terrorists volleyball soccer video games i mean this is an insight on the reality within the prison you can chance of speaking to detainees as well while us sadly no we did ask for this over and over again but we did not get access and nobody is really speaking to the detainees on the ground these days and in terms of club man i'm not sure it's a club med for the detainees we were certainly shown all these kind of video rooms and a t.v. set we do have to say you know when they do watch the video games and t.v. they are chained to a big chair not able to get up from it so i'm not sure how much of a spa treatment that really is and you don't know if it's curious that the places we were shown the journalists were taken were really like clean and polished and with this like clothing laid out on the beds of the typical cells we were told of where they'd get mowed you tell us are staying but because we were not allowed to
2:53 pm
actually approach too closely to the actual real selves and get more than just some glimpses of the detainees it was really just hard to say whether or not what we're being shown has a lot to do with what the way things really are and we if we believe reports and we do certainly have the force feeding and the suicides and just the crazy torture allegations that we've been hearing from there over the years it's really hard to believe that what we were shown was really the situation that the detainees are faced with it's unfortunate seems like it's kind of a farcical tour showed a journalist i'm not surprised that we do hear a lot about of course is the force that you just mentioned that although the hunger strike has been officially declared over by representatives come on how many people are still in during the strike because i know that it's not completely over and what did you learn about the process while you were there well in terms of you know even though officials are saying that it's officially over about at least fifteen people we were told are still continuing the hunger strike and they're still continually being force fed and these. just you know official numbers so we could
2:54 pm
be more and we did find out that the force feeding process at least the way officials were presenting it to us was certainly a lot more easy sounding that what it seems to be in reality a very painful thing take a look at the escalation we've got from a nurse that works at a local hospital there. we're still in the news we lubricated and we give the patients a choice do they want to have the key which is a. dual. or if they want to lubricate the two. most of our patients have been using all of the will you seemed like you in fact some of our patients are so used to this they will describe which nostril they want. just makes me sick watching that i mean it just seems like almost it's so nonchalant like oh yeah they prefer the olive oil or any of the attitudes of the guards talking about the administering. well it would be
2:55 pm
yeah i mean it's just ridiculous the way it sounds when i did follow up with a question asking we when we hear that it's a super painful process when the person conducting these four speeding procedures was like no we never really we never really came across that they seem to be comfortable with that so it seems like a really comfortable thing as well as someone in the risk rating chair you know very comfortable in overstating chairs you know doing or declared torture by the u.n. don't worry about that which lubricate their throat with all the oil it's all fine now is the i just want to follow up with my intro it looks like moves are friendly being made to release of the prisoners do you think this is empty rhetoric or are there real moves being made here headway being made it's very hard to say at this point we know officially there's been a new envoy appointed to close gitmo we know they're you know sort of officially saying they're trying to make a move things forward but you know on the on the ground construction is continuing places are being built if not for the detainees and for the locals officials there did tell us that this is only because even if get mo is closed the actual naval base will remain at. that's why all this construction continues but you know the
2:56 pm
numbers i think speak for themselves abbie there's still hundred sixty four detainees being kept at guantanamo over a house of them have been cleared for release they have not gone anywhere and only six people out of one hundred sixty four are currently under trial so the math is simple how long it's going to take up for the other ones to get the justice they've been waiting for hard to say right and the extraordinary amount that taxpayers are paying to sponsor this prison saying open they do so much on the sizer charge now from now on i'm going to i'm going from demo. if you want to know what i'm doing when i'm not on the air you can check me out on twitter at abby martin directly so you can follow me there when i'm in queens we need a segment from the show as well just ran out the bay pissed off at our politicians also please help us get a break in the set trending on twitter and how we can get anyone to put us here but only with the audience's help so have the twitter check now at abby martin you guys that's our show today we're off tomorrow but be sure to join me again on wednesday to break the set all over again.
2:57 pm
wealthy british style. it's not time to. go. to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports on our. real damage and complexity of this oil spill is not something you grasp just by looking at dirty birds we have between four to five million people in this directly affected area of the clothes. it's. be clear why it's not being reported because b.p.
2:58 pm
can't afford to have a reported all along the gulf coast are clean they are safe and they're open for business if b.p. is the single largest oil contributor to the pentagon the us war machine is heavily reliant upon b.p. and their oil this is a huge step backwards for the marker see it's a step forward. carex it is toxic is a look a lot like spraying and. it was it was not a picture that either the government or b.p. really wanted to have out there i don't want dispersants to be the agent on. his bills. child legal rights.
2:59 pm
to the. law. paying for the young girls cam all for the future honner. between two and three hundred million guns united states so you can act like they're not here and keep kids away from them. the pass' out is a large you know i mean this teaches them a lot of for a responsibility and simply come to pay through the eyes of children if we can't do it for our children for our future.
3:00 pm
the american people are furious businesses are enraged and the world economy is held hostage but lawmakers in washington it's career over country some forty eight hours remain there for the united states to end the deadlock and avoid defaulting on its seventeen trillion dollar debt. surveillance scandal sparks an exodus from the dot com domain and global push to shield sensitive data from governments by. the suspect in the murder that sparked somebody rioting here in moscow to take off for a five day manhunt tensions are still simmering in the capital with a nationalist rally held on the same day as a major muslim holiday.

36 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on