Headed Down East

For those of you who have been following the scuttle-butt on Julie’s blog “SKODD for Life” here’s something you may enjoy.  More on mentos and the First Amendment to come to a classroom near you.

Sanna received some feedback from an unknown author (below) in response to a post she wrote on the situation in Guantanamo Bay.  Check out the conversation and Sanna’s follow-up post to this blog - another example of good blogging discussion.

Everyone is a critic…

I can not understand how high school kids with narrow perspectives on the world assume the right to criticize the decisions of world leaders. The public’s view of what really goes on, its causes and its effects is heavily obscured by the lack of proper channels of information.
Whether or not the right decisions are being made is not a question of whether or not you perceive your country to be doing the right thing, it’s a question of whether or not your leaders are trustworthy.

You will never know everything that goes on and you will rarely even know enough to be able to form relevant arguments that people who are closer to the matters at hand won’t be able to refute. If you do trust your elected officials then take comfort in that your will is being carried out through them, no matter what distorted dramas the media may create.

If, however, you don’t trust your leaders..(and I hope your reasons are valid) the only opinion you should adopt and preach about is the one of distrust.

Check out the discussion as Dan defends his post on Guantanamo.  Dan wrote:

Foreign terrorists dont count as the people, and dont have our constitutional rights.

Now he’s catching a little heat.  What are the Constitutional rights of people who are not U.S. Citizens?  I believe this is what Dan meant by “the people.”  What should the Constitutional rights be?

As we read in class, Hamdan versus Rumsfeld was a significant example of Judicial Review as it pertains to the rights of detained terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.  The court found that the system of military tribunals being used with terror suspects was unconstitutional.  Since then the White House and Congress has saught to create new, Constitutional guidelines for these tribunals.  As of today the proposal from the white house and the proposal from the Senate Armed Service committee have some significant differences in how they feel the tribunals should be carried out.  As written on National Public Radio’s website, the current situation is as follows:

Key Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee tried to reach a compromise with the White House this weekend over how to interrogate and try terrorism suspects. But President Bush has maintained his position that the U.S. be allowed to withhold classified evidence from defendants being tried for terrorism.

If you listen to the full report on NPR’s website (you’ll need windows media player or realplayer) you will hear that President Bush is asking to “limit U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions.”  In other words, U.S. interrogators should be allowed to interrogate suspects while with-holding classified evidence from the suspect.  This would require revising Article III of the Geneva Conventions:

Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict. (http://www.genevaconventions.org/)

The link highlighting “outrages upon personal dignity” will take you to an NPR page where Bush speaks specifically about that wording being too vague.  This is the article language that the Bush administration would like to revise so that the Geneva Conventions would allow for more aggressive questioning of terror suspects.

On the other hand Senator Lindsey Graham argues for the necessity of allowing terror suspects to hear the evidence brought against them.  Graham asks, “What would happen if a CIA agent were captured in Iran trying to subvert their nuclear program and the Iranian government put this person on trial as a war criminal?  And the Iranian prosecutor had a file marked ’secret,’ gave it to their judge and their jury and said, ‘convict this man’ and they never shared the evidence with the American agent?”  You can hear this question phrased in the first NPR report I referred to by clicking on the red “listen” button.

 What do YOU think makes for a fair trial?  What will the SUPREME COURT think makes for a fair trial?

Education has changed.  In the past finding information required a great deal of time and extensive resources.  To find a book in the library twenty years ago you had to use a card catelog.  Computer databases were pretty rare.  The internet was non-existent.  As a result, one of the central roles of teachers was to make information accessible to the students.  Professionals alone controlled information - teachers, editors, publicists.  The average civilian could do little more than write an editorial to a newspaper.

Today information is abundant.  Furthermore, everyone has the ability to publish and share their own knowledge and ideas.  Wikipedia is a great example.  Anyone out there can create and add to this online encyclopedia.  Some people express great concern that the information on wikipedia does not go through professional editors.  However, who is to say that those professional editors will include the most relevant information and exclude the least relevant?  Who is to say that those editors will interpret facts accurately - or in a way that presents multiple perspectives?

Wikipedia allows average people - you and me - to add our knowledge and experiences to a database accessible by everyone.  As wikipedia has grown it has become clear that there are relatively few vandals out there who seek to illegitimize the database.  Typically, a group of people knowledgeable on a specific subject work to maintain and update their favorite wikipedia page.  In this way the content of wikipedia is more accurate than a database generated by a small group of editors.

Blogs do the same thing.  I’ve put my thoughts out here for the world to see.  Some of you will agree and some will disagree.  But most importantly the discussion is public.  Anyone with access to an internet connection can add and respond.  John Dewey viewed education as the great equalizer.  However, Dewey failed to acknowledge that the information was largely controlled by the upper and middle class.  Today technology seems to be the real great equalizer.  That’s because our knowledge base will be generated by all members of society and each perspective will be present.