by Kenneth J. Thiesen, BLN

Many people in this country are aware of the atrocious conditions and treatment of adult prisoners in the U.S. war of terror. These prisoners have been held at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and other hellholes run by the U.S. But few are aware that thousands of children have also been taken by the U.S. and its allies in this war of terror.

A few of these children have been held at Guantanamo and have received some publicity, but most have been held in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and have received very little notice from U.S. media. What has and is happening to these children victims of the U.S. war?

As late as May 2008 U.S. authorities reported to the U.N. that they were holding at least 513 Iraqi children in U.S.-run prisons as “imperative threats to security.” The U.S. did not report how many children had been previously transferred by U.S. authorities to prisons run by Iraqi puppet forces. Most of the children were held in the same hellhole prisons that held adult prisoners.

In April 2008 the U.S. government reported “approximately 10 juveniles being held at Bagram Theater Internment Facility as unlawful enemy combatants. Bagram has been compared to Gitmo in the crimes committed there by U.S. authorities.

The U.S. came under intense international criticism for its treatment of children when these numbers were released. As a result the U.S. government recently released a report claiming that as of December 2009 only five children were held by the U.S. in U.S. military detention in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report did not say what happened to the other children. It is unknown whether these numbers are true or not, but even if they are, the report leaves unanswered the question of whether these children have access to the protections guaranteed to them under international law. It also fails to address the rights of children transferred by the U.S. to Iraqi and Afghan authorities.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed concerns on January 28th about the U.S. government report. It is likely that most of the reduction may be attributed to the transfer of prisoners to Iraqi authorities. It is well known that the Iraqi puppet forces run hellhole prisons sometimes even worse that those of the U.S. The ACLU asked for data on the fates of the detainees and sought assurance that all current or former child soldiers and juvenile prisoners are being given their rights afforded under international law.

Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program stated, “…the public is entitled to know how these cases are being handled. We hope that the U.S. can confirm how many of these detainees were released and how many were transferred to Iraqi or Afghan authorities for prosecution. The U.S. has a responsibility to ensure that any juvenile detainees transferred to other authorities are still granted their basic human rights, including consideration of their status as juveniles and safe opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration into society.”

The U.S. report did not include information about the treatment and care for those who were under 18 at the time of their capture and who are still in U.S. custody. Also current U.S. military policy allows the U.S. to take up to two weeks to provide the International Red Cross with names and access to all detainees, which is too long for the needs of children in custody. The first weeks of detention are critical to juvenile prisoners, and they should be accounted for and attended to as soon as possible. Much of the abuse that prisoners experience often takes place shortly after capture.

“The humane treatment of juveniles in U.S. military custody is critical to restoring the rule of law and humanity to U.S. detention operations overseas,” said Jennifer Turner, human rights researcher with the ACLU Human Rights Program. “…the government still lacks a comprehensive policy regarding the treatment of juveniles still in detention and their access to education, legal services and physical and psychological services that are critical to their rehabilitation.”

In November 2009, the ACLU sought updated data from the Department of Defense on juveniles in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan and information on efforts to bring U.S. policy regarding the treatment, detention and trial of juveniles into compliance with international law. As of today no response has been received from the Pentagon.

Why is the Obama administration not releasing this information to the ACLU and the public? What is being hidden? It is not enough to reduce the number of juveniles held in the U.S. war of terror just by transferring them to Iraqi or Afghan puppet forces. What are the conditions of incarceration? Are these children still being deprived of their legal and human rights? What crimes are being committed in our names? These are all questions that deserve an answer. Those responsible for the abuse of these children must be held accountable. This includes not only those responsible during the years of the Bush regime, but also those within the Obama administration who have failed to end the abuse of these children. Transferring them to other abusers in U.S. puppet governments does not excuse the U.S. role or end the abuse.

These children victims of the U.S. war of terror have been silenced through their incarceration and treatment. We, and that means you too, must speak out for them and demand justice now!

by Walter Williams, GMU

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving ability. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math and 24th in science. McKinsey & Company, in releasing its report “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools” (April 2009) said, “Several other facts paint a worrisome picture. First, the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers. In recent cross-country comparisons of fourth grade reading, math, and science, US students scored in the top quarter or top half of advanced nations. By age 15 these rankings drop to the bottom half. In other words, American students are farthest behind just as they are about to enter higher education or the workforce.” That’s a sobering thought. The longer kids are in school and the more money we spend on them, the further behind they get.

While the academic performance of white students is grossly inferior, that of black and Latino students is a national disgrace. The McKinsey report says, “On average, black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind white students of the same age. This racial gap exists regardless of how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score) and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures. Taking the average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for math and reading across the fourth and eighth grades, for example, 48 percent of blacks and 43 percent of Latinos are ‘below basic,’ while only 17 percent of whites are, and this gap exists in every state. A more pronounced racial achievement gap exists in most large urban school districts.” Below basic is the category the NAEP uses for students unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.

The teaching establishment and politicians have hoodwinked taxpayers into believing that more money is needed to improve education. The Washington, D.C., school budget is about the nation’s costliest, spending about $15,000 per pupil. Its student/teacher ratio, at 15.2 to 1, is lower than the nation’s average. Yet student achievement is just about the lowest in the nation. What’s so callous about the Washington situation is about 1,700 children in kindergarten through 12th grade receive the $7,500 annual scholarships in order to escape rotten D.C. public schools, and four times as many apply for the scholarships, yet Congress, beholden to the education establishment, will end funding the school voucher program.

Any long-term solution to our education problems requires the decentralization that can come from competition. Centralization has been massive. In 1930, there were 119,000 school districts across the U.S; today, there are less than 15,000. Control has moved from local communities to the school district, to the state, and to the federal government. Public education has become a highly centralized government-backed monopoly and we shouldn’t be surprised by the results. It’s a no-brainer that the areas of our lives with the greatest innovation, tailoring of services to individual wants and falling prices are the areas where there is ruthless competition such as computers, food, telephone and clothing industries, and delivery companies such as UPS, Federal Express and electronic bill payments that have begun to undermine the postal monopoly in first-class mail.

At a Washington press conference launching the McKinsey report, Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was “Professor James Crow.” Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial issue; it’s a vital issue for the entire nation.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

by David Goodman, Mother Jones

John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked him whether he’d ever talked to a military recruiter, Travers, a 19-year-old African American with a buzz cut, a crisp white T-shirt, and a diamond stud in his left ear, smiled wryly. “To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters,” he said. “It was overwhelming.” Then he added, “I thought the recruiters had too much information about me. They called me, but I never gave them my phone number.”

Nor did he give the recruiters his email address, Social Security number, or details about his ethnicity, shopping habits, or college plans. Yet they probably knew all that, too. In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students’ GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect like Travers, the soldier may know more about the kid’s habits than do his own parents.

The military has long struggled to find more effective ways to reach potential enlistees; for every new GI it signed up last year, the Army spent $24,500 on recruitment. (In contrast, four-year colleges spend an average of $2,000 per incoming student.) Recruiters hit pay dirt in 2002, when then-Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-La.) slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush’s signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students may sign an opt-out form—but not all school districts let them know about it.

Yet NCLB is just the tip of the data iceberg. In 2005, privacy advocates discovered that the Pentagon had spent the past two years quietly amassing records from Selective Service, state DMVs, and data brokers to create a database of tens of millions of young adults and teens, some as young as 15. The massive data-mining project is overseen by the Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies program, whose website has described the database, which now holds 34 million names, as “arguably the largest repository of 16-25-year-old youth data in the country.” The JAMRS database is in turn run by Equifax, the credit reporting giant.

Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says the Pentagon’s initial failure to disclose the collection of the information likely violated the Privacy Act. In 2007, the Pentagon settled a lawsuit (filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union) by agreeing to stop collecting the names and Social Security numbers of anyone younger than 17 and promising not to share its database records with other government agencies. Students may opt out of having their JAMRS database information sent to recruiters, but only 8,700 have invoked this obscure safeguard.

The Pentagon also spends about $600,000 a year on commercial data brokers, notably the Student Marketing Group and the American Student List, which boasts that it has records for 8 million high school students. Both companies have been accused of using deceptive practices to gather information: In 2002, New York’s attorney general sued SMG for telling high schools it was surveying students for scholarship and financial aid opportunities yet selling the info to telemarketers; the Federal Trade Commission charged ASL with similar tactics. Both companies eventually settled.

The Pentagon is also gathering data from unsuspecting Web surfers.

Read the rest at this link.