There has been a broad and comprehensive media blockade on any news related to five Cubans unjustly charged and convicted in Miami in 1998, who have been held since then in US prisons for... ,essentially, fighting illegal and nefarious acts within the Miami Cuban community against Cuba.

There was a time when the chance to denounce tryanny was considered a virtuous and noble calling.

Fellow-blogger Christopher Emdin has raised some interesting and compelling issues in relation to Obama and education. The comments have generated additional layers onto which the platform of a decent (and just) society can be properly situated.

Paradigm-shift: beaver tail replaces boots but still no cigar...

Why bother writing about the first hundred days of Obama or a new presidency, for that matter? What is one hundred days in a four-year presidency, half of which is traditionally preoccupied with getting re-elected (polling, fundraising, partisan appearances, aligning everything with the “party”, not the country, people and best interests of whatever). One hundred days is less than one semester of university education, less than a hockey/baseball/football/basketball season, less than a whole lot of stuff. Three months and a couple of days is really not that long at all, especially when one considers the years, decades and even centuries of conflict, well, we’re no longer sure what we’re fighting for, over yonder.

Greetings,

There has been such an outpouring of love for Joe on this website and elsewhere, and the diverse, sporadic messages all mesh together, for me anyway. They resonate. They speak to the decency and humanity that Joe represented.

My partner Gina and I have been reading Joe's most recent book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy (published by Springer, 2008). We have been reading sections here and there, relating what we know and learn back and forth, and looping it back to Joe. I would like to share one small paragraph in the book that I think appropriately and effectively sums up (some of) Joe`s thinking. 

... and they call it democracy...

Bruce Cockborn had it right when he whimsically, and perhaps sarcastically, stated “and they call democracy”. Of course, he was referring to the unrepentant pillaging of the Reagan administration, who, in passing, is held up as the epitome of US pride, patriotism, and success at the presidential level (that is another subject but it is an astounding one), against innocent men, women and children in Central America. But the metaphor is a good one. Doing injustice to another in the name of democracy seems, to say the least, a little perverse.

Obama won!! Of course, the whole world knows this, celebrated this, prayed for this, and is now recoiled in anticipation for great things to happen. Why shouldn’t the world expect great things from the “greatest” country?

Greetings,

A few quick thoughts about the unending soi-disant political campaign state-side.

First, if you have the time, please listen to the March 14, 2008, interview that Amy Goodman of Democracynow.org did with Gore Vidal: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/14/legendary_author_gore_vidal_on_the

Vidal provides such a delightfully critical, frank and insightful analysis about why and how the US has plummeted in the global market-place. His thoughts are a nice compendium to what Chomsky has been saying for decades. 

About the election:

Back state-side after a week in Vancouver at the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Congress, which was a very enjoyable gathering of roughly 8,000 folks. The education part of the conference contained a number of excellent sessions, including one dealing with empire, in which Joe and Shirley provided some insightful analysis along with the other participants. Joe’s metaphor of the “zombies of positivism” is still swishing around the frontal-lobal-neuronic cavern generally reserved for sur(reality) shows. I almost feel for the poor zombies when I think of how we need numbers to justify not problematizing social justice and democracy in education because… so they say, it just can’t be measured (do we really want to measure the need for human rights?).

Yes we can but what about the system?

The US electoral campaign is now in full swing, or, rather, has been hitting a fever-pitch for about the last 18 months. It will surely culminate at some point. And then it will re-start with those who lost trying to get a foot-hold on new investors in their campaign. It almost seems anti-climatic to select someone—a simple individual—after such a prolonged infomercial.

March 25, 2008