Tuesday, November 30, 2010

PARTING SHOTS by P.B.Lecron

Kicky picks from my photo library
Unless you're a grumpy person, it's sort of fun to happen onto one of the top first-generation Parisian street artist's paintings. Would you recognize works by any of these names : Jef Aérosol, Miss.Tic, Jérome Mesnager, Speedy Graphito, Mosco et Associés, and Nemo?  

Click on photos to enlarge them.
















See preceding four posts to learn more about these artists and Parisian street art.
Text & photos © 2010 P.B.Lecron

Saunders and Peterson Win DC Election

YIPPPEEEEE! Our pals in DC won the union election. The AFT is getting to be interesting with Karen Lewis and Nathan Saunders. Too bad our pals in Puerto Rico pulled their 40,000 teachers out of the AFT in 2003. We might have seen some interesting action in Detroit at the next AFT convention in 2012.

Miami teacher Paul Moore posted the news with this:

Getting Rid Of D.C.'s WTU Quisling For Rhee

And Quislings they are. Weingarten and Mulgrew and the entire Unity AFT/UFT crew.
 
When reported on the NYCEdNewsListserve Leonie Haimson wrote:
With Rhee, Fenty and now Parker gone, it is a new day in DC.
 Daley going too in Chicago, as well as their schools CEO, Huberman.
 Klein leaving, but not Bloomberg unfortunately….NYC is the unluckiest of the three.

I responded with:
Another union victory for the anti-Weingarten forces in the AFT.

NYC is unluckiest of the 3 because we still have Unity Caucus running the UFT.

See video I did of Nathan Saunders and Candi Peterson at the AFT convention in Seattle this summer.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=EdNotesOnline#p/u/5/v4wo0viVzT0

Both Nathan and Candi were out in LA in the summer of 2009 when a bunch of Real Reformers (union too) met with the LA teachers union and a group from CORE in Chicago when their hope of winning the union election was slim.

The UFT/AFT ineptness (or collaboration) is creating a more militant movement within the teachers union nationwide. Detroit may be next.
There is a lot of back story here and Ed Notes has been on top of the DC story. Just look in the archives around April and May to see how Randi used a ruse to cancel the elections which were due to take place before the vote on the contract she negotiated with Rhee because she feared a Saunders win would jeopardize the vote.

Now of course the vote totals were very low and a lot of hay will be made of that but if Nathan and Candi put together a democratic union we will see these numbers go up.

WAPO reporter Bill Turque has been on top of the story in DC in a fair manner. This comment from his article is worth noting: 
With his defeat by a margin of 556 to 480, Parker joins Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) as the third major figure to effectively be forced from office by political fallout from the 2007-2010 school-reform movement.
Here is Candi's first report. (click on the link to read Bill Turque's full story).

Finally!

Candi Peterson, blogger in residence and WTU General Vice President (effective December 1, 2010)

The Saunders slate won in the Washington Teachers' Union run-off election Tuesday evening at the AFT headquarters. This is the second win for the Saunders slate. We were the highest vote getter in round one of the WTU election on October 27. Given that WTU's Constitution required slates receive a 51% margin to win, a run-off election was held between the top two slates; the Saunders and Parker slate.

As I have often written about, this election has been a long protracted battle after another. To jog your memory, former" holdover" union president George Parker refused to step down and turn over union documents to the WTU Elections Committee. As a result, WTU elections were not held in May as required by our union's constitution. Long story short, AFT intervened as the WTU administrator and conducted our union elections. Fast forward to Tuesday evening and the Saunders slate can claim a victory with Nathan Saunders as the next WTU President, Candi Peterson, as the next WTU General Vice President and a host of committed and hard working Executive Board and Board of Trustee members.

Tonight we are humbled by all of the support and look forward to building a participatory union democracy committed within the next 30 days to publishing a membership and delegate assembly meetings for SY 2010-11; approving a WTU strategic plan to address IMPACT evaluations, job security and legal issues; meeting with AFT President Randi Weingarten; meeting with DC Mayor-Elect Vincent Gray to discuss IMPACT teacher evaluations and other educational issues affecting teachers, parents and students; meeting with City Council Chairman-Elect Kwame Brown to discuss IMPACT teacher evaluations and other educational issues, meeting with the 266 wrongfully terminated teachers to discuss an immediate change in their legal strategy; meeting with retired teachers and others who have been affected by the loss of retroactive pay and benefits under the new contract, hire personnel experts and human resource consultants to assist with a teacher evaluation tool, review all outstanding grievances and arbitrations, and revamp WTU's image and legal strategy to be proactive, progressive and productive.

Our slate looks forward to taking the helm and becoming the education-union leaders that DC teachers and school personnel deserve.

I hope you will check out Bill Turque, Washington Post writer's coverage on "Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker loses run-off election" (click on title link for story).

....Deny Waiver coalition announces Thursday as day of outrage

Cathie Black meets a real life public school parent and gets an earful....

John Dewey HS Fight Back Friday - Dec. 3, 3PM

This Friday, December 3rd, our rally will begin at 3 pm and run for about an hour. We have invited Sheepshead Bay HS faculty and staff to participate as well.

Teachers from any school are invited to participate. Check out the Fight Back Fridays blog site.
 
Wear RED this Thursday to Show Your Outrage Over the Cathleen Black Waiver!
Wear RED this Thursday to Show Your Outrage Over the Cathleen Black Waiver!
Join Parents, Educators, and Public Officials to Denounce the Waiver Granted to Black. Rally @ TWEED (52 Chambers) Beginning @ 4 PM.
 
No Waiver for Cathie Black Press Conference- More of what the media did not want you to see!

Educators go and apply for Cathie Black's old job

Cathie Goes to School

November 30, 2010 (GBN News): NY City Chancellor-designate Cathie Black experienced her first ever visit to a public school today. Breaking a weeks-long silence, she pronounced the visit to PS109 in the Bronx “exciting” as she entered the building. “I’ve passed by public schools so often,” she told reporters. “I can’t believe I’m actually going inside one.”

Upon emerging from the school ten minutes later, Ms. Black immediately demonstrated the acute business acumen for which Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed her. “What an inefficient use of space!” she exclaimed. “Why, you can squeeze a awful lot more kids in there and make teaching them much more cost effective.”

The Chancellor-to-be belied her detractors’ concerns that she would be insensitive to the needs of parents. “The parents I met all told me they want smaller class size,” she said. “Well, I saw a lot of places in there that are much smaller than the classes they’re using; closets, boiler rooms, even bathrooms. I guess it takes a business person to figure out that we can give their parents what they want by putting the kids in those rooms, while saving the big classrooms for Eva, like Mike said for me to do to.”

Ms. Black even garnered some teaching experience during her short visit. After she successfully read “My Pet Goat” to a first grade class, Mayor Bloomberg declared that her newfound classroom experience now “totally qualifies” her for the Chancellorship, even without the waiver granted earlier by the State Education Commissioner.

A tale of two cities; Cathie Black, are you ready for some real live public school parents?

"I feel fantastic," said Black in the Upper East Side. "I just went to a couple of parties and people said, "How wonderful. Thank you for doing this for the city.' And I feel great."


Wonder how many of these partygoers in her social set send their own kids to NYC public schools?

Meanwhile, public school parents throughout the city continue to be outraged. See today's Times blog, where parent Nicole Bush asks her about privatization and overcrowding at this morning's photo op in the Bronx. Of course, Black has no response. This is what's called learning on the job.


Another DOE Scam - TAPCO - Theatre Arts Production Co. School Revealed

UPDATE: Jan. 15, 2010 - CONTACT LEONIE HAIMSON - THIS IS REALLY HER.
leonie haimson said...
Instead of all these anonymous comments, please email me at leonie@att.net; and I promise I will keep your name confidential.


This comment has been passed around from the http://jd2718.wordpress.com/ blog:
New comment on your post "Do Not Apply"
Author : Bronx Teacher

I find it interesting that TAPCo was discussed on this forum.  Somehow, the Theatre Arts Production Co. School was rated the number 1 school in the NYC-DOE report cards this past month.  When the principal announced it, students fell over laughing.  The reality is that Principal Passarella knows how to cook the books and play the system.  I'm sure she's not the only one doing it, she's just the best at it.  The report card grades various stages of academic progress ... such as the number of credits each grade student has obtained.

This is interesting because TAPCo has an almost 100% graduation rate ... funny, cause students who dropped out even graduated.  Let's see how this works:

- teachers are not allowed to fail students.  No F's or 55's on report cards.  Any 55 is changed to an NC (No Credit).    Teachers are to give students EVERY opportunity to remove the NC ... such as copying work from friends, cheating, lying, etc.
- teachers who do not comply and continue to fail students are terminated and removed from the school ... even if it's mid semester.  Administration will just change the failing grades to passing ones.
- therefore, TAPCO does not have any failing students and thus, every student is on track for graduation.
- students are also given bogus credits for classes they never took ... such as Phys Ed and Foreign Language.
- most TAPCo students "earn" up to 14-16 credits a year, far above the 11 required for graduation.  They are given full credit for taking an Arts class once a week, a Theatre class once a week, Phys Ed classes which don't exist, Foreign Language class once a week with a "phantom" teacher who is out on disability.
- Regents passing grades are a joke as well ... especially in ELA and US/World History.  The rubrics are vague, and the grading teachers give out 4's and 5's like candy.  A cursory review of the essays indicate that most of these students can barely string together a legitimate sentence.  Meanwhile, teachers are giving them 5's.
- the latest insult to teachers is the development of the Inquiry Team ... or more-so, the Inquisition Team.  This is a group of the principal's favorites who use their position on the team to intimidate other teachers.  They are led by an angry, bitter little woman named Mrs. Acosta.  Acosta does not teach any classes, but goes around criticizing people's classrooms.  Her fake smile is very transparent.  She has used her "power" against teachers who have spoken up against her or disagree with her.  Her role is to report back to the principal any dissension among the teachers.
- it's interesting how the number 1 school in the City has a teacher turnover rate of about 45%.  Don't be surprised if that number is exceeded next year.  But it's ok ... Principal Passarella knows there are plenty of teachers out there who will do anything and everything for a job.

Steve Koss on the NYCEdNews listserve commented:


I just this evening picked up this story while browsing Norm Scott's Education Notes blog site (www.ednotesonline.blogspot.com); seems he picked it up from another blog called JD2718 (http://jd2718.wordpress.com ). It's not surprising, but it’s still truly a must read story for its explicit and detailed confirmation of what we all know is happening.
My challenge to Cathie Black: THIS above is, by the "management system" you are inheriting from Joel Klein, the number-one-scoring (by inference, the best-achieving) high school in NYC. Although no one at Tweed will ever admit it, we all know that this sort of "playing the system" is rampant across the entire city system, and the report card system is worse than a joke, since some parents may actually believe it is legitimate.  Given your extensive management skills and experience and your superstar reputation, not to mention your newly acquired, in-depth knowledge of schools and public education, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS SCHOOL AND HOW ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS CREATED BY YOUR PREDECESSOR'S FATALLY FLAWED "MANAGEMENT SYSTEM"? 

How many Jewish partisans were there?

What is a Jewish partisan and how many were there?

A partisan is a member of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy, especially within occupied territory; a guerrilla.


Approximately 20,000 to 30,000 Jews, many of whom were teenagers, managed to escape to form or join organized resistance groups. They are known as the Jewish partisans, who, along with hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish partisans, fought against their common enemy across much of Europe.


Faye with her Camera
Photographer: Moishe Lazebnik, Toronto, Canada, 1999

“I want people to know that there was resistance. Jewish people didn’t go like sheep to the slaughter. If they had the slightest opportunity to fight back, they did and took revenge. Many lost their lives heroically.


“I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”


See Faye Schulman's photos in the exhibit "Pictures of Resistance" coming to Hillel in January. For information on the exhibit and programming, click here.

Join us on Thursday to protest the waiver!

Yesterday, Commissioner Steiner approved a waiver for Cathie Black, a magazine executive, to become our next Chancellor, despite a total lack of educational qualifications.

For more on the approval, including the fact that the mayor has consistently overstepped the law when it comes to our schools, see today’s Times. What can we do?

  • Join with parents across the city in the Deny Waiver Coalition on the steps of Tweed this Thursday, December 2, at 4 PM, and wear red to show your outrage. Here's a flyer. Post this event on your Facebook page and invite your friends and colleagues.

We’ve had eight long years with our schools run by a non-educator. Class sizes have risen sharply, our children have lost art, music and science, test prep has replaced learning, and the results? Black and Hispanic students have fallen even further behind their peers in other large cities, and we are the only city in the country where non-poor students actually score worse on the national tests than in 2003.

It’s time to start fighting back. Join on Thursday, and spread the word! Above is a flyer you can post and hand out at your schools.

MISTER SGO 2010

While we are featuring pageant odds n' ends across the world, we thought we would include the recently-held Mister SGO 2010 contest. We aren't talking Santigo, Chile, but Santiago del Estero, a province in northern Argentina. Rodrigo Vega won the title this past weekend. Hernán Rubín and Antonio Kuapil were the first and second runners-up.

HUNGARIAN GOULASH-PART TWO

In addition to election of Miss Hungary 2010, Budapest recently saw the election of Miss Plastic Hunary 2010. Alexandra Kocsis won this title on November 26, 2010. The pageant is open to entrants who have had some type of aesthetic surgery. All this talk of goulash has inspired Madge, the Beauty School Cafeteria Lady, to serve the dish up tomorrow! (Photo: Reuters)

HUNGARIAN GOULASH - PART ONE

Miss Hungary 2010 was held last night in Budapest at the VAM Design Center. Dora Gregori won it all. First runner-up was Iveta Venczlik. Second runner-up was Zsófia Botos. While this is the oldest pageant in Hungary and once sent its winner to Miss World, it is not to be confused with the pageant that curently sends its winners to Miss Universe and Miss World. Beauty School scholars will note that Miss Universe Hungary 2008 and top 15 finisher Jazmin Dammak was Miss Hungary 1999.

MISS ASIA 2010

A group of Miss Asia contestants gather to pose for photographers at an ancient park in Hefei, east China's Anhui province on November 30, 2010. The Miss Asia pageant is an annual beauty pageant organized since 1985 by Asia Television (ATV), a TV station in Hong Kong, and will stage its pageant final on December 5, 2010. (Photo: Getty Images)

Rpp Bahasa Indonesia SMP Kelas 7



Rpp SMP Mata pelajaran Bahasa Indonesia untuk kelas 7 semester 1 dan 2 dapat anda download dengan link dibawah ini, silahkan download secara gratis, file downloadan berada di sever ziddu, untuk mendapatkan kecepatan download terbaik silahkan daftar di account ziddu. Daftar dengan klik Banner Ziddu di sidebar blog ini.


Berikut ini RPP Bahasa Indonesia SMP Program Studi IPS kelas 7 lengkap yang bisa di Download.




Berdasarkan Pertemuan :




RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 1 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 2 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 3 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 4 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 5 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 6 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 7 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 8 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 9 [Download] .Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Pertemaun 10 [Download] .Doc


-----------------------------------------------------------------


Berdasarkan Semester Type a :



RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 1 [Download].Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 2 [Download].Doc

Link Alternatif Rpp Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Berdasarkan Kompetensi Dasar [Download]


=========================================



Berdasarkan Semester Type b (update) : 




RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 1 [Download].Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 2 [Download].Doc

---------------------------------------------------------------



Berdasarkan Semester Type c (SMP Muhammadiyah) : 




RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 1 [Download].Doc

RPP Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 2 [Download].Doc

---------------------------------------------------------------





Demi kelengkapan perangkat pembelajaran, maka saya tambahkan silabus mata pelajaran bahasa indonesia kelas 7 SMP sebagai berikut :





Silabus Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 1 [Download].Doc

Silabus Bahasa Indonesia Kelas 7 Semester 2 [Download].Doc


---------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to Sulistya Eviningrum SH atas RPP dan silabus Bi untuk semester 1 dan 2 Type b Update.







Nudged or Nannied?

The BBC cover the continuing debate on behavioural interventions in the UK

SORTING OUT STREET ART by P.B.Lecron


"To create is to resist."


How to sort out "art" from "vandalism" in the streets? Parisian street artists have reconciled themselves to a system of notifying officials and receiving authorization--to guard against legal proceedings and to avoid removal of their works. 


Since 2001 the artists' association Lézarts de la Bièvre opens up 70 studios to the public each June and invites a street artist to paint on selected walls along the studio circuit in the fifth and 13th arrondissements

Miss.Tic inaugurated the tradition and was followed the year after by Jérôme Mesnager, father of the Corps Blanc. Nemo, creator of a whimsical black stenciled shadow man in coat and hat, came next, then the two artists known as Mosko et Associés added their signature African savannah creatures.


In 2005 came Speedy Graphito, another first-generation street artist. His early works of angular lines and robot figures are reminiscent of the late Keith Haring's rollicking geometric shapes.



Each artist's work is added to the preceding one, forming visual dialogues, as in the mural below from 2006, featuring three figures of one of the most popular stencil artists, Jef Aérosol.



Because of their ephemeral nature, some of these works are still visible, others not, so that their photos today are archival. 


For more information, history and super visuals including videos and maps of five different walking circuits, see http://www.lezarts-bievre.com/ 

This post is the fourth in a series of excerpts, with minor revisions, taken from Inside Outsider Art, an article I wrote which appeared in France Today magazine.


Text & photos ©2010 P.B.Lecron

Monday, November 29, 2010

Press Conferences Today and Thursday: Wear Red to School on Thursday to Protest Cathie Black

Updated, Nov. 30, 3:00pm

Check out the incredible testimonies given by parents and teachers at the No Waiver for Cathie Black Press Conference on Sunday, Nov 28 on the steps of Tweed. Lots of media coverage but they didn't share with the public most of what was said at the event.       

 Waiver for Cathie Black Press Conference- More of what the media did not want you to see!


Join parents and educators as they challenge Steiner's approval of Cathleen Black as NYC Schools Chancellor:

Tuesday:

Who:  Deny Waiver Coalition
What: Parents speak out against and announce challenge to Steiner's waiver decision
Where: Steps of Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers St.
When: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 4 PM

Thursday: 

Who:  Parents, students and teachers, WEAR RED on Thursday in protest and join us at our rally to demand an chancellor who:
1. HAS EDUCATION EXPERIENCE
2. BELIEVES IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

When: Thursday, December 2, 4:00PM

Where:   Tweed, DOE Headquarters
  Trains – 4,5,6,N,R,J to City Hall
       2,3 to Park Place
       A,C,E to Chambers Street

FOR MORE INFO:
GO TO WWW.DENYWAIVER.COM
Email:  info@denywaiver.com
Call: Chris Owens, 718-514-4874
 Noah Gotbaum, 917-658-3213
            Mona Davids, 917-340-8987



As widely reported, yesterday Commissioner Steiner approved a waiver for Cathie Black, a magazine executive, to become our next Chancellor, despite a total lack of educational background or qualifications.

For more on this appointment, see our blog at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com.  For more on the approval, including the fact that the mayor has consistently overstepped the law when it comes to our schools, see today’s Times.  What can we do?

1-      Join the new Deny Waiver Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Deny-Waiver-Coalition/117396824992566 to keep up with the latest news and updates.

2-      Join with parents across the city in the Deny Waiver Coalition on the steps of Tweed this Thursday, December 2, at 4 PM, and wear red to show your outrage.  Post this event on your Facebook page and invite your friends and colleagues.

We’ve had eight long years with our schools run by a non-educator.  Class sizes have risen sharply, our children have lost art, music and science, test prep has replaced learning, and the results? 

Black and Hispanic students have fallen even further behind their peers in other large cities, and we are the only city in the country where non-poor students actually score worse on the national tests than in 2003.

It’s time to start fighting back. Join on Thursday, and spread the word!

Thanks,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters


Rise Up Red, New York!
Thurs, Dec
2

ON THE STEPS OF TWEED COURTHOUSE, 4PM

"Red Thursday" Rally to Protest Cathie Black Appointment

You've signed the online petition, now make your voice heard as we gather to send a message to Mayor Bloomberg and NY State Education Commissioner David Steiner:

"We want a qualified Chancellor! We don't want special deals and exemptions from the law for the Mayor's friends!"

RSVP on Facebook (you don't need an account) ~> Facebook Event Page

Come wearing red, and don't forget to join our Facebook and Twitter causes and share the event with fellow supporters!

Education cuts, the National Plan and class sizes

Because of the dire fiscal situation, it seems some cut-backs to educational spending would be inevitable. The National Plan is pretty vague on education (amongst other things). Discussing the plan in the Irish Times Colm McCarthy remarked “The plan reflects successful lobbying to exempt the education budget from severe cuts. This is being justified in terms of the importance of holding with existing targets for pupil-teacher ratios, notwithstanding the dearth of evidence that reducing these ratios weakens educational outcomes in any measurable way.”

Is this really true? Well no. Few parameters in the economics of education have been so well studied as the effect of class size on educational outcomes. There are dozens and dozens of studies. So what’s the answer then? Well this is where it gets complicated. Firstly, we have no good evidence for Ireland that I am aware of. If this is what Colm McCarthy means then he is correct but then we don’t have any evidence on lots of things for Ireland and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. What does the international evidence say then? The first complication is that one should not expect one answer. Primary schools are different from secondary schools, a class of 40 is different from one of 20 and Korea is not Bangladesh so variation in measured effects is to be expected. A further problem, which non academics may not care about but is important, is that methods for estimating these effects vary widely and this partly explains some of the variation.

The most well studied country is the US. The STAR experiment in Tennessee is generally considered a well designed study and points to significant benefits from smaller classes but in that case the reductions were big (around 9 pupils on average). A “natural experiment” in Connecticut came up with a “precisely estimated zero” effect (Hoxby). The famous Maimonides Rule study for Israel (Angrist & Lavy) found positive effects of smaller classes but similar work for the Netherlands found the opposite (papers by Levin, Dobbelstein et al). A cross country study using TIMSS data (Woessman & West) found a mixed bag of results. Some reviews of the evidence point to negligible effects over all (see the work by Eric Hanushek) while other meta-analyses point to clear benefits from reducing classes. So rather than a dearth of evidence there is too much of it or at least there is not enough consensus and you can pick a study to suit your prejudice (or “prior” to give it its scientific name).

What’s striking about this literature is its near obsession with one variable, class size. Other measures of quality are almost entirely ignored. Ask yourself or someone else was their school good and they will quickly you reasons why it was or wasn’t. Class size tends not to be prominent a reason in my experience. This isn’t scientific but it does remind us that lots of things, some hard to measure, go into making a good school. One factor that everyone mentions is their teachers. Curiously, measuring the quality of teachers and the effect it has on outcomes does not feature much in the policy debates.

In the absence of clear evidence it probably makes sense that any damage from increased class effects is minimized by favouring more socially disadvantaged schools and those schools with the biggest class sizes.

Cluster Fox Gets Simpsonized

Amen!

Federal Employees To Learn A Basic Truth

President Obama has indicated that Federal Employees will now have a two-year wage freeze.Apparently, the freeze also includes the traditional "automatic" cost-of-living increase that was to have been 1.4% this year. (As always, this freeze won't include the U.S. Congress, they'll get their COLA.)Teachers in our school district never get a "cost of living" increase.Welcome to our world, federal

Questions on Genocide

A college student writing a paper on genocide and governmental policies for prevention and response emailed us with a few questions.

We turned to Marie Berry, a PhD candidate in Sociology with a focus on genocide in UCLA's prestigious program. Marie, a graduate of the University of Washington, spent several years working at the Holocaust Center.


Do you think any changes should be made to the UN structure to try and help responses to genocides?

Most debates about the UN’s treatment genocide are concerned with altering the definition of genocide, rather than changing the mandated responses to genocide. In general, this is because the UN’s responses to genocide have yet to successfully materialize. Thus, scholars and policy makers debate the definition in an attempt to pressure the signatories of the convention to refine the definition and thus make it more feasible for action to stop genocides that are underway.

The process of drafting the 1948 Genocide Convention was extremely political; in particular, the involvement of the Soviet Union complicated the process, given that they (and affiliated countries like Belarus) wouldn’t sign a document that criminalized something Stalin had been doing for years. What resulted was a definition that includes “national, ethnic, racial, or religious” groups, but excludes political or economic ones. And, as a result, the historical episodes of violence that are commonly accepted as genocides exclude mass murders in Ethiopia, and often Guatemala. The problem with this is that in most analyses of genocide, the real causes are obscured—instead, it is easier to explain away genocide in terms of ethnic, racial, or religious groups that “hate” each other. Of course, in every case of genocide in history, the “ethnic” or “racial” groups that end up being targeted for extermination have been integrated in the societies that they live in for centuries (or more). Jews in Europe, Tutsis in Rwanda, and Bosniaks in Bosnia weren’t simply targeted one day because of their ethno-religious identify, but rather because of a series of political power struggles that escalated and were ultimately framed as ethno-religious.

The UN’s definition of genocide, therefore, is problematic in several ways. First, it serves to reify the ethno/racial/religious aspects of a brewing conflict while obscuring the political and economic ones. In the case of Rwanda, this allowed the international media and foreign governments to dismiss the violence as “tribal” and neglect acknowledging the power struggle at play in Kigali that was in part facilitated by the international community’s attempts to negotiate a peace process between the current Hutu regime and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front invading from Uganda. Moreover, it obscured the significance of the colonial era, recent crop shortages and resulting famines, and intra-ethnic conflicts between a powerful family from the North and other powerful families from the South.

Second, the definition revolves around the idea of “intent”; a group must have the intent to destroy a group for mass violence to be considered genocide. This eliminates some of the most massive deaths in human history, such as Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” where it is difficult to argue that Mao intended to kill 20 million+ of his countrymen (but easy to argue that his policies had that effect). The very concept of “intent” is almost always subjectively determined; barring the leak of some sort of internal government memo explicitly stating the goal of eliminating a group within its population, intent is usually agreed upon after amassing mounds of evidence that point that direction. This is much easier in retrospect, after genocide is over, when the true intent of a perpetrating group is revealed. Intent is much more difficult to determine during the actual genocide itself—especially in cases like Rwanda, where the genocide happened rapidly over merely 100 days.

Last, the narrowness of this definition and the exclusion of political or economic (i.e. class) groups, is conducive to disagreement and debate over whether violence counts as a genocide or not. This leads, ultimately, to inaction, as we’ve seen in basically every case that ultimately resulted in genocide (with the possible exception of East Timor: See Geoffrey Robinson’s book If You Leave Us Here We Will Die, 2009). For the UN’s definition of genocide to be more effective at invoking action from the international community, I believe it needs to be centered on the degree of devastation being caused to civilians, rather than on the subject concept of intent and restrictive classifications like race and religion.


How much does politics complicate responses to genocide?

I think that politics complicates responses to genocide a lot, but self-interest complicates responses even more. Military interventions generally carry tremendous costs in terms of human lives and financial resources. If a given country has little strategic or economic relevance to an intervening state, the risks of intervening are high while the potential gains are low. Politics also factors in, particularly when strategic alliances are strained over an ally engaging in genocide. We’ve seen this most recently with US involvement in Darfur, where at the initial stages of the conflict the US was hesitant to shame Sudanese President Bashir publicly given his cooperation about eliminating al-Qaeda training cells in his country. The US-led 1995 Dayton Accords after the wars in the Balkans were also influenced by politics, and as a result we watched as the Serbian aggressors (and perpetrators of egregious crimes against humanity) were given control over 49% of Bosnian territory – a higher percentage than before the war. So we see that politics can not only influence decisions to intervene in genocides, but also the peace-process afterward.


What are some of the best tactics in stopping/preventing genocide? What is your feeling on military interference versus peaceful interventions?


The best tactics for stopping and preventing genocide are unique in each situation and at each stage in the conflict. In my opinion, however, the first and most important things to consider are the real roots of the conflict. Dismissing violence in Rwanda as merely tribal warfare between Hutus and Tutsis gives policy makers little leverage to negotiate a cessation of violence or to design a plan to physically intervene. Instead, understanding the historical processes that led to the evening of April 6, 1994, when the genocide began, are absolutely essential if we are going to be able to conceive of bringing the violence to a halt. Furthermore, understanding the “repertoires of violence” that people in a given region draw from based on historical experiences of violence can give us a better knowledge of where the violence might be heading and thus how we could potentially confront it. The brutal treatment of Serbs in Ustaša concentration campus in former Yugoslavia during WWII provided a historical memory that was adopted by Serbs several decades later against Bosniaks—had the “west” understood many of the historical roots of the types of violence being used in the war in the Balkans, intervention might have been more carefully designed and carried out. Once the history of a conflict is understood from all perspectives, the best tactics of intervention can be more successfully determined. And, in my opinion, sometimes peaceful interventions are the best option, while at other times the situation has gotten so out of control that the only possible options are military. In the case of Rwanda, for example, a military intervention really was the only option. However, I tend to believe in the cyclical nature of violence, and thus would only endorse an armed intervention as a very last resort.