friendsoflatinamerica

ASVAB testing in Howard County

The Howard County Public Schools have elected to have the results shared only with students and their families. The Department of Defense will not have access to the results of the ASVAB. The sample letter follows.

Dear Parent/Guardian:

On DATE at TIME, your child will have the opportunity to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) as part of the Career Research and Development course. Taking this test and interpreting individual results will enable all students, whether they plan to seek employment after high school, enter military service, or continue their education at a college or university, to make better decisions about course selection during their high school years and will enrich their understanding of the vocational options available to them.   The test, which was developed by the Department of Defense, incorporates relevant occupational information from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) including 400 diverse and current occupations for high school students to consider in their career choices.  Your child’s scores on the ASVAB serve as one of several pieces of information that will be used to explore a variety of career options during the Career Research and Development course.

The ASVAB takes approximately three hours to administer and will be completed in one session. When the results become available, a representative from the ASVAB program will assist the students in interpreting the results. The Howard County Public Schools have elected to have the results shared only with students and their families.  The Department of Defense will not have access to the results of the ASVAB.

As a parent, your knowledge of your child’s efforts and accomplishments makes you a valuable resource to your child.   We feel that the ASVAB results can assist you and your child in exploring educational and career options.  Please complete the permission form below and have your child return it to his or her Career Research and Development teacher.

Sincerely,

NAME
TEACHER                  
I give my permission for ___________ to take the ASVAB on  DATE at TIME.

Parent/Guardian Signature

Noam Chomsky Meets with Chavez in Venezuela

Merida, August 27th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) -- U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally

televised forum on Monday.

Chomsky is well known in Venezuela for his critiques of U.S. imperialism and support for the progressive political changes underway in Venezuela and other Latin American countries in recent years. President Chavez regularly references Chomsky in speeches and makes widely publicized recommendations of Chomsky's 2003 book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global

Dominance.

"Hegemony or survival; we opt for survival," said Chavez in a press conference to welcome Chomsky.  He compared Chomsky's thesis to that of German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in the early 1900s, "Socialism or Barbarism," and referred to Chomsky as "one of the greatest defenders of peace, one of the greatest pioneers of a better world."

Through an interpreter, Chomsky responded, "I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that's easy. What's harder is to create a better world... and what's so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."

During Monday's forum, which was broadcast on the state television station VTV, Chomsky pointed out that the ongoing coup in Honduras, which began on June 28th, is the third coup the United States has supported in Latin America so far this century, following the coup against Chavez in 2002 and Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

The nearly finalized deal to allow the U.S. to increase its military presence on Colombian bases "is only part of a much broader effort to restore Washington's capacity for intervention," said Chomsky.

According to Chomsky, the region has the capacity to unite and form a "peace zone" in which foreign

militaries are forbidden to operate. "Venezuela can help to advance this proposal, but it cannot do it

alone," he said.

"The transformations that Venezuela is making toward the creation of another socio-economic model could have a global impact if these projects are successfully carried out," said the renowned author.

Aporrea.org, a popular Venezuelan news and pro-revolution analysis website, described Chomsky as

oriented toward "libertarian socialism" and "vehemently anti-Stalinist" in an introduction to a recent

interview in which Chomsky said U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy will be similar to that of the second administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Chomsky addressed this issue during Monday's conference as well, commenting that Obama "could have much to offer Latin America if he wanted to, but hasn't given any signals that he does." He cited the U.S.'s indecisive posture toward the coup in Honduras as evidence.

Chomsky also addressed the media and freedom of expression in the U.S. "In the United States the

socio-economic system is designed so that the control over the media is in the hands of a minority who own large corporations... and the result is that the financial interests of those groups are always behind the so-called freedom of expression," he said.

Chomsky said the growing disappointment with the Obama administration in the U.S. was predictable because the corporate media marketed Obama's presidential candidacy on the slogan of "Change We Can Believe In" but omitted concrete proposals for effective changes, and the Obama administration has since shown an incapacity to institute such changes.

Chomsky was accompanied in Caracas by the co-founder of South End Press and ZMagazine and system operator of ZCom, Michael Albert, and the co-founder and editor of Venezuelanalysis.com, sociologist Gregory Wilpert.

FOR VIDEO FOOTAGE CHECK; 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPVfRdLez4I

Dear friends,

 I wanted to thank you for your work and support to make the 20th Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba a success. 

We had about 60 folks attend our delicious rice and beans dinner prepared by our own members! We raised close to $1,000 (including the $200 pledged from our Treasury). Nancy, thanks for the rice; Marina for the salad, Michael for the drinks, Francine for the desserts, Ray for getting the utensils and for agreeing to MC the program, Millie for the CD's of Cuban music. Thanks also to Bette Hoover for opening her home for a bunch of the Caravanistas. We sent them off late this morning, after feeding them some healthy and not so healthy food. It was great to be a part of this travel challenge.

 Let Cuba Live!!

 Leslie

Thanks for joining us to welcome the “caravanistas” on their way to Cuba.They will challenge the U.S. blockade by bringing humanitarian aid, solidarity, and friendship to our friends in Cuba .

The event was Co-sponsored by:Howard County Friends of Latin America (HoCoFoLA), the Baltimore-Matanzas Sister City Association and the Maryland-Cuba Sister City and The Maryland-Cuba Friendship Coalition.

In Ecuador, High Stakes in Case Against Chevron

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By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- Deep in the northern Ecuadoran rain forest, next to pits filled with noxious sludge, a lawyer on his very first case argued that a U.S. oil company had deliberately fouled a swath of jungle nearly the size of Delaware during two decades of production.

Wearing a straw hat for the recent outdoor hearing, Pablo Fajardo was delivering the final arguments in a lawsuit that began in New York in 1993 against Texaco but is wrapping up here against Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001. The stakes are high -- and so tinged with nationalism that Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has openly sided with the plaintiffs, 48 individuals representing tens of thousands of people in the region.

If the judge rules against Chevron, the company could face the largest damages award ever handed down in an environmental case, dwarfing the $3.9 billion awarded against ExxonMobil for the 1989 spill in Alaska.

A report by a court-appointed team last year concluded that pollution caused mainly by Texaco's Ecuadoran affiliate, Texaco Petroleum, had led to 1,401 cancer deaths in this stretch of Amazonian jungle. The team's leader, Ecuadoran geologist Richard Cabrera, reported finding high levels of toxins in soil and water samples near Texaco's production sites and assessed damages at up to $27.3 billion.

"This is a simple case," said Fajardo, 37, a former oil worker. "We ask, is there damage or not? If there is damage, who pays? And if there is payment, how much and to whom?"

The RNC Meets to Draft Their Platform: Sparks Fly on the Issue of Illegal Immigration

by Shushannah Walshe

Minneapolis-
All eyes may be on Denver this week, but the Republican National Committee began their meetings to draft an election platform today ahead of next week's convention. Sparks flew when delegates got into debate over illegal immigration, which reflected where John McCain originally stood on the issue, but has now taken a more conservative stance.

Delegates were split into different subcommittees and it was in the national security meeting where members got into heated discussion surrounding the issues of amnesty and English as the official language of the United States.

Two delegates wanted to harden the language surrounding the issue of amnesty. The draft read, "We oppose amnesty." But, delegates from North Carolina and Colorado wanted to include opposition to "comprehensive immigration reform" because they believe it is a code word for amnesty.

This sparked a heated discussion between members with a delegate from Washington DC who said that the Republican Party is a "not a xenophobic party, not an intolerant party. We are a compassionate party that follows the rule of law and endorses federal law," said Bud McFarlane.