Mayday Is the Real Labor Day! Here’s a Fine Poem Anyway:

Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We’ll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers’ Commonwealth.

-Joe Hill-

and don’t forget to strike on October Seven

Welcome Back to School! Is School Educational?

Little Red SchoolhouseABC News “Crisis in the Classroom” with Arne, Michell Rhee, and AFT’s Weingarten Sucking up: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

Let’s Leash Arne and Barack: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/29/2010-08-29_lets_unleash_all_data_on_teachers.html

Putting a Noose on the Core (Regimented/Nationalist) Curriculum–States Take Bribe to Push More Tests: The Department of Education on Thursday awarded $330 million to two groups of states to design new standardized tests to replace the end-of-year reading and math exams used over the past decade to measure achievement under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The new tests, which are to be aligned with the common academic standards that nearly 40 states have adopted in recent months, are to be ready for the 2014-15 school year, the department said. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/education/03testing.html?hpwIn Detroit, School Will Open but Where are the Teachers to Be? Hundreds of teachers without job assignments for the fall converged at a Detroit hotel Monday seeking a classroom spot before students return to school next week.Detroit Public Schools issued layoff notices to about 2,000 teachers earlier this year as it grapples with a $363 million budget deficit and declining enrollment. While some teachers had already been brought back, hundreds without assignments were asked to report to the Hotel St. Regis on Monday, the first day of school for teachers.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100831/SCHOOLS/8310344/1026/schools/Anxious-DPS-teachers-await-job-assignments

But Who Gets Laid off And How if, predictably, The Kids Don’t Show Up for the DPS Mess? The “Special Authority” provision of the contract allows the district to protect itself from incurring a deficit in the event student enrollment drops significantly, resulting in the district having more teachers than it needs to staff classrooms. (August 28 DFT post http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ )

More Corruption in Detroit Schools–a Principal, an Accountant, and a Cop: A former principal, former school accountant and a former police officer will face felony charges in connection with embezzling nearly $150,000 from the Detroit Public Schools, officials announced today. http://www.freep.com/article/20100831/NEWS01/100831020/1318/Officials-used-DPS-funds-for-mortgage-payments-home-goods-Worthy-says

Connecting the War/Education Lies: As schools began to open for the 2010-11 year, two lies that need to be connected were kept apart in the for-profit media. On August 30, 2010, ABC News “This week,” chaired by Christiane Amanpour offered the usual tripe about educational reform, virtually praising the White House Race to the Top (RaTT) project. Washington D.C.’s school tyrant, Michelle Rhee, joined Obama errand-boy Arne Duncan and the American Federation of Teacher’s boss Randi Weingarten in a celebration of reform under the guise that “We are all in this together for the children.”http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1644&section=Article

Perpetual War Front

Bill Blum Writing on the Heels of Obamagogue’s Lying Iraq-Exit Speech–Rivers of Blood!: no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured … the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up … an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html

Cindy on the Obamagogue’s Iraq Exit Speech: “Well, first of all, my family lost in a big way,” said Cindy Sheehan, who became perhaps the nation’s most prominent antiwar activist after her son died in Iraq. “We had one of our cherished members, Casey, murdered by the U.S. empire in Iraq.” In her view, “the only winners have been Halliburton, KBR, CACI, Xe, Unocal, BP, Standard Oil, Boeing” and other corporations that profited from the war. “People here in the U.S. who don’t know that they lost have lost big time,” she said. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/weekinreview/29baker.html?hpw

What We Have Here is a Failure to Protect the Proper Kinds of Corruption: U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan are developing a strategy that would tolerate some corruption in the country but target the most corrosive abuses by more tightly regulating U.S. contracting procedures, according to senior defense officials. American officials here have not spoken publicly about countenancing potentially corrupt local power brokers. Such a stance would run somewhat against the grain of a counterinsurgency doctrine that preaches the importance of building competent governance. But military officials have concluded that the Taliban insurgency is the most pressing threat to stability in Afghanistan and that a sweeping effort to drive Some military and civilian advisers to the U.S.-led command in Kabul have argued for a more comprehensive effort to root out graft and other official abuses, contending that government corruption and ineffectiveness have prompted many Afghans to support the insurgency. “You can’t separate the fight against corruption from the fight against the Taliban,” one of the advisers said. “They are intimately linked.”

But U.S. officials and defense analysts say challenging local power brokers and criminal syndicates, many of which depend on U.S. reconstruction contracts and ties to the Afghan government for support, would likely add to the unrest in Kandahar and produce a higher U.S. casualty rate. “Putting an end to these patronage networks would not come cheaply,” said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan.out corruption would create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit….

and don’t forget to Educate/Agitate/Occupy/Strike on October Seventh!

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Alfie on Assessments, Goals, and Big Tests: What is its basic conception of assessment? To get a sense of how well things are going and where help is needed, we ought to focus on the actual learning that students do over a period of time—ideally, deep learning that consists of more than practicing skills and memorizing facts. If you agree, then you’d be very skeptical about a program that relies on discrete, contrived, testlike assessments. You’d object to any procedure that seems mechanical, in which standardized protocols like rubrics supplant teachers’ professional judgments based on personal interaction with their students. And the only thing worse than “benchmark” tests (tests in between the tests) would be computerized monitoring tools, which the reading expert Richard Allington has succinctly characterized as “idiotic.”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/08/25/01kohn_ep.h30.html?tkn=WMVFLa0LfemilvpFh/WxiJkx+P2bTGNrKTAv&cmp=clp-edweek

The Bottomless Pit of Evidence vs High-Stakes Tests (does evidence matter?): Children perform best in exams when teachers are not overly concerned about their test results, according to research published today. Pupils show greater motivation, are better behaved and are more likely to be independent and strategic thinkers when teachers are not obsessed by grades, the study by the Institute of Education found. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/13/exam-test-results-teaching-style

Krashen on VAT: Value-added evaluations of teachers assume that higher test scores are always the result of teaching. Not so. Test scores are influenced by other factors.We can generate higher scores by teaching “test preparation” strategies for getting higher scores without students learning anything. We can generate higher scores by testing selectively, making sure that low scorers are not in school the day of the test. And of course we can generate higher scores by direct cheating, sharing information about specific test questions with students.Teachers who prepare students for higher scores on tests of specific procedures and facts are not teaching; they are simply drilling students with information that is often soon forgotten. Moreover, research shows that value-added evaluations are not stable year to year for individual teachers, and that different reading tests will give you different value-added scores for the same teacher. If The Times is serious about helping children, don’t bash teachers, address poverty. American children from high-income families do very well on international tests, but our children of poverty do much worse, (More at:)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miller-value-added-scores-20100822,0,6697165,full.story

The One-Sided Truth About Value Added Teaching: From the LATimes owner’s perspective, they tell the truth on behalf of important sections of the ruling class, and occasionally those sections fight it out both on the editorial pages and in the rest of the paper too. Within that context of what is really their truth, the value added research “works,” in that it sees school workers (who have always been workers and have been professionals almost only when bosses want educators to make sacrifices) as people whose minds must be stripped; their minds and creativity replaced with the minds of managers as in the common (bourgeoisie) core standards, in other regulated curricula, in high-stakes exams (production quotas), and who must be won to this alienation as a necessity for, on one hand, the chance to keep a job, and on the other hand, for the good of the nation’s kids (future workers and warriors)… http://www.susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=736

The Lines of Influence in Education Reform (check the link to the draft/chart): Another example is the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, where Bill Gates gave AFT $3.4M for “teacher quality initiatives”

and $217, 200 for AFT conference expenses. See: Did Bill Gates Buy His Podium at the AFT Convention? Sometimes a breakdown of the numbers provides a more clear picture of the power and influence of money. Then there is money “with stipulations” that the Gates Foundation provided to NPR. The purpose of that money is “to support coverage of education issues on NPR programs, including the Morning Edition and All Things Considered”. The amount provided was $750,000. I don’t feel comfortable with that on many levels.

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/the-lines-of-influence-in-education-reform/

UC Boss Lives Like Czar (Flees Lease): Mr. Yudof, 65, moved with his wife into a 10,000-square-foot, four-story house with 16 rooms, 8 bathrooms and panoramic views. He said he needed the house, which rented for $13,365 a month by the end of the lease and was paid for by U.C., to fulfill his obligation to host functions for staff members, donors and visiting dignitaries.

Mr. Yudof held 23 such functions over a two-year period, according to the university. He also ordered a list of improvements and repairs — including air conditioning and 12 phones — that drove up costs and, according to staff members, tied up university officials in meetings and lengthy negotiations on issues ranging from water bills to gopher eradication.

After the Yudofs vacated the property at the end of June, Brennan Mulligan, the landlord, informed university officials that he intended to keep the U.C.’s $32,100 security deposit. Mr. Mulligan requested an additional $45,000 to cover the repairs for hundreds of holes left from hanging art, a scratched marble bathtub, a broken $2,000 Sivoia window shade and other claims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/education/22bcyudof.html?adxnnl=1&ref=education&adxnnlx=1282521676-EMh/gb5VjrRcgJ56yFGlMQ

WSU’s Tragic Detroit Trajectory–Falls to 4th Tier, then This
: Wayne State University is failing its African-American students, graduating fewer than one in 10 while success for their white counterparts is four times higher, according to a report issued this month.

The graduation gap between white and black students at WSU is the worst in the nation among public universities, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100823/SCHOOLS/8230327/1026/schools/Black-white-graduation-gap-at-WSU-worst-in-U.S.

After Painting School Doors Blue (closing 40, laying off hundreds of teachers) Detroit PS sends 62 page Homework Packages to Students 2 Weeks Before School Opens but 2000 teachers and Dozens of Principals Have No Assignments: Detroit elementary and middle-school students don’t resume classes for two weeks, but they already have homework. Detroit Public Schools announced Monday it will mail 62-page packets of homework this week to 28,650 students in grades three through eight. The packets, which must be finished and turned in the first day of classes, focus on areas in which DPS students have tested poorly.
The initiative is the first time DPS students have been given homework before the start of school, said DPS spokeswoman Kisha Verdusco.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100824/SCHOOLS/8240364/1026/DPS-to-mail-kids-homework-packets-due-first-day-of-class

Detroit Foundations Release List of Worst Schools in Detroit (August 25):
The first-ever ranking of the city’s public, charter and private schools is being released today in an effort to help parents choose good schools and pressure failing schools to shut down…
listing of schools in the city is produced by Excellent Schools Detroit, a broad coalition that includes Detroit Public Schools, charter school leaders and several foundations. The list is divided in three categories — elementary, middle and high schools — and the schools are ranked based on test scores and other data averaged over a three-year period.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100825/SCHOOLS/8250398/Report-card-ranks-best-and-worst-Detroit-schools

What if There Was a Parade for Schools and Only Fools and Crooks Came? (Cosby pops up waiving his bogus doctorate): Waving from the final float were Mayor Dave Bing, activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, comedian and activist Bill Cosby, and Robert Bobb, the district’s emergency financial manager under whose watch the parade was launched last year…The crowd was fairly thin http://www.freep.com/article/20100826/NEWS01/100826057/1319/Bands-floats-cheers-set-stage-for-DPS-school-year

California–No School Funds for September: California will delay paying $2.9 billion of subsidies to schools and counties in September, a month earlier than projected, to save cash amid an impasse that has left the state without a budget for 54 days. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-23/california-defers-2-9-billion-for-schools-counties.html

RaTT Saps: The department chose nine states – Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island – and the District of Columbia for the grants (which means that teachers in the “winner states” will suffer, but so will education workers in the “sucker states” which entered the shell game, and lost–States that did not apply are: Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. Delaware and Tennessee, as Round 1 winners, were not eligible to apply). USE RATT MAP

Obamagogue’s Errand Boy, Duncan, Wants More Data For Merit Pay and Firings: U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will call for all states and school districts to make public whether their instructors are doing enough to raise students’ test scores and to share other school-level information with parents, according to a text of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ed-grants-20100825,0,1448546.story

SoCal Bans Literature With Help of Teachers and Profs: “The Old Man and the Sea,” “The House on Mango Street,” and “The Great Gatsby” are so last century when it comes to high school English classes in Chula Vista and National City. Once literature-based, English classes throughout the Sweetwater Union High School District — and elsewhere in California — have been revamped in an attempt to better prepare students for college and the real world.

That means reading lists once dominated by the classics now consist of newspaper editorials, historic documents, advertisements and some nonfiction. Assignments no longer dwell on the symbolism in a poem or focus on an entire novel. Instead, they emphasize expository, analytical and argumentative writing.

Developed by professors from the California State University system with help from high school teachers, the new “rhetorical approach” to English was designed to curb the growing number of high school graduates who need remedial instruction in college…the district saw a jump in scores on statewide English tests. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/aug/23/literary-classics-shelved-in-retooled-english/
Vita For Professor McClish http://rhetoric.sdsu.edu/docs/cv/mcclish_cv.pdf

Secrets of the Wag-the-Dog CSU Foundations Begin to Leak: California State University officials are concerned that they have erroneously mixed public and private funds in accounting for the foundations that support the system’s 23 campuses, according to a report the California Faculty Association is releasing today. http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/25/2980607/gfdhgjkdfhgjkdfhf.html

Perpetual War Front

COUNTERTERRORISM MAP NY TIMES AUGUST 14th
Stratfor on the Fake Withdrawal from Iraq: The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with three goals: The first was the destruction of the Iraqi army, the second was the destruction of the Baathist regime and the third was the replacement of that regime with a stable, pro-American government in Baghdad. The first two goals were achieved within weeks. Seven years later, however, Iraq still does not yet have a stable government, let alone a pro-American government. The lack of that government is what puts the current strategy in jeopardy…Given all that has been said about the success of the Petraeus strategy, it must be observed that while it broke the cycle of violence and carved out a fragile stability in Iraq, it has not achieved, nor can it alone achieve, the political solution that would end the war. Nor has it precluded a return of violence at some point. The Petraeus strategy has not solved the fundamental reality that has always been the shadow over Iraq: Iran. But that was beyond Petraeus’ task and, for now, beyond American capabilities. That is why the Iranians can afford to be so confident. “The U.S. Withdrawal and Limited Options in Iraq is republished with permission of STRATFOR. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100816_us_withdrawal_and_limited_options_iraq?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100817&utm_content=readmore

Oops. There Go Those Iraq Bombs Again: Insurgents unleashed a wave of coordinated attacks across Iraq on Wednesday in a demonstration of their ability to strike at will, offering their counterpoint to American aspirations of bringing the war in Iraq “to a responsible end”….It is remarkable the degree to which the Aug. 31 date has gone unnoticed among Iraqis; many believe the American military will never really leave, despite a deadline of 2011 for its departure. Indeed, a sense of repetition seems to color everything in a summer of discontent, where American assurances of positive “long-term trend lines” meet the disbelief of a population that seems as angry as at any time since the invasion. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?hp

While Obamagogue Vacates, He Restores the NeoCons to Sell War:

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-08-27/neocons-resurfacing-obama-administration.html#

2926 Vets Apply for Unemployment, Week of 8/14:

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm

106,558=Total Homeless USA Vets: http://www.nchv.org/page.cfm?id=81

There Goes the Economy

“For most of those which were once great are small today, and those which used to be small were great in my own time…Human prosperity never abides long in the same place.” Herodotus

Jump You Fuckers! In Song by Gene: http://maxkeiser.com/watch/rebel-rouser/jump-you-fuckers/

Petras on Fake Progressives and the Capitalist Crisis: What the current unequal and uneven impact of the capitalist system tells us is that capitalists can overcome crises only by heightening exploitation and rolling back decades of “social gains”. The current process of profit recovery, however, is highly precarious because it is based on exploiting current inventories, low interest rates and cutting labor costs (Financial Times August 10, 2010, p 7). It is not based on dynamic new private investments and increased productive capacity. In other words, these are “windfall gains” – not profits derived from increased sales revenues and expanding consumer markets. How could they be – if wages are declining and unemployment/underemployment/and lost labor is over 22%? Clearly, this short-term profit boom, based on political and social advantages and privileged power, is not sustainable. There are limits to the massive layoffs of public employees and production gains from the intensified exploitation of labor … something has to give. One thing is certain: The capitalist system will not fall or be replaced because of its internal rot or “contradictions”. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20Editorials/2010/August/19%20o/Crisis,%20What%20Crisis,%20Profits%20Soar%20By%20James%20Petras.htm

Egad! The D-Word is Back: The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D-Word (depression) is back in play. Foreclosures are up, and the Administration’s programs to stop them are down, well below their stated goals, only helping one-sixth of those promised assistance.
And here’s a statistic for you: 300,000. That’s the number of foreclosure filings every month for the past 17 months. This year, 1.9 million homes will be lost, down from 2 million last year. Is that progress? In July alone, 92, 858 homes were repossessed. http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/082310a.html

GM Writes on its Own Shaky Recovery: While GM has made a remarkable turn-around thus far, with hefty profits in the first two quarters of this year, the $64 billion question is whether it can succeed longer term. On that the jury is still out, and the challenges GM faces are spelled out clearly in the S1 filing. Some of the highlights (or lowlights) include the following, which I’ve selected from the S1 and have grouped under headings for this blog: http://blogs.birminghampost.net/business/2010/08/a-risky-business-laid-bare-gen.html

Housing Sales Collapse (again): Sales of existing houses plunged by a record 27 percent in July as the effects of a government tax credit waned, showing a lack of jobs threatens to undermine the U.S. economic recovery…The pace of existing home sales is the slowest since comparable records began in 1999. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-24/sales-of-u-s-existing-homes-drop-more-than-estimated-to-3-83-million-rate.html

Video Trailer: Plunder, the Crime of our Time:

Paramour Spends $400,000 on Vacation While The Obamagogue Guts Food Stamps–Teachers Gleeful to Take Bribe to Shut Up?: Just as Michelle Obama returned from her much-criticized luxury vacation to Spain, which cost the U.S. taxpayers an estimated $400,000, her husband cut $11.9 billion from the Food Stamp program, designed to help the poorest Americans. The cut, along with tax increases to businesses is supposed to pay for an aid package to several states, mostly to prevent the layoff of about 160,000 public school teachers and administrators. (Next stop Martha’s Vineyard).

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-virginia-beach/as-first-lady-returns-from-luxury-vacation-obama-cuts-food-stamps-to-nation-s-poor

Shedding Jobs and Health Insurance: Researchers issued yet another grim statistic Monday on the toll of the recession: 2 million additional Californians — 85,000 of them in the capital region — lost their health care coverage during the recent economic slide.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/24/99566/californias-uninsured-rate-hits.html

Emerging Fascism Front:

As A Mass, Multi-tentacled, Popular Movement:

S. Africa Returning to Apartheid Era Censorship? On Friday, the South African writers Nadine Gordimer, André Brink, Achmat Dangor, John Kani and Njabulo Ndebele added their voices to the protests. “This is the threat of a return to the censorship under apartheid,” said Ms. Gordimer, three of whose novels were banned in that era. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/africa/23safrica.html?ref=world

The Heavens Weep:

Indus River Flood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwgFVaP0mG0

Pakistan Drowning in Neglect: there is at least one other way of looking at the country revealed by this natural disaster. This is a place where peasants drown in rice fields they don’t own, where mud-and-brick villages are submerged to save slightly less expendable towns, and where dying villages stand next to airbases housing the most sophisticated fighter jets in the world. Such a country is owed more than just aid, it is owed nothing less than reparations from all those who preside over its soil. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/opinion/26sethi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=pakistan&st=Search&scp=2

Jama on the Obamagogue/BP Gulf Oil Gusher:
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses direct threats to human health from inhalation or dermal contact with the oil and dispersant chemicals, and indirect threats to seafood safety and mental health. Physicians should be familiar with health effects from oil spills to appropriately advise, diagnose, and treat patients who live and work along the Gulf Coast or wherever a major oil spill occurs.

The main components of crude oil are aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons.1 Lower-molecular-weight aromatics—such as benzene, toluene, and xylene—are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and evaporate within hours after the oil reaches the surface. Volatile organic compounds can cause respiratory irritation and central nervous system (CNS) depression. Benzene is known to cause leukemia in humans, and toluene is a recognized teratogen at high doses. Published online August 16, 2010. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.1254

Spy vs Spy:

Karzai Aide on CIA Payroll (another shocker!) The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/asia/26kabul.html?_r=1&hpw

Solidarity Forever:

Turncoat Duffy (with Rat Weingarten) Agrees To Reopener of “Value-Added” Education: The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said Saturday that he has accepted city school district officials’ proposal to reopen negotiations over teacher evaluations but stopped short of saying whether a method tying teacher reviews to their students’ test scores would be on the table.

Los Angeles Unified School District leaders on Friday requested that the union consider making the method, known as value-added analysis, count for part of teachers’ evaluations — a move that would transform how instructors are assessed in the nation’s second-largest school district.

United Teachers Los Angeles and its president, A.J. Duffy, have staunchly opposed the use of students’ standardized test scores in teacher evaluations. But they have come under pressure over the last several days from local leaders and the head of a major national teachers union to accept value-added analysis as one measure of teacher performance, according to sources familiar with the discussions…Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, met with Duffy last week and urged him to consider agreeing to using value-added analysis as one component of evaluations, according to people with knowledge of those meetings. In an interview last week, she said she believes parents have a right to know how well their child’s teacher rated, but she opposed making teachers’ scores available to the public.

Weingarten is more open to value-added analysis than other union leaders and said she has negotiated 54 contracts in districts where it counted for 10% to 30% of a teacher’s overall review. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teacher-response-20100822,0,4363402.story

Gangster SEIU and Sellout AFL-CIO to Waste $88 Million in Mid-Term Elections: The leaders of the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have agreed to coordinate spending millions of dollars in the midterm elections to support pro-union candidates, most of them Democrats. (Trumka and SEIU Kiss and Make Up? Watch out, NEA members)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704125604575449913707878130.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5

The two labor organizations say they have a combined $88 million or more to deploy in this year’s election cycle. It’s not clear how much of that money they will pool together.

We Say Fight Back!

Patrick Bond on Uprising in S. Africa: August 22, 2010 – The two major civil service unions on strike against the South African government have vowed to intensify pressure in coming days, in a struggle pitting more than a million members of the middle and lower ranks of society against a confident government leadership fresh from hosting the World Cup.

Along with many smaller public sector unions, educators from the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) and nurses from the National Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) continued picketing schools, clinics and hospitals, leading to widespread shutdowns starting on August 18. Skeleton teams of doctors and military personnel were compelled to send non-emergency cases home. http://links.org.au/node/1852

Press Attacks S. Africa Strike, but the Strike Holds: “If the government really cared about the matric students, they would have tried to meet our demands so that the children can be ready for the examinations at the end of the year,” said Nxumalo. http://allafrica.com/stories/201008260851.html

Magical Mystery Tour
KirbyJohn Caldwell Performs Bush Wedding Ceremony:

America Sighs With Relief–The Demagogue is a Christian–Just Like Bush! Pastors who’ve prayed with President Barack Obama defended his Christian faith Thursday as the White House downplayed new polling that showed a steep climb since he took office in the percentage of Americans who think he’s Muslim or at least don’t believe that he’s Christian.

“He is a Christian by choice, a devout Christian,” said Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. Caldwell is among a group of Christian leaders whom Obama regularly calls for inspiration. Caldwell also officiated at the wedding of President George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/19/99411/pastors-who-pray-with-obama-say.html

Kirbyjohn Caldwell Takes on the Pervo John McCain (probably an atheist): Well, I don’t know a lot about John McCain’s family history, I do know, however, that as recently as last week I think it was, the senator made a comment in South Dakota regarding his wife entering some Buffalo Chips contest which is this topless deal and if she were to enter she would probably win it and my personal opinion and based on my understanding of the Christian faith, that’s not, not, N-O-T, not the type of expression that a presidential candidate, or anyone for that matter who is a follower of the Christian faith, ought to make..

Worst Thing in the History of the World:

A Celebration for Guns, Babies, and Jesus: Catherina Wojtowicz, 41, is one of those who traveled to Washington to see Beck and Palin. She arrived in the capital yesterday wearing a T-shirt that carried Palin’s name and “Babies, Guns, Jesus.” The self-employed event organizer from Chicago’s Southwest Side said she wanted to celebrate the Constitution and see Beck in person. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-27/beck-palin-rally-in-washington-drawing-supporters-of-babies-guns-jesus-.html

Tubby White Boy Calls Out the Obamagogue as a Racist

Best Thing in the History of the World:

The Always Vile CPUSA, a Perpetual Fistula of Opportunism and Dishonesty, Unravels–A Dissident Voice from the Farcical Convention:
In the view of the Communist (that is, the Marxist-Leninist) wing of the CPUSA, however, the May 21-23, 2010 convention was a disaster. We see the Convention as a scandalous retreat from the US Party’s honorable history of principled struggle. The Convention was a retreat from socialism, class struggle, political independence, and internationalism. The Convention gave up ground on the fight against racism, imperialism, and monopoly.

http://mltoday.com/en/subject-areas/communist-forum/impressions-of-the-cpusa-convention-914-2.html

The Greeting from Greece to the CPUSA’s Rot: As long as the crisis of the international communist movement persists, as long as the situation does not improve and retreats from ideological and theoretical principles are not resolutely confronted, as long as the front against opportunist views that hinder the formation of a single revolutionary strategy against imperialism does not become strengthened, the situation will harbor the danger of an even greater backslide.

http://www.cpusa.org/international-greetings-communist-party-of-greece/

Glenn Beck Loves the CPUSA Which Loves The Obamagogue

Never Forget:

Shining Path Weds in Prison: The founder of Peru’s violent Shining Path guerrilla movement married his long-time partner and former second-in-command at a maximum security naval prison in Peru on Friday. Abimael Guzman, 75, married Elena Iparraguirre, 62, in a 15-minute civil ceremony

Shays Rebellion started on August 29, 1786

1941 Seige of Leningrad Begins August 29th (872 days resulting from Stalin’s Idiocy)

August 28, 1963, “I Have a Dream”

August 30 (‘43) R. Crumb’s Birthday! Keep on Truckin

So Long Ed Kean:

Thanks to Paul, Mary, Amber, Adam and Gina, Bob(s), Bill(s), the Susans, George, Sharon, Peter M, Tom H, Ricky C, Steve R, Barry, Jack G, Perry, Kate, Sharon, Marc and Bonnie, Celia, Kerry, Fredy, Chuck R, Nancy, and Carol H in Hawaii!

Good luck to us, every one.

r

(unfortunate victim of Hawaiian Sea Monster Attack)

Little Red Schoolhouse

Chicago Says No Concessions! Chicago Teachers Union delegates voted unanimously to reject the Board of Education’s demands that the teachers give up nearly $100 million — in salary adjustments and other concessions (such as furlough days) — at a special delegates meeting on Wednesday, August 11. More than 500 delegates and other union members filled the auditorium at the Local 399 Operating Engineers union hall for the two hour meeting. http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1588

Detroit Paints Itself Blue to Lure in Children: Dunson was among 40 volunteers who painted 25 doors the signature blue color of the district’s campaign and assembled lawn signs extolling the district. (beware, kiddies, of the school board president) http://www.detnews.com/article/20100814/SCHOOLS/8140377/1408/local/DPS-volunteers-paint-doors-blue-for–I-m-in–campaign

Detroit Fed of Teachers Opposes Charters/Starts Charter: For their students to be admitted, parents or guardians must sign a Parent Contract to ensure they support the concept of the program. “The teacher-led school presents a unique and unprecedented opportunity to DFT and DPS,” said Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. “This school will allow teachers to take ownership and direct responsibility for the educational destiny of the children.”
Emergency Financial Manager, Bobb, Leaves Detroit More Broke Than Ever: Although Bobb has worked hard to make cuts and get the district in proper order, the district’s deficit has grown to $363 million from $219 million at the end of last fiscal year.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100815/OPINION01/8150304/1008/Detroit-school-board-is-wasting-time

100 Teach For America’s Invade Detroit PS: Their arrival has sparked excitement among educators who embrace the enthusiasm corps members bring. But their presence has reignited concerns from the teachers union, which is upset certified teachers still have layoff notices. The union will challenge the hiring of Teach for America members over qualified teachers waiting to return to work… the applicants aren’t certified teachers. (They’ll study at University of Michigan to earn their certification.) Johnson said certified teachers aren’t automatically better and those without certification aren’t inherently inferior.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100820/SCHOOLS/8200387/1026/DPS-enlists-teacher-corps-in-classrooms

Michigan’s Really Really Totally Horrible Schools Under Gun: Sixty-five of the lowest performing schools are in Metro Detroit; 52 are in Wayne County, including 40 Detroit public schools. Seven are charters. Roseville Community Schools had two middle schools ranking as low achieving; Taylor’s Truman High School also landed on the list, as did public high schools in Highland Park, Pontiac, Inkster, Harper Woods, Oak Park and Mount Clemens.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100817/SCHOOLS/8170351/1026/Worst-performing-schools-put-on-notice

Berliner: Rich Schools Get Richer and Poor Schools Get Poorer (a shocker!): when poor children go to public schools that serve the poor, and wealthy children go to public schools that serve the wealthy, then the huge gaps in achievement that we see bring us closer to establishing an apartheid public school system. We create through our housing, school attendance, and school districting policies a system designed to encourage castes—a system promoting a greater likelihood of a privileged class and an under class.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/new-analysis-of-achievement-ga.html

UTLA’s Duffy Hung on His Own Petard on LATimes Value-Added Farce:  Duffy attacked the reliability of standardized tests in general, but then defended the performance of his members in part by pointing to the rising graduation rates and Academic Performance Index scores at many campuses. The API is a separate statistical measure for schools which, at the elementary and middle school level, is entirely based on standardized tests.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-react-20100816,0,857875,full.story

Haiti Hide Your Children! Here Comes Paul Vallas! An international development bank interested in helping Haiti rebuild its devastated schools has turned to Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas for advice. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/02/haiti_rebuilding_effort_draws.html

Obamagogue’s Boy Duncan Loves Those Test Scores (thanks, unionites, for all that campaign money, and thanks to Tom Hayden, Katha Pollit, and all the liberal saps who urged the Demagogue on others): U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Monday that parents have a right to know if their children’s teachers are effective, endorsing the public release of information about how well individual teachers fare at raising their students’ test scores.

“What’s there to hide?” Duncan said in an interview one day after The Times published an analysis of teacher effectiveness in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system. “In education, we’ve been scared to talk about success.”

Duncan’s comments mark the first time the Obama administration has expressed support for a public airing of information about teacher performance — a move that is sure to fan the already fierce debate over how to better evaluate teachers. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0817-teachers-react-20100817,0,3598751,full.story

Ohanian on the Common Core Curriculum (common to Gates and Freedom House): James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is recommended for “advanced” 8th graders. Here’s how it begins:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=830

An Oldie but Goodie (From Hell): Milton Friedman on the Role of Government in Education: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1173402/posts

Perpetual War Front:

Riz Khan Interviews John Pilger on Rebranding the Iraq War:

2011 for Afghanistan Exit? Not!
Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There’s construction everywhere. It’s exactly what you wouldn’t expect from a transient presence.

Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were –- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you’ve got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes … I didn’t see any of the C-130 cargo craft, but they’re here somewhere.

More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, (sic)….

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/u-s-afghan-mega-base/

Obamagogues Wider and Secret Wars: a glimpse of the Obama administration’s shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.

While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed…
The administration’s demands have accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations….as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html?hp

Chalmers Johnson

Chalmers Johnson on the End of the World, Sky Falling, etc.: My own role these past 20 years has been that of Cassandra, whom the gods gave the gift of foreseeing the future, but also cursed because no one believed her. I wish I could be more optimistic about what’s in store for the U.S. Instead, there isn’t a day that our own guns of August don’t continue to haunt me. (Johnson, rejecting Marx, sees imperialism as hubris and militarism, ie, a bad attitude, too well armed. Missing the relentless search for raw materials, cheap labor, markets, and regional control as vital to capital and its personifications, he then misses the other side–the real potential of mass, class conscious resistance and transformation–but read his new book anway).

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175286/tomgram:_chalmers_johnson,_portrait_of_a_sagging_empire__/

Category of Ain’t Gonna Happen: Karzai Kicks out Mercs–‘cept his own guards: President Hamid Karzai ordered a four-month phaseout of all private security companies in Afghanistan, domestic and foreign, a move that, if carried out, would create an extraordinary shift in the country’s security, likely slowing many foreign projects and potentially delaying some day-to-day military activities. The sole exception to the order allows private guards to continue to operate within compounds of embassies, consulates, nongovernmental organizations and economic organizations, like the World Bank…The American government alone employs about 26,000 private security contractors who work for 37 private security companies…“These people have no choice but to start robbing people or join the Taliban,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/world/asia/18afghan.html?ref=world

Tragedy for Afghanistan–Huge Oil Field Discovered: “A huge oil resource, which looks like a triangle, with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil, has been discovered by Afghan geologists in cooperation with international geologists between Balkh and Sheberghan provinces,” Jawad Omar, a spokesman for the ministry, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-15/afghanistan-discovers-1-8-billion-barrel-oilfield-in-north-ministry-says.html

Russia Today on US Farcical Exit From Iraq–Rebranding Occupation:

Tomgram: Wiki Leaks and Task Force 373: Task Force 373 team fired five rockets at a compound in Nangar Khel in Paktika province to the south of Khost, in an attempt to kill Abu Laith al-Libi, an alleged al-Qaeda member from Libya. When the U.S. forces made it to the village, they found that Task Force 373 had destroyed a madrassa (or Islamic school), killing six children and grievously wounding a seventh who, despite the efforts of a U.S. medical team, would soon die. (In late January 2008, al-Libi was reported killed by a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone strike in a village near Mir Ali in North Waziristan in Pakistan.)

Paktika Governor Akram Khapalwak met with the U.S. military the day after the raid. Unlike his counterparts in Khost and Nangarhar, Khapalwak agreed to support the “talking points” developed for Task Force 373 to explain the incident to the media. According to the Wikileaks incident report, the governor then “echoed the tragedy of children being killed, but stressed this could’ve been prevented had the people exposed the presence of insurgents in the area.”

However, no military talking points, no matter in whose mouth, could stop the civilian deaths as long as Task Force 373’s raids continued. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175287/tomgram:_pratap_chatterjee,_manhunters,_inc./

Tom Tomorrow Cartoon on the Sillies vs the Serious on War: http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/TomTomorrow8-18.png

There Goes the Economy:

Yikes! Here Comes The Great Bugout Moment. Fortify Your Home!

David Harvey (animation) on the Reasons for the Financial Collapse (any sensible person today would join an anti-capitalist organization):

http://davidharvey.org/2010/06/rsa-crises-of-capitalism-talk-animated/

Greider (again) on the AIG Bailout (national socialism at work) : the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.”

Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (as well as a dozens of European banks) from huge losses. Those financial institutions played the derivatives game with AIG, the esoteric practice of placing financial bets on future events. AIG lost its bets, which led to its collapse. But other gamblers—the counterparties in AIG’s derivative deals—were made whole on their bets, paid off 100 cents on the dollar. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill. “The AIG rescue demonstrated that Treasury and the Federal Reserve would commit taxpayers to pay any price and bear any burden to prevent the collapse of America’s largest financial institutions,” the COP report said. This could have been avoided, the report argues, if the Fed had listened to disinterested advisers with a less parochial understanding of the public interest. http://www.thenation.com/article/153929/aig-bailout-scandal

Joblessness Continues to Boom: New applications for unemployment insurance reached a half million last week, pointing to a job market that is struggling. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/business/economy/20econ.html?hp

Wolff: This is a Systematic Crisis of Capitalism: The unspoken ideological taboo in most public discussion of the economic crisis prohibits seeing or treating the problem as systemic, as a problem of capitalism as a system. Instead, our political, journalistic, and academic leaders mostly see only symptoms and “develop policies” only for those symptoms. Alarms about one symptom — and contested efforts to address it — soon shift to another symptom and “policy responses” for it. Often such policies for one symptom actually worsen another symptom. For example, when stock markets collapsed early in 2000 (symptom), the Federal Reserve drastically cut interest rates (policy response); that move facilitated the excess lending that collapsed the entire economy in 2007.

Today’s alarms focus on housing and huge government subsidies there. To see the systemic problems of the US housing industry, consider its basic economics. The “American dream” of owning one’s home was never affordable to the vast majority of US families because the wages or salaries paid by their employers were never enough.

http://www.truth-out.org/housing-crisis-a-symptom-capitalisms-failure62507

The Back Story to the Second HP Firing: http://www.cnbc.com//id/38704024

Emerging Fascism Front:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVM3bXiSAc

Lori’s Parole Revoked: A Peruvian court said Wednesday that it had revoked the parole of Lori Berenson, the New Yorker imprisoned in the 1990s on charges of collaborating with a Marxist revolutionary group. It ordered her to be returned to prison to complete five years left in a 20-year sentence. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/world/americas/19berenson.html?_r=1&hp

Video Interview With Lori Berenson http://www.peruviantimes.com/peruvian-times-interview-with-lori-berenson/197707

The Heavens Weep:

Obamagogue/BP Still Lying About Death of the Gulf:The existence of a huge plume of dispersed oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico might pose a continuing threat to wildlife for months or year http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/science/earth/20plume.html?hp

BP Shields Self And Top Defendants: People affected by the spill seeking final settlements face a choice similar to that faced by the 9/11 victims: If they decide to sue instead of accepting a settlement, they could face years of litigation; and if they decide to accept the settlement, it could come before the full damage from the spill is known. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/us/20spill.html?_r=1&ref=global

Spy vs Spy: (a 29 second video worth every moment):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvAxRzHtCag&feature=related

Sam Smith et al on the Strange Case of the Weathermen (the CPUSA connections are missed but here is a taste): there is the seldom mentioned possibility that the Weather Underground was not what it seemed. Write Bramhall:

“Many former Students for a Democratic Society members believe the Weather Underground was actually a US intelligence creation, formed with the specific objective of infiltrating and shutting down SDS. This view is substantiated by FBI documents that came to light 1973 revealing the role of agent provocateurs in infiltrating and instigating much of the violence attributed to the Weathermen which [Obama friend Bill] Ayers used to have his weapons and bomb making charges dismissed.

“There is also considerable circumstantial evidence to support these allegations. First and foremost is the striking “coincidence” that many of the Weather Underground leadership were, like Bill Ayers, the sons and daughters of wealthy members of the corporate elite. Second is the report of contemporary SDS members that the Weathermen, who did no fundraising to speak of, appeared to have unlimited funds to spend on organizing and military style training. Third are their classic (successful) Cointelpro style tactics in destroying SDS. And last the troubling question of how Bill Ayers can openly brag about his terrorist activities in his 2002 book Fugitive Days and yet instead of facing the death penalty for conspiracy to commit murder, enjoys status and privilege as a tenured professor of education.” http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2010/08/obamas-hidden-past-contd.html

National Security Archive (always worth checking): Washington, D.C., August 11, 2010 – Documents posted by the National Security Archive on the 40th anniversary of the death of U.S. advisor Dan Mitrione in Uruguay show the Nixon administration recommended a “threat to kill [detained insurgent] Sendic and other key [leftist insurgent] MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed.” The secret cable from U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, made public here for the first time, instructed U.S. Ambassador Charles Adair: “If this has not been considered, you should raise it with the Government of Uruguay at once.”

The message to the Uruguayan government, received by the U.S. Embassy at 11:30 am on August 9, 1970, was an attempt to deter Tupamaro insurgents from killing Mitrione at noon on that day. A few minutes later, Ambassador Adair reported back, in another newly-released cable, that “a threat was made to these prisoners that members of the ‘Escuadrón de la Muerte’ [death squad] would take action against the prisoners’ relatives if Mitrione were killed.”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB324/index.htm

Solidarity Forever:

UAW Members Attack Union Hacks–and Face Down Counterattack: Following an explosive union meeting Sunday in Indianapolis—in which workers shouted down officials from the United Auto Workers union and drove them from the meeting—all the forces of the establishment have united to intimidate the workers at the General Motors stamping plant into taking wage and benefit cuts.
GM announced Tuesday that it plans to stop production at the Indianapolis stamping plant in June 2011, in a move that auto workers condemned as a naked effort to blackmail them into accepting concessions. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/inds-a18.shtml

King of UAW Continues Union’s War on Foreign Cars: United Auto Workers President Bob King this month reiterated the union’s longstanding policy to ban nonunion vehicles on UAW property, but did so in a more hands-on and publicly forceful fashion that separates him from his predecessors. http://www.detnews.com/article/20100819/AUTO01/8190362/UAW-s-Bob-King-reiterates-ban-on-foreign-cars-on-union-property

Falling out Among Thieves: AFT National Battles Sellout DC Local: Update 8:30 pm: The WTU has filed suit against the AFT, asking a federal judge to issue an injunction blocking the national union from conducting the local’s election.

It wasn’t long ago that the Washington Teachers Union and its national parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, were locked in a high-stakes contract fight with Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Now it looks like they’ve gone to war against each other.

AFT president Randi Weingarten has made good on her threat to assume control of the WTU’s stalled elections, announcing late Tuesday that she had placed the local under an “administratorship” to conduct the balloting in a timely manner. The move, which the AFT says does not interfere with the union’s day-to-day operations, came after WTU president George Parker and the union executive board refused to comply with an Aug. 4, order to begin the election immediately. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcschools/2010/08/aft_moves_on_wtu_election_take.html

We Say Fight Back!

Cops Fire Rubber Bullets At Striking Teachers in S. Africa:

Joburg on Strike: JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – More than one million South African state workers went on strike for more pay on Wednesday, threatening a prolonged action they say will bring the government in Africa’s largest economy to a halt. http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE67H3ED20100818

Film Released on Women Maoist Fighters in Nepal:

http://womanrebelfilm.com/?page_id=8

Levin Pied: Ahlam Mohsen, the Michigan State University student who is in jail accused of pelting Sen. Carl Levin with a pie, has a growing coalition of supporters on Facebook.
Anti-war protestors are using the social networking site to update Mohsen’s supporters on her status in the Mecosta County Jail in Big Rapids and to organize a rally Friday in Detroit demanding her release. http://www.detnews.com/article/20100819/POLITICS03/8190471/1022/Facebook-supporters-organize-rally-for-woman-accused-in-Levin-pie-attack

Magical Mystery Tour

Worst Thing in the History of the World:

Al Shanker: “When school children start paying union dues, that ’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”

Detroit: Do Two Police Chiefs, Your Bosses–Get Free Hit and Run Pass:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100814/METRO01/8140350/1408/LOCAL

Best Thing in the History of the World:

Live Like Froggy!

Do My Thoughts Deceive Me? (Count the Passes at about 12 minutes in, for sure):

Rapid Rajah Indicted–Forked Tongue, not Ball: Clemens’s allegedly false testimony came in a public hearing in which Clemens and his former trainer Brian McNamee, testifying under oath, directly contradicted each other about whether Clemens had used the banned substances.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/sports/baseball/20clemens.html?_r=1&hp

Remember Pinky Deras! You couldn’t see the ball,” said Paciorek, who played against Deras in Little League. “He had such a fastball — there was no such thing as a radar gun back then — but his fastball would be the equivalent to a 90 or 100 mph fastball, given the distance (to the plate), no doubt about it.”
And at the plate?
Deras hit .641 with 33 home runs and 112 RBIs

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100821/SPORTS07/8210322/-Pinky–Deras–The-greatest-Little-Leaguer-there-ever-was

The El Cajon Rock and Roll Rebellion (8/1960): It took police, wielding batons, lobbing teargas and driving their patrol cars onto the sidewalks, almost three hours to disperse the crowd. Veteran cops, accustomed to teenage deference, were shocked by the crowd’s angry defiance. One contingent of about 100 stubbornly held their ground on a gas station parking lot, answering teargas and police charges with volleys of ’soft drink bottles, glasses and rocks’, slightly injuring two officers. http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2008/07/drag-racers-riot-1960-in-san-diego-for.html

Never Forget:

The Battle of Blair Mountain

The Hitler/Stalin Pact of 1939:

Thanks to Katie, Greg, Amber, Donna, Marisol, Pete, Dirty Edd, Alan J and S, Kerry P, Fredy, Beatrice, Faith and Craig, Gina and Adam, Joe C, Joe B, Joe S, Billy and Tom, Doug, Sharon A, Mrs Kosek, Marc and Bonnie, Weird Eric, Bob, Sherry, Erin, Kelly, Arturo, Ruben, and Don A.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Headline Publications:

Kim Scipes:

The AFL-CIO’s Secret War Against Developing Countries–Solidarity or Sabotage (20% discount!): http://richgibson.com/ScipesFlyer.pdf

Don Perl:  Book Chapter–”Heeding Humble Voices” (free and worth your time) http://richgibson.com/HeedingHumbleVoices.pdf

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Richard Brosio at the Rouge Forum Conference: 2010.
“Marxist Thought: Still Primus Inter Pares For Understanding And Opposing The Capitalist System.” http://rougeforum.org/2010/primusinterpares.pdf

Dems Push Through Bribe to Teachers (and cops) to Continue the RaTT: House Democrats today pushed through a $26 billion jobs bill to protect 300,000 teachers and other nonfederal government workers from election-year layoffs. (Don’t ask about the food stamp cuts…) http://www.freep.com/article/20100810/NEWS15/100810033/1320/House-OKs-bill-to-help-teachers-public-workers

Ok. About the Food Stamps: Though many in the education community are celebrating last week’s Senate vote for the so-called Edujobs bill, I can’t find any joy in it. In fact, I am shaken and ashamed because, to pay for it, the Senate snatched $11.9 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kati-haycock/cutting-food-stamps-to-sa_b_674770.html

Alpert on What the Rich Do When They Lose a School Board Vote–Try to Abolish the Board: “These guys are trying to water down the school board because they didn’t like the way the election turned out,” said John de Beck, a longtime board member. “Himelstein is like the hired gun for the rich. He has no qualifications and he has no training in how to run a school.”

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/article_1b0cf208-a5c5-11df-9107-001cc4c03286.html?login_success=true&mode=comments

A Note from the Local Valedictorian: School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-take

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212383-Valedictorian-Speaks-Out-Against-Schooling-in-Graduation-Speech

Perpetual War Front:

We’re Pulling the Troops Out of Iraq! Not! Psyche!
The reality in Iraq may defy that deadline, because many American and Iraqi officials deem the American presence to be in each nation’s interest. “For a very long period of time we’re going to be on the ground, even if it’s solely in support of its U.S. weapons systems,” said Ryan C. Crocker, who was the American ambassador in Baghdad until 2009 and helped to negotiate the agreement that tethers the two countries and mandates that all American troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011… five months after national elections, there is still no Iraqi government to begin talking about what any post-2011 arrangement might entail. But many Iraqi officials deem it quietly necessary on a number of fronts: Iraq is buying more and more sophisticated American weapons, like tanks and warplanes, and will need Americans here for training and maintenance. At the same time, training is intensifying for the Iraq Army to learn not only how to battle internal insurgents, but also how to protect its national borders — a project that will take many years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&hp

Double Psyche! We’ll Stay in Afghanistan Too! After 9 Years, We Really Get it Now! American military officials are building a case to minimize the planned withdrawal of some troops from Afghanistan starting next summer, in an effort to counter growing pressure on President Obama from inside his own party to begin winding the war down quickly.
“Their argument,” said one senior administration official, who would not speak for attribution about the internal policy discussions, “is that while we’ve been in Afghanistan for 9 years, only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right, and we need to give it some time and think about what our long-term presence in Afghanistan should look like.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/world/asia/12policy.html?_r=1&hp

Oops! There Goes the Afghan Army! An ambitious military operation that Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban forces battering an Afghan battalion in a remote northeast area for the last week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?_r=1&hp

Gangster Karzai Can’t Run Election: Worsening insurgent violence in many parts of the country is raising concern about Afghanistan’s ability to hold a fair parliamentary election in little more than a month, a crucial test of President Hamid Karzai’s ability to deliver security and a legitimate government. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/world/asia/12karzai.html?hp

NYTimes Waffles Some More on the US Wars (Can’t We All Just Get Along?): Americans need regular, straight talk from President Obama about what is happening in Afghanistan, for good and ill, and the plan going forward. More ambiguity will only add to the anxiety and confusion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/opinion/13fri1.html?pagewanted=3&hpw

What War? Go Shopping! Use Your Credit! (No Credit?!! Ulp.)
“The army is at war, but the country is not,” said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. “We have managed to create and field an armed force that can engage in very, very lethal warfare without the society in whose name it fights breaking a sweat.” The result, he said, is “a moral hazard for the political lea the United States has been at war for 47 of its 230 years, or 20 percent of its history. Put another way, Americans have been at war one year out of every five.
“You know, it’s a surprise to me that it’s that high,” said Mr. Daggett, who has focused on the cost, not length, of wars. “You think of war as not being the usual state.”dership to resort to force in the knowledge that civil society will not be deeply disturbed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/weekinreview/25bumiller.html

War Means Work: The Militarist Jobs Program: America’s biggest — and only major — jobs program is the U.S. military.
Over 1,400,000 Americans are now on active duty; another 833,000 are in the reserves, many full time. Another 1,600,000 Americans work in companies that supply the military with everything from weapons to utensils. (I’m not even including all the foreign contractors employing non-US citizens.)
If we didn’t have this giant military jobs program, the U.S. unemployment rate would be over 11.5 percent today instead of 9.5 percent. http://robertreich.org/post/938938180/americas-biggest-jobs-program-the-u-s-military

Pakistan. What Flood? I’m in Europe! With Pakistanis bracing for more rain and floods, President Asif Ali Zardari struggled Friday to confront a barrage of criticism over his recent visit to Europe while rivers gorged by monsoon rains ravaged scores of towns — a trip that critics have derided as “insensitive” and a “joyride.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/world/asia/14pstan.html?_r=1&hp

India/Pakistan/Kashmir–Wild Cards: For decades, India maintained hundreds of thousands of security forces in Kashmir to fight an insurgency sponsored by Pakistan, which claims this border region, too. The insurgency has been largely vanquished. But those Indian forces are still here, and today they face a threat potentially more dangerous to the world’s largest democracy: an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/world/asia/13kashmir.html?_r=1&hp

Hezbollah/Iran/USA Rumors via Stratfor: why the recurring rumors of impending Hezbollah terrorist attacks? For several years now, every time there has been talk of a possible attack on Iran there has been a corresponding threat by Iran that it will use its proxy groups in response to such an attack. Iran has also been busy pushing intelligence reports to anybody who will listen (including STRATFOR) that it will activate its militant proxy groups if attacked and, to back up that threat, will periodically send IRGC-QF, MOIS or Hezbollah operatives out to conduct not-so-subtle surveillance of potential targets. (They clearly want to be seen undertaking such activity.)
In many ways, the Hezbollah threat is being played up in order to provide the type of deterrent that mutually assured destruction did during the Cold War. The threats of unleashing Hezbollah terrorist attacks and closing the Strait of Hormuz are the most potent deterrents Iran has to being attacked. Since Iran does not yet possess a nuclear arsenal, these threats are the closest thing it has to a “real nuclear option.” As such, they are threats that Iran will make good on only as a last resort. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100811_hezbollah_radical_rational?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100812&utm_content=readmore&elq=597f5aab52874f95a1ea52a79478db53

Japan’s Boss Apologizes for Decades of S. Korean Oppression, but Doesn’t Pay Up: Prime Minister Naoto Kan apologized to South Korean residents for his nation’s transgressions all those generations ago. “For the enormous damage and suffering caused by this colonization, I would like to express once again our deep regret and sincere apology,” Kan said in a statement endorsed by his cabinet. Still residents like Kim Hyung-il wanted gestures over mere words. The prime minister’s statement, many noted, did not mention Koreans forced into manual labor and sexual slavery. “The Japanese government needs to show action, not just some words on a piece of paper,” said Kim, a 73-year old retiree who was a young boy during the occupation.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-korea-japan-apology-20100811,0,1176224.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

There Goes the Economy Front:

http://www.addmovi.com/video/30666/broken_dollar/

The Sky is Falling: a trio of reports released on Wednesday cast a new shadows over the global economy. First came news from China suggesting that nation’s fast-growing economy was cooling. Then the Bank of England reduced its already-diminished forecast for the British economy. Finally, new trade figures from Washington showed that American exports were faltering, a sign that hard-pressed domestic manufacturers could not rely on overseas markets to ease their pain at home.
Together, the reports unnerved financial markets that were still edge from the Fed’s downbeat news on Tuesday. The stock market tumbled anew in 265-point decline that drove the Dow Jones industrial average back into the red for the year. The broad market fell 2.8 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/12markets.html?_r=1&hp

Congressional Oversight Panel Documents Corporate State: The report concludes that the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.”
Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (as well as a dozens of European banks) from huge losses. Those financial institutions played the derivatives game with AIG, the esoteric practice of placing financial bets on future events. AIG lost its bets, which led to its collapse. But other gamblers—the counterparties in AIG’s derivative deals—were made whole on their bets, paid off 100 cents on the dollar. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill….Obama came to office intent on restoring public trust in government. His indulgence of the mega-banks led to the opposite result.
More to the point, the AIG story raises real doubts and suspicions about how the government will respond next time. Or whether the new financial reform legislation actually corrects government’s deference to the pinnacles of private financial power. Massive federal intervention was certainly necessary, the Warren panel agrees, including quick action to forestall AIG’s bankruptcy. But government declined to demand anything in return….One weakness is embedded in the institutional culture of the Fed—its chummy relations with the most powerful institutions and the moral confusion between public purpose and private returns. In some ways, these traits date back to the Federal Reserve’s origins in 1913, when this hybrid government agency was created, melding public and private interests.

http://www.thenation.com/article/153929/aig-bailout-scandal?rel=emailNation

Income Falls in Most Areas-Except Government/Military Towns: Personal incomes fell across the U.S. last year except in areas with a high concentration of federal government and military jobs, the Commerce Department said Monday. They declined most in places with a lot of housing and finance jobs. Among the 52 metro areas with populations of more than one million, in only three did both net earnings and the broader measure of personal income both rise.
All three had strong ties to the federal government: the Washington, D.C., area and two areas with a large military presence, San Antonio and Virginia Beach, Va. In all three, the biggest gains were among workers in the federal government and the military; private sector compensation fell.
The same picture was reflected nationally, as private employers froze and in many cases reduced workers’ pay and hours. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575419683851811758.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The End of Debt Morality–Mom and Pop Won’t Pay Their Bills (like the Banksters): During the great housing boom, homeowners nationwide borrowed a trillion dollars from banks, using the soaring value of their houses as security. Now the money has been spent and struggling borrowers are unable or unwilling to pay it back. The result is one of the paradoxes of the recession: the more money you borrowed, the less likely you will have to pay up.

“When houses were doubling in value, mom and pop making $80,000 a year were taking out $300,000 home equity loans for new cars and boats,” said Christopher A. Combs, a real estate lawyer here, where the problem is especially pronounced. “Their chances are pretty good of walking away and not having the bank collect.”

Lenders wrote off as uncollectible $11.1 billion in home equity loans and $19.9 billion in home equity lines of credit in 2009, more than they wrote off on primary mortgages, government data shows. So far this year, the trend is the same, with combined write-offs of $7.88 billion in the first quarter.

Even when a lender forces a borrower to settle through legal action, it can rarely extract more than 10 cents on the dollar. “People got 90 cents for free,” Mr. Combs said. “It rewards immorality, to some extent.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/12debt.html?_r=1&hp

DR Doom Speaks on the Economy or It’s End: (Marx: “The limit to capital is capital itself”)

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/08/tea_economist

Even the New Yorker Says: Soak the Rich, the Very Rich: This is one case where simpler isn’t better. In a society that’s becoming more stratified, a sensible tax system should draw more distinctions, not fewer. The U.S. is now a place where the rich and the ultra-rich really inhabit different worlds. (A couple of years ago, Barron’s declared, “Yes, it takes more than $10 million to be seen as rich these days.”) They should probably inhabit different tax brackets, too.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki

Emerging Fascism Front:

Obamagogue Signs $600 Million Nationalism Bill :
The new $600 million will fund some 1,500 new border patrol agents, customs inspectors and other law enforcement officials along the border, as well as two more unmanned aerial “drones” to monitor border activities. Congress’ speedy approval of the measure marked a rare display of bipartisanship. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67B3G720100813?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29

Spy vs Spy

Kim Scipes’ new book: The AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing
Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage? Discount offer here: http://richgibson.com/ScipesFlyer.pdf

What’s The Real Story About Google Anyway? Former CIA clandestine case officer Robert David Steele made some very hot comments on his appearance on the Alex Jones radio show. Steele cites his contacts within the agency with the information that Google and the CIA are involved with one another.
Steele said, “I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government – that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off.”

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4774

Solidarity Forever Front:

Weingarten Loves the Obamagogue Teacher/Copper Bailout:
“In a Big Victory for Students, Congress Passes Jobs Bill
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives interrupted their summer recess for a special one-day session on Aug. 10 to pass a $26 billion funding package that will save thousands of educators’ jobs and help states maintain vital public services. The 247-161 vote in the House, along with last week’s vote in the Senate, is “the ultimate indication of who’s for kids and who isn’t,” says AFT president Randi Weingarten.” http://mi.aft.org/dft231/

We Say Fightback Front:

The Rouge Forum Flyer for October 7th: A Day of Strikes and Action:

http://www.rougeforum.org/October7.pdf

The Heavens Weep:

The Gulf of Mexico faces a renewed and enlarged threat to marine life: a low-oxygen “dead zone” about the size of Massachusetts, caused by chemical runoff into the Mississippi River that flows into the sea. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-12/crude-marred-gulf-of-mexico-s-dead-zone-grows-as-spill-impact-is-studied.html

Magical Mystery Tour Front:

Secret Celibate Sex: The history of sexual violations of Roman Catholic clergy and church response has been well preserved in church documents from the Council of Ancyra in 315 to the 2001 document, De delictis gravioribus, authored by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI

http://ncronline.org/blogs/examining-crisis/secret-sex-celibate-system

Worst Thing in History of World Front:

Worst Places to Live in the USA–Who Missed Hammond, Indiana???

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/08/05/10-worst-places-to-live/

Wrestlerette Squares Off With Liar in CT Farce: McMahon has faced questions about past steroid use by the wrestlers employed by WWE and the propriety of its staged violence and skits. Blumenthal suffered a political embarrassment in May when, following a New York Times report, he said he had unintentionally misspoken in claiming during some past public occasions that he served in the Vietnam War..http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/world-wrestling-former-ceo-mcmahon-wins-republican-connecticut-senate-nod.html

In Detroit, Do Both Police Chiefs, Get A Special Parking Spot: She is known around Detroit Police headquarters as the “Teflon Lieutenant.” She reportedly had romantic relationships with the current and former police chiefs and was given a special parking space usually reserved for a high-ranking official, among other perks.
She was put in charge of the department’s efforts to comply with the federal consent decree, a position some claim she used to get back at former supervisors who had disciplined her in the past. One officer who filed a lawsuit against her last week called her “tyrannical.”

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100812/METRO01/8120416/Cop-shop-texts-stir-up-another-juicy-Detroit-scandal

Best Things in History of World:

Citizen Helps Self–Shoots Robber: Croff, 31, is accused of shooting 53-year-old Herbert Silas in the chest after chasing the man from his side yard on the night of Dec. 28. Croff arrived home that evening to find Silas and another, younger man on his property on the city’s East Side. One of the intruders, he said, was carrying a knife. Armed with two registered guns, Croff opened fire.
“I told him he was going to die, and I shot him,” Croff told investigators on the tape. An autopsy showed Silas died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. In the interview recording, Croff spoke at length about his frustration with trying to live right — working hard to make ends meet in a home he could not afford. Croff is on trial in Wayne County Circuit Court for second-degree murder, which carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100810/METRO/8100412/Man-charged-in-fatal-shooting-told-burglar–he-was-going-to-die-

Spector’s Rouge Forum Speech:

Sixty Five Years Ago Fat Man and Little Boy Fell on Japan:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/392814/atomic_bomb_little_boy_original_footage/

Opposing Views on The Bombings:
Richard Frank in the Weekly Standard

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp

Gar Alperovitz on Hnet:

http://www.doug-long.com/debate.htm

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Obamagogue Defends Education Agenda As Class War Agenda:
Saying that reforming education is perhaps “the economic issue of our time,” President Obama went before a major civil rights organization on Thursday to defend his main education program against criticisms from some minority and teachers groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/education/30obama.html?_r=1&ref=education

KIPP and Teach For America Boost Duncan Grants–$50 million plus for Toadies.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/08/04/37i3.h29.html?tkn=PNNFe3MnCU4p/vC/JS0P0YEsq0c6D+zEsq3E&cmp=clp-edweek

Civil Rights Groups Hide Their Own Report On Obamagogue’s RaTT: Seven civil rights groups have written a “Framework for Education Reform” that while not a trouncing of the Obama and Duncan education agenda definitely is critical of it and offers up a remedy for the nation’s education ills. That document was supposed to be released on July 26, 2010, but the press conference scheduled was cancelled. A spokesperson quoted in the Washington Post said it was due to scheduling conflicts by leaders of the groups.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1576&section=Article

Jesse Hagopian: What I learned from Teaching in DC Schools: The problem with Rhee’s thinking is that our goal should not be to discover “success stories” of kids who were able to transcend the deplorable conditions of life that make it so hard for so many to succeed, but rather to change those conditions in the first place. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/28-0

Detroit Bamn Loses Lawsuit vs Bobb’s Private Funding: Foundations that help pay the salary of Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb do not harm the public good by making the contributions, a Wayne County Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100730/NEWS06/7300368/1322/Judge-rules-its-OK-for-foundations-to-help-pay-Bobb

GAO: 15 For-Profit Colleges Frauding: Many of the largest for-profit entities were named among the 15 sites targeted by GAO investigators: University of Phoenix, with more than 400,000 students; Argosy University, part of the 136,000-student Education Management Corp.; Kaplan College, part of the 119,000-student Kaplan Higher Education operation owned by The Washington Post Co.; and Everest College, part of the 110,000-student Corinthian Colleges.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080403816.html

Perpetual War Front:

Obamagogue’s Perpetual War Lies: By the end of this month the US expects that the number of American troops stationed in Iraq will be down to 50K. That is a reduction of about 90K from the peak of the big surge. This supposedly marks the end of the combat mission, whatever that means. Of course he didn’t mention the 75K mercenaries, er contractors that are also remaining in Iraq. http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/63124

Progressive Review – These figures ignore the number of troops that will end up being stationed in nearby countries. For example, right now there are 10,000 American troops in Kuwait but one never hears about it. And there has been talk of storing troops in other Arab countries in case they are needed back again. But if you add the Afghan, Iraq and Kuwait troop levels you end up with a modest 8% reduction in troop force.

Yet Another Final Battle: Surging Again in Afghanistan:
As the U.S.-led coalition launches its most critical military operation of the nine-year war in Afghanistan, doubts are growing about whether the United States and its allies can contain the surging Taliban-led insurgency and prevent the country from reverting to an al Qaida sanctuary or erupting in civil war. The operation aims to secure Kandahar, the financial, trade and political hub of southern Afghanistan and the seat of Taliban rule of Afghanistan until the 2001 U.S. invasion. Kandahar is the cultural and spiritual center of the Pashtuns, the ethnic group from which the Taliban are drawn almost exclusively.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/30/98430/us-led-coalition-finds-success.html

Stratfor on WikiLeaks: The WikiLeaks seem to contain two strategically significant claims, however. The first is that the Taliban are a more sophisticated fighting force than has been generally believed. An example is the claim that Taliban fighters have used man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) against U.S. aircraft. This claim matters in a number of ways. First, it indicates that the Taliban are using technologies similar to those used against the Soviets. Second, it raises the question of where the Taliban are getting them — they certainly don’t manufacture MANPADS themselves….It is therefore irrational to expect the Pakistanis to halt collaboration with the force that they expect to be a major part of the government of Afghanistan when the United States leaves. The Pakistanis never expected the United States to maintain a presence in Afghanistan permanently…The WikiLeaks portray a war in which the United States has a vastly insufficient force on the ground that is fighting a capable and dedicated enemy who isn’t going anywhere. The Taliban know that they win just by not being defeated, and they know that they won’t be defeated. The Americans are leaving, meaning the Taliban need only wait and prepare…just made the most powerful case yet for withdrawal from Afghanistan sooner rather than later. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100726_wikileaks_and_afghan_war?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1007027&utm_content=readmore&elq=65f88d3883974471a44a88f21c18dfc7

Pat Tillman’s Mom on McChrystal: I Told You So–They Lie: The autopsy gives a description of Pat’s body that led us to later question if the autopsy was even his, and the field hospital report contains language that suggests he was alive when he was brought back to the field hospital at Forward Operating Base Salerno. Yet soldiers’ statements indicated Pat was decapitated by the barrage of bullets, and he was deemed killed in action by the medic on the scene.
These horrifying discrepancies raised dire questions. Even the medical examiner called for a criminal investigation, but the adjutant general prevented it from going forward. By covering up the circumstances of Pat’s death, McChrystal and the rest of the chain of command may have, knowingly or unknowingly, covered up a crime.
McChrystal’s actions should have been grounds for firing him back then.

There Goes the Economy Front:

The unemployment rate for Blacks was 15.6% last month. This is according to the latest report on the nation’s employment situation released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly Employment Situation report. This rate was virtually unchanged from June, when unemployment in the Black community also stood at 15.4%. For the nation as a whole, unemployment remained at 9.5% in the month of July. Among whites, unemployment was 8.6%; among Latinos, unemployment was 12.1%. Comparable June 2010 figures were 9.5%; 8.6%; and 12.4% respectfully. Overall, payroll employment fell by 131,000, driven by the loss of 143,000 temporary Census jobs. http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/blackworkers/monthly/bwreport_2010-08-06_21.pdf

Bankruptcies Still Booming: The 137,698 consumer bankruptcies filed in July represented a 9 percent increase nationwide over the 126,434 filings recorded in July 2009, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), relying on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center (NBKRC). NBKRC’s data also showed that the July consumer filings represented a 9 percent increase from the 126,270 consumer filings recorded in June 2010. Chapter 13 filings constituted 28 percent of all consumer cases in July, a slight increase from June.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/08/personal-bankruptcy-filings-up-9-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CalculatedRisk+%28Calculated+Risk%29

Fired HP Sexist Gets $28 million-plus Parachute–Second HP Disgrace: Hurd’s “systematic pattern” of submitting falsified financial reports to hide the relationship convinced the board that “it would be impossible for him to be an effective leader moving forward and that he had to step down,” HP general counsel Michael Holston said on a conference call Friday with analysts.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100807/BUSINESS07/100807007/1322/Disgraced-HP-CEO-to-get-nearly-28M-in-cash-stock

Rolling Stone on the Obamagogue Bankster Deal: Cue the credits: the era of financial thuggery is officially over. Three hellish years of panic, all done and gone — the mass bankruptcies, midnight bailouts, shotgun mergers of dying megabanks, high-stakes SEC investigations, all capped by a legislative orgy in which industry lobbyists hurled more than $600 million at Congress. It all supposedly came to an end one Wednesday morning a few weeks back, when President Obama, flanked by hundreds of party flacks and congressional bigwigs, stepped up to the lectern at an extravagant ceremony to sign into law his sweeping new bill to clean up Wall Street….
these reforms fail to address even a tenth of the real problem. Worse: They fail to even define what the real problem is. Over a long year of feverish lobbying and brutally intense backroom negotiations, a group of D.C. insiders fought over a single question: Just how much of the truth about the financial crisis should we share with the public? Do we admit that control over the economy in the past decade was ceded to a small group of rapacious criminals who to this day are engaged in a mind-numbing campaign of theft on a global scale? Or do we pretend that, minus a few bumps in the road that have mostly been smoothed out, the clean-hands capitalism of Adam Smith still rules the day in America? In other words, do people need to know the real version, in all its majestic whorebotchery, or can we get away with some bullshit cover story?…
Throughout the debate over finance reform, Democrats had sold the public on the idea that it was the Republicans who were killing progressive initiatives. In reality, Republican and Democratic leaders were working together with industry insiders and deep-pocketed lobbyists to prevent rogue members like Merkley and Levin from effecting real change. In public, the parties stage a show of bitter bipartisan stalemate. But when the cameras are off, they fuck like crazed weasels in heat. http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=823

Fed Antsy About Jobs, Mortgages, Inequality:
The latest poor reading came in Friday’s monthly employment report, which showed the US private sector creating only 71,000 jobs in July – not enough to keep up with population growth, let alone bring down the unemployment rate. That followed news a week earlier that growth in US gross domestic product slowed from an annualised rate of 3.7 per cent in the first quarter to 2.4 per cent in the second quarter. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dedcb986-a316-11df-8cf4-00144feabdc0.html

The Heavens Weep–Pete Seegar Sings on the BP Gusher:

Emerging Fascism Front:
Fighting Mosques: Mosques around the country are facing resistance similar to the opposition against a proposed Islamic center near ground zero in New York, but the anger and fear is a little sharper.
At a recent demonstration against a planned mosque in the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, detractors wore “Vote for Jesus” T-shirts and held signs that read “No Sharia law for USA!,” referring to the Islamic code of law.
In Temecula, Calif., opponents of a proposed mosque brought dogs to a prayer service. http://www.detnews.com/article/20100808/LIFESTYLE04/8080323/1041/Far-from-ground-zero–opponents-fight-new-mosques

Spy vs Spy

Hedges on Why the US Officials Hated Howard Zinn:
By the end of the file one walks away with a profound respect for Zinn and a deep distaste for the buffoonish goons in the FBI who followed and monitored him. There is no reason, with the massive expansion of our internal security apparatus, to think that things have improved. There are today 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, The Washington Post reported in an investigation by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. These agencies employ an estimated 854,000 people, all of whom hold top-secret security clearances, the Post found. And in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together, the paper reported, they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings—about 17 million square feet.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/why_the_feds_fear_thinkers_like_howard_zinn_20100801/

Solidarity Forever Front:

During the 2008 Elections, The National Education Association Spent $56.3 Million While AFT Spent $13.8 Million. NEA Outspent Every Other Political Action Fund, by Far. What Did the Union Bosses Get for Blowing Away Members’ Money? Now, AFL-CIO’s Tops Plan to Do it All Again (ooh no the bigger evil is coming–ratify evil and vote for the Lesser One:
As a pep talk, President Trumka’s speech to more than 200 state, central labor council and local union leaders deserved high marks. He lambasted the Bush presidency, extolled the virtues of the Obama administration, and, if he exaggerated on both counts, it could be forgiven, with only three months before the November election. He emphasized the importance of turning out a huge union household vote to ensure victory for the nation’s working families. He added:
“We have to bring our “A” game to the election; which is why I am so glad to be talking to Labor’s ‘A’ Team.”
Meanwhile, although the economy is said to be well on the road to recovery, a growing number of companies, even those that are reporting record profits, are pressuring their employees to take wage cuts and reduce benefits, presumably to avoid layoffs or outsourcing. The wage cuts are occurring in virtually every industry, and include orchestra musicians corporate law partners and university professors. http://laboreducator.org/lt100806.htm

SEIU’s Sellout Andy Stern Joins Siga Board of Directors: SIGA Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:SIGA – News), a company specializing in the development of pharmaceutical agents to combat bio-warfare pathogens, announced today that Andy Stern, labor leader and prominent advocate for reform, joined SIGA’s board of directors. Mr. Stern is the former president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest and fastest-growing healthcare union in North America.

Andy Stern was responsible for growing the SEIU from 1.0 million members into a powerful 2.2 million member union. Under his leadership, the SEIU had been widely recognized as being an engaged and influential force driving healthcare reform and, ultimately, passage of the 2010 Health Care Reform Act….Mr. Stern also serves on the board of directors of Broad Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Economic Policy Institute, as well as a lifetime Trustee of the Aspen Institute, and the President of the Kaiser Permanente Partnership.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Andy-Stern-Joins-SIGAs-Board-pz-1783915793.html?x=0&.v=1

Obamagogue’s Marie Antoinette Luxuriates in Spain While Joblessness Booms and Wars Rage (thanks to all the liberal hacks who begged others to vote for these parasites–that would be you Tom Hayden, Barbara Ehirenreich, Katha Pollit, and the rest of those whose analytical disabilities are now on full display):
While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her “closest friends.” According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.
Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama’s Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, “luxurious,” “posh” and “a millionaires’ playground.” Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/04/2010-08-04_material_girl_michelle_obama_is_a_modernday_marie_antoinette_on_a_glitzy_spanish.html

Adolph Reed on Obamagogue’s Narcissist Paramour: The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain. http://www.progressive.org/mag_reed0508

Sellout of the Month: Detroit Federation of Teachers’ Keith Johnson, Pimping “Priority Schools:
Clarification on Priority Schools [7.30.10]

Dear DFT Members,

A tremendous amount of confusion and misinformation has arisen regarding Priority Schools, what they mean, why members have to apply, and the application process itself.

Please allow me to address the discrepancies and provide clarity. (Click above for the list of Priority Schools),

1. Why do members have to apply for Priority Schools? Priority Schools are likely to include mandates such as extended day, extended year, mandatory additional professional development, etc. that exceed what is required under the DFT/DPS contract. Extended day is paid at the hourly rate of $28.90. Extended year pay is the employee’s regular pay rate. For Master’s step 10 that is $381 per day, which is over $11,000 for a six week extended year. The district has not committed to how long the extended day or year will be, or which schools will have it. Extended day and year are subject to funding. Members assigned to Priority Schools must agree to and adhere to those mandates in order to remain or be assigned to these schools. Some members currently assigned to schools that have been identified as Priority Schools may not wish to agree to those mandates, and thus are afforded the opportunity to decide whether they wish to remain or be assigned to them. The purpose of the application is to give members the opportunity to inform the district of their interest in remaining or being assigned to a Priority School.

2. What happens to members who opt not to be assigned to or remain at a Priority School? Such members will be assigned to other schools that are not designated as Priority Schools. There is no adverse reflection upon their employment record, no compromise of any of their contractual rights, salaries, or benefits.

3. What is the purpose of the “interview”? The interview is for the members to be made aware of the mandates of the Priority School they are currently assigned to or wish to apply. There will be a scripted set of questions that will be asked of each member developed jointly by the Union and the district. All interviewees will be asked the same questions, relative to the Priority School mandates and their willingness to adhere to them. The interview panel will consist of me as DFT President (or my designee), or Mark O’Keefe, Executive Vice-President, the LRA assigned to the school, the building representative, the principal, and someone from the office of the Chief Academic Officer. There must be an educationally viable reason, e.g. poor attendance, documented evidence of poor classroom management or unsatisfactory performance, poor record keeping, etc. for a member currently assigned to a school designated as a Priority School not to be retained if the member wishes to stay and is willing to adhere to the mandates of the Priority School.

4. When will the interview take place? The district has announced that interviews will take place the week of August 2. The union has advised the district that our members need more time and that we will not be available for interviews until the week of August 9. We are awaiting the district’s response.

5. If I received a layoff notice can I still apply to remain or be assigned to a Priority School? Yes. Anyone currently working in or out of a school designated as a Priority School may apply as well as members who have received a layoff notice. A notice does not mean you are laid off, and is not a viable reason not to be retained or assigned to a Priority School.

6. Do I have to pay an application fee and submit a transcript? Absolutely not. You are already a DPS employee. The information that was posted on the website (DPS) was for new applicants to the district. The Union is working with the district to correct this discrepancy to erase the confusion for current employees.

7. What if I am out of town and/or on vacation at the time my interview is scheduled? Accommodations will be made. All members currently assigned to a school designated as a Priority School will have the opportunity to apply and be interviewed to remain at that school. We recommend that you contact the Office of Human Resources to make them aware of your availability. If you encounter any problems contact me directly at (313) 683-4049 or keith7606@sbcglobal.net.

I hope this message clarifies questions and concerns members may have. If there are additional questions and concerns please contact me or Executive Vice-President Mark O’Keefe at (313) 875-3500 or email at mokeefe@dft231.com.

In solidarity,
Keith R. Johnson
DFT President

Runner-Up Sellout of the Month: The Largest UAW Local Urges People to Pick The Good Boss:
It’s The Day We Pick Our Boss
State employees must show power and vote in the August 3rd primary election. Michigan will elect candidates for Governor and the State Legislature. To stop the continued attacks on our wages and benefits hit the polls Tuesday. Take time to tell family and friends just how important it is to send the right people to Lansing. Summertime primaries often have low turnout but that also means your vote has greater influence. As the demand for state services increases we must step up and strengthen state government.
Now go out and pick a good boss! http://www.uawlocal6000.org/

Third Runner Up for Sellout of the Month: NCTE

We Say Fightback Front:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_gFyB6GnA

The Rouge Forum Flyer for October 7th: A Day of Strikes and Action

http://www.rougeforum.org/October7.pdf

Magical Mystery Tour Front:

His program has been seriously sidelined by the lingering effects of the sex abuse scandal in the United States; the explosion of the scandal in Ireland, Germany, Italy and now Belgium; and the diminishment of the episcopal office, particularly in those countries most affected by the scandal.

http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/hierarchy-deeply-damaged-within

Worst Thing in History of World Front:

There’s no business like show business

She played Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor.

And accompanied the one and only Aretha Franklin.

A gala benefit performance in Philadelphia.

At the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Before 8,000 people.

And they loved it.

How many of them knew that the pianist was a genuine, unindicted war criminal?

Guilty of crimes against humanity.

Defender of torture.

With much blood on her pianist hands.

Whose style in office for years could be characterized as hypocrisy, disinformation, and outright lying.

But what did the audience care?

This is America.

Home of the Good Guys.

She was fighting against the Bad Guys.

And we all know that the show must go on.

So let’s hear it, folks … Let’s have a real all-American hand … Let’s hear it for our own darling virtuoso …

Miss Condoleezza Rice!

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer84.html

Don’t Brawl and Kindergarten Graduation!:
Two women whose fight during a kindergarten graduation ceremony in June caused a school lockdown have been charged with with misdemeanors, San Bernardino County prosecutors announced this week. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/charges-filed-against-parents-whose-brawl-disrupted-kindergarten-graduation.html

Michigan State Fair Goes Out of Business–A USA First:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100807/METRO/8070371/Michiganians-struggle-with-loss-of-state-fair

Obamagogue Still Opposes Gay Marriage But Has a Waffle:

Obama has remained silent on the question — and remains opposed to gay marriage. “The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control,” David Axelrod, a top Obama advisor, told NBC News on Friday. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/obama-still-opposes-gay-marriage.html

Best Things in History of World:

Detroit Mayor Names Convicted Murderer For Police Oversight Board:

http://detnews.com/article/20100731/METRO01/7310356/1409/Bing-nominates-convicted-murderer-for-police-board

Best of All: Request for Researchers and Writers:
I am tackling a book project on the contemporary CIA penetration of US campuses and seeking collaborators.
My prospective publisher wants it to be an edited anthology by academics across the country. I envision ten chapters of approximately 10,000 words each, of previously unpublished material on the subject.
We’ll be looking at the history of the CIA, CIA in Latin America, and especially the CIA on campus through the Intelligence Community Centers of Academic of Excellence, Intelligence Analysis Campuses, and Officers in Residence. I have eight contributors signed up.
Is it possible you might write a chapter? I am seeking commitments now, a draft by November 1, and a final draft by January 1. If you cannot personally participate I would appreciate any help identifying other prospective authors.

Contact: pzwerling@rgv.rr.com
Dr. Philip Zwerling
Department of English
University of Texas Pan American

Thanks to Doug, Faith, Craig, The RF SC,  Carole, bon voyage Adam and Gina, Happy Baby Luke!, Judy the Beauty, the Joes and the Susans, Greg and Katie, Donna, Sandy, Eliz, Betty, Bill, Peter M, Don A., Elvira, Tony, Lila, Evan and Ethel, Richard B, Alan, and Sherry.

A humble Tip of the Hat to This Week’s Winner: Lucky the Dog. Argh.

Good luck to us, every one. r

Michelle Rhee of DC Fires 241 Teachers After Hugging AFT’s Weingarten for Helping Out on Sellout Contract.  The AFT Does–Nothing Much and More Educators are on Firing Line: D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced Friday that she has fired 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals under a new evaluation system that for the first time holds some educators accountable for student improvement in standardized test scores….Last month, union members and the D.C. Council approved a contract that raises educators’ salaries by 21.6 percent but diminishes traditional seniority protections in favor of personnel decisions based on results in the classroom. The accord also provides for a “performance pay” system with bonuses of $20,000 to $30,000 annually for teachers who meet certain benchmarks, including growth in test scores http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303093.html

States RaTT Each Other Out: Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks.
Their support has surprised many in education circles, given states’ long tradition of insisting on retaining local control over curriculum. The quick adoption of common standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school is attributable in part to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September. “I’m ecstatic,” said Arne Duncan, (Obamagogue’s Boy Toy)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/education/21standards.html?hp

Stimulus Bait and Switch: The San Dieguito high school district must return $2.8 million of already-spent stimulus funds to the state. The district has to give back the money because it automatically converted to a different category of school system that is entitled to drastically less stimulus funds. The expense comes at a rough time for the district. It’s also facing a $2.78 million reduction in property-tax revenue calculated since June. To deal with the loss of funds, the San Dieguito Union High School District board Tuesday approved laying off 15 nonteaching workers and reducing several school services as steps toward adjusting future budgets.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jul/21/bn21eschool-stimulus-money/

Perpetual War Front:

American Backed Gangster Regime not Way To Afghan Heart and Heads:
…for all the talk about tackling corruption, including the “governments in a box” the U.S. promised to deliver, Kandaharis have yet to experience any noticeable improvements. The infamous Ahmed Wali Karzai — the president’s half brother, who has been publicly accused of all kinds of corruption, including opium trafficking, land confiscation and employing insurgents for his own advantage — is still running the province and much of the region as if they were his personal fiefdom. He still largely controls the appointment of officials, who then preside over an appalling system of patronage, protections and punishments. Worse still is the fact that ordinary citizens have to watch Wali Karzai and others of his ilk get showered with American dollars to provide private security, logistics, construction materials and intelligence.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0717-green-afghanistan-corrupti20100717,0,2822425.story

There Goes the Economy Front:

Will Your Children Grow Up to be Servants and Nannies? Why the labor market of the future will be even more polarized… the transition to digital organizations is a recipe for even more inequality. In “Performance Pay and Wage Inequality,” economists Thomas Lemieux, W. Bentley MacLeod, and Daniel Parent maintain that the increasing use of performance pay can account for “nearly all of the top-end growth in wage dispersion.” Assuming this pattern holds, there is no reason to believe that we will see any decrease in wage dispersion. Quite the opposite: The most skilled workers will cluster in digital organizations, and wages at the top will continue to expand at a healthy clip. http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/22/labor-unemployment-technology-opinions-columnists-reihan-salam.html?feed=rss_opinions

War and Unemployment Forever??? The unemployment rate in the United States is likely to remain well above 7 percent through the end of 201http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/22fed.html?_r=1&hp2 and the duration of President Obama’s current term, according to the Federal Reserve.

Boom/Bust/Bust/Busted: No one should be surprised, Mr. Dimon insists, that booms go bust. That’s the way markets work. Most Americans probably find that answer unsatisfying, to put it politely. After all, millions have lost their homes, their jobs, their savings.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/sorkin-preparing-for-next-big-one/

Hey! Thanks $1.6 Billion! We Love Taxpayers! Your Friends, the Banksters: With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited.
Mr. Feinberg is expected to call the payouts ill advised but not unlawful or contrary to the public interest, the people with knowledge of his report said….On Wall Street, meanwhile, profits and pay have already rebounded. Goldman Sachs is on pace to hand out an average of $544,000 per worker in salary and bonuses, though many could earn several times that amount. JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank is on track to pay its workers, on average, about $425,000, while the average Morgan Stanley employee could collect about $260,000.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23pay.html?_r=1&hp

Galbraith Blasts Deficit Commission: Conflicts of interest constitute the fourth major problem. The fact that the Commission has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare, raises the most serious questions. Quite apart from the merits of Mr. Peterson’s arguments, this act must be condemned. A Commission serving public purpose cannot accept funds or other help from a private party with a strong interest in the outcome of that Commission’s work. Your having done so is a disgrace….In sum: the economic forecasts on which you are being asked to develop a credible plan for reducing deficits over the medium term are a mess. The unemployment and growth forecasts are implausibly optimistic, while the inflation and interest rates projections are implausibly pessimistic and mutually inconsistent. Good policy cannot be based on bad forecasts. As a first step in your work — long overdue — the Commission should require the development of internally consistent, and You are plainly not equipped by disposition or resources to take on the true cause of deficits now and in the future: the financial crisis. Recommendations based on CBO’s unrealistic budget and economic outlooks are destined to collapse in failure. Specifically, if cuts are proposed and enacted in Social Security and Medicare, they will hurt millions, weaken the economy, and the deficits will not decline. It’s a lose-lose proposition, with no gainers except a few predatory funds, insurance companies and such who would profit, for some time, from a chaotic private marketplace.Thus the interesting twist in your situation is that the Republic would be better served by advancing no proposals at all.factually plausible, economic forecasts on which to base future deficit and debt projections… http://www.angrybearblog.com/2010/07/professor-jamie-galbraiths-testimony-to.html

Chinese Monetary Theory, A Historical Take: While many commentators focus on China’s future, this column draws economic theory insights from its past. It argues that Chinese monetary theory preceded Western thought and influenced the likes of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Moreover, it says the Eastern emphasis on the pursuit of wisdom, as opposed to knowledge, has a role to play in today’s economic debate. http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5318

Emerging Fascism Front:

Spending on immigration enforcement has steadily climbed since 2002 and continues to climb in President Obama’s administration. Spending for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) increased from fiscal year 2002, at almost $7.5 billion, to fiscal year 2010 over $17 billion.

Republican charges that the Obama administration is giving border security and immigration enforcement short shrift are false.

Spy vs Spy

Top this! CIA Director-Nominee, “I am not a hood ornament.” James R. Clapper Jr. also defended the extensive use of government contractors to perform intelligence work, comparing the growth of private companies working for spy agencies since the Sept. 11 attacks to the industrial buildup that took place during World War II. From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100721/NATION/7210343/1022/Intelligence-director-nominee-grilled#ixzz0uIXkOTcU

Washington Post’s Top Secret America Series: The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

Post Story on Frontline–the Hidden Geography of the Fascist Spies:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/frontline-video/

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/secrets-next-door/

Iran Says Scientist Was Double Agent: Iran fired a new salvo on Wednesday in what is becoming a bizarre propaganda war over the supposed defection and later return of an Iranian nuclear scientist, with Iran’s semiofficial media suggesting that he was a covert operative who had provided “valuable information” about the Central Intelligence Agency’s inner workings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/world/middleeast/22iran.html?_r=1&ref=world

Solidarity Forever Front:

Kim Scipes on US Labor Imperialism:
Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock. 2010. “The American Federation of Teachers in the Middle East: Teacher Training as Labor Imperialism.” Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2, June: 181-197. Examines contemporary program of AFT in Lebanon.

http://faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes/LaborBib.htm

Kelber on How the AFL-CIO Rigs Top Elections:
It is an incredible fact worth endless repeating that, for the past 124 years, since the founding of the American Federation of Labor, no officer or member of any affiliated state federation or central labor council has ever been elected to the AFL-CIO’s highest body, its Executive Council. In all those 124 years, less than a handful of opposition candidates have dared to run for Executive Council seats, only to face a crushing defeat from entrenched incumbents.

The complete dominance of international union presidents on the Council is based on Article IV of the AFL-CIO Constitution, that gives international unions as many convention votes as the number of its total membership, while affiliated state and local bodies are limited to one vote each.

If you add all the votes of the state feds and CLCs together, the most they can total is 700 convention votes, while a big union like the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is entitled to one million convention votes. The one-vote delegates are little more than wallflowers at conventions. In effect, millions of AFL-CIO dues payers are deprived of proper representation at conventions. http://laboreducator.org/lt100723.htm

AFL CIO Hacks Try October 2 Dodge: http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/07/08/trumka-time-to-raise-our-voices-for-good-jobs-now/

We Say Fightback Front:

The Education Agenda is A War Agenda
by Dr Rich Gibson
Emeritus Professor San Diego State University
Lecturer Southwestern College
Forthcoming in CCA Advocate

In developing strategies in summertime assemblies, both education unions’ leaders(NEA and AFT) ignored schools’ social context.

The education agenda is a war agenda; a class war agenda and an empire’s war agenda. The promise of perpetual war is as real as accelerating rates of inequality. Governments emerge as varying forms of the traditional corporate state: executive committees and armed weapons of the rich. Capital trumps democracy.

Schools are centripetal organizing points in de-industrialized life.

Such realities cause society to make peculiar demands on education.

The core education plan is Obama’s Race to the Top. RaTT is:

*Regimented national curricula promoting patriotism, ending free inquiry;
*Racist, anti-working class high stakes exams re-segregating already segregated school system;
*Merit pay, wage and benefit cuts, layoffs, and attacks on tenure with full time positions becoming temp jobs–-school workers are among the last people in the US with benefits, fairly predictable jobs, and pay–an injury to other workers becomes an injury to all;
*Militarization working class districts and “national service” to syphon off resistance in middle class and upper class districts.
*Limited forms of charters and privatization but the fundamental effort, not-public but tax funded mis-education for social control, will persist in the main.
*Competition for RaTT dollars demeaning all who participate;
*Tamping down student hopes, abolishing the vision and abilities it takes to win and run a just, equitable, society.

As university life extends from the k12 world, we see:
*Dramatic fee/tuition hikes, driving students out of school or into perpetual debt based, mainly, on inherited wealth–also reasserting segregation;
*Routinization of college and university curricula and methods as the disciplines align with the k-12 world, a result already in place;
*Militarization of university life as administrators chase dollars from the warfare and intelligence industries.

Fear now propels much schooling.

Both school unions were deeply involved in creating and selling the RaTT. Neither has a strategy, nor accompanying tactics, to resist.

Educators need not be missionaries for capitalism.

On March 4th, 2010, students, educators, and community people engaged in strikes and protests against the effects of the bi-partisan education scheme–direct action for control of workplaces that can be sustained, defeating the alienating, hopeless, tactic of voting away the tyrannical rule of the few over the many.

Student M4 leadership now calls for more actions on October 7th, then conferences October 23rd and 24th. Join them. Action based resistance, united, can win.

Worst Thing in History of World Front:

Detroit City Council Bails Out Failed Casino for Cops: The Detroit City Council today approved the purchase of the former MGM casino for $6.3 million for a new Detroit Police and Detroit Fire departments headquarters and approved the sale of $100 million in bonds to fund the purchase and the renovation of the building.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100720/NEWS01/100720027/1318/Council-OKs-6.3M-to-buy-old-casino-for-police-HQ

Hey–There’s Some Wars On. Adults Dress Up in Comix Costumes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5peqbAL6YE

Del Mar Race Track Opens. There’s still some wars on. Wear a Funny Hat. Behold, a Pale Horse:

Best Things in History of World:

Defending Masturbating Illiterate Detroit School Board Boss, Otis Mathis, activist Malik Shabazz says,
“ “That’s outrageous. That’s out of control,” community activist Malik Shabazz said. “That’s below the belt.” From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100720/METRO01/7200388/Detroit-council–residents-spar-over-DPS-control#ixzz0uFxLZxh7

Superstar Detroit Top Cop Quits:
Police Chief Warren Evans resigned today, according to a release from Mayor Dave Bing’s office. The announcement of his departure comes hours before a six-minute video was to be broadcast on WXYZ-TV depicting him “heavily armed” in promotional footage. From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100721/METRO01/7210405/Detroit-Police-Chief-Warren-Evans-resigns#ixzz0uLbzjDdE

Video of Detroit Media Hound Goon/Cop:

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/is-detroit%E2%80%99s-top-cop-going-hollywood%3F

Best of All: Help Appears For Girls Whose Lemonade Stand Was Robbed:
Calls offering donations have come in from as far away as Colorado and Cincinnati for a group of girls whose Pontiac lemonade stand was robbed Sunday afternoon.
The outpouring has been overwhelming — and a great lesson after a man ran off with the girls’ Mickey Mouse jewelry box and $40 in proceeds, mom Danielle Behan said today.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100721/NEWS03/100721080/1319/Help-pours-in-for-girls-Pontiac-lemonade-stand

Best or Worst Thing in History of World: $637,159 — Monthly spousal support Jamie McCourt is to receive from Dodgers owner Frank McCourt while their divorce proceedings are ongoing. So there might not be enough cash to acquire premium help.

Weird Thing in the World, a July 26 birthday–1943 – Mick Jagger, English singer (The Rolling Stones) (Old. Dude. Old).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_05eBtKEH3I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_05eBtKEH3I

Thanks to Amber, Connie, Doug and Doug S, Nancye, Adam and Gina, Don and Betty, Dick and Lisa, Sherry, Marisol, Candace, Arturo, Shelly, Jesus, Peter M, Stephen R, Don A, Faith W, Bobbie, Kelly, Sharon, Lucille K, Marc and Bonnie, Evan and Ethel, Bob A, Della, Judy the Beauty, and Chris.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Rouge Forum Poster and Flyer for National Strike and Day of Action 10/7

http://www.rougeforum.org/October7.pdf

Reports from the NEA and AFT Summer Assemblies are in Substance News:
http://www.substancenews.net/index.php

Monopolist Gates Joins Quisling Weingarten at AFT Convention (G. Schmidt photo)

Vacillating Reactionary Patriot Ravitch Salutes Company Union NEA (photo Gibson)

The Faces of popular US Fascist Unionism and the Resistance are above.
Perpetual War Front:

Highest Rate of Army Suicides in June: Thirty-two soldiers took their own lives last month, the most Army suicides in a single month since the Vietnam era. Eleven of the soldiers were not on active duty. Of the 21 who were, seven were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Department of Defense said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100716/us_yblog_upshot/record-number-of-u-s-soldiers-commited-suicide-last-month

Hillbillary off to Gush Over Gangster Karzai and Win War: “But Holbrooke acknowledges concerns that the war and the reconstruction effort are not proceeding as hoped or planned.”

http://www.freep.com/article/20100717/NEWS15/100717011/1322/Clinton-off-to-Afghanistan-as-war-fears-rise

China and Afghanistan: When Chinese officials consider their international economic interests, Afghanistan and Central Asia (sometimes referred to as “Greater Central Asia”) naturally come to mind. These countries possess an abundant supply of untapped natural resources, and they offer potential export markets as well as investment opportunities for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Moreover, these territories can provide the conduit through which the PRC imports and exports goods from and to other economically important regions of the world. Increasing the volume and types of goods available from/to China requires improving the region’s means of transportation, with railroads representing an important element along with surface roads, energy pipelines, and shipping by sea and air.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36604&tx_ttnews[backPid]=13&cHash=9e785abeb1

NYTImes’ Burns’ Attacks Rolling Stone Article on McChrystal, Promises Fealty to Militarists:

Burns and other Hastings critics talk up the need to build trust between journalists and military officials–a questionable goal in itself, but all the more so when the resulting “trust” really just means journalists will continue to believe military officials who have repeatedly misled them.

http://www.fair.org/blog/#post-15153

There Goes the Economy Front:

The Dodd-Frank Dodge: The Dodd-Frank bill does nothing to deal with Wall Street’s central problem: systemic non-disclosure.So long Glass-Steagall. Hello Dodd-Frank–the most comprehensive rewrite of financial rules since 1933. This 2,319-page colossus–10 times the length of Glass-Steagall–took 1.5 years to produce and will cost $30 billion and many more years to implement. Will all this time and treasure make Wall Street safe for Main Street?
No.  http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/15/dodd-frank-failure-regulation-opinions-contributors-james-henry-laurence-kotlikoff-wall-street.html?feed=rss_opinions

Government Sachs’ Wrist Slapped as Billions Pour In: Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550 million to settle federal claims that it misled investors in a subprime mortgage product as the housing market began to collapse, officials said Thursday. If approved by a federal judge in Manhattan, the settlement would rank among the largest in the 76-year history of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but it would represent only a small financial dent for Goldman, which reported $13.39 billion in profit last year.News of the settlement sent Goldman’s shares 5 percent higher in after-hours trading, adding far more to the firm’s market value than the amount it will have to pay in the settlement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/business/16goldman.html?hp

Trade Gap Yawns: The United States trade deficit grew in May to more than $42 billion, its widest gap in nearly two years, mostly because of a rise in imports of consumer goods, according to government figures. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/business/economy/14econ.html?ref=todayspaper

One Size Fits All Tarp Hurts Little Banksters: The report argues that TARP called for a “one-size-fits-all” formula for all bank bailouts. That was a bad fit for small banks, which lack the same access to capital markets and the implicit guarantee that the government won’t let them fail. Small banks are also disproportionately exposed to commercial real estate losses.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/14/news/economy/Main_Street_banks_TARP/

Shocker–Capitalism Made Rich Richer, Poor Poorer: Prof Rajan notes that “of every dollar of real income growth that was generated between 1976 and 2007, 58 cents went to the top 1 per cent of households”.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/07/58-of-real-income-growth-since-1976-went-to-top-1-and-why-that-matters.html

Jamie Dimon’s JpMorgan Does a WooHoo and Thanks, Patriots! “The bank reported net income of $4.8 billion in the quarter.After powering ahead for the last year on the strength of its Wall Street trading operations, JPMorgan said its net income rose 76 percent, to $4.8 billion, from $2.7 billion in the period a year earlier. Earnings rose to $1.09 a share, from 28 cents.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/business/16bank.html?_r=1&hp

Jamie Dimon’s Famous Patriotic Quote: “I would do anything for this country, but not if it would jeopardize JP Morgan” (Sorkin, Too Big To Fail, p478).

Dean Baker on Bogus Finance Reform Bill: On the negative side, there is little in this legislation that will fundamentally change the way that Wall Street does business. The rules on derivative trading will still allow the bulk of derivatives to be traded directly out of banks rather than separately capitalized divisions of the holding company. The Volcker rule was substantially weakened by a provision that will still allow banks to risk substantial sums in proprietary trading. “More importantly, there is probably no economist who believes that this bill will end the risks of too-big-to-fail financial institutions. The six largest banks will still enjoy the enormous implicit subsidy that results from the expectation that the federal government will bail them out in the event of a crisis.”Also, the fact that no regulators, most obviously Ben Bernanke at the Fed, were fired for failing to prevent the crisis leaves in place serious doubts about the structure of incentives for regulators. Cracking down on reckless behavior by politically powerful financial institutions will always be difficult for regulators. On the other hand, if regulators know that failing to crack down carries no consequences, even when it leads to disastrous outcomes, we can expect that regulators will have a strong bias toward ignoring reckless behavior. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/statement-on-wall-street-reform-bill-july-2010

Companies Keep their Bucks/Won’t Hire: Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession. And as several major firms report impressive earnings this week, the money continues to flow into firms’ coffers. Yet all the good news from big business hasn’t translated into much promise for jobless Americans, leading many to wonder: If corporations are sitting on so much money, why aren’t they hiring more workers? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071405960.html?hpid=topnews

Bloomberg: Treasury Bills Hit Low as Economy Shrivels: “Treasury two-year note yields fell to a record low as reports showed that consumer confidence plunged to the lowest level in a year and retail sales declined, heightening concern the economic recovery is stalling. Yields on 10-year notes traded near a 14-month low this week after minutes of the Federal Reserve’s June meeting showed policy makers noted that risks to the recovery increased. Housing starts and sales of existing homes declined last month, reports next week are forecast to show….“The Fed is on record talking about deflation, which they haven’t in some time,” said Thomas Tucci, head of U.S. government bond trading in New York at primary dealer Royal Bank of Canada. “When the Fed starts to identify things by name, that means it is seriously on their minds.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-17/treasury-two-year-note-yields-tumble-to-a-record-low-as-economy-weakens.html

Where Low Wages Really Are: As everyone knows, China’s low wages make it an attractive place to setup factories for certain kinds of manufactured goods. Except so many factories have moved to China that the country’s not nearly as poor as it used to be. So the sweatshoppers of the world are moving to new horizons:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/where-the-wages-are-really-low/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+matthewyglesias+%28Matthew+Yglesias%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Emerging Fascism Front:

Reminder: Chalmers Johnson Reviews Wolin: To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: “inverted totalitarianism,” a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on “private media” than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events. It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison—751 per 100,000 people—of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has “emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation’s political traditions.”  The genius of our inverted totalitarian system “lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual. … A demotion in the status and stature of the ‘sovereign people’ to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of ‘popularizing’ power to democracy as a brand name for a product marketable at home and marketable abroad. … The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. … The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed.”  http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/page2/20080515_chalmers_johnson_on_our_managed_democracy/

Story about Walt Riley and Susan Harman’s Bust:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/15/BABP1EECC9.DTL

Nazi Women and the Holocaust: …number of seemingly ordinary German women who willingly went out to the Nazi-occupied eastern territories as part of the war effort, to areas where genocide was openly occurring. “Thousands would be a conservative estimate,” Ms. Lower said in an interview in Jerusalem last week. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/world/europe/18holocaust.html?_r=1&hp

Nazis On Patrol in AZ: Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents and a tough new immigration  law are not enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who is now leading a militia in the Arizona desert. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/us/18militia.html?hp

Spy Versus Spy

ACLU Spies Everywhere! “Today the government is spying on Americans in ways the founders of our country never could have imagined. The FBI, federal intelligence agencies, the military, state and local police, private companies, and even firemen and emergency medical technicians are gathering incredible amounts of personal information about ordinary Americans that can be used to construct vast dossiers that can be widely shared with a simple mouse-click through new institutions like Joint Terrorism Task Forces, fusion centers, and public-private partnerships. The fear of terrorism has led to a new era of overzealous police intelligence activity directed, as in the past, against political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrants.This surveillance activity is not directed solely at suspected terrorists and criminals. It’s directed at all of us. Increasingly, the government is engaged in suspicionless surveillance that vacuums up and tracks sensitive information about innocent people. Even more disturbingly, as the government’s surveillance powers have grown more intrusive and more powerful, the restrictions on many of those powers have been weakened or eliminated. And this surveillance often takes place in secret, with little or no oversight by the courts, by legislatures, or by the public. ”

http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-spy-files

The Upside Down Iranian Defector Case: The United States and Iran have been locked in a covert “intelligence war” that has been raging for some time now. And, as in the Cold War, this war likely will involve the use of tactics ranging from assassinations and clandestine operations to propaganda, disinformation and the use of military proxies. Defectors and agents of influence also have been a feature of such wars in the past — which brings us back to the Asghari case.
The significance of Asghari’s disappearance stems entirely from his background. Not only did he serve as Iran’s deputy defense minister under former President Mohammed Khatami, but he also is a retired general who was a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the 1980s and 1990s. “This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR” http://www.stratfor.com/asghari_case_defection_and_damage_control?fn=6216721243?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100715&utm_content=related2&elq=f0d6091ac3904f6a8b4deec1930c2541

Three Cups of Imperialism: The e-mail message was in response to a note of support from Mr. Mortenson. It reflected his broad and deepening relationship with the United States military, whose leaders have increasingly turned to Mr. Mortenson, once a shaggy mountaineer, to help translate the theory of counterinsurgency into tribal realities on the ground. (The Brits often used “the plight of women” to bolster empire in India).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/world/asia/18tea.html?hp

Solidarity Forever Front:

NEA hacks sing Solidarity Forever, befouling a proud song. Reg Weaver, on the left, was busy eating a lot and taking home $686,949. Lily Eskelsen and Dennis Van Roekel will make a combined $700,000 plus this year. For that, they will tell students, education workers and community people to vote their way out of the Master/Slave relationship that is at the heart of exploitation.

The Lyrics that the NEA Piecards Could Not Sing:

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run,

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,

But the union makes us strong.

CHORUS:

Solidarity forever,

Solidarity forever,

Solidarity forever,

For the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,

Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?

For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;

Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;

Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;

But the union makes us strong.

Chorus

All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.

We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.

It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.

While the union makes us strong.

Chorus

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,

But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.

We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn

That the union makes us strong.

Chorus

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old

For the union makes us strong.

We Say Fightback Front:

The Second Battle For Blair Mountain

Great Video: Baby, You Got What it Takes!

Magical Mystery Tour Front:

Rapists Fear Women Priests: The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia…The new rules do not, for example, hold bishops accountable for abuse by priests on their watch, nor do they require them to report sexual abuse to civil authorities

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/world/europe/16vatican.html?hp

Worst Thing in History of World Front:
MOSCOW (???!!!!) — One woman said children as young as 10 working in the fields developed red rashes on their stoHuman Rights Watch researchers documented 72 instances of children working in the Kazakh tobacco fields, which employ about a thousand migrants each season.
Many are paid on a piecework basis, by the ton of harvested tobacco. The group said this was an inducement for parents to bring their children into the fields at harvest time. Even then, the report said, families made only a few hundred dollars for a half-year of farm work, after covering debts to farmers for board and travel. machs and necks as they harvested tobacco for use in cigarettes made by Philip Morris…. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/business/global/14smoke.html?src=me&ref=business

Best Thing in History of World:

More Time For KKKwame, the Racists’ Fave Mayor: Kwame Kilpatrick has been accused of sexual misconduct in prison for allegedly groping his wife during a July 4 visit to the Oaks Correctional Facility near Manistee. (Must be an Otis Mathis Trainee!) From The Detroit News:http://www.detnews.com/article/20100715/METRO01/7150455/Prison-officials-cite-Kilpatrick-for-misconduct-with-wife#ixzz0tmbFLx5b

Thanks to Lloyd, Sharon and George and Danny, Bob, Terry S and Ronna S, Crystal, Sherry, Arturo, Marisol, Dr P and Dr Bob, Michael, Gerry, Eve, Cary, Harry L, Holly, Donna, Bill and Bill, Greg, Mr J and Mr Z, Steve R, Susan and Susan, Perry, Kate, Giselle, Jack S, Tom H, Dana, Jesus,  Jim W, Tony and Otis.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Report from NEA Rep Assembly: The Education Agenda is a War Agenda:

http://richgibson.com/NEA-RA2010.html

NEA RA Photos: http://richgibson.shutterfly.com/71
(All banned on the Rethinking Schools and other Liberal listserves).

The NEA 2010 Rep Assembly: The Longer Version:

http://richgibson.com/NEA-RA2010LongerView.html

George Schmidt on the Totalitarian Welcome to Bill Gates at AFT Convention:

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1529&section=Article

Bill Gates Speaks to AFT while Some Walkout and Most Cheer the Convicted Monopolist:

Ohanian on Broad Foundation Impact on Schools and the Demagogue, Obama:

http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=704

1/3 of Detroit Principals are New Hires: More than a third of Detroit Public Schools will have new principals when school begins in September after a wave of retirements and reassignments.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100707/SCHOOLS/7070374/1026/schools/DPS-hires-52-new-principals#ixzz0t2ZlTchl

Touchy-Feely DPS Boss Arraigned: Former Detroit School Board President Otis Mathis III stood mute Tuesday at his 36th District Court arraignment on charges of misconduct in office and obscene conduct. http://www.detnews.com/article/20100706/SCHOOLS/7060373/1026/schools/Ex-DPS-board-president-Mathis-arraigned-on-obscenity-charge#ixzz0t2adJw2u

Who’s Running For Detroit School Board? Nobody: Nobody wants to run for two available seats on the Detroit Public Schools board. The deadline to get on the Aug. 3 primary ballot passed May 11 without anyone filing, meaning only a write-in candidate can be elected this fall.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100710/SCHOOLS/7100346/Detroit-Public-Schools-board-gets-no-candidates#ixzz0tFxHKtcx

Detroit Boss Bobb Already Reneges on Vile DFT Contract: In his outline for the 2010-11 budget, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb stated that he will raise class size for grades 4-12 beyond the negotiated limits in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the School District and the DFT. The EFM has stated that the contract allows for teachers to receive compensation for oversized classes. http://mi.aft.org/dft231/

Detroit Snooze Editorializes vs Tenure and Seniority: “ Spurred by a growing body of research that shows teacher quality is the No. 1 in-school predictor of student achievement, states and cities from New York City to Colorado are moving to ensure school districts consider other factors — such as performance and attendance — when staffing the nation’s classrooms, despite enormous political hurdles and risks. From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100708/OPINION01/7080329/1008/Good-teachers-for-all#ixzz0t7nzmUUJ

Another Look at the AFT Convention (alt site): http://www.aftconvention2010.8k.com/

Perpetual War Front:

McChrystal: Goon: Given McChrystal’s alleged involvement in the torture of detainees at Camp Nama in Iraq, his primary role in the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death and other dark acts involving his time commanding the Joint Special Operations Command under the Bush-Cheney administration, McChrystal should have never been named commander in Afghanistan. When he was appointed, Obama sent a message about the kind of policy he wanted in Afghanistan–one which favored unaccountable, unattributable direct action forces accustomed to operating in secret and away from effective oversight. Indeed, in the Rolling Stone article, McChrystal appeared to admit his famous commitment to decreasing civilian deaths was a sham operation. According to Rolling Stone: “‘You better be out there hitting four or five targets tonight,’ McChrystal will tell a Navy Seal he sees in the hallway at headquarters. Then he’ll add, ‘I’m going to have to scold you in the morning for it, though.’” http://www.thenation.com/blog/36599/gen-stanley-mcchrystal-and-blackwater-updated

Most Soldiers Have Nothing to Gain From this War. Poor and working people are sent to kill other poor and working people to make the rich richer…

Soldier Charged For Wiki Leaks (with video): The US military has pressed criminal charges against a soldier suspected of leaking video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq to the website, WikiLeaks. Army Spc Bradley Manning is accused of transferring classified data on to his personal computer and transmitting it to an unauthorised third party.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10529110.stm

There Goes the Economy Front:

Millions Fall off The Unemployment Lists as Bennies Expire: With the U.S. Senate’s failure to extend unemployment benefits that expired in June, things have gone from bad to worse for unemployed workers.

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/07/consider_rebudgeting_as_unempl.html

Obamagogue Health Care by Chris Hedges: “at least $447 billion in taxpayer subsidies will now be handed to insurance firms. We will be forced by law to buy their defective products. There is no check in the new legislation to halt rising health care costs. The elderly can be charged three times the rates provided to the young. Companies with predominantly female work forces can be charged higher gender-based rates…” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_health_care_bill_is_enough_to_make_you_sick_20100712/

Banks Say No but Taxpayers Cannot: From the earliest days of the credit crisis, the nation’s big financial institutions have been less than forthcoming about ballooning loan losses buried inside their books. To some degree this is understandable: denial is a powerful thing, after all, and writing off troubled loans during a period of severe stress is, for bankers, the equivalent of getting a root canal.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/morgenson-banks-say-no-too-bad-taxpayers-cant/?scp=1&sq=banks%20say%20no%20too%20bad%20taxpayers&st=cse

Salon Review on movie, Inside Job, about the Criminal Bankster Industry: Charles Ferguson is here to tell the world that the crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, threw millions of people out of their homes and out of work, and further widened the gulf between rich and poor was no accident. It was a crime.

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/05/19/cannes_ferguson

Will Banks Pay Their Debts, and Go Under? The sovereign debt crisis would seem to create worry enough for European banks, but there is another gathering threat that has not garnered as much notice: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/business/global/12refinance.html?_r=1&hpw

Magical Mystery Tour Front:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXc-IHGzpEE

Voice of God Cuts Back Staff: Founded in 1872, The Michigan Catholic was previously a weekly newspaper that served the region’s 1.3 million Catholics. Today, the staff learned that it would decrease publication to every two weeks and that five of its 12 employees were laid off. The next issue is to come out July 16 followed by July 30.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100707/NEWS06/100707063/1320/Catholic-newspaper-cuts-back-on-publishing

Worst Thing in History of World Front:

LL has Nasty Manicure (the number one read article at the Detroit Free Press on July 7th):
The 24-year-old actress sported a colorful manicure in court Tuesday that included obscene messages on each of her middle fingers. Close-up photos taken by a courtroom photographer revealed the tiny letters, which made worldwide news today on entertainment websites.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100707/ENT07/100707057/

Best Thing in the History of the World:

The Racists’ Favorite Mayor, Kilpatrick of Detroit, Pleads Not Guilty to 19 New Charges, Pleads Broke, and Sits in Jail:

http://www.freep.com/article/20100713/NEWS01/100713001/1318/Kilpatrick-pleads-not-guilty-to-19-felony-charges

Emerging Fascism Front:

Oakland Cops Beat Up and Arrested Our Friend Susan Harman:

http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2010/07/69-year-old-retired-school-principal-beaten-school-board-director-arrested-last-night-

Riot Fraud at G20 in Toronto–Cops pose as Rioters:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19928

Spy vs Spy

I Spy, You Spy, We Spy, They All Spy: Ten convicted Russian sleeper agents were whisked out of the United States on a plane headed over the Atlantic Ocean late Thursday as part of a deal with Moscow to put a quick end to an episode that threatened to disrupt relations between the two countries. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/world/europe/10russia.html?hp

Stratfor on the Ruskie Spies:…there are two things we know about the Russians: They are not stupid, and they are extremely patient. If we were to guess — and we are guessing — this was a team of talent scouts. They were not going to meetings at the think tanks because they were interested in listening to the papers; rather, they were searching for recruits. These were people between the ages of 22 and 30, doing internships or entry level jobs, with family and academic backgrounds that would make employment in classified areas of the U.S. government easy — and who in 20 to 30 years would provide intelligence and control to Moscow.

Who Snatched Whose Spy? In the latest twist in a murky tale, Pakistan said Tuesday that an Iranian nuclear scientist who Tehran maintains was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency had taken refuge in a section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington that deals with Iranian interests. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html?hp

Solidarity Forever?

Labor Backer Harry Kelber: Nice to be a Labor Boss, Sorry It Sucks for You (800,000 left AFL in 2008): Reading a long July 4 panegyric extolling the values and virtues of the labor movement, I was struck by one sentence that, in the midst of heavy platitudes, expressed a glittering truth. The sentence read: “People who work directly for unions get good wages and benefits.” (You betcha!) Starting at the top, the three AFL-CIO executive officers each earn about $250.000 a year with a guaranteed 60 percent of their salary for each year after they retire. All of the 51 members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council get salaries in the 6-figure range, And don’t forget the pensions and the perks! And none of them has ever been fired from their or suffered a wage cut!

http://www.laboreducator.org/

Heavens Weep Front:

BP Partner Refuses Share in Oil Gusher: One of BP’s partners in the deepwater well which exploded in April – leading to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – has refused to pay its share of the costs so far. Houston-based Anadarko, which owns 25% of the Macondo well, was asked to pay $272m (£180m) by BP. But an Anadarko spokesman said it was going to withhold payment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10581968.stm

We Say Fightback Front:
General Strike Paralyzes Greece: Another 24-hour general strike, the sixth this year to date, brought Greece to a standstill Thursday, in protest of the austerity plan adopted by the Giorgos Papandreou government. (July http

So Long, Tuli:

He exorcised the Pentagon

Tuli Kupferberg, a poet and singer who went from being a noted Beat to becoming, in his words, “the world’s oldest rock star” when he helped found the Fugs, the bawdy and politically pugnacious rock group, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/arts/music/13kupferberg.html?_r=2&hpw

Thanks to Susan and Susan, Marilyn, Amber, Gina and Adam, Doug S, Connie, Betty and Don, Barb and Ken (yes), Terry Stern, Tony, Andy, Candace, Larry, Bob, Dan H, Lisa, Bill and Greg, Mr J, Mr Z, Lloyd, Barry, Ernst, Ira, John T, Isadora, VS, Paul and Mary, Donna S, Kathy K, Michael, Shirley, Perry, Kay, George, Sharon, and Matt and Kimmie.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

http://www.rougeforum.org/October7.pdf

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Aging Pole Dancer Hides Fee At CSU School: “In preparation for Ms. Palin’s arrival, workers had transformed the cafeteria’s dining hall. It was draped with crimson tablecloths, festooned with orchids and surrounded by chain-link fences.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/us/politics/27palin.html?hpw

Strange Bedfellows (save the hankies): Bamn represents DPS: “The board is asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent the layoffs and outsourcing while the case is in court. The board’s attorney, George Washington, said the motion for an injunction will be filed this afternoon.” http://www.freep.com/article/20100629/NEWS01/100629033/1320/School-board-to-file-motion-against-Bobb

Schoolbrary: Library and School Fittingly Covered with a Prophylactic: “The San Diego City Council voted Monday to start building a downtown library with a school on two upper floors. The plan passed despite a downturn that has cut back on library hours across the city and the fact that fundraisers still have to scrounge up more than $30 million in donations.” See the unforgettable image—

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/government/article_6f1c2d8c-8333-11df-b36f-001cc4c002e0.html

Ohanian on College of Ed Review of Her Site: “This just confirms my view that in schools of education, critical thinking skills are nothing more than reheated mashed potatoes. And as far as “difficult to integrate” the material on my site into “most curriculum and pedagogy for teacher education,” are these people out of their minds? My site only concerns the daily life’s blood of practicing teachers. If this weren’t true, why would the Bank Street College of Education be invited me to launch their new season?”  http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9403

Detroit School Budget Deficit Booms:The budget deficit for Detroit Public Schools has ballooned from $219 million last year to $363 million, according to budget documents released Tuesday by the district.The 66-percent spike in the debt occurred during the first full year of leadership under Robert Bobb, the state-appointed emergency financial manager. Bobb was appointed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm to help eliminate the district’s deficit. His term expires in March. A year ago Bobb pledged to end overspending and expected a $17 million surplus that would help whittle the $219 million deficit accumulated from previous years.From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100630/SCHOOLS/6300344/1026/Detroit-Schools-budget-deficit-grows-66-#ixzz0sJhXjb2k

We Say Fightback

Uprising at G8 in Toronto:

Cops Attack U. Toronto During G8 (plus photos) : “ Police raided a university building and rounded up more protesters Sunday in an effort to quell further violence at the global economic summit after black-clad youths rampaged through the city, smashing windows and torching police cruisers. Police said they have arrested more than 500 demonstrators, many of whom were hauled away in plastic handcuffs and taken to a temporary holding center constructed for the summit…Thousands of police headed to Toronto to reinforce security there after the smaller Group of Eight summit ended Saturday in Huntsville, Ontario, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) away. Security was being provided by an estimated 19,000 law enforcement officers drawn from across Canada, and security costs were estimated at more than US$900 million. ”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jun/27/police-arrest-more-than-500-at-toronto-summit/

Native Americans Lead 100K March Vs Zonie Law: ” As an estimated 100,000 people marched six miles May 29 to protest Arizona’s new immigration law, they were led by Lakotas, Paiutes, Yavapai-Apache, Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, and other tribal members. Those in front held a banner that read, “Lakota-Nation: America Was Built With Stolen Land. No Border. No Boundaries.” http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/95614534.html

Perpetual War Front:

From Tomgram:

OBAMA: “I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18 months?”
PETRAEUS: “Sir, I’m confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame.”
OBAMA: “If you can’t do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?”
PETRAEUS: “Yes, sir, in agreement.”
MULLEN: “Yes, sir.”
…Petraeus’s COIN policy logically demands a decade-long war, involving labor-intensive (and military-centric) nation-building, waged village by village and valley by valley, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and countless U.S., NATO, and Afghan casualties, including civilians.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175266/tomgram:_robert_dreyfuss,_the_president_chooses_the_guru/

War Means Work: “Defense contractors in San Diego County are experiencing ups and down common to the industry. The situation has been complicated by high-level political discussions over the fate of some weapons programs and the role of the Navy and Marines. Here’s a current snapshot of the industry locally.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jun/25/providing-the-systems-that-serve-local/

General McChrystal and the Wages of Hypocrisy (the big secret is that the US cannot befriend the Afghans, et al, because the US is there to rob them, even if US troops do not know that, Afghans do…): “ there is likely an even deeper reason for the ill-considered remarks by the general and his “Team America” (as his crew liked to refer to itself):  They were operating in an environment of significant and increasing hypocrisy at the political level and intellectual dishonesty at the level of policy and even propaganda.  This situation has produced a level of cognitive dissonance which became so corrosive that those at the center of the Afghanistan mission could not stop themselves from revealing this reality to the outside world when presented with the opportunity, however ill-advised doing so might have been for their careers and the mission more broadly.”

http://www.hnn.us/articles/128443.html

Exterminate All the Brutes: Petraeus to take a Second Look at Firepower:
“I want to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform,” General Petraeus said. “Those on the ground must have all the support they need when they are in a tough situation.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/world/asia/30petraeus.html?hp

American Bribes Fly Out of Kabul: “KABUL — A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan — often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport — as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money’s origin.

The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal.” http://afpakwar.com/blog/archives/4613

Solidarity Forever:

Criminal Quisling Mandela Regime–the Glass Half Full at World Cup–Dave Zirin:

Galeano on Soccer: http://www.versobooks.com/verso_info/excerpts/galeano_excpt.shtml

Emerging Fascism

Cops Slug Journalist at G8:

http://www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5326&updaterx=2010-06-27+19:10:41

Oops There Goes the Economy

Chossudovsky on G8 Lies (Remember War, Bankbailouts, Forget Schools + Health, cut deficit!):

Banksters to Congress–Thanks for Groveling: “ there is the financial reform bill. You killed any plans to break up too big to fail banks (leaving us with huge government subsidies) and kept any talk of a financial speculations tax from being taken seriously.Keep up the great work; we’ll remember you at campaign contribution time.” http://www.truth-out.org/wall-street-congratulates-washington-a-job-well-done60845

Banks Escape Regulations by the People (a shocker): “Banks won’t have to prepay billions of dollars into a fund to cover the cost of breaking up large failing financial institutions, as both the House and Senate first proposed. Banks also escaped a limitation on their size, and there’s no explicit prohibition of government rescues if their failures pose major risks to the economy.
In addition, they’ll have to wall off their trading in the lucrative, complex instruments called derivatives in separate related companies. The lack of transparency surrounding derivatives amplified the financial crisis. In a compromise brokered by the Treasury Department, banks were able to keep their trading desks for common — and generally less-risky — types of derivatives, such as bets on swings in interest rates and on the U.S. dollar’s value against other currencies. This move won over the New Democrat Coalition, 69 moderates in the House.”

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/25/v-print/96584/finance-bill-gives-more-consumer.html

Stocks Fall, Again: “Stocks sank worldwide today as downbeat reports intensified worries about the global economy and bolstered fears that the U.S. would slide back into recession. The Dow Jones industrials closed down about 265 points, or 2.6%, to about 9,870. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost about 3.1%, and the Nasdaq composite plunged about 3.8%. Wall Street opened lower after a consumer confidence index fell more than expected. The day’s selling began in China after an index of that country’s economic prospects was revised lower.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiw-markets-20100629,0,5795755.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

Fed funding cut to limit No Worker Left Behind:

“Michigan’s unemployed were dealt another blow Tuesday when the state announced it will scale back a popular worker retraining program thousands have used to restart their careers”

Spy vs Spy

Russian Times on Russian Spy Ring:

The Formal Complaint vs The Russian Spy Ring: from i n or about the 1990s, up t o and i n c l u d i n g the present, i n t h e Southern D i s t r i c t of New York and elsewhere, ANNA CHAPMAN and MIKHAIL SEMENKO, t h e defendants, and others known and unknown, u n l a w f u l l y , w i l l f u l l y and knowingly, d i d combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and w i t h each other t o commit an offense against the U n i t e d States, t o w i t , to v i o l a t e Section 951 o f T i t l e 18, U n i t e d States Code.  http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2010-06/54639202.pdf

The Heavens Weep:

Fearing the “destruction” of BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N), British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday some certainty is needed over its costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill even as the company’s stock plunged to a 14-year low. “Total share losses for the embattled British energy giant since the worst oil spill in U.S. history began on April 20 stand at around $100 billion, more than halving its market value prior to the disaster. BP stock on Friday fell more than 6 percent in London and New York. BP plans to nearly double next week its capacity for siphoning oil gushing from its ruptured deep-sea well, but a looming storm is raising fears the effort could be disrupted for days or weeks. BP and the U.S. government nervously watched as an approaching low-pressure system over the western Caribbean Sea gathered strength.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1416392020100625

Hey Look! Magic!

Pope Rebukes Cardinal: “The Vatican drew aside, for a brief and puzzling moment, the thick veil that covers its internal business. It issued an extraordinary communiqué on Monday chastising a powerful cardinal who had criticized another powerful cardinal — proof of a battle inside the Vatican walls that mirrors the anger over sexual abuse raging outside them.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/world/europe/29pope.html?scp=1&sq=pope%20vatican&st=cse

The Weekly Infuriator:

Best Thing in the History of the World:

Geezer Bandit for President: Geezer Bandit robbed yet another bank – what’s believed to be the 11th bank tied to the prolific and elusive bank robber. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Geezer-Bandit-Hits-11th-Bank-97150959.html

Advice to Detroit Board of Ed Prezzie–How to Fold a Hankie for that Special Occasion:

Annie Get Your Gun! “it was only a few years ago that some commentators were calling talk of the Second Amendment as an individual right crazy, something that only paid shills for the N.R.A. could possibly endorse. That turns out not to be the case.”

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/what-bolstering-gun-rights-will-mean/?hp#glenn

Worst thing in the History of the World:

Criminal Charges Coming vs Mathis? “The request stems from last week’s accusations by the district’s superintendent, Teresa Gueyser, that Mathis had touched himself in a sexual way in front of her during a private meeting, and that Mathis had previously done so during meetings with her. Mathis wrote a letter to colleagues that acknowledged he “made inappropriate actions toward a professional employee of the board” but blamed “ongoing health problems” for his “poor judgment.” From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100626/SCHOOLS/6260359/1409/Criminal-charges-sought-against-Mathis#ixzz0rwN7TUFB

The Only Solution to the Myriad Problems of Out Time:

Classics:

Perhaps nothing points so clearly to the alienated nature of politics in the present day United States as the fact that capitalism, the economic system that drives the society, is effectively off-limits to critical review or discussion. To the extent that capitalism is mentioned by politicians or pundits, it is regarded in hushed tones of reverence for the genius of the market, its unquestioned efficiency, and its providential authority. One might quibble with a corrupt and greedy CEO or a regrettable loss of jobs, but the superiority and necessity of capitalism—or, more likely, its euphemism, the so-called “free market system”—is simply beyond debate or even consideration. There are, of course, those who believe that the system needs more regulation and that there is room for all sorts of fine-tuning. Nevertheless, there is no questioning of the basics.

From Capitalism, the Absurd System:  http://monthlyreview.org/100601mcchesney-foster.php

Thanks to AG, Lloyd, Sandy, Don, Alcorn, Candace, Dennis B., Steve, Doug, Connie, Greg, Bill, Adam and Gina, Sherry, Joe and Joe, The Susans, Crystal, Jon, Stephen, Joel, Mr J and Mr Z, Judy who just retired, Pete, Ricky, TC, Margaret, Arturo, and Jesus.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

The Rouge Forum helped lead March 4th. Join Us!

June 25 and 26, 1876: Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn (McCuster’s Too!)

Chief Gall
Crazy Horse

June 28,1914 – Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the casus belli of World War I.

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Emily Alpert on the End of the Stim: “Millions of stimulus dollars that helped school districts across San Diego County survive this year and patch together their budgets for next year are drying up next summer, leaving districts that relied on the money to pay teachers or other employees fending off deficits as deep as before. It is a new, if predictable, threat. Financial wonks call it “the funding cliff” — and school districts are now headed straight toward it.”

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/article_8f9817e2-7f37-11df-a709-001cc4c002e0.html

31 States Set Up National Tests: “Two big coalitions of states are competing for federal dollars to create a series of new national academic tests to replace the current patchwork system.In the current system, every state gives a different test to its students. In some states, passing the exam is a graduation requirement. The federal government has said it will award up to two grants of up to $160 million to create a testing system based on the proposed new national academic standards in language arts and mathematics.” Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/breaking/31-states-band-together-to-create-new-national-academic-tests-to-replace-patchwork-system-96984834.html#ixzz0rj0jLIsQ

So Long New York State History: “The New York State Board of Regents blamed the elimination of the 5th and 8th grade social studies assessments on budget cuts, inflation, the increased cost of testing vendor contracts, and the need for more test security. But the real reason for the elimination of history in the classroom is the pressure to achieve No Child Left Behind standards and participate in President Obama’s Race to the Bottom.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/new-york-cancels-history_b_622665.html

Teacher Gary Groth on His Year of the RaTT in School: “This year I was told what to teach, when to teach, how to teach, how long to teach, who to teach, who not to teach, and how often to test. My students were assessed with easily more than 120 tests of one shape or another within the first 6 months of the school year. “My ability to make decisions about what is best for my students was taken away by an overzealous attempt to impose ‘consistency’ within my grade group. My school hired an outside consultant who threatened us with our jobs, demanded that everyone comply, and required us to submit data on test results on a weekly basis. If your class didn’t do well, you were certainly going to be in trouble…”

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/teacher-worst-year-in-the-clas.html#more

Welcome UALE! “The UALE Worker-Writers Group was formed to help schools, trade unions and grass roots organizations connect with contemporary working class writers. By providing a list of authors with their locale and email address, we make it easier for organizations to invite writers to their facility. Writers can provide readings, workshops and classes that help working class men and women develop their writing and storytelling skills.All are invited to submit the names of writers. Be sure to include contact information and location.”

http://uale.org/contemporary-worker-writers

School Gutting Continues In CA.: “Preliminary proposals for the 2011-12 year include a call to cut the district work force by 10 percent, close small schools, eliminate vice principals, raise class sizes and revert to half-day kindergarten classes. Districts across California have gutted their budgets due to ongoing cuts from the state. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a $2.5 billion reduction in education funding next year.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jun/22/slashed-budget-for-schools-all-but-okd/

We Say Fightback

Uprising in Bangladesh: 700 Factories Struck and Closed: “ About 700 garment factories in Bangladesh were shut Tuesday after days of violent protests by tens of thousands of workers demanding better wages. The manufacturers decided late Monday to close their factories because they had no other way to avoid the anarchy in the major industrial hub outside the capital, according to an official at the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. But the shut doors spurred more violence Tuesday, when workers smashed vehicles and set fire to at least five on a major highway…”We are helpless,” Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, a vice-president of the industry group…” http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hEOvm0kNTZZR7rttjyuv3sQPU54g

China Again–Toyota Struck: “Toyota Motor halted production at a car factory in China on Tuesday for the second time this month after workers at a supplier staged a walkout. It was the latest in a string of strikes that has hit Japanese carmakers just as they look to increase production in China, the world’s biggest auto market.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/business/global/23strike.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Perpetual War (botched) Front:

Navy Hushes Poisoning of Personnel at Camp Lejeune: “The U.S. Department of the Navy says that more research is needed to connect ailments suffered by Marines such as Devereaux who served at Camp Lejeune and their families who lived there to decades of water contamination at the 156,000-acre base in eastern North Carolina. Meanwhile, however, the Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly begun awarding benefits to a few Marines who were based at Lejeune.”Right now, I would venture to say that any Camp Lejeune veteran who files a claim now is presumed to have been exposed to the contaminated drinking water,” Brad Flohr, the assistant director for policy, compensation and pension service at the VA, told a meeting of affected Marines and family members in April.” http://www.stripes.com/news/us/va-quietly-giving-benefits-to-those-exposed-to-lejeune-s-toxic-water-1.107796

War? What War? Look at Sarah’s Implants! No Wait! Mylie’s Exit! Woo Hoo!!

* Earlier this year, Marja was the site of a major offensive against the Taliban. It was initially considered–or cited–as a success for the US forces. Now fighting continues in Marja, and the area has yet to be secured and stabilized.

* Marja was supposed to be followed by a US/NATO assault in Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban–and a city controlled by Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who has been accused of rampant corruption. But earlier this month, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, began to downplay expectations for the coming Kandahar operation. Moreover, US officials keep debating among themselves whether they should try to push out Ahmed Wali Karzai (a.k.a AWK) or work with him. From the outside, the what-to-do-about-AWK tussle looks like a mess

* President Karzai continues to be an unreliable–and erratic–partner. After a rocket attack on the peace jirga, he suggested in a meeting that Americans, not the Taliban, were responsible for the assault. A New York Times article quoted Amrulah Saleh, who resigned as chief of Afghan’s intelligence service after this attack, saying that Karzai “has lost his confidence in the capability of either the [NATO] coalition or his own government to protect this country.” A Western diplomat told the paper, “Karzai told me that he can’t trust the Americans to fix the situation here. He believes they stole his legitimacy during the elections last year”–when Karzai was widely viewed as having engaged in massive fraud.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/21/is-bp-oil-spill-helping-obama-on-afghanistan-war/

Hot Competition For Militarizing New Sectors of the Education Industry! “  USC has opened an academic center in San Diego that is offering a military social-work program — the first of its kind in the nation. The USC San Diego Academic Center was launched in the fall in Rancho Bernardo with graduate classes leading to a master’s degree in social work. Although other specialties in the field are available, most of the attention is centered on the unique military social-work program. The concentrated presence of the military in San Diego led the University of Southern California to decide to expand into the county for the first time, said Cindy Monticue of the USC School of Social Work.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jun/20/usc-deploys-military-social-work-program/

US Funding Feudalist Afghan Warlords and War Criminals: “American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday…money given to these Afghan warlords often amounts to little more than mafia-style protection payments, with some NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords coming under attack. … American taxpayer money is making its way to the Taliban. Several trucking company supervisors told investigators that they believed the gunmen they hired to escort their convoys bribed the Taliban not to attack.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22contractors.html?hp

US Invasion Sparks Drug Unwar: “The last several years of poverty, conflict and widely available opium are taking a toll on the Afghan population, with roughly 800,000 Afghan adults now using opium, heroin and other illicit drugs, a jump from five years ago, according to a study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22afghan.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp

Free! All You Need to Know About Why Obamagogue’s Wars Will Fail! Street Without Joy, No Charge: http://www.archive.org/details/streetwithoutjoy031227mbp

Whose Punk Is Who? The Infamous Rolling Stone Story: “After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now-infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn’t send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of “mission failure.” The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president’s ass.”  “The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense. In the end, however, McChrystal got almost exactly what he wanted”…””Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing,” McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.”
“I’m not saying go out and kill everybody, sir,” the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236?RS_show_page=1

So Long McCuster, You’ve Been Punked: “there is a crucial difference: In Iraq, General Petraeus was called in to reverse a failed strategy put in place by previous commanders. In Afghanistan, General Petraeus was instrumental in developing and executing the strategy in partnership with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who carried it out on the ground. Now General Petraeus will be directly responsible for its success or failure, risking the reputation he built in Iraq.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/world/asia/24petraeus.html?hp

Warlord Karzai Backed Warlord McCuster: “Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave a strong endorsement Tuesday to embattled Gen. Stanley McChrystal, describing him as the “best commander” of the war and expressing hope that he keeps his job despite a magazine profile replete with derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and members of the U.S. national strategy team.”http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/ap_afghan_karzai_062110/

Spec Ops Gang Shocked and Appalled: “Indeed, it was the comments attributed to members of McChrystal’s staff that made the biggest impact on the special ops officers. “McChrystal has surrounded himself with a bunch of clowns … who don’t have really a … clue of what their role is and what they’re doing,” said a Special Forces officer with extensive experience in Afghanistan.” http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/tns_reaction_062210/

Solidarity Forever:

Warbucks Weaver Announcing Deal With AFL-CIO and NEA

NEA Bans Delegate for Questioning former NEA President’s 2008 Salary of $686,949: “Since May 19, I have called and emailed the press office of the National Education Association, asking the staff to explain why former NEA president, Reg Weaver, collected a total of $686,949, in his last year as president. That’s about $260,000 more than any NEA president, past or present.”

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1493&section=Article

Nearly 2/3 of AFT Members Voting Approve of Holding HS Graduations in Churches:
“Yes 61%  (2,210 votes)
No 39% (1,419 votes)
Total Votes: 3,629 http://www.aft.org/

Rhee: Take the Rotten AFT Contract For DC, Sold By Weingarten, to NYC!  The Contract would:
* Base layoffs on “performance, not seniority.”

* Eliminate teachers who collect full-time pay but don’t have a permanent position at a school.

* Fire teachers who are rated “ineffective” and offer bonuses for “our most highly effective teachers.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/13/2010-06-13_dc_schools_boss_offers_fix_for_nyc.html#ixzz0rYgkWkE0

Michelle Rhee Thanks Weingarten for Helping Sell out DC Educators: “We negotiated this agreement with the help of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who used to run New York City’s UFT. At its conclusion we all agreed that the new deal is good for kids and fair to teachers….Use Randi Weingarten. I don’t like to get in the middle of someone else’s negotiation and I know that there is a long and complicated history between Weingarten and Klein. However, based on my experiences negotiating with Weingarten, she is very much able to see the direction the nation is heading in and the fact that unions need to be a part of the solution. Both Klein and Mulgrew should lean on her.” Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/06/13/2010-06-13_dc_school_chancellor_michelle_rhee_says_new_york_must_learn_from_her_groundbreak.html#ixzz0ruOP9650

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/06/13/2010-06-13_dc_school_chancellor_michelle_rhee_says_new_york_must_learn_from_her_groundbreak.html#ixzz0ruO0JcaT

Harry Kelber–Labor Talk: “For the past ten months Elizabeth Shuler has been the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer in name only…she has never fulfilled any of the functions (despite a) $238,976 salary (plus) 60% pension….the AFL’s net assets declined from $60 million in 2000 to a negative $2.3 million by 2008.” http://www.laboreducator.org/ June 25 edition

Shuler Thanks You For Your Dough (no mention of farcical debt–sob, wells up, loves Mom):

UAW Goons Offer Toyota Workers a New Layer of Bosses: “The problem for the U.A.W. is that the auto industry’s troubles have actually compounded the challenge of organizing workers, labor experts say. The union has little in the way of a sales pitch on wages and benefits now that the Detroit automakers have cut wages and benefits to union members to be more in line with Toyota and the other so-called transplant manufacturers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/business/global/23uaw.html?src=busln&scp=1&sq=uaw%20toyota&st=cse

Emerging Fascism

Sam Smith on Liberals and The Obamagogue: “Leaving aside the distortion of the term progressives – properly applied to those tired of liberals in denial – the claim raises some precise questions that vanden Heuvel never addressed. For example, do her “progressives” support: – The war in Afghanistan? – The continued use of Gitmo and similar facilities? – The continuation of unconstitutional practices in wiretapping? – The harassment of government whistleblowers? – The corporate-driven war against public education? – The bailout of huge banks while foreclosure-threatened homeowners are left to fester? – Increased funding for war on drugs? – Obama’s plans offshore drilling? – His handling of BP crisis? – The support Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestine? – Obama’s plans to undermine the Miranda ruling? – The extension of the Patriot Act? – Obama’s attempt to wrest more budgetary control from Congress? – A commission designed to cut Social Security and Medicare? – Plans to turn public housing over to corporate slumlords?” http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=5951

Pluralists! Multi-Culturalists! Nationalists! Taste This:

http://www.globalpost.com/video/general/100525/bosnia-train

Millionaire Supremes Say You Can’t Aid Terrorists (who are???): “The Supreme Court upheld a federal law banning “material support” for foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting challenges that the measure was so broad as to impinge on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment rights of free speech and association.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895204575320641631008492.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

Robert Fisk: The Language of War: “For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words “peace process” to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people. I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo – although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis…How do we break with the language of power? It is certainly killing us. That, I suspect, is one reason why readers have turned away from the “mainstream” press to the internet. Not because the net is free, but because readers know they have been lied to and conned; they know that what they watch and what they read in newspapers is an extension of what they hear from the Pentagon or the Israeli government, that our words have become synonymous with the language of a government-approved, careful middle ground, which obscures the truth as surely as it makes us political – and military – allies of all major Western governments.” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/fighting-talk-the-new-propaganda-2006001.html

Huttaree Fools Denied Bail: “”The group and its members had never taken any action except for field training, and some of the taped conversations appeared to be in jest,” she said.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100622/METRO/6220398/Appeals-court–Hutaree-defendants-to-stay-behind-bars#ixzz0rcOfnARL

Oops There Goes the Economy

Get A JOB!

N Plus One: Back to Marx: “It would add a nice dialectical twist to the future history of our period if it could be said that, around the time the post-Maoist Chinese took up shopping, the post-bubble Americans turned to studying Marx.” http://nplusonemag.com/intellectual-situation-your-marx

Welcome! Insurgent Notes: “The legacy of Bolshevism in particular (which we neither embrace nor despise) has among other things greatly obscured the fundamental problem identified by Marx as the alienation of universal from cooperative labor. This problematic has been reified for over a century by variations around the themes of a (mainly intellectual) vanguard “leading” the working class and a libertarian counter-point glorifying workers as the point of production to the exclusion of all else. The much deeper reality of the problem is built into the nature of capitalist society itself, based as it is on the separation of mental and manual labor.”

http://insurgentnotes.com/2010/06/presenting-insurgent-notes/

Millionaires in Black Robes to Free Enron’s Skilling? “The court sent both cases back to the lower courts. Mr. Skilling’s lawyers have argued that a decision in his favor should void his entire conviction, which was based on several theories. That, Justice Ginsburg wrote, is “an open question” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/us/25scotus.html?hp

Spy vs Spy

Air America Spies and Drug Dealers Have A Friendly Chat with the LATimes: “That iconic photo of a helicopter on a Saigon rooftop loading passengers just before the city fell? It wasn’t, as many have mistakenly said, a military chopper on the U.S. Embassy roof loading up the last diplomats. It was an Air America Huey on an apartment building that housed CIA employees.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-adna-air-america-convention-20100619,0,4141314,full.story

The Heavens Weep:

WILL THIS CHILD WITNESS WORLD’s END????

BP Spills Coffee:

BP/Obamagogue Soften Blow (WSJ): “BP successfully argued it shouldn’t be liable for most of the broader economic distress caused by the president’s six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And it fended off demands to pay for restoration of the Gulf coast beyond its prespill conditions. After the high-profile meeting of administration and BP officials on Wednesday, it was in the interest of neither to discuss such details. BP wanted to look contrite and to make a grand gesture, and the White House wanted to look tough. President Barack Obama came away touting how BP’s money would be handed over quickly and impartially to those hurt by the spill. Not only did BP earmark the $20 billion fund but it promised an additional $100 million for Gulf workers idled by the drilling moratorium. But BP didn’t offer a blank check. The $100 million—0.5% of the total—won’t come close to covering collateral damage from the White House’s moratorium. The drilling industry estimates the moratorium will cost rig workers as much as $330 million a month in direct wages, not counting businesses servicing those rigs like machine-shop workers.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895204575320064145090860.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Analyst says Gusher Might be good for GDP!
“Annie Lowrey notes a J.P. Morgan Chase analysis suggests JP Morgan Chase is Biggest Owner in BP–ting the BP spill will actually raise the country’s GDP, at least in the short term. “Cleaning up the spill will likely be enough to slightly offset the negative impact of all this on GDP, J.P. Morgan said,” summarizes Luca Di Leo. “The bank cites estimates of 4,000 unemployed people hired for the cleanup efforts, which some reports have said could be worth between $3 and $6 billion.”This is a nice object lesson in the inadequacy of GDP as a measurement of societal well-being. I could blow up the biggest building in every city in the country and the resulting reconstruction effort could mean a big temporary increase in GDP.”

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/could_the_bp_oil_spill_increas.html

BBC: Worker Told BP About Faulty BOP: “A Deepwater Horizon rig worker has told the BBC that he identified a leak in the oil rig’s safety equipment weeks before the explosion. Tyrone Benton said the leak was not fixed at the time, but that instead the faulty device was shut down and a second one relied on. BP said rig owners Transocean were responsible for the operation and maintenance of that piece of equipment.Transocean said it tested the device successfully before the accident.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10362139.stm

Your Money or Your Water: “A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration had imposed in response to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23drill.html?hp

BP vs Birder Andrew Wheelan

Shortly after the end of the video, Wheelan got in his car and drove away but was soon was pulled over. It was the same cop, but this time he had company: Kenneth Thomas, whose badge, Wheelan told me, read “Chief BP Security.” The cop stood by as Thomas interrogated Wheelan for 20 minutes, asking him who he worked with, who he answered to, what he was doing, why he was down here in Louisiana. He phoned Wheelan’s information in to someone. Wheelan says Thomas confiscated his Audubon volunteer badge (he’d recently attended an official Audubon/BP bird-helper volunteer training) and then wouldn’t give it back, which sounds like something only a bully in a bad movie would do. Eventually, Thomas let Wheelan go.
“Then two unmarked security cars followed me,” Wheelan told me. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I was specifically trying to figure out if they were following me, and every time I pulled over, they pulled over.” This went on for 20 miles. Which does little to mitigate my own about reporting from what can feel like a corporate-police state.The media liaison for the government-run Deepwater Horizon Response Joint Information Center told me BP would would get back to me for comment on the incident. I’m still waiting.

Klare: Whither the Next Oil Calamity? “The disaster in the Gulf is no anomaly.  It’s an arrow pointing toward future nightmares.” http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175264/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_coming_era_of_energy_disasters

Hey Look! Magic!

Rapist Priests Try to Fend Off the Law: “Victims of abuse by Catholic clergy are expressing dismay at the strong lobbying the church is doing in Lansing to halt an effort to remove Michigan’s statute of limitations on sex abuse cases. In Michigan, victims must file criminal or civil complaints by the time they turn 19 — what some say is an unrealistic limit on kids who often are traumatized for years by the abuse. The church maintains that removing the statute of limitations could open the floodgates to abuse cases that are a half-century old and could take money away from programs that benefit the poor. But victims such as Collins see the church’s actions as another example of the church protecting itself rather than victims. http://www.detnews.com/article/20100625/METRO/6250386/Catholic-church-fights-lifting-of-sex-abuse-suit-limits#ixzz0rqTIEHAs

Oconnor: “ There should be a full criminal investigation of the Catholic hierarchy of any country in which this has been an issue. There should be a full criminal investigation of the Vatican. There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope. The pope should stand down for the fact that he did not act in a Christian fashion to protect children, and for the fact that his organization acted to preserve their business interests decade after decade rather than be concerned about the interests of children, and for showing so much disrespect for Christ, God, the victims, the rest of us, their own clergy. . . .” http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/24/world/la-fg-sinead-qa25-2010mar25/2

Belgian Ghouls Chase Rapists: “An extraordinary series of raids on the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium provoked sharp criticism from the Vatican on Friday, with the church expressing “shock” a day after Belgian investigators interrupted a bishops’ meeting at the church’s Brussels headquarters, detaining clerics for nine hours, and opened an archbishop’s grave at a cathedral north of the city.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/world/europe/26belgium.html?hp

Papacy Continues Cover-Up: “The Vatican is asking a federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath in a Kentucky sex abuse lawsuit on the grounds that there has been no evidence of a link to church officials in Rome.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/25/vatican-moves-to-block-qu_n_625435.html?ir=Daily%20Brief

The Weekly Infuriator:

Oops. Sorry About Your Pier: “Pfaeffle is the ninth skipper fired this year. He is the fourth surface commander and the first frigate skipper relieved in 2010.”

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/navy_co_pfaeffle_fired_062210w/

Best Thing in the History of the World:

Kilpatrick’s Mug Shot

The Racists’ Fave Mayor KKKilpatrick, Faces Lots More Charges: “Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was indicted this afternoon on allegations of taking at least $640,000 from his nonprofit foundation for his mayoral campaign and travel, car leases college tuition, anti-bugging equipment and yoga lessons.A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Kilpatrick, currently serving time in a northern Michigan prison, with 19 fraud-related charges. They include 10 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, five counts of filing false tax returns and one count of tax evasion.” From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100623/METRO/6230417/Kwame-Kilpatrick-indicted-on-19-counts#ixzz0rjnHoD1H

Worst thing in the History of the World:

Detroit School Boss Teresa Gueyser’s Letter Regarding Fondler and School Board Prezzie Otis Mathis: “On this day Mr Mathis continued to fondle his genital area for approximately 20 minutes, or the entire time I was talking…”

http://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/detnews/2010/pdf/0618mathis.pdf

Freep On The Mathis Enablers: “The good news is that most Detroit Board of Education members have ignored school board president Otis Mathis’ ill-considered attempt to retract the resignation he submitted last week after Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Teresa Gueyser outed him for masturbating in school business meetings. Mathis has no future in public service. If he even dimly appreciated his predicament, he’d be decamping to a remote foreign country instead of trying to get his office back. The bad news is that the board majority that elected Mathis president earlier this year is still in place, and at least one of their number, the Reverend David Murray, has dismissed Mathis’ over-the-top transgressions as a function of either the ex-board president’s youth (Mathis is 55) or his naivete. (“Maybe he didn’t know,” Murray suggested Friday after Gueyser’s accusations became public, “it was offensive to her.”)”

Mathis Explains Why Illiteracy Shouldn’t Disqualify a School Board President:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4083379/fit-to-lead/?playlist_id=87249

Teacher Fired for the Nasty! “Jarretta Hamilton said administrators at the Southland Christian School in April 2009 had questioned her about when she had conceived and then fired her for “fornication” after she told them she had become pregnant before her marriage.”

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/4210728

The Only Solution to the Myriad Problems of Out Time?:

June 28, 1997: The Tyson Bite:

Classics: Fredy Perlman: “It seems to me that at least one of Marx’s observations is true: every minute devoted to the capitalist production process, every thought contributed to the industrial system, further enlarges a power that is inimical to nature, to culture, to life. Applied science is not something alien; it is an integral part of the capitalist production process. Nationalism is not flown in from abroad. It is a product of the capitalist production process, like the chemical agents poisoning the lakes, air, animals and people, like the nuclear plants radioactivating micro-environments in preparation for the radioactivation of the macro-environment. As a postscript I’d like to answer a question before it is asked. The question is: “Don’t you think a descendant of oppressed people is better off as a supermarket manager or police chief?” My answer is another question: What concentration camp manager, national executioner or torturer is not a descendant of oppressed people?”

Thanks to Lloyd, Frank, Mort, Bob, Alan, Tanya, Sherry, Amber, Taylor, Erin, Steph, Jodie, Wayne, Adam and Gina, Bill, Greg, Joel, Mr J, Mr Z, Bob, Teresa, Candace, Bonnie Mc, Barb V, Sandy Stone, Pierce G., Jim A, David S, Ms V, The Susans and the school in Yosemite.

Good luck to us, every one.

r