Rouge Forum 2013 will be held at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI on May 16-19.
The theme of this RF2013 is “Winning the Class Struggle Against Corporate Education Reform”
The Rouge Forum brings together academic presentations and panel discussions, performances, community building, and cultural events.
Join us in Beautiful Downtown Detroit! The Rouge Forum holds meetings on a regular basis at both local and national levels. The national conferences have been held on a more or less annual basis; all meetings are action-oriented and the national conferences usually include workshops for teachers and students; panel discussions; community-building and cultural events; as well as academic presentations. Many prominent voices for democracy and critical pedagogy have participated in Rouge Forum meetings.
On this site you’ll find the latest information about upcoming Rouge Forum meetings and conferences as well information on past conferences, including abstracts, papers, and videos.  http://rougeforumconference.wordpress.com/

Rios Montt Convicted of Genocide (but no Americans tried) A three-judge panel Friday convicted former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt of genocide, saying his military regime used “extreme terror” in an effort to wipe out a Mayan minority ethnic group in the early 1980s.
In a packed courtroom in Guatemala City, Judge Yassmin Barrios said investigators had proven that the regime led by Rios Montt, who is 86, used starvation, mass homicide, dislocation, rape and aerial bombardment as tactics to exterminate the Ixil minority, which it believed to harbor leftist guerrillas.
Barrios gave Rios Montt a 50-year jail term for genocide and an additional 30 years for crimes against humanity.
When Barrios read the sentence, cheers erupted in the courtroom, a sign of the high emotions surrounding the trial, which deeply divided Guatemala and drew attention in other Latin American nations with a history of military dictatorships.
The conviction marked the first time a former Guatemalan military strongman known for “scorched earth” tactics to eradicate leftist guerrillas had been found guilty of genocide and ordered to prison.
“The accused, Jose Efrain Rios Montt, had full knowledge of all that was occurring and did nothing to stop it,” Barrios said.  Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/10/190978/guatemala-court-gives-80-year.html#.UY5D_Mp35x0#storylink=cpy

Detroit’s Fast Food Workers Strike Organizers estimate that as many as 400 workers at more than 60 fast food restaurants in the Detroit metro area walked off the job on Friday, in what may be the largest fast food strike in American history.
Leaders in the workers rights campaign said the strike has shut down multiple restaurants entirely, including multiple McDonald’s outlets, a Long John Silver’s, a Burger King, two Popeye’s restaurants, and a KFC. At one McDonald’s, management attempted to avert a shutdown by bringing in replacement workers—but those replacement workers then promptly joined the strike.   http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/10/detroit-experiences-what-may-be-largest-fast-food-strike-yet/

They Fought Back

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Ohanian on the NAEP Inquiries The Feds are intent on adding to their data bases–so they’ll have all the “proof” they need to document every instant of people’s lives. It starts with the kids. Improving the Measurement of Socioeconomic Status for the National Assessment of Educational Progress: A Theoretical Foundation, a white paper, shows how the Feds can classify students by more than just their parents’ income or education levels. As Greg Toppo reported in USA Today, May 9, 2013: this paper explains the federal government should be able to tie test scores to a host of indicators, including: whether parents own or rent their home, how many times a family has moved in the past year and whether anyone in their household gets medical assistance.  http://www.dailycensored.com/the-feds-are-making-a-list-inbloom-is-checking-it-twice/

Saginaw Mich Teachers won’t get paid Teachers in the Buena Vista School District in Saginaw — told Friday they won’t get paid for the rest of the school year — have opted to continue working in the hope the district and state can resolve the district’s financial crisis.
The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) recently decided to freeze the district’s April, May and June state aid payments after state officials discovered the district had received $580,000 in state aid for a program for incarcerated youths that the district no longer ran. District officials had failed to notify the state they no longer ran the program. The freeze in payments will allow the state to recoup the money.  http://www.freep.com/article/20130506/NEWS06/305060094/Buena-Vista-Saginaw-teachers-to-work-without-paycheck

Capitalist Schools Preach Fear of Sexual Pleasure

Single Sex Classrooms where Sins are only in the Mind The School District of Beloit is going forward with offering its single-gender classes despite complaints by the ACLU alleging Robinson Elementary School and McLenegan Elementary School were violating Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in education.
“We are going to move forward. We feel pretty strongly we as a district have done this with good intent,” Superintendent Steve McNeal said.  “I’m all for the decision to move forward and fight this thing,” school board member Mark Rand said.
In interviews after a special meeting Tuesday evening, board President Shannon Scharmer said members unanimously decided the district is going to respond to the ACLU’s complaint by providing the necessary information in hopes of keeping the single-gender classes. Scharmer said the single-gender classes appear good for kids and said many parents are in favor of them.
McNeal added there is some data showing the classes may help students, but said the even bigger issue is that the district is giving parents a choice.
Scharmer noted many women in power such as Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton attended all-girls schools.  http://www.beloitdailynews.com/news/single-gender-classes-stay/article_19d8bb5c-b7f0-11e2-bcab-0019bb2963f4.html

Missionaries for Capitalism Rush toward their new Catechism (national standards and the tests that follow) Goehring is among the earliest adopters of Common Core standards, a set of national guidelines that California and 44 other states have embraced as the next big shift in teaching.
The new standards stress critical thinking, problem solving and use of technology. Students will spend less time reading literature and more time analyzing nonfiction. Math lessons will teach students multiple ways to answer problems and apply skills to real-world situations.
California school districts are now hurriedly building curriculum, buying computers and training educators to teach to the new national standards. They have little time. State-mandated testing of the standards begins in 2014-15.
“This is the singular largest shift in public education in my nearly 25 years now,” said Chris Evans, superintendent of Natomas Unified School District.  Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/09/5406542/california-moves-quickly-to-carry.html#storylink=cpy

MaryLand School Workers Want More Training on Common Core (they so want to please) Maryland teachers are asking for more time and training to meet the demands of new evaluation systems and education standards expected to be in place by the start of the next school year, according to a survey from the Maryland State Education Association.
Nearly two out of three teachers surveyed say they’re unprepared to teach students based on more rigorous Common Core State Standards. About 72 percent said they aren’t ready for new teacher and principal evaluation systems. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/2013/05/07/5f4a2b68-b727-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html

Pontiac joins List of Michigan Schools that Cannot Meet Payroll An Oakland County school district is facing such dire financial circumstances it is not expected to make payroll next week, according to report by state education Superintendent Mike Flanagan.The results of a preliminary review of the Pontiac School District’s finances reveal it has not made sufficient progress on eliminating its $37.7 million deficit, Flanagan said in his May 8 report to district officials.Pontiac Schools had been using cash advances from Oakland Intermediate Schools to meet its May 3 payroll, Flanagan says, adding, “There are no further funds that can be advanced by Oakland Schools that would be sufficient to meet the May 17, 2013, payroll obligation” of $875,000.The district also is unable to meet other vendor obligations including transportation, utilities and custodial services as well as a $1.5 million in technology bills owed to Oakland Schools, according to the state report. From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130510/SCHOOLS/305100425#ixzz2SxoJjozF

Cheater Cheater! Frankly, I am bewildered that there is so much curiosity as to why there is cheating in schools and how to address this as if it were an isolated problem (“Exploring the culture of cheating,” April 15). To me it seems blatantly obvious.
Ours is a culture of cheating. Banks cheat customers, taxpayers, government. Advertising — the most cynical of all aspects of the culture — is built on considerable misrepresentation (cheating). Corporations cheat the public, the customers, the government. Cigarette companies lie. Virtually every element of the culture is based on cheating. And that cheating comes without any ill consequences. No one from banks or corporations ever goes to prison; there is no “truth in advertising.”
In school, the focus is all on grades, not on learning. The entire focus of and on education in this country is on how it will help students make more money — get better jobs — the more degrees, the more money. I have never heard anyone ever mention that education has intrinsic value, that it enhances the quality of our lives, makes life more interesting and fulfilling.   http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/article_f3992968-f851-50ab-a5f5-a0bda63ed216.html

Cheater Cheater Part 2 The Texas Education Agency is asking federal officials to investigate the San Elizario and Canutillo school districts which, like the El Paso Independent School District, tried to control the population of limited English proficient students to cheat federal accountability measures.
The TEA sent a letter on Monday to the U.S Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and the Office of the Inspector General seeking the investigation because findings in the districts are similar to the cheating scheme that occurred at the EPISD. The agency also attached its finalized audit findings on the Canutillo and San Elizario districts that were released in March.  http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_23195283/tea-asks-feds-probe-san-eli-canutillo-policies

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

26 Thousand Rapes in US Military in one year Just one day after the Air Force’s chief of sexual assault prevention was arrested for sexual assault himself, a new Pentagon report shows a sharp increase in the estimated number of assaults in the military annually.
The report from the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office for Fiscal Year 2012 found a 6 percent rise in reported assaults over the last year, for a total of 3,374. But much more troubling is the estimated number of sexual assault incidents that were never officially reported. In last year’s report, there were an estimated 19,000 instances, but this year the number has jumped to an unprecedented 26,000 instances of assault, leaving thousands unreported.  http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/05/07/1972241/pentagon-sexual-assault-report/

Snepp: The Vietnam Syndrome Thirty-eight years ago last week, I was among the last CIA officers to be choppered off the U.S. Embassy roof in Saigon as the North Vietnamese took the country. Just two years before that chaotic rush for the exits, the Nixon administration had withdrawn the last American troops from the war zone and had declared indigenous forces strong enough, and the government reliable enough, to withstand whatever the enemy might throw into the fray after U.S. forces were gone. That’s the same story we told ourselves in Iraq when we pulled out of that country in 2011. And today, as American troops are being drawn down in Afghanistan, we’re hearing variations on the same claims once again. Yet security remains so fragile in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible not to worry that we are deluding ourselves and that we failed to learn the most important lessons of Vietnam.
One major ingredient of both the Afghanistan and Iraqi experiments was the use of American dollars to buy off insurgents, wean them from their Al Qaeda or Taliban suitors and win the indulgence, however grudging, of the leadership in Kabul or Baghdad. Such payments may help ensure a lull in the violence to allow U.S. forces to withdraw. But the enduring fallacy of such tactics was made clear in Vietnam.
The strategic hamlet and pacification programs of the early and mid-1960s featured U.S. operatives fanning out through the countryside to buy the quiescence of village and hamlet chiefs. But in the end, the only thing that this money purchased was a continued Balkanization of the political landscape. The local beneficiaries, including special police and paramilitary units, identified with their American bagmen, not with Vietnam’s central government, and the government in turn remained suspicious of their loyalties. The moment U.S. dollars and protection were withdrawn, the central government cracked down, destroying whatever calm existed.
Such an adjustment is now going on in Iraq, where reports are mounting of Shiite vengeance against Sunnis. In Afghanistan, the “stabilizing” effect of U.S. forces and money is belied by a ragged security picture throughout the country and the resurgence of warlords.
In the last year and a half, as the Obama administration has staggered into its Afghan end-game, armed American drones and special commando operations have replaced the expensive counter-
insurgency template designed by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. But the resulting campaign of targeted killing may not be an improvement because it contains the same ghastly flaws the Phoenix program had in Vietnam. The Phoenix program, a de facto assassination operation run by the CIA and U.S. military and carried out by provincial Vietnamese units, helped put the Viet Cong on the ropes temporarily, by eliminating many of their most experienced fighters and political operatives.
But for all this, the North Vietnamese went on to win. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/05/opinion/la-oe-snepp-lessons-of-vietnam-20130505

The Benghazi Lies: “Greg Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, said lawyers from the State Department told him not to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi.” http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146449n&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cbsnews%2Ffeed+(CBSNews.com)

Benghazi Lies Part 2 a disclosure of e-mails that show the White House was more deeply involved in revising talking points about the attack than officials have previously acknowledged.  The e-mails, which the administration turned over to Congress, show the White House coordinating an intensive process with the State Department, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies to obtain the final version of the talking points, used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in television appearances after the attack.
The State Department, in particular, pushed to remove references to Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia, the Libyan militant group suspected of carrying out the attack as well as warnings about other potential terrorist threats from the C.I.A., which drafted the initial talking points.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/us/politics/benghazi-e-mails-put-white-house-on-the-defensive.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

BP withdraws some Staff from Libya Oil giant BP has withdrawn some non-essential staff from operations in Libya following UK government advice about uncertainty in the country.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22501901

Karzai: US can Stay in Afghanistan and Send Me Money Forever: The United States and Afghanistan are negotiating a security agreement that would allow American forces to stay here beyond the end of 2014, and Mr. Karzai said the Obama administration had asked for nine bases spread across the country.
“We agree to give them these bases,” Mr. Karzai told students during a speech at Kabul University. “We consider our relations with the United States beyond 2014 to be positive for Afghanistan.”
The American reaction, though, was far less positive than one would expect. Officials characterized Mr. Karzai’s comments as premature at best, and said they appeared to reflect the Afghan government’s desire for a larger force than the United States is likely to be willing to commit. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/world/asia/karzai-says-us-can-keep-afghan-bases-after-2014.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Pakistan High Court Rules Drone Strikes Illegal and Some as War Crimes Pakistani High Court Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan has issued a ruling today declaring the ongoing US drone strikes against the tribal areas illegal under international law, adding that they amount to a “war crime” when they kill innocents. http://news.antiwar.com/2013/05/09/pakistan-high-court-us-drone-strikes-illegal/

Bourgeoisie Critic Ahmed Rashid notes fake election in Pakistan, Calls for Military Rule Even by Pakistan’s dismal standards of rigged elections, military dictatorships and incompetent civilian governments, the polarisation, murder and mayhem on the streets is unprecedented. Coupled with the gross opportunism of all political leaders in ignoring issues on which the nation’s survival depends, this is causing immense international and public concern.  …In April alone, 100 candidates and their supporters have been killed, and 300 have been wounded in suicide bombings, shootings and land mine explosions – the majority from the ANP. Yet the two rightwing parties that have been let off the hook by the Taliban, led by opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and the former cricketer Imran Khan, have refused to condemn the militants or take a stand on behalf of their targeted colleagues. Mr Khan appears to be sympathetic to the Taliban, while Mr Sharif pretends they do not exist….The crisis can be met only if all
political parties – victors and vanquished – and the army understand the need to pull the ship of state together
and change its direction. Unless that happens the next government, just like the last one, will be doomed  http://www.ahmedrashid.com/wp-content/archives/pakistan/articles/pdf/Pakistanspoliticiansmustunitetosavethenation.pdf

Kurdish Fighters Enter the Now-regional Syrian Civil War “While the crisis is deepening in our neighboring country, Syria, and the Kurdish groups in Syria’s north gain power, the AKP’s decision to start negotiations with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] gives the impression that there is also a set of regional calculations on the agenda,” he said today, May 10, at a media event entitled “CHP’s Proposal and Priorities for Democracy, Rule of Law and Societal Peace.” Kilicdaroglu listed 19 reasons why CHP keeps its distance from the AKP’s negotiations with the PKK.
While there is nothing new about politicians clashing over ideas, the differences between Turkey’s political camps are so wide that there seems to be no common vision for the future. It’s not that people don’t want peace and prosperity as a regional power, but the opposition holds that the risks that the AKP is taking are so huge that failure will cost the country dearly, and will potentially set off a bigger struggle to keep peace at home.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/pkk-fighters-relocating-syria.html#ixzz2T7FnYeIY

War Means Work:There go the Afghan Jobs The 11-year Western military occupation of Afghanistan has been a boon for the Afghan workforce, providing thousands of jobs for interpreters, mechanics, cleaners and drivers. But with bases being torn down and equipment shipped out as combat troops prepare to leave next year, many Afghan workers are no longer needed.
For Shakour and his close friend Padshah Gul, a mechanic who was laid off the same day, the consequences are devastating. Their Bagram jobs paid far more than typical semiskilled Afghans earn. The pair assumed that working for foreigners afforded more certainty and stability than the shaky Afghan economy could provide. Now that seemingly solid foundation has been torn away, leaving them feeling bereft and abandoned.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-layoffs-20130513,0,6054664.story

Who Fractured Iraq? Less than a year and a half after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq’s political leaders are openly debating the prospect of two dangerous paths for their country: de facto division or civil war. Perhaps both.
Tension between the Shiite majority, now in control of the levers of power, and the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam Hussein, has been building for months. But politicians on all sides agree that the country has entered a perilous new phase, highlighted in late April by an attack on a Sunni protest camp by security forces that killed at least 45 people.   http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/10/world/la-fg-iraq-divided-20130511

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Stocks at Record High amidst Massive Unemployment, Imprisonment, Endless War and Booming Inequality (capitalism laughing) Don’t let the soaring stock market and applause from politicians over a slight dip in the unemployment rate fool you. A deeper dive into government data underscores just how bleak the picture still is in today’s labor market.
The unemployment rate in April was 7.5 percent, two full percentage points below where it stood at the end of the Great Recession in June 2009. The Obama administration touts the creation of 6.8 million jobs over the past 38 months. At the same time, the stock market has roared back from recession depths, the Dow Jones index of industrial stocks this week closing above 15,000 for the first time.
On the face of it this is good news.
But the improving headlines mask a scarred labor market. One out of five American families reported last year that not a single family member had a job. About 102 million Americans are completely out of the work force. And by a number of measures, participation in the labor market remains at or near modern lows.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/09/190840/while-wall-street-soars-jobs-market.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update#storylink=cpy

Capital’s Murder toll in Bangladesh crime passes 1000 The death toll from the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh rose above 1,000 victims on Friday, as work crews continued clearing debris from the wreckage site of the building following what is considered the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry. The death toll, now at 1,021, has been rising quickly in recent days, and will likely keep climbing, as work crews using heavy machinery are now removing rubble from some of the most heavily damaged sections of the building. Five garment factories operated inside the structure and at least 3,000 people were reportedly working inside when the building collapsed on the morning of April 24.
Located in an industrial suburb of Dhaka, the national capital, Rana Plaza exemplified many of safety problems plaguing a Bangladeshi garment industry that is now the world’s second-leading exporter, trailing only China. Authorities in Bangladesh now say the building was illegally constructed, with permits obtained through political influence. The owner, Sohel Rana, now in jail, was illegally adding upper floors to structure at the time the building collapsed, officials said. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/world/asia/bangladesh-collapse-death-toll.html?ref=global-home

Obamagogue Appointee Penny Pritzker Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker, nominated by President Obama to be Secretary of Commerce, faces a grilling confirmation process. As media are pointing out (and I noted in a 2007 Reader piece), the Pritzker family has a background of consorting with organized crime, and has used offshore tax and secrecy havens to slice their tax obligations. After her nomination, The Nation magazine did a two-part series on the family’s sleazy background, but the author pointed out, “Penny is not responsible for the dodgy practices of her grandfather,” the late patriarch. However, she will get grilled about the failure of a Chicago bank, and other Pritzker businesses to which she was closer. (Incidentally, as Forbes points out, she is worth $1.85 billion, 277th on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Ten members of the Pritzker clan — known for its internal squabbles — are on the Forbes 400 list.)
In 2006, residents of Classic Residence by Hyatt at La Jolla Village (which was headed by Penny Pritzker and now has another name) sued Hyatt/Pritzker entities for fraud and deceit, misrepresentation, elder abuse, breach of fiduciary duty and other transgressions. In 2008, the Superior Court suit was settled. Hyatt agreed to pay $2.27 million to residents, although $1.4 million went for their attorney’s fees. Hyatt also agreed to have the wellness center open 24 hours a day and staffed by professionals at key hours, and put a 3% ceiling on monthly fee increases through 2013 for those suing.  http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/may/08/penny-pritzkers-la-jolla-adventure/?utm_source=San+Diego+Reader+Newsletters&utm_campaign=538d42d479-News_Stories_201305095_6_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8142a24857-538d42d479-408112185

Penny P Part 2 And investigative reporter Dennis Bernstein says that Pritzker’s nomination is additionally controversial becuase of her involvment in a sub-prime mortgage scandal and the collapse of Superior Bank in Chicago in 2001.
According to Bernstein:
Penny Pritzker played fast and loose with the American Dream. Her pioneering sub-prime operations, out of Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. She ended up crashing Superior for a billion dollar cost to tax payers, and creating a personal tragedy for the 1,400 people who lost their savings when the bank failed. Pritzker, whose family controls Hyatt Regency Hotels, is in the top one percent of the one percent. Her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but will now allow her to cleanse her sordid sub-prime banking record by becoming the first woman Secretary of Commerce.
During the official nomination ceremoney, Obama said of Pritzker, “She knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur.”
But as blogger DS Wright suggests at FireDogLake, wouldn’t a better Commerce Secretary be someone who was not “at odds with labor unions” or one without “problems complying with bank regulations”.

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Yemeni Minister, Ignored on Gitmo in DC, Leaves Abruptly Yemen’s human rights minister breezed into Washington this week expecting the opportunity to lobby U.S. officials for the release from Guantanamo of Yemeni detainees, who make up more than half the population at the controversial U.S.-run prison that President Barack Obama has pledged to close.
“Unfortunately, I ended up with nothing,” a dejected Hooria Mashhour said by phone from Yemen on Thursday, hours after returning from her trip.
Mashhour had planned a 10-day visit, but she left after just three days with no official meetings and no updates on plans for the 84 or more Yemenis who comprise the majority of the 166 detainees remaining at Guantanamo.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/09/190859/yemeni-minister-expecting-high.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update#storylink=cpy

Flunked a High Stakes Exam? Join the Cartels The concept was spelled out in a 2009 law promoted by then-President Felipe Calderon: Every Mexican officer would be subject to a battery of psychological, drug and polygraph tests as well as a home visit to identify those living beyond their means. Officers who failed would be fired. New recruits who took their places would be tested as well, and all would be retested regularly.
Calderon viewed it as a way to finally establish a clear line between good and bad guys in a country where officers are often feared and despised for abuses of power and ties to the cartels.
“It’s impossible to leave the fox inside the henhouse,” he told a group of governors in 2011. The plan was also supported by the U.S. government, which contributed money and expertise.
But four years into the process, many are instead losing confidence in the test. Its administrators have been criticized for an over-reliance on polygraph exams that are sometimes administered in a sloppy, unprofessional way that may lead to false positives.   http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-police-testing-20130509,0,5510809.story

Brit Parasite on Parade Britain’s Prince Harry arrived in the United States Thursday afternoon, kicking off his seven-day official visit with a tour of Capitol Hill.
The 28-year-old prince, who is third-in-line for the British throne, returns to the U.S. in hopes of mending his public image tarnished by his last visit when he was photographed naked in Las Vegas playing billiards.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/09/190871/prince-harry-kicks-off-us-tour.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update#storylink=cpy

The Heavens Weap

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.  Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.
The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130511

Solidarity for Never

Germany: Opel Workers Denounce Sellout When asked about their situation they respond: “They totally tricked us.” Another worker agrees. “First they failed to inform us, then they deliberately deceived us.”
The men were referring neither to Opel management nor to its parent company, General Motors, from which they had heard “only lies and empty promises for years”. They were referring to the IG Metall (IGM) trade union.
“For 15 years, they pressured us to accept one concession after another,” said one worker and cited numbers. “When I look back at the last ten years I have lost a total of between 50,000 and 70,000 euros.”
A colleague nods in agreement. “First of all, you sacrifice 1.25 percent of your salary to secure the factory. Then you waive 60 percent of your Christmas bonus to encourage the company to take on young people. Then we have to make more sacrifices to prevent layoffs. Then, after all this, you have to forfeit holiday payments. And what do we have at the end of it…?”
“Berthold Huber [the head of IG Metall] is a criminal in my eyes. He and his clique have betrayed us and sold us out,” one worker declares and wins approval from all sides.
One day earlier, protest strikes took place in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and Thuringia. “Do you think anyone told us about it? Solidarity for the IG Metall trade union is an alien concept,” says one, adding: “One hour strikes are a joke!”  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/11/opel-m11.html

Spy versus Spy

CIA as Presidential Assassination Squad It’s hard to remember, but for the last quarter of the 20th century, the C.I.A. took no part in assassinating bad guys. How the agency transformed itself into “a killing machine, an organization consumed with manhunting,” is the subject of Mark Mazzetti’s fascinating, trenchant, sometimes tragicomic account, “The Way of the Knife.”  The terrorist attacks of 9/11 propelled this shift, but even then, the resistance from within was fierce. Mazzetti — a New York Times reporter who was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team — has done much to document the C.I.A.’s use and abuse of its new powers. Here he traces the bitter fights between Langley’s old guard and Young Turks over whether the agency should use the new armed Predator drones to hunt and kill even Osama bin Laden. A few months earlier, there wouldn’t have been so much as a debate. Mazzetti quotes a former counterterrorism chief telling the 9/11 Commission that, before the Twin Towers’ fall, he would have refused a direct order to take out Al Qaeda’s leader. The agency’s motto back then, when it came to such matters: “We’re not Mossad.”   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/books/review/the-way-of-the-knife-by-mark-mazzetti.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

This reticence stemmed from Senator Frank Church’s mid-1970s hearings, which uncovered the C.I.A.’s long, dark history of black-bag jobs and inspired President Ford to sign an executive order barring assassinations of foreign leaders.

Obamagogue To Expand Surveillance Laws (again) The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/us/politics/obama-may-back-fbi-plan-to-wiretap-web-users.html

Torturer Passed Over for Top CIA job–meet the new spook, unnamed A CIA officer who was the first woman to lead the agency’s clandestine service, but was also directly involved in its controversial interrogation program, will not get to keep that job as part of a management shake-up announced Tuesday by CIA Director John O. Brennan.
The officer, who is undercover, served as director of the National Clandestine Service on an interim basis over the past two months, and many considered her a front-runner to keep the post, which involves overseeing the CIA’s spying operations worldwide.   But she faced opposition because of her extensive role in an interrogation program that critics have said relied on torture to get information from al-Qaeda captives after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. She had run a secret prison in Thailand where two detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques. She later helped order the destruction of videotapes of those interrogation sessions.
Instead, Brennan has given the job to a 57-year-old longtime officer who served tours in Pakistan and Africa and was recently in charge of the agency’s Latin America division, according to public records and former officials. He is also undercover, U.S. officials said.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-selects-new-head-of-clandestine-service-passing-over-female-officer-tied-to-interrogation-program/2013/05/07/c43e5f94-b727-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html?hpid=z4

IRS as Weapon aimed at Government Critics t various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.
The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/12/irs-targeted-groups-that-criticized-the-government-ig-report-says/?hpid=z1

Robert Alexander, Lovestone, and the AFL-CIA Alexander was active in the socialist and trade union movements. In 1934, politicized by the Great Depression, Alexander joined the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth section of the Socialist Party of America.[1] He continued organizing activities for YPSL while at Columbia and remained an active member of its parent group, the Socialist Party of America, serving as a member of its executive council 1957 to 1966.[1] When the Socialist Party changed its name in December 1972 to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA), he maintained his membership until 1980; according to Perrone’s biographical sketch, Alexander thought that SDUSA had become “too conservative”.[1]
It was as a leader of the New Jersey YPSLs that he first met Jay Lovestone, then head of the Communist Party, Opposition. Alexander would later go on six missions to Latin America for Lovestone, first under the auspices of the Free Trade Union Committee, then under the direction of the AFL-CIO International Department.[2]
Alexander was a member of the Board of Directors of the Rand School of Social Science from 1952 until its closure in 1956.[1] He served on the League for Industrial Democracy’s National Council and was an active member of Americans for Democratic Action and a delegate to several of its national conventions.[1]
During the 1950s, Alexander served as a consultant for the American Federation of Labor and AFL-CIO on the organized labor movement in Latin American and the Caribbean.[3] In 1961, he was named by president-elect John F. Kennedy to the Task Force on Latin America, which recommended the establishment of the Alliance for Progress.[3]
Alexander was also a lifelong member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[3]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Alexander

The Magical Mystery Tour

Boundless Superstition Just Fine in US’ Capitalist Schools

More than eight months after Kountze High School cheerleaders first hoisted banners at football games quoting Scripture, a judge Wednesday declared the signs OK, overturning an earlier school district prohibition against them and inviting more challenge from an out-of-state organization opposing them.
With less than a month to go before a scheduled hearing on the matter, Hardin County 356th District Court Judge Steve Thomas issued a written ruling that effectively formalized a decision last fall that permitted the signs to be displayed.
The case created a national stir and the cheerleaders made appearances on morning talk shows.
Thomas said in his ruling that the “evidence in this case confirms that religious messages expressed on run-through banners have not created, and will not create, an establishment of religion in the Kountze community,” and that the banners were constitutionally permissible.  http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Judge-declares-religious-banners-at-school-OK-4500552.php

The Succession of Degenerates in the LA Archdiocese “It’s my turn to stand up and set the record straight,” the shaky cursive read. “Msgr. Hawkes was not a great priest, he was a sick man who used his status to abuse many.”  …But Hawkes’ revered place in the archdiocese’s history is being reconsidered in light of the recent release of his confidential church personnel file. The file, made public in January in a lawsuit against the church, shows that 10 years after his 1985 death, two men came forward to say Hawkes had sexually abused them as teenagers.
“I went into shock,” said prominent California historian Kevin Starr, who has written about Hawkes. “This was a great big commanding figure…. A celebrity.”   http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hawkes-20130508-dto,0,3430788.htmlstory

He’s Back! Cardinal Mahoney on the Hunt again When Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, of public duties for mishandling clergy sex abuse cases, a church spokesman said the retired prelate’s life would remain largely the same with one exception: confirmations.
No longer would Mahony preside at springtime rites in which teenagers receive the sacrament that marks full passage into the Catholic Church, the spokesman said.
But three months later, Mahony is back doing confirmations. Since Easter, he has officiated at eight services, including one last week in which he anointed more than 120 youths at a Wilmington parish.   http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mahony-20130510,0,2784486.story

The Rouge Forum 2013 will be held at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI on May 16-19.
The theme of this RF2013 is “Winning the Class Struggle Against Corporate Education Reform”
The Rouge Forum brings together academic presentations and panel discussions, performances, community building, and cultural events.
Join us in Beautiful Downtown Detroit!    http://rougeforumconference.wordpress.com/

Congratulations to Gil Gonzalez on the Release of

General Strike in Greece  and Marches World Wide As workers around the world observed the international Labor Day holiday with demonstrations and rallies, thousands of Greeks walked off their jobs on Wednesday in the second general strike against government austerity measures this year, shutting down tax offices, leaving state hospitals to operate with emergency employees and disrupting public transportation. The Greek protest came as workers in Asia, including Bangladeshis infuriated by the lethal collapse of a garment factory, demonstrated in cities including the capitals of Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Istanbul, riot police officers sprayed throngs of people with water and tear gas as they gathered for a rally, defying an official ban.
Labor unions in Spain called for rallies in more than 80 cities, news reports said, while protests were also scheduled in Portugal. In France, the bitterly divided labor movement called for hundreds of demonstrations across the country, with rival union confederations holding separate marches. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/world/europe/greeks-stage-general-strike-against-austerity.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Happy Birthday!

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Did We Remind that the Education Agenda is a War Agenda? Navy Loves STEM schooling Although women make up about half of the United States workforce, they represent just 24 percent of careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In order to correct this, major nonprofit groups have been organizing STEM enrichment camps for middle- and high-school girls, driven by the philosophy that more women will pursue STEM careers if their interest is piqued at an early age.
But recently, some girls-only STEM programs have gone beyond fostering interest in science and math among the next generation of women. Branches of the U.S. military – in particular, the Navy – have increasingly been using these programs to market the military to girls as young as 11 and 12.  http://comdsd.org/article_archive/NavyandSTEMeducation.html

Segregated Capitalist Schooling in the Corporate State Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.
Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.
What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.
One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

Another Shocker–School Reform Related to Poverty (but never to capitalism itself) That pattern of poor performance was compounded by the fact that what little growth school districts enjoyed accrued heavily to higher-income and white students, not to the low-income and minority students who were supposed to benefit. Closing schools neither improved student outcomes nor saved districts money, and even the strong charters in these three cities delivered more mixed benefits than commonly reported. This is a critical story that, despite the public data, will come as a surprise to many: these supposedly successful reforms are doing little good and more than a little harm….Perhaps most troubling, in some cases, no students really gained ground; rather, increases were due simply to changes in the composition of the student body. Disaggregation of the data showed this to be the case with respect to both reading and math scores among fourth graders.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/29/the-gap-between-school-reform-rhetoric-and-reality-in-3-cities/

Detroit School Boss from Failed Government Motors (who fired every teacher) declares “Mission Accomplished”  and is praised by DFT Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said: “There were those in Lansing that wanted him to blow this district up, and he thought about the kids and the impact upon them, so he decided rather than to blow it up to fix it up.”
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130503/SCHOOLS/305030363#ixzz2SSG7ZbhL

Hey Detroit! JP Morgan is your Friend, your Friend, your Friend Gov. Rick Snyder joined Detroit Public Schools this morning in announcing $1.5 million in grants from JPMorgan Chase to turn three schools in southwest Detroit into community centers with added social services.
JPMorgan Chase has committed a $1-million grant to Southwest Solutions, a local nonprofit agency, to provide an array of services at Western International High School, Harms Elementary and Maybury Elementary over the next three years that would include financial literacy, screening for eligibility for benefits and home repair loan programs.
The services will work in tandem with the state Department of Human Services’ Pathways to Potential program that last year placed DHS caseworkers, called success coaches, in schools to identify resources and assistance to students and families. Western will get a new success coach.
“This is an exciting day,” Snyder said.
The funding will help to bolster DPS’s new five-year strategic plan announced earlier this month that aims to turn schools into community centers that could provide social services for up to 12 hours every day. The strategic plan is part of an effort to attract and retain students. DPS is down to 50,000 students, about a third the size the district was a decade ago.   http://www.freep.com/article/20130429/NEWS01/304290094/Detroit-schools-get-1-5-million-grant-JP-Morgan-Chase

No $ for Early Childhood Ed, but Millions for Karzai A new report released Monday shows that funding for preschool programs across the country fell by an unprecedented $500 million in the 2011-12 school year as enrollment stalled and more programs saw a drop in quality than improvement.
The report also says that in 2011-12, the latest year for which information is available, only 28 percent of all 4-year-old children in the country were in state-funded preschool programs, and 15 states actually reduced pre-K enrollment. D.C. public schools served more 4-year-olds in preschool than 15 states with programs, and more 3-year-olds than all but five states, it says. (See D.C., Virginia and Maryland reports below.)    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/29/study-preschool-funding-sees-unprecedented-single-year-drop/

Al Jazerra on Capitalist Education and Reform Failures Multiple research in the US has shown that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And now the Equity and Excellence report, commissioned by the US Congress, says the US education system is largely to blame.  The study says: “Ten million students in US’s poorest communities … are having their lives unjustly and irredeemably blighted by a system that consigns them to the lowest-performing teachers, the most run-down facilities, and academic expectations and opportunities considerably lower than what we expect of other students.”
So what has become of the American dream? Despite growing up with economic hardships do you still have the opportunity for prosperity and financial success through hard work?
It is a notion that President Barack Obama recently alluded to in his inaugural address: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”
However, the report on education says that in no other developed country has the system stacked the odds against so many of its children.
To discuss this, Inside Story Americas is joined by guests: Sean Reardon, a professor of education and sociology and author of The Widening Income Achievement Gap; Mary Bruce, a senior education adviser for the public policy firm, Civic Enterprises; and Sylvia Allegretto, the co-chair for the Centre on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California.”It’s a shocking state right now. We have one in four children in this country living in poverty, increasingly children lack housing, healthcare and basic food security in some cases in concentrated and segregated areas, and then we are spending less money in schools in the education of those who are the least able to get education outside of school. This builds up a kind of inequality that doesn’t exist in most of the industrialised nations around the world.”   http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/02/201322211124074638.html

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

War Means Work and $$$: Building Tanks the Military Doesn’t Want Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.
Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.
But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”
It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.
Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.
“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.
Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.
Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located.
If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.     From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130428/POLITICS03/304280328#ixzz2RnM2pwQd

Tens of Millions of $ From CIA to Gangster Afghan Karzai For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.  ll told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=1&

Karzai: The Money Will Keep Flowing from CIA The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured that the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/asia/karzai-said-he-was-assured-of-cash-deliveries-by-cia.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Who Lost Afghanistan? If the lawlessness, poverty, and endemic corruption of Afghanistan are indicative of anything, it is that the multi-billion dollar efforts to restore stability in the region have been an abject failure.
As the scheduled 2014 reduction of American-led NATO troops moves closer, the occupying forces leave behind a state where none of their initial goals have been realized.
The Afghan central government is weak and hopelessly corrupt, the national armed forces are disorganized and resentful of foreign presence, the Taliban still wield notable influence, women remain extremely marginalized, Afghans are trapped in abject poverty, and the occupiers themselves continue to shoulder the responsibility for heavy civilian causalities.
Tens of billions have been poured into Afghanistan over the past decade, but the fact is that official figures of aid and financial resources spent in the country on paper do not come close to what was actually doled out to US proxies.
Reports confirm that tens of millions of US dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai since his installation in 2004.
The report states that the ‘ghost money’ paid to Karzai’s office was not subject to oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid or the CIA’s formal assistance programs, and much of it went to “warlords and politicians, many with ties to the drug trade and in some cases the Taliban.”
The report also cites an anonymous US official who claimed, “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States.” These revelations should not only raise the eyebrows of US taxpayers – the disingenuous reality of American funds finding their way into the pockets of the Taliban should raise blood pressures.   http://rt.com/op-edge/afghanistan-corruption-failure-stability-835/

Below, War Criminal Pals Laugh at the People of the World

Bill Blum on the Terrorists What is it that makes young men, reasonably well educated, in good health and nice looking, with long lives ahead of them, use powerful explosives to murder complete strangers because of political beliefs? I’m speaking about American military personnel of course, on the ground, in the air, or directing drones from an office in Nevada.
Do not the survivors of US attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere, and their loved ones, ask such a question?
The survivors and loved ones in Boston have their answer – America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That’s what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber has said in custody, and there’s no reason to doubt that he means it, nor the dozens of others in the past two decades who have carried out terrorist attacks against American targets and expressed anger toward US foreign policy. 1 Both Tsarnaev brothers had expressed such opinions before the attack as well. 2 The Marathon bombing took place just days after a deadly US attack in Afghanistan killed 17 civilians, including 12 children, as but one example of countless similar horrors from recent years. “Oh”, an American says, “but those are accidents. What terrorists do is on purpose. It’s cold-blooded murder.”   http://williamblum.org/aer/read/116

Israel Goes to war with Syria The Syrian government immediately blamed Israel for the explosions, whose power appeared to far outstrip that of any weapons in the rebels’ arsenals. Israeli officials refused to confirm that Israeli forces had carried out the strikes, which the Syrian deputy foreign minister, speaking on CNN, called “an act of war.”
With much still unexplained about the effects and motivations of the attack, it rattled the region, which has lived in fear that the Syrian war will lead to a wider conflict.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/world/middleeast/after-strikes-in-syria-concerns-about-an-escalation-of-fighting.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Israel and Depleted Uranium Shells Israel used “a new type of weapon”, a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.
“When the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake,” said the source, who was present near the attack site on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday morning.
“Then a giant golden mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted uranium shells.”   http://rt.com/news/syria-israel-uranium-air-strike-847/

Obamagogue Marching into the Syria Quagmire The White House is once again considering supplying weapons to Syria’s armed opposition, senior officials said Tuesday. Such a decision would be a policy shift for the Obama administration, which has stepped up its nonlethal aid but stopped short of lethal weaponry and has expressed reluctance about greater military entanglements in the Syrian civil war.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/world/middleeast/bomb-in-central-damascus.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Canada Betrays US War Resister A female soldier in the U.S. Army who fled to Canada after becoming ‘disillusioned’ with the Iraq War has been sentenced to 10 months in prison.
During a two-week leave in 2007, Private First Class Kimberly Rivera crossed the Canadian border to avoid having to complete a second tour of duty in Iraq.
Rivera, 30, was a wheeled-vehicle driver in Fort Carson’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team and served in Iraq in 2006.
At a court martial on Monday the mother-of-four said she had became ‘disillusioned’ with the U.S. mission and pleaded guilty to two counts of desertion and a bad-conduct discharge.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reported that when judge Colonel Timothy Grammel asked Rivera how long she remained absent, she replied: ‘As long as I possibly could, sir. … I intended to quit my job permanently.’
After fleeing to Canada, Rivera applied for refugee status but was denied.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316966/Kimberly-Rivera-pleads-guilty-desertion-sentenced-10-months-jail.html#ixzz2SSUzCyRT

Rule Britania! Back to the Gulf The UK army is planning to build up a strong “shadow presence” in the Gulf, marking a return to the seat of its old imperial power, a UK think tank said. The Arab Spring and security fears over a nuclear Iran are among the reasons for the move.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published a report titled ‘A Return to East of Suez? UK Military Deployment to the Gulf’ on Monday morning, analyzing a shift in UK policy that is driven by a “fear of what is happening in the Middle East.”
The report stressed that on the surface, the increased military presence would not mirror the imperial foothold Britain once held in the region.
The military intends to build up a strong shadow presence around the Gulf; not an evident imperial-style footprint, but a smart presence with facilities, defense agreements, rotation of training, transit and jumping-off points,” the report said.   http://rt.com/news/uk-suez-military-presence-546/

CIA’s Frank Snepp on the Vietnam Syndrome Thirty-eight years ago last week, I was among the last CIA officers to be choppered off the U.S. Embassy roof in Saigon as the North Vietnamese took the country. Just two years before that chaotic rush for the exits, the Nixon administration had withdrawn the last American troops from the war zone and had declared indigenous forces strong enough, and the government reliable enough, to withstand whatever the enemy might throw into the fray after U.S. forces were gone.That’s the same story we told ourselves in Iraq when we pulled out of that country in 2011. And today, as American troops are being drawn down in Afghanistan, we’re hearing variations on the same claims once again. Yet security remains so fragile in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible not to worry that we are deluding ourselves and that we failed to learn the most important lessons of Vietnam.One major ingredient of both the Afghanistan and Iraqi experiments was the use of American dollars to buy off insurgents, wean them from their Al Qaeda or Taliban suitors and win the indulgence, however grudging, of the leadership in Kabul or Baghdad. Such payments may help ensure a lull in the violence to allow U.S. forces to withdraw. But the enduring fallacy of such tactics was made clear in Vietnam.  http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-snepp-lessons-of-vietnam-20130505,0,5276212.story

Jeffrey St Clair and the Game of Drones At last we know. The mysterious legal authority for Barack Obama’s killer drone program flows from another administration with an elastic interpretation of executive power: that of Richard Nixon.
In a chilling 16-page dossier known simply as the White Paper, one of Obama’s statutory brains at the Justice Department cites the 1969 secret bombing of Cambodia as a legal rationale justifying drone strikes, deep inside nations, against which the United States is not officially at war.
This startling disclosure is drafted in the antiseptic prose of an insurance adjuster announcing the denial of a claim based on a pre-existing condition. Yet, the bombing of Cambodia (aka Operation Menu), which involved more than 3,000 air strikes, was almost universally acknowledged as a war crime. Now the Obama administration has officially enshrined that atrocity as precedent for its own killing rampages.
Since Obama’s election, the CIA has overseen nearly 320 drone strikes in Pakistan alone, killing more than 3,000 people, as many as 900 of them civilians. Among the dead are at least 176 children. Assassination was never this easy, never so risk-free. At last we know. The mysterious legal authority for Barack Obama’s killer drone program flows from another administration with an elastic interpretation of executive power: that of Richard Nixon.  http://www.counterpunch.org/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

It just keeps getting worse. The 17 nations of the euro zone saw another rise in joblessness. In March, it rose to a seasonally adjusted rate of 12.1 percent, up from 12 percent in February and 11 percent from March 2012. The rate for the 27 nations of the European Union held steady from the previous month at 10.9 percent, but it was up from 10.3 percent in the same period last year.
Compared with last year, 1.8 million more working-age Europeans are unemployed, according to Eurostat. This means 26.5 million working-age Europeans are idle, including 19.2 million in the euro zone.
The worst-hit nations are the usual suspects, the ones that have been hit hardest by the sovereign debt crisis that has sent the entire region into its most protracted recession on record. They are:
Greece at 27.2 percent;
Spain at 26.7 percent; and
Portugal at 17.5 percent….The number of Europeans under the age of 25 who have no jobs stands at 23.5 percent for the EU and 24 percent for the euro zone. The worst-hit countries for youth unemployment are:
Greece at 59.1 percent;
Spain at 55.9 percent; and
Italy at 38.4 percent.  http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-30042013-BP/EN/3-30042013-BP-EN.PDF

Capital at Work–Suicide Rises From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among US citizens between the ages of 35 to 64 soared by 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people. Is a void of democracy in the economic system driving Americans to become their own worst enemies?
Suicide now ranks higher than death by automobile: in 2010, there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes compared with 38,364 suicides.
Although suicide tends to be viewed as a problem inflicting teenagers and the elderly, the recent study shows a marked rise in the number of suicides among the Baby Boom generation (a demographic group born between the years 1946 and 1964, when the annual birthrate rose dramatically in the US).  http://rt.com/op-edge/us-corporate-power-suicide-crisis-817/

Where To or To Not Live The Pacific Northwest has a good reputation nationwide–the two most popular of the 21 prominent cities we asked about in our national poll last weekend are Seattle and Portland, OR. 57% of American voters see Seattle favorably and only 14% unfavorably, edging out Portland (52-12) by three points on the margin.
The most unpopular is Detroit, which only 22% see positively and 49% negatively. Americans have net-negative impressions of only two other of these cities, and both are in California: Oakland (21-39) and Los Angeles (33-40). In February, PPP found California to be the least popular state in the union. It does have the 11th most popular city, though: San Francisco (48-29).
Between the pack are Boston (52-17), Atlanta (51-19), Phoenix (49-18), Dallas (48-21), New York (49-23), New Orleans (47-24), Houston (45-22), Salt Lake City (43-20), Philadelphia (42-22), Baltimore (37-24), Las Vegas (43-33), Chicago (42-33), Cleveland (32-25), Washington, D.C. (44-39), and Miami (36-33).  http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/04/american-cities-favorability-poll.html

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

above, the militarized invasion of Watertown.Terrorism, which seeks to replace a social movement with a weapon, typically blows back on those the terrorists claim to represent. Local example of the not so distant past: Weathermen.

Solidarity for Never

This

Did not have to become this

A few weeks ago, as Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra tested the acoustics of their new $700 million theater here, they played one of the most dramatic selections in the symphonic repertory: the rousing finale of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.  “That movement has enormously big brass and percussion,” Mr. Gergiev recalled, “and I asked them to play a little bit harsher than usual, to let us see what the limit of the hall is. First I had them play too soft, then too loud.”
Navigating between extremes has not been just an acoustic experiment, but also the challenge of the 2,000-seat theater itself, which formally opens on Thursday with a gala concert. Called the Mariinsky II and connected to the original, ornate 19th-century Mariinsky Theater by a pedestrian bridge over a canal, it is the first new Russian opera house to aspire to international significance since the time of the czars.
It has accordingly been the object of tremendous scrutiny, particularly after more than 10 years of development, three architects — or four, depending on how you count — and a government-financed budget that exploded to nearly 10 times the initial estimate.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/arts/music/mariinsky-ii-is-set-to-open-in-st-petersburg.html?ref=global-home

Cuba: Bosses are Workers Now of state employees bused in before dawn to observe International Workers’ Day, there was a novel, and increasingly favored, breed: entrepreneurs whose private businesses the government is counting on to absorb thousands of the state workers it considers redundant and hopes to shed.
Their presence — albeit limited — at one of the most important fixtures in the Castro-era calendar reflects the shifting economic mix in a country where, for decades, private enterprise was anathema and the state officially provided everything anyone could need, from a job to the sugar people put in their coffee.
But the state’s ability to do that has declined significantly over the years, with salaries and subsidies like food rations unable to cover even basic needs.
“This is a way of showing solidarity with the workers and of showing that we, too, are workers,” said Orlando Alain Rodríguez, a former sommelier at a state-run hotel who opened a restaurant on a busy intersection in downtown Havana nine months ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/world/americas/on-may-day-in-havana-a-nod-to-capitalism.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

More Proof: Concessions Don’t Save Jobs and Bosses only Want More I think it’s fair to say that the men sitting across the table from me Monday afternoon were not terribly happy with my recent work.
Bob Schoonover, president of Service Employees International Union, Local 721, and Art Sweatman, a shop steward and tree trimmer for the city of Los Angeles, found much to dislike in my April 23 column. That’s the one in which I said public employee unions need to make a few more concessions.
“We did a whole bunch, and we saved the city a whole bunch of money,” said Schoonover, who speaks like a boxer working the bag, one jab after another.   http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0501-lopez-seiu-20130430,0,2862767.column

Betraying Bradley Manning Racing to stanch a flow of criticism, the president of San Francisco’s annual gay pride celebration said Friday that the U.S. Army private charged in a massive leak of U.S. secrets to the WikiLeaks website will not be an honorary grand marshal after all.
SF Pride Board President Lisa Williams said in a statement that an employee of the organization had prematurely notified imprisoned intelligence specialist Bradley Manning this week that he had been selected for the distinction, which recognizes about a dozen celebrities, politicians and community organizations each year for their contributions to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.
“That was an error, and that person has been disciplined. He does not now, nor did he at that time, speak for SF Pride,” Williams said.   http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/04/26/wikileaks-suspect-wont-be-san-francisco-pride-parade-marshal/

Spy versus Spy

Difficult visit to a US Spy Center My outing to the facility last Thursday was an eventful one. I can confirm that the National Security Agency’s site is still under construction. It was surprisingly easy to drive up and circle its parking lot. But if you take photos while there, it is — much like Hotel California – very hard to leave….asked. I said that I was. He responded, “You’re going to need to delete those.”
I explained that I was a journalist and that I preferred not to. He insisted, saying we were on restricted federal property and that taking photos there was illegal. Luckily for me, Randy Dryer is not just a university professor but a practicing and long-experienced media lawyer. He explained to the officer who we were, why we were there and that we hadn’t realized we were on restricted property. The officer, who carried a gun and a portable radio, began writing everything we said down in a little green notebook. When the officer insisted again that the photos be deleted, Dryer asked if we could talk to his supervisor.
At this point another uniformed officer pulled up behind us. He came up to the car and went essentially through the same question-asking routine while the first officer, who took our driver’s licenses, walked away from the car to call his supervisor.   http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/03/04/nsa-utah-data-center-visit/2/

When the University of Utah professor who invited me to Salt Lake City to talk to his students asked how I wanted to spend three hours of downtime Thursday afternoon, the super-secret spy center was at the top of my list. The professor, Randy Dryer, was dubious about the value of visiting the construction site, assuming there would be a huge fence that would prohibit us from getting close or seeing anything significant. That turned out not to be the case.

N. Korea Sentences American The United States demanded Thursday that North Korea immediately release an American sentenced this week to 15 years of hard labor on charges of trying to overthrow the government.
The Obama administration is calling for amnesty for Kenneth Bae, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-sentences-american-on-charges-he-tried-to-topple-government/2013/05/02/03498dfc-b2dd-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Obamagogue Backs Institutionalized Fear of Sexual Pleasure–Attacks Plan B  Ruling The Justice Department filed notice late Wednesday that it will challenge a federal court decision requiring the government to make emergency contraceptives available over the counter to women of all ages.
The move came hours after the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of emergency contraceptives to women 15 and older. Previously, Plan B was available to teenagers younger than 17 only with a prescription. Older women had to request it from a pharmacist.
The Obama administration also asked the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York to stay Judge Edward Korman’s early-April ruling, which is set to take effect Sunday.
The administration’s challenge will no doubt reignite a debate over whether young teens should be eligible to obtain emergency contraception without a doctor’s consent, a politically fraught issue that has vexed two presidential administrations and led to the resignation of multiple FDA officials.
“We are deeply disappointed that just days after President Obama proclaimed his commitment to women’s reproductive rights, his administration has decided once again to deprive women of their right to obtain emergency contraception without unjustified and burdensome restrictions,” Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup, whose organization represents the defendants, said in a statement.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/01/obama-administration-plans-to-appeal-plan-b-ruling/?hpid=z4

Raping Africa In going public, Anthony Musaala has forced the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda to confront a problem it had insisted didn’t exist. And he may stir a debate far beyond Africa’s most Catholic of countries.
The Ugandan priest has been suspended indefinitely by the archbishop of Kampala for exposing what he calls an open secret: Sex abuse in the Catholic Church is a problem in Africa as well as in Western Europe and North America.
The African Catholic Church is fast-growing, pious and traditional. As the church elsewhere forks out billions of dollars to compensate the child sex abuse victims of priests, few African Catholics have questioned the assumption, voiced recently by Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, that the African church is purer than its counterpart in the West, which is regarded as secular and permissive.
It’s not more pure, says Musaala. He says he has the evidence to prove it.
“The Vatican turns a blind eye because it doesn’t want to be embarrassed about this blooming church. But I think it’s time we had the truth,” Musaala says.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-africa-catholic-abuse-20130505,0,4578310.story

Barbarism Rises in Bangladesh Four people were killed and hundreds injured as a rally in the capital of Bangladesh turned violent. Police used tear gas to disperse thousands of Islamist protesters in the streets of Dhaka who demanded execution for “blasphemous” blogging.
“One point, One demand: Atheists must be hanged”, chanted the demonstrators as they marched along at least six highways, blocking transport between Dhaka and other cities and towns.
The demonstrators gathered in the capital’s Motijheel commercial district, amounting to between 150,000 to 200,000 people according to AFP. On their way, they set shops and vehicles on fire, according to police accounts.   http://rt.com/news/bangladesh-protests-blasphemy-islam-845/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Kilpatrick Mom on the Hunt for Space Aliens–in Congress Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick said Monday she’s excited about presiding over a week’s worth of testimony about the existence of extraterrestrials.
The Detroit Democrat and mother of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick signed up with five other former members of Congress to listen to testimony aimed at proving alien contact with Earth and a government effort to cover it up.
“I’ve been interested for a while,” Kilpatrick said before the kickoff of the hearings, known as the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure sponsored by the Paradigm Research Group, a private ET lobbying organization.
The hearing lasts through Friday at the National Press Club and will be the basis for a documentary on UFOs. For her service — listening to about 30 hours of congressional-style testimony — the private group will pay her $20,000 plus expenses.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130429/POLITICS03/304290397#ixzz2SSezNvEH

Exploding the Gun Ban Eight months ago, Cody Wilson set out to create the world’s first entirely 3D-printable handgun.
Now he has.
Early next week, Wilson, a 25-year-old University of Texas law student and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, plans to release the 3D-printable CAD files for a gun he calls “the Liberator,” pictured in its initial form above. He’s agreed to let me document the process of the gun’s creation, so long as I don’t publish details of its mechanics or its testing until it’s been proven to work reliably and the file has been uploaded to Defense Distributed’s online collection of printable gun blueprints at Defcad.org. All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic with a Dimension SST printer from 3D printing company Stratasys, with the exception of a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition.
Technically, Defense Distributed’s gun has one other non-printed component: the group added a six ounce chunk of steel into the body to make it detectable by metal detectors in order to comply with the Undetectable Firearms Act. In March, the group also obtained a federal firearms license, making it a legal gun manufacturer.
Of course, Defcad’s users may not adhere to so many rules. Once the file is online, anyone will be able to download and print the gun in the privacy of their garage, legally or not, with no serial number, background check, or other regulatory hurdles. “You can print a lethal device,” Wilson told me last summer. “It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show.”http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/05/03/this-is-the-worlds-first-entirely-3d-printed-gun-photos/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

The Cheeseburger Revolution

So Long

Mexico’s Educators Carry on a Higher Form of Education than Capitalist Schooling One of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s signature efforts to shake up the country — a broad plan to overhaul the education system — has run into violent protests that underscore how difficult it may be to carry out, particularly in some volatile states with poor academic performance.  Armed with iron rods and rocks, dozens of masked members of the teachers’ union in Guerrero State attacked the local offices of the four major political parties on Wednesday, smashing windows and overturning furniture. They also set fire to the office of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to which Mr. Peña Nieto belongs.

On Thursday, in a further sign of the growing conflict over education changes, teachers marched down Mexico City’s main boulevard, temporarily closing it down.

Mexico School Workers Storm Bosses Offices eachers protesting against an education overhaul have stormed the offices of political parties in southwestern Mexico, breaking windows and setting fire to the ruling party’s offices.

Plumes of black smoke billowed from the rectangular-shaped headquarters of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Guerrero state after masked protesters broke into the building and tossed chairs, papers and plants from windows.

Some spray-painted anti-government graffiti on the building, while others tore pictures of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who pushed through a reform plan for the country’s failing education system with the backing of opposition parties.

Teachers in Guerrero are fighting the legislation that will impose tougher oversight of teaching standards and crack down on abuses.   http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/04/2013424224735102626.html

Gitmo Concentration Camp Prisoners Expand Hunger Strike Over half of all detainees at the US-run Guantanamo Bay military prison are now taking part in a hunger strike, with many being force-fed, a US military spokesman confirmed today.

The number of prisoners on hunger strike has risen to 84, an increase of 32 since last Wednesday, with 16 now receiving “enteral feedings,” a process involving being force-fed via tubes.    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/over-half-of-guantanamo-bay-prisoners-on-hunger-strike-as-number-increases-to-84-8581965.html

Seattle School Workers, Led by TFAer, Urge Test Boycotts on Red Mayday (now talk about empire and capital too—the Why of the Tests) Educational Justice Has No Borders: Join the May Day International Day of Solidarity with the Seattle MAP Test Boycott    http://scrapthemap.wordpress.com/category/blog/

Chicago Students’ test Walkout On a day they were slated to take a state-required test that directly affects their graduation eligibility, around 100 Chicago Public School students boycotted exams to protest the district’s plan to close 54 schools.

Six busloads of students — paid for by community groups, according to CBS Chicago — were picked up at their respective high schools and dropped off at CPS’ downtown headquarters Wednesday.   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/cps-student-boycott-high-_n_3148447.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Disclosures Coming from School Of Americas??? A federal judge in Oakland says the government must release the names of Latin American military leaders it has trained at the installation formerly known as the School of the Americas, where protesters say the United States has nurtured some of the hemisphere’s worst human rights abusers.

The Defense Department facility at Fort Benning, Ga., now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, provides training in combat and counterinsurgency techniques.

Some of its attendees were implicated in the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter in El Salvador. Another graduate was the late Roberto d’Aubuisson, a rightist Salvadoran politician accused by opponents of promoting death squads in his nation’s civil war.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Combat-school-must-disclose-trainees-4457786.php#ixzz2Rk1ywG00

Petition for WhistleBlower Bradley Manning http://www.bradleymanning.org/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

ObamagogueCare About to Screw Part Time Faculty It started in November, as a few colleges announced new limits on adjunct hours, fearful that not doing so would result in the part-time instructors being covered by institutional health plans under the new federal health care law. At that time, some higher education lobbyists said the trend was limited. Today it’s clear the practice has spread.

“It’s definitely a trend. We’ve heard from colleges in Colorado, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Florida, so it’s no longer accurate to call it an isolated incident,” said Maria Maisto, president of the adjunct organization New Faculty Majority.

When a new provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009, more commonly known as Obamacare, goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, employers with more than 50 employees will have to cover those who work at least 30 hours a week. The Internal Revenue Service in January proposed that institutions must use “reasonable” methods to calculate how many hours of actual work one credit hour means for adjunct faculty members, and will heard arguments Tuesday about the issue.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/24/more-institutions-cap-adjuncts-hours-anticipation-federal-guidelines#ixzz2RXyuGrm1
Inside Higher Ed

Bankrupt Detroit “Public” Schools Loan EAA $6 Million (from Where???) Administrators at the Education Achievement Authority took $6 million in loans from the cash-strapped Detroit school district without approval from EAA board members, according to the secretary of the recovery district’s board.

Mike Duggan told The Detroit News on Thursday he learned of the secret loans from a constituent Wednesday night, but he never heard of the loans at monthly EAA board meetings, which he says he regularly attended.

“The board has never approved a loan from DPS. I’m pretty confident the board was never advised of it, either,” said Duggan, who is running for mayor of Detroit.
The loans came to light this week in documents obtained by state Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The EAA is a newly formed statewide school district created by Gov. Rick Snyder to take over the state’s lowest performing schools. All 15 EAA schools are former Detroit Public Schools.

“I think it’s very troubling, and it raises questions about transparency. The finances of DPS and EAA need to be kept separate; a lot of board members feel that way,” Duggan said.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130426/SCHOOLS/304260365#ixzz2RjJMR58T

Patrick Shannon Will be at the Rouge Forum 2013–you should be too!

Obamagogue’s Fearful Lapdog Duncan Runs to His Pals at the Chamber of Commerce Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently met with Chamber of Commerce leaders and urged them to be more vocal and forceful in defending the Common Core State Standards. Why?    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/24/is-the-common-core-standards-initiative-in-trouble/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Obamagogue Shocked! Simply Shocked! He’s Been Funding AQ!!!! cross Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.  …Among the most extreme groups is the notorious Al Nusra Front, the Qaeda-aligned force declared a terrorist organization by the United States, but other groups share aspects of its Islamist ideology in varying degrees.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html?ref=global-home

WarMaker Kerry Sucks Socks With Afghan Puppets Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a meeting on Wednesday with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief, to try to ease regional tensions as NATO approaches the end of its combat mission in Afghanistan.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/asia/kerry-meets-top-afghan-and-pakistani-officials.html?ref=global-home&_r=1&

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: What’s good for M & M Enterprises will be good for the country.

MiloMinderbender Roars: Who Lost that $757 Million in Afghanistan, and Who Got it??? The Pentagon allowed a private firm providing food and water to U.S. troops in Afghanistan to overbill taxpayers $757 million and awarded the company no-bid contract extensions worth more than $4 billion over three years, according to the Pentagon’s chief internal watchdog and congressional investigators.

The deal represented one of the largest U.S. military contracts in Afghanistan. But the Defense Logistics Agency, which was overseeing the contract, failed repeatedly to verify that the contractor’s invoices were accurate, an official in the Defense Department inspector general’s office said. http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/04/24/12553/pentagon-claims-757-million-overbilling-contractor-afghanistan

More Cooked Up WMD’S: Syria–The US took an odd and winding path from denial to acceptance of “evidence” of Syria’s use of chemical weapons, but the putative proof behind the allegations is flimsy, at best.  The “publicly available” evidence, none of which is particularly new, falls well short of the standards a UN team would need for “proof” of the use of chemical weapons during the civil war. Though there has been some hinting at other, secret evidence Israeli military officials, who are the source of the allegations, are pointing entirely to rebel-provided photographs as building their case.

The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons, and officials continue to insist they believe they can win the civil war without them. Though both rebels and government forces have repeatedly claimed they are on the brink of winning the war, it seems stalemated and nowhere near so dire that Syria would’ve been forced to play the chemical weapons card.

The UN has been trying to deploy a team to investigate the allegations in Syria, with the Assad government the first to urge them to come. The visit has been delayed, however, with the UN team demanding not only access to the alleged site of usage, but virtually the entire nation.     http://news.antiwar.com/2013/04/26/syria-allegations-rest-on-flimsy-evidence/

The Hillbillary Lies on Libya Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton. This fact contradicts her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 23, 2013.

In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.

Contrary to Administration rhetoric, the talking points were not edited to protect classified information. Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior Administration officials.

As to the first item, the report cites “a cable signed by Secretary Clinton in April 2012, the State Department settled on a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including Benghazi.” The committees essentially accuse Clinton of not telling the truth under oath. (“Multiple Committees have reviewed the State Department documents cited in the previous sections and remain concerned that the documents do not reconcile with public comments Secretary Clinton made regarding how high in the State Department the security.”)
As for the talking points, the report finds that in the interagency process (documented in e-mails among officials) the talking points were not altered because of intelligence concerns but to essentially conceal blame:

Those edits struck any and all suggestions that the State Department had been previously warned of threats in the region, that there had been previous attacks in Benghazi by al-Qa’ida-linked groups in Benghazi and eastern Libya, and that extremists linked to al-Qa’ida may have participated in the attack on the Benghazi Mission.   The talking points also excluded details about the wide availability of weapons and experienced fighters in Libya, an exacerbating factor that contributed to the lethality of the attacks. Administration officials have said that modification of the talking points was an attempt to protect classified information and an investigation by the FBI, but the evidence refutes these assertions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/04/24/libya-report-more-proof-of-dissembling-and-incompetence/?hpid=z4

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Prashad: Capitalist Terror in Bangladesh On Wednesday, April 24, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines and workers to the retail houses in the Atlantic world. Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the satanic shelves of Wal-Mart. Rescue workers were able to save two thousand people as of this writing, with confirmation that over three hundred are dead. The numbers for the latter are fated to rise. It is well worth mentioning that the death toll in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City of 1911 was one hundred and forty six. The death toll here is already twice that. This “accident” comes five months (November 24, 2012) after the Tazreen garment factory fire that killed at least one hundred and twelve workers.

The list of “accidents” is long and painful. In April 2005, a garment factory in Savar collapsed, killing seventy-five workers. In February 2006, another factory collapsed in Dhaka, killing eighteen. In June 2010, a building collapsed in Dhaka, killing twenty-five. These are the “factories” of twenty-first century globalization – poorly built shelters for a production process geared toward long working days, third rate machines, and workers whose own lives are submitted to the imperatives of just-in-time production. Writing about the factory regime in England during the nineteenth century, Karl Marx noted, “But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its wear-wolf hunger for surplus labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight…. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by reducing it of its fertility” (Capital, Chapter 10). http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/26/the-terror-of-capitalism/

Taibbi on Finance Capital’s Conspiracies the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants’ incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

“A farce,” was one antitrust lawyer’s response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.
“Incredible,” says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2RjI5fEH8

Detroit’s Coppers Dispose of Homeless People Detroit police have been picking up homeless people in the city’s popular Greektown entertainment district and dumping them miles away in remote neighborhoods and even outside the city, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
The individual and civil rights organization said it filed a complaint Thursday with the U.S. Justice Department and sent a letter to city and police officials demanding an end to the practice, Rana Elmir, an ACLU spokeswoman told The Associated Press. The complaint follows a yearlong investigation by the organization, which listed the stories of five people who said they were “taken for a ride” by Detroit police.  …The “practice of essentially kidnapping homeless people and abandoning them miles away from the neighborhoods they know — with no means for a safe return — is inhumane, callous and illegal,”

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130418/METRO01/304180450#ixzz2RjHRDMnn

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Bloomberg Finds Fascism Too Gentle Today In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

Mr. Bloomberg, who has come under fire for the N.Y.P.D.’s monitoring of Muslim communities and other aggressive tactics, said the rest of the country needs to learn from the attacks. http://politicker.com/2013/04/bloomberg-says-post-boston-interpretation-of-the-constitution-will-have-to-change/

Solidarity for Never

A long lost classic rises again—don’t miss Blue Collar (that’s 640 Temple, DSS, in the film)

Spy versus Spy

Nice Job Feds–Ricin/Elvis Walks A U.S. attorney in Mississippi dropped charges Tuesday afternoon against Paul Kevin Curtis, who’d been accused of sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

Curtis, 45, was arrested last Wednesday, a day after the letters were intercepted on their way to the White House and the U.S. Senate.
The charges were dismissed without prejudice, which means Curtis could be charged again. The order for dismissal notes only that “the ongoing investigation has revealed new information.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/23/189471/charges-dropped-against-suspect.html#storylink=cpy

Failed Warrior/Spy/Love Machine and Sleeze, Petraeus, rewarded as Full Prof at CUNY Scandal-scarred former CIA Director David Petraeus is bringing his secrets to a City University classroom nearly six months after resigning in disgrace over an affair with his biographer.

The cloak-and-shag-her general, who commanded coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, was named visiting professor of public policy at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College yesterday. The appointment appears to be the next step in Petraeus’ image makeover, part of a calculated return to public life. Last month, he gave his first speech since resigning, apologizing at a California dinner honoring veterans and their families.

Meanwhile, CUNY announced the appointment of William P. Kelly as interim chancellor to take over for Matthew Goldstein, 71, who is stepping down on July 1 after a 14-year run.

A search for a permanent replacement is under way.

Kelly currently serves as head of the CUNY Graduate Center and has lead the doctorate-granting institution since 2005.  CUNY is planning a golden parachute for Goldstein, who will get a salary after he retires. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/petraeus_cuny_gig_Iv0usF1TasI8pVaDCh6faJ

Tail Gunner Petraeus’ Rules for Living 1. Lead by example from the front of the formation. Take your performance personally—if you are proud to be average, so too will be your troops.  http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/11/04/general-david-petraeus-s-rules-for-living.html

USer Grabbed in N. Korea An American tour operator who crossed into North Korea from China last year is facing indictment on charges that he carried out hostile acts against the government in Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency said Saturday    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/asia/north-korea-expected-to-charge-american.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

The Magical Mystery Tour

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: As a matter of fact, Father, I know I can get my hands on an entire shipment of religious relics, blessed by the Pope himself. The Germans swiped them and put them on the open market. As I understand it, the stuff includes a wrist and collarbones of some of your top saints!

Christian Jihadists in Paris Riot Over Same Sex Marriage Clashes have broken out between protesters and riot police near France’s National Assembly building, hours after the country legalised gay marriage.

Some protesters opposed to the measure clearing same-sex marriage hurled petrol bombs, and riot police responded with tear gas at the Invalides memorial and museum complex, near the National Assembly in Paris.

Hours earlier, French politicians concluded a wrenching national debate that exposed deep conservatism in the nation’s heartland and tapped into intense discontent with the Socialist government. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/clashes-between-protesters-and-riot-police-in-france-after-gay-marriage-law-clears-last-hurdle-8585892.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Detroiter Mongo Says He will Shoot Taggers Next time The tagging in Capitol Park has taken a turn for the worse: Larry Mongo, owner of d’Mongo’s Speakeasy, just came out on the losing end of what we imagine was an epic, Mortal Kombat-style rooftop battle with some teenagers tagging the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. After hearing noises on his roof and spying a chubby girl peering at him through a window (she was the lookout), Larry confronted the teens on the roof, who promptly pushed him over and escaped, one by jumping off the roof onto a dumpster. Should they come back, Larry intends on shooting them, probably with his nine millimeter. “I will use deadly force,’ says Larry. “Then when one, four, or five of these suburban kids is dead, everybody’s gonna get upset — aren’t they?” That’s probably a solid bet, Larry.
· Bar Owner Says He Was Beaten By White, Suburban Teens [CBS Detroit  http://detroit.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/larry-mongo-beat-up-by-taggers-will-shoot-them-next-time.php

So Long Romney’s AMC The former American Motors Corp. headquarters was a hub of Detroit innovation for more than eight decades, but it only took three years for the complex to turn into a dumping ground.

Neighbors fear the new owner is stripping metals from the complex and plans to leave the mess for taxpayers to clean up. The facility is eligible for foreclosure — and government ownership — because taxes haven’t been paid in three years.

The owner, a scrap hauler convicted in 2004 of running a chop shop, owes $930,000 in taxes. He denies he’s scrapping and says he has a federal grant to convert the building into a home for autistic children. He provided few details on the grant to The Detroit News during a brief interview before hanging up. From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130426/METRO01/304260358#ixzz2RjOFMxlU

So Long

The Best Recent Vietnam History Lesson

Henry A. Prunier taught Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who withstood the armies of France and the United States, how to throw a grenade. The lesson came in July 1945, after Mr. Prunier and six other Americans had parachuted into a village 75 miles northwest of Hanoi on a clandestine mission to teach an elite force of 200 Viet Minh guerrillas how to use modern American weapons at their jungle camp.

The Americans, members of the Office of Strategic Services, the United States’ intelligence agency in World War II, wanted the guerrillas’ help in fighting the Japanese, who were occupying Indochina. The Viet Minh welcomed the American arms in their struggle for Vietnamese independence.

What’s more, in inviting the Americans to his field headquarters, Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Minh leader, could receive medical treatment for his malaria, hepatitis and other ailments. The Americans stayed for two months, and their care may have saved his life.

Mr. Prunier (pronounced PRUNE-yer), who died last month at 91, was a 23-year-old Army private at the time, recruited as a translator because of his language skills. His first assignment was to instruct a diminutive man, known to the Americans as Mr. Van, in the use of American rifles, machine guns, bazookas and other arms.

Mr. Van, who wore a white linen suit, black shoes and black fedora, was actually Mr. Giap, who as a general nine years later would lead North Vietnamese troops to victory at Dien Bien Phu, forcing France from Vietnam, and then fight the United States military to a costly stalemate.

“Giap wanted to know why we lobbed the grenade overhand and what activated the mortar,” Mr. Prunier said……Henry Arthur Prunier was born in Worcester on Sept. 10, 1921. He attended Assumption College, also in Worcester, where most classes were taught in French, but left after three years to enlist in the Army. Recognizing his linguistic skills, the Army sent him to the University of California, Berkeley, to study Vietnamese. There, the O.S.S. approached him and two others for “a voluntary mission into Indochina.” Told there was a 50 percent chance of survival, all said no.

After Berkeley, Mr. Prunier was sent to a cryptology school and scheduled to join an infantry division heading for France. But the night before he was to ship out, he was ordered to go to Washington to join the O.S.S. and take part in a special operations mission, code-named Deer Team.  While the Deer Team was with the Viet Minh, the Japanese surrendered and the Viet Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation, using language from the Declaration of Independence. Ho gave his American friends a message to forward to President Harry S. Truman asking him to support the Viet Minh against France, which had lost its colonies to Japan during the war and was fighting to take them back. Mr. Truman never replied. The United States backed France.

Some historians have said that by rejecting Ho’s overture the United States squandered an opportunity to build ties with North Vietnam that might have kept Americans out of war two decades later. The counterview is that Ho’s Communist ideology would have inevitably made North Vietnam an enemy by definition.
Mr. Prunier came down somewhere in the middle. “He saw no contradiction between being a Communist and hoping for a democratic way of life for his people,” he said of Ho.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/world/asia/henry-a-prunier-army-operative-who-helped-trained-vietnamese-troops-dies-at-91.html?_r=0

To such heights of evil are people driven by religion. (Lucretius)

“Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor

“To end the domination of capital, make war impossible, wipe out state boundaries, transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and freedom.” Aims of the Third (Moscow) International as stated in the Manifesto. It is that or the domination of barbarism.

WaPo Brief: Chechnya in 4 Minutes (nationalism marries mysticism) http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/thefold/chechnya-200-years-of-background-in-four-minutes/2013/04/19/0518f0ba-a927-11e2-b029-8fb7e977ef71_video.html

Over Half of Gitmo Prisoners on Hunger Strike The number of inmates taking part in the Guantanamo Bay hunger strike has reached 84, which is just over a half of the prison’s population, US military officials have stated, as reported by AP news agency.  http://rt.com/usa/guantanamo-strike-prisoners-inmates-162/\

Anon Threatens Internet blackout in Response to CISPA Passage

Trying Rios Mott Over the past month, survivors of massacres committed 30 years ago have testified how soldiers rampaged through Mayan villages, killing those who did not flee and destroying houses and crops. Women who had been raped covered their faces with shawls as they testified. Men who had been children at the time described seeing their parents or siblings killed. General Ríos Montt, 86, seized power in 1982 and ruled Guatemala for 17 months during a time when the army intensified its scorched-earth operations in the Mayan highlands to flush out leftist guerrillas.
A United Nations truth commission formed after the 1996 peace accord found that the state had committed “acts of genocide” against certain groups of Mayans, including the Mayan-Ixil.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/world/americas/judge-rejects-annulment-of-ex-dictators-guatemala-trial.html?ref=global-home

The Little Red Schoolhouse

In the Capitalist UC System, California Students get Jobbed The chances of in-state high school seniors gaining admission to the University of California worsened this year, as more of them applied and the number accepted dropped 2.2%, according to data released Thursday. Meanwhile, the ranks of out-of-staters and international students who were offered a UC spot continued to increase.
A record 99,132 Californians sought to become UC freshmen in the fall and 60,089, or 60.6%, were admitted by at least one of the system’s nine undergraduate campuses. That acceptance rate was the lowest ever — down from more than 70% five years ago.
UC officials contend that this year’s drop is a result of continuing financial constraints on the system and an effort to prevent overcrowding, because more students than anticipated enrolled for the current freshman class. Even though 1,354 fewer Californians were admitted for the 2013-14 school year, administrators said their goal was to enroll about 33,500 state freshmen, the same as last fall.  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-admissions-20130419,0,252956.story

New York Times Loves the Common Core, as they Loved the Iraq + AFPak Wars New York City parents are understandably nervous about tough new state tests that were rolled out last week. And some parents whose children have already taken the tests are outraged. They shouldn’t be: the tests, which measure math and English skills, are an essential part of rigorous education reforms known as Common Core that seek to improve reasoning skills and have been adopted by 45 states.  The city says that it provided adequate advance notice of the tests and that last year more than 90 percent of New York teachers said they understood the Common Core material. The outreach program could have been more aggressive. But with that proviso, New York deserves enormous credit for being one of the first states to carry out what is clearly the most important education reform in the country’s history.
The Common Core standards were the product of a heavily researched, bipartisan effort pioneered by the National Governors Association in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers. The effort arose from a broad recognition that the United States was losing ground to many of its competitors abroad because the learning standards as applied in most states were pathetically weak. The problem came to light when students who sailed through weak state tests did significantly worse on the rigorous federally backed test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/moving-ahead-with-common-core.html

A Reminder on Why the Common Core the Council of Foreign Relations, led by war-hawk Condoleeza Rice (“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,”) issued its Education Task Force Report, demonstrating in clear terms that the education agenda is a war agenda: class and empire’s wars.
“Human capital will determine power in the current century, and the failure to produce that capital will undermine America’s security…Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy.”
In the midst of World War I, a general demanded that the schools become “human munition factories.” That capitalist schools serve a capitalist state is key to grasping the war project at hand.   http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/28/detroit-and-the-international-war-of-the-rich-on-the-poor/

Hawaii Teachers build the Scaffold that Will Hang Them (Ya Can’t teach a Sneetch) Gov. Neil Abercrombie wasted no time in signing off on the new contract public schoolteachers ratified last night.
At a news conference this morning, the governor and officials with the state Department of Education and the Hawaii State Teachers Association made the four-year deal official. It now heads to the Legislature for funding approvals.
Abercrombie told reporters he believes the contract, which will tie teachers’ pay raises in part to student performance, should be celebrated as one of the most progressive contracts in the country.
Ninety-five percent of teachers voting voted to ratify the deal, which includes annual pay increases and reduced medical premiums for teachers, and ends a two-year labor dispute with the state.  http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20130418_Abercrombie_HSTA_sign_contract_after_teachers_ratify_deal.html

Michigan Governor Snyder’s Secret Plan to Voucherize Capitalist Schooling Gov. Rick Snyder on Friday defended his administration’s involvement in a secret project that is trying to develop a cheaper way to deliver public education through a voucher-like funding system.
The education reform advisory team’s existence had been secret until The Detroit News reported Friday about a months-long “skunk works” project to design a new “value school” that costs $5,000 per child annually to operate — $2,000 less than the state’s minimum per-pupil funding. The group includes employees of software companies, charter school advocates and five state employees.From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130420/SCHOOLS/304200345#ixzz2R9TbeS7C

National Black Education Agenda on the Common Core Neither the assumptions of “A Nation at Risk” nor the soon to be implemented“Common Standards,” both of which assume an American student population
embodied with a similar history of freedom and cultural neutrality, is sufficient to educate students of African descent whose ancestors in the United States bore the scars of physical and mental chains of enslavement and who themselves, whether they recognize it or not, are still victimized by a white supremacist culture and
school curriculum.

No other race came to America in chains to be suppressed and vilified by Americans of European descent who are presently accorded unearned special privileges because of their skin color and heritage. Although the new standards claim that no specific curriculum materials are being advocated, in several areas that specify common standards in English Language Arts,and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Mathematics, Science, and Technical
Subjects, grades kindergarten through the 12th grade and college, the “sample” of illustrative texts rarely contains any books or writings by Black authors, and, for that matter, of any writings by Hispanic/Latino, Native American or Asian writers! The“illustrative” texts for student reading in grades K5 contain no readings identifiable as written by or about authors of color. Yet, as the Common Core State Standards make clear these are only recommendations, not required readings. States are free to choose their own texts and materials. The State of Texas, for example, has already decided to remove such illustrious Americans as President Thomas Jefferson and Justice Thurgood Marshall from its textbooks and curriculum. The frequent suggestion in ‘The Standards’ that students be paired for diversity is an  implementation deception in schools that are primarily or all of one racial group or where some students are separated into elite “gifted” or “advanced placement” http://www.scribd.com/doc/136909345/NBEA-CommonCore-Critique42013

College Prez Describes Loss of 500,000 student positions in CA as “slack in Demand” Over the last four years, we have lost 469,000 students statewide, and enrollment demand is slowing down. This “forced change” due to financial contraction has deeply affected the CCC system. We need to embrace the reduced mission of the CCC’s, focusing on success, not just access. One way to address this mission is to work towards increasing unit load, rather than increasing students. This approach supports student success, as we know that full-time students achieve educational goals at a higher rate than part-time students. Finally, we need to continue to work more as a system and not lose the momentum we currently have in addressing student success (SB 1440, SB 1456, etc).
Potentially, this “slack in demand” will allow CCC’s some catch-up time to address areas neglected over the past four years, such as maintenance. While the economic outlook is moderately good, fixed costs will continue to accelerate (STRS, PERS, health benefits, and deferred maintenance). We need to plan for these.  http://www.swccd.edu/index.aspx?page=2276

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Perpetual War Against Exactly What???? The U.S., in other words, is probably in less danger from external enemies than at any moment in the last century. There is no other imperial power on the planet capable of, or desirous of, taking on American power directly, including China. It’s true that, on September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers with box cutters produced a remarkable, apocalyptic, and devastating TV show in which almost 3,000 people died. When those giant towers in downtown New York collapsed, it certainly had the look of nuclear disaster (and in those first days, the media was filled was nuclear-style references), but it wasn’t actually an apocalyptic event.
The enemy was still nearly nonexistent. The act cost bin Laden only an estimated $400,000-$500,000, though it would lead to a series of trillion-dollar wars. It was a nightmarish event that had a malign Wizard of Oz quality to it: a tiny man producing giant effects. It in no way endangered the state. In fact, it would actually strengthen many of its powers. It put a hit on the economy, but a passing one. It was a spectacular and spectacularly gruesome act of terror by a small, murderous organization then capable of mounting a major operation somewhere on Earth only once every couple of years. It was meant to spread fear, but nothing more.
When the towers came down and you could suddenly see to the horizon, it was still, in historical terms, remarkably enemy-less. And yet 9/11 was experienced here as a Pearl Harbor moment — a sneak attack by a terrifying enemy meant to disable the country. The next day, newspaper headlines were filled with variations on “A Pearl Harbor of the Twenty-First Century.” If it was a repeat of December 7, 1941, however, it lacked an imperial Japan or any other state to declare war on, although one of the weakest partial states on the planet, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, would end up filling the bill adequately enough for Americans.  http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175687/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_cathedral_of_the_enemy/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=c39779f5df-TD_Engelhardt4_14_2013&utm_medium=email#more

US Troops Plunge Toward Syria–Jihaddists, we got your back The US will deploy 200 troops to Jordan in the coming weeks in a bid to support that country’s defenses, Washington says, as the Syrian crisis escalates.
The Wednesday statement came from US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Congress. He said the deployment will assist the efforts to contain violence on the Syrian border, as well as set the groundwork for combating any perceived threats of chemical weapons use in Syria.   http://rt.com/news/jordan-us-troops-syria-028/

Afghan Opium Crop Doing Just fine For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across Afghanistan, reversing earlier drops stemming from a decade-long international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.  The report’s findings raised concerns among international law enforcement officials that if the trend continued, opium would be the country’s major economic activity after the departure of foreign military forces in 2014, leading to the specter of what one referred to as “the world’s first true narco-state.”
Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last year accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply. “The assumption is it will reach again to 90 percent this year,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations’ top counternarcotics official here.

US Pouring Money on Syrian Jihadists Secretary of State John Kerry announced Sunday morning that the United States would double its aid to the Syrian opposition, providing $123 million in fresh assistance.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/middleeast/kerry-says-us-to-double-aid-to-the-opposition-in-syria.html?ref=global-home

The World American Hysterics Made in Pakistan Electioneering has taken a dark twist in northwest Pakistan, where a concerted campaign of Taliban attacks against the main secular party is violently reshaping the democratic landscape before parliamentary elections scheduled for May 11.
In the past 10 days, militants have carried out four bombings and one grenade attack against Mr. Khan’s Awami National Party, which has governed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province since 2008, and whose secular ideology is repugnant to the Taliban’s vision of imposing an Islamic caliphate in Pakistan.
In the worst attack, last Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed 19 people and wounded dozens in central Peshawar, narrowly missing the former railways minister, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/world/asia/pakistani-taliban-violently-reshape-the-ballot.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Pakistan’s Gangster Musharraf Back under Arrest Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was arrested and placed in police custody Friday, a day after commandos whisked him away from an Islamabad courthouse where he faces charges of illegally detaining dozens of judges while in power.
Musharraf, who only a few weeks ago presented himself as a patriotic savior returning to his homeland from self-imposed exile, was being held at police headquarters at least until his next court appearance, which was expected within 48 hours. It was not known whether he would be moved back to his Islamabad residence under house arrest or to a jail cell to await trial.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-musharraf-20130420,0,2015585.story

Ally Karzai Says US Drones Kill A Dozen Children and More The spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the C.I.A. was responsible for calling in an airstrike on April 7 that left 17 Afghan civilians dead, 12 of them children, and that the secret Afghan militias that the agency controls behaved as if they were “responsible to no one.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/world/asia/after-airstrike-afghan-points-to-cia-and-secret-militias.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Klare on Resource Shock Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.
Two nightmare scenarios — a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change — are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition, and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence), and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia, and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time all regions of the planet will be affected.
To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.
Resource Shortages and Resource Wars
Start with one simple given: the prospect of future scarcities of vital natural resources, including energy, water, land, food, and critical minerals. This in itself would guarantee social unrest, geopolitical friction, and war. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175690/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_coming_global_explosion/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=2d2291faa3-TD_Klare4_21_2013&utm_medium=email#more

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Gitmo is Killing Me ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.
I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.
I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.
I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either. …I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.  The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.  And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.
I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.         http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/opinion/hunger-striking-at-guantanamo-bay.html

Military decrees media access to Manning’s hearing is a privilege, not a right http://www.bradleymanning.org/

After Dzhokar’s capture Friday evening, authorities decided not to read him his Miranda rights rights against self-incrimination, and hold him under a so-called public safety exception to the law, a move that has quickly raised legal and national security questions.   http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-boston-bombing-investigation-20130420,0,7218006.story

Why are the Americans Afraid of a Trial? Because no political leader can say, “People make gods; gods don’t make people. You psycho, you have evil fairies dancing in your head–and they belong in the third century Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Saturday in a joint statement that alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be denied a defense attorney and declared an “enemy combatant.”
They added in a statement on Graham’s Facebook page, “It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city.”
The two Republican conservatives have demanded that terror suspects not be Mirandized or tried in federal courts and instead be shipped to the detainee prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nn-miranda-boston-bombing-suspect-20130420,0,2852243.story

FBI Stumbles Again The significance of the trip was magnified late Friday when the F.B.I. disclosed in a statement that in 2011 “a foreign government” — now acknowledged by officials to be Russia — asked for information about Tamerlan. The request was “based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”  The senior law enforcement official said the Russians feared he could be a risk, and “they had something on him and were concerned about him, and him traveling to their region.” Chechen extremists pose a greater threat to Russia than they do to the United States, counterterrorism specialists say, though some of the groups have had ties to Al Qaeda.
But the F.B.I. never followed up on Tamerlan once he returned, a senior law enforcement official acknowledged on Saturday, adding that its investigation did not turn up anything and it did not have the legal authority to keep tabs on him. Investigators are now scrambling to review that trip, and learn about any extremists who might have influenced, trained or directed Tamerlan while he was there.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/boston-marathon-bombings.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The Criminal/Political Class in Mexico Skates on Drug Charges Gen. Tomas Angeles Dauahare, who once held the plum post of military attache to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, was rumored to be the next defense minister of Mexico.
Until that day in May last year when he and three other top military men were arrested on suspicion of working on behalf of a notorious drug cartel.
It was the largest indictment of army officers on charges of drug-trafficking in recent memory, hailed in many quarters as proof of then-President Felipe Calderon’s determination to root out corruption at every level.
But one night last week, Angeles stepped from the Altiplano maximum-security prison, all charges dropped.
The release of Angeles marked the second high-profile prosecution in as many days to be dismissed, raising questions about a series of Calderon-era cases that are collapsing like dominoes.
The failure to win convictions in major drug cases underscores the abysmal state of Mexico’s judicial system, stymied by corruption, antiquated procedures and incompetence.    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-collapsed-justice-20130421,0,2444382.story

Solidarity for Never

Seiu Boss Pleads Out On March 22, Rufino Sanchez, former president of National Association Government Employees (NAGE) Local R3-10, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York to one count of mail fraud resulting in the loss of $18,565 in funds from the union, formerly based in Ronkonkoma, N.Y. Sanchez had been indicted last July on 22 counts of mail fraud relating to the theft of $15,723 in union funds and arrested in August. NAGE is an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The indictment, arrest and guilty plea follow a probe by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.

Teamster Charged, Local Trusteed Al Sprague collected two incomes. Unfortunately, one of them may have been under false pretenses. Late in January the International Brotherhood of Teamsters determined that Sprague, president-business agent of Teamsters Local 164, received unemployment benefits while drawing an income from the Jackson, Mich. union. Apparently, he’s not the only official at the local with ethical problems. To safeguard assets, Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa put the local under trusteeship. “Following the assignment of a Personal Representative to investigate allegations of impropriety regarding the financial administration of Local 164, I have received a report that confirms the Local Union is not being operated in a manner consistent with the requirements of the International Constitution and federal law,” Hoffa wrote in a letter to local officers and members.

AFGE Top Pleads On March 15, Jacquelyn Pugh-Rodgers, former vice president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2107, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to one count of mail fraud. Pugh-Rodgers had been indicted in July along with two local officials, James Charleston and Mary Craigen, for two counts of mail fraud and one count of embezzlement in excess of $1,000 from the North Chicago, Ill.-based union. The actions follow a probe by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.

Spy versus Spy

Shrink in Army/CIA LSD Attacks Dies Gerald D. Klee, a retired psychiatrist and LSD expert who participated in experiments with the hallucinogenic drug on volunteer servicemen at U.S. military installations in the 1950s, has died. He was 86. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-gerald-klee-20130309,0,3203268.story

Klee died Sunday of complications after surgery at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Md., his family said.

In 1975, Klee made headlines when he confirmed reports that the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Psychiatric Institute had been involved in secret research between 1956 and 1959, when hundreds of soldiers were given LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide.

The Magical Mystery Tour

Thank God! Pope Keeps Uppity Nuns in their Place Pope Francis has reaffirmed the reprimand of American nuns issued by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and endorsed the plan to have three bishops supervise an overhaul of the nation’s largest umbrella group of American nuns.  …The Vatican last year said in its doctrinal assessment that the nuns’ group was tinged with feminist influences, focused too much on ending social and economic injustice and not enough on stopping abortion, and permitted speakers at its meetings who questioned church doctrine.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/pope-upholds-reprimand-of-nuns-group.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Best Sorority Email Ever There are two things the Delta Gamma sorority’s University of Maryland chapter refuses to tolerate. The first is Delta Gammas who are “LITERALLY being so fucking AWKWARD.” The second is young ladies who are “so fucking BORING.”
Last week, bitches got told. http://gawker.com/5994974/the-most-deranged-sorority-girl-email-you-will-ever-read

So Long

Joe Kelner–Sued Kent State Joseph Kelner, a lawyer who took on the sitting governor of Ohio, a former university president and the National Guard in a suit on behalf of the student victims of the Kent State shootings in 1970, died on Monday in Manhasset, N.Y. He was 98. …In 1980, Mr. Kelner was the co-author, with James Munves, of the book “The Kent State Coverup,” in which he alleged that “one governmental agency after another had managed to suppress evidence and shield those responsible for the shootings in a monumental cover-up.” He added, “The same process continued in the Cleveland courtroom.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/us/joseph-kelner-98-dies-led-kent-state-lawsuit.html?pagewanted=all

Mexico: Armed Vigilantes and Teachers Unite Debate is intensifying over armed vigilante patrols that have sprung up in crime-plagued sections of rural Mexico, particularly in the state of Guerrero, where some patrols joined forces this week with a radical teachers union that has been wreaking havoc with massive protests, vandalism and violent confrontations with police.  The two groups, on the surface, would appear to have little in common. The vigilante patrols, typically made up of masked campesinos, are among dozens that have emerged in the countryside in recent months, purporting to protect their communities from the depredations of the drug cartels. The state-level teachers union, meanwhile, has taken to the streets to protest a sweeping education reform law backed by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Their alliance was announced in a joint meeting Sunday. A leader of the vigilantes said they were joining with the teachers because it was the vigilantes’ “watchword to fight against injustice.”

The groups took part in their first joint demonstration this week in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state, which is home to the well-known resort city of Acapulco. The vigilantes apparently chose to march unarmed, and there were no reports of serious trouble.

But there is concern that an already-volatile series of political protests may take on a violent edge.
Before the alliance was announced, stick- and pipe-wielding members of the union, known as the State Coordinating Committee of Guerrero Education Workers, three times had blocked the key freeway connecting Mexico City and Acapulco, disrupting commerce during Acapulco’s crucial spring break season.

Last week, some of the union protesters attacked federal police with homemade weapons as officers removed them from the road, according to police reports carried by Notimex, the state news agency. According to police, 15 officers were injured.      http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/11/world/la-fg-mexico-vigilantes-20130412

100,000+ Students March For Real Education in Chile Students in Chile have resumed their protests for education reforms, with more than 100,000 people taking to the streets of the country.

In the capital, Santiago, riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to break up the march, after being targeted by hooded protesters.

Eight officers were injured and 109 people detained, authorities say.

Students say Chile’s education system, traditionally viewed as the best in Latin America, is profoundly unfair.

They say middle-class students have access to some of the best schooling in Latin America, while the poor have to be content with under-funded state schools.

Local media say the massive turn-out in Santiago puts the first big march of the year among the largest in the last two decades.

Students have been campaigning for about two years, but this was the first nationwide protest in 2013.    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22118682

IU On Strike This message is to communicate that Hunter Teaches, an autonomous group of adjunct instructors at Hunter College in New York City, declare our solidarity with the students, staff and faculty striking at Indiana University campuses on April 11-12. We have posted this message on our website and sent to our over 300 contacts. We endorse unequivocally the strikers’ demands, which include:
1. Immediate reduction of tuition and fees
2. An end to privatization and outsourcing at IU campuses
3. An end to the present wage freeze
4. Compliance with IU’s pledge to double the enrollment of African-American students
5. An immediate end to HB1402 and SB590, which legitimize racial discrimination on IU campuses
6. No retaliation against strikers

Reminder from Ollman–Toward Class Consciousness Why haven’t the workers in the advanced capitalist countries become class-conscious? Marx was wont to blame leadership, short memories, temporary bursts of prosperity, and, in the case of the English and German workers, national characteristics.1 In the last fifteen years of his life he often singled out the enmity between English and Irish workers as the chief hindrance to a revolutionary class consciousness developing in the country that was most ripe for it.2 The success of this explanation can be judged from the fact that it was never given the same prominence by any of Marx’s followers. Engels, too, remained unsatisfied. After Marx’s death, he generally accounted for the disappointing performance of the working class, particularly in England, by claiming that they had been bought off with a share of their country’s colonial spoils.3 The same reasoning is found in Lenin’s theory of imperialism, and in this form it still aids countless Marxists in understanding why the revolution Marx predicted never came to pass in the advanced capitalist countries.

Despite these varied explanations (or, perhaps, because of them), most socialists from Marx onward have approached each crisis in capitalism with the certainty that this time the proletariat will become class-conscious. A half-dozen major crises have come and gone, and the proletariat at least in the United States, England, and Germany are as far away from such a consciousness as ever. What has gone “wrong”? Until socialists begin to examine the failure of the proletariat to perform its historically appointed task in light of their own excessive optimism, there is little reason to believe that on this matter at least the future will cease to resemble the past. It is the purpose of this essay to effect such an examination.     http://www.pipeline.com/~rougeforum/towardclassconsciousness.htm

Mayday is Nigh

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Rhee and the DC Test Cheaters Teachers in 18 D.C. classrooms cheated last year on high-stakes standardized tests, according to the results of an investigation released Friday by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

The findings come one day after journalist John Merrow published a 2009 memo that raised questions about whether D.C. officials have adequately investigated past cheating allegations. The 18 classrooms found to have “critical” violations of test security were spread across 11 schools, including seven traditional and four charter schools. Critical violations include test-tampering such as providing students with answers or using prohibited electronic devices.

Teachers in four other classrooms were found to have committed “moderate” infractions, such as refusal to sign a non-disclosure form.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/teachers-in-18-dc-classrooms-cheated-on-tests-last-year-probe-finds/2013/04/12/b1a57e7c-a3a3-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html

Detroit’s Emergency Finance Manager (from years at failed Government Motors) Rolls out the latest plan to inject false hope into city schools Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts unveiled a plan Thursday that calls for reinventing the district’s identity and improving the way it does business, in hopes of reversing its enrollment slide.

Roberts hopes the changes will help retain more families in the district and attract new ones — one of DPS’s only hopes for long-term survival.

The plan, titled “Neighborhood-Centered, Quality Schools,” calls for preschool for all 4-year-olds in Detroit, the return of art and music programs to elementary-middle schools and a community-schools model where families have access to school buildings 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

A longer school year and day, increased security in and around schools and an enforceable attendance policy are also part of the plan to turn DPS back into a viable school district. It’s a steep challenge, given that Detroit’s population has dropped by more than half over the past 60 years.
From The Detroit News:   http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130411/SCHOOLS/304110463#ixzz2QNvtnqZK

Bill Gates Leaps to the Lead of Occupy DOE Efforts are being made to define effective teaching and give teachers the support they need to be as effective as possible. But as states and districts rush to implement new teacher development and evaluation systems, there is a risk they’ll use hastily contrived, unproven measures. One glaring example is the rush to develop new assessments in grades and subjects not currently covered by state tests. Some states and districts are talking about developing tests for all subjects, including choir and gym, just so they have something to measure.

In one Midwestern state, for example, a 166-pagePhysical Education Evaluation Instrument holds teachers accountable for ensuring that students meet state-defined targets for physical education, such as consistently demonstrating “correct skipping technique with a smooth and effortless rhythm” and “strike consistently a ball with a paddle to a target area with accuracy and good technique.” I’m not making this up!

This is one reason there is a backlash against standardized tests — in particular, using student test scores as the primary basis for making decisions about firing, promoting and compensating teachers. I’m all for accountability, but I understand teachers’ concerns and frustrations.     http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bill-gates-a-fairer-way-to-evaluate-teachers/2013/04/03/c99fd1bc-98c2-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

Atlanta’s Hall Inidicted. Rhee Not. Huh? Atlanta’s black former school superintendent and 34 other black teachers and administrators have been indicted for “racketeering” in a cheating scandal. Why aren’t others like former DC Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and her team indicted? Should we be rallying the racial wagons around Dr. Hall and the other 34? No way     http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-was-atlantas-beverly-hall-indicted-racketeering-while-michelle-rhee-wont-be

College Basketball is Capitalist Basketball=Corrupt Basketball Exactly two years after he and nine other defendants were arrested, bettor Paul Thweni was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison Thursday for his role in a scheme to fix basketball games at the University of San Diego.    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/apr/12/south-dounty-defendants-plead-not-guilty/

Adding to the List–Test Cheats on Long Island??? Teachers in Glen Cove, N.Y., administering annual state tests next week will be under heightened scrutiny after district and law-enforcement officials said they were investigating allegations of cheating.

The Nassau County district attorney’s office Friday said it opened an investigation into whether 18 elementary-school teachers in the city on Long Island’s North Shore had coached students during last year’s state tests. The school district disclosed this week that it opened an internal inquiry in November 2012.

The allegations surfaced as teachers and students in New York state’s 700 school districts prepared for this year’s state tests, which begin next week. The state Education Department will dispatch a staff member to Glen Cove next week to help the superintendent monitor the exams.     http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324695104578419171762821136.html

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Above, photo from Afghanistan by Kathleen Foster. The trailer to her award winning film, Afghanistan/Pakistan 10 years On, is linked here http://10yearsonafghanistanandpakistan.wordpress.com/

US Imperialism Massacres More Civilians in Surgical Strike An American military airstrike in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border was reported to have killed 18 people, including at least one senior Taliban commander but also women and children, raising the thorny issue of civilian casualties for the third time in roughly a week.  …In addition to killing Mr. Khan and about four other Taliban fighters, at least 10 children died in the strike, and at least 5 women were wounded, said Abdul Zahir Safi, the governor of the Shigal district, where the attack occurred. Afghan officials said they believed that the women and children were relatives of the Taliban commander.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/world/asia/years-worst-attack-on-united-states-in-afghanistan.html?ref=global-home

Barbarians Funding Fanatics in 14th Century Religious Wars (today) The group that abducted us, the Nusra Front – or Jabhat al Nusra in Arabic – has good reason to be suspicious of Americans. In December, the U.S. State Department declared it a front for al Qaida in Iraq and a wing of the Islamic State of Iraq, another al Qaida branch – a relationship that its members don’t try to hide. One bluntly, and smilingly, told me last month: “Of course we’re all al Qaida.”

That relationship was formalized this week when the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq released a video announcing that the two groups would drop the pretense of being separate and operate under a single name, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. On Wednesday, the al Qaida connection was completed when the head of Nusra pledged allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, the man who replaced Osama bin Laden at the top of the terrorist group.

The chain of events comes at a time when the Saudi, Qatari, Turkish and Jordanian governments, with support from the U.S., have increased weapons shipments to the rebels. Those weapons have also reached Nusra, which also is getting a steady flow of non-Syrians across the Turkish border to fight. Turkey has made no steps to stop that traffic.

The U.S. government’s designation of Nusra as a terrorist group backfired on the ground, increasing Syrian support for the group, which is also working quickly to provide people in areas affected by fighting with basic services. It recently scored a major victory on that front, taking over a hydroelectric dam near Raqqa, the capital of the province of the same name, making it the only place in Syria that has power 24 hours a day. Nusra also has seized oil installations, grain silos and other strategic infrastructure across northern and eastern Syria….After our release, the men who’d abducted us took us to their commander’s house for a meal and to have all our belongings returned. Abu Omar asked me whether I believe in God, and whether I thought Syrians had a right to an Islamic state. He suggested to Mousab that he read portions of the Quran that focus on separating oneself from bad influences, that is, from non-Muslims like me.

My glasses – they had been taken when I was blindfolded – and a satellite tracking device I was carrying were the only things that were not returned to us. Abu Omar apologized for the missing items, and I said something to the effect that it didn’t really matter, I was genuinely relieved to be alive.

Abu Omar turned to me, appearing somewhat pleased.
“That is the difference,” Abu Omar said. “We love death.” Read more here:   http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/10/188167/nusra-front-members-in-syria-have.html#emlnl=McClatchys_10_Best_Read#storylink=cpy

McClatchy: Drone Strikes Gone Wild Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.

The administration has said that strikes by the CIA’s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against “specific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces” involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting “imminent” violent attacks on Americans.

“It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,” President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. “It has to be a situation in which we can’t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.”

Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn’t adhere to those standards.

The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn’t on the U.S. list of terrorist groups at the time of the 9/11 strikes; of suspected members of a Pakistani extremist group that didn’t exist at the time of 9/11; and of unidentified individuals described as “other militants” and “foreign fighters.”
Read more here:   http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas-drone-war-kills-others.html#emlnl=McClatchys_10_Best_Read#storylink=cpy

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

America’s Mole People Below the streets of Kansas City, there are deep underground tunnels where a group of vagrant homeless people lived in camps.

These so-called homeless camps have now been uncovered by the Kansas City Police, who then evicted the residents because of the unsafe environment.

Authorities said these people were living in squalor, with piles of garbage and dirty diapers left around wooded areas.    Read more:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306113/Kansas-City-homeless-city-Group-living-underground-crude-camps.html#ixzz2QNsBVMey

So Long Michigan Welfare Workers (and thank your fake UAW union) More than 1,000 jobs, or nearly 9 percent, would be cut from the Michigan agency that handles welfare, food assistance and child abuse investigations under a budget approved Tuesday by a Republican-led House panel.

GOP lawmakers voted to hire fewer additional child protective workers than proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder and cut more than 200 public assistance caseworker positions along with hundreds of other staff in the Department of Human Services. Three juvenile justice facilities also would be closed and the youth offenders sent to private facilities under the budget.
From The Detroit News:   http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130409/POLITICS02/304090415#ixzz2Q2AjRjHZ

Thanks for that $192 Million, Obamagogue (and taxpayers) and So Long Fisker Fisker was to receive up to $529 million in U.S. loans, in part to open a factory in Delaware. It ended up borrowing about $192 million, but missed financial and product-development benchmarks.    http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/04/09/house-republicans-plan-a-hearing-on-fisker/

So Long Entertainment Book, and All those workers Entertainment Promotions, known for its thick coupon book, abruptly closed its doors after 50 years Tuesday, laying off 667 employees, including 225 at its Troy headquarters.

The Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing also surprised its customers across the country, which include many schools that sell the books for fund-raisers.

Despite the closing, as of Tuesday afternoon, Entertainment Promotions’ website was still taking orders for books. http://www.freep.com/article/20130313/BUSINESS06/303130037/Troy-Entertainment-publisher-files-for-Chapter-7-bankruptcy

Obamagogue–the Most Effective Evil (Glenn Ford) Contrast Kennedy’s assessment of the African-American community’s support with how President Obama has demonstrated his solidarity with the Hispanic community. He nominated the first Hispanic female Supreme Court justice. He has supported the Latino community’s call for comprehensive immigration reform.

He demonstrated his support to the gay and lesbian community by ending the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. To signal his support for women and feminists, he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Even as the tide shifts in the Middle East, the Obama administration continues to provide unambiguous support to Zionist interests in America. These are real policy outcomes, not abstract political sentiments.

Here are some real data for Kennedy and others to consider. The economy started its most recent decline during the administration of George W. Bush. African-American households lost more than half their wealth between 2005 and 2009. If these same “black detractors,” as Kennedy describes them, were not wrong to criticize President Bush, why should we sit idly by as the situation grows worse under President Obama? Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, recently said, “If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House.”     http://www.theroot.com/views/some-black-critics-obama-are-right?page=0,1

Consumers begin to think the economy Might Suck Consumer confidence tumbled sharply this month to its lowest level since July amid a slew of discouraging economic reports and continued gridlock in the nation’s capital, according to a leading barometer.

The consumer sentiment reading compiled by Thompson Reuters and the University of Michigan fell to 72.3 in the preliminary reading for April, down from 78.6 last month, Reuters reported Friday.

Economists had expected the reading to stay about the same.

Instead, with recent data indicating a slowdown in the recovery and large federal budget cuts kicking in, consumers expressed more pessimism about the state of the economy and their long-term outlook.     http://www.latimes.com/business/money/

Wells Fargo Doing Great–How About you? Wells Fargo & Co.‘s quarterly profit jumped 22%, beating expectations, despite a fall-off in the mortgage business, which generates a quarter of all revenue at the San Francisco banking giant.

The quarter was marked by cost-cutting, fewer loan losses and growth in loans and deposits. Revenue declined slightly, reflecting pinched profit margins on lending at a time of record-low interest rates.     http://www.latimes.com/business/money/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Gitmo Concentration Guards Force Feeding Prisoners The U.S. government has begun notifying lawyers of Guantanamo Bay prisoners if the men they represent are being force-fed to prevent them from starving to death in a hunger strike that has dragged on for more than two months, though its extent remains in dispute.  http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CB_GUANTANAMO_HUNGER_STRIKE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-04-08-17-34-35

Wife of World’s Biggest Warmaker/Assassin wants to Disarm Americans ABC News edited out First Lady Michelle Obama saying that a Chicago teenager was killed with an “automatic weapon.” Hadiya Pendleton was allegedly shot by a gang member on probation for a weapons charge with a handgun, not a rifle, which would be semi-automatic (unless it was a revolver.)
Robin Roberts got the first interview with Mrs. Obama since the inauguration in January, which she used to ask about gun-control efforts by President Obama.
A spokesman for ABC News, Heather Riley, emailed me that, “The full sto was posted to our website in advance of the interview being broadcast. The edits made to Robn’s interview with the First Lady were made solely for time.” Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2013/feb/26/miller-abc-edits-out-time-michelle-obama-wrongly-c/#ixzz2Q7tgbLPm
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Solidarity for Never

Hey CTA Members! Dues Going to a Bill To Make it Easier to Fire You California’s largest teachers union is backing a measure that would make it easier to discipline and fire teachers accused of misconduct after successfully fighting a similar proposal last year. http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_22907747/californias-largest-teachers-union-now-backs-bill-ease

UTLA Votes No Confidence in Deasy and No Confidence in UTLA Los Angeles teachers overwhelmingly expressed “no confidence” in L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy in the first vote of its kind in the nation’s second-largest school system…One side effect of the Deasy vote was to deflect attention from another question that went before teachers on the same ballot. It had been put there by teachers gathering signatures independently of the union leadership. That measure sharply criticized the leadership and laid out education and negotiating priorities for the union.

The resolution criticized “current UTLA practice” for “weakening and dividing us,” asserting that “UTLA has neither mobilized, nor organized its own membership, nor has it reached out to build alliances with community forces in a meaningful and consistent way.” http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0412-teachers-deasy-20130412,0,7411286.story

Spy versus Spy

The Family Jewels  http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Kwame Kilpatrick’s (jailed former Detroit Mayor) Mom, ex-US Rep Cheeks, to hold hearings on extraterrestials on earth at National Press Club A group hoping to prove alien contact with Earth has tapped former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick to help convince the federal government to acknowledge the existence of extraterrestrials.

The Detroit Democrat and mother to former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will help preside over 30 hours of congressional-style hearings April 29 t May 3 at Washington’s National Press Club. She did not respond to calls for comment.Dubbed the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, the public panel pledges to expose evidence of “extraterrestrial vehicles” and a government effort to deny sightings of such craft commonly called UFOs….Kilpatrick will be joined by five other former members of Congress for the hearings. Each will be paid about $20,000 and their expenses will be covered, Bassett said.

Joining Kilpatrick on the bipartisan panel are ex-Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska (Democrat and more recently Libertarian), as well as former Reps. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and Merrill Cook, R-Utah.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130411/POLITICS02/304110362#ixzz2QNxWvvKd

So Long

http://iuonstrike.tumblr.com/  Strike Preparations Indiana U–and how about you?

You can Register for the Rouge Forum Conference online: The Rouge Forum welcomes everyone, regardless of ability to donate.

Below are the suggested donations for attending the 2013 Rouge Forum Conference. For those who think the conference is too good of a bargain, you may submit a higher donation. Please, do not consider the suggested donation as a limit.

Listed donations below include lunch for Friday and Saturday.

• Full time employed, professors, K-12 teachers ($100)
• Part time employed, adjunct faculty, teacher aides, community members ($50)
• College students, unemployed, retired ($30.00)
• K-12 students (Free)

http://rougeforumconference.wordpress.com/rouge-forum-2013/registration-rf-2013/

Citizens of Tierra Colorado Mexico Seize City, Arrest Cops Thousands of armed vigilantes have taken over a town in Mexico and arrested police officers after their ‘commander’ was killed and dumped in the street.

The self described ‘community police’ and arrested 12 officers and the town’s former director of public security, who they accuse of taking part in the killing of Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal, 28, on behalf of a local organised crime group.

The 1,500-strong force has also set up improvised checkpoints on the major road running through Tierra Colorado, which connects the capital Mexico City to Acapulco, a coastal city popular with tourists less than 40 miles away. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300381/Vigilantes-seize-town-Mexico-shoot-tourists-commander-killed.html#ixzz2PHhcClzO

San Diego, “Home of the Drone” Protest April 2013

Kids Fight Capitalist-Schooling-as-Jailing “We want our school to be more like a school,” says Ruff, a shy honor student with a cheeky grin and aspirations to become a University of Florida Gator some day. “Other schools don’t have police officers. So why does our school have to have that?”

They’re hoping to use the photographs to persuade D.C. school officials to start a “restorative justice” program to cut down on the 6,000 students or so who were suspended last school year, some multiple times.

But in the current climate they may have trouble winning over school administrators such as the principal at Woodson, who says he thinks tight security is crucial to keeping kids safe.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-students-use-photography-to-protest-school-security/2013/04/04/e32bef48-8b44-11e2-9838-d62f083ba93f_story.html

Fast Food Workers Protests How much should employers pay the people who serve up your french fries and ring up your tacos? It’s an issue that’s being raised for the second time in six months as hundreds of fast food workers in New York City walked out on the job Thursday to demand higher wages. An estimated 400 workers from 60 restaurants in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Harlem participated, organizers say.

The campaign, organized in part by the group Fast Food Forward, is asking for wages to be raised to $15 an hour, which in some cases would double the pay of some workers, raising their pay to around what a substitute teacher makes, or an emergency medical technician, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-mo-fast-food-workers-20130404,0,7892003.story

Dockworkers Srike in Hong Kong A rare strike among contract dockworkers at the cargo terminals owned by Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man, stretched into its seventh day Wednesday, and the walkout is starting to have a real and increasing effect on the flow of ships and goods on the doorstep of the world’s workshop, in southern China.

If the strike drags on, it could affect the peak season for cargo volume, which begins in May and lasts until October, as exporters hurry goods from southern Chinese ports to retailers in the United States and Europe to meet holiday season demand.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/business/global/hong-kong-strike-clogs-shipping-traffic.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Detroit EFM Fires Academics Boss Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts in an executive order is expected to announce today that he has fired the interim superintendent of academics, just as a new emergency manager law takes effect.

Roberts said he fired John Telford and reappointed Karen Ridgeway, Telford’s former deputy superintendent.

The school board battled Roberts in court to expand the board’s authority for months when a weaker emergency manager law, Public Act 72, was in effect. The court ruled Feb. 22 that Roberts had no jurisdiction when it came to academics. As a result, the board instructed Ridgeway to report to Telford instead of Roberts.
“I know that these last few months have been filled with confusion…,” Roberts wrote in a letter expected to be released to staff today. “However, we have made it through those difficult times and can now focus on the future.”

As a part of the executive order, Roberts also terminated Telford’s pro bono staff of five.

Telford said Wednesday night that Roberts didn’t have the authority to terminate his contract, which runs through December. He said he will continue to serve as “superintendent in waiting.” From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130328/SCHOOLS/303280386#ixzz2P9gVPeeJ

Shocker! Michigan “Bad Bank” Schools have t LOT of Discipline Problems Officials with Michigan’s statewide school district released some stunning statistics that show the challenges to reform the worst-performing schools are not just academic — they are behavioral, too.

In the first five months of the school year in the Education Achievement Authority — the statewide system for failing schools — authorities documented more than 5,000 discipline-related infractions across 15 school buildings in Detroit, ranging from fights to truancy to gambling and disorderly conduct.

The number of incidents skyrocketed in the second quarter, from mid-November through the end of January, when 4,000 infractions piled up, including 1,000 truancy cases, 986 disorderly conduct incidents, 63 drug possessions, 33 firearm possessions and 22 physical assaults against staff.

Also reported were 876 cases of insubordination and 52 cases of threats of violence or coercion.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130403/SCHOOLS/304030358#ixzz2PcpOvwLC

Those who are at the Heart of the Creation of the Reasons for the Bad Bank Michigan Schools pretend to fix the problem http://www.detroitpush.org/MBC/board.htm

Michelle Rhee has at least one kid in a private school The Times asked Rhee’s spokeswoman again about what type of school Rhee’s children attend.
Shaw declined to answer the question directly. Instead, after multiple emails and phone calls from Times reporters, she issued a statement apologizing for “misleading” the newspaper with her initial response.

“It was not our intention to be misleading. It is our policy not to discuss where Michelle’s children attend school out of respect for their privacy,” the statement says. “While it is true Michelle is a public school parent, we understand how that statement was misleading, and we apologize to the Los Angeles Times.”
Asked whether those remarks indicate that at least one of Rhee’s children attends private school, Shaw again declined to answer. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/political/la-me-pc-michelle-rhee-a-public-school-parent-20130328,0,6195587.story

Test Cheat, Religious Fanatic, Snitch, breaks Atlanta Test Score Scam When asked during an interview if she was surprised that out of Atlanta’s 100 schools, Mr. Hyde turned up at hers first, Ms. Parks said no. “I had a dream about it a few weeks before,” she said. “I saw people walking down the hall with yellow notepads. From time to time, God reveals things to me in dreams.”

“I think God led Mr. Hyde to Venetian Hills,” she said.

Whatever delivered Mr. Hyde (he said he picked the school because he knew the area from patrolling it as a young police officer), 10 months after his arrival, on June 30, 2011, state investigators issued an 800-page report implicating 178 teachers and principals — including 82 who confessed to cheating.

By now, almost all are gone. Like Ms. Parks, they have resigned or were fired or lost their teaching licenses at administrative hearings.   …“The cheating had been going on so long,” Ms. Parks said. “We considered it part of our jobs.”

She said teachers were under constant pressure from principals who feared they would be fired if they did not meet the testing targets set by the superintendent.
Dr. Hall was known to rule by fear. She gave principals three years to meet their testing goals. Few did; in her decade as superintendent, she replaced 90 percent of the principals.

Teachers and principals whose students had high test scores received tenure and thousands of dollars in performance bonuses. Otherwise, as one teacher explained, it was “low score out the door.”    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/us/former-school-chief-in-atlanta-indicted-in-cheating-scandal.html?pagewanted=2&hp&pagewanted=all

Almost as bad as Wall Street–test cheats everywhere In the past four academic years, test cheating has been confirmed in 37 states and Washington D.C. (You can see details here, and, here, a list of more than 50 ways that schools can manipulate test scores.) The true extent of these scandals remain unknown, and, as Michael Winerip of The New York Times shows here in this excellent article, it is very hard to get to the bottom of these scandals. In Atlanta, it took the will of two governors who allowed investigators to go in with a lot of time and subpoena power.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/01/atlanta-test-cheating-tip-of-the-iceberg/

Test Cheats in El Paso turn schools into Diploma Mills Widespread cheating continued at the El Paso Independent School District even after disgraced Superintendent Lorenzo García was arrested, as many high schools became “diploma mills,” according to an 86-page audit released Monday by the district.

A number of administrators cited in the report by Weaver and Tidwell, an Austin-based forensic accounting firm, said the company conducted an incomplete investigation and its auditors seemed unfamiliar with Texas education law.

The audit report noted that for much of García’s five-year tenure, “the district was run by a criminal.” But the report said problems continued even after García’s arrest in the summer of 2011.

“Long after García’s arrest and departure on August 1, 2011, many of these practices continued unabated. Although García was gone, the Bowie Plan infrastructure he created was still intact. In the rush to avoid accountability consequences for inadequate graduation rates, many district high schools became credit mills and, eventually, diploma mills, as unearned credits resulted in the graduation of ill-prepared students. These students are the victims of the culture García promulgated, and it is not a culture easily undone,” the report said.     http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_22917594/audit-cheating-made-many-episd-schools-diploma-mills

There Goes Camden: Christie Takes Over Gov. Chris Christie today announced the state would assume control of Camden public schools, describing a district “at the breaking point” with “chronic and severe” problems.

The move would make Camden the fourth school district under state control and the first for the Christie administration.

The state took over its three biggest districts — Newark, Jersey City and Paterson to try to impose fiscal discipline and stamp out corruption.    http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/03/nj_to_take_control_of_camden_s.html

So Long California Community Colleges California’s community colleges — the nation’s largest public higher education system — have lost so many teachers and classes that students are being driven away.

With the number of course sections down systemwide by as much as 20 percent since 2008, enrollment rates have hit their lowest point in two decades, concludes a Public Policy Institute of California report released Monday.

The community colleges’ ideal of open access for all, still dear to many Californians, barely resembles the reality on campuses today after years of budget cuts.

“I expected to get the classes I needed, but I was wrong,” said Rigo Navarro…..The community college chancellor’s office reports that a half-million students have been shut out of the system in recent years because they couldn’t get into classes. The system counted 2.4 million students in 2011-12, down from 2.9 million students in 2008-09, according to the report. .. Last semester, class instructor Chad Mark Glen tried to ease the damage, letting in every student who tried to register for his introduction course. The cap was 44 students, but he invited more than 90 into a little lecture hall — basically, packing two sections into one. Students sat on the floor and poured into the hallway.

Glen said the class was vibrant and fun to teach. It was also draining. This semester, he said, “I told my dean, ‘Put it back to 44.’ I just felt I couldn’t do it again.” http://www.insidebayarea.com/education/ci_22870735/hundreds-thousands-have-been-shut-out-community-colleges?source=rss

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/a-truly-devastating-graph-on-state-higher-education-spending/274199/

Chicago’s Unionist Karen Lewis Defends Capitalist schools, Manages an Entire interview without saying “Capitalism, Imperialism,” or even “Poverty” and buys the nationalism inherent in “the common good” WHY? Lewis: What’s interesting to me is if you read blogs, you read Facebook, you go to wherever you need to go, teachers across the country are complaining about being scapegoated for problems that they’re not responsible for. They are given mandate after mandate that does not help children. And I think the problem is, as teachers and clinicians and paraprofessionals, our main goal is to help children, and when we see that the corporate agenda is actually doing harm, we have to call that out. We have tried to accommodate these people, we have done everything they have ever asked us to do, and yet it is not enough. It will never be enough until they destroy our profession.

And there are those of us that feel that we have to be on the line to protect not only our profession, but the common good of publicly funded public education. There’s a reason we have public education in this country, and it is because it serves the common good. http://truth-out.org/video/item/15543-chicago-teachers-union-president-karen-lewis-on-fighting-school-closures#13651179890591&action=collapse_widget&id=2953861

Rise of the RoboGraders Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.

And then, instead of being done with that exam, imagine that the system would immediately let you rewrite the test to try to improve your grade.

EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/how-would-you-feel-about-a-computer-grading-your-essays/

New Marketing Niche for Historians (discovering capitalism) Markets and financial institutions “were created by people making particular choices at particular historical moments,” said Julia Ott, an assistant professor in the history of capitalism at the New School (the first person, several scholars said, to be hired under such a title).

To dramatize that point, Dr. Ott has students in her course Whose Street? Wall Street! dress up in 19th-century costume and re-enact a primal scene in financial history: the early days of the Chicago Board of Trade.

Some of her colleagues take a similarly playful approach. To promote a two-week history of capitalism “boot camp” to be inaugurated this summer at Cornell, Dr. Hyman (a former consultant at McKinsey & Company) designed “history of capitalism” T-shirts.      http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/education/in-history-departments-its-up-with-capitalism.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: We’re gonna come out of this war rich!
Yossarian: You’re gonna come out rich. We’re gonna come out dead.

above, flyer distributed by vets to vets this week at Fort Hood

Vets Die Awaiting Benefits: The VA’s inability to pay benefits to veterans before they die is increasingly common, according to data obtained by The Bay Citizen. The data reveals, for the first time, that long wait times are contributing to tens of thousands of veterans being approved for disability benefits and pensions only after it is too late for the money to help them.

In the fiscal year that ended in September, the agency paid $437 million in retroactive benefits to the survivors of nearly 19,500 veterans who died waiting. The figures represent a dramatic increase from three years earlier, when the widows, parents and children of fewer than 6,400 veterans were paid $7.9 million on claims filed before their loved one’s death.

These veterans range from World War II veterans like Alderson who die of natural causes without their pensions to Iraq war veteran Scott Eiswert, who committed suicide after his disability claim for post-traumatic stress disorder was denied.
The ranks of survivors waiting for these benefits also have surged, from fewer than 3,000 in December 2009 to nearly 13,000 this month.    https://www.baycitizen.org/news/veterans/number-veterans-who-die-waiting-benefits/

2004 and the Origins of the Drone Wars Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.      http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/world/asia/origins-of-cias-not-so-secret-drone-war-in-pakistan.html?ref=global-home

US/NATO Murders 6 More–by mistake - A NATO airstrike killed four policemen and two civilians on a rural road in Afghanistan’s eastern Ghazni province, Afghan officials said Thursday.

Fazel Ahmad Tolwak, governor of Deyak district, said the four police had attended a memorial ceremony for a deceased villager Wednesday and, on the way back, gave a ride to several members of the Taliban and two members of Tolwak’s family.

The police let the Taliban off, while the civilians remained in the vehicle, he said. The NATO aircraft apparently saw the Taliban riding in the vehicle and assumed they were still there, Tolwak said. He said he didn’t know why the Taliban were riding with the police.

Tolwak said the airstrike was not called by Afghan security forces as some had reported, but by a NATO patrol a few miles away that had come under attack from Taliban fighters, leading to the apparent case of mistaken identity.   ..On Wednesday, Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers killed more than 40 civilians in a court complex over an eight-hour period in western Farah province. The death toll was the highest in Afghanistan resulting from a single attack since December 2011 when a Shia Muslim shrine was bombed in Kabul, killing 80 people.     http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-afghanistan-nato-airstrike-20130404,0,5683266.story

US Brass visits Afghanistan–Seven Americans Killed On the same day that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived in Afghanistan for an assessment visit, six Americans were killed Saturday in attacks by Afghanistan insurgents.

Hours after Dempsey arrived in the nation, five Americans — three soldiers and two civilians — were killed when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded in southeastern Zabul province. An Afghan doctor was also killed in the attack on a convoy headed to a hospital for a visit.

Another American was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, military officials said. The one-day American death toll was the highest since last summer.    http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-six-americans-killed-in-afghan-attacks-as-top-uscommander-visits-20130406,0,2895175.story

Japan Readies for War Perhaps the most notable feature of the war games in February, called Iron Fist, was the baldness of their unspoken warning. There is only one country that Japan fears would stage an assault on one of its islands: China.

Iron Fist is one of the latest signs that Japan’s anxiety about China’s insistent claims over disputed islands as well as North Korea’s escalating nuclear threats are pushing Japanese leaders to shift further away from the nation’s postwar pacifism.

The new assertiveness has been particularly apparent under the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a conservative who has increased military spending for the first time in 11 years. With China’s maritime forces staging regular demonstrations of their determination to control disputed islands in the East China Sea and North Korea’s new leader issuing daily proclamations against the United States and its allies, Mr. Abe’s calls for a bolder, stronger military are getting a warmer welcome in Japan than similar efforts in the past.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/asia/japan-shifting-further-away-from-pacifism.html?pagewanted=all

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The Council on Foreign Relations Shivers about Income Inequality Rising U.S. Income Inequality
Income inequality in the United States has been rising for decades, with the top echelon of earners rapidly outpacing the rest of the population. According to the Congressional Budget Office (PDF), the average real after-tax household income of the top 1 percent rose 275 percent from 1979 to 2007. Meanwhile, income for the remainder of the top quintile (81stto 99th percentile) grew 65 percent. Income for the majority of the population in the middle of the scale (21st through 80th percentiles) grew just 37 percent for the same period. And the bottom quintile experienced the least growth income at just 18 percent.            Furthermore, in 1965, a typical corporate CEO earned more than twenty times a typical worker; by 2011, the ratio was 383:1, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

While many of the suspected drivers of rising income inequality—globalization, technological change and the rising value of education—affect other nations as well, few have seen as stark a rise in inequality. From 1968 to 2010, the share of national income earned by the top 20 percent rose from 42.6 to 50.2 percent, with gains concentrated at the very top. Meanwhile, the “middle class,” the middle 60 percent, saw its share decline from 53.2 to 46.5 percent. This increasing income inequality is captured by the steady rise in the U.S. Gini coefficient, from 0.316 in the mid-1970s to 0.378 in the late 2000s. Today, the U.S. income distribution is one of the most uneven among major developed nations (PDF).    http://www.cfr.org/united-states/income-inequality-debate/p29052#p2

Democrat Obamagogue Set to Cut Social Security (nice job, liberals) President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/us/social-programs-face-cutback-in-obama-budget.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130405&_r=0

One Half Million Forced Out of Work Force The Labor Department reported that the economy added 88,000 jobs in March, the slowest monthly job growth since last June when it added 87,000 jobs. In spite of the weak reported job growth, the unemployment rate edged down to 7.6 percent. However, like the February decline, this drop was also associated with people dropping out of the labor force. The household survey reported a decline of 496,000 in the size of the labor force. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) fell to 58.5 percent, just 0.3 percentage points above the low hit in the summer of 2011. The EPOP for women fell by 0.2 percentage points to 54.6 percent, tying the low hit in January.  …The March report should end the excessive wave of optimism that led many analysts to claim the economy had reached a turning point and to talk about the end of the Fed’s quantitative easing policy. It is bizarre that this sort of talk ever gained much currency. After all, the economy grew at just a 1.6 percent annual rate in the second half of 2012. While the February jobs report was better than expected, and the last five months showed somewhat more rapid growth than the year-round average, it was well below the pace from a year ago.

It is important to remember that the March data does not reflect the impact of the sequester. Apart from the drop in postal employment, which was not affected by the sequester, federal employment was virtually unchanged. Given the underlying weakness of the economy, the hit from the sequester could push the employment growth rate below the 100,000 monthly rate needed to keep the unemployment rate stable. It is more likely that the unemployment rate will rise than fall through the rest of 2013.   http://www.cepr.net/index.php/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/job-growth-falls-to-88000-half-a-million-workers-leave-labor-force

The number of Americans living in poverty has spiked to levels not seen since the mid 1960s, classing 20 per cent of the country’s children as poor. It comes at a time when government spending cuts of $85 billion have kicked in after feuding Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a better plan for addressing the national deficit. The cuts will directly affect 50 million Americans living below the poverty income line and reduce their chances of finding work and a better life….The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of Americans in poverty at levels not seen since the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty.
As President Barack Obama began his second term in January, nearly 50 million Americans — one in six — were living below the income line that defines poverty, according to the bureau. A family of four that earns less than $23,021 a year is listed as living in poverty.

The bureau said 20 percent of the country’s children are poor.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302997/U-S-sees-highest-poverty-spike-1960s-leaving-50-million-Americans-poor-government-cuts-billions-spending.html#ixzz2PT1L0tqd
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Taxes? Taxes? We Don’t Pay no Stinking Taxes An enormous leak of confidential financial records has revealed the identities of thousands of wealthy depositors — including European officials and corporate executives, Asian dictators and their children, and even American doctors and dentists — who have stashed immense amounts of money in offshore tax havens.  …the files “illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy to avoid taxes, fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations.” The current banking crisis threatening Cyprus, it said, “is one example of how the offshore system can impact an entire country’s financial stability.” (included among the named)  Denise Rich of the United States, the songwriter and former wife of Marc Rich, the onetime fugitive oil trader, who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton on tax evasion charges.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/europe/vast-hidden-wealth-revealed-in-leaked-records.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

EuroZone–Massive Unemployment The euro zone jobless rate rose to 12.0 percent in the first two months of the year, the latest in a series of record highs tracing to late 2011, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported Tuesday.

The agency revised upward the January jobless rate for the euro zone from the previously reported 11.9 percent, itself a record. For the overall European Union, Eurostat said the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.   Both the jobless rates and the number of unemployed are the highest Eurostat has recorded in data that reach back to 1995, before the creation of the euro.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/global/unemployment-in-euro-zone-reaches-a-record-high-of-12-percent.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Currency Wars Often Become Hot Wars–there goes the Yen with the Visible hand of the Corporate State Japan plans to flood its economy with freshly printed yen in coming months in an effort to shock one of the world’s major industrial powers out of a 20-year-old stupor.

The impact of an unexpectedly ambitious move by the Bank of Japan on Thursday could course quickly through the world economy, pulling down the value of Japan’s currency and with it the prices of the cars, electronics and other goods the country sells worldwide.  That could mean a larger U.S. trade deficit with the country and a more difficult market for American exports, which will become more expensive in Japan by comparison. The yen fell 3 percent against the dollar on Thursday, continuing a six-month-old trend in which it has dropped about 25 percent as the country prepared to shake up economic policy. On Friday, the yen fell again and Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average soared, closing its morning session up 3.76 percent and climbing above 13,000 for the first time in almost five years.

Rivaling what the U.S. Federal Reserve did in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, Japan’s move is the latest example of how the developed world is relying on its central bankers to keep the economy afloat while politicians grapple with underlying problems, including government debt and economic competitiveness.
Institutions such as the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have waded deep into unfamiliar territory to do the job, buying government bonds and other assets while their own internal balance sheets balloon. They are pushing money into the economy with historic low interest rates to try to battle the fact that households are slow to spend and companies are hesitant to invest and hire. The risks are known but impossible to quantify: of inflation remaining tame until it roars out of control, or of asset bubbles creeping into unexpected parts of the economy as investors take advantage of cheap money worldwide to make ever-riskier bets. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/japan-opens-the-spigot-with-a-torrent-of-yen-planned-to-boost-the-economy/2013/04/04/fbd3027e-9d47-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html?hpid=z2

Who Lost Stockton? And San Berdoo and…. federal judge ruled Monday that Stockton is eligible for bankruptcy protection, over the objection of creditors who argued the city could come up with more money.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein said Stockton can move forward with a plan to reorganize debt. He twice stated that the creditors had acted in bad faith and had refused to pay their share of the costs for negotiations.

“The creditors got a big black eye today,” said Karol Denniston, an attorney who helped draft the legislation that guided Stockton’s mandated mediation before filing for bankruptcy protection. “Now the stage is set for the real dogfight.”
In late June, Stockton became the nation’s largest city to fail financially. At that time, all eyes were on the port city of 300,000 as experts warned the action could set off a string of similar filings among cash-strapped municipalities. Since then, a half-dozen cities have filed for Chapter 9 protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, including the city of San Bernardino. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-stockton-bankrupt-20130401,0,7979388.story

With No Criminal Charges but $616 Million Fine, SAC Boss buys $150 million Picasso Reports surfaced last week that Mr. Cohen had bought the Picasso for $155 million. That, coupled with news that Mr. Cohen paid $60 million for an oceanfront estate in the Hamptons, led to speculation that Mr. Cohen’s shopping spree was a statement of confidence that his legal problems were over or an effort to shield assets from the government.

News of the purchases emerged less than two weeks after SAC agreed to pay the government a record $616 million penalty to settle civil insider trading accusations against the fund. Mr. Cohen has not been charged with any wrongdoing, and has said he believes that he has at all times behaved appropriately.   http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/suit-by-ex-wife-of-sacs-cohen-revived-on-appeal/

Dynasty=Tyranny= Kennedy as Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, is likely to be the next United States ambassador to Japan, according to people familiar with the appointment process.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/caroline-kennedy-is-considered-for-japan-ambassador.html

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Obamagogue’s Honduran Death Squads The video (warning: contains graphic images of lethal violence), caught randomly on a warehouse security camera, is chilling.

Five young men walk down a quiet street in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A big black SUV pulls up, followed by a second vehicle. Two masked men with bullet-proof vests jump out of the lead car, with AK-47s raised. The two youths closest to the vehicles see that they have no chance of running, so they freeze and put their hands in the air. The other three break into a sprint, with bullets chasing after them from the assassins’ guns. Miraculously, they escape, with one injured – but the two who surrendered are forced to lie face down on the ground. The two students, who were brothers 18- and 20-years-old, are murdered with a burst of bullets, in full view of the camera. Less than 40 seconds after their arrival, the assassins are driving away, never to be found.

The high level of professional training and modus operandi of the assassins have led many observers to conclude that this was a government operation. The video was posted by the newspaper El Heraldo last month; the murder took place in November of last year. There have been no arrests.

Now, the Obama administration is coming under fire for its role in arming and funding murderous Honduran police, in violation of US law.    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/30/congress-us-support-honduras-death-squad-regime

Solidarity for Never

How About your NEA dues? NEA and its state affiliates spent more than $310 million in direct contributions on political campaigns for candidates and issues in that 12-year period. That figure does not include independent expenditures or issue advertising. Almost $53.4 million came from NEA national headquarters, while another $257.1 million was spent by affiliates.

More than 47.3 percent of that total – almost $147 million – was spent in California or on behalf of California ballot measures and candidates. http://www.eiaonline.com/2013/03/25/neas-legacy-310-million-in-direct-campaign-spending-since-2000/

Spy versus Spy

Ex CNN Reporter Ordered to Fake News Ex-CNN reporter Amber Lyon revealed that during her work for the channel she received orders to send false news and exclude some others which the US administration did not favor with the aim to create a public opinion in favor of launching an aggression on Iran and Syria.    http://sana.sy/eng/22/2013/03/30/475112.htm

Carl Berstein Reminder–the US Press and the CIA The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well‑known ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to identify him. A high‑level CIA official with a prodigious memory says that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966; he does not know who they were, or who in the newspaper’s management made the arrangements.  …Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc   http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

Ayers, once a Liberal with a bomb, now merely a grant sucking liberal, regrets nothing (including the destruction of the largest student movement in the history of the US, on the eve of a mass outpouring of activism, nor trying to blow up a dance for young military officers and their dates–ever arrogant and repellent, here is Ayers’ latest interview coming out as the media once more tries to heroize the Weathermen–who did the work of the police I feel like I’ve lived a very blessed life. Having three amazing kids and three amazing grandchildren, being a teacher for 40 years, it is all terrific stuff. And opposing the war in Vietnam with every fiber of my being? I couldn’t be happier or prouder of that. In terms of opposition to the war, I have no regrets.      http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/03/exclusive-bill-ayers-on-the-weathermen-obama-s-crap-job-more.html

The CIA Spy who Said Too Much and Got Ten Years in Prison from Obamagogue n 2007, John Kiriakou was settling into a lucrative life as a former spy. His fourteen-year career as a C.I.A. officer had included thrilling, if occasionally hazardous, tours as a specialist in counterterrorism. In Athens, in 1999 and 2000, he recruited several foreign agents to spy for the United States, and at one point was nearly assassinated by leftists. In Pakistan, in 2002, he chased Al Qaeda members, and when Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda logistics leader, was wounded and captured, Kiriakou guarded his bedside. (Kiriakou recounted many of his exploits in a colorful memoir, “The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the C.I.A.’s War on Terror.”) In 2004, he retired, and soon took a job with the accounting and consulting firm DeLoitte. He worked in the field of corporate intelligence and advised Hollywood filmmakers on the side.

At the time, the press was looking into allegations that C.I.A. officers and contractors were involved in torture, and it wasn’t long before they sought out Kiriakou for comment. For several years, the agency had managed to keep secret the scope of its abusive interrogations of Al Qaeda-affiliated prisoners, which had the formal approval of President George W. Bush. Gradually, however, investigative reporters revealed details of the interrogations, and in 2006 Bush acknowledged the existence of the C.I.A.’s detention program. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained confirming documents through the Freedom of Information Act, but what the public knew often came from journalists quoting anonymous sources.

On December 6, 2007, the Times published a story by Mark Mazzetti revealing that the C.I.A. had made classified videotapes of harsh interrogations, Abu Zubaydah’s among them. The tapes were made in 2002, but the agency destroyed them three years later. Jose Rodriguez, who then led the National Clandestine Service, had ordered the tapes destroyed, despite reservations expressed by others in the Bush Administration.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/01/130401fa_fact_coll#ixzz2PZD6X8oc

CIA Renditions Ok by Italy Italy’s president on Friday pardoned a United States Air Force colonel convicted in absentia by Italian courts in 2009 for the abduction of an Egyptian terrorism suspect from a Milan street in an operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency. The office of President Giorgio Napolitano said he hoped that the pardoning of the American, Col. Joseph L. Romano, would ease a “delicate” situation between the two allies, which cooperate closely on security matters. Colonel Romano was security chief of the Aviano air base in northern Italy, where the abducted Egyptian Muslim cleric was taken before being flown out of the country and eventually to Egypt. The trial was the first in the world involving the C.I.A.’s extraordinary rendition program to abduct terrorism suspects and transfer them to third countries where torture is permitted. The cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, was abducted in 2003 in Milan, where he lived while seeking asylum in Italy. He was taken to Aviano, then transferred to an American military base in Germany before being flown to Egypt, where, he said, he was tortured. He was eventually released. Twenty-three Americans were convicted in Milan, all in absentia; Colonel Romano was the only one who was not a C.I.A. employee.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/world/europe/italys-president-grants-pardon-in-rendition-case.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

The Magical Mystery Tour

Monsignor Meth Pleads Guilty A shamed Roman Catholic priest “MONSIGNOR METH” after cooking up $300,000 of the highly addictive drug — and running an adult video and sex toy shop — pleaded guilty to a federal drug charge on Tuesday.

Kevin Wallin, of Waterbury, Connecticut, was charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and will now face 11 to 14 years in prison when he is sentenced on June 25.

The 61-year-old dealer in a collar had up to four pounds of meth mailed to him by co-conspirators in California that he then sold from his apartment, according to prosecutors.

Wallin also bought an adult video and sex toy shop in North Haven named Land of Oz & Dorothy’s Place, in a bid to launder his drug earnings, law enforcement said, RadarOnline noted. http://www.nationalenquirer.com/true-crime/breaking-really-bad-monsignor-meth-pleads-guilty

Catholic Schools in Decay The nation’s Catholic schools, facing increasing competition, rising costs and a diminishing core of potential pupils, continue to struggle to keep students and find new ones. But there are some signs of growth in cities including Los Angeles and Indianapolis.

Enrollment in Catholic schools nationwide declined almost 12% for the 2012-13 school year compared with five years ago, a National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) report says. About 2 million children, from pre-K to 12th grade, attend Catholic schools across the U.S. In 2007-08, there were 2.27 million, says the report, released in February.   http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/04/catholic-schools-failing-to-keep-up-enrollment/2054767/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Ammo Flies off Store Shelves Gun enthusiasts fearful of new weapon controls and buying into rumor mills about government hoarding are purchasing bullets practically by the bushel, making it hard for stores nationwide to keep shelves stocked and even putting a pinch on some local law enforcement departments.    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/apr/04/laws-rumors-have-ammo-flying-off-store-shelves/

So Long

I just got the news that Harry Kelber, The Labor Educator, 98 years old, quietly passed away this morning. Harry was an inspiration, writing three columns for me to send out to this list and post to this website until about a month ago.

A strong union man for some 70+ years, Harry was also critical of union leadership and a believer in rank-and-file unionism. Harry announced last June on his 98th birthday that he planned to run for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, not so much to win, but to articulate his road to strong unionism.

Harry has written a number of booklets that are used by labor unions in large number, especially “Why Unions Are Good for You and Your Family” (in English and Spanish), “Why Unions are in Politics” and “Belong and Be Strong…” You can read about all his booklets on his website at http://www.laboreducator.org.

About a month ago, Harry stopped sending me articles. When we checked on him, it was clear that he was slowing down and might not write another column.
However, on his website, you can see his articles from the past almost 10 years. In the past year, Ralph Nader, The Nation, The Progressive, Corporate Crime Reporter and others have interviewed him and/or written articles about Harry.
Harry will be missed by us all and the labor movement be a bit weaker without his prodding!

There will be a memorial some time time in May or June.
In solidarity,
Lew Friedman
for The Labor Educator

Barbarism Rising
Detroit and the International War of the Rich on the Poor
by RICH GIBSON
Every Detroit teacher was fired in the fall of 2012.
Apparently, the nation did not notice. Hence, this story.

On March 26, 2013, 78% of the voting members of the Detroit Federation of Teachers ratified a contract which DFT president, Keith Johnson, called, “terrible.”

The contract mirrors, does not improve, an edict imposed on the union by an “Emergency Manager,” Roy Roberts, a black 74-year-old former manager at the failed General Motors corporation, once the most powerful company in the world now commonly called Government Motors. Roberts was appointed by Michigan Governor Snyder, effectively setting aside all the key actions of the elected Detroit School Board–the third state takeover in 25 years. None of them repaired the school system.

The DFT contract, though, does allow the union to continue to collect dues, the pacified labor of its members sold to Roberts for the term of the contract. DFT president Johnson will continue to receive his $142,000 salary as the rank and file accept another set of wage and benefit concessions.

Concessions, DFT members should have learned, don’t save jobs. Beginning in 1996, the DFT made concession on concession until, in the fall of 2012, every Detroit public school teacher was effectively fired and forced to reapply for a position. Hundreds of them, including teachers with 20 years and more seniority, one of them a former DFT vice president, have never been recalled.    http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/28/detroit-and-the-international-war-of-the-rich-on-the-poor/

Indiana University Strike Preparations http://iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Gitmo Concentration Camp Hunger Strike Spreads A hunger strike among detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who have been imprisoned by the United States military without trial – some for more than a decade – is continuing to grow, although there is sharp disagreement between the military and lawyers for the detainees about how many are participating.  As of Monday morning, 28 of the 166 prisoners had refused enough continuous meals to be deemed hunger strikers in the official count, and 10 of them were being force fed, said a military spokesman, Capt. Robert Durand. That was up from 26 hunger strikers and 8 who were being force fed on Friday, according to the military’s count. Three detainees have been hospitalized for dehydration, Captain Durand added.

Lawyers for detainees, however, citing declassified notes of conversations with their clients in person and by phone, claim that the military’s numbers are significantly undercounting the actual level of participation. Their clients have told them that an overwhelming majority of the detainees in Camps Five and Six – where low-level suspects who are not facing any charges before a military commission, the bulk of the inmate population, are being held – have been refusing to eat for weeks, they said.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/us/guantanamo-hunger-strike-appears-to-widen.html?ref=global-home

Strongville O on Strike –3 weeks on Teachers have been picketing at board members homes since the first week of the strike, but began picketing work places on March 19, starting at Aleris International in Beachwood, where board member Carl Naso works. On March 20, the teachers picketed outside of Cuyahoga Community College, where board President David Frazee is an associate dean.    http://www.cleveland.com/strongsville/index.ssf/2013/03/both_sides_in_strongsville_tea_1.html

World Upside Down! Time Mag Hypes Marx (to the left of nearly the entire “left”)

With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,” Marx wrote.

A growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No wonder some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu Rongjun was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx’s classic Das Kapital. “You can find reality matches what is described in the book,” says the playwright….“Virtually all progressive or leftist parties contributed at some point to the rise and reach of financial markets, and rolling back of welfare systems in order to prove they were capable of reform,” Rancière notes. “I’d say the prospects of Labor or Socialists parties or governments anywhere significantly reconfiguring — much less turning over — current economic systems to be pretty faint.”

That leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalism’s flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers don’t discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge.
Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/03/25/marxs-revenge-how-class-struggle-is-shaping-the-world/#ixzz2OartPfMk

Congratulations on the Publication of

Parks was politically active before and long after the Montgomery bus boycott, and her family was equally engaged. Her grandfather (who had been enslaved) was a supporter of Marcus Garvey, and her husband, Raymond, participated in the Communist-led movement defending the Scottsboro Boys. Parks spent a decade working alongside E. D. Nixon, the Pullman porters’ unionist, in the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through the N.A.A.C.P., Parks also met the veteran organizer Ella Baker, who mentored her. Throughout her career, she never shied away from progressives, even those labeled Communist.    http://www.amazon.com/Rebellious-Theoharis-Jeanne-Edition-Hardcover/dp/B00BR9WNS0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1364705850&sr=8-2&keywords=rebellious+life+of++rosa+parks

Chicago Protests School Closings (AFT voted overwhelmingly for Obama) After gathering at Daley Plaza, protesters started a march that included a sit-in by about 150 people in the southbound lanes of LaSalle Street outside City Hall. Many were led away by police peacefully, their hands behind their backs but not handcuffed. CTU had earlier written in its news release that the protesters would “risk arrest,” but police made a point of noting that 127 people were issued tickets on site, not arrested.
The school closing issue has been controversial for months. After hearings that the district said were attended by more than 20,000 people, CPS last week unveiled a plan to shut down 53 elementary schools and one high school program.   http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-28/news/chi-rally-march-in-loop-today-against-cps-closings-20130327_1_chicago-teachers-union-school-closings-53-elementary-schools

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Corruption is Systematic in Captalism and its Schools Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools’ ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.

Former Superintendent Beverly Hall faces charges including conspiracy, making false statements and theft because prosecutors said some of the bonuses she received were tied to falsified scores. Hall retired just days before the findings of a state probe were released in mid-2011. A nationally known educator who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009, Hall has long denied knowing about the cheating or ordering it.  …The allegations date back to 2005. In addition to Hall, 34 other former school system employees were indicted. Four were high-level administrators, six were principals, two were assistant principals, six were testing coordinators and 14 were teachers. A school improvement specialist and a school secretary were also indicted.

Howard didn’t directly answer a question about whether prosecutors believe Hall led the conspiracy.

“What we’re saying is, is that without her, this conspiracy could not have taken place, particularly in the degree that it took place. Because as we know, this took place in 58 of the Atlanta Public Schools. And it would not have taken place if her actions had not made that possible,” the prosecutor said…. A 2011 state investigation found cheating by nearly 180 educators in 44 Atlanta schools. Educators gave answers to students or changed answers on tests after they were turned in, investigators said. Teachers who tried to report it faced retaliation, creating a culture of “fear and intimidation,” the investigation found.      http://news.yahoo.com/3-dozen-indicted-atlanta-cheating-scandal-214241949.html

The School Worker Force as Segregated as Capitalist Schooling Itself (stop the prattling about “public” schools) Classrooms are becoming more diverse, but the people leading them remain predominantly white.

More than 80 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in education awarded during the 2009-10 school year were to non-Latino white students, according to a new study by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Three-quarters went to women, and only 4.2 percent went to Latinos.

At the same time, the racial and ethnic makeup of the country’s student body has become less monolithic over the years. Nearly half of all children under five right now are minorities, and no racial or ethnic group will constitute a true majority in the United States by 2050, according to Census data.    http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/student-diversity-teachers-white/story?id=18782102#.UVDvSOfD59k

Wayne Ross: Dr Seuss and Dangerous Citizenship First, Dr. Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle was deemed too political for British Columbia classrooms, then the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—specifically the
provision that protects free speech—was the subject of censorship in the Prince Rupert School District (No. 52). In an effort to “shield children from political messaging,” Prince Rupert school administrators and trustees have been vigilant (to the point of absurdity) in their attempts to enforce a 2011 arbitrator’s ruling that BC students must be insulatedfrom political messages in schools http://www.academia.edu/2923365/Dr._Seuss_and_Dangerous_Citizenship

Smashing the California Community College System California has been disinvesting in higher education:
2009-10 categorical cut ($313 million) and apportionment cut ($190 million); 2011-12 apportionment cut ($385 million).

Served more than 252,000 FTES for whom the colleges did not receive funding; while additionally reluctantly turning away another 129,000 FTES due to workload reduction.

Received no statutory cost-of-living increase between 2007-08 and 2012-13 creating a cumulative loss of purchasing power totaling 18.3 percent, or $994 million.

Reduced course sections ranging between 5 to 15 percent per college. Increased class size.

Fees increased from $20/unit in 2008-09 to $46/unit in 2012-13 – a 130 percent increase in five years.

The California Community Colleges enrollment decreased by more than 485,000 students to 2.4 million in three academic years (from 2008-09 to 2011-12) due to severe budget cuts.

Course sections (classes) were reduced by approximately 24 percent due to state funding reductions.   Colleges have been forced to:

• Reduce course offerings by roughly 15 percent resulting in hundreds of thousands of students being turned away.
• Increase class sizes
• Lay off adjunct faculty and other staff.
• Institute furloughs.
• Spend down reserves and borrow money to manage cash flow.

http://californiacommunitycolleges.cccco.edu/PolicyInAction/KeyFacts.aspx

Hey! Digby Divers of the World! How Come Rhee didn’t get to keep the kids? The 43-year-old Rhee, whose children attend public school in Tennessee, where her ex-husband lives, is guided by the free-market principles that characterized her tumultuous three-year tenure in Washington.    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-michelle-rhee-20130327,0,3997665.story

Rhee Hires Nunez whose Murdering Son was Pardoned by Gropenfuhrer chelle Rhee pushes her controversial brand of education reform in California’s capital, she has tapped one of the town’s most influential power brokers, Fabian Nunez, to guide her strategy.

The former Assembly speaker and high-powered consultant is serving as an advisor to StudentsFirst, the national advocacy group Rhee founded here.    http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-me-pc-michelle-rhee-fabian-nunez-20130327/10

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Women In Combat–Job Opportunity to become Cannon Fodder When the Pentagon said earlier this year that it would open ground combat jobs to women, it was cast in terms of giving women equal opportunities in the workplace — the military workplace.

But the move has practical considerations, too. The military needs qualified people to fill its ranks, and it’s increasingly harder to find them among men.

“It’s fairly common knowledge that our population of military-age young men, who qualify for the military, is declining,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said in an interview with NPR just after the Pentagon announced that women no longer be excluded from ground combat jobs.  Too many potential male recruits have criminal records, drop out of high school or have drug problems. In addition, the rising obesity rate is also a factor.   http://www.npr.org/2013/03/25/174966070/as-qualified-men-dwindle-military-looks-for-a-few-good-women

Having Broken Iraq and Forged an Iran/Shiite Victory, US Whines About Iraqi Airspace. Iraq yawns Iraq is helping to shore up the besieged regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by allowing Iranian arms and fighters to cross into Syria from Iraq, Secretary of State John F. Kerry charged Sunday.

During an unannounced trip to Baghdad, Kerry lobbied Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for greater scrutiny of flights that cross Iraq. He appeared to make little headway with Maliki, a Shiite with long ties to Iran and little inclination to do U.S. bidding 10 years after the American invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/kerry-asks-iraq-to-stop-syria-arms-flow/2013/03/24/61eec97e-9467-11e2-95ca-dd43e7ffee9c_story.html

US Backed Fake Syrian “Rebels” i.e., Jihadists Unravel: Syria’s opposition coalition was on the verge of collapse Sunday after its president resigned and rebel fighters rejected its choice to head an interim government, leaving a U.S.-backed effort to forge a united front against President Bashar al-Assad in tatters.

The resignation of Moaz al-Khatib, a moderate Sunni preacher who heads the Syrian Opposition Coalition, climaxed a bitter internal fight over a range of issues, from the appointment of an interim government to a proposal by Khatib to launch negotiations with the Syrian regime.  ..“The coalition is on verge of disintegrating,” he said. “It’s a big mess.”

The trigger for Khatib’s departure was the selection last week of Ghassan Hitto, a relatively unknown Syrian-born U.S. citizen, to head a proposed interim government. Khatib and his supporters had opposed the creation of an interim government at this time, as had the United States, whose diplomats argued against the move on the grounds that it created an unnecessarily divisive distraction from the goal of bringing down Assad’s regime, according to Syrian opposition members.

Hitto’s candidacy was backed, however, by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the push to install him as Syria’s first opposition prime minister was widely seen as an effort by the Brotherhood to claw back some of the influence lost when the original Syrian opposition body, the Syrian National Council, was absorbed into the wider Syrian coalition.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-opposition-in-disarray-as-its-leader-resigns/2013/03/24/16523304-94ba-11e2-95ca-dd43e7ffee9c_story.html?hpid=z2

US Pouring Arms and $ to Jihadists While Demanding Iran and Russia Cut it out

click to enlarge arms shipment map

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.  The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

Cost of War? Mass Human Carnage plus $6 Trillion According to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, the Iraq War will end up costing more than $6 trillion. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, in review of building and infrastructure projects in Iraq, found “fraud, waste, and abuse,” funds shoveled mostly to Pentagon contractors, and “different masters with different agendas” thanks to the rivalry of the Defense and State Departments.   http://www.examiner.com/article/iraq-war-will-end-up-costing-at-least-6-trillion

Who Lost Bagram??? Never Mind. The US Gets to Continue the War Within hours of the American military’s formally transferring all but a “small number” of the Afghan prisoners at the Bagram Prison to the Afghan government, President Hamid Karzai held a friendly news conference with Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday that stood in stark contrast to his recent acrimonious tone toward the United States…   On detention, American officials had long feared that the Afghans might release dangerous Taliban prisoners. But the Obama administration has made a priority of reaching an agreement on an American military presence here after 2014 that will allow the United States to keep tabs on Iran and Pakistan and contain extremists in Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal areas. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/world/asia/us-cedes-control-almost-on-afghan-prisoners.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

There Goes Nerkh U.S. military leaders on Saturday formally handed over security responsibilities to Afghan troops in an area of Wardak province that was the focus of claims by President Hamid Karzai that U.S. troops were responsible for kidnappings and human rights abuses.

The transfer of a base in the Nerkh district of Wardak province from U.S. special operations forces to Afghan troops comes 10 days after Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, reached an agreement with Karzai to carry out the handover.

Karzai initially wanted all American special forces personnel out of Wardak, but later agreed to limit the immediate handover to Nerkh.   http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-american-forces-afghan-province-20130330,0,1819822.story

Pakistan’s Taliban Runs Wild in Key Port Karachi But there is a new gang in town. Hundreds of miles from their homeland in the mountainous northwest, Pakistani Taliban fighters have started to flex their muscles more forcefully in parts of this vast city, and they are openly taking ground.

Taliban gunmen have mounted guerrilla assaults on police stations, killing scores of officers. They have stepped up extortion rackets that target rich businessmen and traders, and shot dead public health workers engaged in polio vaccination efforts. In some neighborhoods, Taliban clerics have started to mediate disputes through a parallel judicial system.

The grab for influence and power in Karachi shows that the Taliban have been able to extend their reach across Pakistan, even here in the country’s most populous city, with about 20 million inhabitants. No longer can they be written off as endemic only to the country’s frontier regions.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/world/asia/taliban-extending-reach-across-pakistan.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130329

Ten Years On–the Winner of the Iraq War is Ten years after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the country’s oil industry is poised to boom and make the troubled nation the No.2 oil exporter in the world. But the nation that’s moving to take advantage of Iraq’s riches isn’t the United States. It’s China.
America, with its own homegrown energy bonanza, isn’t going after the petroleum that lies beneath Iraq’s sands nearly as aggressively as is China, a country hungry to fuel its rise as an economic power.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/27/187100/iraqi-oil-once-seen-as-us-boon.html#storylink=omni_popular#storylink=cpy

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Bitter Fruit of Fake Arab Spring in Egypt A fuel shortage has helped send food prices soaring. Electricity is blacking out even before the summer. And gas-line gunfights have killed at least five people and wounded dozens over the past two weeks. The root of the crisis, economists say, is that Egypt is running out of the hard currency it needs for fuel imports. The shortage is raising questions about Egypt’s ability to keep importing wheat that is essential to subsidized bread supplies, stirring fears of an economic catastrophe at a time when the government is already struggling to quell violent protests by its political rivals.

Farmers already lack fuel for the pumps that irrigate their fields, and they say they fear they will not have enough for the tractors to reap their wheat next month before it rots in the fields.

United States officials warn of disaster unless Egypt soon carries out a package of tax increases and subsidy cuts tied to a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.     http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/world/middleeast/egypt-short-of-money-sees-crisis-on-food-and-gas.html?ref=global-home

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

From R. Palme Dutt, “Fascism and Social Revolution,” Chapter 5
The main method of the bosses was liberalism and concessions, as long as their forces were unprepared. Even in the face of outright Fascism, social democracy looked to parliamentary means for defense. The revolution in Italy was defeated by reformism. Fascism came when workers were disillusioned and disorganized already. The transition to fascism was no sudden, abrupt break, but of a continuation of the same old bosses using new means    http://richgibson.com/synopsisfascim.htm .

Tyranny Check List Part 1: Secrecy Reporters covering the government’s prosecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is being court-martialed for conveying secret information to WikiLeaks, have spent a year trying to pierce the veil of secrecy in what is supposed to be a public proceeding.  In pretrial hearings at Fort Meade, Md., basic information has been withheld, including dockets of court activity, transcripts of the proceedings and orders issued from the bench by the military judge, Col. Denise Lind. A public trial over state secrets was itself becoming a state secret in plain sight.

Finally, at the end of last month, in response to numerous Freedom of Information requests from news media organizations, the court agreed to release 84 of the roughly 400 documents filed in the case, suggesting it was finally unbuttoning the uniform a bit to make room for some public scrutiny.

Then again, the released documents contained redactions that are mystifying at best and at times almost comic. One of the redacted details was the name of the judge, who sat in open court for months.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/business/media/in-wikileaks-trial-a-theater-of-state-secrecy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

More Money For Obamagogue’s Concentration Camp (it’s not closed???) The United States Southern Command has requested $49 million to build a new prison building at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for “special” detainees on top of other renovations it says are necessary since Congress has decided to keep it open indefinitely. That brings the potential taxpayer bill for upgrading the deteriorating facilities to an estimated $195.7 million, the military said on Thursday.

That overall price tag is significantly higher than the estimate of $150 million to $170 million that General John F. Kelly, the Southcom commander, gave in Congressional testimony on Wednesday. The special detainee facility was not included on the list of requested construction projects released by Southcom on Wednesday when reporters asked for details. http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/pentagon-wants-to-build-new-prison-at-guantanamo/

No Repercussions for CIA Torturers In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, C.I.A. officers involved in detainee abuse and botched rendition cases have repeatedly escaped internal punishment by the spy agency, and some have even been promoted, according to The Associated Press.

The A.P. concludes that the Central Intelligence Agency’s disciplinary system “takes years to make decisions, hands down reprimands inconsistently, and is viewed inside the agency as prone to favoritism and manipulation.”

The report does not reveal any new cases of detainee abuse, but unearths new details about already reported instances of detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the C.I.A.’s 2003 rendition of Khaled el-Masri — a German citizen detained in Macedonia and brought to a secret prison in Afghanistan.

George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, objected to the fact that The A.P. decided to publish the first names of some undercover C.I.A. officers, and challenged the conclusion that the C.I.A. doesn’t hold its officers accountable.

“It’s wrong for anyone to suggest that the agency ignores allegations of misconduct,” he said.   http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/report-c-i-a-agents-tied-to-abuse-escape-punishment/

Cartel Update This is what happens when a drug cartel turns on itself in a community where the law is largely in the hands of a creepy parallel power structure. When the narcotics business goes smoothly, residents say, they learn to put up with the influence of the narcos. Lately, it’s been anything but smooth.
Rival gangster bosses are skirmishing to fill a vacuum at the top of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group that traces its roots to whiskey bootleggers in the 1930s. The smugglers turned to narcotics in the 1970s. Despite their longevity, they’re racked by internecine disputes that have been in crescendo for several years.

Different factions control Reynosa (Los Metros) and Matamoros (Los Rojos), two of the largest cities in Tamaulipas state, along the border with Texas near the Gulf of Mexico.  Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/28/187196/gulf-cartels-power-struggle-holds.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update#storylink=cpy

Solidarity for Never

Indiana State Teachers Union Investigated for Multi Million $ Securities Fraud The state seeks damages of more than $24 million from ISTA over mishandling of its insurance fund, which went bust in 2009.

The state’s lawsuit was filed the same year, alleging that the state’s largest teachers union unlawfully sold securities without registering them and engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation in selling its insurance products to school districts.   http://www.indystar.com/article/20130327/BUSINESS/303270085/Judge-rejects-Indiana-teachers-union-request-dismiss-case?nclick_check=1

The Long March Plus

Begat Chinese Fashion Week

China’s Counterfeit Communist Bosses Run To MBA Schools “After the Cultural Revolution, a lot of people felt the need to make up for lost time, so we worked extremely hard,” said Mr. Wang, 56, who studies at the China Europe International Business School, or Ceibs.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/education/in-china-executives-flock-back-to-graduate-school.html?ref=internationaleducation

Spy versus Spy

Sure Route to CIA promotion–Coverup Torture A C.I.A. officer directly involved in the 2005 decision to destroy interrogation videotapes and who once ran one of the agency’s secret prisons has ascended to the top position within the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, according to current and former intelligence officials.  … The years since the Sept. 11 attacks have transformed the C.I.A., and a whole generation of clandestine officers are rising through the agency’s ranks who have more training in hunting, capturing and killing terror suspects than in typical spying work like recruiting foreign agents to spy against their governments for the United States.

The promotion of the officer, who spent years working inside the agency’s Counterterrorist Center and once was in charge of a so-called black site, played a role in developing the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program, was first reported by The Washington Post. Because the officer remains undercover, The New York Times is not disclosing her identity.

The officer served as the C.I.A. station chief in London and New York, and the branch of the agency she now leads — called the National Clandestine Service — is responsible for all C.I.A. espionage operations and covert action programs. The head of the clandestine service is one of the most coveted jobs in the C.I.A., and has never before been run by a woman.

The destruction of dozens of C.I.A. interrogation tapes, documenting the interrogations of Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in a secret C.I.A. detention facility in Thailand, was one of the most controversial episodes of the past decade. The Justice Department undertook an investigation into the matter after the destruction of the tapes was disclosed in late 2007, but no C.I.A. officers were criminally charged.

The destruction was ordered by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time was the head of the agency’s clandestine service.   The officer was serving as Mr. Rodriguez’s chief of staff, and several former C.I.A. officers said she was a strong advocate for getting rid of the tapes, which had been sitting for years inside a safe in the agency’s station in Bangkok. “She and Jose were the two main drivers for years for getting the tapes destroyed,” said one former senior C.I.A. officer.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/us/officer-tied-to-tapes-destruction-moves-up-in-cia.html?hp&_r=0

NPR Killing Talk of the Nation NPR is ending the 21-year-old call-in radio show “Talk of the Nation” and will encourage local stations to replace it with an expanded version of “Here and Now,” an afternoon news broadcast that is produced here, the organization announced on Friday.  ..As fans cried “say it isn’t so” on social networking Web sites on Friday, the show’s host since 2001, Neal Conan, said in an e-mail to staff members, “I’m proud that we go out on top, with record station carriage and the largest audience in the program’s history.”

NPR officials denied that the organization’s budget deficit of $7 million spurred the decision. They portrayed the change as a move away from opinion and toward straightforward storytelling (sic). http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/business/media/npr-to-end-talk-of-the-nation.html?ref=media&_r=2&

Prisoner X JERUSALEM — Israel has revealed very little about the man known as Prisoner X, an Australian-Israeli who was jailed here in 2010 after apparently getting caught in a web of espionage and intrigue, other than how he died: alone, by asphyxiation, after hanging himself in the shower of his cell.  Since the episode was exposed last month, the authorities here have rigorously concealed the reason for the arrest and secret imprisonment of the man, identified as Ben Zygier, as he awaited trial in solitary confinement, citing interests of national security.

But in the latest twist, two news organizations have reported that Mr. Zygier, who was 34 when he died in December 2010, had unintentionally exposed two top spies for Israel in Lebanon, revealing their identities to a European man known to be close to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite organization Israel fought in a monthlong war in 2006.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/world/middleeast/israels-prisoner-x-said-to-have-exposed-spies.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

CIA or Jihadist? As US Army veteran Eric Harroun awaits trial in Virginia for allegedly fighting alongside al-Qaeda supporters, the man’s father claims he was working for the CIA and was reporting back to the agency from Syria.

Harroun, a 30-year-old American from Phoenix, Arizona, has been charged by the US government for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely a rocket propelled grenade launcher) to conduct an attack against the Syrian government. The US Army veteran dubbed by media ‘Phoenix jihadist’ appeared in numerous videos alongside members of the al-Nusra Front, designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization in December, but which has also been fighting alongside the Syrian opposition to take down the Assad regime. To date, 29 US-backed Syrian opposition groups have linked with al-Nusra, and have signed a petition calling for the support of the Islamist group that the White House believes is a branch of al-Qaeda.   http://rt.com/usa/cia-harroun-us-syrian-064/

The Magical Mystery Tour

SNAP vs Abusing Nuns For at least eight years, victims of child molesting nuns and members of SNAP have repeatedly urged America’s largest organization of nuns to expose the truth about child sex crimes and cover ups by women religious. But the LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious) continues to essentially rebuff us and them.

Now more than ever, since they’re being attacked by bishops like we have been (and are being), nuns should be sympathetic to our plight. It grieves us to have to keep prodding them to take long-overdue, simple steps to protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded. But how can we do otherwise? http://www.snapnetwork.org/nun_abuse

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

So Long

I can have no other notion of all the Governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of managing the public only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all thast they have so ill acquired, and then that they may engage the poor to toil…for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please.
From Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516. http://saveourcola.wordpress.com/

http://iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession
by Andrew Kliman Synopsis

Chapter 1: Introduction.
Chapter 2: Sets out the theoretical framework that underlies the empirical analyses that follow. It discusses key components of Marx’s theory of crisis––the tendential fall in the rate of profit, the operation of credit markets, and the destruction of capital value through crises––and how they can help account for the latest crisis and Great Recession.
Chapter 3: Discusses the formation and bursting of the home-price bubble in the U.S., and the Panic of 2008 that resulted. It then discusses how Federal Reserve policy contributed to the formation of the bubble, arguing that the Fed wanted to prevent the United States from going the way of Japan. After Japan’s real-estate and stock-market bubbles burst at the start of the 1990s, it suffered a “lost decade,” and the Fed wanted to make sure that the bursting of the U.S. stock-market bubble of the 1990s did not have similar consequences. The latest crisis was therefore not caused only by problems in the financial and housing sectors. As far back as 2001, underlying weaknesses had brought the U.S. economy to the point where a stock-market crash could have led to long-term stagnation.
Chapter 4: Examines a variety of global and U.S. economic data and argues that they indicate that the economy never fully recovered from the recession of the 1970s. Because the slowdown in economic growth, sluggishness in the labor market, increase in borrowing relative to income, and other problems began in the 1970s or earlier, prior to the rise of neoliberalism, they are not attributable to neoliberal policies.
Chapter 5: Shows that U.S. corporations’ rate of profit did not rebound after the early 1980s. It also shows that the persistent fall in the rate of profit––rather than a shift from productive investment to portfolio investment––accounts for the persistent fall in the rate of accumulation. (more http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/new-book-the-failure-of-capitalist-production.html)

Gitmo Hunger Strike A mass hunger strike has been unfolding in the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison for nearly six weeks. RT has been badgering the UN, prison officials, detainees’ attorneys and activists to get a full account of the situation.
March 22
The number of Guantanamo Bay detainees on hunger strike has increased to 26, up one from the previous day, Guantanamo Bay spokesman Capt. Robert Durand told RT via email on Friday following a written request.
“As of Friday, 22 March 2013, we have 26 hunger strikers, with 8 receiving enteral feeds. This an increase from Thursday, which was 25/8. Tuesday and Wednesday, it was the 24/8, Monday, 21/8, and Friday, 14/8.
We have two detainees in the detainee hospital for rehydration and observation, on enteral feed. We have two other detainee in the detainee hospital for non-hunger strike, non-life threatening treatment,” Durand said.   http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-bay-hunger-strike-399/

Demonstrators Attack Muslim Bros Offices In Egypt Egyptian protesters have ransacked an office of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party in the northern coastal city of Alexandria.
It was the second such attack on an office of the Islamist group on Friday. The first was in the Cairo neighborhood of Manial.
Both attacks happened as opponents and supporters of the Brotherhood clashed near the group’s headquarters in Cairo.
An Associated Press cameraman saw protesters attack the office in Alexandria, leaving with computers, files and other objects. The attack took place near the site where unknown assailants fought protesters demanding the resignation of President Mohammed Morsi, who is a member of the party.
Brotherhood offices came under attack across Egypt last December.
The group has characterized the assailants as “thugs” and “counter-revolutionaries” seeking to oust the democratically elected leader. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/67484/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-protesters-storm-Muslim-Brotherhoods-Alexand.aspx

Chicago Fights School Closings–but to save capitalist schooling? Better a class conscious movement to Rescue Education from the Ruling Classes: I don’t see any Caucasians being moved, bussed, or murdered in the streets as they travel along gang lines, or stand on the steps of a CPS school,” said activist Wendy Matil Pearson as opponents of the school closing plans protested outside Horatio May Elementary Community Academy in the Austin neighborhood.  http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/03/22/school-closing-opponents-call-mayor-a-racist-liar/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

There is a link between the state and the interests of capitalists. …The state, especially in organizing and directing the educational system, trains bureaucrats, technicians, executives and workers for the economy…the state’s educational system does not merely train personnel in the skills required for production. The ideological structure necesssary to maintain the hierarchy and absolutism of factories, businesses, and banks, is part of the state’s educational curriculum. ..the state socializes the population into an ideology that makes the existing class structure, the distribution of wealth and political power, wholly legitimate. (Gil Gonzalex, Progressive Education. p13)

Council On Foreign Relations’ (and War-Whore Rice) Issue Task Force Report: The Education Agenda is a War Agenda (class war and imperialist war) The United States’ failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country’s ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role, finds a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)–sponsored Independent Task Force report on U.S. Education Reform and National Security.
“Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk,” warns the Task Force, chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state. The country “will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long,” argues the Task Force.  The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education.

“Human capital will determine power in the current century, and the failure to produce that capital will undermine America’s security,” the report states. “Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy.”

The Task Force proposes three overarching policy recommendations:
Implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security. “With the support of the federal government and industry partners, states should expand the Common Core State Standards, ensuring that students are mastering the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard the country’s national security.”
Make structural changes to provide students with good choices.
“Enhanced choice and competition, in an environment of equitable resource allocation, will fuel the innovation necessary to transform results.”
Launch a “national security readiness audit” to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness. “There should be a coordinated, national effort to assess whether students are learning the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard America’s future security and prosperity. The results should be publicized to engage the American people in addressing problems and building on successes.”

“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” warned Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security advisor. In the long war that followed, more than 4,000 U.S. troops were killed, but not a single “nuke” was ever uncovered. (above, with pal Ghaddaffi)

NEA’s New Poster Boy and A Vacillating Reactionary Front for NEA’s Counterfeit Education Resistance The Network for Public Education, a new volunteer organization formed by Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, and other education experts, plans to use grassroots advocacy to defend public education from a wide range of well-financed threats.  Ravitch told the New York Times that the Network is calling for “broad-minded public school curriculums that included arts, sciences, foreign languages and physical education; better financing for schools; more respect for teachers; and the ‘appropriate use of testing to help students and teachers, not to punish or reward students, teachers, principals, or to close schools’.”  According to the Network’s Web site, the group will also support candidates who “oppose high-stakes testing, mass school closures, the privatization of our public schools and the outsourcing of its core functions to for-profit corporations.” Issue #158 – March 22, 2013 NEA ESEA UPDATE

Killing Ethnic Studies in Tx when Patrick’s bill — along with companion House Bill 1938 from Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione — is heard and amended, it’s likely to morph into what its authors truly intended: an attack against ethnic studies, including Mexican American Studies, African American Studies and other programs developed in the last half-century to fill in the blank spaces left by Eurocentric scholarship.
Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Ayala-Legislation-takes-aim-at-future-of-ethnic-4362237.php#ixzz2OF1z6hyP

After the San Diego EA Made big Concessions—and an Untested Superintendent is hired with an 8% raise ($255 thou) over the last boss—a School Worker Writes I think these raises that these Central Office administrators are receiving are disgusting and shameful. On Sunday, 3/10/13 the Union-Tribune reported that Deputy General Counsel received a $60,000 raise. Stan Dobbs (Mr. “teachers make $92,000″) makes a base salary lf $173,000 – 12% higher than the person who had that position. Today I received word from my principal
that I am in excess from my school because the District is raising class size to 24-27 students per class (K-3). We are constantly beat over the head with how much the District spends on “teacher” salaries…what about administrator salaries????
Before the election and passing of Prop 30, all we heard was that the District needed this extra money to help solve its budget problems, yet what do they do with the money, but give exorbitant raises.  http://thebreakfastclubsandiego.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/new-sdusd-board-approves-7-8-raise/#comments

Michigan and More–So Long foreign language instruction Even as foreign language immersion grows in Metro Detroit, districts around the country are dropping foreign language classes, mostly in rural and poor areas, according to a nationwide survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C.
Districts scaling back foreign language offerings include Warren Consolidated Schools, which traditionally taught French, German and Spanish. Now it offers only Spanish.
“The number of students who selected French or German in ninth grade to begin their two-year world language requirement dropped significantly,” said chief academic officer Brian J. Walmsley. “Although we do not offer French and German, we do offer students the opportunity to take these courses through dual enrollment options.”
Foreign language studies could be de-emphasized statewide by a bill that would drop it as a high school graduation requirement.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130318/SCHOOLS/303180344#ixzz2OKsJFC43

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

The Lone British Soldier, of 16,500, who made it from Kabul to Jalalabad in the Afghan war of  1842. Empires cannot learn.

“Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him.
We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.” Marx

“Americans know so little history they cannot connect cause and effect.” Chalmers Johnson. And hence, Americans cannot link German V1 Rockets and Hellbound Drones.

Living Under Drones:  Executive Summary and Recommendations ; In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.This narrative is false. http://www.livingunderdrones.org/

Brit Ministry of Defense Admits Afghan War is Lost (again) British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are part of a campaign that attempted to “impose an ideology foreign to the Afghan people” and was “unwinnable in military terms”, according to a damning report by the Ministry of Defence.
The internal study says that Nato forces have been unable to “establish control over the insurgents’ safe havens” or “protect the rural population”, and warns the “conditions do not exist” to guarantee the survival of the Afghan government after combat troops withdraw next year.
The report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says that when troops leave, Afghanistan “will be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base”, which means that the West will have to continue to fund “large-scale support programmes” for many years to come.
Even if the internal situation were stable, the Afghan government may not survive the destabilising activities of its neighbours. “Regional players do not have a vested interest in the success of the Kabul government”, states the document in a clear reference to Pakistan. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mod-admits-campaign-in-afghanistan-is-an-unwinnable-war-8535291.html

Reminder. The US is not At War With Pakistan, but the US bombs Pakistan The officials said missiles fired late Thursday night from a drone operated by the Central Intelligence Agency hit a moving vehicle in Datta Khel Bazar in the North Waziristan tribal region, which is a redoubt of local and foreign militants. “Four men inside the vehicle were killed,” a tribal official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The nationality of those killed was not immediately clear. The vehicle exploded after it was hit by two missiles, leaving the bodies charred and beyond recognition.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/asia/pakistan-says-us-drone-strike-kills-4.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

Costs of War–$4 Trillion and Untold hundreds of thousands dead and wounded—for?

McClatchey and most of the Pro Profit Press: Iraq??!! O yeah, we made a mistake: A decade ago, the media screwed up, and screwed up royally.
We got the Iraq war wrong.
Big time.
There were a few exceptions, including detailed work that questioned claims about weapons of mass destruction by the then-Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau (now McClatchy, which owns The Sun News) while most others simply parroted what was coming out of the Bush administration.
Coastal Carolina University also did an important thing when it invited Scott Ritter, the former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq, to Conway and allowed him to say why he knew Saddam Hussein no longer had the much-discussed weapons – even though some residents of the Grand Strand disapproved of the invitation.
Ritter had personal problems then and since but was right about Iraqi weapons capabilities….The Washington Post has since admitted that it didn’t publish a story by one of its top reporters that had quotes from top retired military officials who were questioning claims being made by the Bush administration.
The New York Times published stories that were primarily sourced by people within the administration that turned out to be completely bogus – in the run-up to the war and shortly after it began.
That doesn’t even include how the so-called non-mainstream and non- liberal media handled it, or the tens of millions voters who helped re-elect George W. Bush in 2004 even after they found out about the massive errors that led to a decade-long war in which 4,500 U.S. soldiers were killed, tens of thousands others sustained major injuries, 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives and the suicide rate among U.S. soldiers hit a record high.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/19/186180/commentary-the-media-blew-it-on.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update#storylink=cpy

Cheney’s Haliburton Did Well in Iraq–how about you? he accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.
Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.
Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.
The No. 1 recipient?
Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.
The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.
Who were Nos. 2 and 3?
Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.
As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.   http://readersupportednews.org/FOCUS%20_%20Cheneys-Halliburton-Made-39-5-Billion-on-Iraq-War.htm

Iraq: Depleted Uranium and Cancer Fallujah, Iraq – Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq.
Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates.
There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah.
Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.   http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html

Syria: Broken—42 Dead in Mosque Bombing A suicide bomber has attacked the Iman Mosque in the Syrian capital city of Damascus today, killing 42 people, including senior pro-government Sunni cleric Mohammad al-Buti, the Imam of the Ummayyad Mosque, one of the most significant mosques in all of Islam. 84 other people were also reported wounded.   http://news.antiwar.com/2013/03/21/damascus-mosque-hit-by-suicide-bombing-42-killed/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Binelli Audio, The Last Days of Detroit http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r70z6

Forbes: The Wall Street Pension Feeding Frenzy and Capitalist Corruption Yesterday a federal grand jury indicted two former top officials of CalPERS, the nation’s largest public pension fund on fraud, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Three years after the “pay-to-play” influence peddling scandal surfaced at the $225 billion fund, the Department of Justice may be poised to investigate and prosecute public pension corruption nationally. Take my word for it, there’s enough public pension corruption across the country to keep DOJ busy for decades.
As a seasoned public pension forensic investigator, it has long been my opinion that potential criminal charges are needed to deter politically-savvy scammers who are confident they will not be held accountable by pension officials they have cozied-up to—officials who are, at a minimum, conflicted and often outright culpable.  The Wall Street public pension trough feeding frenzy has, unbeknownst to taxpayers and government workers participating in these funds, cost the nation trillions and is only getting worse with the proliferation of hedge funds and private equity alternative investments.   http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2013/03/19/calpers-criminal-prosecutions-needed-to-end-public-pension-fraud/

LA Times Discovers the Rich Aren’t Like US! If the concerns of the wealthy carry special weight in government — as an increasing body of social scientific evidence suggests — such extreme differences between their views and those of other Americans could significantly skew policy away from what a majority of the country would prefer. …  While the wealthy favored more government spending on infrastructure, scientific research and aid to education, they leaned toward cutting nearly everything else. Even with education, they opposed things that most Americans favor, including spending to ensure that all children have access to good-quality public schools, expanding government programs to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so, and investing more in worker retraining and education.  http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-page-wealth-and-politics-20130322,0,3575694.story

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Notably, Alexa Obrien is the only journalist/blogger covering Bradley Manning Regularly

Obrien’s Bradley Manning Archives http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/

Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Marks one Year in Jail It’s the first anniversary of the day Jeremy Hammond was arrested for the last time. Since his March 5, 2012 arrest, he’s been in Federal custody, and currently resides in “The Hole”—solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Hammond has yet to stand trial. If convicted, he could face anywhere from 35 years to life in prison, and it’s still unclear whether the year he’s spent in custody without trial will be subtracted from his total sentence.  …Hammond’s alleged crimes center around the infamous Stratfor hack of December, 2011, in which the operations of a private global intelligence contractor were exposed for all to see.
Hacker crew LulzSec took responsibility. Over five million emails were obtained in the hack, and—after an apparent attempt by LulzSec leader (turned FBI informant) Hector “Sabu” Monsegur to ransom them to WikiLeaks—someone in LulzSec leaked them to the whistleblower site for free, much to the FBI’s dismay.
Hammond is being charged with that leak.

A lifelong activist and anarchist, Hammond organized his first protest at 12, and basically never stopped since, despite frequent arrests and convictions. After the Stratfor arrest, he waited eight months, until November 20th, to find out if he’d be granted bail. To no one’s surprise, he was not successful, but to everyone’s surprise, the judge cited his use of everyday internet technology such as TOR, an IP-anonymizing software developed for the US military, as a factor in judging him a flight risk.
Within two weeks Anonymous struck back, claiming that Judge Loretta Preska, who is presiding over Hammond’s case, is biased because her husband was a client of Stratfor’s. Judge Preska has declined to recuse herself, and her husband denied any relationship with Stratfor. Anons have taken umbrage at the dismissive tone of her remarks to the defense, and have begun two parody accounts which tweet “So what?” to anyone who asks a question.  http://www.dailydot.com/news/jeremy-hammond-lulzsec-wikileaks-1-year-prison/

Rios Mott–The CIA’s Mass Murderer Roughly 200,000 civilians, most of them of Mayan descent, were killed during the 1960-1996 conflict as a string of right-wing governments attempted to rid Guatemala of leftist guerilla fighters suspected of being in league with communists.
An additional 45,000 people went missing.
Victims and human rights advocates applauded the start of the trial over Rios Montt’s 17-month rule.
“Finally we’re going to know the truth. It’s justice for the survivors and for the world,” said Sandra Moran, 53, who was laying flowers outside the court before the trial started. Her uncle was tortured during Rios Montt’s government, she said.
A United Nations-backed truth commission report released after the 1996 peace accords found that the army and paramilitary groups were responsible for more than 90 percent of the hundreds of massacres carried out during the war.   http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/20/us-guatemala-riosmontt-idUSBRE92I11720130320

Postmodernism: “Religion with an Angry Cloak” (Breisach) History had not ended, nor could postmodern theory grapple with the conditions of its continuance. The financial collapse of 2008 demonstrated that language itself, or the “symbolic register” in postmodern parlance, could not by itself contain the entirety of social reality. In fact, the manipulation of the “symbolic realm” in the stock market, in particular in the real estate sector, had resulted in real material consequences that had spun out of the reaches and control of language itself. Moreover, mere symbolic manipulation could not, by itself, remediate such consequences. Further, for those who regarded class analysis as outmoded, or class itself as a mere construct of language, the class character of the social order, underlying layers of mediation and theoretical obscurantism, became starkly visible. Meanwhile, with the election of Barack Obama and his continuation and extension of Bush’s policies, the hollowness of identity politics (the political fallout shelter of postmodernism’s retreat from historical materialism) was on full display.  http://insurgentnotes.com/2013/03/postmodernism-the-academic-left-and-the-crisis-of-capitalism/#comment-1184

Solidarity for Never

Detroit Federation of Teachers: After EVERY Detroit Teacher was fired in the Fall, Wages/Benefits cut (and 80 % of the members tried to quit), DFT Boss Keith Johnson Seeks Ratification of A Contract He himself Says is “Terrible,” in order to keep the forced dues feeding him http://dft231.mi.aft.org/files/2013_cba_faq.pdf

Wayne State Faculty Union Locks In 8 Years of Forced Dues in Long Term Contract dodging right to work law Despite a legislative proposal to cut funding to educational institutions that sign off on labor contracts before the state’s right-to-work law takes effect next week, the Wayne State University Board of Governors on Wednesday approved an eight-year labor pact with its faculty union.
Approval of the contract ended eight months of negotiating at WSU that was initially highlighted by a struggle between the administration and union over a proposal the rank and file regarded as an effort to ban faculty tenure.
When an agreement was reached recently, a new battle erupted, with the university and union officials standing in solidarity as Republican lawmakers balked over the lengthy contract. The GOP legislators demanded an explanation and proposed slashing university appropriations by millions for schools skirting right to work.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130320/POLITICS02/303200459#ixzz2OKgAEbzD

Spy versus Spy

Operation Condor, the Church, and the New Fake Pope A coordinated campaign to kill political dissidents across Latin America in the 1970s, all with the knowledge of the US, resulted in one of Latin America’s darkest periods.  Tens of thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by military regimes across the continent and those who fled repression in one country were often targeted in another – there was no escape.
‘Operation Condor’ involved six different nations – led by Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet in response to the populist and socialist movements emerging throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 70s.
On Tuesday, a human rights trial began in Argentina to investigate the crimes committed during that operation.
It is the latest example of Latin American Countries coming to terms with their past through criminal proceedings and truth commissions.
However there has been no truth and reconciliation committee to determine the precise extent of the US’s role in the killing or disappearance of some 80,000 people – nor has there been any accountability.
Declassified cables show that the CIA and the US state department were aware of ‘Plan Condor’ early on.

An excerpt of a weekly summary from July 1976 reads:
“When we say there is no evidence we should say there are no documents that show operational participation by the CIA [to prove it]. The [US] legal attaches were very well connected in Southern America and they were aware of the operations.”- Carlos Osorio, Southern Cone Documentation project
“Intelligence representatives from Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina decided at a meeting in Santiago early in June to set up a computerised intelligence data bank – known as ‘Operation Condor’…”
Other cables show that Henry Kissinger, the then secretary of state, told his ambassadors not to confront the military governments over assassinations and torture.
And a 1978 briefing document for a US ambassador to the region says:
“By July 1976, the Agency was receiving reports that Condor planned to engage in ‘executive action’ outside the territory of member countries against leaders of indigenous terrorist groups residing abroad.”   http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/03/2013367461442124.html

The CIA Rendition and Drone Crimes On Tuesday, Open Society Justice Initiative released a report documenting the CIA’s secret rendition, detention and interrogation program following Sept. 11, 2001. The report, which largely details previously known assistance provided to the agency, found that 54 countries played a role in the operations, although in some cases the role was limited. The report is being released at a time of renewed attention on the CIA’s counterterrorism operations. (Read related article) http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/brennan-nomination-opens-obama-to-criticism-on-secret-targeted-killings/2013/02/05/8f3c94f0-6fb0-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html

The Obamagogue’s Private Army, CIA, Expands Role in Backing Syria’s Jihadists in the name of Stopping Jihadists The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its role in the campaign against the Syrian regime by feeding intelligence to select rebel fighters to use against government forces, current and former U.S. officials said.
The move is part of a U.S. effort to stem the rise of Islamist extremists in Syria by aiding secular forces, U.S. officials said, amid fears that the fall of President Bashar al-Assad would enable al Qaeda to flourish in Syria.  The expanded CIA role bolsters an effort by Western intelligence agencies to support the Syrian opposition with training in areas including weapons use, urban combat and countering spying by the regime.
The move comes as the al Nusra Front, the main al Qaeda-linked group operating in Syria, is deepening its ties to the terrorist organization’s central leadership in Pakistan, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324373204578376591874909434.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

The Pretender Pope, the Fake Church, and the Dirty Wars The Vatican under Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II played a central in supporting the Argentinian military Junta.
Pio Laghi, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to Argentina admitted “turning a blind eye” to the torture and massacres.
Laghi had personal ties to members of the ruling military junta including General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera. Admiral Emilio Massera in close liaison with his US handlers, was the mastermind of “La Guerra Sucia” (The Dirty War). Under the auspices of the military regime, he established:
“an interrogation and torture centre in the Naval School of Mechanics, ESMA [close to Buenos Aires], … It was a sophisticated, multi-purpose establishment, vital in the military plan to assassinate an estimated 30,000 “enemies of the state”. … Many thousands of ESMA’s inmates, including, for instance, two French nuns, were routinely tortured mercilessly before being killed or dropped from aircraft into the River Plata
Massera, the most forceful member of the triumvirate, did his best to maintain his links with Washington. He assisted in the development of Plan Cóndor, a collaborative scheme to co-ordinate the terrorism being practised by South American military régimes. (Hugh O’Shaughnessy, Admiral Emilio Massera: Naval officer who took part in the 1976 coup in Argentina and was later jailed for his part in the junta’s crimes, The Independent, November 10, 2010, http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-pope-who-is-francis-i-cardinal-jorge-mario-bergoglio-and-argentinas-dirty-war/5326675

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

So Long

Time For Change
Letter to the Editor | IDS

On Friday, Feb. 22, the Indiana Daily Student ran bold headlines about the forced merger of the journalism school with the telecommunications department and the College of Arts and Sciences program.

In smaller print, an even bolder statement was made by the editor-in-chief of the IDS, Michael Auslen.

“In the past, we may have been complacent. We’ve let opportunities to question decisions by administrators and trustees pass us by.

“That stops today.”

The Board of Trustees has pushed through unwanted mergers, raises in top administrative pay, layoffs for staff, never-ending tuition hikes and an agenda that swaps faculty control of curricula in for standardized micromanagement.

We have watched, waited and hoped that McRobbie & Co. would change course, but we can’t sit idly by any more. We must speak up for ourselves — no one else will do it for us.

There is a new movement on campus — IU On Strike. We are organizing campus to push back against these mergers, cuts and tuition hikes. We are building a diverse coalition that includes faculty, staff, students and community members.

Whether you are upset over housing rate increases or the forced journalism school merger, we suggest you start organizing with like-minded people you know, right where you are.

IU On Strike will do all we can to help you.

We welcome Auslen and anyone else who is concerned about the direction IU is heading to join with us to blaze a new path, one that puts the needs of those most affected by changes first.

We must get together and work for change now because IU deserves better than this. Let’s take Auslen’s words seriously — it is time for change on campus.

We’ve got your back.
— IU On Strike   http://iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Hunger Strike at Gitmo The U.S. military said Friday that it had designated 14 captives at the Guantánamo detention center as “hunger strikers,” and that six of them were being force-fed through tubes in the first admission of a protest claimed by defense attorneys.

The acknowledgement came a day after 51 attorneys wrote Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel of their “urgent and grave concern about a mass hunger strike taking place at the prison, now in its second month.” They sought Hagel’s intervention in “a serious threat to the health and life of detainees.”

Navy Capt. Robert Durand, the prison spokesman, denied “a widespread phenomenon, as alleged.” But he said, for the first time after weeks of denial, that the number had surged to 14 from the five or six detainees who had for years been consider hunger strikers among the 166 captives at Guantánamo.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/15/186054/us-acknowledges-14-on-hunger-strike.html#storylink=cpy

Headline! American Colleges at the top Don’t Attract the Poor! Most low-income students who have top test scores and grades do not even apply to the nation’s best colleges, according to a new analysis of every high school student who took the SAT in a recent year.  The pattern contributes to widening economic inequality and low levels of mobility in this country, economists say, because college graduates earn so much more on average than nongraduates do. Low-income students who excel in high school often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they attend.

Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges, according to the analysis, conducted by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard, two longtime education researchers. Among top students in the highest income quartile, that figure was 78 percent.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/education/scholarly-poor-often-overlook-better-colleges.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130317

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Black Agenda Report on the RaTT, the Black Comprador Class, and Capitalist Schooling President Obama’s Race To The Top then, is the direct cause of our national wave of school closings and mass teacher firings from Philly to Atlanta and Los Angeles to Rhode Island. It was local implementation of Obama’s Race To The Top mandates that forced Chicago teachers out on strike last fall, and it’s reluctance to carry out these measures that now imperils education funding in cities as large as Las Vegas. ...What passes for black leadership these days, the descendants of the old line “civil rights” organizations are firmly on the corporate education reform bandwagon. Bill Gates, for example, delivered the 2011 keynote at the National Urban League’s annual meeting. The NAACP and similar outfits are no better, all preferring to do the bidding of their funders and their president, over the interests of ordinary black families and their children. Even teachers unions are handicapped. Unlike the Chicago Teachers Union most haven’t spent the last few years forging deep ties with organized forces in their school communities, and lack even a tradition of standing up for their own members they way labor unions ought to.   http://blackagendareport.com/content/obamas-race-top-drives-nationwide-wave-school-closings-teacher-firings

Following Union Concessions, San Diego School Bosses Ger Raises and Admin Hires The San Diego school board has boosted central-office personnel in recent months, raising salaries and adding jobs even as it prepared to sell off surplus property, increase class sizes and pare back its teaching force through attrition to help balance its budget.

The hiring follows years during which San Diego Unified School District officials said they took deep cuts in administration as a shared sacrifice to cope with the state’s fiscal crisis.
District officials say lean staffing levels have threatened day-to-day operations of the school system, making it necessary to add key positions.

Longtime parent advocate David Page said the added spending has raised widespread concerns.
“The board started spending before it announced its budget solutions. In a sense, they added to the deficit before they tried to close it,” said Page, director of advocacy for the local nonprofit UpforEd. “The response we get from parents is that they don’t like to see pay raises and new positions before they start seeing restoration of instructional days and programs at the school level.” http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/09/san-diego-unified-add-pay-staff-central-office/

Chicago’s Jihadist Byrd Bennet Bans/Unbans “Persepolis”

The book, recommended by the Young Adult Library Association as one of “100 Best Books of the Decade,” follows Satrapi’s life as a young girl-turned-adolescent in Iran following the Islamic Revolution and subsequent deposal of the Shah. Her parents are described as Western Marxists educated in France, where her book was originally published.

A film adaptation of Persepolis, released in 2007, was banned in Iran, a move that the author believes is due to the fact that the movie portrays women who do not wear hijabs and “because they fall in love.”

“It is too Western and it is un-Islamic and maybe anti-revolutionary,” she said in an interview.

“We’re trying to find out right now if this is CPS-wide or just Lane Tech,” said Steve Parsons, a teacher at Lane Tech.

“We haven’t been given a reason why.”    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/15/chicago-public-school-bans-islamophobic-novel-and-now-parents-teachers-are-protesting/

UC Bosses Continue to Dun Students For UC Illegalities For five years, all UC students have been paying a $60 annual fee to help the university finance massive refunds for past illegal tuition practices. As a result of a UC regents vote Thursday, that charge will continue for five more years.

The controversy began a decade ago when students in law, medical, nursing and other UC professional schools complained that they were being forced to pay fee increases despite promises in university brochures and websites that their education costs would not rise before graduation. Two groups of those students sued and in 2006 and 2010 won Superior Court cases, and later appeals, that led to 12,000 refunds — as much as $10,000 a person in some instances.   http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-surcharge-20130317,0,1078432.story

Arizona Judge Upholds Ban of Mexican American Studies An Arizona law that put an end to ethnic studies courses in Tucson schools has been largely upheld as constitutional by a federal judge, but supporters of the program say their legal fight to restore the program will continue.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Wallace Tashima on Friday found most of the law that bans public schools from teaching certain race-related courses, such as Mexican American studies, constitutional with one small exception. Tashima ruled that the portion of the law that prohibits courses designed for certain ethnic groups was unconstitutionally vague.

Tashima ruled that the provision’s wording was “broad and ambiguous,” raising serious constitutional concerns that threaten “to chill the teaching of legitimate and objective ethnic studies courses.”

Still, Arizona Atty. Gen. Tom Horne this week called the ruling on HB 2281 a “victory for ensuring that public education is not held captive to radical, political elements and that students treat each other as individuals — not on the basis of the race they were born into.”

Horne, who wrote the law, and those who support it said the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson school system promoted resentment toward a race or a class of people and advocated ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of people as individuals.

Defenders of the program rejected that characterization and said it taught often neglected aspects of U.S. history and inspired Latino students to excel in school.    http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ff-ethnic-studies-arizona-20130312,0,6256895.story

The People in this video are not protesting

Speeding the Organized Decay of Capitalist Schooling, Moving College online Students locked out of overcrowded core courses at California’s state colleges and universities should instead be able to take those classes online, according to legislation introduced Wednesday in Sacramento — sending shock waves through academia nationwide.

The bill by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) calls for the development of 50 online classes as potential substitutes for the most oversubscribed lower division courses required for graduation at UC, Cal State and community colleges. In a controversial portion, the proposal would allow these classes to come from commercial providers or out-of-state colleges if their academic quality passes review by a panel of California faculty.    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-online-credit-20130314,0,7068676.story

Saving Money On Standardized Tests by Prepping to Spend More Money on Bigger Tests A plan to suspend California’s standardized testing for certain grades while new computerized exams are developed could save $15 million, the state’s top education official said Wednesday.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson recommended to the state Board of Education that the savings be used instead to develop higher-quality tests linked to new uniform but voluntary academic standards. They have been adopted by 45 states, including California, which plans to roll them out in the 2014-15 school year.

The new standards are aimed at fostering more critical thinking, sophisticated writing and other higher-level skills.

“Rather than continuing to spend scarce dollars and precious class time on outdated testing, we can invest these resources in developing the next generation of assessments that will help students focus on critical thinking and problem-solving — the skills they will need in college and their careers,” Torlakson said in a statement.   http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/torlakson-state-tests.html

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Soon to be Nobel Winner Bradley Manning Speaks to the Court–real audio and a video too Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation is publishing the full, previously unreleased audio recording of Private First Class Bradley Manning’s speech to the military court in Ft. Meade about his motivations for leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks. In addition, we have published highlights from Manning’s statement to the court.

While unofficial transcripts of this statement are available, this marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning….By releasing this audio recording, we wish to make sure that the voice of this generation’s most prolific whistleblower can be heard—literally—by the world.

https://www.pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/03/fpf-publishes-leaked-audio-of-bradley-mannings-statement

Complaining about N. Korea but Targeting China, US Builds up Fake “Defense” System The United States will deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors along the Pacific Coast to increase the Pentagon’s ability to blunt a potential attack from North Korea, in a clear response to recent tests of nuclear weapons technology and long-range missiles by the North.  The new deployment will increase the number of ground-based interceptors to 44 from the 30 already based in California and Alaska. While the limited missile-defense system does not offer a 100 percent guarantee of knocking down a North Korean attack, the weapons send a signal of credible deterrence to the North’s limited intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal.

The Navy also recently bolstered its deployment of ballistic missile defense warships in waters off the Korean Peninsula, although the vessels were sent as part of an exercise even before an increase in caustic language from the North. As part of the Foal Eagle military exercise with South Korea, the Navy has four Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers in the region….The new interceptors are scheduled to be deployed by 2017, at an estimated cost of just under $1 billion.

Officials acknowledged that the ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California had shown dubious capabilities in tests, and said the additional interceptors would be deployed only when they had proved their capability. “We have confidence in our system,” Mr. Hagel said.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/asia/us-to-bolster-missile-defense-against-north-korea.html?ref=global-home

Obamagogue’s and the VA’s Treatment: Cannon Fodder Internal VA documents, obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting and authenticated by the agency, reveal that delays newly returning veterans face before receiving disability compensation and other benefits are far longer than the agency has publicly acknowledged. The documents also offer insight into some of the reasons for those delays.

The agency tracks and widely reports the average wait time: 273 days. But the internal data indicates that veterans filing their first claim, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, wait nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in America’s major population centers wait up to twice as long – 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles and 542 days in Chicago.

The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of Obama’s presidency, to 245,000 in December – an increase of more than 2,000 percent.    http://cironline.org/reports/va’s-ability-quickly-provide-benefits-plummets-under-obama-4241

Court Orders Limited Release of details of Obamagogues’ Death Squads from Above A federal appeals court held Friday that the Central Intelligence Agency must disclose, at least to a judge, a description of its records on drone strikes in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.  The 19-page opinion by Judge Merrick B. Garland rejected an effort by the Obama administration to keep secret any aspect of the C.I.A.’s interest in the use of drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects abroad.

It does not necessarily mean the contents of any of those records will ever be made public, and it stopped short of ordering the government to acknowledge publicly that the C.I.A. actually uses drones to carry out “targeted killings” against specific terrorism suspects or groups of unknown people who appear to be militants in places like tribal Pakistan. The Obama administration continues to treat that fact as a classified secret, though it has been widely reported.  …“as it is now clear that the agency does have an interest in drone strikes, it beggars belief that it does not also have documents relating to the subject.”

The C.I.A., in urging a District Court judge to dismiss the lawsuit, had argued that it should not be required to produce even an index of the relevant documents in its possession — a normal step in such litigation — because it would harm national security even to confirm or deny whether it had an “interest” in such operations    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/us/court-says-cia-must-yield-some-data-on-drones.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Afghans Demand US Out of Key Province The continued presence of American Special Operations troops in Wardak Province, against the wishes of the Afghan government, brought demonstrators to the capital on Saturday and provoked a strongly worded denunciation from Muslim clerics. President Hamid Karzai had given the Americans until March 10 to remove all Special Operations troops from the province, after complaints about night raids in which victims disappeared.

American forces are still there, and the top American commander, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., said that despite the public demands by President Karzai, “he has not issued a directive to the force, and he realizes that we’re working this as quickly as we can.” He was referring to a long-term plan to hand over authority to Afghan officials. American officials have confirmed that no withdrawal of the Special Operations troops is now under way.

On Saturday, the influential Ulema Council, whose members are appointed by President Karzai and represent all of the country’s Islamic clerics, issued a threatening statement demanding the withdrawal from Wardak as well as a transfer of the American-controlled prison at Bagram to Afghan control.  “If the Americans once again do not honor their commitments and keep on disobeying, then this will be considered as an occupation, and they may expect to see a reaction to their action,” the statement said. It referred to American forces in Afghanistan as “infidels,” echoing language used by the Taliban.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/world/asia/objections-to-us-troops-intensify-in-afghanistan.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Pipeline? Schmipeline? At a length of 1,768km, the Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline is one of the great engineering endeavours of the new millennium.

The BTC oil export pipeline transports crude oil from offshore oil fields in the Caspian Sea to the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean from where the crude is further shipped via tankers to European markets.
The pipeline travels from the Sangachal terminal near Baku through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Ceyhan marine terminal on the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean.

The pipeline, which is buried along its entire length, is 1768km in total length: 443km in Azerbaijan, 249km in Georgia, and 1,076km in Turkey.    http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9006669&contentId=7015093

Syria/Turkey et al and Baku too ousands of Azeris demonstrated in the capital, Baku, in a rally organized through Facebook Inc. (FB) to protest non-combat deaths in the armed forces.
Riot police used water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse protesters in the central Fountains Square. The demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Stop killings in the army” and “Stop turning the army into a morgue.” Almost 100 were detained in the unauthorized protest, according to the opposition daily newspaper Yeni Musavat

More than 22,000 people signed up on Facebook to attend the rally. Ali Karimli, leader of the main opposition People’s Front of Azerbaijan Party, said “thousands of people” attended the demonstration.
Azerbaijan’s largely conscription-based army has suffered 15 deaths in non-combat incidents so far this year, according to Jasur Sumarinli, head of the Doctrine Center of Military Studies in Baku. Seventy-seven died last year, he said by e-mail last week.

Military service is mandatory for all men aged from 18 to 35 in the Caspian Sea nation, which has a population of more than 9 million.    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/azeri-police-break-up-demonstration-against-military-violence.html

Puppet cuts Some Strings. Karzai Accuses US of Colluding with Taliban. Hagal Cancels Meet Strained US-Afghan ties have suffered a fresh blow after newly appointed US defence secretary Chuck Hagel cancelled plans for his first joint news conference with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the second reminder of serious tensions in a brief visit to Afghanistan.

US officials cited security concerns, but the decision came just hours after the Afghan leader accused America of colluding with the Taliban to keep foreign troops on Afghan soil. Afghan officials said the presidential palace, where the men planned to meet the press, was totally safe.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said one Afghan official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to discuss the sensitive issue. “It was supposed to take place at the palace, we don’t see any security problems there.”

US officials said the decision was taken because security concerns were raised, and only after consultations with the Afghan government.

But it was the second time in two days that US-Afghan tensions had been made public: on Saturday the planned handover of the final batch of Afghan prisoners held by US forces was also cancelled at the last minute.

Both of the planned displays of public trust and unity were called off in the wake of remarks by Karzai, although US and Afghan officials declined to comment on whether there was any connection with the subsequent halt of the transfer and cancellation of the press conference. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/10/afghan-president-us-forces-taliban

How A US Citizen (and his son) got in Obamagogue’s Drones’ Crosshairs A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks. One was Anwar al-Awlaki, the firebrand preacher, born in New Mexico, who had evolved from a peddler of Internet hatred to a senior operative in Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. Another was Samir Khan, another American citizen who had moved to Yemen from North Carolina and was the creative force behind Inspire, the militant group’s English-language Internet magazine.

Two of the Predator drones pointed lasers on the trucks to pinpoint the targets, while the larger Reapers took aim. The Reaper pilots, operating their planes from thousands of miles away, readied for the missile shots, and fired.   … For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial……The missile strike on Sept. 30, 2011, that killed Mr. Awlaki — a terrorist leader whose death lawyers in the Obama administration believed to be justifiable — also killed Mr. Khan, though officials had judged he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted. The next month, another drone strike mistakenly killed Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had set off into the Yemeni desert in search of his father. Within just two weeks, the American government had killed three of its own citizens in Yemen. Only one had been killed on purpose.

GI’s Salute the Flag, Hug the Chaplain, and Steal the Afghan Bribe Money Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

Long’s scam is part of a pattern of fraud and theft among U.S. soldiers responsible for paying Afghans who support U.S. forces. Last year, 18 U.S. soldiers were charged with such thefts, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. Nine U.S. contractors also were charged.

The inspection agency is now investigating 80 bribery and corruption cases, “and the Tonya Long case is a prime example,” said Special Inspector General John F. Sopko.

Recent prosecutions have described U.S. soldiers creating elaborate schemes to pocket piles of cash, often with the complicity of corrupt Afghans.

Last June, investigators seized $23,000 sewn inside a teddy bear at a base in Afghanistan. The sergeant who had tried to mail the bear to the U.S. told them he was returning cash sent to him to buy carpets, but couldn’t explain why he sewed it inside the bear. The case is under investigation.

In September, a disbursing agent at Bagram Airfield, Sgt. Nancy Nicole Smith, pleaded guilty to forging documents and stealing $100,000 intended for U.S. military operations. Smith stuffed the money in a backpack before her flight to the U.S. at the end of her tour.

In October, Sgt. Christopher Weaver pleaded guilty to his part in a scheme to steal more than $1 million in fuel intended for U.S. forces and sell it to an Afghan. Weaver was paid $5,000 for every 5,000-gallon truck he allowed to illegally leave a U.S. base near Jalalabad.

In December, Staff Sgt. Philip Stephen Wooten, a paying agent, pleaded guilty to stealing about $225,000 by falsifying receipts for money intended for reconstruction efforts. Sgt. 1st Class Mauricio Espinoza, who contracted with Afghan vendors, was charged in the same case. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-scam-20130317,0,4635882.story

NATO (US) Murders Afghan Actor Afghan actor Nazar Mohammad Helmandi, the star of more than a dozen films, is dead today after being killed in a NATO airstrike. Local police in the Helmand Province confirmed his death, along with three militants.    http://news.antiwar.com/2013/03/10/nato-kills-afghan-actor-in-southwest-airstrike/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia By Mohsen Hamid
“Becoming filthy rich requires a degree of un-squeamishness, whether in rising Asia or anywhere else, for wealth comes from capital, and capital comes from labor. And labor comes from equilibrium, from calories in chasing calories out, an inherent, inbuilt leanness, the leanness of biological machines that must be bent to your will with some force if you are to loosen your own financial belt and finally expand.”

As Detroit Dies a Death by a Thousand Cuts and exMayor Kilpatrick and pals head to jail, videos of the many ways they looted the impoverished city’s citizens are released.

Banks Big Winners in Detroit’s Ruin The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.  The city started borrowing to plug budget holes in 2005 under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted this week on corruption charges. That year, it issued $1.4 billion in securities to fund pension payments. Last year, it added $129.5 million in debt, 9.3 percent of its general-fund budget, in part to repay loans taken to service other bonds.

Detroit, which is trying to avoid becoming the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, struggles to serve residents after revenue declined when the auto industry collapsed and the city began to empty.
Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is preparing to name an emergency manager, who will have to address debt and derivatives taken on in the last eight years.

“We have no lights, no buses, poor streets and now we’re paying millions of dollars a year on our debt,” said David Sole, a retired municipal worker and advocate for Moratorium Now Coalition, a Detroit group that fights foreclosures and evictions. “The banks said they need to be paid first. But there is no money.”

The city, which peaked at 1.85 million residents in 1950, has lost more than a quarter of its population since 2000. The 700,000 inhabitants who remain endure unreliable buses, inadequate police and fire protection and broken street lights that have darkened entire blocks.  Banks including UBS AG (UBS), Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) have enabled about $3.7 billion of bond issues to cover deficits, pension shortfalls and debt payments since 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Liabilities rose to almost $15 billion, including money owed retirees, according to a state treasurer’s review.

The debt sales cost Detroit $474 million, including underwriting expenses, bond-insurance premiums and fees for wrong-way bets on swaps, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That almost equals the city’s 2013 budget for police and fire protection.

The largest part is $350 million owed for derivatives meant to lower borrowing costs on variable-rate debt.

Municipal borrowers from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have paid billions to banks to end interest-rate swaps that didn’t protect them. In the bets, a municipal issuer and another party exchange payments tied to interest-rate indexes.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-14/only-wall-street-wins-in-detroit-crisis-reaping-474-million-fee.html

Emergency Financial Fascist Seizes Detroit under the new law, Orr will be able to cancel or modify labor union and vendor contracts and sell city assets with the governor and state Treasurer Andy Dillon’s permission. His bankruptcy expertise will likely be utilized to negotiate with the city’s creditors to reduce Detroit’s $14.9 billion in long-term debts and liabilities.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130314/METRO01/303140456#ixzz2NZLkihLd

Detroit’s EFM and the Chrysler Bailout (which cut wages in half, no strike clause for 5 years, etc) Orr was one of the hundreds of lawyers from Jones Day involved in Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy restructuring, but he had a key job.

Orr, who according to bankruptcy court records made $700 an hour during the bankruptcy, was the lead attorney on convincing the court to allow Chrsler to abruptly close a quarter of its U.S. dealerships.
Chrysler told 789 dealers on May 14, 2009, they had to close in a month and transfer unsold inventory to other dealers. “The company is trying to be compassionate toward its dealers,” Orr told the court in June 2009.

Unlike General Motors — which gave 1,300 closing dealers nearly $600 million in wind-down payments and 18 months to sell unsold inventory — Chrysler took a much tougher line.

Theautomakeropted not to provide any wind-down payments to its dealers. When a lawyer for the dealers, Stephen Lerner, said Chrysler was acting in an “unconscionable” fashion and orchestrated a process that was “less than fair to dealers,” Orr didn’t give ground. “We’re not here to negotiate,” Orr said.Alan Fein, a shareholder with the Miami law firm where Orr got his start, said Orr knows the Detroit region well and has what it takes to do the job.       From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130313/METRO01/303130355#ixzz2NaOtGDhJ

Michigan Unemployment Bennies to be Cut 10.7 Percent About 75,000 unemployed Michigan workers will see a reduction in their benefit checks starting in April as result of the federal budget cuts, the state of Michigan said Thursday.

The announcement of a 10.7 percent cut to federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits is one of the first widespread impacts in Michigan prompted by funding reductions, known as sequestration.

As an example, the state said someone receiving a weekly benefit of $285.21 would see it drop to $254.69.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130314/POLITICS03/303140439#ixzz2NZMhNs3h

Black Agenda Report on How the Civil Rights Movement was Derailed The conversion of the historic black Freedom Movement from the struggle for a broad spectrum of economic, human and political rights into a struggle for mere “civil rights under law” engineered by our black misleadership class has been a blind alley, leading to impotence against gentrification, the prison state, and the drive to privatizate… So what’s happened to us? How have the repeal of the New Deal and Great Society, and the enclosures of vast new spaces in media and the natural world become possible? The answer is the elimination of black America’s role as anchor of the left wing of the national polity, and the historic defection of black leadership.

This was neatly accomplished by converting the historic black Freedom Movement from a struggle for a broad spectrum of economic, human and political rights into a struggle for mere civil rights under law. In this way, with the signing of a few key laws, and a handful of court decisions, black leadership declared victory and demobilized the movement that might have transformed America. It was the autocratic vision of the NAACP, of Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshal, linked to the autocratic style of preachers like Dr. King, triumphant over the radical democratic vision of activists like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and the young people who led SNCC.

To be fair, civil rights victories did sometimes lead to a measure of integration, to some public and private sector affirmative action, to diversity, and certainly to fat contracts for well-connected minority enterprises. But they never raised the minimum wage, or guaranteed a public education of equal quality in poor neighborhoods, or established the constitutional right to a vote, a job, or a home. Certainly the alleged victory of the civil rights movement did not protect us from the alarming growth of the prison state in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Are there really children who don’t deserve quality educations, or families that don’t deserve homes? Are there whole neighborhoods identified by a combination of class and race who don’t deserve public transit, and a third of whose young men just plain need locking up? After the alleged victory of the so-called civil rights movement, the answer is apparently yes. The first places to lose public schools, public transit and public libraries are black communities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philly, and now ominously, metro Atlanta. It’s a failure of leadership nationally, and in those places, the historic failure of the black political class,

After leading us down the blind alley of civil rights under law, and securing its own piece of the pie, the black political class of preachers, politicians, business people and wannabees has walked away from the rest of us    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/there-used-be-these-things-called-public-schools-public-libraries

Too Big To Jail Are banks too big to jail?
If there was any doubt about the answer to that question, Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s attorney general, last week blurted out what we’ve all known to be true but few inside the Obama administration have said aloud: Yes, they are.

“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” Mr. Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”   http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/big-banks-go-wrong-but-pay-a-little-price/

Who Lost the Euro? Run On Cyprus Banks In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the euro zone, anxious depositors drained cash from automated teller machines in Cyprus on Saturday, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new 10 billion euro bailout be paid for directly from the bank accounts of ordinary savers.  The move — a first in the three-year-old European financial crisis — raised questions about whether bank runs could be set off elsewhere in the euro zone. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the group of euro area ministers, declined early Saturday to rule out taxes on depositors in countries beyond Cyprus, although he said such a measure was not currently being considered.

Although banks placed withdrawal limits of 400 euros, or about $520, on A.T.M.’s, most had run out of cash by early evening. People around the country reacted with disbelief and anger.   “This is a clear-cut robbery,” said Andreas Moyseos      http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/business/global/facing-bailout-tax-cypriots-try-to-get-cash-out-of-banks.html?ref=global-home

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Free Ebook: Homeland Fascism: http://homelandfascism101.com/WhatsItAbout.htm

Solidarity for Never

Chrysler fires Protestor: UAW Yawns Chrysler Group LLC has fired a Warren Stamping worker who helped organize a demonstration at the plant two weeks ago to protest a controversial new work schedule.

Alex Wassell, a 63-year-old welder repairman with nearly 20 years at the automaker, had been suspended without pay for making comments — quoted in The Detroit News — that Chrysler said violated the company’s code of conduct.Wassell helped organize a protest on Feb. 28 against a new work schedule that opponents say will force many employees to work Saturdays and require others to alternate between day and night shifts. The protest was not endorsed by the United Auto Workers, which has endorsed the alternative schedule. From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130312/AUTO0101/303120318#ixzz2NOHwzzRD

Michigan Local CWA President, Treasurer Plead Guilty to Embezzlement On February 21, James Killingsworth and Billie Jo Killingsworth, respectively, former president and treasurer of Communications Workers of America Local 84555, each pled guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to one count of embezzling funds from the Webberville, Mich.-based union in the amount of $19,197.02. They previously had been charged in November. The charges and guilty pleas follow an investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.    http://nlpc.org/union-corruption-update

Spy versus Spy

Afghan Student Says CIA et al Beat Him The 29-year-old engineering student was standing outside his classroom here on Saturday morning when he said two pickup trucks full of armed men pulled up. The men, said to be members of a C.I.A.-backed Afghan strike force, grabbed him, tied his hands behind his back, draped a black hood over his head and drove him to an undisclosed location where, the student says, he was beaten and whipped.  The student’s daylong detention was cited by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at a news conference in Kabul, the capital, on Sunday as part of his justification for a ban announced later in the day on foreign forces from entering any Afghan school or university. He said other students had also been detained at the behest of American-controlled Afghan forces.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/world/asia/afghan-says-he-was-beaten-by-cia-trained-force.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

The Magical Mystery Tour

Vote Fraud in Vatican! Do Not Fall for Fake Pope! The Real Write in Winner of the RF Election!

Ghoulardi Has A Superior Funny Outfit Too!

Ghoul Deals With Last Anti-Christ in Disguise

Anti-Christ Tricks Convention of Consecrated Rapists. He is a Pretender! Real Pope Above! Cardinal Bergoglio is also a conventional choice, a theological conservative of Italian ancestry who vigorously backs Vatican positions on abortion, gay marriage, the ordination of women and other major issues — leading to heated clashes with Argentina’s left-leaning president.

He was less energetic, however, when it came to standing up to Argentina’s military dictatorship during the 1970s as the country was consumed by a conflict between right and left that became known as the Dirty War. He has been accused of knowing about abuses and failing to do enough to stop them while as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.  …Though he is averse to liberation theology, which he views as hopelessly tainted with Marxist ideology, Cardinal Bergoglio has emphasized outreach to the impoverished, and as cardinal of Buenos Aires he has overseen increased social services and evangelization in the slums.  ..In 2005, shortly before the Vatican conclave that elevated Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, Cardinal Bergoglio was formally accused by an Argentine lawyer in a lawsuit of being complicit in the military’s kidnapping of two Jesuit priests whose antigovernment views he considered dangerously unorthodox.

The priests, whom he had dismissed from the order a week before they disappeared, were discovered months later on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, drugged and partially undressed. At the time the lawsuit was filed, the cardinal’s spokesman dismissed the accusations as “old slander.”

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but the debate has continued, with Argentine journalists publishing articles and books that appear to contradict Cardinal Bergoglio’s account of his actions. These accounts draw not only on documents from the period, but also on statements by priests and lay workers who clashed with Cardinal Bergoglio…In November 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio was elected head of the Argentine Conference of Bishops for a three-year term, which was renewed in 2008. At the time he was chosen, the Argentine church was dealing with a notorious political scandal, that of the Rev. Christian von Wernich, a former chaplain of the Buenos Aires police who had been accused of aiding in the questioning, torture and death of political prisoners.

The church authorities had spirited Father von Wernich out of the country and placed him in a parish in Chile under a false name, but he was eventually brought back to Argentina and put on trial. In 2007, he was found guilty on seven counts of complicity in homicide, more than 40 counts of kidnapping and more than 30 of torture, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Father von Wernich was allowed to continue to celebrate Mass in prison, and in 2010 a church official said that “at the appropriate time, von Wernich’s situation will have to be resolved in accordance with canonical law.” But Cardinal Bergoglio never issued a formal apology on behalf of the church, or commented directly on the case, and during his tenure the bishops’ conference was similarly silent. …In 2010, he described a government-supported law to legalize marriage and adoption by same-sex couples as “a war against God” and “a maneuver by the devil.”    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/new-pope-theologically-conservative-but-with-a-common-touch.html?pagewanted=2&ref=global-home

Justice for Magdalenes is comprised of survivors, the family members of survivors, long-time activists in human rights and adoption reform, academics, researchers, acrhivists and representatives from the political community. An Ad Hoc Oireachtas Committee was formed in 2009 to work with JFM’s committee and advisory, led by Mr. Tom Kitt T.D. (retired, now JFM advisory committee); Michael Kennedy T.D. and Kathleen Lynch T.D. http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/about.htm

Ten Million Payout for Raping Children (sort of reverse dispensation) The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay nearly $10 million to four men who claim they were molested by a pedophile priest in what Cardinal Roger Mahony has called the most troubling case of his tenure, a lawyer for the men said Tuesday.  The agreement settled four lawsuits against the church concerning Michael Baker, who authorities believe molested 23 boys during three decades as a parish priest and hospital chaplain.

The settlement is the first since the church released 12,000 pages of internal personnel files about its handling of abuse allegations, including scores of documents detailing how Mahony and a top aide dealt with Baker. The priest admitted his abuse of two boys directly to Mahony during a 1986 retreat. Mahony sent him to New Mexico for treatment, but later returned him to ministry where he molested again. He was convicted in 2007.

Two of the cases were set for trial next month. Vince Finaldi, a lawyer for the alleged victims, said he believed the file release “played heavily” into the archdiocese’s decision to settle the cases. “Once we got the files it confirmed everything we had argued for years and years,” Finaldi said. “Cardinal Mahony’s fingerprints were all over the case.”    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/la-archdiocese-agrees-to-10m-settlement-over-molestation-claims.html

L.A. May Have Been Used As ‘Experiment’ and Revolving Door in Dealing With Pedophile Priests
With the election of a new Pope, the church is eager to begin its next chapter, but the past continues to haunt the L.A. Archdiocese.

In an exclusive investigation, never before heard tapes obtained by “SoCal Connected” reveal straight talk from church officials about how to deal with sexually abusive priests. They also show Los Angeles was part of a quiet experiment to reassign those priests. We’ve also done exhaustive data analysis tracking the abusers. http://www.snapnetwork.org/l_a_may_have_been_used_as_experiment_and_revolving_door_in_dealing_with_pedophile_priests

Rapist Priests and Their Protectors Want Trials Hidden Away from LA In an acknowledgment that new revelations in the priest abuse scandal have tarnished the church’s image, lawyers for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are seeking to postpone upcoming sexual abuse trials or relocate them to a courthouse 200 miles away because they don’t believe they can get a fair trial in Southern California.

The church’s request to a judge for a delay or change of venue in pending cases this week came just hours after the announcement that the archdiocese would pay two brothers an unprecedented $4 million each to avoid a molestation trial set for April. The payouts to the men, part of a $10-million deal ending four lawsuits, dwarfed settlements the church paid victims in recent years and underscored the archdiocese’s reluctance to face juries in its own backyard.   http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-church-lawsuits-20130316,0,863542.story

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

So Long

The NYTimes Obit for a War Criminal That never mentions he was a US Ally After the Viet’s Invasion which Halted the Khmer Rouge Genocidal Efforts Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge who was one of three elderly leaders on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, died on Thursday in a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he had been taken from his holding cell. He was 87.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/asia/ieng-sary-khmer-rouge-leader-tied-to-genocide-dies-at-87.html?ref=global-home&_r=1&

Philly Bank Occupiers Skate A jury has acquitted a dozen demonstrators arrested during a November 2011 sit-in at a Philadelphia bank.   The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the Common Pleas Court jury deliberated for about 13 hours over three days before finding the defendants not guilty of conspiracy and defiant trespass.

The demonstrators appealed after they were convicted last summer by a municipal court judge and ordered to pay $500 fines.  They accused Wells Fargo of what they called “racist predatory lending” policies resulting in a disproportionately large number of home foreclosures in black neighborhoods.

Prosecutors argued unsuccessfully that the protesters’ free speech rights didn’t apply once they went into the bank because they were on private property, not on a public sidewalk.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office declined comment on the verdict.  http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Occupy-Wells-Fargo-Acquittal-195434381.html

Indiana University

Debt Testimonial: Junior at IU Bloomington
I am a junior at Indiana University. I work two jobs on campus to make ends meet. As of today, I have accumulated $21,037.52 of debt in Federal Stafford loans. All of this was still not enough to cover the costs for me to attend. So, each semester my parents have graciously taken out Parent PLUS loans for me with the stipulation that I begin to pay them off once I graduate. Once I calculate in the PLUS loans, after my junior year of state university I will be in approximately $31,000 of debt. These numbers loom over my head as I try to look forward to my career in social services. I will strike because this is simply not acceptable. Education was supposed to be my way out of the working class. – Junior, IU Bloomingon

http://iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Sydney University on Strike Staff at Sydney University took 24-hour strike action on Thursday. Despite management’s hard work to undermine the action, a very large number of staff either participated or stayed at home, whether they were union members or not.

Students who came to listen to the few scabs that did continue their classes were greeted by strong pickets at every gate. Members of the NTEU, CPSU, student activists and supporters turned out in their hundreds to staff the pickets. Construction workers from the nearby Charles Perkins Centre walked off the job to show solidarity with the picket. A vibrant rally then marched to the vice chancellor’s office.   http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7680%3Astrikers-defy-management-to-shut-down-sydney-university&Itemid=392

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Yes Virginia, the Education agenda is a War Agenda: class and imperialist war–and it always has been (what follows is hollow liberalism which seeks to more deeply empower the police state) Have American university campuses become so inured to the militarization of policy, culture – our thought – that they can’t see the Trojan horse sitting in the quad, its occupants pouring out and passing out sweets and credits to all the Ivy Leaguers passing by with goggled eyes and open arms?

A caricature for sure, but is it so off base? How else does one explain the muted response to news that the Department of Defense may have been funding the “U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) Center of Excellence for Operational Neuroscience,” at the Yale Medical School in New Haven? The proposed program, according to a report by ABC News last week, would teach special operations personnel the art of “conversational,” and “cross cultural” intelligence gathering, and pay volunteers from the community’s vast immigrant population (mainly poor Hispanics, Moroccans and Iraqis) to serve as the guinea pigs test subjects.     http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2013/02/25/boots-on-campus/

Grand Rapids Teachers on Food Stamps Since Feb. 15 when the district began deducting back health insurance premiums over what it’s allowed to pay under the state’s Publicly Funded Health Insurance Contribution Act of 2011, Ratliff said morale among teachers has suffered dramatically and a sort of depression has set in. Some are losing $300 per pay check.

“I am a five-year teacher who brings home $555.39 for two weeks and who currently qualifies for a Bridge Card,” Ratliff told the school board Monday to loud applause from her colleagues. “How is this possible?”

Some two dozen teachers told similar stories during nearly an hour of often emotional testimonials. Some told of renting rooms in order to keep their homes while others said they simply can no longer pay their bills. http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/03/grand_rapids_teachers_say_sala.html

Michigan’s Capitalist Schools Head toward Bankruptcy Only 11 of the 49 Michigan school districts in deficit expect to end the budget year in the black, while 13 have seen their deficits grow during the year, according to a report by State Superintendent Mike Flanagan.

In his quarterly report to the Legislature on Feb. 26, Flanagan updated lawmakers on the financial state of districts that incurred year-end deficits in 2012 and their progress — of lack thereof — in reducing the shortfall during the 2012-13 year.

Overall, Michigan has seen a steady increase in the number of school districts with negative fund balances. In 2001, only 18 of the state’s 549 districts and 256 charters had deficits, but the number has been rising for five years. From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130307/SCHOOLS/303070362#ixzz2MtjUBbpc

Holy Crap! The Common Core leads to Tests! (but WHY the Common Corpse?) I confess that I was naïve. I should have known in an age in which standardized tests direct teaching and learning, that the standards themselves would quickly become operationalized by tests. Testing, coupled with the evaluation of teachers by scores, is driving its implementation. The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted. The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.

I hear about those distortions every day. Many of the teachers in my high school are also the parents of young children. They come into my office with horror stories regarding the incessant pre-testing, testing and test prep that is taking place in their own children’s classrooms. Last month, a colleague gave me a multiple-choice quiz taken by his seven-year old son during music. Here is a question:

Kings and queens COMMISSIONED Mozart to write symphonies for celebrations and ceremonies. What does COMMISSION mean?    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/04/principal-i-was-naive-about-common-core/?wprss=rss_national

Welcome Home Vet. Now Pay Triple Tuition After Brian Stone graduated from Dearborn High School, he moved to Florida, then lived in Japan, Thailand, Russia and other countries while serving in the Navy.

After four years of service, he returned to his home state last year and enrolled at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, only to learn he was classified as an out-of-state resident.

That meant he would have to pay three times as much tuition as his resident peers — $9,000 per semester instead of $3,000.

Stone fought back and now pays in-state tuition. He has since become the face of Michigan student veterans who are battling universities over tuition policies that add costs for military personnel trying to earn a degree after being stationed out of state.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130309/SCHOOLS/303090364#ixzz2N1JNUjqV

Capital Pounding Down the Doors of Every School Tuition costs for public colleges and universities are at a record high nationally while state funding to higher education is at its lowest level in 25 years, according to a national report released Wednesday.

When stacked up against the rest of the nation, Michigan is at the extreme ends, with tuition costs above the national average and state support among the lowest, according to the report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

The scenario is complicated by the demand and the need for higher education at all-time highs — and states have been unable to keep pace with enrollment and inflation, said Paul Lingenfelter, president of the Boulder, Colo.-based organization that issued the report.

“It’s been particularly hard in states like Michigan, which has suffered economically,” Lingenfelter said. “That’s probably why you see the trends in Michigan are essentially worse than the national averages.”
Even so, the overall problem is serious nationally, he added.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130307/SCHOOLS/303070364#ixzz2Mu0OtPYW

Police Agent Joins Dues Eater and 1 Sap to Save Capitalist Schooling Diane Ravitch, the historian and former assistant education secretary who has become an outspoken critic of those who favor high-stakes testing, tenure reforms and other controversial measures aimed at the public schools, has joined with other education advocates to form a group that will grade and endorse political candidates.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/education/diane-ravitch-joins-group-to-monitor-public-schools.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

above, Ravitch Gets Applause from NEA’s boss, Dennis Van Roekel ($465,000 a year for his betrayals)

Against Ravitch Nothing significant is going to happen if it takes place behind the leadership of the vacillating reactionary Dianne Ravitch and the union bosses who lionize her.

Still a patriot, still a nationalist, still god-blessing everything in sight, still favoring the exploitation that is at the root of capital and its state, as well as the empire’s wars, there is a reason why she is hugged by unionite heads like the presidents of the NEA and AFT who allowed the militarization of schooling, helped create the No Child Left Behind Act and its Democratic inheritor, the Race to the Top, who poured millions of dollars and volunteer hours into electing the easily recognized demagogue, Obama, and who now oversee the wreckage of teachers wages, benefits, and their very jobs.   http://richgibson.com/againstravitch.htm

California Teachers Association Offers “How to” Suck up to the Common Corpse A major shift in literacy emphasis and a stronger balance between mathematics procedural knowledge and understanding are key components of the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). California will begin fully implementing assessments in the 2014-15 school year. The state is preparing for the transition and many districts are already gearing up, so CTA members are advised to become familiar with the coming changes now.   http://www.cta.org/en/Professional-Development/Publications/2013/02/February-2013/Common-Core_What-you-need-to-know-now.aspx

AFT and the Common Corpse, helping school workers become instruments of their own oppression The American Federation of Teachers, with Britain’s TES Connect, today unveiled “Share My Lesson,” which will become the largest online community for U.S. teachers to collaborate and share teaching resources and innovative ideas, with a significant emphasis on resources to guide teachers on implementing the new Common Core State Standards. The announcement about Share My Lesson was made today at the Global Education Conference at Stanford University.

“Teachers are expected to do so much, often with very little support, and they are thirsty for the tools they need to improve instruction. The AFT decided to accept the challenge and make its biggest investment ever in a tool to improve the teaching profession,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. The AFT and TES Connect have committed $10 million to develop and maintain the site.

“Share My Lesson supports teachers by giving them a place to come together and share their knowledge, skills, lesson plans and effective classroom strategies. It’s by teachers, for teachers, and is an easy-to-use source for classroom resources—and it’s free. It will become every teacher’s go-to online destination for the support they need,” Weingarten said. Any educator, from preschool to college, can register and use the site.      http://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2012/061912.cfm

Mexico: The Country that Stopped Reading Nowadays more children attend school than ever before, but they learn much less. They learn almost nothing. The proportion of the Mexican population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago. Even if baseline literacy, the ability to read a street sign or news bulletin, is rising, the practice of reading an actual book is not. Once a reasonably well-educated country, Mexico took the penultimate spot, out of 108 countries, in a Unesco assessment of reading habits a few years ago.

One cannot help but ask the Mexican educational system, “How is it possible that I hand over a child for six hours every day, five days a week, and you give me back someone who is basically illiterate?”   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/the-country-that-stopped-reading.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Nepotism for Bosses, Concessions for School Workers in San Diego When explaining to U-T Watchdog how they came to hire a new executive for labor relations at the San Diego Unified School District, officials talked about two previous recruitments for a similar position.

“We had one candidate each time, an internal candidate. We had no other takers for the position,” said Deputy Superintendent Phil Stover. “Our input was that our pay was not adequate to encourage candidates to apply. The board then this year increased the position from that of a director to an executive director. This enabled us to offer a better salary.”

Sounds like they started from scratch with the recruitment for the beefed up position, right?

Wrong.

The district filled the original position — and then added the higher level position as well.

In its story about the $131,000 executive position (which went to a friend of school board member Richard Barrera in January), the Watchdog included Stover’s original answer. Several readers contacted us to say — hold on, that’s not how it went down.

Stover confirmed that the original director job was filled, as was the new executive director job.   http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/08/san-diego-unified-labor-relations-hiring/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

New CIA Boss and the Torture Memos … a blistering, 6,000-page Senate study that includes incendiary accusations that agency officials for years systematically misled the White House, the Justice Department and Congress about the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding that were used on Qaeda prisoners.

By the account of people briefed on the report, it concludes that the program was ill-conceived, sloppily managed and far less useful in obtaining intelligence than its supporters have claimed.

“It’s a potential minefield for John Brennan,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former assistant C.I.A. director and former House Intelligence Committee staff director.

The still-classified report by the Senate Intelligence Committee will place Mr. Brennan squarely in the cross-fire between Democratic critics of what they call a morally and practically disastrous experiment in torture, and some Republican defenders who say the report is biased and fault President Obama for banning coercive interrogations. And it could place Mr. Brennan in a difficult position inside the agency’s headquarters in suburban Virginia. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/us/politics/cias-harsh-interrogations-pose-hurdles-for-john-brennan.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail1=y&_r=0&emc=tnt

Suicide Bombers Strike Duing Hagal Visit A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defense Ministry today, one of two attacks that killed at least 18 people as U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the nation, officials said.

Nine people were killed in the bombing at the ministry, a fresh reminder that insurgents continue to fight and challenges remain as the U.S.-led NATO force hands over the country’s security to the Afghans.

About a half hour later, another suicide bomber attacked a police checkpoint in Khost, the capital of Khost province in eastern Afghanistan. An Afghan policeman and eight civilians, who were mostly children, died in that blast, said provincial spokesman Baryalai Wakman.   http://www.freep.com/article/20130309/NEWS15/130309008/Suicide-bomber-attacks-Afghan-defense-ministry-during-Hagel-s-visit

Pakistanis: Nope. Not Our Drones. Yours The Pakistani military on Tuesday denied suggestions by American officials quoted in an article in The New York Times that Pakistan had used the C.I.A. drone program as cover for its own military operations in the tribal belt.   …The strident denial creates an unusual situation in which officials from both countries are effectively accusing the other of carrying out the same attack, albeit with different weaponry.

The C.I.A. has carried out about 330 attacks in the tribal belt, using Predator and Reaper drones, mostly over the past five years. The Pakistani military is not widely thought to have armed drone capability, but does have both American- and Chinese-designed warplanes capable of delivering airstrikes.

The furor reflects the political sensitivity of the drone campaign, which is viewed by many Pakistanis as an expression of American hostility that infringes their sovereignty and undercuts human rights   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/world/asia/pakistan-rejects-us-disavowal-of-drone-strikes.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

Pakistan on the Brink A powerful explosion ripped through a crowd of Shiites as they left a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, on Sunday, killing at least 45 people. It was the latest atrocity in an escalating campaign of countrywide sectarian violence.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/world/asia/bombing-in-shiite-district-of-karachi.html?ref=global-home&_r=1&

above, the Russian Orthodox Mask of Infamy Torture device

The Looting Within the Iraq Invasion STUART BOWEN: Well, the first sign of it was my first trip to Iraq in February of 2004, when I was walking the halls of the Republican Palace behind two people, and one turned to the other and said, we can’t do that anymore. There’s a new inspector general here. That sent me a signal that the challenges before me were quite substantial.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, as we said, $60 billion dollars, and you write it’s the largest relief and reconstruction effort for one country in U.S. history.

What happened to the money?

STUART BOWEN: Well, it was spent, about half of it, on security, on training the Iraqi police and the army.   ……STUART BOWEN: We have achieved 82 convictions of U.S. contractors and government personnel who committed crimes in Iraq and recovered over $191 million dollars from those cases.

We have 60-plus ongoing cases which we will continue to pursue through the balance of this fiscal year, and I expect at least 20 more convictions and the recovery of at least $100 million dollars.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Was that — is that par for the course when that much money is being spent, or was there something particular to Iraq?

STUART BOWEN: There was something particular to Iraq, Judy.

The lack of controls at the outset created what some — what one person called a free fraud zone in Iraq. And the Bloom/Stein conspiracy, we broke in Hillah, Babylon in 2004, convicted a colonel, three lieutenant colonels. Philip Bloom, the contractor, who has had a previous felony conviction, and Robert Stein, the comptroller for the south-central region.

JUDY WOODRUFF: These were Americans.

STUART BOWEN: Yes, essentially, the comptroller for the south-central region had a previous felony conviction. This is a man who had control over hundreds of millions of dollars.

And he told me when we interviewed him a few years ago that, hey, if there had been a powerful, robust oversight presence on the ground, that the crimes that they engaged in wouldn’t have happened.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stuart Bowen, you were observing all this from the very beginning. Did you see as you went along the mistakes that were being made?

STUART BOWEN: Yes, I did, and we reported on them.   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june13/iraq2_03-06.html

Imperialist War Breeds Capitalist Corruption Three civilian defense contractors who worked at Camp Pendleton pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to steal more than $3 million worth of medical equipment that was to be shipped overseas to be used for injured Marines, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Henry Bonilla, 25, of Pomona; Richard Navarro, 39, of Fallbrook; and Michael Tuisee, 34, of Oceanside, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in theft of government property, federal officials said.

They are scheduled to be sentenced May 24. They could each face five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The three worked in warehouses operated by the 1st Medical Logistics Company, which stores and ships medical items to combat troops around the world.

During their court appearance Thursday, they admitted they stole medical equipment, including ultrasound machines and ventilators, and then resold the items.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said the charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the theft of valuable property at the base.   http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/07/pendleton-contractors-plead-guilty2/

Happy 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War! Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the US did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we—and so many others—will pay the price for it for a long, long time.    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/happy-anniversary-iraq-war#13628738799181&action=collapse_widget&id=4726413

Tunisia and the Farcical Arab Spring At least Tunisia is not as bad as Egypt — that is the hardly comforting good news coming out of the country where the Arab Spring began, more than two years ago. The bad news is that Tunisia has come up far short of the lofty expectations set by Tunisians and outsiders in January 2011, when protests finally forced President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from office. Among the Middle East’s post-revolutionary governments, Tunisia still has the best chance of turning into a consolidated democracy, but barriers old and new are making the task far more difficult.

As I discovered during a recent research trip, Tunisians are deeply worried about their country’s sluggish economy, worsening security situation, and never-ending political stalemate. The protests that began the revolution centered on the lack of job opportunities, and Tunisians at all levels of society are still demanding economic improvement. Now, however, they are increasingly fearful for their own safety, the assassination of the popular left-leaning and secular politician Chokri Belaid being just the latest cause for concern, and they are growing disillusioned with the country’s acute political polarization.    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/letters-from/tunisias-post-revolution-blues?cid=nlc-this_week_on_foreignaffairs_co-030713-tunisias_post_revolution_blues_3-030713

Sexual Assault Ok by the US Military An Air Force general’s decision to overturn the conviction of a standout fighter pilot on sexual assault charges is stirring anger on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers say they are losing patience with the military after a string of related scandals.

Several members of Congress have demanded that the Pentagon intervene after Lt. Gen. Craig A. Franklin, commander of the Third Air Force in Europe, ordered the release of the fighter pilot from prison on Feb. 26 and tossed out his conviction without explanation.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/air-force-generals-reversal-of-pilots-sexual-assault-conviction-angers-lawmakers/2013/03/08/f84b49c2-8816-11e2-8646-d574216d3c8c_story.html

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

“Capitalism teaches the people the moral conceptions of cannibalism are the strong devouring the weak; its theory of the world of men and women is that of a glorified pig-trough where the biggest swine gets the most swill.” -James Connolly 1910.

Banking in the Corporate State Neil Barofsky, who was the special investigator general of the US government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program until his resignation in 2011, spoke to RT about how the Washington-Wall Street political culture could lead to another devastating collapse.

RT: You refer to Washington as “an alien world – a culture more concerned with looking out for themselves or the next headline.” What happened with the TARP program that led you to say such a thing?

Neil Barofsky: It was a remarkable thing coming in. I was a life-long Democrat; I even contributed then to President Obama’s presidential campaign. But I was actually appointed by President Bush, a Republican. It was very striking to me, as a life-long Democrat, how little things have changed. And everything, I think – over time it became increasingly so – was very much politicized. Decisions were made with an eye towards the press cycle: what headlines are going to get generated. And sometimes it resulted in remarkably head-scratching arguments that had very little to do with what TARP was supposed to do. So the official story line – the official narrative that survives to this day – is that TARP worked, TARP was incredibly successful because it helped to preserve the financial system. But that was not what TARP was supposed to do. History was eventually rewritten by the Treasury Department to make it seem that all was TARP supposed to do was Band-Aid over a broken financial system. All those other things, for which there would have never been a bank bailout, all those things that were to help all those people other than the executives at the giant financial systems that just got ignored and brushed away.

RT: You have said that the largest banks in the US did and still do hold a gun to the head of America’s financial system. Why?

NB: Essentially in the most recent stuff that we’ve seen coming out of the Department of Justice – and they have done some big settlements – they’ve done HSBC over sort of a breathtaking amount of money laundering, they’ve done some of the LIBOR cases and interest rate-rigging with some big European banks. One of the questions that has been raised was, ‘why are you not requiring guilty pleas from these institutions?’ The response of the Department of Justice was ‘ if we charge these institutions it could potentially destabilize the entire economic system of the world.’ This is a stunning admission. I give them an ‘A’ for honesty. This means that in essence there are two sets of rules. And now there is a special subset of the Too Big to Fail/Too Big to Jail’ corporations. And that creates a tremendous incentive to commit more fraud, to break more laws.

RT: So who is managing the economy: the government or the banks?

NB: It’s a fair question. A lot of the management of the government in the economy is outsourced to the banks. That’s how TARP was originally run. It wasn’t that the US government has hundreds of billions of dollars and they are going to save these banks for the purpose to put back the money into the economy to increase lending to businesses, homeowners … to get the economy rolling again. But when they did they didn’t do it the way you would think you would have if that was your goal: banks – JP Morgan Chase, here is your $25 billion, but when you use this you are going to agree to increase lending and we’re going to measure it or at least require it … incentivize it, and keep track of it. That is how you think it would be if the government was running the program. That’s not what they did. They gave it to the banks with no strings attached – no conditions, no requirements, no incentives, no transparency. When I said, ‘let’s make the banks tell us what they are doing with the money,’ so we would know their goals, I was told that I was stupid, that I was playing politics – that if I did it myself I would destroy the banking system. This led to Tim Geithner himself cursing me out of a meeting when I suggested that he was anything less than the most transparent secretary of the Treasury in US history. That is all part of that incredible deference that they showed to the banks. Just give the money to the banks and trust them.    http://rt.com/op-edge/neil-barofsky-crisis-politics-918/

Bubble Bubble Five and a half years after the start of a frightening drop that erased $11 trillion from stock portfolios and made investors despair of ever getting their money back, the Dow Jones industrial average has regained all the losses suffered during the Great Recession and reached a new high. The blue-chip index rose 125.95 points Tuesday and closed at 14,253.77, topping the previous record of 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, 2007, by 89.24 points. From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130305/BIZ/303050392#ixzz2Mtr8jMzC

Real Unemployment and the Part Time Life One of the more unsettling trends in this recovery has been the rise of part-time work.

We are nowhere near recovering the jobs lost in the recession, and the track record looks even worse when you consider that so many of the jobs lost were full time, whereas so many of those gained have been part time.

Compared with December 2007, when the recession officially began, there are 5.8 million fewer Americans working full time. In that same period, there has been an increase of 2.8 million working part time. Part-time workers — defined as people who usually work fewer than 35 hours a week — are still a minority of the work force, but their share is growing. …These trends are part of the reason that many people believe the standard unemployment rate of 7.7 percent understates the extent of underemployment. If you include both part-time workers who want full-time work and people who have stopped looking for jobs but still want to work, the unemployment rate is actually 14.3 percent. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/the-rise-of-part-time-work/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Diane Feinstein Wants to Disarm Americans. Her Husband: Blum’s wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband’s government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Blum has denied any wrongdoing, however.[3] Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company (Perini) controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife.[4] URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract.[1]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum

Chalmers Johnson on Feinstein JOHNSON: Because we aren’t paying attention to what we’re doing, to what the defense budget is supposed to do. We think it’s been alright to use it as a jobs program. As I say, the mother hens of the defense facilities subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee [sic] are the senators of the states with the two largest numbers of military bases, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Dianne Feinstein of California [actually members of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense]. These are the mother hens that would do anything in their power to keep the bases open. That’s their function. We have over 700 military bases around the world. They do not contribute one iota to our security. We can get along with 30 of them and still be a new Rome, but we keep building more. We just created a new—of all the things that we don’t need—an Africa command. Africa’s got enough troubles without having a bunch of American military officers in it.    http://newprioritiescampaign.org/home/resources/85-2/

Hellbound Drones Boomerang–We Can Blow You Up in the USA–Holder (White House, “No We can’t, or maybe or–what’s that up in the air????) The controversy, arising out of the drone war, that President Obama has the authority to assassinate US citizens abroad in non-war zones just got even more disgraceful.

The Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter in response to persistent inquiries from Senator Rand Paul, who vowed to block the confirmation of John Brennan to CIA chief if the White House didn’t respond. In the letter, Holder maintains that the President does have the authority to kill US citizens on US soil without any due process.

“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder wrote. http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/05/obama-administration-yes-we-can-kill-americans-on-us-soil/

Barbarism–Currently the Most Popular Social Movement Worldwide–Children Rob Tuskegee Airman As he stared down the barrel of a nickel-plated pistol wielded by a teenaged gunman demanding the keys to his Jeep, Jesse Rutledge said an odd thought entered his mind:

“I’m thinking, ‘This kid is so little; how’s he going to see over the steering wheel?’” said the 88-year-old former Tuskegee Airman who flew bombing missions over Japan in World War II.

That initial thought was replaced by fear, said Rutledge, who was carjacked by four youths as he left a barber shop near Harper and Van Dyke at about 4 p.m. Saturday.

“Yeah, I was scared.” Rutledge, a former gunner on a B-25 bomber, shook his head. “I’m 80-something years old and I still got to fight out here.”

Police arrested the alleged robbers — ages 13, 14, 15 and 16 — the next day.  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130304/METRO01/303040391#ixzz2MtrkjUKL

Two Detroit Children Spend Night With Dead Bodies Family members say a 5-year-old girl witnessed the gruesome shooting of her mother and two others on the city’s west side and possibly spent the night with their bodies.

A neighbor discovered the bodies of two women and a man Thursday morning inside a northwest-side abandoned house on the 11300 block of Coyle along with the unharmed girl and a second child, a newborn girl.

Kenyetta Hunt, a family member of the male victim whom she identified as Curtis Clements, said she spoke with the 5-year-old at the neighbor’s house Thursday morning.

“I think she’s going to be traumatized for the rest of her life after seeing her mom get killed,” Hunt said. “She is going to need a lot of family around her.” From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130307/METRO01/303070434#ixzz2Mu8ic8Jq

The CFR is Clearer about Problems of  Capitalism than the Entire US Left Inequality is indeed increasing almost everywhere in the postindustrial capitalist world. But despite what many on the left think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it, for the problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized. Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it — because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords. Despite what many on the right think, however, this is a problem for everybody, not just those who are doing poorly or those who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism — because if left unaddressed, rising inequality and economic insecurity can erode social order and generate a populist backlash against the capitalist system at large.   http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138844/jerry-z-muller/capitalism-and-inequality

Note to a Teacher From a SoCal Student Violence in Mexico?
In a personal opinion I will is terrible. Mexico is a corrupt state; people don’t respect authority, police sings, and people among each other. On Sunday February 17 2013 my brother was killed and found on the street next to the train trails tracks. His body was raped in a plastic tent. They strangled him and cut his forehead with a pocket knife all over his back head, he also have stab several time in the stomach. I am very affecting for the loss of my brother my only men brother. We had to be in all the government office of Tijuana doing the paper work to prepare everything for the funeral. Being in the office I got to appreciate the bad coordination that they have in Mexico Police. I never thought that I will go through something like this and had to attend the polices office because my brother murder was an assassination…

Arkansas Abortion Banners (home of Hillbillary) Arkansas adopted what is by far the country’s most restrictive ban on abortion on Wednesday — at 12 weeks of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat can typically be detected by abdominal ultrasound.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/us/arkansas-adopts-restrictive-abortion-law.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130307

Solidarity for Never

UFT-AFT Tops Betray School Bus Strike (and so did the bus union bosses) On Friday, February 15, the month-long strike by the 8,100 school bus drivers and matrons of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 was called off by the union leadership. There was no vote by the membership, the decision was announced in a 45-minute teleconference call. The next day the labor-hating New York Post crowed, “Union Strike Bus-ted.” The liberal New York Times proclaimed the outcome a “Win for New York Mayor” Michael Bloomberg, who issued a statement gloating that “special interests,    http://www.internationalist.org/nycschoolbusstrikebetrayed1302.html

CA Unionites Elect Brown–he cuts members pensions California unions, accustomed to getting their way in the Capitol, lost some ground last year when Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through the Legislature a series of public-pension cuts that affect their members.

Now several labor groups have gone to court in an attempt to reverse some of the cuts, forcing Brown to defend legislation he used to persuade voters that he was being frugal with their tax money. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pension-lawsuits-20130309,0,1054443.story

AFGE Boss/Thief Cops a Plea On February 14, Federck Petro, former president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2094, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to one count of embezzlement of funds from the New York City union, which represents VA hospital employees. He had been charged and arrested in December 2011 with stealing more than $100,000. The actions follow a joint investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General.    http://nlpc.org/union-corruption-update

UAW Boss/Thief On January 15, Joya Mills, former financial secretary of Local 2500 of the United Auto Workers, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to one year of probation and 50 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a $25 assessment, for failure to maintain financial records following her theft of funds from the Detroit-based local. She previously had paid $11,600 in restitution. Mills pled guilty last October. The actions follow a probe by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.

Spy versus Spy

Spying on Americans After the US Supreme Court upheld the right of the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans’ communications with foreigners without a warrant, the White House seeks to quash a similar lawsuit citing the plaintiff’s inability to provide evidence.

Last week the justices ruled 5-4 against the American Civil Liberties Union and others who sought to nullify a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The provision allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept emails and phone calls of Americans as long as they are suspected of communicating with someone outside of the country.

Judges ruled that the ACLU et al were not eligible to complain because they could not submit evidence that they were targeted by the surveillance program.

Now the White House is seeking to quash another case against the same NSA eavesdropping program, citing the previous ruling as a precedent, reports Wired.

The lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation accuses the US government of secretly monitoring all of Americans’ electronic communications with the assistance of nation’s telecom companies. ...Basically the government says its surveillance program is a state secret and its details cannot be revealed. But without such details it cannot be challenged in court, because the plaintiffs cannot prove that they were harmed by the surveillance.    http://rt.com/usa/nsa-surveillance-lawsuit-secret-930/

CIA For Sale Three companies that contract with the CIA agreed Thursday to pay $3 million to settle a whistleblower case accusing them of plying CIA employees with gifts to win jobs.

According to court records, American Systems Corp., Anixter International Inc., and Corning Cable Systems LLC sought to do the cabling and wiring of CIA facilities. The lawsuit accused the companies of supplying expensive gifts to CIA workers in charge of the agency’s “Falcon” and “Buckeye” programs — the code names for CIA building projects.

They included trips to Mexico and Myrtle Beach, chartered fishing excursions, tickets to Redskins, Red Sox and Cubs games, deer hunting trips and golf excursions and other gifts, all in violation of federal law.

The CIA workers were also treated to scores of meals, according to the lawsuit, with the Hooters restaurant chain a favorite destination of the CIA project manager in charge of the “Falcon” and “Buckeye” programs.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/whistleblower-case-results-in-3m-settlement-against-cia-contractor-for-violating-kickback-law/2013/03/07/2241b396-8778-11e2-a80b-3edc779b676f_story.html

Dexter White, architect of Bretton Woods, A Soviet Mole? In the course of 11 years, beginning in the mid-1930s, White acted as a Soviet mole, giving the Soviets secret information and advice on how to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration and advocating for them during internal policy debates. White was arguably more important to Soviet intelligence than Alger Hiss, the U.S. State Department official who was the most famous spy of the early Cold War.    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138847/benn-steil/red-white

The Magical Mystery Tour

Third Nominee in the RF Election For the New Pope!

Let a child lead them, and collect the dough. Too young to rape kids.

Romans Hide Your Children: Mobs of Child Rapists Arriving

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

So Long

Caudillo