Why Are Things As They Are?

French Students and Workers Show the Way!
French students blockaded more high schools and universities Thursday, as the third straight day of nationwide strikes over the government’s retirement reforms snarled train travel and sent a renewed challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy.

France’s BFM TV showed groups of students toppling trash cans in southeast France, erecting barricades in the middle of a Paris avenue, and being closely watched by police in several areas.

While the protesting students won’t reach retirement age for decades, the government is keeping a close eye on their rallies because student protests have brought down major government reforms in the past.
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iIZ9stJbSIK2tq3_6BaIvJuN_DUwD9IRLR800?docId=D9IRLR800

Video embedded in Daily Californian Reports:
www.dailycal.org/article/110671/live_blog_oct._7_day_of_action

What Have Others Done? Long March October 1934
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMDW9vopRAw&feature=related

October 21 1967 March on Pentagon

Little Red Schoolhouse

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda; A Class and Empire’s War Agenda: Navy Takes Over San Ysidro Schools: The Navy is teaming with the San Ysidro School District in the service’s largest initiative of its kind. Partners in Education pairs locally-based ships with schools to ensure students leave with “academic, technical, and employability skills necessary to be successful in the workplace,” Navy officials said. www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/oct/08/navy-adopts-san-ysidro-schools/

Divide and Rule–California to Gut K12 Schools, Hit State Workers, the Poor and Disabled, and Prisoners, with a Small Bribe to Colleges and Universities: California’s in-home healthcare program for the elderly, blind and disabled would shrink by 3.6%, the document says. Child-care services provided by the state would be trimmed by $48 million.Winners in the plan would be the state’s two higher-education systems, the University of California and California State University. Both would receive $200 million to compensate for cuts made last year and enough money to fully fund projected enrollment growth, according to the report.
latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/10/new-state-budget-details-released.html

Rhee Going Going Gone but Rotten Contract, Sellout Unions, and Racist System Hold Strong: D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee will announce Wednesday that she is resigning at the end of this month, bringing an abrupt end to a tenure that drew national acclaim but that also became a central issue in an election that sent her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, to defeat.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101205658.html?hpid=topnews

For Those Who Thought They Could Vote In Real Social Change in DC Schools: Presumptive mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray introduced Kaya Henderson on Wednesday as the interim chancellor of D.C. public schools and vowed that reforms launched under Michelle A. Rhee would continue when he takes office in January….In Henderson, Gray inherits someone in tune with Rhee on the fundamentals of education reform, especially the belief that teacher quality is the most important determinant of student success. Rhee and Henderson worked together at the New Teacher Project, a teacher recruiting nonprofit group that Rhee founded and ran before she was appointed by Fenty in June 2007. Henderson was a vice president for the group.

She was Rhee’s first appointment and was named her top deputy the day Rhee was introduced to the District. At the time, Rhee made it sound as if they had come to the District as a package.

“I told Kaya, ‘I can’t do this without you,’â ” Rhee said at the time. “She’s everything you’d want in a leader. She has an ability to motivate people. She’s a critical thinker, and she’s an innovative thinker.” www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101205658.html?hpid=topnews

From the Same Reporters Who Brought Us VAM (and the ACLU)–Will UTLA Dump Tenure and Seniority? “This is a shifting of the tectonic plates,” said David Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John’s College in New York City. “If this were to move forward, every major district in the country is going to look to this as the model…. It would be the most innovative system in the country — if it comes to pass.” articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/06/local/la-me-lausd-20101006

You Kiddies Good and Better Do your Salutin: The Poway Unified School District clarified its Pledge of Allegiance policy after outraged parents said students shouldn’t be able to opt out of saying the pledge.

Superintendent John Collins announced the change at Monday’s school board meeting, saying the district sought legal advice to make sure it was following both state and federal law. State education code says every school should have a daily patriotic exercise and the pledge fulfills that requirement. On the other hand, federal law says no one shall be compelled to say the pledge
www.10news.com/news/25362078/detail.html

Wall Street’s Fake Successful Charter in Harlem: The parent organization of the schools, the Harlem Children’s Zone, enjoys substantial largess, much of it from Wall Street. While its cradle-to-college approach, which seeks to break the cycle of poverty for all 10,000 children in a 97-block zone of Harlem, may be breathtaking in scope, the jury is still out on its overall impact. And the cost of its charter schools — around $16,000 per student in the classroom each year, as well as thousands of dollars in out-of-class spending — has raised questions about their utility as a nationwide model. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/education/13harlem.html

Ohanian And Metro Times Show Depth Of Detroit Schools’ Economic/Social Crisis: Metro Times has learned that twice in the past 10 months, the state has approved two short-term loans totaling $443 million. Department of Treasury spokesman Caleb Buhs confirms that the loans, obtained through bond sales, were approved by his department. However, no mention of the loans — $256 million in March and $187 million in August — was made on the DPS, Department of Treasury or governor’s websites. Buhs tells Metro Times the loans must be repaid by August 2011. Currently, the state is withholding $45 million per month in funding to satisfy the debt, Buhs says. susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9500

Perpetual War

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR1BFpi2W98&feature=fvw

US War Drums Beat with Speakers Aimed at China: Commander Cao was aboard a frigate in the Yellow Sea, conducting China’s first war games with the Australian Navy, exercises to which, he noted pointedly, the Americans were not invited.

Nor are they likely to be, he told Australian journalists in slightly bent English, until “the United States stops selling the weapons to Taiwan and stopping spying us with the air or the surface.”

The Pentagon is worried that its increasingly tense relationship with the Chinese military owes itself in part to the rising leaders of Commander Cao’s generation, who, much more than the country’s military elders, view the United States as the enemy. Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union.

The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China’s rise. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/asia/12beijing.html?_r=1&hp

Escobar on China and Pipelineistan: China’s economy is thirsty, and so it’s drinking deeper and planning deeper yet. It craves Iraq’s oil and Turkmenistan’s natural gas, as well as oil from Kazakhstan. Yet instead of spending more than a trillion dollars on an illegal war in Iraq or setting up military bases all over the Greater Middle East and Central Asia, China used its state oil companies to get some of the energy it needed simply by bidding for it in a perfectly legal Iraqi oil auction.

Meanwhile, in the New Great Game in Eurasia, China had the good sense not to send a soldier anywhere or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire in Afghanistan. Instead, the Chinese simply made a direct commercial deal with Turkmenistan and, profiting from that country’s disagreements with Moscow, built itself a pipeline which will provide much of the natural gas it needs.

No wonder the Obama administration’s Eurasian energy czar Richard Morningstar was forced to admit at a congressional hearing that the U.S. simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia’s energy wealth. If only he had delivered the same message to the Pentagon…
Twenty-eight percent of what’s left of the world’s proven oil reserves are in the Arab world. China could easily gobble it all up. Few may know that China itself is actually the world’s fifth largest oil producer, at 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd), just below Iran and slightly above Mexico. In 1980, China consumed only 3% of the world’s oil. Now, its take is around 10%, making it the planet’s second largest consumer…

Despite the simmering tensions between China, Russia, and the U.S., it’s too early to be sure just who is likely to emerge as the victor in the new Great Game in Central Asia, but one thing is clear enough. The Central Asian “stans” are becoming ever more powerful poker players in their own right as Russia tries not to lose its hegemony there, Washington places all its chips on pipelines meant to bypass Russia (including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that pumps oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia) and China antes up big time for its Central Asian future. Whoever loses, this is a game that the “stans” cannot but profit from…

Beijing’s strategic priority has been to carefully develop a remarkably diverse set of energy-suppliers — a flow of energy that covers Russia, the South China Sea, Central Asia, the East China Sea, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. (China’s forays into Africa and South America will be dealt with in a future installment of our TomDispatch tour of the globe’s energy hotspots.) If China has so far proven masterly in the way it has played its cards in its Pipelineistan “war”, the U.S. hand — bypass Russia, elbow out China, isolate Iran — may soon be called for what it is: a bluff.
www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/12/115915/15

Can A Currency War Become a Hot War? Global finance chiefs warned a race to weaker exchange rates risks hurting the world economy even as they sought to downplay investor fears of a “currency war.” As the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting began in Washington, policy makers expressed concern that efforts to boost exports by embracing weaker currencies threatened to provoke protectionism and trade imbalances at a time when economic growth is already slowing. China was again the target of criticism as foreign officials called the yuan undervalued and pushed for its rise to be accelerated. www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/global-finance-chiefs-seeking-to-soothe-not-solve-currency-war-at-imf.html

US Political Class (exec committee and armed weapon of the Rich) and AFL-CIO Spies say: BLAME THE CHINESE! In the past week or so, at least 29 candidates have unveiled advertisements suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result, Americans have suffered. The ads are striking not only in their volume but also in their pointed language. One ad for an Ohio congressman, Zack Space, accuses his Republican opponent, Bob Gibbs, of supporting free-trade policies that sent Ohioans’ jobs to China. As a giant dragon appears on the screen, the narrator sarcastically thanks the Republican: “As they say in China, xie xie Mr. Gibbs!” www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/us/politics/10outsource.html?hp

Obamagogue Rediscovers the Good Taliban! Troops! Don’t Shoot ‘Em! The United States is helping senior Taliban leaders attend initial peace talks with the Afghan government in Kabul because military officials and diplomats want to take advantage of any possibility of political reconciliation, Obama administration and NATO officials said Thursday. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15nato.html?hp

California Continues War of Rich On Poor: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday vetoed nearly $1 billion in spending on welfare, child care, special education and other programs before signing the budget bill that lawmakers had passed about eight hours earlier after a marathon overnight session. www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget-vetoes-20101009,0,6605339.story

Election Shell Game:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFLa_tl4Rk0
Demagogue vs Pole Dancer (pick your warmonger): Obama has suggested that the sponsors of campaign advertising have sinister motivations. “You don’t know,” he said here. “It could be the oil industry; it could be the insurance industry; it could even be foreign-owned companies. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. Now that’s not just a threat to the Democrats; it’s a threat to democracy.” www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/us/politics/11obama.html?hp

Palin went on, “You know what, you can say whatever you want to say about me but I raised a combat vet and you can’t take that away from me.” www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/us/politics/11obama.html?hp

There Goes the Economy

Stim Me! Beat Me! Make me Write Bad Checks! (and send some jobs too): over all, the economy shed 95,000 nonfarm jobs in September, the result of a 159,000 decline in government jobs at all levels. Local governments in particular cut jobs at the fastest rate in almost 30 years.
The outlook for the rest of the year is equally discouraging, economists say. The length of the workweek has barely budged in six months, and the number of people working part-time because they are unable to find full-time work continues to climb. If employers are not giving more work to their existing employees, it may be hard to justify decisions to bring on additional staff.
www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/business/economy/09jobs.html?_r=1&hp

The Ugly Figures Broken Out: The unemployment rate for Blacks was 16.1% last month. This is according to the latest report on the nation’s employment situation released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly Employment Situation report. This rate decreased slightly from August, when unemployment in the Black community stood at 16.3%. For the nation as a whole, unemployment remained stable at 9.6% in the month of September. Among whites, unemployment was 8.7%; among Latinos, unemployment was 12.4%. Comparable August 2010 figures were 9.6%; 8.7%; and 12.0% respectfully. laborcenter.berkeley.edu/blackworkers/monthly/bwreport_2010-10-08_23.pdf

Stiglitz on the Great Freeze Up and Currency Wars: Central banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve, are creating chaos with their rate policies, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz told the World Business Forum in New York.

The economist, who called for the government to enact more stimulus to help get the economy out of a long-term malaise, was skeptical of more Fed action to support the economy. He said the central bank has flooded the market with liquidity, but that money isn’t flowing into domestic investment in the U.S. Banks are using the money to repair still-damaged balance sheets or funneling cash elsewhere in the world looking for better returns on investment, he said.

Stiglitz worries about the level of instability in the global economy causing another crisis, such as a currency war among nations looking to make themselves more competitive which is exacerbated by investment from abroad. “That could give rise to a lot of turmoil,” he said.

He also warned about government austerity programs world-wide. Stiglitz, who says the U.S. stimulus kept the unemployment rate from rising as high as 13% and its biggest flaw was being too small, said lessons learned during the Great Depression and from financial crises in Asia and Latin America dictate that now isn’t the time to worry about deficits but focus on boosting aggregate demand. blogs.wsj.com/worldbusinessforum/2010/10/06/stiglitz-central-banks-creating-chaos/

Teachers Key in Job Losses: The U.S. lost more jobs than forecast in September as local governments fired teachers and other workers in response to declining tax revenue. www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/employers-in-u-s-cut-more-jobs-in-september-than-economists-had-estimated.html

Our Core Democratic Value, Property, Is Under Attack! Now, as many of these loans have fallen into default and banks have sought to seize homes, judges around the country have increasingly ruled that lenders had no right to foreclose, because they lacked clear title.

These fundamental concerns over ownership extend beyond those that surfaced over the past two weeks amid reports of fraudulent loan documents and corporate “robo-signers.”

The court decisions, should they continue to spread, could call into doubt the ownership of mortgages throughout the country, raising urgent challenges for both the real estate market and the wider financial system. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100607227.html?hpid=topnews

Boo Hoo For the Banksters Says Obamagogue’s Boy: A top White House adviser questioned the need Sunday for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners. “It is a serious problem,” said David Axelrod, who contended that the flawed paperwork is hurting the nation’s housing market as well as lending institutions. But he added, “I’m not sure about a national moratorium because there are in fact valid foreclosures that probably should go forward” because their documents are accurate. Axelrod said the administration is pressing lenders to accelerate their reviews of foreclosures.
www.detnews.com/article/20101011/BIZ/10110335/1001/White-House-questions-halting-all-foreclosures

Another Shocker! Obamagogue’s Auto-Bailout Boss is a Crook: Steven Rattner, who oversaw the Obama administration’s overhaul of the auto industry, for months resisted a settlement with regulators over his role in New York pension fund kickbacks because he did not want to be banned from the securities industry.

But this week, Mr. Rattner relented. He has agreed to accept a ban for a few years, according to three people briefed on the negotiations but not authorized to discuss them.

That concession was made with the possibility of his facing a criminal charge related to whether he was truthful in his testimony years ago about his role in helping to distribute a low-budget comedy movie for the benefit of a public official.

Under a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission that could be announced as early as Thursday, Mr. Rattner will pay a fine of more than $5 million along with accepting the ban, according to the people briefed on the talks. Mr. Rattner may still be able to perform some roles in finance, even with that ban.

A spokesman for Mr. Rattner declined to comment. Mr. Rattner, 58, while at the private equity firm he co-founded, the Quadrangle Group, was accused by federal regulators of paying off a political adviser to secure investment business from the state’s pension fund.

He is the most prominent financier to pay a settlement in the pension kickback investigation, which raised questions across the country about the ways investment firms seek money from public pension funds….

Mr. Rattner’s role as a Democratic power broker was on display at the event at the Four Seasons restaurant. Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, attended, as did Vernon Jordan, the senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton. Ms. White, Mr. Rattner’s wife, had just returned from Pakistan where she is working as a special adviser to Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The anticipated fine for Mr. Rattner is more than $5 million. His net worth is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to government disclosure forms
www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/business/14rattner.html?hp

Looting the Schools to Build a Publicly Financed Privately Owned Football Stadium in San Diego: www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/oct/08/new-chargers-stadium-may-result-new-state-budget/

We Say Fight Back!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEi5ssUImaY
Whittier Library Occupiers Fight On in Chicago (Oct 9): Whittier Elementary School parents and Pilsen neighborhood activists have refused to end their occupation of the school’s field house after the CPS offered to postpone demolition of the building for 6 months, because that offer did not constitute a commitment by CPS CEO Ron Huberman to turn the building into a library and parent center. www.examiner.com/libraries-in-chicago/gas-restored-at-whittier-field-house-as-occupation-continues

French Strikes Join Wave:
In the latest expression of discontent over government austerity moves across Europe, French transport and energy workers, teachers and civil servants took to the streets on Tuesday to protest plans to reform the country’s pension system — the third such strike here in just over a month.

The strikes in France follow waves of social unrest across the region in recent months, with protesters in Spain, Belgium, Greece and Ireland voicing their anger as governments seek to rein in exploding deficits that threaten to undermine their sovereign credit ratings, exacerbating national budget woes. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/world/europe/13france.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Better Late than Never? UAW Members to Picket “Solidarity” House: Union dissidents will picket outside the UAW’s headquarters on Saturday, Oct. 16, to protest contracts negotiated by UAW leadership that could cut some workers wages unless they transfer. www.freep.com/article/20101008/BUSINESS0101/101008035/1318/GM-workers-to-picket-over-negotiated-wage-cuts

Poway School Employees Dump AFL-CIO and Form Independent: A group of Poway Unified School District employees unhappy with the way their union has treated them voted to oust the organization and form a new union.

The California School Employees Association has represented 1,255 of the district’s instructional aides and clerical, technical and paraprofessional workers in contract and other negotiations with Poway Unified for at least 15 years.

However, results from a vote count that the state Public Employment Relations Board conducted Tuesday at its Los Angeles-area office revealed that 416, or 56 percent, of the 739 employees who participated in a decertification election opted to dump the old union and form a new one called the Poway School Employees Association. www.nctimes.com/news/local/poway/article_3b0b274d-f332-5fea-801c-4f8d92d3aeb0.html

Here’s a QandA Sheet from PSEA: poway-psea.org/files/PSEA_FAQ_and_Comparison_To_CSEA.pdf

A Massive Petition Campaign Against the Removal of C.L.R. James’ name from a U.K. Library WON!!! What we do counts!

Solidarity Forever

School Worker Unions March Money and People into the Tiger’s (rather than lion’s) Mouth:
The unions’ political organizations and employees have devoted a combined $8.2 million to Democratic candidates and party committees at the state level so far during the 2010 election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance-research organization based in Helena, Mont. By comparison, just $938,000 in donations has flowed to GOP candidates and committees so far, according to institute data compiled through Sept. 27….

The NEA was the largest single provider of political cash at the state and federal levels during the 2007-2008 election cycle, contributing a combined $56.5 million, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance-research organization in Washington, and by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. the CRP notes that the data on federal money are not based on donations from the organizations themselves, but rather from the unions’ political action committees, the unions’ employees, and the employees’ immediate family members.

Of that combined state and federal money, the overwhelming amount, $53.8 million, went to state-level candidates, political parties, and ballot measures, rather than to federal candidates and national parties. Similarly, of the $12.3 million contributed by the AFT’s political organizations and employees that cycle, $9.3 million flowed into the states, the CRP and institute reported.

Separate data compiled by the institute for the 2010 election cycle shows that, at the state level alone, the NEA and its PACs, its subsidiaries, and the union’s employees have through Sept. 27 contributed $13.8 million to candidates and issues. the AFT and its PACs, its subsidiaries, and the union’s employees have given roughly $3.5 million toward state candidates and causes, according to the institute. NEA officials said some of their state-focused donations come from a fund devoted specifically to ballot measures and legislative issues, which is not a PAC
eklmnhost.com/blog/state-campaigns-draw-unions-money-muscle/

A NYTIMES ad for AFT’s Quisling Weingarten Who Insists She Is Too A Sellout Quisling Judas Goat Rat:
Ms. Weingarten must navigate tricky waters between reformers who demand sweeping changes and rank-and-file union members for whom job security is a major issue. She has met with some opposition within her ranks.

On Thursday, Baltimore teachers voted down a new contract that Ms. Weingarten had endorsed, which would have based pay in large part on how successful teachers are in the classroom rather than on seniority.

And in May, Ms. Weingarten was heckled at her union’s state convention in Michigan by a handful of Detroit teachers, who were angry, in part, that a new contract introduced an evaluation system in which they are rated by their peers. Hard-liners argued that peer review makes teachers complicit in the firing of colleagues…Ms. Weingarten had played a major role in reaching compromises on seniority and evaluations during the contract’s negotiation. It passed in December but with 36 percent of teachers voting no. Some called the leader of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, Keith Johnson — and by extension, Ms. Weingarten — a sellout. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/education/16teacher.html?hp

In Win/Win For Kaiser, SEIU Outspends Upstarts: The service employees union spent millions of dollars in the campaign, fearing that a victory for its rival would give that union the money and momentum to try to take away tens of thousands of other S.E.I.U. members in California.

The vote was the largest private-sector union election since workers at the Ford Motor Company voted to join the United Automobile Workers in 1941. However, the California election pitted one union against another, causing many in the union movement to say it was a destructive, costly contest that undercut labor’s power and image.

The battle was between the service employees, a powerful union with nearly two million members, and a 6,000-member upstart that was formed by local leaders who were ousted when the S.E.I.U. imposed a trusteeship on its 150,000-member health care local in Oakland. The election was fiercely contested, with each side accusing the other of lying, fraud and bullying.
www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/business/09union.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

San Diego Labor Council Scabs on Working Class, Backs Publicly Financed Chargers’ Stadium:
The fallout has split traditional politics. The Labor Council is allied with the Republican mayor and Fletcher, hailing the investment in downtown construction and visitor industry for San Diego’s “economic engine.” www.voiceofsandiego.org/this_just_in/

Steve Earl on the Poison Pill in Health Care Reform, SEIU’s Deals, and the Efca Flop:
embeddedwol.blogspot.com/2010/10/poison-pill-in-obamacare-that-helped.html

Spy vs Spy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ25SQm6U38&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usw5Alg3Z7Q&feature=related
Did FBI Asset Set Off Kent State Shootings? Though the tussle and pistol shots, if authenticated, match some key details of a confrontation several witnesses reported seeing or hearing involving a pistol-waving Kent State student named Terry Norman, they raise many new questions.

Norman was photographing protestors that day for the FBI and carried a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolver in a holster under his coat for protection. Though he denied discharging his pistol, he previously has been accused of triggering the Guard shootings by firing to warn away angry demonstrators, which the soldiers mistook for sniper fire.

Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings (audio)

.
Western Spies Inside Iran Nuke Program: Iran’s atomic energy chief has acknowledged that Western spies had infiltrated the country’s nuclear program, but he said that Iranian officials had countered their efforts. www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear-20101010,0,6518050.story

Doxer Spy–Case of The Dangle: The government isn’t saying for which country Elliot Doxer allegedly volunteered to spy, but clues in court papers filed in Boston last week barely disguise that it was Israel.

Other hints in the government’s indictment suggest something even more intriguing: that Doxer got caught up in one of the oldest games in the espionage trade — the dangle.
blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/10/doxer_a_boston_spy_yarn_with_a.html?hpid=news-col-blog

The Heavens Weep

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQULqWxI2v8
What Else are We Not Allowed to Know? Government scientists wanted to tell Americans early on how bad the BP oil spill could get, but the White House denied their request to make the worst-case models public, a report by the staff of the national panel investigating the spill said Wednesday. www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/06/101697/white-house-squelched-release.html

Gulf Oil Drillers Open For “Business” Again: Dan Favre, communications director of the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental advocacy group, condemned the administration’s decision to lift the moratorium, saying it “again puts the region at risk.” He noted that the BP spill cleanup and restoration have not been completed.

“We certainly can’t afford another oil catastrophe,” Mr. Favre said. “While new rules to increase safety of drilling operations are welcomed, renaming a federal agency and creating a blueprint for safer drilling are not enough to ensure that the industry will actually follow the rules.”
www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/us/13drill.html?_r=1&hp

Magical Mystery Tour

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2qLjQbRv3w

The Religion Chart of the USA
4.bp.blogspot.com/_DlJyFTh4bjU/S55hgIv7ixI/AAAAAAAAJPE/6pR6Iizr4iE/s1600-h/world_christiandenoms_usa_100305.jpg

Yippee! It’s Like Totally Legal! When I was researching the views of the Catholic hierarchy on education for my last column, I came across this quote in Gravissimum educationis (Declaration on Christian Education) that nearly knocked me out of my seat:
“Let them be given also, as they advance in years, a positive and prudent sexual education.”

I have to admit that sometimes this church is absolutely mind-boggling. I mean, here’s a quote that easily could be used for a comprehensive sex education campaign; and yet, the U.S. Catholic bishops spend a good amount of time railing against sex education, favoring instead an abstinence-only approach.

However, it’s not just about the lobbying power of the bishops. Sex education of any sort is lacking from Catholic churches and schools, not to mention many Catholic homes.
ncronline.org/blogs/young-voices/prudent-and-positive-catholic-sex-education

Best Thing in the History of the World

Watch the Cattle Round-up Courtesy of Squeaky: link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid960594369?bclid=958498245&bctid=1716406566

They’re Back!!! You have to love Red Wings fans.
The Red Wings defeated the Ducks, 4-0, and hometown hero Mike Modano scores a goal on his first shot. But the biggest cheering of the night? When a penalty on Pavel Datsyuk, who got into a fight with Anaheim’s Corey Perry in the third period, was announced. The sellout crowd at Joe Louis Arena roared with a passion that officially signaled the start of hockey season.

Worst Thing in the History of the World
Insurance Ghouls Steal From Dead Vets Widows: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members, according to records made public through a Freedom of Information request.

The amendment to Prudential’s contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts, which allow the company to withhold lump-sum payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself. www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-14/veterans-agency-arranged-secret-deal-with-prudential-over-soldier-benefits.html

Injustice: “The San Diego Padres began the season with the 29th-highest payroll in baseball, at just under $38 million — or about two-thirds of what the Yankees spent on the left side of their infield,” The New York Times reported on its baseball blog, www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/article_540b31b2-d09c-11df-88d8-001cc4c002e0.html

Never Forget

So Long Solomon
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hv6sQXI1WY

From the Paperless Archives–a First OSS Report from the Liberation of Dachau:
www.paperlessarchives.com/FreeTitles/DachauOSSSection7thArmyReport.pdf
Thanks to Faith, Alan, Big Al, Adam, Gina, The RF SC, Brian, Jill, Swithers, Perry and Kate, Katy and Greg and the kids, Sharon and George, Kim, Bob, Terry S and Ricky, Vanessa, Joe, Ben, Corey, Richard, Pete, Dirty Edd, Candace and Sam, Hoffie, and Betty.

Good luck to us, every one.

r