We Say Fight Back!

Rescue Education from the ruling classes!  Mayday is a Friday! Perfect? 

May 2015 Holidays:

Waukegan on Strike  will be no school again Monday for Waukegan students as negotiators for striking teachers and District 60 head back to the bargaining table.

In a statement issued Friday, the Waukegan District 60 board apologized for the inconvenience caused by the strike, which began Thursday. The board also said the union’s demands would bankrupt the district.
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“That’s what’s at stake here –- the financial solvency of the Waukegan school system,” the release stated. “While the union has spent much time talking about a surplus, the 9 percent salary increase the teachers propose this coming year and the 7 percent increases they have asked for next year and the following year would bankrupt the district.”

Mike McGue, president of Lake County Federation of Teachers Local 504, said warnings of bankruptcy are “just not true.”

McGue said that the school district has gone from a $2.7 million deficit four years ago to a $37 million surplus today.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-waukegan-teachers-strike-20141005-story.html

After Uproar, School Board in Colorado Scraps Anti-Protest Curriculum  After two weeks of student protests and a fierce backlash across Colorado and beyond, the Jefferson County School Board backed away from a proposal to teach students the “benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” while avoiding lessons that condoned “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” But the board did vote 3-to-2 to reorganize its curriculum-review committee to include students, teachers and board-appointed community members.         http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/us/after-uproar-colorado-school-board-retreats-on-curriculum-review-plan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

San Ysidro on Strike 

San Ysidro Elementary School District teachers will strike Wedneday after last-minute negotations between the district and teacher’s union failed Tuesday night, a teacher confirmed to NBC 7.

The meeting ended shortly after 7 p.m. after the two sides could not come to an agreement.

Unfortunately, we are running out of time, and we can’t walk out of that room without something signed,” said Judith Crespo, a teacher at Smythe Elementary. “Then there will be a strike tomorrow in San Ysidro, and it’s a tragic day.”

Teachers rallied outside every school in the district Tuesday morning, handing out neon-colored fliers to parents and holding signs that read, “I don’t’ want to strike, but I will.”  San Ysidro teachers say they’re facing a 6.5 percent pay cut and some of the worst health benefits in the county. They’re also calling for smaller class sizes and more manageable workloads.  Source: www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Last-Step-Before-Picket-Line-for-San-Ysidro-Teachers-278417121.html#ixzz3FWkibVy7

Teacher strike takes over schools’ HQ  As a teachers strike entered its third day, angry parents supporting the instructors took over the San Ysidro School District’s headquarters Friday morning demanding to speak with the administration.

District officials were behind closed doors all day, talking with the teachers union. Interim Superintendent George Cameron said parents made it clear they want a resolution, and said he is hopeful one can be reached soon.

“We’ve been in contact with union leadership since the morning,” Cameron said Friday afternoon. “We’ve been discussing ways to amicably reach a settlement. From our point of view, it’s important that we recognize the district faces a serious financial struggle — any resolutions need to take that into account.”Teachers are striking for increases to salary and health care benefits.  …a

group of mothers organized the morning’s protest so parents, students and teachers could show they were uniting against the district.

“They wanted to show unity and protest against this continual barrage of lies,” he said.

Teachers contend the substitutes hired by the district are unqualified, and the district maintains they are substitutes from the same pool from which it always hires. Scarlett said that’s untrue.

“There is a solidarity between teachers and subs,” he said. “And they know not to cross the picket line.”  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/10/san-ysidro-parents-teachers-strike-hq/2/?#article-copy

Philly Students take to the streets to protest termination of teachers’ contract  Philadelphia students refused to attend classes at two District high schools Wednesday morning to express solidarity with teachers who they think have been mistreated by the School Reform Commission.  http://thenotebook.org/

Mexico: Thousands demonstrate in cities over disappearance of 43 student teachers who went missing after police arrested them  Tens of thousands of demonstrators have blocked roads across Mexico in protest at the disappearance of 43 student teachers from the southern state of Guerrero, with many of them going missing after being arrested by police.

“They took them alive. We want them alive,” demonstrators chanted as they marched through the centre of Mexico City, nearly two weeks after the students disappeared in the city of Iguala about 120 miles south of the capital.

Relatives of the missing students led the march. They walked, mostly in silence, beside a banner with photographs of the disappeared, greeted by chants of “you are not alone” from onlookers lining the streets.

Protesters also included contingents from universities and colleges around the capital as well as teachers, union members, activists and empathetic citizens.

Police said around 15,000 people participated in the march in the capital. Thousands more joined a protest in Chilpancingo, Guerrero’s state capital, which included a temporary blockade of the main highway linking Mexico City to Acapulco.

According to Milenio TV the day of action also included protests in 19 more of Mexico’s 32 states, as well as in nine other countries, including a group gathered outside the Mexican embassy in London.  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/09/mexico-protests-student-teachers-missing

SDSU students seek to rid the campus of the racist Aztec programs  Filed Oct. 2, a formal resolution from the SDSU Queer People of Color Collective asks the student body to abandon all Aztecs references and eliminate the school mascot, the Aztec Warrior, because the words and costumed cheerleading “perpetuate harmful stereotypes of Native Americans, including the notion that Native Americans are innately violent, dangerous, and ‘savage,’ which is demonstrated by the Aztec Warrior’s aggressive body language, the Aztec Warrior’s use of a spear at special events, the use of a spear on the SDSU Athletics Logo which is printed on uniforms and SDSU memorabilia, and the slogan ‘fear the spear.'”   http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/09/sdsu-aztec-warrior/

NYC Principal Quits as there’s no plan! The principal of a long-struggling high school in Brooklyn handed in his resignation this week — and offered Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Education Department one of its sternest public rebukes yet.

“The problem is, there is no plan,” the principal, Bernard Gassaway of Boys and Girls High School, said of the city’s approach to struggling schools. “They’re making it up as they go along.”

Mr. de Blasio and the schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, have distanced themselves aggressively from the approach taken by the administration of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to the city’s worst performing schools, which rested primarily on closing them and replacing them with new, generally smaller ones. But Mr. Gassaway’s critique, perhaps the first of Ms. Fariña’s tenure to be made so loudly by an insider, comes amid growing questions about what the city plans to do instead.
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Related Coverage
De Blasio Plans Revised Code for Discipline in SchoolsSEPT. 28, 2014
The Education Issue: The Battle for New York Schools: Eva Moskowitz vs. Mayor Bill de BlasioSEPT. 3, 2014
City Hall Memo: De Blasio’s Transparency Is Turning Opaque Under FireOCT. 9, 2014
As de Blasio Aids Bid for Democratic Senate, Cuomo Is a Nearly Invisible ManOCT. 9, 2014

Boys and Girls, which has existed in some form since 1878 and is Bedford-Stuyvesant’s main high school, has a long list of distinguished alumni, including Shirley Chisholm, Norman Mailer and Aaron Copland. But in recent years, its reputation has become checkered.

In 2005, a class-action lawsuit against the city alleged that some students at Boys and Girls were essentially warehoused in an auditorium for large portions of the day www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/nyregion/principal-of-failing-school-quits-saying-city-lacks-an-education-plan.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region%C2%AEion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Philly revokes teachers’ contract, changes health benefits, redirects $44 million to schools  After 21 months of fruitless labor talks, the School District made a bold move Monday to unilaterally restructure teachers’ health benefits and send $44 million in savings directly back to schools.

At a special meeting that was barely publicized until hours before its 9:30 a.m. start, with no public testimony before acting, the School Reform Commission unanimously voted to cancel the contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers in order to rework its health-care provisions. The District also filed a legal action in Commonwealth Court to establish its right to rewrite the contract based on special powers granted to the SRC.  http://thenotebook.org/blog/147781/src-revokes-contract-changes-health-benefits

History Demonstrates the Billion Dollar Capitalist School Lunch Agenda is a War Agenda The federal school-lunch program has always invited martial metaphors, and not without reason: It was the U.S. military that first advanced the national-security implications of a healthful lunch. In the spring of 1945, at the dawn of the Cold War, Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, a former school principal who joined the armed forces before World War I, went in front of the House Agriculture Committee to deliver a stern warning. Hershey headed the Selective Service System — the draft — and he told the lawmakers that as many as 40 percent of rejected draftees had been turned away owing to poor diets. “Whether we are going to have war or not, I do think that we have got to have health if we are going to survive,” he testified.
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Within a year, a majority of lawmakers from both parties had voted for the National School Lunch Act. The act declared it “the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation’s children.” In the way of many programs inspired by the Department of Defense, the School Lunch Program grew in large part because it offered something to everyone. Over the coming decades, the Department of Agriculture would send billions of dollars to states and school districts to help cover the costs of school meals and spend billions more to purchase surplus farm products for the schools. The program was expanded significantly under Richard Nixon, who sought to ensure that poor children got their school lunches free, and by the mid-1970s it fed 25 million kids.  …

In one sense, the school-lunch program was all too successful. No longer was the military having trouble finding well-fed young American men and women. By 2009, according to the Department of Defense, more recruits were being turned away for obesity than for any other medical reason. The recruits, as a letter signed by dozens of retired generals and admirals put it, were “too fat to fight.”

www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/magazine/how-school-lunch-became-the-latest-political-battleground.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=3

Deasy’s inaction on Jefferson High fiasco is shocking  Jefferson was thrown into turmoil in August by the failure of a new computerized system the district relied upon to schedule the school’s 1,500 students. Hundreds of students have gone without schedules, been assigned to courses they’ve already taken or been locked out of classes they need for graduation.

Eight weeks into the semester, their schedules are loaded with space-fillers — periods labeled Service, Adult Class or Home, that offer no instruction and waste the time of teenagers already at risk of falling academically behind.

Those “content-less” classes are the target of a Northern California lawsuit alleging the state has ignored its obligation to ensure that all students have access to an adequate education.

Jefferson became a focal point because its troubles illustrate the issues at stake: Students hanging out in the auditorium or performing clerical tasks, or simply being assigned to go home because their schools don’t have the will, the resources or the leadership to engage and educate them.l Related
“We have kids at Jefferson with four of those classes in a day,”   http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-1011-banks-deasy-lawsuit-20141011-column.html#navtype=outfit

NCLB to RaTT–SAT Scores Flat SAT scores among the nation’s high school seniors remain stubbornly stagnant.

The College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the test, reported scores Tuesday from the Class of 2014 that were similar to other recent senior classes.

Overall, the mean score in reading was 497. It was 513 in math and 487 in writing. The top score in each category is 800, and 583 of the 1.7 million students from the class who took the test achieved the perfect score of 2,400.

About 43 percent of test takers met a benchmark that indicated they were likely ready for credit-bearing, college-level work — a figure that has also remained about the same.

The benchmark was met by nearly 53 percent of white and nearly 61 percent of Asian test-takers. Nearly 16 percent of African-American test-takers met the college-ready benchmark, as did nearly a quarter of Hispanic test-takers and about a third of Native Americans.

The SAT is undergoing major revisions, but the new exam won’t come out until 2016.  http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/07/us-sat-scores-remain-stagnant/16847831/

L.A. school board, Deasy again at odds over involvement in lawsuit  beleaguered Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy finds himself at the center of another dispute with his bosses, this time over his involvement in a lawsuit that criticizes district schools and policies.

Deasy’s sworn declaration in the case places him at odds with members of the school board, which did not authorize his action.

The goal of the litigation is to compel the state to eliminate non-academic periods that have hindered students from fulfilling graduation and college requirements. Those periods include “service classes,” which involve answering the phones and running errands, and “home periods,” during which unsupervised students are allowed to leave campus.   http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-lausd-deasy-20141007-story.html

From Cory Wright Mallot –-Jobs!  Hi Folks,We have two tenure track positions in elementary education in curriculum (math, English, science, or literacy) and one in educational foundations (classroom management, ed psych, assessment). Calgary is a great town. Very family friendly, close to the mountains, lots of parks and green spaces within the city. St. Mary’s is open and inclusive of faculty from different / no faith traditions, and has a deep interest in social justice. Our graduating teachers are often the first to be snapped up owing to the strength of our program. Our program is growing and we need good candidates to fill these new lines. Please post widely to your networks, as Canadian positions are sometimes overlooked by people who would otherwise be a good fit.  http://www.stmu.ab.ca/…/STMU-Tenure-Track-Position-in-Educa…

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

above, Rouge guest Konapacki http://huckkonopackicartoons.com/mike-konopacki-cartoons/labor-cartoons/konopacki-labor-cartoons-for-may-2013/

US Yells at Turkey for not fighting the war the US Initiated While Turkish troops watched the fighting in Kobani through a chicken-wire fence, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the town was about to fall and Kurdish fighters warned of an impending blood bath if they were not reinforced — fears the United States shares.

But Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would not get more deeply involved in the conflict with the Islamic State unless the United States agreed to give greater support to rebels trying to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. That has deepened tensions with President Obama, who would like Turkey to take stronger action against the Islamic State and to leave the fight against Mr. Assad out of it.
Mr. Erdogan has also resisted pleas to send his troops across the border in the absence of a no-fly zone to ward off the Syrian Air Force.  Even as it stepped up airstrikes against the militants Tuesday, the Obama administration was frustrated by what it regards as Turkey’s excuses for not doing more militarily.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/world/middleeast/isis-syria-coalition-strikes.html

Who Is Losing Anbar? Islamic State fighters are threatening to overrun Iraq’s Anbar province  Islamic State militants are threatening to overrun a key province in western Iraq in what would be a major victory for the jihadists and an embarrassing setback for the U.S.-led coalition targeting the group.

A win for the Islamic State in Anbar province would give the militants control of one of the country’s most important dams and several large army installations, potentially adding to their abundant stockpile of weapons. It would also allow them to establish a supply line from Syria almost to Baghdad, and give them a valuable position from which to launch attacks on the Iraqi capital.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-state-fighters-are-threatening-to-overrun-iraqs-anbar-province/2014/10/09/34b302f0-84e4-4d73-b220-2d91161363e5_story.html?hpid=z1

Pakistan Taliban vow support for IS in Syria and Iraq   The Pakistani Taliban have expressed their support for Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria and Iraq.In a statement marking the Muslim festival of Eid, the group appealed to Islamists there to unite against the “enemy” – the US-led alliance.

IS has taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq, but has also been battling al-Qaeda-linked rival militant groups.The Pakistani Taliban has been waging its own insurgency against the Islamabad government since 1997.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29494772

Rashid on the ISIS Pakistan Taliban Hookup For now, the statement—issued as Muslims worldwide celebrated the Eid holidays and just hours after ISIS announced the beheading of another Western aid worker—seems mostly symbolic. The Pakistani Taliban have not merged with ISIS, nor have they accepted ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their Caliph. On Monday, the group’s spokesman clarified that it was not a declaration of allegiance to ISIS. But the move by the Pakistani group is a startling indication of how much ISIS’s brutality and ability to control a large swath of territory are changing the jihadist landscape—not only in the Middle East but also in South Asia. For a younger generation of Islamic militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially, it suggests a readiness to bring ISIS-style tactics to their own campaigns at home.

Numerous Pakistani fighters have gone to fight in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Bosnia, and the Middle East in the past. And in recent years, some factions of the Pakistani Taliban that are based in the mountainous tribal badlands Between Afghanistan and Pakistan, have offered protection to al-Qaeda and its leaders, and helped train foreign militants to carry out bombings in the West. But until now, fighters seeking to take part in international jihad have tended to join al-Qaeda, while the Taliban’s own members—who are dominated by Pashtun tribesmen—have been primarily committed to setting up a shariah state in Pakistan and helping their Afghan brothers do the same in Afghanistan.

Over the past few months, however, the stunning military success of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has inspired the Pakistani Taliban to show an interest in a wider jihad. A new generation of militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan—younger, more radicalized, better educated, and deeply committed to war and sacrifice—feel let down by their own militant leaders, who they see as having gone too far to compromise with the existing states and governments. For example, efforts by the Afghan Taliban leaders to enter a dialogue with the US over the last few years and to set up a Taliban office for mediation in Qatar have angered some younger Afghan militants.  http://www.ahmedrashid.com/wp-content/archives/pakistan/articles/pdf/the-allure-of-isis.pdf

After Feigning Love for Egyptian Democracy, U.S. Back To Openly Supporting Tyranny  It is, of course, very difficult to choose the single most extreme episode of misleading American media propaganda, but if forced to do so, coverage of the February, 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations in Egypt would be an excellent candidate. For weeks, U.S. media outlets openly positioned themselves on the side of the demonstrators, depicting the upheaval as a Manichean battle between the evil despot Hosni Mubarak’s “three decades of iron rule” and the hordes of ordinary, oppressed Egyptians inspirationally yearning for American-style freedom and democracy.

Almost completely missing from this feel-good morality play was the terribly unpleasant fact that Mubarak was one of the U.S. Government’s longest and closest allies and that his ”three decades of iron rule” — featuring murder, torture and indefinite detention for dissidents — were enabled in multiple ways by American support.  https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/02/feigned-american-support-egyptian-democracy-lasted-roughly-six-weeks/’

Blowhard Biden Spoke Truth    “My constant cry was that our biggest problem is our allies — our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,” Biden told his listeners in remarks subsequently posted on the White House YouTube channel (go to 1:32:00 if you want to skip the earlier speech).

“The Turks were great friends,” he notes, adding that he recently spent considerable time with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and they have “a great relationship.” Ditto the Saudis and the Emiratis. But when it came to Syria and the effort to bring down President Bashar Assad there, those allies’ policies wound up helping to arm and build allies of al Qaeda and eventually the terrorist “Islamic State.”

“What were they doing?” Biden asked rhetorically. “They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad — except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/05/vp-biden-apologizes-for-telling-truth-about-turkey-saudi-and-isis.html

Libya’s parliament moves to small port city as dangers in Tripoli increase (that would be “the shores of Tripoli, eh?)  With armed groups battling for control of Libya, the eastern town of Tobruk — with its well-protected natural port, close-knit tribal society and the absence of militias — has become one of the safest places to seek refuge. The city has become the unlikely center for a broad range of politicians, activists and military figures hoping to take back the Libyan state.

In August, Libya’s parliament moved to Tobruk, with members saying they were facing a constant risk of violence in the capital. Dozens of politicians, journalists and activists in Tripoli have been arrested, kidnapped or killed, a trend that has only intensified since a loose alliance of mainly Islamist militias going under the name of Libya Dawn took control of most of the city several weeks ago.

This port city of 200,000 was little prepared for its new role as a strategic hub for those in retreat. There are only five hotels, so the authorities initially rented a Greek car ferry to house the overflow, while they tried to find more permanent accommodations.

The previous Libyan parliament, dominated by members sympathetic to Libya Dawn, continues to meet in Tripoli     www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/tripoli-is-so-dangerous-that-even-libyas-parliament-has-moved-out/2014/10/03/9952b54e-4053-11e4-b03f-de718edeb92f_story.html?hpid=z13

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Detroit black Infant Mortality: The department’s latest figure for Detroit alone, from 2012, was between 13.6 and 17.4 for every 1,000 babies born in the city.  www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/10/one_in_six_detroit_babies_born.html

Cuba infant Mortality rate: 4.7  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

One in 45 children experience homelessness in America each year. That’s over 1.6 million children.  While homeless, they experience high rates of acute and chronic health problems. The constant barrage of stressful and traumatic experience also has profound effects on their development and ability to learn. (Fact Sheet here http://www.familyhomelessness.org/children.php?p=ts)

Forbes: It’s Good to be Really Rich and Get Richer  Thanks to a buoyant stock market, the richest people in the U.S. just keep getting richer. That has made it harder than ever to join the ranks of the 400 wealthiest Americans. The price of entry to The Forbes 400 this year is $1.55 billion, the highest it’s been since Forbes started tracking American wealth in 1982. Last year it took $1.3 billion to score a spot. Because the bar is so high, 113 U.S. billionaires didn’t make the cut…All together the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth a staggering $2.29 trillion, up $270 billion from a year ago. That’s about the same as the gross domestic product of Brazil, a country of 200 million people. The average net worth of list members is $5.7 billion, $700 million more than last year and a record high. An impressive 303 of the 400 saw the value of their fortunes rise compared to a year ago. Only 36 people from last year’s list had lower net worths this year. Twenty-six people fell off the list; another six people died, including businessman and Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2014/09/29/inside-the-2014-forbes-400-facts-and-figures-about-americas-wealthiest/

Palm Beach Crows About its Rich Residents (Koch Tops) With a net worth of $42.9 billion, energy magnate David Koch remains the richest Palm Beacher on the latest Forbes 400 list of the nation’s wealthiest residents.His No. 4 rank is unchanged from last year.But plenty of other islanders saw their rankings shift — often for the better — on the annual list, which is based on individual net worth as estimated by Forbes researchers. An improving economy and a bullish stock market have been a boon for those whose wealth revolves largely on growth industries and investments.

Koch is the only one of 28 islanders who earned a spot in the Top 30 on the list, which was released Monday. His net worth, which rose from $36 billion last year, is tied with that of his brother, Charles, who doesn’t own property here. Leading the list — for the 21st time — is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose $81.2-billion net worth is nearly double that of each Koch brother.David Koch’s twin brother, Palm Beacher William “Bill” Koch, is also on the list, in 178th place. His net worth of $3.2 billion is largely unchanged from last year. As a result, a number of other billionaires elbowed their way past him to higher ranks, dropping him from the No. 122 spot he occupied on the 2013 list. – See more at: www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/news/local/palm-beach-fortunes-soar-amid-forbes-400/nhY56/#sthash.IlwzTtev.dpuf

How the Rich Get Rich by Making people Poorer: Walmart Guts Health benefits for 30,000 Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that starting Jan. 1, it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Wal-Mart’s total part-time workforce, but comes after the company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers who were eligible for health insurance coverage since 2011.

The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees. It also comes a day after Wal-Mart said it is teaming up with an online health insurance agency called DirectHealth.com to help customers shop for health insurance plans.

“We had to make some tough decisions,” Sally Welborn, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.  http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/wal-mart-cuts-health-benefits-part-timers-26015112

The Dow Is Now In The Red For 2014  Friday’s 115-point sell-off in the Dow Jones Industrial Average sent the 30-stock index into the red for the year.

Closing at 16,544, the Dow is now below its Dec. 31, 2013 close of 16,576.

Some market-watchers think this is just a brief blip in the 5-year old bull market. Others warn this could be the beginning of something much scarier.

One thing’s for sure: volatility is back in the markets.  Read more: www.businessinsider.com/dow-average-negative-for-2014-2014-10#ixzz3FsV94u8O

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Not Forgotten. Michael Brown’s Murder was two months ago. 

Cops and Military Planned to smash rebellions for a century and now they ready for Michael Brown Verdict 

Missouri authorities are drawing up contingency plans and seeking intelligence from U.S. police departments on out-of-state agitators, fearing that fresh riots could erupt if a grand jury does not indict a white officer for killing a black teen.

The plans are being thrashed out in meetings being held two to three times a week, according to people who have attended them. The FBI said it was also involved in the discussions.

Details of the meetings and intelligence sharing by Missouri police agencies and their counterparts around the country have not been reported before.

The grand jury is expected to decide next month whether to bring criminal charges against police officer Darren Wilson, who shot dead Michael Brown, 18, on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/us-usa-missouri-shooting-plans-idUSKCN0HW1TF20141007

Martin Heidigger–still a Nazi Asshole (throw in his CIA asset paramour, Hannah) Heidegger was one of the most influential thinkers of the modern era. He was also a convinced Nazi. During his brief term as rector at the University of Freiburg (1933–1934) he worked to advance the process of Gleichschaltung, or coordination, that brought the university into alignment with the official policies of the Third Reich. Apologists for Heidegger have occasionally sought to underplay the gravity of this political record. They note that he stepped down from his post after less than a year, and they add that many of his academic contemporaries, such as Ernst Krieck and Alfred Baeumler, were both more zealous and more effective in their collaboration. The difference, however, is that few today take those other men seriously as scholars. Heidegger, meanwhile, continues to be read, and his permanent place in the pantheon of Continental philosophy seems more or less secure.

How, then, can one study his philosophy without taking some cognizance of his ignominious past? One strategy for resolving the dilemma has been to insist on a neat distinction: Heidegger was good at philosophy but bad at politics. An elegant defense along these lines was developed by Hannah Arendt, his erstwhile student, whose essay “Martin Heidegger at Eighty” (published in these pages in 1971) compared Heidegger to Thales, the ancient philosopher who grew so absorbed in contemplating the heavens that he stumbled into the well at his feet.1

For those who value Heidegger’s philosophy, this interpretation holds an obvious appeal, since it casts the whole business of Heidegger and Nazism in the ennobling light of tragic error. Some called Arendt an apologist, though her criticism reached well beyond Heidegger and faulted the whole of the philosophical profession for its unworldliness.2 Nor should we forget that German academics in more practical fields (medicine, physics, and engineering, to take only three examples) debased their disciplines with far more lethal effects.

For Heidegger the “inner truth and greatness” of the Nazi movement lay in “the encounter between global technology and modern humanity” (a specification he secretly added to a 1935 lecture when it was published in 1953). These are not the words of a brutal realist; they belong to a philosopher whose “private National Socialism” proved ill-suited to the needs of the regime. But what is most disturbing in Heidegger’s case is not primarily what he did; it is what he thought about what he did. Hence the challenge of the black notebooks: even after the “error” of the rectorship it turns out that Heidegger did not awaken from his philosophical-political fantasies. They only grew more extreme.  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/09/heidegger-in-black/?insrc=whc

Solidarity for Never

 NEA Boss Eskelson hugs California School Boss Torlakson 

That shrinking NEA     NEA Membership Numbers Accelerate Downward. Officers of the National Education Association expressed some optimism last July that the union’s falling membership numbers were finally reaching their nadir. Active membership losses totaling more than 9 percent since 2008-09 had slowed to a drop of about 17,000 by the end of the 2013-14 school year. While still a significant loss, surely the end of the lean years was in sight.

That is, until the first figures for the 2014-15 school year came in. NEA is down 37,000 active members from this time a year ago.

Total membership did not fall quite as badly, but the demographic trend cannot be comforting to the union. Student membership fell by 4,700, but was more than offset by an increase of 6,600 retired members. Of course, the idea is that student members are likely to become active members when they are hired to work in public schools. Retired members remain retired members, paying only $30 per year.

NEA’s total membership now stands at approximately 2,960,000 members – its lowest level since the merger of NEA New York with New York State United Teachers in 2006.  http://www.eiaonline.com/2014/10/06/nea-membership-numbers-accelerate-downward/

 Spy versus Spy

Bought Journalism: How Politicians, Intelligence and High Finance Control Mass Media (Video)  http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/10/06/bought-journalism-how-politicians-intelligence-and-high-finance-control-mass-media.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm4OUcfiM-8

James Bamford, Whistleblower–the NSA Crimes and Me More than three decades later, the NSA, like a mom-and-pop operation that has exploded into a global industry, now employs sweeping powers of surveillance that Frank Church could scarcely have imagined in the days of wired phones and clunky typewriters. At the same time, the Senate intelligence committee he once chaired has done an about face, protecting the agencies from the public rather than the public from the agencies.

It is a dangerous combination – one the Church Committee warned of long ago. “The potential for abuse is awesome,” the committee observed, especially when “checks and balances designed … to assure accountability have not been applied.” As the committee presciently noted in its report, “Intelligence collection programs naturally generate ever-increasing demands for new data.”

For proof, one need only look at the NSA’s ever-expanding array of surveillance techniques. The agency’s metadata collection program now targets everyone in the country old enough to hold a phone. The gargantuan data storage facility it has built in Utah may eventually hold zettabytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information. And the massive supercomputer that the NSA is secretly building in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will search through it all at exaflop (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second) speeds.

Without adequate oversight, or penalties for abuse, the only protection that citizens have comes not from Congress or the courts, but from whistleblowers (clickable declassified criminal investigation of NSA at end)  https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/

Englehardt: Failures of the Shadow Government Think about it, and think hard. Since 9/11 (which might be considered the intelligence equivalent of original sin when it comes to missing the mark), what exactly are the triumphs of a system the likes of which the world has never seen before? One and only one event is sure to come immediately to mind: the tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden. (Hey, Hollywood promptly made a movie out of it!) Though he was by then essentially a toothless figurehead, an icon of jihadism and little else, the raid that killed him is the single obvious triumph of these years.

Otherwise, globally from the Egyptian spring and the Syrian disaster to the crisis in Ukraine, American intelligence has, as far as we can tell, regularly been one step late and one assessment short, when not simply blindsided by events. As a result, the Obama administration often seems in a state of eternal surprise at developments across the globe. Leaving aside the issue of intelligence failures in the death of an American ambassador in Benghazi, for instance, is there any indication that the IC offered President Obama a warning on Libya before he decided to intervene and topple that country’s autocrat, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011? What we know is that he was told, incorrectly it seems, that there would be a “bloodbath,” possibly amounting to a genocidal act, if Gaddafi’s troops reached the city of Benghazi.

Might an agency briefer have suggested what any reading of the results of America’s twenty-first century military actions across the Greater Middle East would have taught an observant analyst with no access to inside information: that the fragmentation of Libyan society, the growth of Islamic militancy (as elsewhere in the region), and chaos would likely follow? We have to assume not, though today the catastrophe of Libya and the destabilization of a far wider region of Africa is obvious.

Let’s focus for a moment, however, on a case where more is known. I’m thinking of the development that only recently riveted the Obama administration and sent it tumbling into America’s third Iraq war, causing literal hysteria in Washington. Since June, the most successful terror group in history has emerged full blown in Syria and Iraq, amid a surge in jihadi recruitment across the Greater Middle East and Africa. The Islamic State (IS), an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which sprang to life during the U.S. occupation of that country, has set up a mini-state, a “caliphate,” in the heart of the Middle East. Part of the territory it captured was, of course, in the very country the U.S. garrisoned and occupied for eight years, in which it had assumedly developed countless sources of information and recruited agents of all sorts. And yet, by all accounts, when IS’s militants suddenly swept across northern Iraq, the CIA in particular found itself high and dry.     http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175901/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_entering_the_intelligence_labyrinth

The Magical Mystery Tour

www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/09/pope_rage_on_th.php

Al Jazeera America Presents: “Holy Money”  he Pope is not only the shepherd of a billion faithful. He is also the head of a business empire of global dimensions that employs millions of people. The Holy Roman Church owns hospitals and universities, gold stocks and works of art of inestimable value. It attracts donations from all over the world, owns huge swathes of very expensive real estate both in the USA, in Italy and in some very surprising places. Today, the Catholic Church is the richest religious institution in the world but it also has an extremely high rate of financial crimes. The “affairs” have shaken the confidence of Catholics around the world, and have involved the highest levels of the Vatican as well as small local parishes.  http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/al-jazeera-america-presents/multimedia/2014/3/al-jazeera-americapresentsholymoney.html

Priest Timothy Kane, 58, is accused of stealing from the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Angel Fund to get money for a prison inmate he was having a sexual relation with.  The continuation of the embezzlement trial of a Detroit priest who admitted having a sexual relationship with a Michigan prison inmate imprisoned for manslaughter has been rescheduled for Tuesday.

Timothy Kane, 58, is accused of stealing from the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Angel Fund to get money for the inmate and his family, according to previous Free Press reports. Kane faces embezzlement of less than $20,00 and other charges and his jury trial was expected to resume today in Wayne County Circuit Court.

Kane was arrested at the St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church rectory in northwest Detroit on Feb. 6, the Free Press has reported.

An anonymous donor gave $17 million to the Angel Fund, which is being discontinued, to help urban priests pay for services for the poor, according to the earlier reports.  http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2014/10/06/detroit-priest-trial-rescheduled/16804337/

Priest found guilty in Angel Fund embezzlement  The Rev. Timothy Kane, a Catholic priest who ministered at Detroit parishes and once was a prison chaplain, took the stand Tuesday to deny he stole money from the Angel Fund charity for the poor and testified confusion caused by diabetes made him sign a confession to police after his February arrest.

But after deliberated little more than an hour Tuesday, a jury of eight men and four women found the 58-year-old priest guilty on six counts related to stealing from the Angel Fund.   http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2014/10/07/catholic-priest-denies-theft-inmate-relationship/16865705/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

below, a classic:

Monday, Oct. 6, 2014 | 10:47 p.m.
Powered by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Teachers get trial; bankers get break
While appalled by the nationwide test-cheating scandals, it is impossible not to note that classroom teachers, who rightly feared for their jobs, face 35 years in prison on conspiracy
charges, while grifting bankers who laundered money for terrorists and drug cartels were never criminally charged. Instead, their banks were fined — big wrist slaps — and nobody
went to jail.
Perhaps the greater guilt lies with the likes of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, his boss and others who promulgate the test score fetishes, measuring little more than parental
income and home language, as gatekeepers to employment and promotion for students and teachers alike. If we consider teachers to be little more than bank robo-signers, we see
the issue in the proper perspective. First-graders know what “no fair!” is.
RICH GIBSON, SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

Faith and Noam! Falcone: Faith Agostinone-Wilson has conducted some educational research ….examines school-based implementations, as you mentioned the “neoliberal worldview via correct worker attitude.” This would be for a teacher – I’m assuming a student also – in order to “promote classroom management as a way to build teamwork or steering students towards self-regulation. These efforts worked together to ultimately shape attitudes and dispositions towards a capitalist ethos.” Almost as if the schools are becoming embodiments of modern corporations  http://truth-out.org/news/item/26693-democracy-and-education-in-the-21st-century-and-beyond-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky#14130587702371&action=collapse_widget&id=5065916

So Long

p