Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fightback!

Workers to Face Coast Guard at Longview (1st time since the postal strike the military mobilized to crush a strike) The U.S. Coast Guard will escort the first ship coming to the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview this month, and the Occupy movement and local labor groups say they are planning to greet the vessel with a massive protest. EGT officials say they have not scheduled a date for the ship’s arrival. The freighter is expected to haul thousands of tons of grain to Asia, but opposition groups are already marshaling their forces to support the lengthy protest by union dock workers at the grain terminal. “We just want to swell the population of the city to show there are people behind us,” said Jeff Washburn, president of the Cowlitz Wahkiakum Central Labor Council, which passed a resolution calling for a protest this week.   tdn.com/news/local/protest-planned-for-first-ship-to-dock-at-egt-grain/article_e9b1d6e0-38d7-11e1-aac5-001871e3ce6c.html

Nigeria’s Working Class Threatens to Shut Down Oil after Days of General Strike Nigeria’s main oil union said Thursday that it would shut down oil production on Sunday if the government did not reverse its decision to remove popular fuel subsidies. Nationwide strikes prompted by the decision, which has doubled gas prices, continued Thursday, as tens of thousands of people protested for the fourth straight day. President Goodluck Jonathan met with labor unions on Thursday to try to resolve the dispute. The president of one of the largest unions, Abdulwaheed Omar of Nigeria Labor Congress, called the talks “fruitful” and said they would meet again on Saturday. Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer.    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/africa/nigeria-oil-workers-threaten-to-shut-off-crude-flow-in-protest.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Columbia Conference vs War Crimes and the Fascist NDAA International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law” to be held on January 14, 2012 at 12 pm at Columbia Law School. The event will provide an excellent opportunity for students interested in gaining an understanding the theory and the practical application of international law in the real world. Attorney Roger Wareham: The genesis of the tribunal began during the intervention in Libya. Back in May the December 12th movement always has a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19. This is part an ongoing campaign to re-colonize the African continent. Libya was important to that for a number reasons. Libya has some of the best crude oil in the world that requires the least amount of production in terms of transforming it into gasoline. Col. Gaddafi stood for the proposition that there would be a United States of Africa. Libya had the highest standard of living on the African continent. What we hope to come out of this is fashion a petition to take before the International Criminal Court. The plan is we’ll going to take at least a 400 people strong delegation to the Hague in June to present a petition to the prosecutor, requesting they prosecute the heads of NATO, Britain, Canada, Italy, for war crimes. Saturday January 14, 2012 / Columbia University Law School / 435 West 116th Street / 718-398-1766 / iptribunal2012@gmail.com  

Congratulations on the Pubication of Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers Wild Women of San Francisco Invade and Occupy Bank Confirming the truth of the New York banner proclaiming, “The Zuccotti virus has spread,” a gleeful group of older women in San Francisco managed to close down a Bank of America when they stormed it with their walkers and wheelchairs for a well-deserved “run on the bank.” The women, aged 69 to 82, were protesting the bank’s fees, foreclosures and other untold unconscionable practices.   www.commondreams.org/further/2012/01/06-2

Bucks County PA Goes on Strike About 600 teachers at a large suburban Philadelphia school district went on strike Monday after working for three years without a contract. The teachers in the Neshaminy School District in Bucks County haven’t received any pay increases since the last contract expired in 2008, but they pay nothing toward their health insurance premiums. “We’d like to be in the classrooms teaching,” said Charlene Dixon, a fifth-grade teacher who’s going on strike for the first strike time in her 28 years teaching. “We are ready and willing to negotiate. … We want a fair contract.”    http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/2012/01/teachers-philly-area-district-plan-walkout/2075931?utm_source=feedburner+dcexaminer%2Fbreaking&utm_medium=feed+Breaking+News&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dcexaminer%2Fbreaking+%28Breaking+News%29feed&utm_content=feed&utm_term=feed

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Ohanian–Great Writing vs the Common Core Dullards: Skeptics who might doubt that replacing Brown Bear, Brown Bear with a Wikipedia entry on Ursus arctos will stave off our nation’s economic woes might wonder: Why, if fiction is no more vital than leftover turnips, is there a Nobel Prize in Literature and not in lawyers’ briefs or material from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Web site (listed as a Common Core exemplary text). For more on the prescribed informational text, the reader is advised to do what not more than fourscore in the country have done: Read Appendixes A and B of the Common Core State Curriculum Standards. Surely Appendix A will frost your toes (www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_A.pdf) and then Appendix B will freeze your heart. David Coleman and his Common Core Standards cohorts decree that once teens get through Ovid’s Metamorphoses, they can move on to an article from Scientific American about the Higgs boson. (English/Language Arts Literacy Examples ELA-1 and ELA–2: Focused Literacy, Extended Constructed Response Type, p. 684 (www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf)     www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2716#comments

So Long Community Colleges of California (make room for the UC and CSU Pushouts) The thrust of the reforms represents a seismic shift in community colleges’ traditional role as open to all comers. They would move to ration access to classes and would push students to meet their academic goals through incentives. Among the 22 recommendations are proposals requiring all colleges to use a single assessment for English and math skills and prioritizing registration and fee waivers for students who have concrete goals, such as a degree, certificate or transfer to a four-year college.   www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-community-colleges-20120110,0,5859282.story

NEA Bosses Want to Start Their Merger Scam Again. Here is what Happened the last Time: “NEA AFT AFL CIO? HELL NO! This essay assails one of the liberals’ favorite projects in the 1990’s, the manufacture of a merger between the largest union in the United States, the independent National Education Association, and the AFT-AFL-CIO. It focuses on the particulars of the merger, often using the voices of proponents and opposition forces, in part because the roots of change are within the material details, and their interpretations, of history. Because there are few radicals or revolutionaries operating openly within the NEA, the critique goes mainly to the liberal drive to unite the unions from the top. Even so, the absence of radicals and revolutionaries in either union is a telling point about the state of U.S. radicalism at the turn of the century.   clogic.eserver.org/2-1/gibson.html

The Merger Statement from NEA Boss John Wilson 5. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers will begin merger talks as they realize it is in the best interest of sustainability and power as well as an efficient use of members’ dues dollars.   blogs.edweek.org/edweek/john_wilson_unleashed/2012/01/my_predictions_for_2012.html

Corruption Plays a Big Role in Capitalist Schools Southwestern College has suspended $5.8 million in contracts with two firms that are players in the District Attorney’s criminal probe into South County construction contracts. The governing board voted in closed session Wednesday to suspend the contracts of Seville Construction Services and BCA Architects. Court documents from the DA’s probe of contracting practices at Southwestern and Sweetwater schools raise questions about how the firm’s bids were awarded. “Obviously with the DA findings and the continuing internal investigation that we’re conducting, we feel that this is the most appropriate step for us to take at this time,” said board President Norma Hernandez. The move means that all work has halted on the “Corner Lot,” a 9-acre gravel field near the intersection of East H Street and Otay Lakes Road in Chula Vista that the community college has been trying to develop as a gateway to the campus. The project is funded by Proposition R, a $389 million bond measure approved by voters in 2008.        http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/12/southwestern-suspends-contracts-two-more-firms/

Small Time Corruption too! Eight cafeteria workers are under investigation in the Sweetwater Union High School District as officials examine allegations of widespread theft and nepotism, citing at least $500,000 in losses. The district put six employees on unpaid leave — two supervisors, two cafeteria managers, a secretary and a food storage warehouse worker. At least two of them, the supervisors, have since resigned. The district has hired private investigator Bob Price, president of San Diego-based ESI International, to examine the food-service department, at a cost of $64,000.    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/11/sweetwater-says-workers-looted-cafeterias/

Tucson Smashes Mexican American Studies USD’s Governing Board eliminated its ethnic studies program Tuesday night in a 4 -1 vote following impassioned pleas from program supporters. Board member Adelita Grijalva was the dissenting vote. Courses in the Mexican American Studies program were suspended immediately. With the district facing the loss of 10 percent of it state funding, members were “backed into a corner” by the state Legislature, Board President Mark Stegeman said.    http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/011012_tusd_ethnic_studies/tusd-axes-ethnic-studies/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIHKP3EX2zw

Above, in war, each side influences the other. But who was the Invader?

Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran? (if US troops are in Isreal, 9000 and more, and Isreal bombs Iran, and Iran responds, what does that mean?) Washington has deployed 9,000 US troops to Israel to participate in “war games” designed to test the US/Israeli air defense system. As Iran represents no threat unless attacked, Washington’s war preparations signal Washington’s intention to attack Iran.   www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article32601.html

US Threatens War if anyone Touches its Straits—of Hormuz The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.   www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/middleeast/us-warns-top-iran-leader-not-to-shut-strait-of-hormuz.html?ref=global-home

Hey US! Remember that Afghan War? You Lost! Reporting from Washington— The U.S. intelligence community says in a secret new assessment that the war in Afghanistan is mired in stalemate, and warns that security gains from an increase in American troops have been undercut by pervasive corruption, incompetent governance and Taliban fighters operating from neighboring Pakistan, according to U.S. officials. The sobering judgments, laid out in a classified National Intelligence Estimate completed last month and delivered to the White House, appeared at odds with recent optimistic statements by Pentagon officials and have deepened divisions between U.S. intelligence agencies and American military commanders about progress in the decade-old war.    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-intel-afghan-20120112,0,3639052.story

Three US Aircraft Carriers Head toward Iran How’s this for timing: by accident of Navy schedules, the U.S. military now has two aircraft carrier battle groups near Iran’s shores, with a third on her way, right as a bomb killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and Iran threatens to close off a key waterway. But while there was just one carrier in the region for weeks, the Pentagon insists that its ship movements aren’t a response to Tehran’s recent bellicosity. The U.S.S. Carl Vinson has linked up with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and is somewhere in the northern Arabian Sea. It’ll replace the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, which recently sailed out of the Strait of Hormuz, the water lane through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes — and which Iran is rattling its saber about closing to protest new sanctions. That means that during this latest period of tension with Iran, the U.S. military has two aircraft carrier battle groups in the region, the Vinson and the Stennis, neither of which is actually in the Arabian Gulf at this point. And on her way is the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the Navy confirms, which is sailing from the Pacific to join with the Stennis. But it’s unclear how soon the Stennis will depart the region, as it’s scheduled to do — meaning there could, however briefly, be three carrier groups near Iran.   www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/iran-aircraft-carriers/

It it CIA, Mossad, or the Brits who are Making Covert War on Iran? Who are the Terrorists? As arguments flare in Israel and the United States about a possible military strike to set back Iran’s nuclear program, an accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyberattacks and defections appears intended to make that debate irrelevant, according to current and former American officials and specialists on Iran.   …The Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, writing on Facebook about the attack, said, “I don’t know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear,” Israeli news media reported. Like the drone strikes that the Obama administration has embraced as a core tactic against Al Qaeda, the multifaceted covert campaign against Iran has appeared to offer an alternative to war. But at most it has slowed, not halted, Iran’s enrichment of uranium, a potential fuel for a nuclear weapon. And some skeptics believe that it may harden Iran’s resolve or set a dangerous precedent for a strategy that could be used against the United States and its allies.   www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-adversaries-said-to-step-up-covert-actions.html?ref=global-home

Back to those Not so Surgical Strikes of the Hellbound Drones The United States on Tuesday carried out its first drone strike in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas in nearly two months, ending a pause that was intended to avoid worsening relations between the countries after an American airstrike in November killed two dozen Pakistani troops. Missiles fired from a remotely piloted aircraft struck a house outside of Miram Shah in the North Waziristan tribal area, killing at least three militants, Reuters reported, citing a local intelligence official. Officials in Washington confirmed the strike but, as is customary with missile attacks from drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, they would not provide any details. The C.I.A. last conducted a drone strike in Pakistan on Nov. 16, 10 days before the attack that killed the Pakistani troops in two remote outposts along the border with Afghanistan. American officials decided after the cross-border episode to suspend the strikes pending a wide-ranging Pakistani review of its security relationship with the United States. American officials said over the weekend that any lull in drone strikes did not signal a weakening of the country’s counterterrorism efforts, and suggested that strikes could resume soon.    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/world/asia/cia-drone-strikes-resume-in-pakistan.html?_r=3&tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The Financial Times says “Capitalism” and openly worries about Revolution while the Fake Education “Left” Cannot. Why? Opportunism. Racism, Cowardice. Sheer Ignorance. If the campaign rhetoric is any guide, the US is in the throes of a Marxist change in consciousness. In spite of belonging to a party that draws much of its cash from Wall Street, rival Republican contenders for the presidential nomination have ripped into Mitt Romney’s past as a private equity executive. Without any help from the left, the former chief executive of Bain Capital stands accused of being “a vulture”, “looting”, “greed” and “profiting from other people’s misery”. If it carries on like this, the Democrats will have nothing left to say when it comes to the general election.  Is the US seeing a backlash against capitalism?

There is nothing, however, in the atomised discomfort of middle-class America that would suggest a revolution in the making. People do talk about a new age of populism. Perhaps “age of transition” would be more accurate – although to what is not yet clear. Earlier periods of economic turmoil, most notably during the robber baron decades of the late-19th and early-20th century, did turn populist. Then, like now, both parties tended to go to the same sources for money. In Mark Twain’s novel The Gilded Age, the deepest well of election finance was the railroad capitalists. Today it is Wall Street.   …

.Mark Hanna, the late-19th century electoral manager, famously said: “The three most important things in American politics are money, money and I forget what the other one is.” Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former White House chief of staff, said much the same thing in 2006 when he helped engineer the Democratic party’s handsomely bankrolled midterm congressional victory. So much for the parallels. The differences between now and then are also instructive. Unlike the “progressive era”, today’s America is shaped as much by apathy as it is by anger. The early 1900s were characterised by the “prairie populism” of the small farmer and the rise of an organised working class. They tended to meet around the small town “cracker barrel” and in the industrial workplace. Today’s squeezed middle classes share no obvious gathering place. They are economically diffuse and geographically scattered.

“The largest squeezed group today are people with high-school diplomas working in the service sector,” says Michael Lind, author of a forthcoming economic history of America. “Most of them are living in the suburbs and watching TV.” When the politicians appear, they tend to switch channel…. Mr Obama is supported by large majorities of America’s black people, Hispanics and Asians. Fewer than 40 per cent of blue-collar whites now approve of him. That divide has grown stronger since 2008, even while voter “intensity”, or depth of support, has shifted back to working-class white people. This year, Mr Obama will hold his nominating convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, and home of a young and educated multi-ethnic population. The Republicans, meanwhile, have settled on the white retirement zone of Tampa, Florida.

If there is a political war brewing, it will be between generations and ethnic groups rather than between classes.  …Yet America’s mood remains far too mercurial for clear-cut predictions. When an electorate conveys this degree of disaffection, it is prone to unexpected swings. “We seem to be living in an age of disenchantment with democracy,” says Mr Jacobs. “Trust in the system has almost entirely vanished.”http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6aacc21c-3de4-11e1-91ba-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1jNGldgXy

OOps, OOps, and OOps a lot! Who Lost Europe? Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of France, Italy and seven other European countries on Friday, a move that may have more symbolic than fundamental financial impact but served as a reminder that Europe’s economic woes were far from over.     Another memory jog came Friday from Greece, the original source of Europe’s debt troubles. Talks hit a snag between the new Greek government and the banks and other private investors that Athens hopes will agree to take losses on their debt so that Greece can avoid a default. Together, those developments underscore that even as Europe’s debt turmoil enters its third year, no clear solutions are yet in sight — despite recent signs that a new lending program by the European Central Bank might be easing financial market pressures.

Chavez: We Will Pay Exxon thieves Nothing Exxon took Venezuela to the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, seeking as much as $12 billion in compensation after Mr. Chávez ordered the nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project in 2007.    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/business/global/euro-zone-downgrades-expected.html?_r=2&ref=global-home “I tell you now, we will not recognize any decision” by the center, Mr. Chávez said during a televised speech. He has repeatedly accused the United States oil major of using unfair deals in the past to “rob” Venezuela, an OPEC member, of its resources. “They are trying the impossible: to get us to pay them,” he said. “We are not going to pay them anything.”    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/business/venezuela-will-not-recognize-world-bank-ruling-in-exxon-case.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

US and Western Oil Firms Remain In Iraq (and so do troops plus mercs) While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain. On November 27, 38 months after Royal Dutch Shell announced its pursuit of a massive gas deal in southern Iraq, the oil giant had its contract signed for a $17bn flared gas deal. Three days later, the US-based energy firm Emerson submitted a bid for a contract to operate at Iraq’s giant Zubair oil field, which reportedly holds some eight million barrels of oil. Earlier this year, Emerson was awarded a contract to provide crude oil metering systems and other technology for a new oil terminal in Basra, currently under construction in the Persian Gulf, and the company is installing control systems in the power stations in Hilla and Kerbala. Iraq’s supergiant Rumaila oil field is already being developed by BP, and the other supergiant reserve, Majnoon oil field, is being developed by Royal Dutch Shell. Both fields are in southern Iraq. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq’s oil reserves of 112 billion barrels ranks second in the world, only behind Saudi Arabia. The EIA also estimates that up to 90 per cent of the country remains unexplored, due to decades of US-led wars and economic sanctions. “Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market,” oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera. “But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time since being forced out of the country in 1973.”

Henwood on Massive Constant Unemployment Employers added 200,000 jobs in December. Over a fifth of that gain, 42,000, came from couriers and messengers—meaning all those FedEx and UPS folks delivering holiday packages ordered from the likes of Amazon. Online retailers had a great December. Not so much for brick and mortar retailers, who’d apparently expected otherwise and hired ambitiously, adding another 28,000 to the headline figure. Given the ultimate disappointment of the holiday season, retail-store-wise, and the explicitly temporary nature of the courier jobs, these gains—which together accounted for over a third of the total—are likely to be reversed in January. What I’ve been calling the eat, drink, and get sick sector returned to its previous strength after slipping in November, as bars and restaurants and health care together added almost 50,000, a quarter of the total.   lbo-news.com/2012/01/06/that-jobs-report/

Foreclosures and the Surge Ahead California and other states are likely to see an enormous wave of long-delayed foreclosure action in the coming year as banks deal more aggressively with 3.5 million seriously delinquent mortgages.
And experts said that dealing with the foreclosure process, from issuing notices of default to selling repossessed homes, is likely to push housing prices lower this year before the real estate market has a chance to recover.
A report from RealtyTrac, an Irvine data firm, said about 1.9 million U.S. homes were hit with default notices, foreclosures and other actions last year. That is down from 2.9 million in 2010. Seriously delinquent loans are defined as being four months in arrears.
“There were strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets,” said Brandon Moore, chief executive of RealtyTrac. “We expect that trend to continue this year.”
The real estate market was in “full delay mode” last year on foreclosures as banks worked to correct legal problems with procedures in many states, Moore said.   www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-foreclosures-20120112,0,7066381.story

Geithner: “Greenspan is a Friggin Genius!” (they may be dumb but they are also powerful thieves) The leaders of the Federal Reserve went around the room saluting Alan Greenspan during his last day as chairman of the central bank. Then Timothy F. Geithner, the future Treasury secretary, made a prediction. “I’d like the record to show that I think you’re pretty terrific, too,” Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, told Greenspan amid laughter on Jan. 31, 2006. “And thinking in terms of probabilities, I think the risk that we decide in the future that you’re even better than we think is higher than the alternative.”    http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/greenspan-image-tarnished-by-newly-released-documents/2012/01/12/gIQAvh0mtP_story.html

Underwater on His Detroit Condo, City Council President Defaults. Shouldn’t DPS and the City Follow Suit? City Council President Charles Pugh is facing foreclosure on his mortgage and says he likely will abandon his $385,000 Brush Park condominium. His personal financial struggles come as he and his council colleagues fight to bail Detroit out of its own fiscal crisis. On Friday, Pugh said he can’t afford to pay the mortgage …Pugh paid $385,000 for the three-story, two-bedroom townhouse east of Woodward in 2005. But following a prolonged decline in housing values, a condo next door recently sold for $80,000, Ussery said.   www.detroitnews.com/article/20120113/METRO/201130421/-Tough-choices-Pugh-facing-foreclosure-Brush-Park-condo?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

In the San Diego Police State, Cops Charge Free Speech as Felonies: San Diego police arrested four Occupy protesters on felony charges after they interrupted Mayor Jerry Sanders’ final State of the City address Wednesday night.  Disturbing a public assembly — such as a City Council meeting or Sanders’ annual speech — normally spurs only a misdemeanor (Our editor and CEO were sitting directly behind the protesters, however, and said they never heard police tell the protesters to stop. Police simply moved into arrest the protesters, they said. Some protesters did stop chanting once police moved in the group’s direction and those who did weren’t arrested.)charge. But in this case, police added a felony charge of conspiracy to commit a crime for each person.        …www.voiceofsandiego.org/data-drive/article_616279a8-3d86-11e1-b221-0019bb2963f4.html

Solidarity ForNever

The Betrayal of the African National Congress, long a Trojan Horse for Capitalism after winning South Africa’s first multiracial democratic elections in 1994, the African National Congress faced impossibly high expectations. People long denied access to jobs, education, political power and dignity hoped to reap the rewards of self-rule quickly, and the party has struggled to deliver on its lofty promises. Today, more than a third of South Africans are unemployed, and the jobless rate for youths is nearly 70 percent. The education system is in crisis. Land and natural resources remain concentrated in the hands of wealthy whites. While a handful of black entrepreneurs have enjoyed great economic success, the growing wealth of people associated with the party has led to accusations of corruption, tarnishing its moral standing.   www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/africa/the-african-national-congress-turns-100.html?_r=3

Spy Versus Spy

The Mossad/CIA’s Dangerous False Flag Operation vs Iran A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag

DEA Ran Drugs and Guns For Mexican Cartels U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents laundered millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday. With the help of Mexican federal police officers, the DEA agents and their Colombian informant conducted at least 15 wire transfers to banks in the United States, Canada and China and smuggled about $2.5 million in the United States. The efforts aimed to infiltrate the Mexican Beltran Leyva drug cartel and a cell of money launderers for Colombia’s Valle del Norte cartel in Mexico and included flying at least one shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Madrid through a Dallas airport on behalf of the cartels. Money laundering is a favored tactic of the DEA. The illicit activity – specifically sanctioned as Attorney General Exempt Operations – often violates Mexican sovereignty, facilitates additional criminal activity on the part of the drug cartels, and may be counterproductive, especially in the shadow of the failed gun-running operation Fast and Furious.   news.antiwar.com/2012/01/09/us-agents-laundered-money-shipped-drugs-for-cartels/

Magical Mystery Tour

Religious Fanatics on Sup Court Unleash the Whirlwind: Inside a Religion, anything goes The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday for the first time in an important church-state separation issue that ministers cannot sue their churches claiming they had been fired in violation of employment discrimination laws.    The justices unanimously overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that the job of a former teacher and minister at a church school was secular rather than religious and she could pursue her claim that she was improperly fired in violation of federal law. The case pitted the competing interests of the government enforcing laws such as those prohibiting discrimination and retaliation and of the constitutional protections of religious freedom.   www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44789939/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/high-court-ministers-cant-sue-churches-bias/

First Trial for Philly Rapist Priests and the Coverup Moves on Heinous as the accusations are, the most shocking – and significant – are those against the fifth defendant, Monsignor William Lynn. At 60, Lynn is portly and dignified, his thin lips pressed together and his double chin held high. In a dramatic fashion statement, he alone has chosen to wear his black clerical garb today, a startling reminder that this is a priest on trial, a revered representative of the Catholic Church, not to mention a high-ranking official in Philadelphia’s archdiocese. Lynn, who reported directly to the cardinal, was the trusted custodian of a trove of documents known in the church as the “Secret Archives files.” The files prove what many have long suspected: that officials in the upper echelons of the church not only tolerated the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests but conspired to hide the crimes and silence the victims. Lynn is accused of having been the archdiocese’s sex-abuse fixer, the man who covered up for its priests. Incredibly, after a scandal that has rocked the church for a generation, he is the first Catholic official ever criminally charged for the cover-up.

Battered by civil suits and bad press, the church has responded with a head-spinning mix of contrition and deflection, blaming anti-Catholic bias and the church’s enemies for paying undue attention to the crisis. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops helped fund a $1.8 million study of sex-abuse cases against priests, but the results read like a mirthless joke: To lower the number of clergy classified as “pedophiles,” the report redefines “puberty” as beginning at age 10 – and then partially blames the rise in child molesting on the counterculture of the 1960s. The church also insists that any sex crimes by priests are a thing of the past. “The abuse crisis,” the study’s lead author concluded, “is over.” That echoed statements by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who went on 60 Minutes declaring the scandal “nothing less than hideous” and then, with a sweep of his hand, announced, “That’s over with!” Dolan, in turn, sounded a lot like Bishop Wilton Gregory, the former president of the USCCB, who framed the lie more eloquently:

“The terrible history recorded here is history.” That was in 2004, seven years ago. Given how the innermost workings of Catholic culture have long been cloaked in secrecy, the case in Philadelphia offers a rare opportunity to understand why the cover-up of sexual abuse has continued for so long, despite the church’s repeated promises of reform. The answer, in large part, lies in the mindset of the church’s rigid hierarchy, which promotes officials who are willing to do virtually anything they’re told, so long as it’s in God’s name. “It’s almost like the type of stuff you see in cult behavior,” says a former Philadelphia priest who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “Someone on the outside would say, ‘That’s crazy.’ But when you’re on the inside, you say, ‘It’s perfectly right, because everything is divinely inspired.’ If you have a monopoly on God, you can get away with anything.”     www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-catholic-churchs-secret-sex-crime-files-20110906

Chicago Cardinal Says, “Sorry bout that” for Homophobic comment re Gays and the Klan Cardinal Francis George is sorry for comparing gay activists to the Ku Klux Klan in an interview on Christmas Day. “I am truly sorry for the hurt my remarks have caused,” George said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune published Friday. “When I was talking, I was speaking out of fear that I have for the church’s liberty and I was reaching for an analogy which was very inappropriate, for which I’m sorry.” The controversy erupted back in October when George objected to next summer’s Gay Pride Parade passing by his Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on a Sunday during mass. Organizers agreed to push the start time of the parade to noon to avoid bothering morning worshippers, according to the Chicago Tribune.    http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-01-07/news/30599793_1_gay-pride-parade-gay-rights-catholic-group

The Worst Thing in the History of the World. Obamagogue Sells King, a rebel, as a Nationalist  (maybe, like Stalin on Lenin, Obamagogue Will have King Stuffed)

The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release January 13, 2012

Presidential Proclamation — Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday, 2012 MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., FEDERAL HOLIDAY, 2012 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION

On a hot summer day nearly half a century ago, an African American preacher with no official title or rank gave voice to our Nation’s deepest aspirations, sharing his dream of an America that ensured the true equality of all our people. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired a movement that would push our country toward a more perfect Union.

At a time when our Nation was sharply divided, Dr. King called on a generation of Americans to be “voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion.” His example stirred men and women of all backgrounds to become foot soldiers for justice, and his leadership gave them the courage to refuse the limitations of the day and fight for the prospect of tomorrow. Because these individuals showed the resilience to stand firm in the face of the fiercest resistance, we are the benefactors of an extraordinary legacy of progress. Today, Dr. King is memorialized on the National Mall where he once spoke, a symbol of how far our Nation has come and a testament to the quiet heroes whose names may never appear in history books, but whose selflessness brought about change few thought possible.

Dr. King’s memorial reminds us that while the work of realizing his remarkable dream is unending, with persistence, progress is within our reach. On the Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday, we celebrate the man who fought for the America he knew was possible. Dr. King’s faith in a God who loves all His children and a Nation grounded in the promise of equality would not let him rest until victory was won. As we work to meet the challenges of our time from fixing our schools so every child gets a world class education to ensuring all Americans have access to strong and secure economic opportunity let us draw strength from

Dr. King’s stirring affirmation that “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” In his memory, let us continue climbing toward that Promised Land, one more fair and more just for all people. NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 16, 2012, as the Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service projects in honor of Dr. King, and to visit www.MLKDay.gov<www.mlkday.gov/&gt; to find Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service projects across our country.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth. BARACK OBAMA

The Best Thing in the History of the World

The Great Escape! Real!!!

by the measures of ingenuity, courage and persistence, the tunnels built almost 70 years ago in sandy scrubland near the small town of Zagan, 130 miles southeast of Berlin in what was then Hitler’s Germany and is today western Poland, were a legendary feat of engineering, although on a miniature scale.

Chronicled by the 1963 movie “The Great Escape,” the tunnel building is one of World War II’s great stories. In the decades since, the legend of the allied fliers’ mass breakout on the night of March 24, 1944, together with the ingenious planning and the Nazi retribution that followed — 73 of the 76 escapers recaptured, and 50 of them summarily executed on Hitler’s orders — has, in a way, eclipsed reality.    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/europe/at-great-escape-site-tunnel-is-excavated-by-modern-engineers.html