Rouge Forum Update: All Out October 7th! Nationwide School Strike! Plus More!
Growing from the March 4th Actions, the M4 Committees have called for a nationwide school strike on October 7th, to be followed by state conferences on October 23 and 24. Shut them down and open Freedom Schools where educators, parents, students, and community people can gain and test knowledge in a reasonably free atmosphere, seeking to learn why things are as they are–and what to do.
The Rouge Forum helped lead March 4th. Join Us!
June 25 and 26, 1876: Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn (McCuster’s Too!)
Chief Gall
Crazy Horse
June 28,1914 – Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the casus belli of World War I.
Little Red Schoolhouse:
Emily Alpert on the End of the Stim: “Millions of stimulus dollars that helped school districts across San Diego County survive this year and patch together their budgets for next year are drying up next summer, leaving districts that relied on the money to pay teachers or other employees fending off deficits as deep as before. It is a new, if predictable, threat. Financial wonks call it “the funding cliff” — and school districts are now headed straight toward it.”
www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/article_8f9817e2-7f37-11df-a709-001cc4c002e0.html
31 States Set Up National Tests: “Two big coalitions of states are competing for federal dollars to create a series of new national academic tests to replace the current patchwork system.In the current system, every state gives a different test to its students. In some states, passing the exam is a graduation requirement. The federal government has said it will award up to two grants of up to $160 million to create a testing system based on the proposed new national academic standards in language arts and mathematics.” Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: www.sfexaminer.com/breaking/31-states-band-together-to-create-new-national-academic-tests-to-replace-patchwork-system-96984834.html#ixzz0rj0jLIsQ
So Long New York State History: “The New York State Board of Regents blamed the elimination of the 5th and 8th grade social studies assessments on budget cuts, inflation, the increased cost of testing vendor contracts, and the need for more test security. But the real reason for the elimination of history in the classroom is the pressure to achieve No Child Left Behind standards and participate in President Obama’s Race to the Bottom.”
www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/new-york-cancels-history_b_622665.html
Teacher Gary Groth on His Year of the RaTT in School: “This year I was told what to teach, when to teach, how to teach, how long to teach, who to teach, who not to teach, and how often to test. My students were assessed with easily more than 120 tests of one shape or another within the first 6 months of the school year. “My ability to make decisions about what is best for my students was taken away by an overzealous attempt to impose ‘consistency’ within my grade group. My school hired an outside consultant who threatened us with our jobs, demanded that everyone comply, and required us to submit data on test results on a weekly basis. If your class didn’t do well, you were certainly going to be in trouble…”
voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/teacher-worst-year-in-the-clas.html#more
Welcome UALE! “The UALE Worker-Writers Group was formed to help schools, trade unions and grass roots organizations connect with contemporary working class writers. By providing a list of authors with their locale and email address, we make it easier for organizations to invite writers to their facility. Writers can provide readings, workshops and classes that help working class men and women develop their writing and storytelling skills.All are invited to submit the names of writers. Be sure to include contact information and location.”
uale.org/contemporary-worker-writers
School Gutting Continues In CA.: “Preliminary proposals for the 2011-12 year include a call to cut the district work force by 10 percent, close small schools, eliminate vice principals, raise class sizes and revert to half-day kindergarten classes. Districts across California have gutted their budgets due to ongoing cuts from the state. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a $2.5 billion reduction in education funding next year.”
www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jun/22/slashed-budget-for-schools-all-but-okd/
We Say Fightback
Uprising in Bangladesh: 700 Factories Struck and Closed: “ About 700 garment factories in Bangladesh were shut Tuesday after days of violent protests by tens of thousands of workers demanding better wages. The manufacturers decided late Monday to close their factories because they had no other way to avoid the anarchy in the major industrial hub outside the capital, according to an official at the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. But the shut doors spurred more violence Tuesday, when workers smashed vehicles and set fire to at least five on a major highway…”We are helpless,” Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, a vice-president of the industry group…” www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hEOvm0kNTZZR7rttjyuv3sQPU54g
China Again–Toyota Struck: “Toyota Motor halted production at a car factory in China on Tuesday for the second time this month after workers at a supplier staged a walkout. It was the latest in a string of strikes that has hit Japanese carmakers just as they look to increase production in China, the world’s biggest auto market.” www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/business/global/23strike.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Perpetual War (botched) Front:
Navy Hushes Poisoning of Personnel at Camp Lejeune: “The U.S. Department of the Navy says that more research is needed to connect ailments suffered by Marines such as Devereaux who served at Camp Lejeune and their families who lived there to decades of water contamination at the 156,000-acre base in eastern North Carolina. Meanwhile, however, the Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly begun awarding benefits to a few Marines who were based at Lejeune.”Right now, I would venture to say that any Camp Lejeune veteran who files a claim now is presumed to have been exposed to the contaminated drinking water,” Brad Flohr, the assistant director for policy, compensation and pension service at the VA, told a meeting of affected Marines and family members in April.” www.stripes.com/news/us/va-quietly-giving-benefits-to-those-exposed-to-lejeune-s-toxic-water-1.107796
War? What War? Look at Sarah’s Implants! No Wait! Mylie’s Exit! Woo Hoo!!
* Earlier this year, Marja was the site of a major offensive against the Taliban. It was initially considered–or cited–as a success for the US forces. Now fighting continues in Marja, and the area has yet to be secured and stabilized.
* Marja was supposed to be followed by a US/NATO assault in Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban–and a city controlled by Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who has been accused of rampant corruption. But earlier this month, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, began to downplay expectations for the coming Kandahar operation. Moreover, US officials keep debating among themselves whether they should try to push out Ahmed Wali Karzai (a.k.a AWK) or work with him. From the outside, the what-to-do-about-AWK tussle looks like a mess
* President Karzai continues to be an unreliable–and erratic–partner. After a rocket attack on the peace jirga, he suggested in a meeting that Americans, not the Taliban, were responsible for the assault. A New York Times article quoted Amrulah Saleh, who resigned as chief of Afghan’s intelligence service after this attack, saying that Karzai “has lost his confidence in the capability of either the [NATO] coalition or his own government to protect this country.” A Western diplomat told the paper, “Karzai told me that he can’t trust the Americans to fix the situation here. He believes they stole his legitimacy during the elections last year”–when Karzai was widely viewed as having engaged in massive fraud.
www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/21/is-bp-oil-spill-helping-obama-on-afghanistan-war/
Hot Competition For Militarizing New Sectors of the Education Industry! “ USC has opened an academic center in San Diego that is offering a military social-work program — the first of its kind in the nation. The USC San Diego Academic Center was launched in the fall in Rancho Bernardo with graduate classes leading to a master’s degree in social work. Although other specialties in the field are available, most of the attention is centered on the unique military social-work program. The concentrated presence of the military in San Diego led the University of Southern California to decide to expand into the county for the first time, said Cindy Monticue of the USC School of Social Work.” www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jun/20/usc-deploys-military-social-work-program/
US Funding Feudalist Afghan Warlords and War Criminals: “American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday…money given to these Afghan warlords often amounts to little more than mafia-style protection payments, with some NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords coming under attack. … American taxpayer money is making its way to the Taliban. Several trucking company supervisors told investigators that they believed the gunmen they hired to escort their convoys bribed the Taliban not to attack.”
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22contractors.html?hp
US Invasion Sparks Drug Unwar: “The last several years of poverty, conflict and widely available opium are taking a toll on the Afghan population, with roughly 800,000 Afghan adults now using opium, heroin and other illicit drugs, a jump from five years ago, according to a study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.”
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22afghan.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp
Free! All You Need to Know About Why Obamagogue’s Wars Will Fail! Street Without Joy, No Charge: www.archive.org/details/streetwithoutjoy031227mbp
Whose Punk Is Who? The Infamous Rolling Stone Story: “After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now-infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn’t send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of “mission failure.” The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president’s ass.” “The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense. In the end, however, McChrystal got almost exactly what he wanted”…””Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing,” McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.”
“I’m not saying go out and kill everybody, sir,” the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.”
www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236?RS_show_page=1
So Long McCuster, You’ve Been Punked: “there is a crucial difference: In Iraq, General Petraeus was called in to reverse a failed strategy put in place by previous commanders. In Afghanistan, General Petraeus was instrumental in developing and executing the strategy in partnership with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who carried it out on the ground. Now General Petraeus will be directly responsible for its success or failure, risking the reputation he built in Iraq.” www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/world/asia/24petraeus.html?hp
Warlord Karzai Backed Warlord McCuster: “Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave a strong endorsement Tuesday to embattled Gen. Stanley McChrystal, describing him as the “best commander” of the war and expressing hope that he keeps his job despite a magazine profile replete with derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and members of the U.S. national strategy team.”http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/ap_afghan_karzai_062110/
Spec Ops Gang Shocked and Appalled: “Indeed, it was the comments attributed to members of McChrystal’s staff that made the biggest impact on the special ops officers. “McChrystal has surrounded himself with a bunch of clowns … who don’t have really a … clue of what their role is and what they’re doing,” said a Special Forces officer with extensive experience in Afghanistan.” www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/tns_reaction_062210/
Solidarity Forever:
Warbucks Weaver Announcing Deal With AFL-CIO and NEA
NEA Bans Delegate for Questioning former NEA President’s 2008 Salary of $686,949: “Since May 19, I have called and emailed the press office of the National Education Association, asking the staff to explain why former NEA president, Reg Weaver, collected a total of $686,949, in his last year as president. That’s about $260,000 more than any NEA president, past or present.”
www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1493§ion=Article
Nearly 2/3 of AFT Members Voting Approve of Holding HS Graduations in Churches:
“Yes 61% (2,210 votes)
No 39% (1,419 votes)
Total Votes: 3,629 www.aft.org/
Rhee: Take the Rotten AFT Contract For DC, Sold By Weingarten, to NYC! The Contract would:
* Base layoffs on “performance, not seniority.”
* Eliminate teachers who collect full-time pay but don’t have a permanent position at a school.
* Fire teachers who are rated “ineffective” and offer bonuses for “our most highly effective teachers.”
www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/13/2010-06-13_dc_schools_boss_offers_fix_for_nyc.html#ixzz0rYgkWkE0
Michelle Rhee Thanks Weingarten for Helping Sell out DC Educators: “We negotiated this agreement with the help of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who used to run New York City’s UFT. At its conclusion we all agreed that the new deal is good for kids and fair to teachers….Use Randi Weingarten. I don’t like to get in the middle of someone else’s negotiation and I know that there is a long and complicated history between Weingarten and Klein. However, based on my experiences negotiating with Weingarten, she is very much able to see the direction the nation is heading in and the fact that unions need to be a part of the solution. Both Klein and Mulgrew should lean on her.” Read more: www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/06/13/2010-06-13_dc_school_chancellor_michelle_rhee_says_new_york_must_learn_from_her_groundbreak.html#ixzz0ruOP9650
Harry Kelber–Labor Talk: “For the past ten months Elizabeth Shuler has been the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer in name only…she has never fulfilled any of the functions (despite a) $238,976 salary (plus) 60% pension….the AFL’s net assets declined from $60 million in 2000 to a negative $2.3 million by 2008.” www.laboreducator.org/ June 25 edition
Shuler Thanks You For Your Dough (no mention of farcical debt–sob, wells up, loves Mom):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8idsxHIPkM
UAW Goons Offer Toyota Workers a New Layer of Bosses: “The problem for the U.A.W. is that the auto industry’s troubles have actually compounded the challenge of organizing workers, labor experts say. The union has little in the way of a sales pitch on wages and benefits now that the Detroit automakers have cut wages and benefits to union members to be more in line with Toyota and the other so-called transplant manufacturers.”
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/business/global/23uaw.html?src=busln&scp=1&sq=uaw%20toyota&st=cse
Emerging Fascism
Sam Smith on Liberals and The Obamagogue: “Leaving aside the distortion of the term progressives – properly applied to those tired of liberals in denial – the claim raises some precise questions that vanden Heuvel never addressed. For example, do her “progressives” support: – The war in Afghanistan? – The continued use of Gitmo and similar facilities? – The continuation of unconstitutional practices in wiretapping? – The harassment of government whistleblowers? – The corporate-driven war against public education? – The bailout of huge banks while foreclosure-threatened homeowners are left to fester? – Increased funding for war on drugs? – Obama’s plans offshore drilling? – His handling of BP crisis? – The support Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestine? – Obama’s plans to undermine the Miranda ruling? – The extension of the Patriot Act? – Obama’s attempt to wrest more budgetary control from Congress? – A commission designed to cut Social Security and Medicare? – Plans to turn public housing over to corporate slumlords?” www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=5951
Pluralists! Multi-Culturalists! Nationalists! Taste This:
www.globalpost.com/video/general/100525/bosnia-train
Millionaire Supremes Say You Can’t Aid Terrorists (who are???): “The Supreme Court upheld a federal law banning “material support” for foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting challenges that the measure was so broad as to impinge on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment rights of free speech and association.” online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895204575320641631008492.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories
Robert Fisk: The Language of War: “For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words “peace process” to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people. I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo – although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis…How do we break with the language of power? It is certainly killing us. That, I suspect, is one reason why readers have turned away from the “mainstream” press to the internet. Not because the net is free, but because readers know they have been lied to and conned; they know that what they watch and what they read in newspapers is an extension of what they hear from the Pentagon or the Israeli government, that our words have become synonymous with the language of a government-approved, careful middle ground, which obscures the truth as surely as it makes us political – and military – allies of all major Western governments.” www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/fighting-talk-the-new-propaganda-2006001.html
Huttaree Fools Denied Bail: “”The group and its members had never taken any action except for field training, and some of the taped conversations appeared to be in jest,” she said.
www.detnews.com/article/20100622/METRO/6220398/Appeals-court–Hutaree-defendants-to-stay-behind-bars#ixzz0rcOfnARL
Oops There Goes the Economy
Get A JOB!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwI2DTiVSJ0
N Plus One: Back to Marx: “It would add a nice dialectical twist to the future history of our period if it could be said that, around the time the post-Maoist Chinese took up shopping, the post-bubble Americans turned to studying Marx.” nplusonemag.com/intellectual-situation-your-marx
Welcome! Insurgent Notes: “The legacy of Bolshevism in particular (which we neither embrace nor despise) has among other things greatly obscured the fundamental problem identified by Marx as the alienation of universal from cooperative labor. This problematic has been reified for over a century by variations around the themes of a (mainly intellectual) vanguard “leading” the working class and a libertarian counter-point glorifying workers as the point of production to the exclusion of all else. The much deeper reality of the problem is built into the nature of capitalist society itself, based as it is on the separation of mental and manual labor.”
Millionaires in Black Robes to Free Enron’s Skilling? “The court sent both cases back to the lower courts. Mr. Skilling’s lawyers have argued that a decision in his favor should void his entire conviction, which was based on several theories. That, Justice Ginsburg wrote, is “an open question” www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/us/25scotus.html?hp
Spy vs Spy
Air America Spies and Drug Dealers Have A Friendly Chat with the LATimes: “That iconic photo of a helicopter on a Saigon rooftop loading passengers just before the city fell? It wasn’t, as many have mistakenly said, a military chopper on the U.S. Embassy roof loading up the last diplomats. It was an Air America Huey on an apartment building that housed CIA employees.”
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-adna-air-america-convention-20100619,0,4141314,full.story
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXkF5YgZAX8&feature=related
The Heavens Weep:
WILL THIS CHILD WITNESS WORLD’s END????
BP Spills Coffee:
BP/Obamagogue Soften Blow (WSJ): “BP successfully argued it shouldn’t be liable for most of the broader economic distress caused by the president’s six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And it fended off demands to pay for restoration of the Gulf coast beyond its prespill conditions. After the high-profile meeting of administration and BP officials on Wednesday, it was in the interest of neither to discuss such details. BP wanted to look contrite and to make a grand gesture, and the White House wanted to look tough. President Barack Obama came away touting how BP’s money would be handed over quickly and impartially to those hurt by the spill. Not only did BP earmark the $20 billion fund but it promised an additional $100 million for Gulf workers idled by the drilling moratorium. But BP didn’t offer a blank check. The $100 million—0.5% of the total—won’t come close to covering collateral damage from the White House’s moratorium. The drilling industry estimates the moratorium will cost rig workers as much as $330 million a month in direct wages, not counting businesses servicing those rigs like machine-shop workers.” online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895204575320064145090860.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Analyst says Gusher Might be good for GDP!
“Annie Lowrey notes a J.P. Morgan Chase analysis suggests JP Morgan Chase is Biggest Owner in BP–ting the BP spill will actually raise the country’s GDP, at least in the short term. “Cleaning up the spill will likely be enough to slightly offset the negative impact of all this on GDP, J.P. Morgan said,” summarizes Luca Di Leo. “The bank cites estimates of 4,000 unemployed people hired for the cleanup efforts, which some reports have said could be worth between $3 and $6 billion.”This is a nice object lesson in the inadequacy of GDP as a measurement of societal well-being. I could blow up the biggest building in every city in the country and the resulting reconstruction effort could mean a big temporary increase in GDP.”
voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/could_the_bp_oil_spill_increas.html
BBC: Worker Told BP About Faulty BOP: “A Deepwater Horizon rig worker has told the BBC that he identified a leak in the oil rig’s safety equipment weeks before the explosion. Tyrone Benton said the leak was not fixed at the time, but that instead the faulty device was shut down and a second one relied on. BP said rig owners Transocean were responsible for the operation and maintenance of that piece of equipment.Transocean said it tested the device successfully before the accident.” news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10362139.stm
Your Money or Your Water: “A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration had imposed in response to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23drill.html?hp
BP vs Birder Andrew Wheelan
Shortly after the end of the video, Wheelan got in his car and drove away but was soon was pulled over. It was the same cop, but this time he had company: Kenneth Thomas, whose badge, Wheelan told me, read “Chief BP Security.” The cop stood by as Thomas interrogated Wheelan for 20 minutes, asking him who he worked with, who he answered to, what he was doing, why he was down here in Louisiana. He phoned Wheelan’s information in to someone. Wheelan says Thomas confiscated his Audubon volunteer badge (he’d recently attended an official Audubon/BP bird-helper volunteer training) and then wouldn’t give it back, which sounds like something only a bully in a bad movie would do. Eventually, Thomas let Wheelan go.
“Then two unmarked security cars followed me,” Wheelan told me. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I was specifically trying to figure out if they were following me, and every time I pulled over, they pulled over.” This went on for 20 miles. Which does little to mitigate my own about reporting from what can feel like a corporate-police state.The media liaison for the government-run Deepwater Horizon Response Joint Information Center told me BP would would get back to me for comment on the incident. I’m still waiting.
Klare: Whither the Next Oil Calamity? “The disaster in the Gulf is no anomaly. It’s an arrow pointing toward future nightmares.” www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175264/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_coming_era_of_energy_disasters
Hey Look! Magic!
Rapist Priests Try to Fend Off the Law: “Victims of abuse by Catholic clergy are expressing dismay at the strong lobbying the church is doing in Lansing to halt an effort to remove Michigan’s statute of limitations on sex abuse cases. In Michigan, victims must file criminal or civil complaints by the time they turn 19 — what some say is an unrealistic limit on kids who often are traumatized for years by the abuse. The church maintains that removing the statute of limitations could open the floodgates to abuse cases that are a half-century old and could take money away from programs that benefit the poor. But victims such as Collins see the church’s actions as another example of the church protecting itself rather than victims. www.detnews.com/article/20100625/METRO/6250386/Catholic-church-fights-lifting-of-sex-abuse-suit-limits#ixzz0rqTIEHAs
Oconnor: “ There should be a full criminal investigation of the Catholic hierarchy of any country in which this has been an issue. There should be a full criminal investigation of the Vatican. There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope. The pope should stand down for the fact that he did not act in a Christian fashion to protect children, and for the fact that his organization acted to preserve their business interests decade after decade rather than be concerned about the interests of children, and for showing so much disrespect for Christ, God, the victims, the rest of us, their own clergy. . . .” articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/24/world/la-fg-sinead-qa25-2010mar25/2
Belgian Ghouls Chase Rapists: “An extraordinary series of raids on the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium provoked sharp criticism from the Vatican on Friday, with the church expressing “shock” a day after Belgian investigators interrupted a bishops’ meeting at the church’s Brussels headquarters, detaining clerics for nine hours, and opened an archbishop’s grave at a cathedral north of the city.” www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/world/europe/26belgium.html?hp
Papacy Continues Cover-Up: “The Vatican is asking a federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath in a Kentucky sex abuse lawsuit on the grounds that there has been no evidence of a link to church officials in Rome.”
www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/25/vatican-moves-to-block-qu_n_625435.html?ir=Daily%20Brief
The Weekly Infuriator:
Oops. Sorry About Your Pier: “Pfaeffle is the ninth skipper fired this year. He is the fourth surface commander and the first frigate skipper relieved in 2010.”
www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/navy_co_pfaeffle_fired_062210w/
Best Thing in the History of the World:
Kilpatrick’s Mug Shot
The Racists’ Fave Mayor KKKilpatrick, Faces Lots More Charges: “Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was indicted this afternoon on allegations of taking at least $640,000 from his nonprofit foundation for his mayoral campaign and travel, car leases college tuition, anti-bugging equipment and yoga lessons.A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Kilpatrick, currently serving time in a northern Michigan prison, with 19 fraud-related charges. They include 10 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, five counts of filing false tax returns and one count of tax evasion.” From The Detroit News: www.detnews.com/article/20100623/METRO/6230417/Kwame-Kilpatrick-indicted-on-19-counts#ixzz0rjnHoD1H
Worst thing in the History of the World:
Detroit School Boss Teresa Gueyser’s Letter Regarding Fondler and School Board Prezzie Otis Mathis: “On this day Mr Mathis continued to fondle his genital area for approximately 20 minutes, or the entire time I was talking…”
download.gannett.edgesuite.net/detnews/2010/pdf/0618mathis.pdf
Freep On The Mathis Enablers: “The good news is that most Detroit Board of Education members have ignored school board president Otis Mathis’ ill-considered attempt to retract the resignation he submitted last week after Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Teresa Gueyser outed him for masturbating in school business meetings. Mathis has no future in public service. If he even dimly appreciated his predicament, he’d be decamping to a remote foreign country instead of trying to get his office back. The bad news is that the board majority that elected Mathis president earlier this year is still in place, and at least one of their number, the Reverend David Murray, has dismissed Mathis’ over-the-top transgressions as a function of either the ex-board president’s youth (Mathis is 55) or his naivete. (“Maybe he didn’t know,” Murray suggested Friday after Gueyser’s accusations became public, “it was offensive to her.”)”
Mathis Explains Why Illiteracy Shouldn’t Disqualify a School Board President:
video.foxnews.com/v/4083379/fit-to-lead/?playlist_id=87249
Teacher Fired for the Nasty! “Jarretta Hamilton said administrators at the Southland Christian School in April 2009 had questioned her about when she had conceived and then fired her for “fornication” after she told them she had become pregnant before her marriage.”
www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/4210728
The Only Solution to the Myriad Problems of Out Time?:
June 28, 1997: The Tyson Bite:
Classics: Fredy Perlman: “It seems to me that at least one of Marx’s observations is true: every minute devoted to the capitalist production process, every thought contributed to the industrial system, further enlarges a power that is inimical to nature, to culture, to life. Applied science is not something alien; it is an integral part of the capitalist production process. Nationalism is not flown in from abroad. It is a product of the capitalist production process, like the chemical agents poisoning the lakes, air, animals and people, like the nuclear plants radioactivating micro-environments in preparation for the radioactivation of the macro-environment. As a postscript I’d like to answer a question before it is asked. The question is: “Don’t you think a descendant of oppressed people is better off as a supermarket manager or police chief?” My answer is another question: What concentration camp manager, national executioner or torturer is not a descendant of oppressed people?”
Thanks to Lloyd, Frank, Mort, Bob, Alan, Tanya, Sherry, Amber, Taylor, Erin, Steph, Jodie, Wayne, Adam and Gina, Bill, Greg, Joel, Mr J, Mr Z, Bob, Teresa, Candace, Bonnie Mc, Barb V, Sandy Stone, Pierce G., Jim A, David S, Ms V, The Susans and the school in Yosemite.
Good luck to us, every one.
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