Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fightback!

Chicago’s Coppers plan for Nato Fascism Chicago police are planning a range of tactics — some old, some new — to control protests outside the NATO summit scheduled for May 20 and 21. A look at some crowd-control techniques and the department’s position on them:   www.washingtonpost.com/national/chicago-police-to-deploy-range-of-protest-tactics-at-upcoming-summit-of-nato-leaders/2012/05/11/gIQA3BblIU_story.html

Congratulations to Ravi Kumar for the edited edition

Poland–unionists kidnap parliament Hundreds of Polish trade union members protesting against plans to raise the retirement age chained together barriers meant to keep them out of Parliament on Friday, locking lawmakers in for more than an hour. “We will decide when they will leave,”     www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/world/europe/poland-unionists-protest-new-retirement-age.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Collection of Rouge Forum Videos from RF/AERA www.youtube.com/user/iceschannel

Rouge Forum Keynoter Paul Street on the “Occupy” Phenomenom Eager to find and amplify signs of mass radical potential in a period when the capitalist rich are ever more clearly destroying democracy and the Earth – the chances for a decent future –we on the United States left are understandably prone to underestimate the ideological power of the ruling class. Recently, for example, a comrade sent me a link and suggested that I look at, and join him in celebrating, a December 2011 Pew Research Center opinion survey showing that nearly two-thirds of the American people think there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor. The percentage of Americans who think this has apparently risen 19 points since 2009.
Pew attributes part of this public opinion to the success of the Occupy Movement in putting the problem of economic inequality into the political and media culture.[1] So does my correspondent, quite eagerly. I’m pretty sure they are right about that.
Identifying a Phenomenon v. Opposing It
But so what? Perceiving that strong class conflict exists is simply not the same as thinking that America’s harsh class inequality (see below) is a problem that should be overcome and undone through reform and/or revolution. As Pew noted in the online write-up of its aforementioned survey, rising perceptions of class conflict do not necessarily mean increasing grievances toward the rich or support for measures to reduce inequality. In fact, as Pew staffer Rich Morin added, “a recent Gallup survey found that a smaller share of the public believes that income inequality is a problem ‘that needs to be fixed’ than held this belief in 1998 (45% vs. 52%):”[2]   www.zcommunications.org/left-educational-tasks-in-a-capital-occupied-nation-by-paul-street

San Francisco School Workers vote to strike, sometime…. San Francisco Unified School District teachers have voted to authorize a strike in response to a stalemate in contract negotiations with the district, union officials said Friday.
About 97 percent of teachers on Thursday night approved the strike vote, according to Matthew Hardy, a spokesman for the union United Educators of San Francisco.
The vote, according to Hardy, is the first part in a two-step process, and teachers would need to vote a second time before going out on strike.     www.ktvu.com/news/news/education/sf-teachers-overwhelming-vote-strike/nN4Wn/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

A note to farcical school reformers from the Moor A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government. Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.     www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm

Systematically gutting the Capitalist schools of California The share of California high school graduates enrolling in the University of California and the California State University declined by 20 percent from 2007 to 2010, a new study has found.
San Diego County had the largest drop among the state’s more populous counties, with a 25 percent decline in graduates enrolling in the two systems.
The report by the Public Policy Institute of California blames the decrease on reductions in state funding for higher education.
The report — “Defunding Higher Education: What are the Effects on College Enrollment?” — notes that the university systems have cut courses, programs and services in response to funding cuts, while also capping enrollment at more desirable campuses.
Another barrier to enrollment is the sharp increase in tuition at UC and CSU in recent years, according to the report. In fall 2007, 21.9 percent of the state’s high school graduates enrolled in UC or CSU. By fall 2010, that number had declined to 17.8 percent. Among the state’s best prepared high school graduates — those that completed a college prep curriculum — the number decline was even greater: 67.5 percent in 2007 to 54.9 percent in 2010.   www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/09/high-school-grad-enrollment-rates-drop-at-uc-csu/

After Pink Slips to the Entire Teaching force, Detroit Hires principals, and TFA, for bad bank district Covington said he was unable Friday morning to disclose how many students have enrolled for EAA schools. EAA officials have said they hope about 12,000 students will leave DPS schools and be counted as students in the new authority.
Covington said the principals will begin the teacher selection process today and continue interviews on May 19 and June 2, 16 and 23.
An estimated 500 teachers will need to be hired for the 16 EAA schools. Covington said about 1,100 have applied for jobs. The district has signed a contract with Teach for America for about 200 teachers, officials said.
The new principals declined to speak Friday, based on a request by EAA officials.
Students attending the new school district can expect longer school days, a longer school year and each will get an individualized education plan.   www.detroitnews.com/article/20120511/SCHOOLS/205110428/1026/schools/Principals-named-Michigan-s-new-recovery-school-district

Tucson–the MAS fight is still on! Sean Arce may not have a job anymore, but he’s still going to defend the program he used to direct. Arce, the former director of Tucson Unified School District’s now-suspended Mexican American Studies program, was fired earlier this month in the latest crackdown on the program in what has become a years-long saga over the fate of the popular program.   Sean Arce may not have a job anymore, but he’s still going to defend the program he used to direct. Arce, the former director of Tucson Unified School District’s now-suspended Mexican American Studies program, was fired earlier this month in the latest crackdown on the program in what has become a years-long saga over the fate of the popular program.

Phd’s on the Aid “I am not a welfare queen,” says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.
That’s how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship.
“I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare,” she says.  chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/

A Unit on the War on Vietnam www.richgibson.com/vietnam/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

So Long, Iraqi Coppers. In the face of spiraling costs and Iraqi officials who say they never wanted it in the first place, the State Department has slashed — and may jettison entirely by the end of the year — a multibillion-dollar police training program that was to have been the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission here.  What was originally envisioned as a training cadre of about 350 American law enforcement officers was quickly scaled back to 190 and then to 100. The latest restructuring calls for 50 advisers, but most experts and even some State Department officials say even they may be withdrawn by the end of this year.
The training effort, which began in October and has already cost $500 million, was conceived of as the largest component of a mission billed as the most ambitious American aid effort since the Marshall Plan. Instead, it has emerged as the latest high-profile example of the waning American influence here following the military withdrawal, and it reflects a costly miscalculation on the part of American officials, who did not count on the Iraqi government to assert its sovereignty so aggressively.   www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/world/middleeast/us-may-scrap-costly-effort-to-train-iraqi-police.html?ref=global-home

Afghan Commanders to NATO, the Bartleby Maneuver: “No. We Prefer Not to” Afghan commanders have refused more than a dozen times within the past two months to act on U.S. intelligence regarding high-level insurgents, arguing that night-time operations to target the men would result in civilian casualties, Afghan officials say.
The defiance highlights the shift underway in Afghanistan as Afghan commanders make use of their newfound power to veto operations proposed by their NATO counterparts.   www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/afghan-commanders-show-new-defiance-in-dealings-with-americans/2012/05/11/gIQAMdNTHU_story.html

Chesepeake Boss took 1.1 billion in Unreported Loans McClendon has borrowed as much as $1.1 billion in the last three years by pledging his stake in the company’s oil and natural gas wells as collateral, documents reviewed by Reuters show.
The loans were made through three companies controlled by McClendon that list Chesapeake’s headquarters as their address. The money is being used to help finance what could be a lucrative perk of his job – the opportunity to buy into the very same well stakes that he is using as collateral for the borrowings.   world.einnews.com/article/91526543/?promo=800&utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Copy+of+Breaking+News%3A+world16+-+tuesday

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, to Hank Paulson, begging Dimon to help the US government in 2008, on the verge of government collapse–“Hank, I would do anything for the United States—but not at the expense of JP Morgan,” has now misplaced 2 billion dollars. Oops. Bad on Him. Dimon had to face stock analysts and reporters on Thursday and confess to a “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored” trading strategy that lost a surprise $2 billion.The revelation caused traders to shave almost 10 percent off JPMorgan’s stock price the following day and brought a shower of complaints from industry observers and lawmakers who said banks needed tighter scrutiny.
Making the black eye worse for Dimon, the loss came in derivatives trading, the complex financial maneuvering that — on a much greater scale — led to large losses and dissolved banks during the financial crisis.
Dimon “staked so much of his reputation on creating this perception of being the ultimate, infallible risk manager,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund who is now a professor at MIT. “And along comes this huge mistake.”   www.washingtonpost.com/business/markets/dimon-praised-after-financial-crisis-suddenly-finds-himself-with-a-2-billion-black-eye/2012/05/12/gIQARuOQKU_story.html?tid=pm_business_pop

California over the Cliff, or Brown scheme to Raise Taxes? Gov. Jerry Brown announced on Saturday that the state’s deficit has ballooned to $16 billion, a huge increase over his $9.2-billion estimate in January.
The bigger deficit is a significant setback for California, which has struggled to turn the page on a devastating budget crisis. Brown, who announced the deficit on YouTube, is expected to outline his full budget proposal on Monday in Sacramento.
“This means we will have to go much further, and make cuts far greater, than I asked for at the beginning of the year,” Brown said in the video.     latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/05/california-budget-jerry-brown.html

Nearly 100 thousand Californians lose UCB About 93,000 Californians are scheduled to have their extended federal unemployment benefits cut off Saturday because the state is no longer eligible for the long-term aid.
A drop in the state’s unemployment rate to 11 percent — a tenth of a percent above its lowest mark in three years — is triggering the cutoff.    www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/09/unemployment-benefits-abruptly-cut-100k-california/

Who are those guys anyway? 2 more Afghan troops kill NATO troops Two British NATO troops were killed by two men in Afghan police uniforms in southern Afghanistan Saturday, in what has become a near daily occurrence of Afghans shooting their Western trainers.   news.antiwar.com/2012/05/12/men-in-afghan-uniforms-kill-2-more-nato-soldiers/

Too Much. The Scream for 119.9 mil and more A version of Edvard Munch’s iconic 1895 painting, The Scream, sold at auction in New York last week for $119.9 million, an all-time art auction record. The bidding took 12 minutes, not counting the cheering when the hammer fell. Cheers for over-the-top indulging? Sometimes you just want to you-know-what.
But sometimes we can’t scream. On Capitol Hill this week, Politico reports, the House Budget Committee will be putting “the final touches” on an appropriations package that denies jobless Americans unemployment benefits “until they spend down their cash savings below $2,000.” Scream at that in the Budget Committee chambers, and you’ll be thrown out on your ear.
Sometimes, on the other hand, we can just be too dumbfounded to scream. A mega millionaire who made his fortune playing private equity games with Mitt Romney at Bain Capital has a new book out. His theme: The more unequal America gets, the better life gets for everybody!
We have more on this mega millionaire — and lots of his super-rich pals — in this week’s Too Much. Also this week: some constructive alternatives to screaming.

Emerging Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Capitalism has produced a world in which we must worry that a man with a bomb in his crotch will blow up our plane in order to get 1000 virgins—but he is a cop! What would Freud say? The CIA takedown of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner involved an international sting operation with a double agent tricking terrorists into handing over a prized possession: a new bomb purportedly designed to slip through airport security.
U.S. officials Tuesday described an operation in which Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to persuade Al Qaeda bomb makers in Yemen to give him the bomb.
After weeks operating undercover in Yemen, the double agent arranged to deliver the device and a trove of vital intelligence to U.S. and other authorities waiting in another country, officials said. He is now safely out of Yemen.     www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bomb-plot-20120509,0,4461116.story

Election in Mexico–choose one head or another of the same snake. Americans take note It was, in a manner of speaking, the biggest moment of Sunday night’s presidential debate in Mexico.
To mark the debate’s start, a stunning, undeniably well-endowed model took the floor, smiling silently and carrying a box with four pieces of paper in it that candidates drew to see who went first.
The candidates managed a straight face, but at first sight of her, dozens of journalists inside the debate press room at Mexico City’s World Trade Center gasped and jeered.
The woman, identified later as a model and former playmate for Mexican Playboy, Julia Orayen, almost immediately became a trending topic on Twitter.
Orayen was serving as an edecan, a role that has long been traditional to formal political, business, or entertainment events in Mexico.   latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/05/mexico-debate-edecan-model-woman-twitter.html

Greek Nazis Made Gains Election advertisements for Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party called for “taking the dirt out of the country,” “cleaning up Athens” and planting landmines along the borders to stop illegal immigrants from crossing in.
On Sunday, Golden Dawn won enough votes to earn seats in the Parliament, and now Greeks – and the estimated 1 million foreign immigrants here – are bracing to see how the party, with its swastika-like logo and the black-shirted toughs who come to its rallies, will try to commandeer the debate.   www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/07/148044/neo-nazi-party-plots-rise-as-first.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

20 thousand mystified fanatics celebrate football suicide while Chargers demand a free stadium A crowd estimated at about 20,000 rocked Qualcomm Stadium as it listened to and sometimes participated in tributes to Seau.
“I don’t believe there has ever been a player in the National Football League that has played in a city like San Diego that has done more for that city than what Junior Seau has done for San Diego,” said Bobby Ross, who coached the Chargers from 1992 to ‘96.   www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/11/fans-friends-chargers-honor-seau-stadium/

So Long Maurice Sendak, Dedicated Anti-fascist intellectual Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83.   www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/maurice-sendak-childrens-author-dies-at-83.html?_r=4