Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

“To end the domination oj capital, make war impossible, wipe out state boundaries, transform the whole world into one co-operative commonwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and Jreedom.”—Aims of the Third (Moscow) International, as stated in the Manifesto, 1919.

ROUGE  FORUM Conference:   Occupy Education! Class Conscious Pedagogies and Social Change
Miami University,
Oxford, OH June 2-­24, 2012

Program  https://rougeforum2012.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rouge-forum-2012-schedule-draft.pdf

Rouge Forum Keynoter Susan Ohanian on Research Vs Eugenics This book review points out that researchers are beginning to question whether the large amount of money spent on medical research devoted to finding genetic differences between races that might explain health disparities might be better directed at looking at how political and economic causes of everyday events alter our bodies, making them sicker or more resistant to disease. For example, women who experience racial discrimination have higher essential hypertension and are more likely to give birth to low-weight babies.
It’s poverty, not race, that makes people sick.
Consider the fetuses that were gestating in their mothers’ wombs during the famine that swept the Netherlands at the end of World War II. Not surprisingly, the infants born from starving mothers were undersized and not so healthy. Less expected is that members of this same cohort, examined in adulthood, were twice as likely to be obese as those born before or after the famine. They also had an elevated risk for developing schizophrenia and other mental disorders  http://susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=482

And Susan O on those Biosensors for the Kiddies Those Galvanic biosensor bracelets for students are just a small part in Microsoft’s plan for tracking human behavior. See their November 2011 patent application below.
The goal for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose driving purpose is to position children as future workers in the Global Economy, seems to be a riff on that popular TV news announcement: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
It’s 10 a.m. and we know the heart rate, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature movement, facial movements, facial expressions, blood pressure, mood, attention level of every child in America.
Can’t you just see helicopter parents signing up to receive the minute-by-minute tracking?
And then the unions will agree that each teacher’s biosensory class profile can be used along with standardized test scores to determine whether she’s adequate.
And if 92.83% of students aren’t registering “high attention” at any given moment, the U. S. Department of Education can send in a drone to take out the teacher who, according to Microsoft metrics, isn’t stimulating enough. That will wake the students up for 3.14 minutes.
Of course the bracelets could come with shocks–give the student who registers inattention a little shock to stimulate attention.  http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1328

Rouge Forum Keynoter Paul Street on the Electoral Shell Game in Wisconsin I ended up resisting the inclination to write that imagined crow-eating piece for two interrelated reasons: (i) disgust at the tepid and uninspiring centrism of Tommy Barrett, who insisted on denying that he was a “union candidate” and refused to criticize Walker’s regressive austerity agenda; (ii) my sense that the argument behind the imagined essay, was contingent upon a recall victory – a victory that struck me as highly unlikely given some very harsh technical, monetary, political and ideological realities. One such reality was that, under the state’s recall law, a governor, but not his opponent, is released from the standard contribution limit of $10,000 per individual donor until the moment a recall is formally announced. That moment came at the end of March, 2012. By that time, Walker had already picked up political down payments as high as $500,000 (!) from some individuals.

… One lesson it seems to me, is the futility, under the current corporate-dollar-drenched U.S. political regime, of trying to translate a genuine popular uprising (Madison, Wisconsin in February and early March 2011) into an election campaign. While Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy Movement it sparked had real problems when it came to strategic formulation and action on specific demands that matter to ordinary working class people (and it doesn’t get much more specific than the demand to remove Walker and repeal his terrible anti-union bill), Occupy understood that futility very well. Listen to OWS’ original Declaration of the Occupation of New York City:  http://www.zcommunications.org/wisconsin-lessons-by-paul-street

A Summer of Resistance or Retreats? By Rich Gibson
The core issue of our time is the potential of mass class conscious activist resistance met by the reality of perpetual war and intensifying exploitation: joblessness, layoffs, low pay, attacks on pensions and benefits.
The core issue to the National Education Association and every major national union in the united states is to obliterate our social context, class and empire’s wars, to shovel members and the public into voting booths in the belief that they can elect the rich out of their money and the government into a democracy that overpowers capitalism. Nonsense, but serious nonsense.   richgibson.com/summerresistance.htm

Remember–Anatomy of Mutinies In the Russian Army of 1917, mutiny became part of the larger Revolution.
In Germany in 1918, mutiny helped to end the rule of the Kaiser and then led nowhere.
But in all three armies, the troops rebelled not only against bad conditions and poor
leadership but against the war and the regimes which had brought the scourge upon them.
Generals and governments would like to believe that mutiny represents “indiscipline.”
In many cases it does not. It is collective resistance to war. Nowhere was this more clear
than in the U.S. military in Vietnam.
During the latter part of the Vietnam War, there were at least ten major instances of
mutiny.4 These ranged from refusals by small groups of soldiers to insubordination by
units of a hundred of more. David Cortright describes the largest incident (April, 1972):
“When troops of C Company, 2nd Battalion/1st Infantry of the 196th Brigade were
ordered into trucks to patrol enemy territory, about one hundred of the GIs refused to
advance, considering the mission too dangerous. After some discussion, about half the
men agreed to board the trucks, but approximately forty-five soldiers remained
adamant.”  http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/colloques/pdfPac/ch-9.pdf

So Quebec, The World? Catapulting the Canadian province of Quebec into the spotlight, the four-month old student protests have become a symbol of the most powerful challenge to neoliberalism on the North American continent.
Recognizing that the students’ opposition to the tuition fee hikes and their insistence that education should be accessible to all constitutes an implicit challenge to their entire social and economic strategy, the reaction of the Quebec government and Canadian elite has been implacable. Joshua Blakeney pinpoints the significance of the student struggle, sketching a picture tinged with hues of Pinochet’s Chile.   www.setyoufreenews.com/2012/06/09/quebec-students-spearhead-pan-canadian-uprising-against-austerity/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

above, the end of the mystery of reading instruction

Will Courts Soon Order Test Scores to be Key Evaluation Tool for school workers? In a tentative ruling that could potentially transform California teacher evaluations, a Los Angeles judge ordered the L.A. Unified School District to use student academic progress in reviewing instructors.
L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant upheld claims by a group of parents that the district was violating a 40-year-old state law, known as the Stull Act, which requires that teacher evaluations include measures of how well pupils are learning what the state expects them to know each year. The law was amended in 1999 to specifically require the use of state standardized test scores to measure student progress.
But Chalfant did not order the district to use student test scores in evaluations. Which specific measures are used, how they are incorporated into performance reviews, how the different elements are weighted and how administrators are trained in using student performance measures “may well be a matter subject to collective bargaining,” he wrote.
The ruling, while tentative, lends significant legal clout to a growing movement to use student test scores as part of a teacher’s performance review.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/06/la-teacher-reviews-should-include-student-achievement-judge-says.html

Michigan Seeks Law to Force Flag Fetish/Genuflect on Kiddies (not the truly American Right to a Revolution) Sensing a dwindling of patriotism among Michigan’s youth, some state lawmakers want public schools to place more emphasis on honoring the stars and stripes as Flag Day — which commemorates adoption of the American flag by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 — approaches Thursday.
Two bills pending in the Legislature would require schools to mount an American flag in every classroom and require public schools to “ensure” students have an opportunity to recite the pledge each school day.  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120613/SCHOOLS/206130367/Push-require-U-S-flag-classrooms?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGEOne reason Capitalist Schools will arrest you For Truancy: Money The cash-strapped Detroit Public Schools will lose $4.2 million in state aid during the next four years because student attendance fell below 75 percent on 10 days during the 2010-11 school year.
Officials with the state Department of Education examined 19 days when attendance fell below the minimum threshold of 75 percent, including Nov. 24, 2010, when 75,895 students were enrolled but 33,178, or 43.7 percent, showed up.
On June 16 — the last day of school — 41 percent of students attended.   www.detroitnews.com/article/20120612/SCHOOLS/206120335/1026/Poor-student-attendance-costs-DPS-4-2M

What did you do in Capital’s School today, o Child of Mine? Nine students were suspended from a San Diego middle school after their peers reported a group of boys watching pornography on cell phones in class.
According to staff emails exchanged Friday between teachers and administrators at Bell Middle School in Paradise Hills, the school and district’s response to the incident is causing division.
Theater teacher Hale Maher wrote, “I have had my students come up to me and ask horrible questions about what happened… Our job is to protect children. This issue is dividing our faculty. Many of us are outraged yet we keep silent.”  ..According to the statements, a group of boys sat at their desks viewing pornography on their cell phones and masturbating while the teacher sat at his desk.    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/14/students-watched-porn-7th-grade-class/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

A rational army would run away.
Montesquieu

The New Obama Doctrine, A Six-Point Plan for Global War –Special Ops, Drones, Spy Games, Civilian Soldiers, Proxy Fighters, and Cyber Warfare (oops, add class war too) Much of this has been noted in the media, but how it all fits together into what could be called the new global face of empire has escaped attention. And yet this represents nothing short of a new Obama doctrine, a six-point program for twenty-first-century war, American-style, that the administration is now carefully developing and honing. Its global scope is already breathtaking, if little recognized, and like Donald Rumsfeld’s military lite and David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency operations, it is evidently going to have its day in the sun — and like them, it will undoubtedly disappoint in ways that will surprise its creators.  …One thing is certain: American war-making (along with its spies and its diplomats) is heading ever deeper into “the shadows.” Expect yet more clandestine operations in ever more places with, of course, ever more potential for blowback in the years ahead.

The United States is an imperial power chastened by more than 10 years of failed, heavy-footprint wars. It is hobbled by a hollowing-out economy, and inundated with hundreds of thousands of recent veterans — a staggering 45% of the troops who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq — suffering from service-related disabilities who will require ever more expensive care. No wonder the current combination of special ops, drones, spy games, civilian soldiers, cyberwarfare, and proxy fighters sounds like a safer, saner brand of war-fighting. At first blush, it may even look like a panacea for America’s national security ills. In reality, it may be anything but.
The new light-footprint Obama doctrine actually seems to be making war an ever more attractive and seemingly easy option    http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175557/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_changing_face_of_empire/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=fdc74d877e-TD_Turse6_14_2012&utm_medium=email#more

Hey, Hey BHO, How Many Drones Before you Go? “DEAR OBAMA, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda,” a Yemeni lawyer warned on Twitter last month. President Obama should keep this message in mind before ordering more drone strikes like Wednesday’s, which local officials say killed 27 people, or the May 15 strike that killed at least eight Yemeni civilians.
Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair. Robert Grenier, the former head of the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, has warned that the American drone program in Yemen risks turning the country into a safe haven for Al Qaeda like the tribal areas of Pakistan — “the Arabian equivalent of Waziristan.”   www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion/how-drones-help-al-qaeda.html

Why Syria? What lies behind this outburst of humanitarian concern by “the international community”. Is America coming to the rescue of the Syrian people? What is the real reason for America’s war on Syria?
This question is addressed in a lead article by James P. Rubin, a Bloomberg executive editor and former State department official under the Clinton administration. The article appears in this month’s Foreign Policy Magazine under the clear-cut title: “The Real Reason to Intervene in Syria”
In an unusual twist, “the answer to the question”, namely “the real reason” is provided in the article’s subtitle: “Cutting Iran’s link to the Mediterranean Sea is a strategic prize worth the risk.”.
The subtitle should dispel –in the eyes of the reader– the illusion that US foreign policy has an underlying “humanitarian mandate”. Pentagon and US State department documents as well as independent reports confirm that military action against Syria has been contemplated by Washington and Tel Aviv for more than 20 years.
Targeting Iran, “Protecting Israel”
According to James P. Rubin, the war plans directed against Syria are intimately related to those pertaining to Iran. They are part of the same US-Israeli military agenda which consists in weakening Iran with a view to “protecting Israel”. The latter objective is to be carried out through a pre-emptive attack against Iran: “We’re not done with the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran” says James P. Rubin.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31320

Woodstein–40 Years After Watergate, Nixon’s Wars (they forgot the war on Vietnam and the wars on the working class, GM strike, GE Strike, Postal Wildcat, Wage Freeze, etc) At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.
Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/woodward-and-bernstein-40-years-after-watergate-nixon-was-far-worse-than-we-thought/2012/06/08/gJQAlsi0NV_story.html

Marines’ Hot Rocks Camp Pendleton has launched an investigation into the stones that caught fire in a woman’s pocket last month, a base spokesman confirmed Monday. The San Clemente woman was hospitalized with second- and third-degree burns after pocketing a handful of rocks from San Onofre State Beach at the northern edge of San Diego County.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/11/marines-reportedly-investigate-hot-rocks/

below, Gutless General Pittard

With one active Duty Soldier a Day Suiciding, and 18 Vets each day, Idiot General Tells troops to Suck it Up, then Chickens himself out one Army general has retracted a blog post stating he is “fed up” with soldiers who commit suicide, calling it “an absolutely selfish act.”    http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/25/generals-remarks-about-suicide-upsetting/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

How Many of the Senate Banking Committee Members that Groveled for Jamie “We lost two billion dollars but nobody lost any money” Dimon did not get money from JP Morgan? Six did not, of 22 One current staffer on the Senate banking committee, Dwight Fettig, is a former lobbyist for JP Morgan. In 2009, the bank hired him to work on “financial services regulatory reform.” Meanwhile, JP Morgan is stacked thick with former committee staff.
· Naomi Camper – Currently a lobbyist for JP Morgan. Prior to that, from 2001-2004, she was an aide to Senator Johnson.
· Kate Childress –A JP Morgan lobbyist since 2008, she is also a former aide to Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who sits on both the Senate Banking and Finance committees.
· Steven Patterson –A JP Morgan lobbyist and formerly a staff director for economic policy for the Banking committee.
· Nate Gatten— A JP Morgan lobbyist based in London who was reportedly called back to Washington recently to help with the company’s damage control. He is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae, and, in the 1990s, was a banking aide to former Senator Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who also sat on the committee.
· P. Michael Nielsen – A lobbyist with a firm run by former Senator Bennett, he has been retained by JP Morgan for help with federal probes, according to Bloomberg. He was also a senior policy adviser to the committee from 2007 to 2010.

American Banker also reported that three other outside lobbyists currently working for JP Morgan were once affiliated with the committee:

· Jason Rosenberg – A lobbyist at The Glover Park Group and formerly an aide to Jon Tester, D-Mont., who sits on the committee.

· Jenn Fogel-Bublick – A lobbyist at McBee Strategic Consulting and formerly a Democratic counsel on the committee.

· Mike Chappell – A lobbyist for Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock and a former press assistant to Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., another committee member.

A former senator on the committee, Mel Martinez, R-Fl., is also now the JP Morgan exec in charge of Florida, Central America, and the Caribbean. Martinez was elected to the Senate in 2004 and went to the bank in 2010. Bloomberg reported that he was called to Washington after the losses were reported.

Lobbyists for JP Morgan appear to be keeping busy. The bank spent $7.6 million on lobbying last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

What’s Behind Deportation-Master Obamagogue’s Sudden Discovery of Immigrant Justice? www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/us-to-stop-deporting-some-illegal-immigrants.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism is Available from the Rouge Forum For $5 including postage. Here is the closing sentence: “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?”

Warmaker Lockheed Hiring Scabs to Feed Death Machine Lockheed Martin said Friday that it had hired 300 temporary workers to replace striking union employees at its fighter plane plant in Fort Worth and could hire hundreds more.  About 3,300 union workers went on strike there on April 23 over proposed changes in health benefits and a Lockheed plan to stop offering a traditional pension to newly hired workers.
The factory builds the new F-35 strike fighter aircraft as well as an older model, the F-16, for foreign countries. The company has used salaried workers to keep building the planes at a slower rate. It started bringing in the temporary workers in late May.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/business/lockheed-is-replacing-strikers-at-f-35-plant-in-texas.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

GM’s Salaried Workers, with slow learning curve, disconver Injury to 1 = Injury to All A group representing General Motors’ 118,000 salaried retirees blasted the automaker’s plan to convert pension payments into equivalent monthly annuity checks that won’t be insured by a federal authority.
General Motors Retirees Association President Jim Shepherd, in a June 13 letter to GM CEO Dan Akerson, called the plan “galling” and said GM was putting its salaried retirees’ financial future at risk. Read the full text of the letter here.
The move raises questions about how well the conversion – which only affects salaried retirees for now – will be received.
“Never, even in our wildest imagination, could we ever have foreseen that GM would then turn around and treat its retirees with such little regard and with such disdain as GM is doing now,” Shepherd wrote. “Once again, salaried retirees, those of us not protected by a labor agreement, are being singled out for disparate treatment.”  http://www.freep.com/article/20120615/BUSINESS01/120615051/GM-retiree-group-blasts-pension-plan?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

One Down and Tens of Thousands Go Free, Rich, Arrogant, Malignant— Rajat K. Gupta, the retired head of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and a former Goldman Sachs board member, was found guilty on Friday of conspiracy and securities fraud for leaking boardroom secrets to a billionaire hedge fund manager.
He is the most prominent corporate executive convicted in the government’s sweeping investigation into insider trading.
The case, which caps a wave of successful insider trading prosecutions over the last three years, is a significant victory for the government, which has penetrated some of Wall Street’s most vaunted hedge funds and reached into America’s most prestigious corporate boardrooms.  http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/rajat-gupta-convicted-of-insider-trading/?ref=global-home

Nobel–gave one to Kissinger and Obamagogue–devalued The sagging global economy has caused the Nobel Foundation to scale back cash prizes to $1.1 million  http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/06/12/nobel-prize-winnings-slashed-20-percent

Solidarity Fornever

Chickens come Home to Roost: After Decades of Deception and Sellouts, 86% of Detroit school workers Let DFT Membership lapse “This spring the Michigan legislature passed a bill the governor
signed that was specifically designed to destroy teacher unions. This law prohibits school districts from deductingmembership dues (and agency shop fees) from members’ paychecks and would make it virtually impossible  for locals to represent their members. It appears that some of our DFT brothers and sisters are willing to contribute to  the END OF THE DFT! Since the legislation passed we have been working diligently with our state federation, AFT Michigan, to secure voluntary deduction forms from our members. To date only 14 percent of our membership has signed up for the voluntary deduction. ”   mi.aft.org/dft231/index.cfm?action=downloadasset&assetid=2f740d32-798a-4ad5-ac2d-dbebe874b625

After Heaping Concession on Concession, to Save Jobs, 1/4 of Detroit Teachers Face Layoffs Fewer schools, fewer students, fewer teachers.
That’s the reality facing the Detroit Federation of Teachers as the clock ticks down toward June 30, when the union’s contract with Detroit Public Schools expires.
Of the 4,100 teachers at DPS, nearly 1,000 won’t return to classrooms this fall, with the district losing 15 schools to a new statewide system for low-performing schools and two more schools turning into DPS-run charters. Couple those factors with an expected drop in regular enrollment, and the student body will be thinned by an estimated 15,000.  .. as the district works to shed its deficit, balance its books by 2016 and get out of state control, observers expect the teachers and other DFT members will be asked for further concessions.
Any givebacks would go beyond the $30 million from the last contract in 2009 and past the cuts made since last year under Emergency Manager Roy Roberts, which included a 10 percent pay reduction.   www.detroitnews.com/article/20120611/SCHOOLS/206110328/1026/schools/Teachers-union-faces-layoffs

Orwell Snorts and Michigan Proves Concessions don’t Save Pensions either Most public school employees in Michigan will pay more next year to maintain their pension benefits under sweeping retirement changes the state House approved 57-47 Thursday.
Later today, the Senate is expected to pass the revised bill, which maintains a hybrid pension-401K plan for workers hired after 2010.
Lawmakers are pursuing a major overhaul of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System to address a looming $45 billion to $50 billion unfunded liability.
Critics said the bill unfairly shifts the burden of public school employee fringe benefits from the state and school districts to workers and retirees.
“We’re not attacking teachers,” said Rep. Chuck Moss, R-Birmingham. “What we’re trying to do is save the system.”  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120614/POLITICS02/206140456/1026/schools/House-passes-teacher-pension-reform-bill

What Did Wisconsin Ed Assn say after Stunning Walker Defeat? Nothing www.weac.org/Home.aspx  But when given the chance, at least 20 thousand WEAC members quit.  That would be more than 20%.

Munis in Unions Against Revolution:    No contradiction can exist between the economic and the political aspects of a revolutionary conception, even supposing the clearest organic and functional demarcation between them. The same is true for any reactionary conception. Hence the present inter-penetration, the agreement and collaboration between unions – economic organs – and political parties – ideological organs – gives us the key to understanding both, from whichever side one looks at the matter. This statement proceeds from an old and unalterable principle, more than proven by reason and verified by men in the course of a thousand years’ experience: every idea or political action arises from an economic foundation which then plays both a controlling and determining role. In the course of this work we will examine, under different aspects, the inter-penetration of politics and economics and evaluate unions by taking a look at how they presently function.

Unions first appeared as defensive organs of the working class, faced with subhuman conditions of work, presenting themselves, on the industrial plane, as extensions of the old brotherhoods and corporations. On the basis of their aspirations unions do not even reach the level of reformism. Reformism, utilizing ideological and economic analyses, claims to demonstrate that, by means of capitalist democracy, it would be possible to attain socialism through a legal evolution and without any need for revolutionary acts. For unions there was never a question of either evolution or revolution, still less of socialism. Unions go no further than attempting to obtain, for the exploited worker, conditions of labor which are less intolerable and less humiliating, but also, as time has demonstrated, more profitable for capital. In spite of this limitation the early unions were organs which, if not revolutionary, at least had a working class spirit and a sound composition compared to the corruption and false class character of today’s unions.

Attempts to “change” unions are futile even from a practical point of view. In most countries workers are no longer in unions. Even if they still carry a union card in their pocket, whether voluntarily or because the law forces them to do so, the suspicion and disgust they feel for unions is no less strong. In countries which have had the most extensive experience with unions, workers have recourse to unions only if they feel that their “rights” under capitalist law are being flagrantly violated. This is a tedious formality but necessary, on the same level as going to the police when something is stolen. But everyone knows it is useless to go to unions to get something outside the limits of capitalist “law” because unions are a part of that law. Consequently, we see, in many cases, a decline in the number of union members and a general desertion from union meetings by the majority of workers. Unions, having a bureaucratic and legal life of their own, merely use the working class as a docile mass to manipulate in order to Increase their own power as a legal institution in our society. Unions and working people have completely different daily lives and motivations. Any ”tactical” work within unions, even if guided by the purest intentions, will impede the self-activity of the exploited class, destroying their fighting spirit and barring the way to revolutionary activity.     http://libcom.org/library/unions-against-revolution-g-munis

above AFL Yellow Boss Richard Trumka and the Obamagoge

Private Sector Unions Help fund Fight vs Public Sector Unions Backed with millions of dollars in contributions from business, the Committee to Save New York has been Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most important ally in his battles with public-sector unions over government spending, pensions and teacher accountability.  ..the committee turns out to have another source of money: a group of building trade unions who contributed $500,000 last year. Their decision to back Mr. Cuomo — and help finance an offensive against their public-sector brethren — illuminates a deepening fissure in the labor movement.    www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/nyregion/union-donations-to-business-group-show-fracture-in-labor-movement.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Grab Your Wallets Nissan Workers, and hide your children, here comes the UAW and NAACP The United Auto Workers is stepping up its effort to organize Nissan Motor Co., taking the unusual step of playing workers at the company’s factory in Canton, Miss., against their higher-paid counterparts at the company’s plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
The UAW has been holding meetings with small groups of Nissan workers in Mississippi since the end of last year, when The Detroit News first reported that union leaders had picked the Japanese automaker as the target of their much-publicized campaign to organize a foreign car company on U.S. soil.
In these discussions, union organizers have been pointing out that Nissan workers in Mississippi make about $1.50 an hour less than their counterparts at Nissan’s factory in Tennessee. They have also been pointing out that most of the workers in Tennessee are white, while most of the Nissan workers in Mississippi are black. Organizers are accusing the automaker of racial bias and telling workers the only way to fight it is to organize.
It’s a charge Nissan denies, but it is winning the UAW a powerful ally. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has joined the union in criticizing Nissan for what it says are attempts to intimidate Canton workers.   www.detroitnews.com/article/20120612/AUTO01/206120328/UAW-steps-up-organizing-effort-Nissan?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

Emerging Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Flint and Detroit remain the most violent cities in the country, according to preliminary 2011 crime statistics released this week by the FBI.
Both cities saw a drop in overall violent crimes — murder, aggravated assaults, robberies and rapes — but Flint’s was negligible as it leapfrogged Detroit among cities with more than 100,000 people.
The decline in violent crimes for Detroit came despite an 11 percent increase in homicides, from 310 to 344, and marked at least the sixth year in which violent and property crimes decreased. Tens of thousands of city residents have left the city during that time.  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120614/METRO/206140385/

Russia’s Fascists Mimic America’s The Kremlin raised pressure on Russia’s opposition movement on Monday, searching the homes of several of its leading figures. The coordinated early-morning raids sent a new shudder through political circles preparing for another large demonstration in central Moscow on Tuesday.   www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/world/europe/russian-investigators-search-apartments-of-top-opposition-leaders.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120612

The Magical Mystery  Tour

Church Fights to Halt Sex Abuse Suits, While Opposing Contraception and Sex as Non-Exploitive Fun While the first criminal trial of a Roman Catholic church official accused of covering up child sexual abuse has drawn national attention to Philadelphia, the church has been quietly engaged in equally consequential battles over abuse, not in courtrooms but in state legislatures around the country.  The fights concern proposals to loosen statutes of limitations, which impose deadlines on when victims can bring civil suits or prosecutors can press charges. These time limits, set state by state, have held down the number of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against all kinds of people accused of child abuse — not just clergy members, but also teachers, youth counselors and family members accused of incest.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/us/sex-abuse-statutes-of-limitation-stir-battle.html?pagewanted=all

Spy Versus Spy

Below, Jonathan Pollard who Spied on the US for Israel

Dick Stolzt CIA Agent Who did, exactly What? As a young CIA officer, Mr. Stolz specialized in Soviet operations and served postings overseas in Italy, West Germany, Turkey and Bulgaria.
He was serving as chief of station in Moscow under State Department cover in 1965 when he was declared “persona non grata” by Russian authorities. He was accused of espionage and kicked out of the country during a series of tit-for-tat spy expulsions between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
His dismissal made front-page news of The Post and the New York Times. It also gained notice at the CIA. To be “PNGed,” as it is known in spy parlance, is a badge of distinction inside the halls of Langley.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dick-stolz-cias-top-spymaster-dies-at-86/2012/06/12/gJQAHEMdYV_story.html

So Long

Teofilo Stevenson “No, I will not leave my country for one million dollars or for much more than that,” Stevenson was quoted as saying by Sports Illustrated in 1974 in an article headlined “He’d Rather Be Red Than Rich.”
“What is a million dollars,” he added, “against eight million Cubans who love me?”  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/sports/teofilo-stevenson-cuban-boxing-great-dead-at-60.html

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