Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Build International Support for the Chicago Strike Against the Barbarous US Ruling Class Cars were parked two deep at the CTU Strike Headquarters as delegates and strike captains picked up the signs and information for their schools. It was September 8, 2012, less than 48 hours from the beginning of the first strike by the Chicago Teachers Union in a quarter century. Almost every vehicle that drove by on Ashland Ave. honked in solidarity.
The abundance of press could not overshadow the red sea of folks waiting for signs, strings and shirts.  http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3575&section=Article

Lufthansa on Strike Lufthansa flight attendants walked off the job for eight hours on Friday at the Frankfurt airport, causing the cancellation of more than 220 flights. Their union warned of more stoppages unless the airline gave in to its demands. Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, said it canceled more than 220 short- and medium-haul flights from and to Frankfurt, including routes across Europe, after about 1,000 cabin crew members went on strike. A small number of long-haul flights were canceled as well, among them services to and from New York, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Seattle. An airline spokesman, Klaus Walther, accused the union of putting its demands “on the back of the customers.” The union called the strike after 13 months of negotiations for higher pay and guarantees on conditions failed to produce an agreement.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/business/global/strike-by-lufthansa-attendants-grounds-flights.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Miners to Criminal Killers of Mandella Regime: Raised Finger A militant union refused to sign a peace deal with the platinum company Lonmin on Thursday, undermining government-backed efforts to open pay talks and end a four-week strike scarred by deadly violence. Though Lonmin signed the accord with the National Union of Mineworkers and other labor groups, representatives of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union declined to accept the deal. Miners affiliated with the A.M.C.U. at the Marikana platinum mine, where the police killed 34 strikers last month, said they were not interested in a deal that failed to include a wage increase to $1,500 a month, double what they now earn.   www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/world/africa/south-africa-union-snubs-a-deal.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Congratulations on the Publication of

Hey Obamagogue! Free Bradley Manning and Jail your War Criminals! On the day of President Obama’s DNC nomination acceptance speech, protesters in 34 cities acoss the United States targeted local Obama campaign headquarters to demand the President free accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower and Nobel Peace Prize nominee PFC Bradley Manning. International supporters, in Australia and the U.K., also protested at U.S. embassies.
In each city, supporters delivered a letter to the campaign, outlining their demands. The letter called on President Obama to release Bradley Manning and account for the abusive treatment he endured in the Quantico Marine Brig.  http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/releases/nationwide-protests-at-obama-campaign-offices-for-pfc-bradley-manning

UMass: Rehire Professor Madeloni (petition)  We are writing to express grave concern about the non-renewal of Professor Barbara Madeloni from her position as Director of the Secondary Teacher Education Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education.   www.change.org/petitions/university-of-massachusetts-at-amherst-rehire-professor-madeloni-and-protect-academic-freedom-2

The Little Red Schoolhouse

California Gutting Colleges (the six year degree and then what?)  With state budget cuts forcing California’s public universities to shrink their course offerings, earning a bachelor’s degree in four years is becoming even more difficult for many students.
“One winter quarter, there were so few classes, I could only get three out of five offered,” said David Allison, a senior at California State University San Bernardino. “CSU is no longer a four-year institution. It’s more like a five- or six-year institution.”
As the fall semester gets under way, students at the University of California, the California State University and California Community Colleges are feeling the pinch of $2.5 billion in cuts to the state’s public higher education budget over the past three years.  ..Referendum opponents, however, say Brown is using the threat of more higher education cuts as a stick to get support for the tax plan. If Brown wanted to fund higher education, he could reform public pensions and drop expensive projects like the bullet train, said Aaron McLear, spokesman for Californians for Reforms and Jobs, Not Taxes.
“He’s using students as a pawn,” McLear said.
Tuition at CSU and UC has roughly doubled over the past five years. Students at UC, which serves 220,000 students at 10 campuses, pay $13,202 in tuition and fees. At CSU, which has 425,000 students across its 23 campuses, tuition and fees run $7,017.
The state’s 112 community colleges have seen tuition and fees soar 77 percent over the past three years, to about $1,500 a year for a fulltime student.
At the same time, professors have been laid off, the number of classes reduced and admissions curtailed.
Enrollment at the state’s community colleges has plunged from 2.9 million in 2008 to 2.4 million in 2011. This fall, 470,000 students are on waitlists for courses, the chancellor’s office said.
CSU, meanwhile, closed the door on most admissions for the spring semester, shutting out 16,000 students.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/01/calif-students-face-rocky-path-to-graduation/

Legislator Dumps Bill Calif TA spent Millions on Education advocates Friday hailed the eleventh-hour defeat of controversial efforts to rewrite state rules on teacher evaluations that they said would have weakened initiatives in Los Angeles and elsewhere to improve the quality of public school instructors.
Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar) had revived a long-dormant bill, AB 5, in the last few weeks of the legislative session to push forward his plan for a statewide uniform teacher evaluation system featuring more performance reviews, classroom observations, training of evaluators and public input into the review process.
But the bill, supported by the powerful California Teachers Assn., attracted a firestorm of criticism over the costs to financially strapped districts and the requirement to negotiate with unions every element of evaluations, including the use of state standardized test scores. Teachers unions have vociferously argued that test scores are too unreliable for use in key personnel decisions.  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teacher-eval-bill-20120901,0,7899998.story

800 Detroit Teachers Still Laid off and Hundreds More will Never get a Job Back. DFTdoes 0. www.detroitnews.com/article/20120828/SCHOOLS/208280401/1026/DPS-recalls-2-500-teachers-start-school

Child Abusers Celebrate! Test Scores Up California students continued making strides on standardized English and math tests based on results released Friday, but less than half of the students in Los Angeles are performing at grade level.
In all, 57% of California students scored as proficient or better in English and 51% scored that high in math. In the L.A. Unified School District, those numbers were 48% in English and 45% in math.
“The good news has been the steady progress despite the chaos of budget cuts,” state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said. “California has gone from having only one student in three score proficient, to better than one student in two — 900,000 more students than in 2003. This is not anything to rest upon, but it is a considerable measure of progress. We’re headed in the right direction.”  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0901-test-scores-2-20120901,0,2042992.story

NEA’S $465,000 a Year Loves “Don’t Back Down,”–tears flow “I didn’t really think I would like it but I did,” Van Roekel said. “It’s a great movie. It made me cry three times.”  http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/247785-teachers-unions-differ-on-approach-to-controversial-education-film

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

September 8th, Anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad

CFR and Alex Cooley on the New Great Game in Central Asia (three powers and many states–video) www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/audio-video/foreign-affairs-focus-alexander-cooley-on-the-new-great-game-in?cid=nlc-this_week_on_foreignaffairs_co-090612-foreign_affairs_focus_alexande_4-090612

Handing Off the Afghan War to? The senior commander for Special Operations forces in Afghanistan has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until the more than 27,000 Afghan troops working with his command can be re-vetted for ties to the insurgency.
The move comes as NATO officials struggle to stem the tide of attacks on NATO forces by their Afghan colleagues. The attacks, which have killed 45 troops this year, have forced NATO officials to acknowledge a painful truth: Many of the incidents might have been prevented if existing security measures had been applied correctly.

Charge of a Lighter Brigade Taliban suicide bombers staged what appeared to be a carefully coordinated attack southwest of Kabul on Saturday that killed at least a dozen Afghans and wounded 58 more just outside the same American military outpost where a similar attack one year ago wounded scores of American soldiers.  …The attack on Saturday unfolded at daybreak in Sayed Abad, 45 miles from the capital. First a man wearing a suicide vest charged toward the base and a local police headquarters on foot, firing his Kalashnikov before blowing himself up. He did little damage, but his true purpose, officials later said, was to sow confusion and draw attention away from the bigger danger lurking nearby: Another suicide bomber driving a truck hauling a huge cache of explosives.
Moments after that first explosion, the truck driver sped toward the base, for some reason stopping just short of it in the midst of a crowd shopping at a bazaar. There, he detonated his payload,    www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/world/asia/us-base-in-afghanistan-target-of-fatal-bomb-attacks.html?ref=global-home

Marines invade Guatemala, Again It was 50 years ago when the U.S. military last sent any significant aid and equipment into Guatemala, establishing a base to support counter-insurgency efforts during a guerrilla uprising. That movement led to 36 years of war that left 200,000 dead, mostly indigent Maya farmers. The U.S. pulled out in 1978….A team of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala’s western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.   www.military.com/daily-news/2012/08/30/200-marines-join-anti-drug-effort-in-guatemala.html

Mystic and Mandellaite Apologist (what dead miners) Targets Bush and Blair (a bit late) South African Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu has called for the trial of former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for their role in the Iraq war.
“The immorality of the United States and Great Britain’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilized and polarized the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in an article in The Observer on Sunday.   www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/09/02/259483/tutu-calls-for-the-trial-of-blair-bush/

Americans, Still Writhing in Post-shopping Hysteria, don’t notice War Dead Nearly every day the Pentagon posts another formulaic death notice, each one brief and unadorned, revealing the barest of facts – name, age and military unit – but no words that might capture the meaning of the loss.  ..American troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a pace that doesn’t often register beyond their hometowns. So far this year, it’s 31 a month on average, or one per day. National attention is drawn, briefly, to grim and arbitrary milestones such as the 1,000th and 2,000th war deaths. But days, weeks and months pass with little focus by the general public or its political leaders on the individuals behind the statistics.
Each week at war has a certain sameness for those not fighting it, yet every week brings distinct pain and sorrow to the families who learn that their son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother was killed or wounded.  http://www.freep.com/article/20120908/NEWS06/120908015/U-S-flags-ordered-at-half-staff-for-fallen-Michigan-soldier?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Poor Afghanistan–Underground Riches Await whoever Kills Best If there is a road to a happy ending in Afghanistan, much of the path may run underground: in the trillion-dollar reservoir of natural resources — oil, gold, iron ore, copper, lithium and other minerals — that has brought hopes of a more self-sufficient country, if only the wealth can be wrested from blood-soaked soil. But the wealth has inspired darker dreams as well. Officials and industry experts say the potential resource boom seems increasingly imperiled by corruption, violence and intrigue, and has put the Afghan government’s vulnerabilities on display.
It all comes at what is already a critically uncertain time here, with the impending departure of NATO troops in 2014 and old regional and ethnic rivalries resurfacing, raising concerns that the mineral wealth could become the fuel for civil conflict.
Powerful regional warlords and militant leaders are jockeying to widen their turf to include areas with mineral wealth, and the Taliban have begun to make murderous incursions into territory where development is planned. In the capital, Kabul, factional maneuvering is in full swing, including disputes over lucrative side contracts awarded to relatives of President Hamid Karzai. ..Already this summer, the China National Petroleum Corporation, in partnership with a company controlled by relatives of President Karzai, began pumping oil from the Amu Darya field in the north. An investment consortium arranged by JPMorgan Chase is mining gold. Another Chinese company is trying to develop a huge copper mine. Four copper and gold contracts are being tendered, and contracts for rare earth metals could be offered soon.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/world/asia/afghans-wary-as-efforts-pick-up-to-tap-mineral-riches.html?ref=global-home

Holy Crap! The CIA Initiated Haqqanis are Terrorists Now! The State Department on Friday designated Pakistan’s Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization, opening the way for the use of new tools to thwart a complex enemy that has attacked American troops and Afghan civilians while operating much like an organized crime family.
The move by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came after lengthy debate within the Obama administration, with some officials worried that the designation would make it harder to negotiate a peace settlement with the Haqqanis and their Taliban allies. But negotiations have gone nowhere, and the CIA has been launching drone strikes at Haqqani targets, including an attack last  month that killed Badruddin Haqqani, son of the group’s leader and a member of its governing council.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-haqqani-terrorism-20120908,0,6473293.story

above Jalaluddin Haqqani

Who Lost Bahrain Harsh jail terms upheld this week for 13 Bahraini activists marked a setback to the Obama administration’s hope that the Sunni Muslim monarchy was ready to settle its bloody conflict with the country’s restless Shiite majority. It wasn’t the first time Washington has been disappointed.
In the 18 months since the tiny but strategically vital Persian Gulf ally exploded in street protests, the administration has repeatedly pinned its hope on moves by the monarchy that appeared promising but soon fell short.  ..”The Arab world can’t take seriously American claims that it cares about human rights in Syria when it is not doing more in Bahrain,” said Matar Matar, a former legislator with Wefaq, the leading opposition party.   www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-us-bahrain-20120908,0,1421171.story

In Post-apocalypse Detroit, Thousands Celebrate War Spectacles When James “Uncle Mussa” Henderson-El was growing up, he remembers looking up to his older brother, who was in the Navy and stationed in Boston.
On Saturday, he brought his great-nieces, 10-year-old Taylor Jones and 5-year-old Che’la Daniels, both of Eastpointe, to the downtown riverfront for Navy Week, a celebration along the Detroit River to mark the bicentennial celebration of the War of 1812.
“I was hoping we could tour the ships,” the Detroiter said.
Added Taylor, “and we wanted to thank the Navy for doing their jobs.”
Thousands were expected to visit the downtown riverfront this weekend for a chance to explore four military ships that have been docked near the Renaissance Center and to meet members of the Navy   www.detroitnews.com/article/20120908/METRO01/209080377/Navy-ships-docked-Detroit-draw-crowds-compliments?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

It’s Not Just the Jobs, Stupid, it’s the Death Rattle of the Empire The nation added 96,000 jobs in August, compared with a revised figure of 141,000 in July and well below the 125,000 level economists had expected. Over the last six months, job growth has averaged 97,000 a month, typically not enough to absorb new entrants to the labor force, let alone cut the unemployment rate significantly.
“This is one of those reports that as you dig deeper, it looks less friendly,” said Ethan Harris, chief United States economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The improvement in the rate was purely due to people who gave up looking for jobs.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/business/economy/us-added-96000-jobs-in-august-rate-fell-to-8-1.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120908

Come Back Ho, and Shoot them The daughter of a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s Politburo, the country’s most powerful political body, Ms. Huong had only days before been appointed the head of a state-owned construction company. Commentators on the Internet expressed outrage that someone so young — she is reported to be 24 — held such a senior corporate post.
“Taking a little girl who just graduated from journalism school and making her the director general of a construction company is no different than making a one-legged man a soccer goalie,” read a comment on Pham Viet Dao, a popular blog by a Vietnamese writer of the same name. “Sorry to say — this is so stupid.”
Like the Communist Party leaders in China, Vietnam’s political mandarins are struggling to reconcile their party’s message of social justice and equality with the realities of an elite awash in wealth and privilege. The yawning divide between rural poverty and urban wealth has become especially jarring, now that a decade of breakneck growth has come to an end, dimming the prospects for the poor and middle class to fight their way up the social ladder.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/world/asia/in-vietnam-message-of-equality-challenged-by-wealth-gap.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Rich Palm Beach FLA has no Money For Teachers? Palm Beach County School District officials came with a detailed explanation Thursday of why they can’t afford the six pay increases union officials say the district’s roughly 12,000 teachers deserve over the next year to make them whole.
But the district did not come bearing a salary proposal of its own, and a frustrated teachers union said that simply wasn’t good enough.
“You need to go back to the (school) board and tell them to make some kind of a proposal a priority,” said Brian Phillips, chief negotiator for the the Classroom Teachers Association. “The delay tactics are not going to work for us.”
The two sides spent most of Thursday’s bargaining session arguing over whether the school district’s budget woes are really as bad as they claim. The union has asked for teachers to receive up to six pay increases over the next year, depending on how long they have worked for the district.   wap.pbpost.com/post/pm_116959/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=Yrrpm0kj

Another Reason to Shoot them Ho: Scientology Cures Agent Orange The Vietnamese government is treating some people exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed by American troops during the Vietnam War, using a detoxification method developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology, according to doctors involved in the program.   www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/world/asia/agent-orange-victims-in-vietnam-get-scientology-treatment.html

1 in 2 New Grads Unemployed or Underemployed The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.
A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor’s degrees.news.yahoo.com/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html

A Booming Industry—food stamps Food-stamp use reached a record 46.7 million people in June, the government said, as Democrats prepare to nominate President Barack Obama for a second term with the economy as a chief issue in the campaign.   Today’s report shows the two most populous states, California and Texas, had the most recipients. California was tops with 4.012 million, a 0.8 percent gain from the previous month and 7.3 percent more than the previous year. Texas was in second place, while down 0.4 percent from the previous month and 1.4 percent lower than a year earlier. …About 47 percent of recipients are children, and 8 percent are elderly, according to the USDA. About half of all new recipients leave the program within 10 months.   www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-04/food-stamp-use-climbed-to-record-46-7-million-in-june-u-s-says.html

Knowledge as Commodity–Price Fixing Publishers A federal court Thursday approved a settlement between the Justice Department and three of the country’s largest publishers, who were accused of colluding to fix prices for e-books. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers and Simon & Schuster were alleged to have conspired with Apple Inc. to control the price of e-books sold online as part of a larger effort to end Amazon’s online dominance.
The two elements of wrongdoing alleged in the case — publishing competitors conspiring to limit competition in the e-book market, and fixing the retail price — are a sign of an industry grappling with disruptive change.
“Here is an example of what I would call a desperate last stand by publishers to protect themselves against a paradigm shift in publishing — and they failed,” said Jonathan Kirsch, a Los Angeles-based author and publishing attorney.  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-fi-ct-ebooks-20120908,0,6942340.story

Spectacles! The NFL Opens! Scabs! Felon Drug addled concussed dog Killers! And Publicly Financed Stadiums full of hysterical Fans in Team Uniforms New York Giants fans will cheer on their team against the Dallas Cowboys at tonight’s National Football League opener in New Jersey. At tax time, they’ll help pay for the opponents’ $1.2 billion home field in Texas.  That’s because the 80,000-seat Cowboys Stadium was built partly using tax-free borrowing by the City of Arlington. The resulting subsidy comes out of the pockets of every American taxpayer, including Giants fans. The money doesn’t go directly to the Cowboys’ billionaire owner Jerry Jones. Rather, it lowers the cost of financing, giving his team the highest revenue in the NFL and making it the league’s most-valuable franchise.
“It’s part of the corruption of the federal tax system,” said James Runzheimer, 67, an Arlington lawyer who led opponents of public borrowing for the structure known locally as “Jerry’s World.” “It’s use of government funds to subsidize activity that the private sector can finance on its own.”
Jones is one of dozens of wealthy owners whose big-league teams benefit from millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. Michael Jordan’s Charlotte, North Carolina, Bobcats basketball team plays in a municipal bond-financed stadium, the Time Warner Cable Arena, where the Democratic Party is meeting this week. The Republicans last week used Florida’s Tampa Bay Times Forum, also financed with tax-exempt debt. It is the home of hockey’s Lightning, owned by hedge-fund manager Jeffrey Vinik. None of the owners who responded would comment.  …Tax exemptions on interest paid by muni bonds that were issued for sports structures cost the U.S. Treasury $146 million a year, based on data compiled by Bloomberg on 2,700 securities. Over the life of the $17 billion of exempt debt issued to build stadiums since 1986, the last of which matures in 2047, taxpayer subsidies to bondholders will total $4 billion, the data show.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-05/in-stadium-building-spree-u-s-taxpayers-lose-4-billion.html

Fascism Emerging as a Popular Mass Movement

Mass Murderer Mexico Boss and US “Scholar” to get Immunity? A former Mexican president who is now a scholar at Yale University should be immune from a civil lawsuit brought against him in the United States in connection with a 1997 massacre during his term, the State Department said Friday.  …The State Department said Mr. Zedillo should have immunity because the suit, filed in federal court in Connecticut, concerned actions taken in his official capacity, which generally allow heads of state freedom from the hook of American courts. The filing noted that the Mexican government had asked that immunity be granted…The lawsuit, which alleges war crimes and crimes against humanity, has generated speculation in Mexico that it has more to do with settling political scores; Mr. Zedillo is abhorred by some members of his party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, for allowing reforms that contributed to its downfall in 2000.
The suit was filed by 10 anonymous people who said they were survivors of a 1997 assault by paramilitary groups on the village of Acteal in Chiapas State during a conflict between Indian guerrillas known as Zapatistas and the government. Lawyers have said the plaintiffs are anonymous because they fear reprisals.
The plaintiffs said they were members of Las Abejas, or the Bees, who were sympathetic to the Zapatistas and had sought refuge in Acteal when it came under attack by vigilantes allied with the ruling party. In the end, 45 people, including 18 children, were killed.   www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/world/americas/us-moves-to-grant-former-mexican-president-immunity-in-suit.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Empire of Torture Just days after Attorney General Holder announced a formal decision of impunity resulting from a probe into 101 documented cases in which CIA agents engaged in acts of torture and abuse in apparent violation of CIA guidelines—including those approving torture—further explosive allegations have emerged that lay bare the scope of CIA cooperation with abusive regimes in the era before the Arab Spring. Drawing on interviews with Libyan prisoners previously held by the CIA in black-site facilities, as well as a large cache of secret documents that turned up when rebels seized Qaddafi’s state security offices last year, Human Rights Watch has issued a 156-page report (PDF) that meticulously documents a George W. Bush–era CIA program of torture, including waterboarding, in careful collaboration with former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Among the report’s key findings: harpers.org/archive/2012/09/hbc-90008846

Gropenfuhrer’s Deal For Pal’s Son Reprehensible but Legal Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acted within his constitutional bounds when he reduced the sentence of the son of a political ally convicted in a fatal brawl near San Diego State University, a Sacramento County judge determined Friday.
Judge Lloyd Connelly called Schwarzenegger’s decision “repugnant to the bulk of the citizenry of this state,” but within his executive powers as governor.   www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/07/judge-sides-schwarzenegger-sd-clemency-case/

There Goes the Pilots Contract The AMR Corporation’s American Airlines won court approval Tuesday to throw out its labor agreement with pilots, ending a dispute with the only union it had failed to reach a deal with on concessions as it goes through bankruptcy reorganization.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/business/judge-allows-amr-to-reject-pilot-contract.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Solidarity Fornever

Detroit Fed of Teachers Insane Profit Sharing Plan The Detroit Public Schools, the DFT and other school unions have reached an agreement on a shared savings bonus program covering the district’s 2011-12 and 2012-13 fiscal years.
The program will provide for a one-time bonus to employees if the district’s general fund financial performance meets a pre-determined target.
Specific details of the agreement in principle are as follows:
For each $5 million of general fund operating surplus that the District generates for the end of the FY ended June 30, 2012, and the FY ending June 30, 2  http://mi.aft.org/dft231/

Merit Pay Arrives via Chicago City College “union” City Colleges of Chicago teachers will get a 10 percent pay raise over five years, phase out step increases for experience and phase in merit pay based on student outcomes, under a proposed contract announced Saturday. City Colleges Chancellor Cheryl Hyman and Perry Buckley, president of Cook County Teachers Union Local 1600, announced that the two sides had reached the agreement 10 months before the current contract expires. The pact still must be formally voted on by City Colleges trustees Sept. 13.
Under the agreement, the 600 faculty members will accept a pay freeze during the first year of the five-year agreement and get 2.5 percent increases for each of the four years after that. The first year of the agreement will be the final year for step increases, which amount to anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 per employee, depending on seniority.
More than 72 percent of faculty members voted “yes” and more than 80 percent of professionals affiliated with the school voted “yes,” the union said.
“This agreement represents what’s best for not only the faculty and professionals; it’s what’s best for the students and taxpayers,” Buckley said.
The agreement also includes up to one percent of salary per year to be awarded as student success pay — essentially rewarding faculty for increases in student outcomes.  http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/14875966-418/city-colleges-faculty-administrators-reach-tentative-agreement.html

Teacher “Unions” Leap at Online Charters An online charter school in western Pennsylvania claims to have made virtual education history three years ago by becoming what is thought to be the first cyber charter school in the nation—and the only one to date—to unionize. In June 2009, teachers at the PA Learners Online Regional Cyber Charter School voted 42-14 to have the Pennsylvania State Education Association represent 76 teachers, counselors, and other employees.
Those involved in making that happen say the move could signal the start of a different kind of relationship between teachers’ unions and virtual education, one that, despite continuing concerns over how online schools are managed, results in more collaboration.
“As an association, as a union, our job is to do what we can for students, so we’re going to continue to attempt to organize school workers, wherever they are,” said Mike Crossey, the president of the PSEA, an affiliate of…  http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/08/29/02el-unions.h32.html

Lots of Minnesota EA Hacks in $100,000 Club (and happy to sell labor peace at any price) It may be a challenging time to be a teacher, but it’s apparently a great time to work for the Minnesota teachers’ union. According to a report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, 49 Education Minnesota staffers and three elected officers were paid more than $100,000 in fiscal year 2011.
In fact, 30 of those staff members (and all three officers) have higher salaries than the state Education Commissioner. The compensation details were included in the union’s Labor Organization Annual Report (“Form LM-2”), a legally required filing for any union with more than $250,000 in annual receipts.
Among those collecting $100,000+ are the union’s chief lobbyist, public affairs and communications personnel, and more than 20 field staff. At the top of the pay scale is Education Minnesota president Tom Dooher, collecting a salary of $168,530 (his total pay, including other disbursements, is $190,942).    http://www.startribune.com/local/yourvoices/168808736.html

Spy Versus Spy

The CIA in Mexico, as Numerous as Afghanistan? The DEA has been linked to excessive violence in Latin America—and the involvement of the military, and now the CIA, is also suspected. “Of course many of these operations are taking place, and of course they are bypassing the legal framework in doing so,” says Columbia University security expert Edgardo Buscaglia. “The expansion of the US presence within Mexican soil is unprecedented. We are reaching levels—not in terms of soldiers but in terms of American intelligence—that are close to Afghanistan.”  http://www.thefix.com/content/mexico-cia-drug-war90565

Cops Inside Occupy Austin Ghost Dance undercover Austin police officers infiltrated local Occupy gatherings and strategy sessions to gather intelligence, a newspaper has reported.
At least three officers marched with Occupy Austin, camped with participants and attended strategy meetings, The Austin American-Statesman reported on Aug. 31. Police officials up to Chief Art Acevedo approved the undercover officers, according to court documents.
Officials confirmed to the newspaper that the officers were used, but declined to comment on whether at least one of the officers helped plan and make “lockboxes” — devices that allow protesters to tie themselves together and are generally used to make it difficult for police to break up human chains during protests.  http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/police-went-under-cover-to-infiltrate-occupy-austin?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FirstAmendmentCenter+%28First+Amendment+Center%29

Yes, They Really Are Watching A federal officer was watching passengers at Sacramento International Airport on Wednesday when one caught his eye.
A young man in line, unshaven and carrying a backpack, apparently looked suspicious.
The officer was not a typical Transportation Security Administration screener. He was a specially trained Behavior Detection Officer. BDOs work in the agency’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program (SPOT) and are trained to study a person’s face and body language for hints of his mental state.
They roam all parts of the airport, including curbside.
“Officers are screening travelers for involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered,” the TSA says on its website.   www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/31/164552/roaming-airport-screeners-look.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Catholic Friar: “Those Kids Keep Seducing us!” [Interviewer]: Part of your work here at Trinity has been working with priests involved in abuse, no?
[Father Groeschel]: A little bit, yes; but you know, in those cases, they have to leave. And some of them profoundly — profoundly — penitential, horrified. People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that’s not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.
[Interviewer]: Why would that be?
[Father Greoschel] [sic]: Well, it’s not so hard to see — a kid looking for a father and didn’t have his own — and they won’t be planning to get into heavy-duty sex, but almost romantic, embracing, kissing, perhaps sleeping but not having intercourse or anything like that. It’s an understandable thing, and you know where you find it, among other clergy or important people; you look at teachers, attorneys, judges, social workers.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HSlbuli7HM&feature=related

Moon Down (sell more flowers)   The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean evangelist, businessman and self-proclaimed messiah who built a religious movement notable for its mass weddings, fresh-faced proselytizers and links to vast commercial interests, died on Monday in Gapyeong, South Korea. He was 92… in the late 1990s, after financial losses, defections and stagnant growth in the church’s membership, he turned on America, branding it a repository of immorality — he called it “Satan’s harvest” — and repositioned his movement as a crusade for moral values.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/world/asia/rev-sun-myung-moon-founder-of-unification-church-dies-at-92.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8Emk7L32Ag

God (or maybe the AntiChrist) Rejoins Democrats The drama occurred in the first moments of the convention proceedings Wednesday night, when Democratic officials reinserted language back into the official platform invoking God and affirming the role of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
Both passages had been in the 2008 version of the Democratic platform, but were removed in the drafting of this year’s edition.
President Obama personally had a hand in getting the language reinstated.
A Democratic official says the president was unhappy about the platform changes when he heard about them.
He told his staff to convey his opposition right away, which set the wheels in motion to reinstate.
On the “God” part, the official said, his response to hearing it was, “Why was it changed in the first place?
But putting the passages back in the platform — a move Democratic officials appeared to think would go smoothly — caused loud objections in the convention hall.  http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-dnc-obama-god-jerusalem-20120905,0,3260786.story

Catholic Bishop Convicted in December 2010, Bishop Finn got some disturbing news: Father Ratigan had just tried to commit suicide by running his motorcycle in a closed garage. The day before, a computer technician had discovered sexually explicit photographs of young girls on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including one of a toddler with her diaper pulled away to expose her genitals.
The decisions that Bishop Finn and his second-in-command in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Msgr. Robert Murphy, made about Father Ratigan over the next five months ultimately led to the conviction of the bishop in circuit court on Thursday on one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse. It was the first time a Catholic bishop in the United States had been held accountable in criminal court in the nearly three decades since the priest sexual abuse scandals first came to light.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/us/in-pedophile-case-church-failed-to-stop-priest.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120908

Mr Cruise! Really! Get out of that Closet! The Church of Scientology and Tom Cruise are certainly laboring this holiday weekend.
An explosive new report contends the organization auditioned potential brides for Cruise following his 2001 split from Nicole Kidman — one that’s been backed up by a famous detractor of the religion.
On Saturday, Vanity Fair magazine released a cover story titled “What Katie Didn’t Know,” an expose claiming an effort on the part of the church to find and vet partners for Cruise, a title that eventually went to his now ex-wife Katie Holmes.
Reportedly executed by Scientology leader David Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, the search for a new bride began in 2004 (presumably after Cruise’s split from his “Vanilla Sky” costar Penelope Cruz), with an objective to find an eligible actress in the congregation.   www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-tom-cruise-scientology-wife-audition-haggis,0,3843713.story

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Biden’s Secret Service Truck Stolen in Detroit A truck rented by the Secret Service carrying equipment for Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to the state on Monday was stolen outside a Detroit hotel, the Secret Service said late Sunday.
Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said the U-Haul truck was stolen outside the Westin Book Cadillac hotel at Washington and Michigan in downtown Detroit late Saturday or early Sunday. He said the truck carried Secret Service property, but no weapons that could have put the public at risk.  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120902/METRO01/209020351/Secret-Service-truck-stolen-downtown-Detroit?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/picture-perfect-ending-marine-park-photog-scrambles-find-mystery-handcuffed-couple-hollywood-interest-photo-pair-article-1.1153656?localLinksEnabled=false

Weird Sting of the Week (“Hey,  I was just happy to see them!”) William Howell Masters III, 60, of South Hampton, N.Y. Masters, the son of sex research pioneer Dr. William H. Masters, has been charged with exposing himself to a sheriff’s deputy and another woman who were posing as recreational kayakers as part of a sting operation on a Michigan river. Huron County Sheriff Kelly Hanson says a completely nude Masters yelled for the women’s attention Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, then made obscene gestures  http://www.freep.com/article/20120905/NEWS01/120905095/Sex-researcher-s-son-charged-with-exposing-self?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE