Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Time For Change
Letter to the Editor | IDS

On Friday, Feb. 22, the Indiana Daily Student ran bold headlines about the forced merger of the journalism school with the telecommunications department and the College of Arts and Sciences program.

In smaller print, an even bolder statement was made by the editor-in-chief of the IDS, Michael Auslen.

“In the past, we may have been complacent. We’ve let opportunities to question decisions by administrators and trustees pass us by.

“That stops today.”

The Board of Trustees has pushed through unwanted mergers, raises in top administrative pay, layoffs for staff, never-ending tuition hikes and an agenda that swaps faculty control of curricula in for standardized micromanagement.

We have watched, waited and hoped that McRobbie & Co. would change course, but we can’t sit idly by any more. We must speak up for ourselves — no one else will do it for us.

There is a new movement on campus — IU On Strike. We are organizing campus to push back against these mergers, cuts and tuition hikes. We are building a diverse coalition that includes faculty, staff, students and community members.

Whether you are upset over housing rate increases or the forced journalism school merger, we suggest you start organizing with like-minded people you know, right where you are.

IU On Strike will do all we can to help you.

We welcome Auslen and anyone else who is concerned about the direction IU is heading to join with us to blaze a new path, one that puts the needs of those most affected by changes first.

We must get together and work for change now because IU deserves better than this. Let’s take Auslen’s words seriously — it is time for change on campus.

We’ve got your back.
— IU On Strike   iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Hunger Strike at Gitmo The U.S. military said Friday that it had designated 14 captives at the Guantánamo detention center as “hunger strikers,” and that six of them were being force-fed through tubes in the first admission of a protest claimed by defense attorneys.

The acknowledgement came a day after 51 attorneys wrote Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel of their “urgent and grave concern about a mass hunger strike taking place at the prison, now in its second month.” They sought Hagel’s intervention in “a serious threat to the health and life of detainees.”

Navy Capt. Robert Durand, the prison spokesman, denied “a widespread phenomenon, as alleged.” But he said, for the first time after weeks of denial, that the number had surged to 14 from the five or six detainees who had for years been consider hunger strikers among the 166 captives at Guantánamo.

Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/15/186054/us-acknowledges-14-on-hunger-strike.html#storylink=cpy

Headline! American Colleges at the top Don’t Attract the Poor! Most low-income students who have top test scores and grades do not even apply to the nation’s best colleges, according to a new analysis of every high school student who took the SAT in a recent year.  The pattern contributes to widening economic inequality and low levels of mobility in this country, economists say, because college graduates earn so much more on average than nongraduates do. Low-income students who excel in high school often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they attend.

Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges, according to the analysis, conducted by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard, two longtime education researchers. Among top students in the highest income quartile, that figure was 78 percent.   www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/education/scholarly-poor-often-overlook-better-colleges.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130317

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Black Agenda Report on the RaTT, the Black Comprador Class, and Capitalist Schooling President Obama’s Race To The Top then, is the direct cause of our national wave of school closings and mass teacher firings from Philly to Atlanta and Los Angeles to Rhode Island. It was local implementation of Obama’s Race To The Top mandates that forced Chicago teachers out on strike last fall, and it’s reluctance to carry out these measures that now imperils education funding in cities as large as Las Vegas. ...What passes for black leadership these days, the descendants of the old line “civil rights” organizations are firmly on the corporate education reform bandwagon. Bill Gates, for example, delivered the 2011 keynote at the National Urban League’s annual meeting. The NAACP and similar outfits are no better, all preferring to do the bidding of their funders and their president, over the interests of ordinary black families and their children. Even teachers unions are handicapped. Unlike the Chicago Teachers Union most haven’t spent the last few years forging deep ties with organized forces in their school communities, and lack even a tradition of standing up for their own members they way labor unions ought to.   blackagendareport.com/content/obamas-race-top-drives-nationwide-wave-school-closings-teacher-firings

Following Union Concessions, San Diego School Bosses Ger Raises and Admin Hires The San Diego school board has boosted central-office personnel in recent months, raising salaries and adding jobs even as it prepared to sell off surplus property, increase class sizes and pare back its teaching force through attrition to help balance its budget.

The hiring follows years during which San Diego Unified School District officials said they took deep cuts in administration as a shared sacrifice to cope with the state’s fiscal crisis.
District officials say lean staffing levels have threatened day-to-day operations of the school system, making it necessary to add key positions.

Longtime parent advocate David Page said the added spending has raised widespread concerns.
“The board started spending before it announced its budget solutions. In a sense, they added to the deficit before they tried to close it,” said Page, director of advocacy for the local nonprofit UpforEd. “The response we get from parents is that they don’t like to see pay raises and new positions before they start seeing restoration of instructional days and programs at the school level.” www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/09/san-diego-unified-add-pay-staff-central-office/

Chicago’s Jihadist Byrd Bennet Bans/Unbans “Persepolis”

The book, recommended by the Young Adult Library Association as one of “100 Best Books of the Decade,” follows Satrapi’s life as a young girl-turned-adolescent in Iran following the Islamic Revolution and subsequent deposal of the Shah. Her parents are described as Western Marxists educated in France, where her book was originally published.

A film adaptation of Persepolis, released in 2007, was banned in Iran, a move that the author believes is due to the fact that the movie portrays women who do not wear hijabs and “because they fall in love.”

“It is too Western and it is un-Islamic and maybe anti-revolutionary,” she said in an interview.

“We’re trying to find out right now if this is CPS-wide or just Lane Tech,” said Steve Parsons, a teacher at Lane Tech.

“We haven’t been given a reason why.”    www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/15/chicago-public-school-bans-islamophobic-novel-and-now-parents-teachers-are-protesting/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK_XsZsc3ms

UC Bosses Continue to Dun Students For UC Illegalities For five years, all UC students have been paying a $60 annual fee to help the university finance massive refunds for past illegal tuition practices. As a result of a UC regents vote Thursday, that charge will continue for five more years.

The controversy began a decade ago when students in law, medical, nursing and other UC professional schools complained that they were being forced to pay fee increases despite promises in university brochures and websites that their education costs would not rise before graduation. Two groups of those students sued and in 2006 and 2010 won Superior Court cases, and later appeals, that led to 12,000 refunds — as much as $10,000 a person in some instances.   www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-surcharge-20130317,0,1078432.story

Arizona Judge Upholds Ban of Mexican American Studies An Arizona law that put an end to ethnic studies courses in Tucson schools has been largely upheld as constitutional by a federal judge, but supporters of the program say their legal fight to restore the program will continue.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Wallace Tashima on Friday found most of the law that bans public schools from teaching certain race-related courses, such as Mexican American studies, constitutional with one small exception. Tashima ruled that the portion of the law that prohibits courses designed for certain ethnic groups was unconstitutionally vague.

Tashima ruled that the provision’s wording was “broad and ambiguous,” raising serious constitutional concerns that threaten “to chill the teaching of legitimate and objective ethnic studies courses.”

Still, Arizona Atty. Gen. Tom Horne this week called the ruling on HB 2281 a “victory for ensuring that public education is not held captive to radical, political elements and that students treat each other as individuals — not on the basis of the race they were born into.”

Horne, who wrote the law, and those who support it said the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson school system promoted resentment toward a race or a class of people and advocated ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of people as individuals.

Defenders of the program rejected that characterization and said it taught often neglected aspects of U.S. history and inspired Latino students to excel in school.    www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ff-ethnic-studies-arizona-20130312,0,6256895.story

The People in this video are not protesting

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqjRySx2nK8

Speeding the Organized Decay of Capitalist Schooling, Moving College online Students locked out of overcrowded core courses at California’s state colleges and universities should instead be able to take those classes online, according to legislation introduced Wednesday in Sacramento — sending shock waves through academia nationwide.

The bill by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) calls for the development of 50 online classes as potential substitutes for the most oversubscribed lower division courses required for graduation at UC, Cal State and community colleges. In a controversial portion, the proposal would allow these classes to come from commercial providers or out-of-state colleges if their academic quality passes review by a panel of California faculty.    www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-online-credit-20130314,0,7068676.story

Saving Money On Standardized Tests by Prepping to Spend More Money on Bigger Tests A plan to suspend California’s standardized testing for certain grades while new computerized exams are developed could save $15 million, the state’s top education official said Wednesday.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson recommended to the state Board of Education that the savings be used instead to develop higher-quality tests linked to new uniform but voluntary academic standards. They have been adopted by 45 states, including California, which plans to roll them out in the 2014-15 school year.

The new standards are aimed at fostering more critical thinking, sophisticated writing and other higher-level skills.

“Rather than continuing to spend scarce dollars and precious class time on outdated testing, we can invest these resources in developing the next generation of assessments that will help students focus on critical thinking and problem-solving — the skills they will need in college and their careers,” Torlakson said in a statement.   latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/torlakson-state-tests.html

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Soon to be Nobel Winner Bradley Manning Speaks to the Court–real audio and a video too Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation is publishing the full, previously unreleased audio recording of Private First Class Bradley Manning’s speech to the military court in Ft. Meade about his motivations for leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks. In addition, we have published highlights from Manning’s statement to the court.

While unofficial transcripts of this statement are available, this marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning….By releasing this audio recording, we wish to make sure that the voice of this generation’s most prolific whistleblower can be heard—literally—by the world.
www.pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/03/fpf-publishes-leaked-audio-of-bradley-mannings-statement

Complaining about N. Korea but Targeting China, US Builds up Fake “Defense” System The United States will deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors along the Pacific Coast to increase the Pentagon’s ability to blunt a potential attack from North Korea, in a clear response to recent tests of nuclear weapons technology and long-range missiles by the North.  The new deployment will increase the number of ground-based interceptors to 44 from the 30 already based in California and Alaska. While the limited missile-defense system does not offer a 100 percent guarantee of knocking down a North Korean attack, the weapons send a signal of credible deterrence to the North’s limited intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal.

The Navy also recently bolstered its deployment of ballistic missile defense warships in waters off the Korean Peninsula, although the vessels were sent as part of an exercise even before an increase in caustic language from the North. As part of the Foal Eagle military exercise with South Korea, the Navy has four Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers in the region….The new interceptors are scheduled to be deployed by 2017, at an estimated cost of just under $1 billion.

Officials acknowledged that the ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California had shown dubious capabilities in tests, and said the additional interceptors would be deployed only when they had proved their capability. “We have confidence in our system,” Mr. Hagel said.    www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/asia/us-to-bolster-missile-defense-against-north-korea.html?ref=global-home

Obamagogue’s and the VA’s Treatment: Cannon Fodder Internal VA documents, obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting and authenticated by the agency, reveal that delays newly returning veterans face before receiving disability compensation and other benefits are far longer than the agency has publicly acknowledged. The documents also offer insight into some of the reasons for those delays.

The agency tracks and widely reports the average wait time: 273 days. But the internal data indicates that veterans filing their first claim, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, wait nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in America’s major population centers wait up to twice as long – 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles and 542 days in Chicago.

The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of Obama’s presidency, to 245,000 in December – an increase of more than 2,000 percent.    cironline.org/reports/va’s-ability-quickly-provide-benefits-plummets-under-obama-4241

Court Orders Limited Release of details of Obamagogues’ Death Squads from Above A federal appeals court held Friday that the Central Intelligence Agency must disclose, at least to a judge, a description of its records on drone strikes in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.  The 19-page opinion by Judge Merrick B. Garland rejected an effort by the Obama administration to keep secret any aspect of the C.I.A.’s interest in the use of drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects abroad.

It does not necessarily mean the contents of any of those records will ever be made public, and it stopped short of ordering the government to acknowledge publicly that the C.I.A. actually uses drones to carry out “targeted killings” against specific terrorism suspects or groups of unknown people who appear to be militants in places like tribal Pakistan. The Obama administration continues to treat that fact as a classified secret, though it has been widely reported.  …“as it is now clear that the agency does have an interest in drone strikes, it beggars belief that it does not also have documents relating to the subject.”

The C.I.A., in urging a District Court judge to dismiss the lawsuit, had argued that it should not be required to produce even an index of the relevant documents in its possession — a normal step in such litigation — because it would harm national security even to confirm or deny whether it had an “interest” in such operations    www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/us/court-says-cia-must-yield-some-data-on-drones.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Afghans Demand US Out of Key Province The continued presence of American Special Operations troops in Wardak Province, against the wishes of the Afghan government, brought demonstrators to the capital on Saturday and provoked a strongly worded denunciation from Muslim clerics. President Hamid Karzai had given the Americans until March 10 to remove all Special Operations troops from the province, after complaints about night raids in which victims disappeared.

American forces are still there, and the top American commander, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., said that despite the public demands by President Karzai, “he has not issued a directive to the force, and he realizes that we’re working this as quickly as we can.” He was referring to a long-term plan to hand over authority to Afghan officials. American officials have confirmed that no withdrawal of the Special Operations troops is now under way.

On Saturday, the influential Ulema Council, whose members are appointed by President Karzai and represent all of the country’s Islamic clerics, issued a threatening statement demanding the withdrawal from Wardak as well as a transfer of the American-controlled prison at Bagram to Afghan control.  “If the Americans once again do not honor their commitments and keep on disobeying, then this will be considered as an occupation, and they may expect to see a reaction to their action,” the statement said. It referred to American forces in Afghanistan as “infidels,” echoing language used by the Taliban.    www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/world/asia/objections-to-us-troops-intensify-in-afghanistan.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Pipeline? Schmipeline? At a length of 1,768km, the Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline is one of the great engineering endeavours of the new millennium.

The BTC oil export pipeline transports crude oil from offshore oil fields in the Caspian Sea to the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean from where the crude is further shipped via tankers to European markets.
The pipeline travels from the Sangachal terminal near Baku through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Ceyhan marine terminal on the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean.

The pipeline, which is buried along its entire length, is 1768km in total length: 443km in Azerbaijan, 249km in Georgia, and 1,076km in Turkey.    www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9006669&contentId=7015093

Syria/Turkey et al and Baku too ousands of Azeris demonstrated in the capital, Baku, in a rally organized through Facebook Inc. (FB) to protest non-combat deaths in the armed forces.
Riot police used water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse protesters in the central Fountains Square. The demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Stop killings in the army” and “Stop turning the army into a morgue.” Almost 100 were detained in the unauthorized protest, according to the opposition daily newspaper Yeni Musavat

More than 22,000 people signed up on Facebook to attend the rally. Ali Karimli, leader of the main opposition People’s Front of Azerbaijan Party, said “thousands of people” attended the demonstration.
Azerbaijan’s largely conscription-based army has suffered 15 deaths in non-combat incidents so far this year, according to Jasur Sumarinli, head of the Doctrine Center of Military Studies in Baku. Seventy-seven died last year, he said by e-mail last week.

Military service is mandatory for all men aged from 18 to 35 in the Caspian Sea nation, which has a population of more than 9 million.    www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/azeri-police-break-up-demonstration-against-military-violence.html

Puppet cuts Some Strings. Karzai Accuses US of Colluding with Taliban. Hagal Cancels Meet Strained US-Afghan ties have suffered a fresh blow after newly appointed US defence secretary Chuck Hagel cancelled plans for his first joint news conference with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the second reminder of serious tensions in a brief visit to Afghanistan.

US officials cited security concerns, but the decision came just hours after the Afghan leader accused America of colluding with the Taliban to keep foreign troops on Afghan soil. Afghan officials said the presidential palace, where the men planned to meet the press, was totally safe.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said one Afghan official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to discuss the sensitive issue. “It was supposed to take place at the palace, we don’t see any security problems there.”

US officials said the decision was taken because security concerns were raised, and only after consultations with the Afghan government.

But it was the second time in two days that US-Afghan tensions had been made public: on Saturday the planned handover of the final batch of Afghan prisoners held by US forces was also cancelled at the last minute.

Both of the planned displays of public trust and unity were called off in the wake of remarks by Karzai, although US and Afghan officials declined to comment on whether there was any connection with the subsequent halt of the transfer and cancellation of the press conference. www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/10/afghan-president-us-forces-taliban

How A US Citizen (and his son) got in Obamagogue’s Drones’ Crosshairs A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks. One was Anwar al-Awlaki, the firebrand preacher, born in New Mexico, who had evolved from a peddler of Internet hatred to a senior operative in Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. Another was Samir Khan, another American citizen who had moved to Yemen from North Carolina and was the creative force behind Inspire, the militant group’s English-language Internet magazine.

Two of the Predator drones pointed lasers on the trucks to pinpoint the targets, while the larger Reapers took aim. The Reaper pilots, operating their planes from thousands of miles away, readied for the missile shots, and fired.   … For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial……The missile strike on Sept. 30, 2011, that killed Mr. Awlaki — a terrorist leader whose death lawyers in the Obama administration believed to be justifiable — also killed Mr. Khan, though officials had judged he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted. The next month, another drone strike mistakenly killed Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had set off into the Yemeni desert in search of his father. Within just two weeks, the American government had killed three of its own citizens in Yemen. Only one had been killed on purpose.

GI’s Salute the Flag, Hug the Chaplain, and Steal the Afghan Bribe Money Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

Long’s scam is part of a pattern of fraud and theft among U.S. soldiers responsible for paying Afghans who support U.S. forces. Last year, 18 U.S. soldiers were charged with such thefts, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. Nine U.S. contractors also were charged.

The inspection agency is now investigating 80 bribery and corruption cases, “and the Tonya Long case is a prime example,” said Special Inspector General John F. Sopko.

Recent prosecutions have described U.S. soldiers creating elaborate schemes to pocket piles of cash, often with the complicity of corrupt Afghans.

Last June, investigators seized $23,000 sewn inside a teddy bear at a base in Afghanistan. The sergeant who had tried to mail the bear to the U.S. told them he was returning cash sent to him to buy carpets, but couldn’t explain why he sewed it inside the bear. The case is under investigation.

In September, a disbursing agent at Bagram Airfield, Sgt. Nancy Nicole Smith, pleaded guilty to forging documents and stealing $100,000 intended for U.S. military operations. Smith stuffed the money in a backpack before her flight to the U.S. at the end of her tour.

In October, Sgt. Christopher Weaver pleaded guilty to his part in a scheme to steal more than $1 million in fuel intended for U.S. forces and sell it to an Afghan. Weaver was paid $5,000 for every 5,000-gallon truck he allowed to illegally leave a U.S. base near Jalalabad.

In December, Staff Sgt. Philip Stephen Wooten, a paying agent, pleaded guilty to stealing about $225,000 by falsifying receipts for money intended for reconstruction efforts. Sgt. 1st Class Mauricio Espinoza, who contracted with Afghan vendors, was charged in the same case. www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-scam-20130317,0,4635882.story

NATO (US) Murders Afghan Actor Afghan actor Nazar Mohammad Helmandi, the star of more than a dozen films, is dead today after being killed in a NATO airstrike. Local police in the Helmand Province confirmed his death, along with three militants.    news.antiwar.com/2013/03/10/nato-kills-afghan-actor-in-southwest-airstrike/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia By Mohsen Hamid
“Becoming filthy rich requires a degree of un-squeamishness, whether in rising Asia or anywhere else, for wealth comes from capital, and capital comes from labor. And labor comes from equilibrium, from calories in chasing calories out, an inherent, inbuilt leanness, the leanness of biological machines that must be bent to your will with some force if you are to loosen your own financial belt and finally expand.”

As Detroit Dies a Death by a Thousand Cuts and exMayor Kilpatrick and pals head to jail, videos of the many ways they looted the impoverished city’s citizens are released.

Banks Big Winners in Detroit’s Ruin The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.  The city started borrowing to plug budget holes in 2005 under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted this week on corruption charges. That year, it issued $1.4 billion in securities to fund pension payments. Last year, it added $129.5 million in debt, 9.3 percent of its general-fund budget, in part to repay loans taken to service other bonds.

Detroit, which is trying to avoid becoming the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, struggles to serve residents after revenue declined when the auto industry collapsed and the city began to empty.
Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is preparing to name an emergency manager, who will have to address debt and derivatives taken on in the last eight years.

“We have no lights, no buses, poor streets and now we’re paying millions of dollars a year on our debt,” said David Sole, a retired municipal worker and advocate for Moratorium Now Coalition, a Detroit group that fights foreclosures and evictions. “The banks said they need to be paid first. But there is no money.”

The city, which peaked at 1.85 million residents in 1950, has lost more than a quarter of its population since 2000. The 700,000 inhabitants who remain endure unreliable buses, inadequate police and fire protection and broken street lights that have darkened entire blocks.  Banks including UBS AG (UBS), Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) have enabled about $3.7 billion of bond issues to cover deficits, pension shortfalls and debt payments since 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Liabilities rose to almost $15 billion, including money owed retirees, according to a state treasurer’s review.

The debt sales cost Detroit $474 million, including underwriting expenses, bond-insurance premiums and fees for wrong-way bets on swaps, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That almost equals the city’s 2013 budget for police and fire protection.

The largest part is $350 million owed for derivatives meant to lower borrowing costs on variable-rate debt.

Municipal borrowers from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have paid billions to banks to end interest-rate swaps that didn’t protect them. In the bets, a municipal issuer and another party exchange payments tied to interest-rate indexes.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-14/only-wall-street-wins-in-detroit-crisis-reaping-474-million-fee.html

Emergency Financial Fascist Seizes Detroit under the new law, Orr will be able to cancel or modify labor union and vendor contracts and sell city assets with the governor and state Treasurer Andy Dillon’s permission. His bankruptcy expertise will likely be utilized to negotiate with the city’s creditors to reduce Detroit’s $14.9 billion in long-term debts and liabilities.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130314/METRO01/303140456#ixzz2NZLkihLd

Detroit’s EFM and the Chrysler Bailout (which cut wages in half, no strike clause for 5 years, etc) Orr was one of the hundreds of lawyers from Jones Day involved in Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy restructuring, but he had a key job.

Orr, who according to bankruptcy court records made $700 an hour during the bankruptcy, was the lead attorney on convincing the court to allow Chrsler to abruptly close a quarter of its U.S. dealerships.
Chrysler told 789 dealers on May 14, 2009, they had to close in a month and transfer unsold inventory to other dealers. “The company is trying to be compassionate toward its dealers,” Orr told the court in June 2009.

Unlike General Motors — which gave 1,300 closing dealers nearly $600 million in wind-down payments and 18 months to sell unsold inventory — Chrysler took a much tougher line.

Theautomakeropted not to provide any wind-down payments to its dealers. When a lawyer for the dealers, Stephen Lerner, said Chrysler was acting in an “unconscionable” fashion and orchestrated a process that was “less than fair to dealers,” Orr didn’t give ground. “We’re not here to negotiate,” Orr said.Alan Fein, a shareholder with the Miami law firm where Orr got his start, said Orr knows the Detroit region well and has what it takes to do the job.       From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130313/METRO01/303130355#ixzz2NaOtGDhJ

Michigan Unemployment Bennies to be Cut 10.7 Percent About 75,000 unemployed Michigan workers will see a reduction in their benefit checks starting in April as result of the federal budget cuts, the state of Michigan said Thursday.

The announcement of a 10.7 percent cut to federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits is one of the first widespread impacts in Michigan prompted by funding reductions, known as sequestration.

As an example, the state said someone receiving a weekly benefit of $285.21 would see it drop to $254.69.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130314/POLITICS03/303140439#ixzz2NZMhNs3h

Black Agenda Report on How the Civil Rights Movement was Derailed The conversion of the historic black Freedom Movement from the struggle for a broad spectrum of economic, human and political rights into a struggle for mere “civil rights under law” engineered by our black misleadership class has been a blind alley, leading to impotence against gentrification, the prison state, and the drive to privatizate… So what’s happened to us? How have the repeal of the New Deal and Great Society, and the enclosures of vast new spaces in media and the natural world become possible? The answer is the elimination of black America’s role as anchor of the left wing of the national polity, and the historic defection of black leadership.

This was neatly accomplished by converting the historic black Freedom Movement from a struggle for a broad spectrum of economic, human and political rights into a struggle for mere civil rights under law. In this way, with the signing of a few key laws, and a handful of court decisions, black leadership declared victory and demobilized the movement that might have transformed America. It was the autocratic vision of the NAACP, of Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshal, linked to the autocratic style of preachers like Dr. King, triumphant over the radical democratic vision of activists like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and the young people who led SNCC.

To be fair, civil rights victories did sometimes lead to a measure of integration, to some public and private sector affirmative action, to diversity, and certainly to fat contracts for well-connected minority enterprises. But they never raised the minimum wage, or guaranteed a public education of equal quality in poor neighborhoods, or established the constitutional right to a vote, a job, or a home. Certainly the alleged victory of the civil rights movement did not protect us from the alarming growth of the prison state in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Are there really children who don’t deserve quality educations, or families that don’t deserve homes? Are there whole neighborhoods identified by a combination of class and race who don’t deserve public transit, and a third of whose young men just plain need locking up? After the alleged victory of the so-called civil rights movement, the answer is apparently yes. The first places to lose public schools, public transit and public libraries are black communities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philly, and now ominously, metro Atlanta. It’s a failure of leadership nationally, and in those places, the historic failure of the black political class,

After leading us down the blind alley of civil rights under law, and securing its own piece of the pie, the black political class of preachers, politicians, business people and wannabees has walked away from the rest of us    www.blackagendareport.com/content/there-used-be-these-things-called-public-schools-public-libraries

Too Big To Jail Are banks too big to jail?
If there was any doubt about the answer to that question, Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s attorney general, last week blurted out what we’ve all known to be true but few inside the Obama administration have said aloud: Yes, they are.

“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” Mr. Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”   dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/big-banks-go-wrong-but-pay-a-little-price/

Who Lost the Euro? Run On Cyprus Banks In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the euro zone, anxious depositors drained cash from automated teller machines in Cyprus on Saturday, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new 10 billion euro bailout be paid for directly from the bank accounts of ordinary savers.  The move — a first in the three-year-old European financial crisis — raised questions about whether bank runs could be set off elsewhere in the euro zone. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the group of euro area ministers, declined early Saturday to rule out taxes on depositors in countries beyond Cyprus, although he said such a measure was not currently being considered.

Although banks placed withdrawal limits of 400 euros, or about $520, on A.T.M.’s, most had run out of cash by early evening. People around the country reacted with disbelief and anger.   “This is a clear-cut robbery,” said Andreas Moyseos      www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/business/global/facing-bailout-tax-cypriots-try-to-get-cash-out-of-banks.html?ref=global-home

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY90E_jPiLI

Free Ebook: Homeland Fascism: homelandfascism101.com/WhatsItAbout.htm

Solidarity for Never

Chrysler fires Protestor: UAW Yawns Chrysler Group LLC has fired a Warren Stamping worker who helped organize a demonstration at the plant two weeks ago to protest a controversial new work schedule.

Alex Wassell, a 63-year-old welder repairman with nearly 20 years at the automaker, had been suspended without pay for making comments — quoted in The Detroit News — that Chrysler said violated the company’s code of conduct.Wassell helped organize a protest on Feb. 28 against a new work schedule that opponents say will force many employees to work Saturdays and require others to alternate between day and night shifts. The protest was not endorsed by the United Auto Workers, which has endorsed the alternative schedule. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130312/AUTO0101/303120318#ixzz2NOHwzzRD

Michigan Local CWA President, Treasurer Plead Guilty to Embezzlement On February 21, James Killingsworth and Billie Jo Killingsworth, respectively, former president and treasurer of Communications Workers of America Local 84555, each pled guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to one count of embezzling funds from the Webberville, Mich.-based union in the amount of $19,197.02. They previously had been charged in November. The charges and guilty pleas follow an investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.    nlpc.org/union-corruption-update

Spy versus Spy

Afghan Student Says CIA et al Beat Him The 29-year-old engineering student was standing outside his classroom here on Saturday morning when he said two pickup trucks full of armed men pulled up. The men, said to be members of a C.I.A.-backed Afghan strike force, grabbed him, tied his hands behind his back, draped a black hood over his head and drove him to an undisclosed location where, the student says, he was beaten and whipped.  The student’s daylong detention was cited by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at a news conference in Kabul, the capital, on Sunday as part of his justification for a ban announced later in the day on foreign forces from entering any Afghan school or university. He said other students had also been detained at the behest of American-controlled Afghan forces.    www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/world/asia/afghan-says-he-was-beaten-by-cia-trained-force.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

The Magical Mystery Tour

Vote Fraud in Vatican! Do Not Fall for Fake Pope! The Real Write in Winner of the RF Election!

Ghoulardi Has A Superior Funny Outfit Too!

Ghoul Deals With Last Anti-Christ in Disguise

Anti-Christ Tricks Convention of Consecrated Rapists. He is a Pretender! Real Pope Above! Cardinal Bergoglio is also a conventional choice, a theological conservative of Italian ancestry who vigorously backs Vatican positions on abortion, gay marriage, the ordination of women and other major issues — leading to heated clashes with Argentina’s left-leaning president.

He was less energetic, however, when it came to standing up to Argentina’s military dictatorship during the 1970s as the country was consumed by a conflict between right and left that became known as the Dirty War. He has been accused of knowing about abuses and failing to do enough to stop them while as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.  …Though he is averse to liberation theology, which he views as hopelessly tainted with Marxist ideology, Cardinal Bergoglio has emphasized outreach to the impoverished, and as cardinal of Buenos Aires he has overseen increased social services and evangelization in the slums.  ..In 2005, shortly before the Vatican conclave that elevated Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, Cardinal Bergoglio was formally accused by an Argentine lawyer in a lawsuit of being complicit in the military’s kidnapping of two Jesuit priests whose antigovernment views he considered dangerously unorthodox.

The priests, whom he had dismissed from the order a week before they disappeared, were discovered months later on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, drugged and partially undressed. At the time the lawsuit was filed, the cardinal’s spokesman dismissed the accusations as “old slander.”

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but the debate has continued, with Argentine journalists publishing articles and books that appear to contradict Cardinal Bergoglio’s account of his actions. These accounts draw not only on documents from the period, but also on statements by priests and lay workers who clashed with Cardinal Bergoglio…In November 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio was elected head of the Argentine Conference of Bishops for a three-year term, which was renewed in 2008. At the time he was chosen, the Argentine church was dealing with a notorious political scandal, that of the Rev. Christian von Wernich, a former chaplain of the Buenos Aires police who had been accused of aiding in the questioning, torture and death of political prisoners.

The church authorities had spirited Father von Wernich out of the country and placed him in a parish in Chile under a false name, but he was eventually brought back to Argentina and put on trial. In 2007, he was found guilty on seven counts of complicity in homicide, more than 40 counts of kidnapping and more than 30 of torture, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Father von Wernich was allowed to continue to celebrate Mass in prison, and in 2010 a church official said that “at the appropriate time, von Wernich’s situation will have to be resolved in accordance with canonical law.” But Cardinal Bergoglio never issued a formal apology on behalf of the church, or commented directly on the case, and during his tenure the bishops’ conference was similarly silent. …In 2010, he described a government-supported law to legalize marriage and adoption by same-sex couples as “a war against God” and “a maneuver by the devil.”    www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/new-pope-theologically-conservative-but-with-a-common-touch.html?pagewanted=2&ref=global-home

Justice for Magdalenes is comprised of survivors, the family members of survivors, long-time activists in human rights and adoption reform, academics, researchers, acrhivists and representatives from the political community. An Ad Hoc Oireachtas Committee was formed in 2009 to work with JFM’s committee and advisory, led by Mr. Tom Kitt T.D. (retired, now JFM advisory committee); Michael Kennedy T.D. and Kathleen Lynch T.D. www.magdalenelaundries.com/about.htm

Ten Million Payout for Raping Children (sort of reverse dispensation) The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay nearly $10 million to four men who claim they were molested by a pedophile priest in what Cardinal Roger Mahony has called the most troubling case of his tenure, a lawyer for the men said Tuesday.  The agreement settled four lawsuits against the church concerning Michael Baker, who authorities believe molested 23 boys during three decades as a parish priest and hospital chaplain.

The settlement is the first since the church released 12,000 pages of internal personnel files about its handling of abuse allegations, including scores of documents detailing how Mahony and a top aide dealt with Baker. The priest admitted his abuse of two boys directly to Mahony during a 1986 retreat. Mahony sent him to New Mexico for treatment, but later returned him to ministry where he molested again. He was convicted in 2007.

Two of the cases were set for trial next month. Vince Finaldi, a lawyer for the alleged victims, said he believed the file release “played heavily” into the archdiocese’s decision to settle the cases. “Once we got the files it confirmed everything we had argued for years and years,” Finaldi said. “Cardinal Mahony’s fingerprints were all over the case.”    latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/la-archdiocese-agrees-to-10m-settlement-over-molestation-claims.html

L.A. May Have Been Used As ‘Experiment’ and Revolving Door in Dealing With Pedophile Priests
With the election of a new Pope, the church is eager to begin its next chapter, but the past continues to haunt the L.A. Archdiocese.

In an exclusive investigation, never before heard tapes obtained by “SoCal Connected” reveal straight talk from church officials about how to deal with sexually abusive priests. They also show Los Angeles was part of a quiet experiment to reassign those priests. We’ve also done exhaustive data analysis tracking the abusers. www.snapnetwork.org/l_a_may_have_been_used_as_experiment_and_revolving_door_in_dealing_with_pedophile_priests

Rapist Priests and Their Protectors Want Trials Hidden Away from LA In an acknowledgment that new revelations in the priest abuse scandal have tarnished the church’s image, lawyers for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are seeking to postpone upcoming sexual abuse trials or relocate them to a courthouse 200 miles away because they don’t believe they can get a fair trial in Southern California.

The church’s request to a judge for a delay or change of venue in pending cases this week came just hours after the announcement that the archdiocese would pay two brothers an unprecedented $4 million each to avoid a molestation trial set for April. The payouts to the men, part of a $10-million deal ending four lawsuits, dwarfed settlements the church paid victims in recent years and underscored the archdiocese’s reluctance to face juries in its own backyard.   www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-church-lawsuits-20130316,0,863542.story

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

So Long

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq4m2jsk9Nw

The NYTimes Obit for a War Criminal That never mentions he was a US Ally After the Viet’s Invasion which Halted the Khmer Rouge Genocidal Efforts Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge who was one of three elderly leaders on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, died on Thursday in a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he had been taken from his holding cell. He was 87.    www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/asia/ieng-sary-khmer-rouge-leader-tied-to-genocide-dies-at-87.html?ref=global-home&_r=1&