Rouge Forum Resistance Update and More!
Friday, January 21st, 2011We Say Fight Back!
Lucasville Hunger Striker (with help from Staughton Lynd) Win!
A hunger strike by the three Lucasville riot leaders has ended with state prison officials conceding to nearly all of the strikers’ demands.
A memo dated Friday from Warden David Bobby of the Ohio State Penitentiary at Youngstown outlined six policy changes being made for inmates under the prison’s “administrative maximum security” designation, the most restricted section of Death Row, which houses about 120 prisoners.
Inmates will be allowed “semi-contact” visits with family members, additional recreation time, access to computer-based legal research, phone privileges up to one hour per day and the opportunity to purchase more items from the commissary, including food and clothing.
Most of the changes were effective immediately, according to Bobby’s memo. The visitation change will take effect Feb 1.
The three inmates — Siddique Abdullah Hasan, known as Carlos Sanders at the time of the 1993 Lucasville riot; Bomani Shakur, formerly known as Keith Lamar; and Jason Robb, all of whom are serving death sentences for their part in the riot — began a liquid-only hunger strike Jan. 3. www.vindy.com/news/2011/jan/18/warden-concedes-to-strikers8217-demands/
Sheetmetal Workers Invade and Wreck Bankster Meeting (link plus embedded video): Awesome activism from members of the Sheetmetal Workers union (SMWIA), 200 of whom burst into a private meeting of mortgage bankers to protest layoffs by a homebuilding company that got a $900 million in federal funds intended for job creation. The banksters fled the scene, though one said he would have engaged the workers if they had “worn a suit.” (Watch CNBC’s coverage of the protest at the top of this post.) workinprogress.firedoglake.com/2011/01/19/union-members-disrupt-mortgage-banksters-meeting-in-dc-video/
Meet the Parasitical Scum at the White House Dinner:
White House Dinner Guest List with Who Sits By Who (important!)
www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/19/107071/guest-list-for-state-dinner-for.html
The Little Red Schoolhouse:
Demolishing What’s Left of California’s Colleges/Universities: Hundreds of thousands of students are likely to be turned away from California State University and the community colleges next year, while the University of California won’t rule out raising tuition – again. ..Brown’s proposed 2011-12 budget gives UC – for the first time – less money from the state than it gets from student tuition: $2.6 billion versus $2.8 billion. ..Brown’s budget includes a proposal to raise community college fees to $36 per course unit, from $26.
That would generate $110 million – enough to support an additional 50,000 students – but overall budget cuts would still close the doors for up to 350,000 students at California’s 110 community colleges if the cuts are approved, Scott said, noting that even small increases in the number of graduates translate into billions more in tax revenue for the state’s economy www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/11/MN5I1H6THH.DTL&tsp=1
Shocker! Class and Critique Have Something in Common: Moreover, we find that learning in higher education is characterized by persistent and/or growing inequality. There are significant differences in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills when comparing groups of students from different family backgrounds and racial/ethnic groups. More important, not only do students enter college with unequal demonstrated abilities, but those inequalities tend to persist—or, in the case of African-American students relative to white students, increase—while they are enrolled in higher education. chronicle.com/article/Are-Undergraduates-Actually/125979/?inl
Alpert on San Diego Bosses Cutback Scheme: I’m following Juarez, a tiny school in Serra Mesa, as it figures out how to shrink its budget. Schools now have more power to decide what to keep and what to cut. But the power has been a mixed blessing, leaving schools to make painful decisions about people they know. http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/schooled/article_29eca2ac-24e9-11e0-80bf-001cc4c002e0.html
Congratulations to Joel Andreas on the Publication of “The Rise of the Red Engineers” (and if you want to know who Hu is, or to Compare Shifts in US Educational Policies to China’s, or how the Chinese Revo was Ruined, this is a good place to Start): 
Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies and the Opportunist Freire Too: The law, which took effect Dec. 31, bans any courses or classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” Arizona’s new attorney general, Tom Horne, immediately used it to declare illegal a Mexican-American ethnic-studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon2.html?ref=opinion
Overcoming Having the Football Coach as Your Calc Teacher:On the first day of her senior year at North Miami Beach Senior High School, Naomi Baptiste expected to be greeted by a teacher when she walked into her precalculus class. ..“All there were were computers in the class,” said Naomi, who walked into a room of confused students. “We found out that over the summer they signed us up for these courses.”
Naomi is one of over 7,000 students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools enrolled in a program in which core subjects are taken using computers in a classroom with no teacher. A “facilitator” is in the room to make sure students progress. That person also deals with any technical problems.
These virtual classrooms, called e-learning labs, were put in place last August as a result of Florida’s Class Size Reduction Amendment, passed in 2002. The amendment limits the number of students allowed in classrooms, but not in virtual labs. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/education/18classrooms.html?hp
International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor:
No Recruiting Tool Like an Empty Stomach Coupled to the Schools-to-Wars-Pipeline: The Pentagon announced last week that all active and reserve branches of the armed forces hit their recruiting and retention goals for the fiscal year to date in December except the Air National Guard, which missed it by only 1 percent.
Military enlistments will become even more competitive in coming years as the services downsize during the twilight of U.S. combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army, which is the largest service with about 569,000 active duty troops, is scheduled to shrink by 22,000 in the next two years.
This month Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced additional cuts of 27,000 soldiers and as many as 20,000 Marines in the next four years.
Despite the combat burden shouldered by the Army and Marine Corps, the abundance of volunteers has permitted the services to be pickier about who they accept as they raise recruiting standards and whittle signing bonuses.
Last year, 99.7 percent of Marine recruits had graduated from high school with a traditional diploma and 72.9 percent scored in the upper half of the written military entrance exam. “The quality of our applicants is higher than ever before,” said Maj. John Caldwell, a spokesman for the commanding general of Marine Corps Recruiting Command. www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jan/16/combat-forces-meeting-their-recruiting-goals/
US Puppet Karzai Blows Up Afghan Election: The move leaves Afghanistan without a Parliament five months after its September election, with the prospect of even further delays. It also puts Mr. Karzai squarely at odds with his international backers, who insist that the elections were valid after investing heavily in them as a way to promote Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy.
Mr. Karzai made his decision at the request of a special court he personally appointed to hear complaints from losing candidates, who say fraud and insecurity left large parts of the population excluded from the vote. Many are from the heavily Pashtun south, where the insurgency is most intense and Mr. Karzai maintains his main political base. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/asia/20afghan.html?_r=1&hp
International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor:
States Seek Bankruptcy Against Workers’ Pension Benefits: Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.
Banksters Suck on Bonus Trough, Again: JPMorgan’s investment bank set aside enough money to pay an average of $369,651 to each employee in 2010, or 2.4 percent less than in 2009, according to the company’s year- end financial statements. Goldman Sachs’s pool equates to an average of $430,700, a reduction of 14 percent. The four New York-based banks will spend a combined $84.4 billion, or an average of $141,192 apiece, on their 598,073 workers, according to financial reports released since Jan. 14. www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-21/goldman-cutting-pay-still-tops-jpmorgan-as-wall-street-bonus-season-begins.html
Pimp for the Rich
Obamagogue Hires GE to Run Remainder of Government: The selection of Mr. Immelt, who was by Mr. Obama’s side during his trip to India last year and again this week during the visit of President Hu Jintao of China, is the latest in a string of pro-business steps the president has taken. He has installed William Daley, a former JPMorgan Chase executive, as his chief of staff; has scheduled a major speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce next month; and ordered federal agencies this week to review regulations with an eye toward eliminating some. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/economy/22obama.html?_r=1&hp
What? A $140 Billion GE Bailout (see above)? Who Remembers?
Tell me again what a triple-A rating is good for? Not a whole lot, if one of the iconic triple-As in American industry, General Electric, has to go hat in hand to the federal government for a $140 billion bailout.
Or maybe G.E. isn’t the bulletproof financial juggernaut the rating agencies say. The company’s vaunted GE Capital unit has supposedly been a money machine for years, having generated solid returns come rain or shine. By now, the unit generates upwards of 40% of G.E. overall profits.
Except there’s one problem: G.E.’s financial services business may be the blackest box on Wall Street. The unit has little transparency, no regulatory oversight, and now, we are finding out, an unstable funding model.
In particular, G.E. has chosen to fund its finance business with short-term commercial paper rather than secure more stable long-term funding based on its triple-A rating–which, it appears, turns out to be fiction. http://seekingalpha.com/article/105984-general-electric-gets-a-140b-bailout-what-s-the-point-of-aaa
Even the New Yorker Questions Obamagogue’s Bailout Boys:
The announcement that General Electric boss Jeffrey Immelt is replacing the former Fed chairman Paul Volcker on a revamped White House advisory board isn’t exactly news, but it raises an interesting question about Obama’s revamped economic team: to be admitted to a senior post, is it essential to have worked for a big financial firm that received a taxpayer bailout?
Let’s consider three recent appointees:
William Daley, the new White House chief of staff. Until December, Daley, who served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce, was the top man in Washington for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion from the TARP program. (In the summer of 2009, it repaid the money.) During the financial crisis, the giant bank also benefitted from a government guarantee of its debt and various emergency Fed lending programs. Although JPMorgan Chase negotiated the financial blowup more handily than some of its rivals, the government support package was key to seeing it through the worst of the crisis.
Gene Sperling, the new head of the National Economic Council. Before joining the Administration in 2009, Sperling was a consultant to Goldman Sachs, which paid him almost $900,000 for advising it on a philanthropic project in developing countries. Goldman received $10 billion from the TARP program, which it paid back in 2009. Like JPMorgan, it benefitted from a government guarantee of its debt, and, in late 2008, it was hastily granted a commercial-banking license, which made it eligible for the Fed’s extensive lending facilities. Goldman has publicly denied that it would have collapsed without government assistance, but most people on Wall Street don’t believe it.
Jeffrey Immelt. G.E. is usually thought of as an industrial corporation, but it is also a big bank in disguise. In recent years, its G.E. Finance arm has provided more than half of its revenues. In November, 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation agreed to guarantee bonds issued by G.E. Capital, and in the following seven months the firm issued almost $90 billion worth of debt that was backed by U.S. taxpayers. Without this taxpayer guarantee, which wasn’t highly publicized at the time, G.E. would have struggled to roll over its debts and could even have gone under. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/01/volcker-immelt.html
Sourcewatch: The Bankster Bailouts in Chart Form:
sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Total_Wall_Street_Bailout_Cost
Reuters: Most Corporations Pay NO TAXES: Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.
The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.
More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.
During that time corporate sales in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion,
www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1249465620080812
Detroit: No Books in Schools, But Wow! A New Copper Center!
A $5.6 million police command center that provides 24-hour monitoring at Detroit Public School facilities is about safety and reinvesting in the community, public officials said Thursday at a ceremonial opening…Built in six months, the facility near Interstate 75 and Clay Avenue is part of a $41.7 million district-wide security initiative to improve safety. Officials hope it will anchor redevelopment in the area, where abandoned homes and businesses line nearby streets. www.detnews.com/article/20110121/SCHOOLS/101210370/1026/DPS-unveils-$5.6M-police-center
The Chicago Mob and the USA (and Back to Chicag0): The main thing to understand is that Daley and Emanuel are all about self-interest, not the public interest. As the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass puts it, “To the Daleys, the political center is Chicago, their ancestral home.”Nevertheless, there is a destructive ideological part of the Daley appointment and Emanuel’s ascent, despite their non-ideological devotion to power. Emanuel and Daley were two of the three principal Clinton lobbyists in the campaign to pass the corporate-backed, anti-labor North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, and Daley helped push through the even greater killer of U.S. jobs, Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China, in 2000. Both are former employees of investment banks, which have a burning interest in “free trade” and cross-border investment deals facilitated by “free trade.” Obama has already reneged on his Ohio presidential-primary pledge in 2008 to reform NAFTA and has let drop the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act.
His naming of Daley is the final nail in the coffin of his 2008 campaign alliance with unions. Between them, NAFTA and PNTR have sent millions of good-paying American factory jobs out of America, so it’s pertinent to ask what Bill Daley will bring to the table on behalf of U.S. workers.
Solidarity Forever:
(Above: Dues eaters Ahern and Trumka Shake It)
NYC AFL-CIO (grifters’ paradise) a Shambles: The council’s communications director, its political director and a government-affairs strategist have resigned in recent weeks. The national A.F.L.-C.I.O. has told Mr. Ahern that he acted improperly in doubling his salary to $80,000. Other labor leaders questioned why Mr. Ahern did not speak up to rebut attacks on the city’s municipal unions, particularly criticism of the sanitation workers’ union over snow removal last month.
Mr. Ahern, 57, who had been the council’s executive vice president, was seen as a welcome presence after the council’s former president, Brian McLaughlin, was convicted of embezzling more than $2 million and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But union leaders and supporters of organized labor have recently voiced disappointment over the performance of the council, an umbrella organization representing more than one million New York union members.
The brunt of the criticism has been directed at Mr. Ahern, particularly after he pushed the council’s board to double his salary to $80,000 a year. That is on top of the $250,000 he receives each year as president of a 4,000-member Queens-based local of the operating engineers’ union. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/nyregion/20labor.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Vietnam’s Sellout CP Takes the China Path After Millions Die For Equality and Justice: “In the past, nine out of 10 university graduates would go into the bureaucracy and want to join the party. Now, it’s the reverse. Nine out of 10 want to go into the private sector,” said Le Dang Doanh, a former official and government advisor. For today’s youth, he said, “there’s no need now to join the party”.
Still, for those in government agencies and state-owned enterprises, not belonging to the party can put a glass ceiling on careers. Privately, some people admit to joining because they have no real choice. www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/01/17/world/international-us-vietnam-congress-party.html?hp
UAW Goons Party on With Ford Bosses At Black Tie Event: It might soon be time for UAW executives and Ford to negotiate a new four-year labor contract, but on Friday night, it was time to relax and raise money for the Ronald McDonald House Charities. About 550 union staff members and officials attended the union’s first black-tie gala, held next door to Cobo Center on the same night as the Detroit auto show’s Charity Preview. Many of the attendees said they planned to visit both events.
“It’s typical of our relationship that we would invite each other to events like this,” said James Tetreault, Ford’s vice president of manufacturing in North America. He attended the event along with his wife, Elaine Tetreault — who wore a long, royal-blue dress — and most of Ford’s labor relations staff. “We do actually like each other.” www.freep.com/article/20110115/BUSINESS03/101150411/1322/Next-door-to-auto-show-gala-UAW-and-Ford-have-a-party-of-their-own
Dues Eaters’ Nightmare: Less Dues! Why is NEA paying AFL?
The number of American workers in unions declined sharply last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, with the percentage slipping to 11.9 percent, the lowest rate in more than 70 years.
The report found that the number of workers in unions fell by 612,000 last year to 14.7 million, an even larger decrease than the overall 417,000 decline in the total number of Americans working. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/22union.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
Spy Versus Spy
US and Israel Attack Iran with a Worm (well, some murders too): The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart…Stuxnet is not the only blow to Iran. Sanctions have hurt its effort to build more advanced (and less temperamental) centrifuges. And last January, and again in November, two scientists who were believed to be central to the nuclear program were killed in Tehran.
The man widely believed to be responsible for much of Iran’s program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a college professor, has been hidden away by the Iranians, who know he is high on the target list. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
CIA Murdered Lamumba and then Millions More in Congo: the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power and arrested the prime minister. Fearful of revolt by Lumumba’s supporters if he died in their hands, the new Congolese leaders ordered him flown to the copper-rich Katanga region in the country’s south, whose secession Belgium had just helped orchestrate. There, on Jan. 17, 1961, after being beaten and tortured, he was shot. It was a chilling moment that set off street demonstrations in many countries.
Four years later, one of Lumumba’s captors, an army officer named Joseph Mobutu, again with enthusiastic American support, staged a coup and began a disastrous, 32-year dictatorship. Just as geopolitics and a thirst for oil have today brought us unsavory allies like Saudi Arabia, so the cold war and a similar lust for natural resources did then. Mobutu was showered with more than $1 billion in American aid and enthusiastically welcomed to the White House by a succession of presidents; George H. W. Bush called him “one of our most valued friends.”
By 1997, when he was overthrown and died, his country was in a state of wreckage from which it has not yet recovered.
Since that time the fatal combination of enormous natural riches and the dysfunctional government Mobutu left has ignited a long, multisided war that has killed huge numbers of Congolese or forced them from their homes. Many factors cause a war, of course, especially one as bewilderingly complex as this one. But when visiting eastern Congo some months ago, I could not help but think that one thread leading to the human suffering I saw begins with the assassination of Lumumba.
We will never know the full death toll of the current conflict, but many believe it to be in the millions. Some of that blood is on our hands. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17hochschild.html?pagewanted=2&tntemail1=y&_r=1&emc=tnt
Vang Pao’s Role As CIA Asset Drug Dealer Omitted from Obits: Vang Pao, who died Jan. 6 in Clovis, a small town in California’s Central Valley, was described in the Times as “charismatic” and in AP as a “fabled military hero” who led a Hmong army against the communist Pathet Lao during the Laotian civil war. Van Pao’s so-called “secret army” was financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as part of the U.S.’s war against North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam.
Well, “financed” is a slippery word, and while, it was true Vang Pao got a lots of money and arms from the CIA, a major source of his financing was the opium trade run out of Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle.” That little piece of history never managed to make it into the obits, which is hardly a surprise. The people the CIA hired to run dope for Vang Pao went on to run dope for the Contras in the Reagan Administration’s war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And talking about close ties between drugs and the CIA in Southeast Asia and Central America might lead to some very uncomfortable questions about the people we are currently supporting in Afghanistan. www.fpif.org/blog/obits_for_fabled_hero_of_vietnam_war_vang_pao_omit_cia_drug_connection
Magical Mystery Tour
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UffrN_wTg7w&feature=related
Worst thing in History of the World:
Cartels Carve Up TJ : Tijuana – The city has been divided into two parts by two drug cartels, which besides unleashing their relentless violence have laid bare enduring social problems of the border.
This fragmentation could worsen as other criminal groups arrive to take advantage of the weakened state of the organization that historically controlled Tijuana, experts warn.
One part is the city’s east side, controlled by the Sinaloa cartel. Though it’s home to the maquiladora industry, many residents who live in the area’s crowded colonias lack public services and lead lives of hardship.
The other part is the western side, dominated by the Arellano Felix cartel, which historically had controlled drug trafficking in the city. www.sandiegored.com/noticias/3881/Cartels-carve-city-into-two-parts/
Did GE (owner of MSNBC) Fire Oberman (note Obama hires GE):
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has resigned, he announced on-air Friday.
“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract,” reads a statement. “The last broadcast of Countdown with Keith Olbermann will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.
Olbermann was noticeably absent from NBCU Town Hall Thursday night.
So Long John Ross: (March 11, 1938 – January 17, 2011) author of: 