Rouge Forum Update: Fightback! Fight Smart!
Thursday, February 17th, 2011The Little Red Schoolhouse:
Talking Points: Public Education or Capitalist Schooling?
Five Key Talking Points with sub-sets:
1. Our social context is:
A. Capitalism–meaning ruthless exploitation.
B. Imperialism: capital’s birth-twin on a relentless search for cheap labor, raw materials, regional control, etc.
C. The real promise of perpetual war and its corollary, rising inequality, often color-coded, usually hitting women and kids first and worst. Many real capitalist crises: financial and failed warfare with rising anti-imperialist movements, potentially, going beyond nationalism.
D. Developing corporate states, an imperfect merger of government and key capitalists (especially finance and industrial, but others as well) in which ruling classes settle their internal issues, then turn on the mass of people as a class, using government as an executive committee and armed weapon.
E. The ascendence of fascism (the corporate state and more) as a popular, multi-tentacled, movement. No specific tentacle makes much sense in itself (T-partyites, evangelicals, Anti-immigrant movements, racists, bankster thieves, the complete militarization of imperial countries, etc) but taken as a whole they merge into activist forms of protection for capitalism.
2. The core issue of our time is the potential of mass, class-conscious, direct action met by the reality of rising fascism. The crux of this is class war, often deflected into race/national/religious/opportunistic wars….More at richgibson.com/talkingpoints.htm
Sickout and Protest Closes Madison Schools: Madison schools were closed Wednesday as teachers planned a district-wide absence to attend protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit union bargaining.
District Superintendent Dan Nerad made the announcement at 11 p.m. Tuesday after 40 percent of the 2,600 members of the teachers union had called in sick and more were expected to do so.host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_e3cfe584-3953-11e0-9284-001cc4c03286.html
But Milwaukee “Union” Tells Teachers to Stay at Work: While Madison Public School students had the day off, the same was not the case for Milwaukee Public Schools. Administration and local union efforts may have hampered any teacher’s desire to cut class.
Everything appears to be normal at Milwaukee Public Schools, despite an overwhelming amount of teachers calling in sick and canceling class in Madison.
MPS Communications Director Roseann St. Aubin says that’s primarily due to a number of warnings sent out to teachers about cutting class. School officials sent e-mails and held after school faculty meetings. “We sent out a strongly worded statement from the administration yesterday that we do have every expectation that all of our employees will be at their jobs.”, she says. The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association even told their union members that teaching needed to come first. www.fox6now.com/news/witi-20110216-mps-teachers,0,359772.story
Boss of U. Puerto Rico Quits after Student battles, Faculty strike:
Below, Students Arrested by Riot Cops who occupied campus til 2/16
The president of the University of Puerto Rico has resigned amid student protests against a new fee. Jose Ramon de la Torre submitted his resignation letter on Friday, a day after dozens of students clashed with police on campus. He said he was stepping down for personal reasons.
De la Torre spokesman Peter Quinones provided a copy of the letter.
Sen. Eduardo Bhatia said in a statement that de la Torre’s departure does not solve the university’s problems and demanded that police leave campus.
Bhatia also requested that the island’s governor and university officials meet with students.
Students have organized several protests against an $800 yearly fee imposed to reduce the system’s budget deficit.
Hard Call in San Diego: $700 mil for Schools or Pro Football?
San Diego officials faced a choice the night they pushed a billion-dollar bill they’d been secretly working on for months through California’s legislature.
Should San Diego grab all the money it could for downtown, with dreams of thousands of new jobs, an expanded Convention Center and a new professional football stadium? Or should San Diego use some of its coming spoils to help the state keep city schools in one piece?
San Diego chose downtown. That decision provided an extra windfall for downtown redevelopment. But it stuck the state with a big tab — by one estimate, hundreds of millions of dollars a year. http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/government/thehall/article_2da3534c-3587-11e0-ab9f-001cc4c03286.html?utm_source=Constant-Contact-MR&utm_medium=Morning-Report-email&utm_campaign=20110211&utm_content=downtown-got-the-benefits
San Diego State’s Racist Monty Montezuma Program Lives on:
Above, Monty Montezuma, aka Aztec Warrior
“What the hell is this?” asked Manny Lieras, president of the Native American Student Alliance, which started the movement to ban Monty Montezuma. “This is horrible. . . . This guy is no different than what we had before.” www.themwc.com/genrel/012402aaa.html
Broad Puppet Bobb Wants $219 mil for Detroit Schools But Michigan Suburbanites dont want the bill, board Silenced:
Because of Bobb’s lengthy testimony, lawmakers said there was no time to hear from Board President Anthony Adams and other Detroiters who traveled to Lansing to speak. michigancitizen.com/bobb-needs-payroll-loan-p9479-1.htm
Heads Up MichiganderS! House Bill 4214: Introduced by Rep. Al Pscholka (R) on February 9, 2011, to add to the conditions that can trigger a state review of a local government or school district’s finances, and the appointment of an “emergency financial manager” (EFM) to ones that are approaching in insolvency . The EFM would have many more powers than under current law, including the power to cancel existing government or school union collective bargaining agreements and other contracts. School EFMs would also have authority over academic matters. The EFM could also order new borrowing, or put a property tax millage increase on the ballot.
Referred to the House Local, Intergovernmental, and Regional Affairs Committee on February 9, 2011.
Columbus O: Students, Workers Fight Back! More than 1,000 workers were at the Ohio Statehouse on Thursday to protest Senate Bill 5.
If approved, the bill would overhaul collective bargaining, 10TV’s Danielle Elias reported.
Supporters of the bill spoke on Tuesday. Thursday’s testimony before the senate committee was from those opposing the bill.
Firefighters, police officers, corrections workers and educators from around Ohio showed up to protest a bill they call a “union buster.”
If the bill passes, collective bargaining by unions, which became law in 1983, could come to an end.
“We work hard to help the community,” said Mark Harrington, who opposes the bill. “Our goal is to be strong and be well. It’s only fair to collective bargain.”http://www.10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2011/02/17/story-columbus-workers-protest-senate-bill-5.html?sid=102
International War of the Rich on the Poor:
Bahrain: US’ Tyranny Opens Fire–Army Takes Over:
The army took control of this city on Thursday, except at the main hospital, where thousands of people gathered screaming, crying, collapsing in grief, just hours after the police opened fired with birdshot, rubber bullets and tear gas on pro-democracy demonstrators camped in Pearl Square.
As the army asserted control of the streets with tanks and heavily armed soldiers, the once peaceful protesters were transformed into a mob of angry mourners chanting slogans like “death to the king,” while the opposition withdrew from the Parliament and demanded that the government step down. www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18bahrain.html?_r=1&hp
Buried on A13 of NYTimes: “I Tricked Bush into Iraq War”
The Iraqi defector whose claims that Saddam Hussein’s government had biological weapons became part of the Bush administration’s justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq has admitted that he fabricated his story.
The defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was code-named “Curveball” by the Central Intelligence Agency and German intelligence officials, told the British newspaper The Guardian on Tuesday that he had concocted his tale that Iraq was hiding mobile bioweapons laboratories. He did so, he said, in hopes that his lies would lead to the eventual overthrow of the Iraqi ruler. www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/middleeast/16curveball.html?scp=1&sq=Irawi%20says%20he%20fabricated%20tale%20of&st=cse
Kabul Bank: Addicted US Financing War Against Itself -Can’t Stop:
The Threat Finance Cell also has almost single-handedly demonstrated the degree to which the American-led war in Afghanistan is compromised by connections among the Taliban, drug traffickers, and Afghan officials. The group was set up, in 2008, to sever the links between Taliban insurgents and their financing, much of which was believed to come from the drug trade. Instead, the investigators found that the lines connecting the Taliban and the drug smugglers often ran through the Afghan government. They also uncovered one of the darker truths of the war: the vast armies of private gunmen paid to protect American supply convoys frequently use American money to bribe Taliban fighters to stand back. These bribes are believed by officials in Kabul and in Washington to be one of the main sources of the Taliban’s income. The Americans, it turns out, are funding both sides of the war. www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_filkins
Stratfor on the Egyptian Rising and What May be Next: The Egyptian regime is still there, still controlled by old generals. They are committed to the same foreign policy as the man they forced out of office. They have promised democracy, but it is not clear that they mean it. If they mean it, it is not clear how they would do it, certainly not in a timeframe of a few months. Indeed, this means that the crowds may re-emerge demanding more rapid democratization, depending on who organized the crowds in the first place and what their intentions are now.
It is not that nothing happened in Egypt, and it is not that it isn’t important. It is simply that what happened was not what the media portrayed but a much more complex process, most of it not viewable on TV. Certainly, there was nothing unprecedented in what was achieved or how it was achieved. It is not even clear what was achieved. Nor is it clear that anything that has happened changes Egyptian foreign or domestic policy. It is not even clear that those policies could be changed in practical terms regardless of intent.
The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe. We were killjoys in 2009, when we said the Iranian revolution wasn’t going anywhere. We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.
BBC: Egypt can Shoot Protesters but cannot Make Workers Work:
Egyptian workers and the country’s military chiefs squared off again on Wednesday as strikes and labor protests spread to the Cairo airport and the nation’s largest textile factory, despite pleas by the military for people to get back to work. …Economists have warned that the labor unrest is deepening an already catastrophic financial crisis and scaring off foreign investors. At the same time, the ruling Supreme Military Council has made increasingly desperate pleas to the workers and their leaders to end the strikes.
On Wednesday, cellphone users in Egypt received text messages from the military exhorting the workers to do the right thing. “Some of the sectors organizing protests, despite the return to normal life, are delaying our progression,” one of the messages said.
A labor movement that was fragmented and hemmed in by former President Hosni Mubarak’s government exploded once the police state collapsed. In part, the strikes are an effort by workers to catch up on wages that have been eaten away by inflation. www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17labor.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
BBC Interactive Map of Lahire Square (interesting for sure):
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787
Algeria: Riot Cops Smash Protest In Mayday Square: Riot police officers stifled a protest in Algeria’s capital on Saturday by hundreds of people voicing the same demands for change that have helped topple two of the region’s autocratic governments over the last month…Witnesses said thousands of riot police officers with clubs had blocked the demonstrators from carrying out a planned march in the center of the whitewashed seaside capital, which was otherwise tense and deserted on Saturday. By late afternoon, with the last of the demonstrators gone, the square was still sealed off by police officers, and dozens of armored police vehicles remained in the neighborhood.
It was unclear on Saturday what, if any, long-term implications the protest would have for Mr. Bouteflika’s government; outbursts of civil unrest have been frequent here for decades. But the large-scale deployment of the police and recent concessions — Mr. Bouteflika has promised to lift a longstanding state of emergency here — show the government is wary of the contagion of unrest in neighboring countries. www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/world/africa/13algeria.html?_r=1&hp
Bahrain: Shot Back to Work:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9ORjEHUpSk
Organizers had hoped to join in one large demonstration at a central traffic circle beneath a mammoth statue of a pearl.
But they never had the chance.
“They’re shooting at us like we were some sort of terrorists,” said Sharifeh al-Gharbil, 30, one of about 20 Shiite women and a scattering of men who gathered at the Duraz traffic circle. “But we’re Bahrainis. We’re not Sunni, we’re not Westerners, we’re not Jordanian, so we’re nothing. I have no job, I have no hope and my family is hungry. www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/world/middleeast/15bahrain.html?hp
Libya Rising:
Dozens of people were injured in clashes in Benghazi, a hospital in Libya’s second city said on Wednesday, on the eve of a nationwide “Day of Anger” called by cyber-activists in a bid to emulate revolts in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia.
The director of the eastern city’s Al-Jala hospital, Abdelkarim Gubeaili, told AFP that 38 people were treated for light injuries. www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5joXWpcbCKxSO2oZgTYYVdwEZPBTA?docId=CNG.603a9efadd0bcd2842eeb2db6ed43c73.101
Why Is Bahrain Important to US et al? Juan Cole:
What is at stake for Americans in the Bahrain unrest?
1. Bahrain is a major center for the refining of crude petroleum, refining some 270,000 barrels a day. This amount is not large, but given tight petroleum supplies and a price of over $100 a barrel for Brent Crude, an outage there would certainly put up world prices.
2. Bahrain hosts a naval base for the US Fifth Fleet, important to the US security architecture for the Persian Gulf (the Arabs say Arabian Gulf). Nearly 2/3s of the world’s proven petroleum reserves and 45% of the world’s natural gas reserves are in the Gulf region.
3. Bahrain is an important finance center. www.juancole.com/2011/02/bahrain-us-naval-base-or-iranian-asset.html
Iran to Send Warships Through Suez? Iran is reportedly planning to send two warships through the Suez Canal, a major oil-shipping route in Egypt.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called the move a “provocation,” according to CNN.
The Suez Canal has been very much in the spotlight in recent weeks, amid fears that political unrest in Egypt and other countries in the region could affect oil supply. The news, which is still developing, caused oil prices to jump Wednesday thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/144513-iran-sending-warships-through-suez-canal
Running on War Treadmill, Can’t Keep Up!
U.S. Special Operations Forces can’t keep up with the demands in Afghanistan despite troop and financial reinforcements, a U.S. Navy admiral said.
U.S. warfare has undergone a sea change at least since a new counterinsurgency strategy was introduced during the Iraq war starting in 2003.
Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said there were massive increases in the number of troops fighting wars, though demands in Afghanistan were “insatiable,” the U.S. Defense Department quoted him as saying. www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/02/09/Special-Forces-feeling-pressure-US-says/UPI-94381297271259/
International Economic War of Rich on Poor:
Wisc. Gov Threatens to Use National Guard to Break Strikes (why it is important to work with the troops, now) : Mr. Walker said Wisconsin was prepared for any fallout, noting in an interview that the National Guard was ready to step in to handle state duties, if need be. www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/12unions.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Michigan Gov Declares War on Students, Workers, and the Poor:
Gov. Rick Snyder will cut funds to cities and schools, seek concessions from state employees, tax pensioners and give a tax cut to most businesses when he unveils his much-anticipated plan to “right-size” state government with his 2012 budget presentation today.
Snyder will announce a 33 percent cut in one pot of money that gets shared among municipalities, his Director of Strategy Bill Rustem said. The pain for cities comes when plummeting property values and a poor economy have forced major cuts to local services and sent some cities to the verge of bankruptcy. http://www.detnews.com/article/20110217/POLITICS02/102170374/Snyder-seeks-to-cut-aid-for-cities–schools–universities
China, Inflation Rising: China’s inflation accelerated in January as prices excluding food rose the most in at least six years, bolstering the case for more interest-rate increases to tame overheating risks in the fastest-growing major economy.
Consumer prices rose 4.9 percent from a year earlier after a 4.6 percent December gain, the statistics bureau said on its website today. A separate central bank report showed banks signed 1.04 trillion yuan ($158 billion) in new loans, less than forecast while still the third-highest January total.
“Inflationary pressures haven’t abated and China has already entered into an era of structural inflation,” said Liu Li-gang, an Australia & New Zealand Banking Group economist in Hong Kong. He sees “more monetary policy tightening ahead.”http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-15/china-s-january-consumer-prices-increase-4-9-producer-prices-climb-6-6-.html
World Food Prices Boom, Food Riots (again) Ahead? Rising food prices pushed tens of millions of people into extreme poverty last year and are reaching “dangerous levels” in some countries, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Tuesday as he released new data showing that the cost of grain and other staples is near a historic high
According to the bank’s data, rising food costs pushed an additional 44 million people below the threshold of extreme poverty, meaning they are surviving on the equivalent of $1.25 per day. It also threatens to undermine public budgets in places such as Albania and Tajikistan that rely heavily on imported food and have little ability to pay more.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021505301.html
Spy versus Spy
Whither the Raymond Davis Case?
On Feb. 13, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) issued a statement demanding that the government of Pakistan execute U.S. government contractor Raymond Davis or turn him over to the TTP for judgment. Davis, a contract security officer for the CIA, has been in Pakistani custody since a Jan. 27 incident in which he shot two men who reportedly pointed a pistol at him in an apparent robbery attempt. …
current tension between the United States and Pakistan, public sentiment in Pakistan regarding U.S. security contractors and the possibility of groups like JuD and JeI attempting to take advantage of the situation, there is a very real possibility that Davis’ release could spark mob violence in Pakistan (and specifically Lahore). Even if the Pakistani government does try to defuse the situation, there are other parties who will attempt to stir up violence.
Due to the widespread discontent over the issue of U.S. security contractors in Pakistan, if protests do follow the release of Davis, they can be expected to be similar to the protests that followed the Mohammed cartoon case, i.e., they will cut across ethnic and sectarian lines and present a widespread threat.www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110216-threat-civil-unrest-pakistan-and-davis-case?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110216&utm_content=readmore&elq=45e5657abd56426dba80eb7aeb43df9e
Not the Weirdest spy in world history, but close: Dewey Clarridge
78-year-old Duane R. Clarridge could easily be mistaken for an average North County retiree —- were it not for the Taser in front of him.
After 33 years with the CIA, Clarridge said he retired from the intelligence agency and moved in 1988 to North County to take a job in the private sector, marketing electronics for a Virginia-based defense and security company now known as BAE Systems.
The company has offices in San Diego, Vista and Temecula, according to its corporate website.
He said he retired from his job at the company in 2002, and began pursuing interests such as woodworking and expanding his extensive collection of tiny spy cameras.
Oh, and running a self-funded network of spylike operatives in Afghanistan and western Pakistan www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_ee15aeb4-5b3c-5a36-a72f-7f5f7e7c1d0d.html
So Long, Borders: – Borders Group Inc., the second biggest U.S. bookstore chain, filed for bankruptcy in New York today after management changes, job cuts and debt restructuring failed to make up for sagging book sales in the face of competition from Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-LGPKQR6S972A01-6HCFV6LJ1E5TK6L0G6225CKGCU
Best Thing in the History of the World:
Below, natural firefall, Yosemite, Valentine’s Day, by Charlie Phillips
Worst Thing in the History of the World:
Miguel Cabrera Arrest Affadavit (there go the Tigers):