Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

In the Crossfire is now online at: www.bopsecrets.org/vietnam/index.htm

Convicted for a Song that Means: Kill the Exploiters! under ANC Rule

Sipho Seepe on the ANC and Much More: Where is South Africa heading?
We can already see the increasing centralisation of power, which is a threat to democracy and transparency. The Constitution demands that Parliament must have oversight of the executive. Only the ANC MP Andrew Feinstein seems to understand this and as a result his political career is threatened. The leadership can’t trust the people to elect their own premiers or mayors. Trevor Ngwane of Pimville in Soweto, a former ANC councillor, was suspended for expressing his opposition to the iGoli 2002 plan.

It is obvious from the way appointments are made that it is not quality and qualifications but political expediency and how well you perform the toyi-toyi that count. The centre knows best and more and more power is accumulating around one person – the president. The late Mobutu Sesi Seko operated the same system in the Congo, which is scary. Just because the ANC fought for democracy and a democratic Constitution does not mean it is immune from turning into an oppressor itself. Africa is full of such examples.
Will the ANC be able to maintain its huge majority?
Before the last election I wrote an article in the Sowetan arguing that the ANC deserved to get a two-thirds majority. I was wrong about that. Now I think the party will be lucky to get 55 per cent at the next election. The ANC has failed in every major respect. The tensions in the alliance mean it cannot unite its own people; its economic policy has not worked; job creation targets have not been achieved, and there is a consistent attack on the institutions of democracy and a disregarding of the electorate. I expect the Democratic Alliance vote to grow among the black population, especially the educated and employed strata and anyone who can see beyond race.   www.hsf.org.za/resource-centre/focus/issues-21-30/issue-23-third-quarter-2001/interview-with-professor-sipho-seepe-scientist-and-newspaper-columnist

Italian Workers Strike vs Attacks on their CLASS:

Thousands of workers took to the streets in Italy in a general strike on Tuesday to protest a package of ever-changing austerity measures, adding to tensions in a crucial week for the future of the euro.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/world/europe/07italy.html?_r=3&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Longshore Workres Storm Terminal:

The busy ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., were shut down on Thursday as an increasingly violent dispute between unionized port workers and the owner of a grain export terminal in Longview, Wash., spilled over to the other facilities. About 500 longshoremen stormed the new $200 million terminal in Longview before sunrise Thursday, carrying baseball bats, smashing windows, damaging rail cars and dumping tons of grain from the cars, police and company officials said.
Later in the day, more than 1,000 other longshoremen shut down the ports of Seattle and Tacoma by not coming to work.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/business/union-dispute-near-seattle-turns-violent-and-idles-ports.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Peter McLaren: The Death Rattle of the American Mind: I regret to inform my liberal friends and colleagues that we have moved well beyond the return of a progressive Keynesianism. That the domination of post–World War II
economics by Fordism/Keynesianism is over (as the production of profit no longer relies upon the production of
commodities and their sale) should not be a revelation to the most astute observers of the contemporary political scene who have been examining in minute detail the collapse of our capitalist universe. Their most grim prognosis tells us that we have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Either we slay the beast of capital, or it will slay us.  http://richgibson.com/deathrattle.pdf

Wiki Dumps on Diplomats! he whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks made public its entire cache of pirated State Department cables Thursday night in a torrent of once secret information that is sure to renew debate over the impact of one of the largest security breaches in U.S. history.After nearly nine months in which the 251,287 cables had been trickling out at a pace that guaranteed there would be WikiLeaks documents still unreleased 10 years from now, the website announced on Twitter that all of the cables had been made public.
“Shining a light on 45 years of U.S. ‘diplomacy,’ it is time to open the archives forever,” WikiLeaks said. The “tweet” included a link to the WikiLeaks website, showing all the cables had been made public. www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/02/122923/wikileaks-makes-all-its-us-diplomatic.html

California Grocery Workers Threaten Strike Action: The union representing Southern California grocery workers has given a 72-hour walkout notice to the grocery chains.
The earliest a strike could happen is 7 p.m. Sunday, but it could still be averted. A strike won’t necessarily begin right away, even then. If that deadline passes, grocery workers will begin final strike preparations, massing at local union headquarters to assemble signs, stockpile food for strikers and their families, and continue picket trainings.   www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/15/strike-notice-given-grocery-workers/

How was the Last Massive Grocery Strike Defeated? 1. The southern California grocery strike involving 70,000 United Food And Commercial Workers members from October 2003 to March 2004 was one of the most significant actions the U.S. labor movement took in the last twenty years.
2. What happened? The workers lost, betrayed by their union leaders. This defeat was devastating, setting up a spiral of attacks on the lives of people who must work to live, particularly on the minimal health benefits that a few working people still have. The old labor saw, “An injury to one just goes before an injury to all,” is already felt in teacher-union contract negotiations.
3. Could this have been won? Yes, it could, but not within the confines of the law, and not in the confines of the structures of the unions, not within the philosophy of the “labor movement” (i.e., the AFL-CIO with the independent National Education Association tossed in for good measure), not without preparation-and most importantly, not without organization and wise action. clogic.eserver.org/2004/gibson.html photo by Nick Ut

Teachers in Tacoma, Washington, go on strike: About 1,900 public school teachers in Tacoma, Washington, the state’s third-largest school district, went on strike on Tuesday in a contract dispute over salary, class size and seniority.
The walkout, coming in the second week of Tacoma’s new school year, followed a strike vote on Monday night and forced the district to cancel classes for its roughly 28,000 students.
School district officials said the job action was illegal and said they would seek a court injunction ordering teachers back to work.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-teachers-strike-tacoma-idUSTRE78C6I320110913 (a judge ordered them back to work. Teachers voted to continue the strike).

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Where Children learn to act Independently, in a Dependent Fashion; Ruled by Products of their Own Minds…..

Race to Delusion and Celebrity: A school district that is a finalist for the soon-to-be announced $1 million 2011 Broad Prize for Urban Education is embarking on a public relations effort — funded with U.S. government and Gates Foundation money — to end public opposition to its school reform program, which includes a slew of new standardized tests.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina is using Race to the Top money — which wasn’t intended to fund public relations efforts — and $200,000 in Gates Foundation money for the campaign. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/school-district-uses-race-to-the-top-money-for-public-relations/2011/09/16/gIQAn3DnZK

What if they Gave School and Nobody Came? In Detroit, only 54% of Kids Show Up: About 54% of Detroit Public Schools students attended school on Tuesday, the first day of school, a woeful rate, but narrowly better than last year.DPS Emergency Manager Roy Roberts today said Tuesday’s attendance was 43,660 students, about half of the 79,611 students that were expected. About 1,800 students were out of school because four buildings were closed due to power outages.
This year, DPS needs about 66,000 students to meet its budget projections and avoid more cuts. DPS gets about $7,500 in state aid for every student who attends school.    http://www.freep.com/article/20110907/NEWS01/110907051/In-Detroit-only-54-public-school-students-expected-attend-first-day?odyssey=tab

SAT, born in Fascism, Says US Students are Getting Dumber (or more betrayed by educators?) SAT reading scores for the high school class of 2011 were the lowest on record, and combined reading and math scores fell to their lowest point since 1995.
The College Board, which released the scores Wednesday, said the results reflect the record size and diversity of the pool of test-takers. As more students aim for college and take the exam, it tends to drag down average scores.   www.tribune-chronicle.com/page/content.detail/id/561665/Wed—3-45pm–SAT-reading-scores-fall-to-lowest-level-on-record.html?nav=5192

The Fascist Origins of the SAT: The frantic rush to high-stakes standardized testing in the US costs one-half billion dollars annually in direct expenditures, probably double that in indirect costs. The chief fetish of the testing movement is the SAT, long known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test but now known, on the insistence of the test’s owners, the Educational Testing Service, as just “The SAT.”
The SAT measures, above all else, class, sex, and race. (Fairtest, Roney). The SAT, like every similar test, is designed to divide people with razor sharp precision, to enumerate human value and to track people’s futures under a veil of objective science  http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rgibson/SATFascistOrigins.htm

Michigan Students to be even More Stupified by Tougher Idiot MEAP (written by bozos, scored until recently be Standard and Poors, and overseen by the Treasury Dept): Students will have to score higher on Michigan’s standardized tests this academic year in order to reach what’s considered a proficient level after a vote Tuesday by the State Board of Education.
The new scoring scales affect the Michigan Educational Assessment Program tests taken by elementary and middle school students and Michigan Merit Exam tests taken by high school students. The tougher scoring requirements follow up on the board’s decision earlier this year to raise standards to better reflect students’ preparedness for careers and college.  http://www.chron.com/news/article/Mich-education-board-OKs-tougher-test-standards-2168689.php

San Diego Schools Headed for the Abyss: The state’s finances remain in serious trouble. The conversation in Sacramento today isn’t about education funding getting better soon; rather, it’s about whether it’ll get worse.San Diego Unified says it will already need to fill a $57 million hole in its budget to pay for the salary increases and other rising costs next year. But that’s only if there’s no further decrease in state funding and the state’s optimistic revenue projections pan out.The district has been grappling with deficits for several years. Steadily increasing salary and benefit costs, combined with deep cuts from the beleaguered state, have forced San Diego Unified to significantly reduce services like school busing and lay off more than 1,000 people.
But while the state’s problems continue to burden districts across California, San Diego Unified has potentially exacerbated their effect with a series of decisions that threaten to further erode class sizes, beloved programs and its overall financial footing.  http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/public_safety/pavement/article_9fce1a5a-dd8f-11e0-a189-001cc4c03286.html

Public Records Act Added To Tail-wagging-dog CA Foundations (researchers heads up!) After three years of legislative back and forth, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed Senate Bill 8, subjecting foundations, bookstores and other auxiliary organizations throughout California’s public university system to open records requests.The Richard McKee Transparency Act of 2011 was authored by state Sen. Leland Yee. Adam Keigwin, Yee’s chief of staff, said the bill started as a way to clarify the role “quasi-public” auxiliary organizations had under open records laws.Keigwin said the law clarifies that the public can obtain correspondence, emails, letters, financial statements and contracts from foundations and auxiliary organizations at the University of California, California State University and the state’s community college system.
The legislation does, however, allow foundation donors to remain anonymous unless they receive gifts from the school worth more than $2,500. Donors can also become public if they enter into a no-bid contract with the school within five years of a donation or if they attempt to influence curriculum or university operations.  http://www.splc.org/news/newsflash.asp?id=2272

San Diego State “University” Opens Eco-Tourism Surf “Research” Center: Surf tourism is a rapidly expanding trend throughout the world’s surfable coasts. According to the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association, the American surf industry is worth approximately $7 billion annually and surfing and surf tourism impacts coastal environments in nearly 120 countries. Yet, impoverished coastal communities in the less-developed world have become unprepared and sometimes unwilling hosts to traveling surfers with different cultural norms and values.
According to Jess Ponting, professor in SDSU’s sustainable tourism program and director of the new center, too often, surf destination communities shoulder major social, cultural and environmental costs while seeing relatively little economic benefit.
“Surfing is such an environmentally aware activity. Surfers take great care of the oceans,” Ponting said.
“But they don’t always think about the rest of their surroundings. We want to teach students about sustainable surf travel, to conduct research into sustainable surf tourism management, to provide support for surf tourism operators looking to go green and to support surf tourism destination communities.” (Fits well with the Homeland Security Program, The Padres Sport Management Program, The Casino Employee Training Program, and the 70 student “seminars”) newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news.aspx?s=73126

Capitalist Schooling–wellspring of corruption (stealing kiddies breakfast money!) : A Staten Island couple stole at least $2.5 million in federal funds meant for nutritious meals for preschoolers, prosecutors asserted in a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday. The complaint accused the couple, Joanna Fan and her husband, Ziming Shen, of siphoning money over five years from accounts at the nonprofit Red Apple Child Development Center preschool chain, of which Ms. Fan, also known as Xiao Ping, is the executive director. The complaint accused the couple of using the money to make mortgage payments on several Manhattan condominiums and to benefit their private business interests, which include Preschool of America Inc., a chain of about a dozen for-profit preschools in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/nyregion/couple-accused-of-stealing-food-money-from-red-apple-preschools.html

Piling on: More Thievery in Detroit Public Schools: A former Detroit Public Schools teacher, a cashier and a cafeteria employee are among 11 people charged with crimes against the school district that include thefts and break-ins, authorities said Thursday.
Six of the defendants were arraigned Thursday in 36th District Court; authorities are seeking the other five, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20110916/SCHOOLS/109160339/1026/schools/DPS-workers-hit-with-a-variety-of-charges

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Mini Tet–Kabul Hit Hard: Heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests struck Tuesday at two of the most prominent symbols of the American diplomatic and military presence in Kabul, the United States Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters, demonstrating the Taliban’s ability to infiltrate even the most heavily fortified districts of the capital.
As the insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, Westerners sought shelter — one rocket penetrated the embassy compound — and Afghan government workers fled their offices, emptying the city center. NATO and Afghan troops responded with barrages of bullets. At least 6 people were killed and 19 wounded.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/world/asia/14afghanistan.html?hp

In Obama’s War that is Peace, Ghadaffi Forces Still Fight back and After 7 months, The Vaunted Historians Against the War have said nothing, nothing, nothing: Forces loyal to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi have launched a fierce counter-attack in the fugitive leader’s stronghold of Bani Walid while putting up fierce resistance in his hometown of Sirte. english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/09/2011917154358332235.html

Egypt’s Fake Revolutionaries Have been Busy: Egyptian security forces raided the offices of an Egyptian affiliate of the Al Jazeera news network known for attentive coverage of street protests, eliciting allegations on Sunday of a crackdown on the news media as the military-led transitional government seeks to ensure law and order after allowing an angry mob to invade the Israeli Embassy over the weekend.   www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/world/middleeast/12egypt.html?_r=2&hpw

Cockburn on the Truthers: Of course there are conspiracies. The allegations that Saddam Hussein had WMD amounted to just such a one. I think there is strong evidence that FDR did have knowledge that a Japanese naval force in the north Pacific was going to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s quite possible Roosevelt thought it would be a relatively mild assault and thought it would be the final green light to get the US into the war….These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling class devilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, or the falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale (the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos) or supposedly “rogue” agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list. The 9/11 “conspiracy”, or “inside job”, is the Summa of all this foolishness.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after-all-these-years/

Inside the Muslim Bros who Lay Inside the Bogus Egyptian Revo: While Egypt’s secular political parties flounder, the power of the Muslim Brotherhood continues to grow. To understand why, there is no better place to turn than Eric Trager’s article, “The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood: Grim Prospects for a Liberal Egypt” in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs (subscriber restricted). In sharp contrast to generally thin mainstream press reporting on Egypt’s post-revolutionary politics, Trager’s piece is based on in-depth interviews with about 30 current and former Muslim Brothers over a three-month period.
This enables Trager to piece together a detailed account of the Brotherhood’s structure and recruitment practices, showing in the process how dramatically different the Muslim Brotherhood is from a conventional political party. For example, at first recruiters don’t even identify themselves as Muslim Brothers but simply “build relationships with their targets in order to scrutinize their religiosity.”  http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/276382/inside-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-stanley-kurtz

Fukushima’s Link To Japanese Quest for a Nuke (what happened to all those Fukushima reds post WW2? the imperial army’s attempt here in 1945 to mine uranium and develop ways of refining it for use in building a bomb. Compared with the United States’ vast Manhattan Project, historians describe Japan’s two bomb-building programs — the imperial navy also ran a separate project — as minuscule, last-ditch efforts, hindered by a lack of resources and pessimism among the projects’ own scientists that such a weapon could actually be completed.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/world/asia/06abomb.html?_r=4&scp=1&sq=fukushima&st=cse

The Decline of Oil and America (nice history here) by Michael Klare: So here’s the question all of us should consider, in part because until now no one has: Are the decline of the United States and the decline of oil connected? Careful analysis suggests that there are good reasons to believe they are.  http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175441/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_is_washington_out_of_gas/#more

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The Rich are Feasting, Feasting. Winter, the Killer of the Poor, Awaits: Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it    And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.
Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period   …..The past decade was also marked by a growing gap between the very top and very bottom of the income ladder. Median household income for the bottom tenth of the income spectrum fell by 12 percent from a peak in 1999, while the top 90th percentile dropped by just 1.5 percent. Overall, median household income adjusted for inflation declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the previous year, to $49,445. That was 7 percent less than the peak of $53,252 in 1999. Part of the income decline over time is because of the smaller size of the American family.
The census report said that the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line last year, 15.1 percent, was the highest level since 1993. (The poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314.) …Minorities were hit hardest. Blacks experienced the highest poverty rate, at 27 percent, up from 25 percent in 2009, and Hispanics rose to 26 percent from 25 percent. For whites, 9.9 percent lived in poverty, up from 9.4 percent in 2009. Asians were unchanged at 12.1 percent.
An analysis by the Brookings Institution estimated that at the current rate, the recession will have added nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor by the middle of the decade. www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html

Last year the share of children under 18 living in poverty jumped to 22%, from 20.7% the previous year. latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/record-462-million-americans-in-poverty-census-bureau-says.html

(Wink, Wink) Obama would raise taxes on the rich (triple wink) to pay for jobs plan :

President Barack Obama would pay for his jobs bill primarily by raising $467 billion in taxes on the wealthy over 10 years, the White House said Monday. Obama included the proposed tax increases in the detailed legislation he sent Monday to Congress, along with a demand that the entire package be passed immediately.  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/12/123892/obama-would-raise-taxes-on-rich.html

Fran Shor: Take the Jobs Act and Shove It–Instead of being sucked into the vortex of a dysfunctional political system, we need to generate the same sort of “indignation” found in the mobilization and organization of the outraged global multitudes whether in southern Europe or northern Africa. And one first step is a clean break with and opposition to Obama and his “American Jobs Act.” Enough with rationalizing and temporizing; just say take this “American Jobs Act” and shove it! www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/13/take-this-american-jobs-act-and-shove-it/

With Finance Capital Holding the Reins, Industrialism Evaporates: Despite its goals for manufacturing, the administration lacks an explicit plan for achieving them. “The United States today is alone among industrial powers in not having a strategy or even a procedure for thinking through what must be done when it comes to manufacturing,” says Thomas A. Kochan, an industrial economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MANUFACTURING’S muscle helped make the United States a world power, but its contribution to national income is dwindling. And while corporate leaders like Mr. Liveris and Jeffrey R. Immelt of General Electric — who is chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness — are beginning to express concern over manufacturing’s relative decline, the multinationals they command have contributed to the problem by gradually shifting production abroad. About half of Dow Chemical’s $58 billion in revenue last year came from overseas operations….A tipping point may already have been reached. Manufacturing’s contribution to gross domestic product — roughly equivalent to national income — has declined to just 11.7 percent last year from as much as 28 percent in the 1950s, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In this century, the 20-percent-or-more club draws its members mainly from Asia and Europe. “The reason you no longer get much of an outcry over this exodus has to do mainly with jobs,” says Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress. “Less than 12 percent of the American work force is in manufacturing today, down from 30 percent in the 1970s. So there isn’t the same level of public concern.”  www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/business/is-manufacturing-falling-off-the-us-radar-screen.html?_r=4&ref=business

Wall Street Aristocrats Stole $1.2 Trllion (friggin Trillion) more: Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.
“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html

Obamagogue Rushed Dough to Bankrupt Solyndra: Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles— The Obama administration ignored “red flags” about failed Northern California solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, rushing through a $535-million loan guarantee for the company in 2009 and improperly restructuring the deal last winter in a failed attempt to boost the economy and the green energy industry, House Republicans said. (ed: who pays? Not Solyndra execs and not the demagogue). www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solyndra-hearing-20110915,0,3717218.story

Tent City, New Jersey

reduced to living on handouts from the local church and friendly restaurants and the community is a sad look at troubles caused as the world’s most powerful country struggles with its finances.

‘We have been in and out of the camp for a year,’ said ex-hotel worker Burt Haut, 43, who lives with his wife, ex-teacher Barbara, 48 in a tent styled like a teepee from the Old West.
‘Our financial difficulties since the credit crisis three years ago have caused us to camp on public ground, at the back of churches and down the backs of closed down stores.
‘We have had help from our friends and family, but we have run that well dry.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021173/Americas-city-broken-dreams-50-jobless-destitute-people-set-forest-community-New-Yorks-doorstep.html

Time to Empty that BoA Account. They’re emptying up to 40,000 humans: Bank of America Corp. is preparing to slash 40,000 or more jobs nationwide, a dramatic retrenchment that reflects the deepening woes of the country’s largest bank and the magnitude of the U.S. economic slowdown.
The layoffs will come mainly from the BofA’s sprawling consumer-banking operations, which will take a heavy toll on branches, loan centers and other offices throughout California.
Bank of America has 45,000 employees in the state, about 1 in 6 of its nearly 300,000-person workforce, and is expected to roll out the job cuts over the next several years. The company, which for years was based in San Francisco and maintains its huge mortgage unit in Calabasas, also is in the process of closing 10% of its branches nationwide. www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bank-america-jobs-20110910,0,4275951.story

Ode To SDG&E

Steve Peace and the

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Run for Office

Hip

Deregulate California Energy

Gray Davis

Vending Machine Governor

Enron loots California

$45 Billion

Davis Appointees go to work for Enron

Enron Collapses

One to Jail

One

No recoup

Two Wildfires

Thousands of Homes burned

Lives lost

Mayor and City Council Adopt Yellow FIREMAN Jackets

Pendleton Marines Retreat to their base

Pols Hold press conferences

Casinos Protected

Fire envelopes city

Only sea breeze

stops conflaguration

Mayor, the good Judge, resigns.

Blackout

Nature did it.

Fascism as a Mass, Popular, International Movement Emerging Fast:

Today’s Desk Murderers Denounce Fascist Medical Experiments of the Past:above, fascist US doctor John Cutler Approved by Harvard et al

The highest medical and legal officials of the American government and experts at Harvard and other top medical schools approved venereal disease experiments on people in the 1940s, which led to the deliberate infection of Guatemalan prisoners and mental patients with syphilis to test penicillin, a White House bioethics panel reported Tuesday. The experiments were “gross violations of ethics” not just by today’s standards but by those of the time, said the report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. It called the experiments “especially egregious moral wrongs because many of the individuals involved held positions of public institutional responsibility.”
President Obama apologized for the experiments to President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala last year, after they were revealed. The ethical errors were made by a startling array of public health luminaries. The surgeon general, the attorney general, Army and Navy medical officials, the president of the American Medical Association, the president of the National Academy of Sciences and experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Rochester gave advance approval in principle for experiments that deliberately infected people with venereal diseases, though not all those in authority knew exactly whom the researchers would infect.  ..Dr. John C. Cutler, a 28-year-old former Coast Guard doctor, was put in charge.
The discovery of his papers in the University of Pittsburgh archives by Susan M. Reverby, a medical historian at Wellesley College, led to the public exposure last year of the Terre Haute and Guatemala experiments. Later in his career, Dr. Cutler would help run the infamous Tuskegee study, in which black Alabama sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated for decades to study how the disease progressed. (ed  The NYTImes callis this a “lapse” www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/health/14syphilis.html?hp

Solidarity Fornever

Happy Teachers assist Personifications of Illusions from NEA; Join in Creating their own Oppression (and the kids too): At McGary, teachers meet regularly to share ideas and analyze student academic data. Pringle, who sat in one of those meetings Monday, said she noticed that teachers were not only focused on their own classes, “but kids in the whole school.”
The approach of involving teachers in administrative-level discussion about student achievement is uncommon in schools across the state and nation, the visitors said. www.courierpress.com/news/2011/sep/12/no-headline—ev_union/above, vacillating reactionary Ravitch and NEA’s Sec-Treas, Fifth Columnist Becky Pringle

New York Times Touts Two Tier Wage System: the advent of a two-tier wage system in Detroit is spiking employment for one of the country’s most important manufacturing industries. The new jobs, which are seen as long term, are being watched closely by economists, executives in other industries and Washington policy makers eager to increase employment in manufacturing and other areas.  …“This is not going away,” said Kristin Dziczek, a labor analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “It has allowed the Big Three to reduce labor costs without cutting the pay of incumbent workers. Is it good for the health and competitiveness of the companies? Yes. And is that good for job security? Yes.”
Four years ago, the United Automobile Workers agreed to allow Chrysler, G.M. and Ford to pay lower wages to new hires to help close the cost gap with foreign carmakers. www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/business/in-detroit-two-wage-levels-are-the-new-way-of-work.html?_r=1&hp

GM-UAW (in bed) Cut a New Deal (note, the bailout/sellout included a UAW no-strike promise for years) General Motors Co. and the United Auto Workers, sobered by the government bailout and bankruptcy just two years ago, agreed on a new four-year contract late Friday without the public acrimony or strikes that have plagued the talks in the past. www.detnews.com/article/20110916/AUTO01/109160431/GM-UAW-agree-on-new-contract

How Have the Labor Bosses Failed, but Prospered, by their own Measure? No national health care. No card check. No Employee Free Choice Act. No Raise in the Minimum Wage. No “Living Wage.” No “Make Wall Street Pay!” campaign (but for the nurses). (and more at Laboreducator.org) But NEA’s ex-Prezzie, Reg Weaver, made $686,949 in one year of work. Nice. Now he works for Education International. They don’t return calls about his pay.

Calif Faculty Assn Boss Joins Gov’s Commish on Higher Ed, for seat at table (to be lunch) More members may be added, but current participants in addition to Taiz include UC President Mark G. Yudof, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed, CCC Chancellor Jack Scott, UC Regents Chair Sherry Lansing, CSU Trustee Roberta Achtenberg, Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs, Crowell and Moring Senior Counsel Michael Kahn, former California Finance Director Tim Gage, AFSCME 3299 President Lakesha Harrison, UC Berkeley student Jeremy Pilaar, and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. (ed, plus the CFA gangsterette Lilly Taiz, completely outvoted, outsepent, outsmarted, but not out soldout).

Spy versus Spy

Meet the Man who Drove James Jesus Angleton over the Edge

Magical Mystery Tour

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSCUlIcWLos

SNAP Wants Fascist Pope Prosecuted by World Court for Crimes vs Humanity:
The biggest association of paedophilia victims who have suffered at the hands of members of the Catholic Church has asked the International Criminal Court to try Benedict XVI and the heads of the Roman Curia, for “crimes against humanity.”
SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, presented an 80 page long document to the ICC at The Hague, to show how the Vatican allegedly “tolerated and made possible the systematic and widespread cover up of rapes and sexual crimes against children across the world.” vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/pedofilia-pedophilia-7994/

Detroit Papists (that would be with a “P’) want Your Children….and One Hundred Thirty Five MILLION Dollars: Despite the challenging economy, the Archdiocese of Detroit launched a campaign today to raise $135 million over the next five years, with Archbishop of Detroit Allen Vigneron making the announcement at Holy Cross Church in Marine City.
“My first thought was, he’s crazy, because these are tough times,” said Rev. Robert Schuster, pastor at Our Lady on the River Parish, which includes Holy Cross. “But as I thought more, prayed and listened, it occurred to me this was a great opportunity to do some really wonderful work.”
Seventy percent of the funds raised will go to parishes. The remaining 30% will go to Catholic families for tuition assistance for Catholic schools, parish-based ministries in the city of Detroit, the training of priests, deacons, and lay ministers and to cover campaign costs …“There’s no sense of desperation from the Archbishop about this,” Schuster said. “God calls us to be his disciples. And one of the ways we demonstrate that is by being good financial stewards.”  www.freep.com/article/20110906/NEWS05/110906063/Archodiocese-Detroit-seeks-raise-135-million-?odyssey=mod

The Irish–Mad at those who Raped their Kids: This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.
While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/world/europe/ireland-recalibrates-ties-to-roman-catholic-church.html?hp

After TWO DECADES Court Orders God Blessing Teacher to Take Down Signs: Bradley Johnson, a mathematics teacher in the Poway Unified School District, had displayed banners in his classrooms for two decades that he saw as celebrating the religious heritage of America, including “In God We Trust,” “God Bless America,” and “God Shed His Grace on Thee.” But after he transferred to a new school, a new principal in 2007 ordered the banners taken down. The size of the banners — some 7 feet wide by 2 feet high — made them “a promotion of a particular viewpoint,” Principal Dawn Kastner is quoted as saying in the court’s 40-page opinion.
Johnson, who sponsors the Christian club at the school, Westview High School in Rancho Penasquitos, said he thought he was being singled out because the phrases involved Christianity. The banners came down, and Johnson filed a lawsuit.
To Johnson, the banners were no more an assertion of a religious point of view than the Tibetan prayer flag, Dalai Lama poster and Malcolm X poster that other teachers had in their classrooms. www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0914-religious-banners-20110914,0,7964326.story

Underwear bomber shouts ‘Osama’s alive;’ FBI says he wasn’t given Miranda (oops): An FBI agent testified today that he did not read Miranda rights to the 24-year-old Nigerian student who is accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 because he was worried about other suicide bombers.
In a jury selection hearing, FBI Agent Timothy Waters testified that he questioned Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at the hospital for about 50 minutes. The hearing will resume Thursday.
Waters, an FBI terrorism expert, said that from experiences abroad, reading non-U.S. citizens Miranda rights complicates the ability to get information quickly.
“It stops the process dead in its tracks,” Waters said. “I didn’t feel it was necessary.” (Free the Undies?!)

Worst Thing in the History of the World

101 Year old Woman Evicted in Detroit Foreclosure: A 101-year-old woman was evicted from the southwest Detroit home where she lived for nearly six decades after her 65-year-old son failed to pay the mortgage.
Texana Hollis was evicted Monday and her belongings were placed outside the home. Her son, Warren Hollis, said he didn’t pay the bill for several years and disregarded eviction notices.   www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/13/us/AP-US-Elderly-Woman-Evicted.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Gumby Bandit Gives Self Up! Jacob Kiss, 19, the man who detectives said tried to rob a Rancho Peñasquitos 7-Eleven last week dressed as the famous claymation character, surrendered Tuesday with an alleged accomplice, San Diego police said. Police said a man in a Gumby costume and an accomplice went into the store on Carmel Mountain Road near Paseo Montalban on Labor Day about 12:30 a.m.

Surveillance video showed the smiling character walking into the store with his arms raised over his head.

He then walked over to the register, put his gloved hands down and leaned his wedge-shaped head over the counter. Police said he told the clerk, “This is a robbery.”

The employee, who did not recognize the Gumby character, thought it was a prank and dismissed him, police said.

Gumby insisted he was serious and said that he had a gun, but when he tried to reach into his pocket the costume got in the way. After fumbling around for a minute all he managed to do was drop 26 cents.
In the meantime his accomplice, who was not dressed as a cartoon character, had already gone outside and was in a minivan, honking the horn. The video shows the clumsy would-be robber struggling to keep the green suit on as he walked out the door. www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/13/gumby-gives-police-keep-suit/

Worst and Best Thing in the History of the World

Evicted 101-year-old Detroit woman gets her house back: Two days after being evicted from her house of nearly 60 years, 101-year-old Texana Hollis can move back home  http://www.detnews.com/article/20110914/METRO/109140432/Evicted-101-year-old-Detroit-woman-gets-her-house-back

Kristi Rossum, Pride of the San Diego Chemistry Department and Daughter of a big Judge, plus methfiend murderess, denied retrial: A former county toxicologist’s effort to get her murder conviction for the killing of her husband overturned stalled Tuesday when a federal appeals court reversed its earlier decision to grant a hearing on key evidence in the case.
Kristin Rossum was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2002 in the high-profile case in which prosecutors accused her of poisoning her husband with a fatal dose of the narcotic fentanyl. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole.   http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/13/kristin-rossum-loses-round-to-get-murder/

“she was selected as the outstanding junior in the SDSU Chemistry Department”: books.google.com/books?id=w51A0Jsi7NsC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=Rossum+SDSU+Chemistry+Department&source=bl&ots=QOwxWVNqT0&sig=p6ulez1LP8uFaIcs6g9M93uJ70I&hl=en&ei=A-ByTsjKCcPniALZ0ZjnDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBg

It Cannot Happen Here:

1920’s Germany: “The crisis in Germany opened by the occupation of the Ruhr was the deepest which any advanced capitalist country had ever experienced. Poverty became general in a state based on the most modern industrial production. Neatly the whole of the working population suffered absolute pauperisation, and the petty bourgeoisie was ruined. The only privileges which survived were those of the owners of capital and the means of production. Speculation, corruption and prostitution triumphed. All measures of social security collapsed, and with them all democratic ideologies. All so-called moral values were ridiculed. Here was, in short, a fearful balance-sheet of failure and the obverse a century of the amazing development and brilliant achievements of capitalism.

Runaway inflation

The most spectacular feature of the crisis of 1923 was the monetary inflation. The phenomenon was not new. It went back to the days immediately after the war, and had once been brought under control, in 1919. From 1921, the fall of the mark appears to have been central to the strategy of the Gennan bourgeolsie. They returned to their former calculations in the belief that the monetary crisis was entirely due to the shortfall in exports, thinking that another fall in the mark would reduce their expenses, increase exports, encourage production and provide the conditions for economic recovery. The big industrialists proposed to re-establish a normal monetary situation by replacing state credit with their own, whilst at the same time demanding guarantees. But no government can safely give such guarantees when an organised working class exists. The Social-Democratic ministers obstructed every slightest hintby their partners in favour of accepting the proposals of Hugenberg and Stinnes,

It seems that from November 1921, the magnates of German industry decided that the general situation must deteriorate before it could improve; runaway inflation would wipe out the German debt, bring the state to its knees before them, exhaust the working people, and leave the great capitalists alone as masters of the situation. The mark fell steadily throughout 1922, and its fall became precipitous when the Ruhr was occupied, It would, however, be difficult to apportion precise responsibility for this collapse, one has to take into consideration the effects of increased government spending, together with panic, as well as any concerted policy.

In April 1922, the doIlar was worth 1000 marks; in October, 2,000; and in November, 6,000. On 4 January 1923, it was quoted at 8,000, on the 10th at10,000 and on the 15th at 56,000 marks. From that moment the curve rose madly, with more or less transitory halts, checks and spasmodic falls followed by sharp accelerations. On 17 May 1923, the dollar was quoted at 96,000 marks, and on 10 July 200,000. On 23 July, the dollar stood at 400,000, and on 28 July at one million; On 7 August, it passed two million; on 9 August, 6.5 milIion; on 5 September, a little under 20 million; on 6 September, 46 million; and on 7 September, 60 million.

On September, the dollar was worth 325 million marks. In one year, the value of the mark ad been divided by 162,500! At this level, figures lost their meaning. On 1 January 1923, there had been 1,654 million marks in circulation. By 15 August, the Reichsbank alone had issued bank notes for 116,402,548,057,000 marks. The printing press worked unceasingly, and private presses were called upon to print one, two, five and 10 million mark notes, and then 50 and 100 million mark notes.

The rise in prices followed the same curve. On 3 February 1923, an egg cost 300 marks; on the 5th, 420; on the 10th, 3,400; on the 11th, 4,400; on the 27th, 7,000; on 5 August, 12,000; and on the 8th, 30,000. Shops had to mark up their prices from day to day, and then from hour to hour. The big stores employed people simply to add zeroes to marked prices, and they often lagged behind the actual figures. In fact the only real transactions took place on the basis of gold or foreign exchange, preferblydollars. The paper mark was no longer of practical use, except for paying wages, when a fixed rate applied.

Economic and social consequences

The economic machine seized up irresistibly, bit by bit. The Reichsbank no longer gave credit except a against material securities of stable value, but went on accepting payment in valueless paper, a good opportunity for speculators who had the necessary means.The rate of interest reached astronomical heights, 100 per cent for a 24-hour loan, 400 per cent for a month, and 5,000 per cent for a year. One might wonder whether anyone who lent for more than 24 hours was quite sane. In fact, no-one who possessed capital wanted to have anything in paper marks but his debts. The peasant refused to sell his crops. Shops were empty, and markets were deserted. The crisis took the form of a real internal blockade. Townspeople organized raids into the countryside, attached farms and looted barns.”

The German Revolution by Pierre Broue

The German revolution failed, in part for lack of class consciousness, and in part for lack of organization—and we know what came next.

Best Thing in the History of the World