Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

This is a REAL Occupation: With Babies & Banners is a 1977 Academy Award nominated documentary about the role women played during The Great Flint Sit Down Strike of 1936-1937. The Full Video is at this Link: flinthistory.com/general-motors/with-babies-banners/

This is fast Becomming a Liberal Ghost Dance into the Voting Booths:  Occupy Oakland protesters leave port to breakfast with union chief: Occupy Oakland protesters who were blocking the entrance to the Port of Oakland on Thursday morning left their posts and went to breakfast — at the invitation of a local union president.  Meanwhile, workers began to show up for work Thursday morning, port officials said in a statement. “Seaport operations have partially resumed, though the situation remains fluid,” officials said in the statement. “Port employees have been directed to show up at work as normal, pursuant to regular work schedules.” latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/occupy-protesters-leave-oakland-port-entrance.html

Moving Money from One Bank to Another is Not Resistance. At base, it is Hysteria.  Money is Never “Local.” It is Not Just Bankers. It is Capitalism. The core issue of our time is the potential of a mass, activist, class conscious movement to transcend capitalism met by the reality of a corporate state, fascism, conducting perpetual war on workers world-wide.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=exuGv3HsV-U

Second Oakland Vet, a Ranger, Attacked by Police, Injured, Denied Medical Care: A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans’ group said he was beaten by police during clashes with anti-Wall Street demonstrators this week.
Kayvan Sabeghi, 32, was arrested and hospitalized about a week after another U.S. military veteran, former Marine Scott Olsen, was badly injured in a confrontation with police that helped spark the latest round of unrest.
The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot. …”He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him,” Kelly said, adding that Sabeghi had served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours,” he said.  http://news.yahoo.com/army-veteran-injured-oakland-clashes-police-012503613.html

Just A Reminder Occupiers, Activists, Intellectuals and Troops. The Empire Comes Homeabove, troops on Woodward Avenue, Detroit 1967 (we are not going to talk, occupy or vote our way out of this. The lesson from the MidEast: Go to the Troops. Ideas can upend the guns.

Cops Assault Occupy Denver: The simmering tension near the Colorado Capitol escalated dramatically Saturday with more than a dozen arrests, reports of skirmishes between police and protesters and authorities firing rounds of pellets filled with pepper spray at supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.   Officers in riot gear moved into a park late in the day where protesters were attempting to establish an encampment, hauling off demonstrators just hours after a standoff at the Capitol steps degenerated into a fight that ended in a cloud of Mace and pepper spray.  http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/10/29/us/AP-US-Occupy-Denver.html?hp

Liberals, who Mask Class War, Pave the Way For Fascism. The Liberal  es Maoite Mayor Of Oakland who Ordered the Attack on Marine Scott Olson: At another time, Ms. Quan, the mayor of Oakland, might have joined the hundreds of protesters who have camped out near City Hall as part of Occupy Oakland. Instead, she is now a focus of their wrath. Late Thursday night, protesters chased her from a rally, shouting “Go home,” and refusing to let her speak. The protesters were reacting to her decision to shut down the encampment, which led to a night of street violence on Tuesday, with police unleashing tear gas on the demonstrators. Ms. Quan said the area had become unsanitary and unsafe  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/us/Oakland-Protests-Test-Mayor-Jean-Quan-Activist-Background.html?hp

US Government Moves Against Occupiers: This past week saw police move forcefully against America’s Occupy Wall Street protesters in a number of cities [1], with considerable police violence in Oakland, California and Denver, Colorado, plus numerous arrests in places like San Diego, Nashville and Atlanta. Video of the Oakland violence recalls a war zone [2].
Events suggest a coordinated effort to “push back” against Occupy’s string of successes, with some police departments seemingly welcoming an opportunity for confrontation with the protesters.  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MK03Dj03.html

“They Say Cut Back!” The Farce in San Diego says “It’s Halloween! Lets dress up , then go lobby! The Occupy San Diego crowd will likely be wearing more than Guy Fawkes masks and bandanas on Halloween night.
That’s because the demonstrators plan to be in costume for the holiday.   www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/oct/31/more-than-guy-fawkes-masks-at-occupy-sd-tonight/

Resistance Library: The INTERNATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY (I.E.D.) is a new foundation of progressive American scholars, lawyers and activists (see WHO WE ARE) dedicated to promoting real democracy in the country that needs it most, the U.S.A.
Welcome to our
CRITICAL DEMOCRACY LIBRARY
a unique educational resource with 150 pieces divided into the following sections:
THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR HYPOCRISY DEMOCRACY
STOLEN ELECTION(S)
AMERICAN “DEMOCRACY”?
IS DEMOCRACY COMPATIBLE WITH CAPITALISM?
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: MANIFESTOS AND CHARTERS
DEMOCRACY QUOTES
DEMOCRACY CARTOONS    http://www.iefd.org/

Why Are Many OWSers Like Most of America? They are hysterics who don’t know Why Things are as they Are and they are Thrashing around in Front of, and often backing, the most technologically powerful corporate state dedicated to war in the history of the world: Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district is decked out with posters and signs for the wide array of political viewpoints of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The six-week-old movement has several Web sites to promote various perspectives. But just who are these protesters? What is their political ideology? Do they have jobs?
Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Fordham University, recently conducted a survey of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York.
Dr. Panagopoulos described the protesters as “disgruntled Democrats.” Sixty percent of those surveyed said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and about three-quarters now disapprove of Mr. Obama’s performance as president. A quarter said they were Democrats, but 39 percent said they did not identify with any political party. Eleven percent identified as Socialists, another 11 percent said they were members of the Green Party, 2 percent were Republicans and 12 percent say they identified as something else.  http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/protesters-at-occupy-wall-street-disapprove-of-obama-a-survey-finds/

Fritz Tucker: Follow the Money and the Takeover of NYC OWS—According to Marisa Holmes, one of the most outspoken and influential leaders of OWS, the NYC-GA started receiving donations from around the world when OWS began on September 17. Because the NYC-GA was not an official organization, and therefore could not legally receive thousands of dollars in donations, the nonprofit Alliance for Global Justice helped OWS create Friends of Liberty Plaza, which receives tax-free donations for OWS. Since then, Friends of Liberty Plaza has received over $500,000. Until October 28, anybody who wanted to receive more than $100 from Friends of Liberty Plaza had to go through the often arduous modified consensus process (90% majority) of the NYC-GA—which, despite its well-documented inefficiencies, granted $25,740 to the Media WG for live-stream equipment on October 12, and $1,400 to the Food and Medical WGs for herbal tonics on October 18.  http://www.countercurrents.org/tucker041111.htm

Hey CIA! Quit Using those Hellbound Drones to Exterminate Everyone! Be More Careful. Just Assassinate some…not all, just some…The CIA has secretly adjusted its drone strike campaign in Pakistan, bowing to pressure from military and diplomatic officials, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Behind closed doors, military and diplomatic officials have expressed concern that the CIA’s large drone strikes are straining the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan, The Journal reported — although “few U.S. officials have publicly criticized the campaign, or its rapid expansion under President Barack Obama.” Pakistani citizens, rising politicians, and top officials have strongly opposed the strikes, which they say kill innocent civilians.
Earlier this year, “the disputes over drones became so protracted that the White House launched a review over the summer, in which Mr. Obama intervened,” The Journal reported. “Among the changes: The State Department won greater sway in strike decisions; Pakistani leaders got advance notice about more operations; and the CIA agreed to suspend operations when Pakistani officials visit the U.S.”  http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/wsj-cia-asked-to-adjust-drone-strike-policy-20111104

Angry Marines, Patriots, Respond to the Police Shooting of Scott Olson: Marines have been flocking to the social networking/aggregator site Reddit to voice their anger at the life-threatening injury inflicted on 24-year-old Iraqi war veteran Scott Olsen by Oakland police during the recent Occupy protests. Video showed Olsen go down after taking a tear gas canister to the head. As fellow protesters tried to assist him, police lobbed a flash grenade into their midst–right next to Olsen’s already fractured skull.  http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/marines-storm-reddit-after-occupy-oakland-shooting-of-scott-olson_b43369

War criminal Henry Kissinger to be honored by New York Historical Society (PETITION for historians) On November 7, the New York Historical Society is holding a fund raiser honoring Henry Kissinger at the Waldorf Astoria. Tickets start at $1000 and go up to $100,000. The $100,000 tickets allow you to also see Gorbachev and Charlie Rose.  http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/10/war-criminal-henry-kissinger-to-be-honored-by-new-york-historical-society-petition-for-historians/

What did the vaunted HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR say about the CIA/Obama assault on Libya? Still not a peep. Why? Sheer opportunism, cowardice, patriotism and stupidity.

Read Marx. Make Class War

From W. Reich, “Mass Psychology of Fascism” Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions
in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive
development. To be radical, according to Marx, means “going to the root of things.” If one goes to the root of
things, if one understands their contradictory character, the means of mastering the reaction become plain. If one
does not understand them, one lands inevitably in mechanism, economism or metaphysics. Any criticism,
therefore, is justified and of practical value only if it can demonstrate what contradictions in social reality are
overlooked. The revolutionary achievement of Marx did not consist in writing proclamations or pointing to
revolutionary goals, but in recognizing the industrial productive powers as the progressive social force, and in
realistically describing the contradictions in capitalist economy. The failure of the workers’ movement can mean
only that those forces which hinder social development are still incompletely comprehended…….vulgar Marxism contended that an economic crisis of the magnitude of that between 1929 and 1933 must of necessity lead to the development of a Leftist ideology in the masses. Even after the defeat in January 1933 its
representatives continued to talk of a “revolutionary upsurge.” In reality, the economic crisis had—contrary to
their expectations—led to an extreme development of a reactionary ideology in the masses. There was a
divergence between the development of the economic base, which was pressing to the Left, and the development
of the ideology of the masses, which was to the Right. This divergence was overlooked. Thus, no one even raised
the question of how it was possible that the masses, at a time of pauperization, could become nationalistic. No
slogans such as “chauvinism,” “psychosis,” “result of Versailles” comprehend this tendency of the middle classes
to turn reactionary at such times. In addition, it was not only the middle classes, but large numbers of the
industrial workers who turned to the Right. The fact was overlooked that the bourgeoisie, warned by the success
of the Russian revolution, took new preventive measures (such as the New Deal); measures which were not
understood and which the workers were unable to analyze. The further fact was overlooked that early fascism was
directed against big business and could not be done away with as “only a vanguard of the money magnates”; if for
no other reason, because it was a mass movement.   www.whale.to/b/reich.pdf

The Little Red Schoolhouse

A Blast from the Past! Questions and Answers about the NCLB: There is a disagreement, on this list, and in the anti-test (and anti-strangulation of literacy) movement, about key questions that must be answered. These questions could be posed to nearly any group seeking change in nearly any situation in the world, but they are set up here in relationship to the NCLB which is, after all, an international phenomenon.

Some of those questions are:
What is the social context of No Child Left Behind?
Why does NCLB exist?
What are the apparent goals of NCLB sponsors, and what are their underlying goals?
Who gains from NCLB?
Who suffers?
Why is it that so many teachers support NCLB, with but modest reforms?
Why did the two teacher unions (along with the US Chambers of Commerce, Broad Foundation, et al) demand the NCLB, and why do their leaders refuse to do anything substantive to even develop a reform movement?
Who does, and who does not, support the abolition, not reform, of NCLB?
What should be done in regard to NCLB, and the social context that set it up?

There are right and wrong answers to those questions.   www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rgibson/TestingSchoolReformDebate.htm

Holy Crap! Tyrants Running Mich Schools Broke Open Meetings Law! A Wayne County judge ruled Friday that leaders of the state’s Education Achievement Authority violated the state’s Open Meetings Act when it went into closed session Aug. 26 to discuss hiring Chancellor John Covington.
In a three-page ruling, Judge Robert Colombo said that the executive committee for the EAA — which governs Michigan’s statewide school system for failing schools — failed to have the required two-thirds affirmative vote to go into the closed session to discuss Covington, the former superintendent of Kansas City, Mo., schools.
The executive committee has five members. Three were present at the Aug. 26 meeting.
The committee also violated the act, Colombo said, when it failed to properly record the roll call vote for the closed session in the official minutes.  .. Covington will be paid a $175,000 signing bonus as well as a $225,000 salary for his first year of employment.The Education Achievement System was created in June by Gov. Rick Snyder to take over Michigan’s lowest performing schools. It will start with failing schools at Detroit Public Schools next fall and expand to other districts in subsequent years.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20111029/SCHOOLS/110290359/1026/Judge–School-panel-violated-Open-Meetings-Act

Michigan! Barbarians at the Gates! Meap Scores Collapse! Have S&P Score ’em Again! Database: 2010 MEAP scores plunge under new standards
State education officials applied new “cut scores” rules to old student test scores in MEAP and the Michigan Merit Exam and found a staggering decline in the number of Michigan students considered proficient in basic subjects. For instance, third-grade math scores in 2010 go from 95 percent proficient to 35 percent.
With the more rigorous standards, students need to get roughly 65 percent of the answers correct to pass the state test, instead of 39 percent, the previous benchmark. Check the database to see how any Michigan school or district fared.
You can find a school or a district by first choosing a county. Then select from the “district” box. A list of schools and the district’s totals will appear. Click on the link to find out how the district or an individual school performed under the old and new standars.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20111103/SCHOOLS/111103001/Database–2010-MEAP-scores-plunge-under-new-standards

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Haqqani Fanatics For the Caliphate to US Empire: Taste This. We are Still here in your Graveyard. When car bombs blew up in West Beirut, or explosions cut down worshipers in Sadr City mosques, survivors generally knew who was to blame, and more or less why — even when no one claimed responsibility.
So, too, with the suicide car bomb that on Saturday delivered the worst blow NATO forces have suffered yet in Kabul, smashing into an armored bus full of troops and killing 13 foreigners, most of them Americans, and at least 4 Afghans.
The Taliban immediately took credit, but Afghan and American officials here strongly suspect that, more specifically, it was the fearsome Haqqani faction, whose fighters have proved better trained and organized than many Taliban, and which in recent months especially has focused its attacks on military targets rather than civilian ones.
The message the Haqqanis are sending — to the world and, especially, to the Afghan public — is that they are willing and able to kill foreign troops. And with the Haqqani bombs comes a particularly troublesome return address: Pakistan, where the group is based    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/world/asia/haqqani-network-sends-message-with-kabul-attacks.html?_r=1&hp

Bill Blum on the Corporate State Assault on Libya: It doesn’t matter to them if it’s untrue. It’s a higher truth.
“We came, we saw, he died.”
— US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi
Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: “We came, we saw, 3,000 died … ha- ha.”
Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands … this tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, al-Jazeera) — from the declared imminence of a “bloodbath” in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn’t intervene to stories of government helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi’s army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)1
The New York Times (March 22) observed:
… the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.
The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels’ media operation:
It’s not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:
No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That’s [Qaddafi’s] propaganda.)   killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html

Pretending to Leave Iraq by Staying In, and By, Iraq (oh, and Iran) The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.  …With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration is also seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new “security architecture” for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.
The size of the standby American combat force to be based in Kuwait remains the subject of negotiations, with an answer expected in coming days. Officers at the Central Command headquarters here declined to discuss specifics of the proposals, but it was clear that successful deployment plans from past decades could be incorporated into plans for a post-Iraq footprint in the region.
For example, in the time between the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States Army kept at least a combat battalion — and sometimes a full combat brigade — in Kuwait year-round, along with an enormous arsenal ready to be unpacked should even more troops have been called to the region.  http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/u-s-is-planning-military-buildup-in-gulf-after-exit-from-iraq-1.159189

What No American Newspaper Gives you. A War Section With Maps!

The Obamagogue CIA War on Libya: Free Missiles for Everyone! On Mar. 18, President Obama told the U.S. Congress that U.S. involvement in the war in Libya would be a matter of “days not weeks.” It turns out, lots of days, 227 and counting.
“It’s really quite interesting how resilient and fierce they’ve been,” U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ralph J. Jodice II told the New York Times. “We’re all surprised by the tenacity of the pro-Qaddafi forces.”
Besides the rather creepy use of the word “interesting” to describe people you are trying to blow up with 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles, the key word in the general’s statement is “surprised.” Aside from destruction, about the only truth of war is surprise. As Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian Army chief of staff, and one of the great military minds of the 19th century, once noted, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”
It appears that when the President made those comments, he had been listening to generals, always a very bad idea  http://www.fpif.org/blog/the_price_of_the_libya_intervention_surface_to_air_missiles_for_all

Mini Tet 2. Following the NLF, bombing  in Kabul: A van laden with explosives swerved into a U.S. military armored bus Saturday, killing at least 12 Americans and at least four Afghans in one of the deadliest days of the decade-long war for Americans in the Afghan capital, according to U.S. military and Afghan officials.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said the dead included five service members with the coalition and eight civilian employees. www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/suicide-bomber-hits-nato-bus-in-kabul-troops-afghans-suffer-casualties/2011/10/29/gIQALkkvRM_story.html?hpid=z1

US Fires General For Second Tier Truths About Puppet Karzai: The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has fired a senior officer from his job as the No. 2 general in charge of training for making inappropriate public remarks about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government.
Gen. John Allen issued a statement Friday saying that Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller has been relieved of his duties as deputy commander for the Afghan training mission.
In a recent interview with the website Politico, Fuller characterized Afghan leaders as erratic, ungrateful and isolated from reality. The interview quotes him as saying Afghan leaders don’t fully recognize America’s sacrifices on their country’s behalf.
Referring to Karzai’s recent assertion that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan if Pakistan got into a war with the U.S., Fuller was quoted as calling the comments “erratic,” adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, I don’t really care?”   www.npr.org/2011/11/04/142037626/u-s-general-fired-for-criticizing-karzai?ps=cprs

Zionist Pirates Hijack Flotilla: Canadian and Irish ships sailing with Freedom Waves to Gaza have been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters a short while ago.
The Israeli military stated that “Upon arrival of the vessels at the Ashdod port, the activists will be transferred to the custody of the Israel Police and immigration authorities in the Ministry of Interior”.
Freedom Waves to Gaza organizers have been unable to communicate with the ships since soon after the vessels were approached by Israeli warships earlier this afternoon.  http://electronicintifada.net/blog/jalal-abukhater/updated-urgent-ships-boarded-israeli-navy#.TrTQRnvD59l

US and Puppets Murder Farc’s Cano, but Resistance Lives: The killing of the top commander of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group dealt what might be the most severe blow yet to the four-decade-old insurgency, but security experts said Saturday that the rebels still had the ability to regroup and carry on the fight.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/world/americas/alfonso-cano-dead-but-farc-dangerous-analysts-say.html?_r=1&hp

Remember Reagan’s Death Squads? What the Empire will do Abroad, will Come home: The death toll was staggering — an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the Contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political “disappearances” in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.
The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part from Ronald Reagan’s White House.
Yet, as the world community punishes war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, no substantive discussion has occurred in the United States about facing up to this horrendous record of the 1980s.
Rather than a debate about Reagan as a war criminal, the former president is honored as a conservative icon with his name attached to Washington National Airport and with talk of having his face carved into Mount Rushmore.
When the national news media does briefly acknowledge the barbarities of the 1980s in Central America, it is in the context of one-day stories about the little countries bravely facing up to their violent pasts.
At times, the CIA is fingered abstractly as a bad supporting actor in the violent dramas. But never does the national press lay blame on individual American officials.  http://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/03/reagan-and-guatemalas-death-files/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Will the World End at the PIGS? Who Lost Greece?  Greeks , GREEKS!, Can’t Vote? Prime Minister George Papandreou, fresh from winning a confidence vote, will attempt to shore up support for an international rescue after Greece’s main opposition party rejected his offer to form a new government.    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-04/papandreou-is-prepared-to-step-aside-if-he-wins-confidence-vote-in-greece.html

Co Underboss of the Corporate State Says, “You are Screwed and I am Not so Suck it up.” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank is doing all it can to spur the economy and reduce unemployment, but admitted that growth “is likely to be frustratingly slow.”
That slower growth — reflected in a downgrade of the Fed’s economic projections for the rest of the year and beyond — is not satisfactory, Bernanke told reporters at a news conference Wednesday.
“I certainly understand that many people are dissatisfied with the state of the economy,” he said. “I’m dissatisfied with the state of the economy.”   latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/11/federal-reserve-ben-bernanke-news-conference.html

Suburbanite Millionaire Basketballer Bing Mayor Of Detroit Demands More Concessions: The city of Detroit is on the verge of running out of money by February because of runaway pension and health care costs, prompting Mayor Dave Bing today to warn that the state may soon have no choice but to appoint an emergency manager to take over city finances and union contracts.
The only way to avoid a state takeover, Bing said in an exclusive interview with the Free Press, is for union employees to accept deep cuts in pension and health care benefits by the summer and agree to modify workforce rules that make it difficult for employees to be laid off or shifted to other positions.
Employees last year accepted 10% pay cuts. www.freep.com/article/20111103/NEWS01/111103032/Bing-Only-union-givebacks-can-avert-an-emergency-manager-city?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Ponzi Corzine, Respectably From Goldman/Sachs, The Senator, The Gov and MF Global (gee, I wonder where all that money went this time…) Dumps his Pensioners : The missing customer money at MF Global is still missing.
On Friday, funds from the bankrupt brokerage firm suddenly surfaced at JPMorgan Chase. Washington and Wall Street, for a moment, were hopeful it was the money they had been searching for all week.
But then, just as quickly, nearly everyone agreed it was not the missing money, and the hunt was on again.
While MF Global has more than $2 billion in accounts at JPMorgan, regulators had previously accounted for those funds, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. Federal officials estimate that roughly $600 million has been misplaced or misused or has disappeared altogether, two of the people said.   dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/corzine-out-as-search-for-mf-global-funds-continues/?hp

Yergin, of The Prize, Writes on the New Oil World Order: For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy.
But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere. The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas, past a major new discovery off the coast of French Guyana to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-yergin-for-the-future-of-oil-look-to-theamericas-not-the-middle-east/2011/10/18/gIQAxdDw7L_story.html?hpid=z2

Replay. The Council on Foreign Relations worries About Inequality. They just don’t want it to cause Uprisings: Summary: Like an odorless gas, economic inequality pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of its democracy. Over the past three decades, Washington has consistently favored the rich — and the more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the rich acquire, making it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price.  http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136402/george-packer/the-broken-contract?cid=emc-nov11promob-content-102611

Michigan Kicks 11,000 off Welfare: More than 11,000 Michigan families will be cut off cash assistance Saturday following a Michigan Court of Appeals ruling Thursday that their benefits can be discontinued.
The families were initially slated to lose their benefits Oct. 1, but a federal judge ruled they hadn’t been given adequate notice by the state Department of Human Service. The cut-off was rescheduled for Nov. 1, but Genesee County Circuit Judge Geoffrey Neithercut granted an injunction to stop the cut-off after a challenge was filed in his court Friday.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20111103/METRO/111030471/Appeals-court-allows-welfare-cuts-to-go-forward

Farcical Sandanistas Sharpen Tyranny in Nicaragua with Capitalism crushing Democracy: Nicaragua has a constitutional ban on sitting presidents running for re-election. But Daniel Ortega is doing just that, and he looks set to win an unprecedented third term.
This is an election filled with shifting ghosts. Characters from all sides of Nicaragua’s tumultuous recent history are involved in the campaign.
Ortega, the former Marxist guerrilla and longtime Sandinista leader, is promising neoliberal reforms and a pro-business environment to attract foreign capital.
Ortega is leading in the polls — but legal scholars say he is ineligible to run.
His leading challenger is Fabio Gadea, a former Contra who in the 1980s fled to Costa Rica to set up an anti-Sandinista radio station.
Also in the race is ex-president Arnoldo Aleman. After Aleman left office in 2002, he was convicted of having stolen $100 million in government funds. The conservative politician’s conviction was eventually overturned in 2009.
Former Sandinista guerrillas are denouncing the current Sandinista leader, saying Ortega is becoming a dictator.  http://www.npr.org/2011/11/05/142034639/daniel-ortega-seeks-re-election-in-nicaragua

The Emergence of Fascism as a Mass Popular Movement

Italian Fascists Seem to Have forgotten El Duce’s Fate (above). “Why, why do you come here, who is this man Mussolini?” asked the celebrant, Giulio Tam, a traditionalist Catholic priest.
“We come to thank this man for the most European, most Mediterranean, most original of ideas,” answered Father Tam, a familiar figure in right-wing circles, before he began reciting the rosary.
So it goes in Predappio, three times a year, to commemorate the day of Mussolini’s birth (on July 29, 1883, in a house not far from the cemetery), his death (at the hands of partisans on April, 28, 1945) and the so-called March on Rome, which brought Mussolini’s party to power in Italy in October 1922.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/europe/tourists-still-drawn-to-tomb-of-mussolini-il-duce-in-italy.html

One Watches Ten. Ten Watch 100. 100 watch 1,000…Britain’s largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.
The surveillance system has been procured by the Metropolitan police from Leeds-based company Datong plc, which counts the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East among its customers. Strictly classified under government protocol as “Listed X”, it can emit a signal over an area of up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person’s movements in real time.   www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/30/metropolitan-police-mobile-phone-surveillance

Washington State Wants more Prison Labor to Pick Apples: Even after deploying 105 prison inmates this week to help pick apples in eastern Washington state, Gov. Chris Gregoire says growers still need from 3,000 to 4,000 workers to help harvest before the season’s first major freeze.
“We’re sitting on the potential of having the third largest crop, at around 105 million boxes, and we can’t get them picked,” Gregoire said in an interview.
The Democratic governor defended the plan to dispatch the male offenders from the Olympic Corrections Center in Clallam County, Wash., a minimum-security work camp, to an orchard in Wenatchee Valley, where they began work Monday, earning $8.67 an hour.  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/11/02/129064/washington-state-gov-prisoners.html

Solidarity ForNever

Every Major Union in the US is Spending and Disorganizing to be sure the Anti-Capitalist, anti-imperialist imminent nature of OWS is surrounded, diverted, demoralized, and demolished.

NYC Union Leaders Stall Working-Class Fightback: y Wall Street” protests have triggered a positive response from working-class people everywhere. After the government’s bailout of banks and corporations, workers and poor people have been made to pay with layoffs and budget cuts. The widespread sense of anger has begun to turn to a recognition that it’s time to take action.
Leaders of the trade unions and community organizations had done little or nothing to protest the mounting attacks since the economic crisis hit, so they were shamed by the enthusiasm for the OWS initiative and prodded to act militant themselves. They sponsored a rally at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan on October 5 in solidarity with OWS. The event drew over 20,000 people, but the unions organized few of their own members to attend. lrp-cofi.org/statements/nycunion_110311.html

AFT and the Empire’s Bribe: Pay US and We will shut up About your Wars, financial collapse, racism, and the ruin of Urban Education: AFT Praises President Obama’s Bold Jobs Plan
President Obama’s bold plan—the American Jobs Act—is the right antidote to help solve our persistent economic problems, AFT president Randi Weingarten says.  http://wa.aft.org/index.cfm?action=cat&categoryID=31064f70-b9d5-4c16-b7b7-a9f02e594981

Spy Versus Spy

Incompetent, bumbling amateur who is probably indirectly responsible for tens to hundreds of thousands of American lives, Union and Confederate. His inflated intelligence reports of Confederate strength caused an already lead- footed McClellan to be even more over-cautious, allowing the Rebels to prepare defenses and for Lee to come on the scene. Possibly added at least two years to the war. As for his arrest of Greenhow, a deaf and dumb person could have found her out, as she wasn’t doing a whole lot in terms of being secretive.

SAS Officer Describes Botched Coup in Africa (video inside): Former British Special Air Service (SAS) officer Simon Mann has broken his silence about a failed 2004 coup attempt in the oil-rich African nation of Equatorial Guinea.
In his newly released book, Mann makes startling claims about the scandal in which the son of Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, was also implicated.  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/10/20111028153343440274.html

Busted in Alaska? A soldier stationed in Alaska was arrested Friday on suspicion of espionage, according to an Army official.
Spc. William Colton Millay, a 22-year-old military policeman from Owensboro, Ky., was taken into custody at 6:30 a.m. Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson by special agents from Army Counterintelligence and Army Criminal Investigation Command.
The FBI and Army Counterintelligence are continuing to investigate Millay, assigned to the rear detachment of the 164th Military Police Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion, 2nd Engineer Brigade. The unit, known as the Arctic Enforcers, deployed to Afghanistan in the spring without Millay.
Millay is in the custody of the Alaska Department of Corrections, where he is listed as a federal inmate at the Anchorage Correctional Complex.
A U.S. Army Alaska spokesman said he could not elaborate on whether Millay has been charged, what charges he would face or whether he faces charges outside of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/10/army-richardson-soldier-arrested-espionage-probe-102911w/

Best and Worst Things In History of the World

They ARE Penn State! (say it ain’s so, Joe) — Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and another school administrator were charged with perjury and failure to report in an investigation into allegations that former football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually abused eight young men, authorities said Saturday.
State prosecutors said Sandusky, 67, of State College, Pa., was arrested Saturday. Curley, 57, and Penn State vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz, 62, both of Boalsburg, Pa., were expected to turn themselves in Monday in the capital of Harrisburg, according to the attorney general’s office. Schultz’s position includes oversight of the university’s police department. www.detnews.com/article/20111105/SPORTS0203/111050379/Ex-Penn-State-defensive-coordinator–others-charged-in-child-sex-case

So Long Matty

Matty Alou, a left-handed slap-hitting outfielder who won a batting championship as a Pittsburgh Pirate and who as a San Francisco Giant once shared an outfield with his brothers Felipe and Jesús, has died in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He was 72.