Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say FightBack!

“The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists in one of the numerous branches of industry, in one of the numerous countries, etc., makes it economically possible for them to bribe certain sections of the workers, and for a time a fairly considerable minority of them, and win them to the side of the bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation against all the others. The intensification of antagonisms between imperialist nations for the division of the world increases this urge. And so there is created that bond between imperialism and opportunism, which revealed itself first and most clearly in Great Britain, owing to the fact that certain features of imperialist development were observable there much earlier than in other countries….

As a matter of fact the extraordinary rapidity and the particularly revolting character of the development of opportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be durable: the rapid growth of a painful abscess on a healthy body can only cause it to burst more quickly and thus relieve the body of it. The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.” (Lenin, Imperialism)

Rouge Forum 2012
June 22-24 at Miami University (Oxford, OH)
About the RF
Accommodations
Call for Proposals
Featured Speakers
Getting There
Registration
RF 2012 Poster
RF Steering Committee
RF@AERA
Proposal deadline extended to May 1

Proposals for presenting at Rouge Forum 2012 will be accepted unti May 1, 2012.
rougeforum2012.wordpress.com/
Details for submitting your proposal can be found here.
OCCUPY EDUCATION! Class Conscious Pedagogies and Social Change

Quebec Students Rise Up Angry  (riot police an every day fixture—video embedded) Riot police used tear gas and concussion grenades on hundreds of students protesting outside Montreal’s Palais des congrès Friday, where Premier Jean Charest was speaking at a symposium on northern development.
The mayhem reached deep inside the convention centre, where Charest’s keynote speech was delayed after a group of protesters gained access to the building and confronted police guarding the meetings.
Two police officers and at least two protesters were injured in the standoff, and 17 people were arrested.
Friday’s action is the latest in Quebec’s escalating student movement against planned tuition-fee increases.
Charest admonished the students and said the social disruption is “unacceptable.”  “This is 2012, this is Quebec. We have had ministers find tanks of gas on their verandas… Molotov cocktails in front of their offices. There are ministers who have had death threats,” the premier said.
“I find it unacceptable that one student association refuses to condemn violence,” he added, singling out CLASSE, the movement’s most militant group.
Charest said debate over Quebec tuition reaches back two decades, and his government’s decision to raise fees was made over a year ago after consultation with different groups.   www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/04/20/students-palais-de-congres.html?cmp=rss

Madison, MI, Teachers Sue to Halt Pay Cut Teachers in the Madison District Public Schools plan to file suit today against the district for imposing retroactive 10 percent pay cuts that take effect today.
Bobby Robinson, a representative for the Madison Education Association, said the union particularly objects to provisions that make the pay cut retroactive to September 2011. An unfair labor practices suit and injunction request to stop the cut is expected in Oakland County Circuit Court.
“The 10 percent pay cut is one thing, but the retroactive part is against the law,” Robinson said.  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120420/SCHOOLS/204200364/1026/schools/Madison-teachers-sue-pay-fight

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyKRn8hinb0&feature=relmfu

Taxing the Rich is not Rich/Abolition bwth: In France, François Hollande, the Socialist who may well succeed Nicolas Sarkozy as president, wants to raise the top marginal income tax rate to 75 percent, calling earnings over a million euros “impossible.” A candidate yet farther on the left suggests a top rate of 100 percent.“The debate in Washington is between the Bush-era and Clinton-era tax rates,” said Mr. Diamond, whom Mr. Obama nominated to the Federal Reserve and Republicans blocked. “Our finding is that the debate should be between the pre-1986 Reagan tax rate, which was 50 percent, and the rates that existed from Johnson until Reagan,” which were higher.
“Thirty percent is three times smaller than the 91 percent of Roosevelt,” Mr. Piketty said, responding to the Buffett Rule proposal and referring to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who engineered the New Deal. “And inequality is greater than in the time of Roosevelt.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/business/for-economists-saez-and-piketty-the-buffett-rule-is-just-a-start.html?_r=4&pagewanted=2

Crackup in the Ruling Class: Citigroup Boss Denied Bouus By Shareholders In a stinging rebuke, Citigroup shareholders rebuffed on Tuesday the bank’s $15 million pay package for its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, marking the first time that stock owners have united in opposition to outsized compensation at a financial giant.
The shareholder vote, which comes amid a rising national debate over income inequality, suggests that anger over pay for chief executives has spread from Occupy Wall Street to wealthy institutional investors like pension fund and mutual fund managers. About 55 percent of the shareholders voting were against the plan, which laid out compensation for the bank’s five top executives, including Mr. Pandit.    http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/citigroup-shareholders-reject-executive-pay-plan/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120418

above, celebrate 41 years of the struggle to preserve Barrio Logan’s Chicano Park and its art

The Department of Education, University of Athens, Greece is hosting the
2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION
10-14 July 2012, Athens, Greece
Organized by the journals:
JOURNAL OF CRITICAL EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES (UK)
CULTURAL LOGIC (USA/CANADA)
KRITIKI (GREECE)
RADICAL NOTES (INDIA)
Eleştirel Pedagoji (TURKEY)

icce-2012.weebly.com/index.html

Congratulations on the Publication of

George Schmidt review of the book and its relation to the potential Chicago school workers’ struke   www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3202&section=Article

Blast from the Past

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufwTCgodmM

The Little Red Schoolhouse

High Stakes exams Eradicate Teaching of LA Rebellion (because the tests teach “it’s not right to rebel”) t two decades after the riots sparked massive violence that would leave dozens dead and thousands injured, lessons about them appear to be limited in Southern California classrooms. For many teachers, the pressure to teach content that will be tested in state standardized tests and Advanced Placement exams next month has crowded out time for the riots, however crucial they are to city history and the nation’s larger civil rights struggle.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has not formally included the riots in its history curriculum because it is not part of the California social studies standards. The district plans to post material on its website for optional teacher use, however.
Michael Reed, the district’s history specialist, said the push to raise test scores has made principals “hawkish” about directing teachers to focus on the areas that will be tested. Test questions from the state’s eighth- and 11th-grade U.S. history exams released by state officials don’t stretch beyond the 1960s, although Reed said the latest tests included a question from the Nixon era of the 1970s.   www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-riots-schools-20120415,0,487515.story

Detroit Kids Walk to School Through Hundreds of Danger Zones (even on test days) The city’s crisis is mammoth. More than 3,000 structures in the Denby area alone are considered so dangerous, they need to be torn down. Last year, the city targeted the area around Denby and two other high schools for increased demolitions and patrols: Osborn, adjacent to Denby on the east side, and Cody, on the west side. More than 5,500 homes need to be demolished in the Cody area and more than 2,700 near Osborn.   …More than 20,000 Detroit Public Schools students walk to bus stops to ride city or school buses each morning. Thousands more walk directly to school. For six months out of the year, it’s dark when they navigate around thousands of vacant structures.
And they do so in a city where more than 26,000 streetlights don’t work.   www.freep.com/article/20120415/NEWS01/304150016/For-many-kids-in-Detroit-school-zones-are-danger-zones?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Student Loan Debt Over One Trillion Dollars, the next bubble The growing student loan debt has led to concerns that it could harm the economy, especially since federally backed student loans can’t be discharged through bankruptcy. Recent reports show that student loans are on track this year to exceed $1 trillion — more than credit and auto loans. Meanwhile, default rates have climbed.
“Student debt has (been) growing for some time,” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, an Oakland, Calif., policy organization that runs the Project on Student Debt. “College costs have continued to outpace both family incomes and available grant aid so students and families are increasingly turning to loans to fill that gap.”
The student loan burden comes as cash-strapped states, including Michigan, continue to scale back support to public universities, leading schools to hike tuition, which means more students borrow more money to cover costs. Last week, Central Michigan University became the first of the state’s public universities to announce a tuition increase for the next school year. Others are expected to follow in coming weeks.  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120417/SCHOOLS/204170370/1026/schools/Students-amass-mountain-debt-default-rates-continue-climb

Banksters Clean up as States Borrow from Schools For the past decade governors and state lawmakers desperate to close deficits have adopted budgets that use a little-noticed accounting gimmick called a “deferral” to borrow money from K-12 schools and pay it back in the next fiscal year.
The problem is the state then immediately taps districts for yet another loan, perpetuating a borrowing cycle that persists today.
The cumulative outstanding debt: $9.4 billion to K-12 schools statewide and $600 million to San Diego County districts.
It would be easy to conclude that persistent school budget woes, including teacher layoffs and program cuts, could be minimized — if only the state would stop this temporary pilfering.But districts eventually do see the money months later. And by delaying payments the state avoids making permanent cuts in school funding on top of the ongoing reduction in spending that have hit education in recent years.
Deferrals also give districts the option of going out and borrowing money on their own to avoid deeper reductions locally.   www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/09/state-borrowing-from-schools-is-adding-up/

Clairemont McKenna SAT Test Cheat “Alone” An investigation has shown that a Claremont McKenna College administrator doctored incoming freshmen’s SAT scores and other statistics in an effort to make the school appear more selective.   The investigation also revealed that former vice president for admission and financial aid Richard Vos said he was responding to pressure from school president Pamela Gann to make the college more selective and did not intend to boost its ranking in U.S. News & World Report listings.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/18/probe-official-inflated-sat-scores-on-his-own/

San Diego Teachers Protest More than a Thousand Pink Slips — Hundreds of teachers turned their classrooms over to substitutes Wednesday to contest pink slips — or simply protest the San Diego school district’s massive proposed personnel cuts — at hearings that give educators a last-ditch effort to save their jobs.
Many showed up in red union T-shirts and carried picket signs. Some brought stacks of papers to grade while they waited through the tedious proceedings. A few even arrived with babies, whose pediatric health care could be cut along with their parents’ jobs.
The San Diego Unified School District issued tentative layoff notices to 1,666 teachers — including 20 percent of the elementary teaching force — last month to cope with the state’s fiscal crisis and help offset a projected $122 million deficit in next year’s $1.1 billion budget.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/18/teachers-appeal-pink-slips/

Evolution Halted In Tennessee Again. Cretinism Sets In We now have compelling evidence that evolution doesn’t happen — at least not in Tennessee. As of April 10, 2012, Tennessee has on its books a new law intended to undermine the teaching of evolution and promote the teaching of creationism in public schools. The legislation was opposed by pretty much every credible organization involved in the teaching of biology: the National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, the Tennessee Science Teachers Association and all eight Tennessee members of the National Academy of Sciences. But the legislators of Tennessee thought they knew better, and Gov. Bill Halsam, demonstrating neither courage nor conviction, allowed the bill to pass into law without his signature   www.alternet.org/story/154961/tennessee_skewers_teaching_of_evolution_in_schools_—_is_your_state_next

Ed Department bogs Down on TED Evaluations (send them a 1% raise and they will vote for anything) – When the Education Department writes rules later this year that will change how teacher preparation programs become eligible for students to receive some forms of federal financial aid, it will tackle the task on its own.
A federal panel charged with recommending how best to overhaul regulations governing teacher preparation programs acknowledged Thursday afternoon that it would not reach a consensus on a set of proposals, and that the gaps between some negotiators — and between negotiators and the Education Department — remained too wide on too many issues.
At the heart of the disagreement was what role, if any, evaluations of teachers based on their students’ test scores should play when judging teacher preparation programs and, in the case of programs at colleges and universities, determining eligibility for some forms of financial aid. The failure to agree on new rules means that Education Department officials are free to write their own language, although they will be doing so after hearing strong objections from many negotiators to the federal proposals.    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/13/rule-making-teacher-preparation-programs-fails-reach-consensus

UCSD’s Compton Cookout Reverberates Still Hosted by a fraternity in February 2010, the Compton Cookout invited women to dress as “ghetto chicks” who “usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama and wear cheap clothes.” The invitation, posted on Facebook, promised chicken and watermelon.
When news of the event became public, it was immediately blasted by student leaders, civil rights activists and the chancellor.
African American students contended that the party was part of an overall attitude of harassment and exclusion at the La Jolla campus, where African American students comprised less than 2% of undergraduates.    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/uc-san-diego-racial-harassment-settlement.html

California University Bosses Party on While Tuition Booms As San Diego’s public universities scaled back enrollment, cut classes and hiked tuition in recent years, the institutions increased spending on end-of-year and holiday parties for staff, public records show.
The University of California San Diego spent $247,996 on such celebrations in 2011, up from $179,552 in 2010, according to reimbursement records. Much of it was for the medical center staff, which receives little in taxpayer funds but remains a public facility.
The amount put UCSD in first place among 47 public agencies surveyed   www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/11/drag-show-lips-and-more-sdsu-party-expenses/

A Sample of the Expenses from San Diego State’s Elites • Faculty and staff in the biology department ventured off campus Dec. 8 to Lips Restaurant for food and drinks and a drag show. The outing totaled $2,633.26. The department spent $2,945 for their holiday gathering the year before held on campus, which featured a disc jockey for four hours.
• SDSU’s university relations and development staff celebrated the holidays Dec. 13, 2011 at Slater’s 50/50 at a cost of $1,816.25.

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

“Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.”
― Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Abridged Edition) (Bollingen Series

Vets Comment on the Product of Endless Imperialist Warfare: barbarism In a war directed against an entire population that overwhelmingly opposes the foreign occupation, where every Afghan is considered “fair game,” grotesque conduct as revealed in the most recent photos is inevitable. No condemnation from Pentagon officials will put an end to it. No token punishment of rank-and-file soldiers will prevent further crimes from taking place. No public relations campaign by the White House will change the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.
There is no “good conduct” in a colonial-type war. There is no such thing as a “kinder, gentler” occupation by the most destructive military machine on the planet, attempting to subjugate an impoverished population that stands in strong, determined opposition to foreign troops on their soil. This is the reality of the war, and will be until all U.S. forces have left.  (March Forward)

Panetta: No Kidding. We are Serious this time. We are sorry to have produced too Many Barbarized Ghoul Troups: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta apologized Wednesday for gruesome, newly revealed photographs that show U.S. soldiers posing with the bloodied remains of dead insurgents in Afghanistan. He said war can lead young troops to “foolish decisions” and expressed concern the photos could incite fresh violence against Americans.   www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j0AhpOA5VCO1LuzluMn_jBHMLfiQ?docId=ac5420e77e5145e6aba022b82bce0b35

Say Leon, How do you Feel About WW3? Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offered a blunt assessment of the threats facing the United States on Wednesday, saying the potential for another war breaking out remains high in places like North Korea.
“We’re within an inch of war almost every day in that part of the world,” Panetta said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, in response to a question about the threats in the Korean Peninsula. “And we just have to be very careful about what we say and what we do.”     thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/222387-panetta-were-within-an-inch-of-war-almost-every-day

Mini-Tet? Taliban hits Kabul At least 11 police officers and five civilians were injured and 19 insurgents killed in Sunday’s brazen attacks on foreign and Afghan targets in Afghanistan’s capital and eastern provinces, government officials said.
Fierce fighting continued throughout Kabul seven hours after the attack was launched around lunchtime on the U.S., British, German and Russian embassies, parliament, NATO headquarters and a military academy in some of the capital’s most heavily guarded neighborhoods.
The government said that by early evening all of the attackers in sites around Kabul had been surrounded by Afghan Security Forces.
The Taliban took responsibility for the assaults in a message to the media, calling it part of a spring offensive.
The attacks caused panic and fear throughout Kabul.    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/04/afghanistan-attacks-kabull-embassies.html

Look! Up in the Air! It’s a Plane! It’s A War Plane! No! Wait! It’s A  Job! It’s AMERICA!  It’s BOTH!

The radar-evading F-35 fighter jet, a nearly $400-billion weapons program under development for more than a decade, is facing its worst turbulence since Washington decided to buy it in 2001 — when it was billed as the most affordable, lethal and survivable military aircraft ever built for the U.S. and its allies.
At a time when federal spending is under a microscope, the plan to develop and build 2,443 airplanes is hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. The F-35, known as the Joint Strike Fighter, has been delayed by glitches in its onboard computer systems, cracks in structural components and troubles with its electrical system.
A two-star general serving as the military’s project manager was fired over the program’s never-ending problems. The Pentagon has delayed orders of the aircraft, and the fighter jet is caught in the middle of a major spending fight in Congress. What’s more, the plane has roiled political debate in Canada, the Netherlands and other allies that are picking up 10% of the development costs.    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fighter-jet-woes-20120419,0,2972144.story

Are We Still in Iraq? Are there problems? A string of deadly explosions and other attacks shook Iraq on Thursday, with bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk resulting in the most fatalities. Over all, nearly three dozen people were killed and more than 100 wounded, according to security officials.
By the standards of Iraq — where attacks occur daily, although at a much diminished rate compared with the height of the war — the wave of violence on Thursday was not extraordinary, although it was a reminder, after weeks of relative calm, that an organized insurgency remained active.   www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/world/middleeast/iraq-attacks-kill-dozens.html

The US, Biggest Arms Dealer in the World, under Obamagogue, Wants more Secret Deals (liberals who want to disarm Americans Arm the World’s Tyrants) The Obama administration has blunted Congress’s authority over proposed arms sales to other countries in an effort to cut legislators out of an increasingly prominent aspect of U.S. foreign policy.
Overseas arms sales account for a growing percentage, in some cases up to 25 percent or more, of annual revenue for the military-indutrial complex, and the Obama administration wants more authority to approve such sales to top buyers like Israel and Saudi Arabia without congressional oversight.  http://news.antiwar.com/2012/04/19/white-house-curtails-congresss-authority-on-arms-sales/

Marx: It is a small step from Troops Killing themselves, to killing officers HERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.   An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.   www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html?_r=2

US Drones Will Continue to Bomb Pakistan Yesterday’s statement from the Pakistani parliament has not changed anything, according to Obama Administration officials, who insist that drone strikes against Pakistan’s tribal area will continue over any objections. They also addressed reports that the reduction in attacks in recent weeks was an effort to placate Pakistan, insisting that the strikes proved how successful the assassination campaign has been, and that it has sent everyone into hiding.    http://news.antiwar.com/2012/04/13/us-drone-strikes-against-pakistan-will-continue/

More than 9 Sexual Assaults a Day in US Military The number of sexual assault reports involving servicemembers remained relatively unchanged in fiscal 2011, according to an annual Department of Defense report on sexual assaults released Friday afternoon.
The 3,192 reported incidents were just 34 more than the previous year, a 1 percent increase. But so many sexual assaults go unreported that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated earlier this year that the total number is closer to 19,000.
The DOD offers two reporting options for sexual assault victims: restricted and unrestricted. Restricted reports allow victims to seek medical treatment and other services but remain confidential, which means the crimes are not investigated and few details are available.    http://www.stripes.com/news/dod-number-of-sex-assault-reports-holds-steady-in-2011-1.174405

Why Do We Not hear, “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Bahrain”? After a night of clashes between antigovernment demonstrators and the police, a protester was found dead Saturday near the capital as Bahrain struggled to restore calm before an international auto race on Sunday. Opposition groups blamed the police for the death.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/world/middleeast/in-bahrain-more-clashes-and-death-of-a-protester.html?ref=global-home

Who’s Coup in Guinea-Bissau? No elected president here has ever finished a full term. In 2009, the president was assassinated. And in January this year, his replacement, Malam Bacai Sanha, died from complications related to diabetes.
In an emergency presidential election on March 18, Gomes won 49 percent — just shy of enough to win the election outright. A runoff is scheduled for April 29, but opposition candidates, including former President Kumba Yala, declared the first round of elections fraudulent, though international observers said there were no irregularities.
Yala, who has a good relationship with the military, has refused to participate in the runoff election. He warned at a recent press conference: “Whoever dares to campaign will be responsible for what happens.”
The nation also is a hotbed for the cocaine trade. Latin American drug smugglers ferry the drugs here to the nation’s uninhabited islands in the Atlantic Ocean. From there it is trafficked to Europe.

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Financial ‘Reform’ Failure: Chase, Bank Of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Now 30% Bigger; Control Assests Equal To 56% Of U.S. Economy Five banks – JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56% of the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve.” Behold! The fruits of toothless, non-regulating financial ‘reform’! Financial oligarchs now control assets equal to a majority of the U.S. economy. They’ve gained complete control of the European economy, and many others around the world. The conditions have been created for a bigger and more devastating global economic crash,   theoldspeakjournal.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/financial-reform-failure-chase-bank-of-america-citigroup-wells-fargo-goldman-sachs-now-30-bigger-control-assests-equal-to-56-of-u-s-economy/

Drunken WhoreMongering Uzi Carrying Decadent Gang Won’t Pay Up (diving into the honeypot) — The Secret Service announced on Friday that three of its employees under investigation in connection with misconduct with prostitutes last week in Colombia have decided to resign, bringing to six the number of individuals forced out of the agency in the case.    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/secret-service-to-dismiss-2-more-in-scandal-official-says.html?ref=global-home

Cracks in the Chinese Social Fascist Clique (the Long March for this? Let us withdraw this mandate from heaven) After a pampered childhood in the walled compounds of the Chinese capital, he was sent off for schooling in England, where he developed a reputation as an academically indifferent bon vivant with a weakness for European sports cars, first-class air travel, equestrian sports and the tango.   … Bo Guagua’s high living clearly irritated party leaders, who named the son, a 24-year-old student at Harvard, in the official statement describing the reasons for his father’s fall from power.
One former government employee with party ties said the leadership tolerated a certain level of corruption among top officials or their relatives as long as it was kept out of public view. He said Mr. Bo’s collegiate antics, splashed across the Internet, were emblematic of an ambitious, cocksure family who often ignored the party’s conservative standards of public behavior.
The resulting buzz also drew unwanted attention to other so-called princelings, who often leverage their bloodline for financial gain but generally seek to avoid publicity lest it damage the party’s image of self-sacrifice and asceticism.
“If you’re discreet, they look the other way,” the former government employee said. “But Guagua’s behavior was striking by the standards; urinating against a fence at Oxford, kissing foreign girls — it all goes down bad in China.”   www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/world/asia/bo-guaguas-parties-and-privilege-aggravate-elite-chinese-familys-fall.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwb3ma33QT0&feature=related

Jeff Neeley’s and GSA’s $823,000 Bash (clowns! Mediums! Where was the Secret Service?) You knew government bureaucrats were living large when they hired a medium.
And this mind reader who helped government workers communicate with the dead was just the beginning of the scandal involving the General Services Administration’s $823,000 spending spree in Las Vegas.  There was also the $75,000 bicycle-building exercise, the clown show, 1,000 sushi rolls at $7 a pop, $6,325 spent on commemorative coins, $8,130 for souvenir books and 300 helpings of “Boursin Scalloped Potato with Barolo Wine Braised Short Ribs” at $5 each.
The official responsible for the 2010 soiree — Jeffrey Neely — said he wanted his conference to be “over the top.” By all accounts, he achieved his goal — and now the party’s over.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-was-the-gsas-jeffrey-neely-thinking/2012/04/16/gIQAC2nTMT_story.html

The White House has Always been For Sale Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits.
More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/us/politics/white-house-doors-open-for-big-donors.html?_r=4&hpw

Suicide by Economy Grows in Ruined Europe The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”   …In Greece, the suicide rate among men increased more than 24 percent from 2007 to 2009, government statistics show. In Ireland during the same period, suicides among men rose more than 16 percent. In Italy, suicides motivated by economic difficulties have increased 52 percent, to 187 in 2010 — the most recent year for which statistics were available — from 123 in 2005.
Researchers say the trend has intensified this year as government austerity measures took hold and compounded the hardships for many. While suicides often have many complex causes, researchers have found that severe economic stress corresponds to higher suicide rates.
“Financial crisis puts the lives of ordinary people at risk, but much more dangerous is when there are radical cuts to social protection,”   www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/europe/increasingly-in-europe-suicides-by-economic-crisis.html?_r=4&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Taibbi on the Obamagogue’s Fake Jobs Bill After changing the name of the Economic Recovery Committee to the Jobs Council, Obama made a radical switch of the group’s leadership. No more would it be run by a tough-on-crime curmudgeon like Volcker, who complained about the “moral hazard” of massive public assistance to banks coupled with weakened regulation and enforcement; the new council would have a different flavor.
Instead, it would be run by General Electric CEO Jeffery Immelt, a man who basically personified Volcker’s “moral hazard” concerns. Immelt collected tens of millions in salaries and bonuses for running a firm that a) came crying to the state for over a hundred billion dollars in bailouts, guarantees and surreptitious Fed support in the years after the crash, and b) was under investigation at the time of Immelt’s appointment for a variety of crimes.
Anyway, some time after the crash, as Obama’s own SEC was working out how much to fine Immelt’s own company for (among other things) accounting fraud and rigging municipal bond bids, Obama decided to put Immelt in charge of a task force that ultimately would recommend a slackening of regulatory enforcement as a means to create jobs.   www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/yes-virginia-this-is-obama-s-jobs-act-20120412

Navy Personnel Court Martialed for Saying “Tax the Rich” Consider the story of Leah Bolger, the latest American hero up on trial:She is a young female artist in the Midwest. She joins the Navy at 22, is made commander and serves two decades as an anti-submarine warfare specialist. After retiring she joins Veterans for Peace and becomes the organization’s first female president. Then, in October of 2011, she commits the crime of interrupting a public congressional hearing of the Super Committee to deliver a message from the 99 percent: End the wars and tax the rich to fix the deficit.
Because of her 45-second transgression, Commander Bolger now faces a court trial this Thursday morning, April 12, where she could receive a maximum jail sentence of six months. Bolger, 54, intends to plead guilty and use her court appearance to draw the connection between America’s deficit debacle and the three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar defense budget we, as voting taxpayers, spend as a base-mark for failed and unending military ventures overseas.  http://truth-out.org/news/item/8488-naval-commander-stands-trial-for-telling-super-committee-to-end-the-wars

With Two Million Plus in Prison, Obamagogue still loves that Drug War President Barack Obama said Saturday legalizing drug use is not the answer to trafficking in illegal narcotics in the Americas, countering a growing chorus in Latin America to discuss decriminalization as a way to ease deadly cartel violence.    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57414151/obama-drug-legalization-not-answer-to-cartels/

Walmart In Mexico: $24 Million in Bribes covered up In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.   ..Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”
The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.
Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.
Neither American nor Mexican law enforcement officials were notified.   www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/business/at-wal-mart-in-mexico-a-bribe-inquiry-silenced.html?ref=global-home

John Conyers’ Jailed Wife (the thief) Moves prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons has cut Monica Conyers loose of “Camp Cupcake” and placed her in a local jail in Virginia.
The ex-Detroit city councilwoman and wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who is serving a 37-month prison sentence for bribery, was transferred on April 12 to the Roanoke City Jail in Virginia, according to the BOP. The federal agency would not say why Conyers was transferred out of the federal prison camp she had been staying at in West Virginia – a place dubbed Camp Cupcake for its cozy, sorority-like setting in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains.
BOP officials would only say that there are several reasons why inmates are moved, including: they need more or less security, disciplinary issues, medical or psychological treatment, they need to participate in a certain program, or to relieve overcrowding.  Which of these applied to Conyers was not disclosed.  http://www.freep.com/article/20120417/NEWS01/120417043/Monica-Conyers-Camp-Cupcake-Roanoke-jail?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Emerging Fascism as a Mass Popular Movement

Solidarity Fornever

Detroit Issues 4100 Teacher Layoff Slips…Proud DFT does….nothing At least 4,100 Detroit Public Schools teachers received layoff noticesthis week and were told they can reapply for their jobs next month.
Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, confirmed Thursday the notices were sent by the district this week. The layoffs are effective Aug. 24, just days before the start of the 2012-13 school year, and went to all teachers in the district. Nonteaching positions were not affected.    http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120413/SCHOOLS/204130364/1026/schools/DPS-teachers-get-layoff-slips

Pontiac School System Evaporates–quisling union offers unemployment counseling Van Fleet was among 45 teachers laid off in the Pontiac School District to help eliminate a $24 million deficit. Teachers at Owen Elementary knew about the layoffs, but the names of the five to be laid off at their school were announced Wednesday. During a press conference in front of the school Friday afternoon, tears flowed from teachers and students as they embraced and said goodbye to each other. Some teachers and their colleagues held boxes to help the laid-off teachers pack their belongings. The cuts also include 27 school administrators, seven secretaries, six support personnel and 12 non-union members. The layoffs come 45 days before the end of the school year.
Pontiac Education Association President Aimee McKeever said she will meet with the laid-off teachers Monday to review unemployment and medical coverage issues.
“The district is saying there’s no chance of recalls,” she said. “They claim at least 500 students will leave the district, but even more will leave now that classrooms will be so overcrowded,” she said. “Because the district mismanaged funds and allowed people to steal from us, they’re putting that burden on the backs of teachers and making the community, the teachers and the students suffer.”    http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120414/SCHOOLS/204140349/1026/schools/Pontiac-teachers-exit-emotional

AFL-CIO’s Rallies Pretend to Fight Wall Street;  When Will We Be Defended with Real Action?
By Harry Kelber

Over the past two years, the AFL-CIO has staged a number of rallies and marches to demand that the bankers and investors of Wall Street “pay their fair share” to compensate the millions of people who lost their jobs and homes because of their reckless, greedy behavior.
Remember AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s “Make Wall Street Pay” in front of the Bank of America? Trumka never confronted the bankers or suggested negotiations for a settlement. The Wall Street bankers and financiers never paid a dime. And Trumka dropped the AFL-CIO campaign two days later.
Now, AFL-CIO leaders have decided to call on some 100,000 union members and allies to demonstrate on Tuesday, April 17, “Tax Day” and also “Equal Pay Day.” Unions across the country will be spending lots of time, money and resources to make the demonstration a success.
But does any union member believe that Congress and the White House will be listening? Haven’t they heard the same speeches by our leaders many times before – and ignored them?
Does anyone expect Wall Street to respond to the April 17 spectacles by disgorging their two trillion dollars in cash that could be used to provide jobs for the millions of people it has victimized by its reckless, greedy financial behavior?
Trumka and the AFL-CIO Executive Council know that reliance on marches and e-mails won’t win support in Washington. So why do they refuse to engage in actions that will command the attention of Congress and the White House? Their cool, soft-pedal activities underestimate the anger and despair that millions of workers are feeling, frustrated by leaders who have no plan of action to improve workers’ lives.

There’s No Evidence That Our Leaders Are Feeling Our Rage

While Trumka and other top labor leaders make militant speeches that present our demands, they are not accompanied by strong actions to re-enforce those demands. They have learned nothing from the civil rights movement and avoid non-violence actions.

It is hard to find evidence of Trumka’s empathy with the plight of the unemployed. He has clung to his six-figure salary, not offering to take a 5 percent pay cut as a symbol of his solidarity with workers who have not seen a paycheck in months, maybe longer.

AFL-CIO leaders can be categorized as talkers. They are not “do-ers.” The best of them can analyze a situation, and then leave it to others to try to turn the analysis into a winner. That’s not enough leadership during the crisis that we are now enduring.
What we desperately need is “do-ers,” leaders who know when and how to take risks and come out as winners.

Unionites Endorse Airline Merger, and Job Losses, as Big Fish Eat Little US Airways moved a step closer to merging with bankrupt American Airlines Friday when three key unions announced their support.
If the merger goes forward, the US Airways brand would go the way of Pan Am, TWA and Eastern Airlines, consigned to history as the merged carrier flies under the American banner.  …As with most mergers, jobs would be lost. In this case, analysts said, most of those affected would be airplane mechanics. Bound by union agreements, American has maintained a cadre of in-house mechanics in an era when other airlines have contracted out that work.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/unions-back-american-us-airways-merger/2012/04/20/gIQAfrPXWT_story.html

Spy Versus Spy

New Information on FBI’s attempts to Set Up Terrorism Days before his arrest in Pittsburgh last month, Khalifa Ali al-Akili posted a remarkable message on his Facebook page: A mysterious man who spoke often of jihad had tried to interest Akili in buying a gun, then later introduced him to a second man, whom Akili was assured was “all about the struggle.”  It smelled, Akili wrote on Facebook, like a setup.   “I had a feeling that I had just played out a part in some Hollywood movie where I had just been introduced to the leader of a ‘terrorist’ sleeper cell,” Akili wrote.
When he googled a phone number provided by the second man, it turned out to be to Shahed Hussain, one of the FBI’s most prolific and controversial informants for terrorism cases. Soon the sting was off; Akili was subsequently arrested on gun — not terrorism — charges, which he has denied.
It was a rare miss for Hussain, 55, who ha played a wealthy, dapper member of a Pakistani terrorist group in several FBI operations over nearly a decade.
This role has inflamed Muslim and civil rights activists, who describe Hussain as an “agent provocateur,” and prompted harsh comments from the presiding judge in a 2010 case, who questioned his honesty and the aggressiveness of the FBI’s tactics.
“I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition,” said U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon at the sentencing of four men from Newburgh, N.Y., convicted on terrorism charges. She added, “That does not mean there was no crime.” www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/documents-provide-rare-insight-into-fbis-terrorism-stings/2012/04/13/gIQASJ6CGT_story.html

Judge Allows Ongoing FBI-CIA SAecrecy on Renditions A judge in Washington, DC has allowed the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency to keep information secret regarding the complicity of British authorities in extraordinary rendition.     news.antiwar.com/2012/04/12/judge-allows-cia-fbi-secrecy-on-rendition/

CIA Still Covering Up Failed Bay of Pigs Fiasco The CIA has argued that the final volume can’t be released because it is “an internal draft of a CIA history that was never approved for release or publication.’’
In a court filing, David S. Robarge, currently the CIA’s chief historian, said that “the mere possibility that an initial draft could be released to the public would undoubtedly chill open and frank deliberations” that go into creating CIA histories.
“The release of an unfinished draft of CIA history risks placing inaccurate or incomplete information into the public domain,’’ Robarge said in a statement to the court.
The CIA’s concern is the draft “will confuse the public,’’ Kornbluh said. “Certainly the public is astute enough to judge for itself.’’    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/16/145445/final-volume-in-cias-official.html

Spies Infecting US Universities (note that the CIA, FBI, ICE, HS, and merc companines don’t count) Hearkening back to Cold War anxieties, growing signs of spying on U.S. universities are alarming national security officials. As schools become more global in their locations and student populations, their culture of openness and international collaboration makes them increasingly vulnerable to theft of research conducted for the government and industry.
“We have intelligence and cases indicating that U.S. universities are indeed a target of foreign intelligence services,” Frank Figliuzzi, Federal Bureau of Investigation assistant director for counterintelligence, said in a February interview in the bureau’s Washington headquarters.
While overshadowed by espionage against corporations, efforts by foreign countries to penetrate universities have increased in the past five years, Figliuzzi said. The FBI and academia, which have often been at loggerheads, are working together to combat the threat, he said. www.detroitnews.com/article/20120409/SCHOOLS/204090367/1026/schools/American-universities-infected-by-foreign-spies-detected-by-FBI

Judge Seeks to Silence CIA Whistleblower A federal judge has ruled that a former clandestine case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency will have to forfeit any future money he earns from a book he wrote about the C.I.A. that was published without the agency’s permission. The C.I.A. says the former employee, writing under the pseudonym Ishmael Jones, submitted the book to the agency’s publications review board as required but published the book, “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture,” before the review was done. After the ruling Thursday by Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., Mr. Jones, who has not disclosed his real identity, said he put the profits in accounts belonging to children of American soldiers killed in action.   www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/us/judge-rules-on-profits-from-ishmael-jones-cia-book.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The Magical Mystery Tour

above, Russian Orthodox Patriarch wearing $5,000 watch, erased in later photo releases

Psycho Budhist Nationalist Admits he Doesn’t Work Before a sold-out crowd of 4,200, Tibetan Buddhism’s spiritual leader held his own in this scholarly setting, despite a confession.
‘Usually when I give a talk, no notes. No preparation,” he said, smiling. “Reason — I’m lazy.”  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/18/faith-and-reason-dalai-lama-ucsd/

Superstitious Prosecutor Leading Zimmerman Case Corey: The first thing my team and I did upon being appointed was to meet with Trayvon’s family and pray with them. “We opened our meeting with prayer.” Also, Ms. Corey thanked “all those people across this country who have sent positive energy and prayers our way,” and she asked them to continue to pray for Trayvon’s family and for her team. “Remember, it is Trayvon’s family that are our constitutional victims….”   www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2012/04/trayvon-martin-angela-corey-and-prosecutors-ethics.html

So Long Levon