Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Matt Taibbi on Obamagogue Care (Griftopia, p175).
Obamacare had been designed as coldly cynical political deal: massive giveaways to Big Pharma in the form of monster subsidies, and an equally lucrative handout to big insurance in the form of an individual mandate granting a few already-wealthy companies 25-30 million new customers who would be forced to buy their products at artificially inflated, federally protected prices.
The essence of Obamacare was two ruthless power plays fused at the hip. It was the federal government seizing control of a sector of America’s private industry worth about 16% of GDP. And it was the same sector of private industry in turn seizing permanent control of America’s taxable income, for converting to private profit. What was little understood by the public…is that the Obama administration tried to pay for the first power play by green lighting the other.
Rahm Emanuel’s (idea) was to buy the insurance and pharma industries’ acquiescence to the gentlest of regulatory regimes by giving them back the one thing they had to trade: the power to tax the public. …
Really, Obamacare was designed as a straight money trade. The admihnistration meant to deal away those billions in subsidies and the premiums from involuntary customers in exchange for the relevant industry’s campaign contributions for a few election cycles.

Congratulations on the publication of:

Marxist Essays
on
Neoliberalism, Class, ‘Race’, Capitalism and Education.
Dave Hill
Foreword by Peter McLaren
Published by the Institute for Education Policy Studies www.ieps.org.uk

The Little Red Schoolhouse
John Deasy, of fake degree fame, got LAUSD to spend $1 billion on Ipads. Here, before the purchase, he hustles for Apple

The Deasy Ipad Scam It has been a year since Los Angeles Unified schools Supt. John Deasy proposed putting a tablet computer in the hands of every student in the district. At that time, there were numerous questions about how and whether this would work. Could first-graders really take care of such expensive equipment? Who would be held responsible if one of the devices was stolen, lost or broken, or if apple juice was dripped into the circuitry? How would the district keep high-schoolers off porn sites? And how much would all this cost?
Deasy said these details would be worked out before any decisions were made. But all we know for sure a year later is the price tag: a whopping $1 billion to provide more than 600,000 students and their teachers with top-of-the-line, software-equipped iPads at $678 each, plus the necessary Wi-Fi in the schools. The district has forged ahead — 47,000 students have received iPads already, with a much bigger purchase planned soon — yet vital issues remain inadequately addressed.  Still unclear, for example, is who pays for accidental loss or damage to the iPads. Under the district’s contract, Apple will replace up to 5% of the devices for free. After that, the district is on its own. Parents at different schools have been given different information about whether they would have to cover the cost, and Deasy said he’s still trying to figure this out. Isn’t this something he should have done before any iPads were purchased?
The district also is coming to terms with how quickly its students disabled the firewall on their tablets to gain broad access to the Internet when they’re not on campus.    www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ipads-lausd-20130927,0,3568882.story

Deasy Flunks the Keyboard test  Keyboards will be necessary for Los Angeles students to take new state standardized tests on iPads, an additional cost in the $1-billion effort to provide tablets in the nation’s second-largest school system, The Times has learned.
In the past, L.A. Unified School District officials said that keyboards were not required and they removed them from specifications for an initial contract that went to Apple, maker of the iPad. Eventually, Apple is expected to receive about $500 million from L.A. Unified for the tablets. Other components of the project, including teacher training and expanded bandwidth, will cost an additional $500 million.    www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ipads-lausd-20131005,0,3991707.story

above, Judith Oakes

Capitalist schools are riddled with corruption–honest graft like Deasy, and this  Rialto >> Judith Oakes, the former school district accountant, may have embezzled more than $3 million in lunch money over 14 years, according to an investigator hired by the district.
Rancho Cucamonga-based private investigator Jeff Stewart’s firm, Stewart Investigations Services, was hired to do a forensic audit of the nutrition services department by the Rialto Unified school board. At the board meeting Wednesday night, Stewart reported that Oakes may have embezzled $1.8 million over eight years, and more than $3.1 million over 14 years.
“It’s a sad moment,” school board President Joseph Ayala said Wednesday. “Not much to say right now.”
Oakes, who was an accountant with the district’s nutrition services department, was arrested on Aug. 7 on suspicion of embezzlement. According to a Rialto Police Department search warrant, she was recorded on video stuffing school lunch money into her bra.    www.sbsun.com/social-affairs/20130925/accountant-may-have-embezzled-3m-in-rialto-unified-lunch-money-says-investigator

250 thousand California kids need glasses over ipads  There is a crisis in California’s schools. More than a quarter of a million children, most of them from poor and minority backgrounds, lack the technology they need to succeed in school.
But what they need has nothing to do with mobile devices or educational apps. It’s a technology nearly 800 years old: eyeglasses.
About 250,000 California schoolchildren don’t have the glasses they need to read the board, read books, study math and fully participate in their classes. About 95% of the public school students who need glasses enter school without them. These students are likely to fall behind and to frustrate their teachers and parents.
It’s often not a money issue. Eye exams and corrective lenses are covered by Medi-Cal and many insurance plans. But there is a huge gap between coverage and care. Sometimes it’s that parents and teachers simply haven’t noticed the problem. And then there are the logistical issues: Parents have to take time off from work, and often they must arrange and pay for transportation. And navigating the healthcare system can be daunting. These things often keep kids, especially those from low-income families, out of the doctor’s office.    www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-beutner-kids-and-vision-20131002,0,4453012.story

Four Decades of Failed School Reform  the tug of war over standardized tests is just the latest round of a struggle I’ve watched many times before. In the four decades between when I started teaching English at T.C. in 1970 and my retirement this year, I saw countless reforms come and go; some even returned years later disguised in new education lingo. Some that were touted as “best practices” couldn’t work, given Alexandria’s demographics. Others were nothing but common-sense bromides hyped as revolutionary epiphanies. All of them failed to do what I believe to be key to teaching: to make students care about what they’re studying and understand how it’s relevant to their lives.    www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/four-decades-of-failed-school-reform/2013/09/27/dc9f2f34-2561-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html

Detroit Bribes on Count Day  Wednesday was Count Day for Michigan public schools. Ninety percent of state funding is linked to how many students show up on Oct. 2. – Hit hard by declining enrollment, Detroit Public Schools offered prizes to students who showed up, including iPad Minis, gift cards and bicycles. Schools served a special menu: barbecue chicken, baked macaroni and cheese, seasoned green beans, cornbread muffins and peach cobbler Bunche Academy made Count Day a no-uniform day and scheduled a dance for middle-school students and an ice cream social. One lucky DPS student won an Xbox. Nearly one in four students received a prize of some kind. A majority of school-age children in Detroit choose charter schools or district-run schools in the suburbs. – See more at: www.joannejacobs.com/2013/10/detroit-schools-offer-count-day-bribes/#sthash.tELhJZ1o.dpuf

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

“But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He’s America’s family secret. He is the American president’s dark doppelgnger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America’s foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of “full-spectrum dominance”, its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable.

 “Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America’s drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a “war on drugs”….)

“Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow each other’s rhetoric. Each refers to the other as “the head of the snake”. Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed – one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the axe. The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the other.

“President Bush’s ultimatum to the people of the world – “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” – is a piece of presumptuous arrogance. It’s not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make.”   A. Roy  2001

12 Years into the Afghan (graveyard of empires) war–US is still fulfilling bin Laden’s goals  (Koeppel)   “All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.” www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/09/AR2010090904735.html?hpid=topnews

above fired General Gurganus

Two Marine Generals forced to retire for not protecting cannon fodder Two senior Marine Corps generals are being forced into retirement for failing to take adequate action before an attack last year at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan that killed two Marines and destroyed a fleet of Harrier jets, officials announced Monday. The Commandant of the Marine Corps has asked both Maj. Gen. Charles Gurganus and Maj. Gen. Gregg Sturdevant to retire in the wake of several investigations as well as a review by the U.S. Central Command into accountability for the attack.
A statement from the Marine Corps said Gurganus “bore final accountability for the lives and equipment under his charge,” and that he “made an error in judgment when conducting his risk assessment of the enemy’s capabilities and intentions.”
The statement went on to say that Sturdevant “did not adequately assess the force protection situation” at Bastion Airfield.
Gurganus, who was the overall Commander of Regional Command Southwest at the time of the September 2012 attack, had been nominated for his third star and was to take over as Chief of Marine Corps staff at the Pentagon. His nomination will be rescinded.   worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/30/20761154-two-senior-marine-generals-forced-to-retire-over-deadly-afghan-attack?lite

AQ Barbarians Blossoming  Gunmen in northern Nigeria burst into a college dormitory early Sunday morning, spraying bullets and killing students indiscriminately, in an attack that carried an echo of the terror eight days earlier at a shopping mall in Kenya.
At least 40 people were killed, according to authorities.
Like the Nairobi attack, the gunmen are believed to come from a violent Islamist group with a long history of indiscriminate attacks, often killing Muslim civilians.
Boko Haram, the Nigerian terror group that authorities blamed for the college attack, is believed to have links with Al Qaeda affiliates in West Africa. The Shabab, the group that claimed responsibility for the Nairobi shopping attack that killed 67 civilians and soldiers, is affiliated with Al Qaeda.    www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-nigeria-college-attack-boko-haram-20130929,0,7997483.story

San Diego’s Miramar War Show Cancelled (but real wars still on–forever)  This year’s Miramar Air Show in San Diego has been canceled, according to the public affairs office at MCAS Miramar.
The popular annual event was scheduled to take place Friday and Saturday.
MCAS Miramar’s commanding officer Col. John Farnam spoke at a news conference Thursday morning. Farnam said he was forced to cancel the show because of restrictions put into place after the recent government shutdown.
“We worked with the guidance we received to move forward with the event,” Farnam said. “In the end, it was just more than I had the authority to overcome.”
Air show vendors had already begun setting up on base. Farnam said vendors, sponsors and people who bought grandstand tickets will be refunded. Source: www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/San-Diego-Miramar-Air-Show-Canceled-226295541.html#ixzz2gt3RgvqX

But for those who Must have their annual fix of spectacular napalm explosions, a past blast

Peace with Iran? Not if Israel has a Say  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel sought to shred the credibility of Iran’s new president on Tuesday, using his annual speech at the United Nations to cast the Iranian as a beguiling figure who used soothing words and charm to mask intentions to build nuclear weapons….Mr. Netanyahu dismissed any thought of allowing Iran to enrich uranium to even a low level, insisting that the only way to assure it would never build a nuclear weapon was a complete dismantlement of its capability to enrich nuclear fuel. He exhorted the West to intensify economic sanctions on Iran instead of easing them, as Mr. Rouhani has demanded. www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/world/middleeast/israel-iran-netanyahu-speech.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Manilla–Who are the “Rebels”  on the Move   Sporadic fighting continued Sunday in Zamboanga City, the embattled southern Philippine city where government officials a day earlier had declared an end to a three-week standoff with separatist militants.  Six rebels were killed in fighting while bomb-sniffing dogs hunted down unexploded ordnance and hidden explosive devices, officials said Sunday. An undetermined number of rebels continued to fight in the obliterated neighborhoods where the fiercest battles had taken place.
More than 200 people — rebels, soldiers, police officers and civilians — have been killed during the standoff, which began Sept. 9 when several hundred members of the Moro National Liberation Front entered the city to raise their flag and declare independence.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/world/asia/fighting-continues-in-philippine-city-after-standoff-ends.html?ref=global-home&_r=4&

Number 2 US Nuke Chief Suspended in Gambling Scandal The general in charge of all US nuclear offensive forces has suspended his deputy, Navy Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, over his suspected role in a casino scandal that involved “a significant monetary amount” of counterfeit gambling chips.
Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler suspended Giardina on September 3 without publicly announcing the move.
Giardina is currently under state investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but has not been arrested or charged thus far, a Strategic Command top spokeswoman, Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze, said.
Giardina was prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other issues requiring a security clearance, Kunze told AP.
Criminal investigators discovered “a significant monetary amount” in counterfeit chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, DCI special agent David Dales announced on Saturday. …  The unusual action became another blow to the US nuclear command after an officer in charge of a nuclear missile unit at Malmstrom Air Force Base was relieved of duty last month after the unit failed a safety and security inspection. Last spring another unit in Minot, North Dakota received weak grades on a safety inspection, resulting in 17 launch control officers temporarily being placed off duty.
Meanwhile, the previous head of Strategic Command, Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, is under a DoJ investigation for leaking classified information to the press. Cartwright, a four-star general, was stripped of his security clearance, Foreign Policy reported last week. rt.com/usa/us-nuclear-general-suspended-495/

American Ozymandias What if the sole superpower on the planet makes its will known — repeatedly — and finds that no one is listening? Barely a decade ago, that would have seemed like a conundrum from some fantasy Earth in an alternate dimension. Now, it is increasingly a plain description of political life on our globe, especially in the Greater Middle East.
In the future, the indecent haste with which Barack Obama sought cover under the umbrella unfurled by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Syrian chemical weapons crisis will be viewed as a watershed moment when it comes to America’s waning power in that region. In the aptly named “arc of instability,” the lands from the Chinese border to northern Africa that President George W. Bush and his neocon acolytes dreamed of thoroughly pacifying, turmoil is on the rise. Ever fewer countries, allies, or enemies, are paying attention, much less kowtowing, to the once-formidable power of the world’s last superpower. The list of defiant figures — from Egyptian generals to Saudi princes, Iraqi Shiite leaders to Israeli politicians — is lengthening.
The signs of this loss of clout have been legion in recent years. In August 2011, for instance, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ignored Obama’s unambiguous call for him “to step aside.” Nothing happened even after an unnamed senior administration official insisted, “We are certain Assad is on the way out.” As the saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Similarly, in March 2010, Obama personally delivered a half-hour-long chewing out of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a politician Washington installed in office, on the corruption and administrative ineptitude of his government. It was coupled with a warning that, if he failed to act, a cut in U.S. aid would follow. Instead, the next month the Obama administration gave him the red carpet treatment on a visit to Washington with scarcely a whisper about the graft and ill-governance that continues to this day.
In May 2009, during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama demanded a halt to the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem. In the tussle that followed, the sole superpower lost out and settlement expansion continued. www.tomdispatch.com/post/175753/tomgram%3A_dilip_hiro%2C_the_mystery_of_washington's_waning_global_power/#more

Who Lost Iraq, again? A suicide bomber killed at least 51 Shiite pilgrims who were crossing a bridge in Baghdad in the deadliest of several attacks in Iraq on Saturday, the police said. All told, the attacks claimed at least 80 lives, officials said.  The bridge connects the two largest neighborhoods of Baghdad, Kadhimiya, a largely Shiite area, and Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni area. The Shiite pilgrims were headed to Kadhimiya on the eve of the anniversary of the death of one of their imams. The blast also wounded 109 people, the Interior Ministry said.
“This has been happening with us for the last 10 years, and they don’t learn that we have faith in our imams and we will never stop,” said one of the wounded pilgrims, Hassan al-Zargani. “We will be happy to die for our imams.”
In other attacks, a suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 30 in a cafe in Balad, north of Baghdad; a bomb left in a cafe in Baya, a neighborhood of Baghdad, killed three people and wounded 15; a bomb killed three members of the Awakening movement in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad; a gunman killed two television journalists in Mosul, in northern Iraq; and in separate episodes in Mosul, assailants killed two civilians and a police officer, and a bomb killed two soldiers. The police and medical workers confirmed the toll.    www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/world/middleeast/iraq-violence.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9inuaYlge0

Rich Lots Richer + Poor Lots Poorer in Corporate State America  Corporations may be raking in record profits, but workers aren’t getting any richer, new data illustrates.
In fact, real wages have declined by nearly seven percent in the past seven years, according to data collected by the compensation research company Payscale. In other words, U.S. workers have less buying power now than they did before the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, corporate profits have increased by 18.6 percent over the past year, according to Payscale. In fact, corporate earnings now represent a larger share of GDP than during any other period in history.
Payscale’s findings are just the latest in a slew of research that indicates the sluggish economic recovery has not been beneficial for most of us. Income inequality in the U.S. is at a new high as skyrocketing income gains for the top one percent are met by stagnating wages for practically everyone else. In 2012, an average CEO of one of the nation’s largest companies was paid 273 times more than his or her workers, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Unfortunately, Payscale predicts that wage growth will continue to slow.    www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/real-wages-down_n_4023869.html?utm_hp_ref=business

WAPO’s Analysis of Previous US Shutdowns www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/25/here-is-every-previous-government-shutdown-why-they-happened-and-how-they-ended/

The Massive Ponzi Scheme Behind the Detroit Pension Fund  A Wall Street deal backed by former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that helped push the city into bankruptcy bankrolled a three-year spree of alleged corruption, according to federal court records and pension officials.
The spending cheated Detroit retirees out of more than $84 million, led to criminal charges against six people and compounded the impact of a money-losing Wall Street deal, which could eventually cost the city more than $2.7 billion.
Federal prosecutors allege city pension officials started approving a series of shady transactions with businessmen in January 2006, six months after the Wall Street debt deal started injecting $1.44 billion into the Detroit pension funds.
Flush with cash, pension fund trustees loaned more than $200 million to businessmen accused of paying bribes and kickbacks between January 2006 and April 2009, according to federal prosecutors. The businessmen included a Georgia man charged with embezzling more than $3 million with the help of a former Detroit Lions wide receiver and spending some of the cash on an $8.5 million mansion in Atlanta.
Some of the money was squandered on riskier alternative investments, including real estate and private equity deals that were approved when Kilpatrick and his appointees — including a childhood friend and fraternity brother — held considerable influence over the pension funds.
“Once the deal went through, the dark side found out and that’s how all these (expletive) deals went through,” Detroit Police & Fire pension chairman George Orzech said.
The money-losing Wall Street deal has exposed the city’s pension funds to a possible takeover by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. He says the retirement system is significantly underfunded and wants to cut retiree pensions to help reduce the city’s overall $18 billion debt.
The timing of the Wall Street deal and almost immediate decision by pension officials to spend the money on allegedly corrupt investments did not surprise Orr spokesman Bill Nowling.
“This is a shocking coincidence,” Nowling said sarcastically. “I think every Detroit pensioner should be demanding from their union leadership and pension leadership, ‘Where is that money?’ ”
It’s gone, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which contends the funds were wasted on deals pitched by businessmen accused of plying Kilpatrick and pension officials with private jet flights and trips to Bermuda, Las Vegas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, gift baskets stuffed with cash, casino chips and thousands in cash.
The businessmen, in turn, allegedly received millions in loans from the pension funds for ventures that included real estate, private equity and a used-car dealership.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130930/METRO01/309300024#ixzz2gt19hvwi

Detroit bond Rating Collapses Fitch Ratings downgraded Detroit’s bond rating today after the city opted not to make payments on its general obligation bonds.
The move, which was expected, underscores how difficult it will be for Detroit to regain Wall Street’s trust following the city’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy. A lower bond rating may increase the city’s borrowing costs.
Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr directed the city to stop making payments on its unsecured bonds after the city filed for bankruptcy July 18.
Fitch’s move to downgrade Detroit from C to D comes as the city approaches an Oct. 1 deadline to make interest payments on $411 million in unlimited tax general obligation bonds and $202.8 million in limited-tax general obligation bonds.
Detroit had already stopped making payments on its $1.5 billion in pension-obligation certificates of participation www.freep.com/article/20130930/NEWS01/309300115/

Jail that will never be finished cost more than $154 Million   It will cost taxpayers $154.5 million for Wayne County to completely shut down and walk away from a failed jail project that is less than half finished with construction halted.
Wayne County commissioners on a jail task force were given documents Wednesday spelling out expenditures of more than $131 million with an additional $23 million in projected costs expected to finish closing up the halted project.
“There’s no dispute that something went terribly wrong to cause an originally projected cost to building a jail of $220 million to grow to a projected $391 million,” said Commissioner Kevin McNamara, D-Belleville. “The abandoned jail is only one-third complete. It’s anyone’s guess how many more price increases would have been encountered had construction continued.”
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20131002/METRO/310020102#ixzz2gpYu7Wmq 

 

Solidarity for Never

King of UAW Swears he is an Ally of the Bosses (so why have a union?)  “It’s really important that people understand the global economy and understand the competitive pressures on the companies. Having a confrontational relationship in a global economy would be counterproductive for our membership,” King told The Detroit News. “We help the companies when we think helping the companies helps our members. Helping the companies grow their business, helping the companies be more profitable — all that helps our members.”
This new approach is the product of the crisis that drove two of Detroit’s Big Three into bankruptcy and forced many suppliers to shutter their factories. But it also is part of the UAW’s campaign to convince foreign automakers to give collective bargaining a chance. King’s term is up next summer, and the 67-year-old union leader has made organizing at least one of the so-called transplants a priority in an effort to fill the void on the union’s membership rolls left by the decades-long decline of the Big Three.
The UAW has made some progress with Volkswagen AG, but largely because of pressure from Germany’s IG Metall union. Workers at factories owned by Asian automakrs have shown little interest in UAW representation.
Nothing demonstrates King’s new approach more than the UAW’s willingness to negotiate between contracts.
“Waiting between contracts in today’s world leaves you missing opportunities,” King said. “It’s a lot different than 20 years ago, where you would intentionally leave a lot of issues for negotiations.”                                                           The Japanese are not buying it. Neither are the Koreans.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20131003/AUTO01/310030054#ixzz2gpbjCm6c

Spy versus Spy

Chilean Spy Boss Suicides A former director of a Pinochet-era intelligence agency killed himself on Saturday, officials said, days after the government announced that it would close the exclusive military prison where he was being held for human rights crimes and transfer the inmates to a less privileged detention center.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/world/americas/former-chilean-intelligence-chief-commits-suicide-officials-say.html?ref=global-home&_r=3&

North/South Korean Spy Saga  On Oct. 24, 1995, as a man now known as Kim Dong-sik hiked up a rain-slick mountain road in Buyeo, about 95 miles south of Seoul, he could not shake off a foreboding. He and another North Korean agent had sneaked into South Korea by boat 52 days earlier on a mission to bring home a Communist spy who had been working in the South for 15 years. The latest message from their superiors said the spy had been instructed to wait for Mr. Kim in a temple in Buyeo, disguised as a Buddhist monk named Jawoon.  But there was no monk.    www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/world/asia/northern-spy-lifts-cloak-on-koreas-deadly-rivalry.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=global-home

The Magical Mystery Tour

Poland: Church Won’t Pay Rape Victims Poland’s Catholic Church has said it will not pay compensation to victims of priests who sexually abused children. Rev Jozef Kloch said in comments aired by Polish Radio 1 that responsibility for compensation lies with the perpetrator.
Kloch was reacting to a €47,500 claim made by a 25-year-old victim against his parish and local church authorities after they failed to reach a settlement. The claim could now be taken to court, in what would be Poland’s first such case.
“The Church will not pay compensation to victims of paedophile priests,” Koch said. “The wrongdoer should do it.”
Earlier, Bishop Wojciech Polak, secretary of the Episcopate, apologised to the victims and also offered psychological and therapeutic support.
Some 27 priests have been convicted in Poland of abusing children. Polish prosecutors are also co-operating with the authorities in the Dominican Republic who are investigating allegations that two Polish priests there, including a Vatican envoy, abused boys.
The church’s refusal to pay the compensation has opened the door to legal action by the male plaintiff, identified only as Marcin K, who was molested as a child.
A Catholic priest was last year sentenced to two years behind bars in the case, but his diocese refused to be held financially liable. www.irishexaminer.com/world/catholic-church-will-not-pay-child-sex-victims-245295.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Metro Times to Detroit: “So long!”  Metro Times, for 33 years a Detroit media institution that covered, criticized and supported its embattled hometown, is hitting 8 Mile.
The well-known weekly is preparing to move to leased space in Ferndale, according to sources outside of the paper.
The move does not appear to be related to the announcement last month that Metro Times is for sale.    www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/6549/adieu_downtown_metro_times_moving_to_ferndale_after_33_years_in_detroit?utm_source=Deadline+Detroit+Newsletter&utm_campaign=bd2c00435c-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4d2ad8703-bd2c00435c-73197837#.UlB9I0vh54L

So Long

Photo by Horst Faas

Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap dies
Last Updated: Saturday, October 05, 2013 10:30:00
General Vo Nguyen Giap, who died Friday aged 102, was considered one of history’s greatest military strategists and was the architect of Vietnam’s stunning battlefield victories against France and the United States.
Second only to late revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh as modern Vietnam’s most revered figure, the former history teacher’s first military lesson came from an old encyclopedia entry about the mechanism of a hand grenade.
The son of a poor scholar, he went on to defeat Vietnam’s colonial masters in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, the battle that ended French rule in Indochina and started direct US involvement leading to the Vietnam War.
Over the next two decades the founding father of the Vietnam People’s Army, whose guerrilla tactics inspired anti-colonial fighters worldwide, again led his forces to victory with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
“When I was young, I had a dream that one day I would see my country free and united,” General Giap later recounted in a PBS interview. “That day, my dream came true.”
General Giap’s brilliance as a strategist places him “in the pantheon of great military leaders” with the Duke of Wellington, Ulysses S. Grant and General Douglas MacArthur, wrote American journalist and author Stanley Karnow.
“Unlike them, however, he owed his achievements to innate genius rather than to formal training.”
Classroom to battlefield
Born on August 25, 1911 in the village of An Xa in central Quang Binh province, General Giap was an admirer of Napoleon and Sun Tzu but did not always appear destined to become a soldier.
Fluent in French, he studied political economy in Hanoi before teaching history and literature at a college and working as an underground journalist.

A member of the Indochina Communist Party, he fled to China in 1939, where he joined Ho Chi Minh, the enigmatic leader who had planned the revolution during decades in exile.
Giap’s wife, who stayed behind with their newborn child, died in a French prison, a personal tragedy that would fuel his anti-colonial fervor.
Vo Nguyen Giap (1st, L) reads the decision on the founding of the Armed Propaganda Brigade for the Liberation of Vietnam (Doi Viet Nam Tuyen Truyen Gia Phong Quan) on December 22, 1944 in in a forest in the northern Vietnamese province of Cao Bang
He returned with Ho Chi Minh to Vietnam’s northern jungles in 1941 to train an army of revolutionary peasant soldiers and co-founded the Viet Minh (abbreviated from Vie^.t Nam Ðo^.c La^.p Ðo^`ng Minh Ho^.i, English “League for the Independence of Vietnam”).
General Giap’s guerrilla tactics — which stressed the need for popular support, the value of hit-and-run attacks and the will to fight a drawn-out war — would defeat both the French and the American armies.
“Guerrilla war is the war of the broad masses of an economically backward country standing up against a powerfully equipped and well-trained army of aggression,” he wrote in one of several memoirs.
“Every inhabitant is a soldier, every village a fortress.”
President Ho proclaimed his first government on September 2, 1945 and named Giap as his interior minister, army chief and later defense minister.
President Ho Chi Minh (C), General Vo Nguyen Giap (1st,R) and their comrades discuss the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954
The revolutionaries were forced back into the jungle when French troops reimposed colonial rule after World War II, triggering a nine-year conflict that ended at Dien Bien Phu.
“It was the first great defeat for the West,” General Giap later said. “It shook the foundations of colonialism and called on people to fight for their freedom — it was the beginning of international civilization.”
General Giap remained the army’s commander in chief throughout the ensuing conflict with the Americans and the US-backed South Vietnam regime, which turned into full-scale war from 1965 and claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans and at least three million Vietnamese.
The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, followed by the country’s reunification, fuelled his near-mythical status overseas as a master strategist and inspired liberation movements everywhere.
“As we grew up in our own struggle, General Giap was one of our national heroes,” South African President Thabo Mbeki said in 2007.
After the war, General Giap retained his position as defense minister and was appointed deputy prime minister in 1976.
General Giap, who had been living in Hanoi’s 108 military hospital for the last three years, is survived by Dang Bich Ha, his wife since 1949, and four children.
AFP/Thanh Nien News

An Interview with General Giap  Q: Was Diên Bin Phû a conventional military victory or was it a victory for military warfare?
Giap: The victory at Diên Bin Phû was a victory for the people. But then, of course, while the concept of a people’s war and guerrilla warfare are not entirely separate, they are separate nonetheless. In this case, it was the people’s war that was victorious. And guerrilla warfare was one aspect of that people’s war. It’s all quite complicated…. What is the people’s war? Well, in a word, it’s a war fought for the people by the people, whereas guerrilla warfare is simply a combat method. The people’s war is more global in concept. It’s a synthesized concept. A war which is simultaneously military, economic and political, and is what we in France would call “synthesized.” There’s guerrilla warfare and there’s large-scale tactical warfare, fought by large units.
Q: What was new about the idea of the “People’s War”?
Giap: It was a war for the people by the people. FOR the people because the war’s goals are the people’s goals — goals such as independence, a unified country, and the happiness of its people…. And BY the people — well that means ordinary people — not just the army but all people.
We know it’s the human factor, and not material resources, which decide the outcome of war. That’s why our people’s war, led by Ho Chi Minh, was on such a large scale. It took in the whole population.    www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/guerrillawars/giaptranscript.html