Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.” (Marx, the Materialist Conception of History)

Germany–Amazon on Strike  Germany is Amazon’s second-biggest market behind the United States and sales there grew almost 21 percent in 2012 to $8.7 billion, a third of its overseas total. Amazon took its most daily orders in Germany last December 16, when almost 4 million articles were bought, with shipments peaking on December 17.
Amazon, which employs 9,000 warehouse staff in Germany plus 14,000 seasonal workers at nine distribution centers, said 1,115 staff had joined the strike at three sites    www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-amazon-germany-idUSBRE9BF0M220131216

Congratulations on the Publication of–

Read Works & Days editor David B. Downing’s “Foreword to the Revolution” here:
blogs.ubc.ca/ross/files/2013/12/WD-Front-pages.pdf
Works & Days + Cultural Logic
Education for Revolution
E. Wayne Ross & Rich Gibson (Editors) available at worksanddays.net/  ($15 cheap!)

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Capitalist College Presidents Doing Pretty Well  Forty-two presidents of private colleges were paid more than a million dollars in 2011, up from 36 for the previous two years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual analysis of the colleges’ latest available tax forms. The three top earners were Robert J. Zimmer, University of Chicago ($3,358,723); Joseph E. Aoun, Northeastern University ($3,121,864); and Dennis J. Murray, Marist College ($2,688,148).
According to the Chronicle, Dr. Zimmer’s pay doubled in 2011, Dr. Aoun’s nearly tripled in the same time, and Dr. Murray’s almost quadrupled from the previous year. Although their base salaries all remained under $1 million, the top three, like many other highly paid presidents, earned much more from retirement packages, bonuses or deferred compensation. (chart with date here chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/143541#id=table)

Detroit Schools (where the fake union let every teacher be fired) lowest in US: reading/math   Students in Detroit Public Schools scored the lowest in the nation among big-city districts in math and tied for lowest in reading, according to national test results released Wednesday.
DPS’ fourth- and eighth-graders trailed 20 other large cities that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Trial Urban District Assessment in mathematics, remaining in the bottom rung of test scores since first taking the test in 2009 and again in 2011 and 2013.
In reading, Detroit fourth- and eighth-graders trailed all but one other district, tying Cleveland students for last.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20131218/SCHOOLS/312180085#ixzz2nsXueDlD

Adjuncts in Capitalist Apartheid America  Once again, we find ourselves in a moral predicament. In educational institutions of every kind, adjunct faculty are being subjected to de facto discrimination and exploitation. They know it, tenure-track faculty know it, administrators know it. The awful secret is out, and we can no longer avert our eyes. We’ll have to deal with this injustice as we did with those that came to a head in the sixties, because if we do not close the gap between our principles and our practice, the profession will forfeit its honor.  I need not belabor the immorality of paying adjuncts a fraction of what other faculty earn, and of denying them benefits, office space, parking rights, and a voice in departmental and institutional policy. These insults and humiliations are reminiscent of the degradation and injustice that roused academics to act against racial, gender, and other indignities.
Of course, there’s a reason that things are as they are. There is always a reason, one which seems cogent enough until suddenly it does not. What began as part-time teaching to meet a temporary need or plug a gap in the curriculum has evolved into systemic institutional injustice.
No one takes exception to cost-cutting, but forcing one group to subsidize another that’s doing comparable work, while maintaining working conditions that signal second-class status, is what the world now rejects as Apartheid.   www.psychologytoday.com/blog/somebodies-and-nobodies/201312/ending-academic-apartheid

CA Districts Fear Losing Millions For Low Income Students Major California school districts fear they will be shortchanged millions of dollars in funding for their low-income students under new state rules requiring them to verify family incomes every year.
Officials in Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno and elsewhere are scrambling to collect verification forms but said that hundreds of families have not yet turned them in — potentially jeopardizing funding that school districts are counting on this year. At stake, for instance, is $200 million in L.A. Unified and $6 million in San Diego.
The districts are urging the state to guarantee them all funding due this year, based on last year’s count of low-income students, whether the new forms are turned in or not.    www.latimes.com/local/la-me-school-funding-20131210,0,4964524.story#ixzz2naWZ4krK

Corruption in Capitalist Schools Snares DC TV News Anchor  Anchoring news broadcasts at WUSA for more than 40 years, she appeared in thousands of living rooms across the region, becoming a face and a name that Washingtonians recognized. She emceed countless charity fundraising galas, built a reputation for caring about the city she covered. Viewers came to trust her, and many came to feel as if they knew her.
And then she was gone.
Shortly before Hayward appeared on air that first day of October – dressed as glamorously as ever in a pale pink suit and a pair of towering slingback heels – the D.C. attorney general filed a lawsuit naming her as one of five people involved in an effort to divert millions of dollars from a city charter school for troubled teens.
As chairwoman of Options Public Charter School, the complaint said, Hayward allegedly signed off on lucrative contracts that funneled local and federal tax dollars to two for-profit companies founded and run by school managers. Hayward allegedly helped incorporate one of the companies named in the civil lawsuit, a company that according to several people familiar with the investigation is now under federal scrutiny.

Criminal School boss Garcia gets sentenced reduced   The former superintendent of an El Paso school district who was sent to prison in one of the country’s worst education scandals has received an unexpected reward — a nearly one-year reduction in his prison term.  A recent decision by the federal Bureau of Prisons to take 11 months off the sentence of the former superintendent, Lorenzo Garcia, has angered educators, parents and lawmakers in El Paso and has drawn attention to the obscure drug counseling program that has become a popular way for white-collar criminals to reduce their prison time.
Mr. Garcia, 58, had been scheduled for release in October 2015 after being sentenced to three years and six months. …Mr. Garcia, who once led the El Paso Independent School District, pleaded guilty last year to his role in a scheme to inflate test scores in struggling schools by preventing low-performing students from taking the exams, as a way to improve school performance under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
To prevent students from taking the tests and dragging down scores, Mr. Garcia and others manipulated their grades, kept some from attending school, discouraged others from enrolling and held transfer students from Mexico in the ninth grade so they would not take a 10th-grade test. The parents of students who were forced out of school used the term “los desaparecidos,” or “the disappeared,”     www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/us/sentence-cut-in-texas-for-school-official-jailed-in-test-scandal.html?ref=education

Double-dipping SDSU pensioner gets $270,000 CSU job –Sally Roush also to rake in monthly $1000 car allowance  In June, when last we checked on Sally Roush, the scandal-plagued vice president of business and financial affairs at San Diego State University was retiring from her position after 30 years of university service. Her total pay in 2012, according to a database of state salaries posted online by the Sacramento Bee, was $301,957.
During the hands-off era of university president Stephen Weber, many academic insiders said she virtually ran the institution, parrying a bevy of sports scandals, buttering up the city’s wealthy male donors.
Some expected Roush to turn up in the business arms of John Moores, the mega-millionaire and ex-Padres owner with whom Roush was especially friendly, as documented by a February 1999 letter from Roush to Moores obtained under the state’s public records act:
As you know, sometimes we have stretched our thinking and, heaven forbid, our administrative processes. But this is a good thing, and we enjoy the challenge of striving for new levels of accomplishment.
Your gifts and gentle guidance have been tremendously motivating. As always, if you would like a briefing on project status, or any issue at the University, please do call on me.”    www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/dec/13/ticker-sdsu-pensioner-gets-270000-csu-job/

Sweetwater trustee Arlie Ricasa to resign–“I accepted gifts…with a value of $2099 and I did not report them.”  Sweetwater Union High School District trustee Arlie Ricasa, who had initially been charged with 28 felony and misdemeanor counts in the South Bay’s schools corruption case, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor today, December 18.
Early today, U-T reporter Greg Moran tweeted that Ricasa “entered her plea in South Bay Superior Court as more than a dozen supporters quietly looked on…. Ricasa pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. She won’t get any jail time…. She will have to resign her seat on the board by tomorrow.”    www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/dec/18/stringers-sweetwater-trustee-arlie-ricasa-resign/

We’re Constantly in Fear: The life of a part-time professor–Academia’s dirty little secret.  Soto, though full-time, is the former president of the faculty union, Southwestern College Education Association, and claims her current interest in matters of part-timers revolves around the implementation of seniority or rehire rights, what they call “vesting.” One of the handouts she has brought is a copy of the Southwestern District vesting policy.
“She is the one who implemented the rehire right language for part-time faculty [in August 2007],” Professor M says of Soto. “So she’s in our court.”
Soto jumps back in, speaking a mile a minute and punctuating the air every couple of seconds with a zebra-striped pen. “The position of the union is supposed to be to support rehire rights for part-timers. My contention is they’re not fighting as hard for it as I think they should,” she says. “In my opinion, the district is engaging in regressive bargaining because they’re trying to do away with the right that was already negotiated.”   www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/dec/18/cover-constantly-fear/?page=4&

In the Stream of Starving Adjuncts  Mary-Faith Cerasoli. She’s a professionally dressed middle-aged woman with a careworn face, hair swept back prettily over her ears, plucked eyebrows, rouged lips, and manicured nails. She’s an adjunct professor who teaches Spanish and Italian at the Bronx and Manhattan campuses of Mercy College and Nassau Community College in Long Island. She has a life-threatening thyroid disease, and she’s homeless. Since fall of 2010, when the 52-year-old started adjuncting, Cerasoli has had to rely on the kindness of friends to survive because her pay is so meager. Over the past six months she’s had to move four times. Her annual salary for teaching five courses per semester is around $22,000 before taxes. Because she has no health insurance, she goes to a specialty clinic in Manhattan, where she has racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills. – See more at: chroniclevitae.com/news/226-how-i-get-by-mary-faith-cerasoli#sthash.c3KDXIp3.dpuf

To the (NYT)Editor:  

I am humbled to be mentioned in Joe Nocera’s column. By no coincidence am I quoted twice uttering the phrase, “I had to learn.” I am still learning.Teaching in the “inner city” — teaching anywhere for that matter — requires skills that are difficult to master. Indeed, teachers need training and continuing systemwide support to meet the challenges of the profession.Education reform, however, will continue to have limited success to the extent that inequality persists. Economic and social insecurity all too often lead to emotional and cognitive difficulties that no classroom can fully rectify. Yet that’s the hand we’re dealt, students and teachers alike, and we soldier on, ever determined to make a difference.And we do so despite the fact that our students graduate into an economy of insecure, low-wage, no-benefit, part-time jobs. While a new tide of progressivism offers a glimmer of hope, punishing programs of fiscal austerity and standardized testing portend a dim future.   KEVIN GREER
Brooklyn, Dec. 18, 2013

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Whoever wants War With China–Stand up! Not you–Obamagogue, Hagel, Clinton, et al  China was “irresponsible” and “unhelpful” during the near-collision of a US warship and a Chinese naval vessel, the US Defence Secretary said.
Chuck Hagel said the Chinese boat cut in front of USS Cowpens on 5 December, and described the act as “incendiary”.
China, who described the incident as an “encounter”, said the incident was handled with “strict protocol”.
It has been described as the most serious Sino-US confrontation in the South China Sea since 2009.
The US said its guided missile cruiser was operating in international waters when a Chinese navy vessel forced it to take evasive action.
But China claims parts of the South China Sea, and state-run newspaper Global Times quoted an expert as saying that the US boat had been “harassing” China’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, as it carried out drills.    www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25459570

US Military Planes Flee Sudanese Small Arms Fire United States aircraft flying into a heavily contested region of South Sudan to evacuate American citizens were attacked on Saturday and forced to turn back without completing the mission, American officials said. Four service members were wounded, one seriously.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/world/africa/south-sudan.html?hp&_r=0

US Vets’ Enemy At Home–the VA  “You’d call up and you’d ask, ‘What’s the status?’ Nobody knew,” he said. “Then you’d make an official inquiry, and they would say, ‘OK, here’s the number.’ And then when you call up a week later, there’s no record of that inquiry.”
In an attempt to expedite his claim, the VA office in Oakland sent the file to be processed in another state. But documents were apparently misplaced in the transfer. Sonnenberg says he was asked to resubmit paperwork, in some cases multiple times.
“I was losing my mind at one point,” he said. “I just started to feel like it was hopeless.… Nothing’s going to change, no one gives a damn about us.”   www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-1220-veterans-backlog-20131219-dto,0,1667083.htmlstory#ixzz2oBOyFAAm

Karzai Woos India Inc. as Doubts on U.S. Pact Sideline Billions  As Karzai explains his reluctance to sign a security pact with the U.S. to political and business leaders in the region, investors are voicing concerns. The agreement would assuage businesses seeking to tap mineral resources estimated at $3 trillion and ensure that the country’s 31 million people, who live on an average of less than $2 per day, receive billions of dollars in aid money over the next decade.
“I don’t think the Americans are thinking of the zero option,” Karzai told reporters in New Delhi two days ago, referring to a scenario under which all U.S. troops might leave Afghanistan in 2014. “It’s a brinkmanship they’re playing with us. Even if they did, then come what may.”    www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-15/karzai-tells-investors-u-s-will-meet-his-security-pact-demands.html

West Tells Syria Rebels: Assad Must Stay –SNC Member: West Open to Assad Running for Reelection  Members of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) report that they have been told by Western officials that they believe President Bashar Assad must remain in power to prevent an al-Qaeda takeover of the country.  “Some do not even seem to mind if he runs again next year,” noted one SNC member. That’s not sitting well with the SNC, but it may not matter.
Western diplomats confirmed the shift, saying that the rebels have been warned that any “transitional administration” would have to include a major presence from Alawites, and that Assad could stay as president with “diminished powers.”
If the rebels reject that plan “they will lose most of the West,” one diplomat said, reflecting the dwindling confidence in the secular rebels’ ability to accomplish anything on their own.    news.antiwar.com/2013/12/17/west-tells-syria-rebels-assad-must-stay/

Britain’s policy on Syria has just been sunk, and nobody noticed  The final bankruptcy of American and British policy in Syria came 10 days ago as Islamic Front, a Saudi-backed Sunni jihadi group, overran the headquarters of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Bab al-Hawa on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey. The FSA, along with the Syrian National Coalition, groups that the United States and Britain have been pretending for years are at the heart of Syrian military and political opposition, has been discredited. The remaining FSA fighters are in flight, have changed sides, or are devoting all their efforts to surviving the onslaught from jihadi or al-Qa’ida-linked brigades.
The US and Britain stopped the delivery of non-lethal aid to the supply depot at Bab al-Hawa as the implications of the disaster sank in. The West’s favourite rebel commander, General Salim Idris, was on the run between Turkey and his former chief supporter and paymaster, Qatar. Turkey closed the border, the other side of which is now controlled by the Islamic Front. The so-called moderate wing of the Syrian insurgency has very limited influence, but its representatives are still being urged by Washington and London to attend the peace conference in Geneva on 22 January to negotiate Bashar al-Assad’s departure from power.
Confusion over what is happening is so great that Western leaders may not pay as much of a political price at home as they should for the failure of their Syrian policy. But it is worth recalling that the Syrian National Coalition and the FSA are the same people for whom the US and UK almost went to war in August, and saw as candidates to replace Assad in power in Damascus. The recent debacle shows how right public opinion in both countries was to reject military intervention.
Who are the winners in the new situation? One is Assad…  www.unz.com/pcockburn/britains-policy-on-syria-has-just-been-sunk-and-nobody-noticed/

AQ Fascists Training Kiddies (on US money)  They are “Zarqawi’s Cubs,” the youth brigade of Syria’s most fearsome Islamist rebel group and one of the newest manifestations of al-Qaeda’s deepening roots in rebel-controlled sections of the country. Building on earlier efforts to expand their influence in Syrian schools, radical Islamists appear to be stepping up efforts to indoctrinate and train children, some as young as 10, according to independent experts who have studied the phenomenon.  The establishment of the Zarqawi’s Cubs camp — revealed in a video posted last month by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — is viewed as particularly worrisome because of the similarities to Iraq’s “Birds of Paradise.” That brigade was created a decade ago by the same terrorist group, in its earlier incarnation as al-Qaeda in Iraq, to train children for military missions,including suicide bombings.
“This is the future threat,”    www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/extremist-syrian-faction-touts-training-camp-for-boys/2013/12/16/e0b4cca4-628e-11e3-a373-0f9f2d1c2b61_story.html?hpid=z5

Imperialist War MEANS Corruption (Navy Again)  Amid a scandal that has already ensnared two ship supply companies in allegations of overbilling the Navy, a third firm that provides services to the Navy’s fleet has placed one of its senior executives on leave over questions about how he handled Navy contracts at another company.  The third firm, Multinational Logistic Services, known as MLS, is the Navy’s largest ship supply company, with $346 million in contracts for ports in Africa, the Mediterranean, Central America and the Pacific.
But in early 2011, as the Navy was evaluating the company’s bid to provide services in Africa, MLS hired an executive named Akbar Khan, who had worked at a rival firm that was then — and still is — under federal investigation for overcharging the Navy for supplies and port services.
The Justice Department, with the Navy’s help, was investigating the rival firm, Inchcape Shipping Services, after former employees alleged that Mr. Khan had been involved in questionable billing practices while he headed its Middle Eastern and African operations, people close to the investigation say.
But while that investigation was underway, Mr. Khan took a similar job at MLS. Later that year, the Navy awarded the company the Africa contract, estimated at $52 million, and has given it additional business since.    www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/us/in-navy-billing-scandal-a-third-company-puts-an-executive-on-leave.html?hp&_r=0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=usM70MtPtHU

They’re Droning on and on  On my wedding day, my wife and I hired a couple of shuttle vans to ferry guests between a San Clemente hotel and the nearby site where we held our ceremony and reception. I thought of our friends and family members packed into those vehicles when I read about the latest nightmarish consequence of America’s drone war: “A U.S. drone mistakenly targeted a wedding convoy in Yemen’s al-Baitha province after intelligence reports identified the vehicles as carrying al Qaeda militants,” CNN reported, citing government sources in Yemen. “The officials said that 14 people were killed and 22 others injured, nine in critical condition. The vehicles were traveling near the town of Radda when they were attacked.”
Can you imagine the wall-to-wall press coverage, the outrage, and the empathy for the victims that would follow if an American wedding were attacked in this fashion? Or how you’d feel about a foreign power that attacked your wedding in this fashion?
The L.A. Times followed up on the story and found slightly different casualty figures: “The death toll reached 17 overnight, hospital officials in central Bayda province said Friday. Five of those killed were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda, but the remainder were unconnected with the militancy, Yemeni security officials said.”    www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-drone-strike-hit-an-american-wedding-wed-ground-our-fleet/282373/

US Backed Islamic Fascists Kill 80+ Civilians in Syria  Over 80 civilians in a town northwest of the Syrian capital of Damascus have been executed by Islamist rebels, sources within the Syrian military told RT. Many others were kidnapped to be used as human shields.
Government forces are continuing a large-scale operation against Jabhat al-Nusra and Liwa Al-Islam fighters, who captured the town earlier this week. The area is located some 20 kilometers away from Damascus.
According to SANA news agency, around 1,000 militants were in the town when it was enveloped by the army on Friday.
The military sources said the “armed groups have performed an execution of civilians” in Adra, RT Arabic correspondent Abutaleb Albohaya reported from Syria.    rt.com/news/syria-adra-civilian-execution-289/

U.S. Marine instructor with Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific, drives a group of Japanese soldiers from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Western Army Infantry Regiment around San Diego Bay in a rigid-hull inflatable boat. 

A new draft of Japan’s national security strategy calls for an expansion of the country’s military power in reaction to China’s military rise and growing territorial claims. Specifically countering China’s military rise is near the heart of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s call for increased military spending, “with a firm commitment to defend the people’s lives and possessions,” he said in a Wednesday meeting with Japanese defense officials over the new strategy.China quickly called the move by the Abe government unreasonable. “Japan’s unreasonable criticism of China’s normal maritime and air activities and hyping up of a China threat have hidden political motives,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei in state run media.
“We urge Japan to pay attention to Asian neighbors’ security concerns, comply with the historical trend, follow the path of peaceful development, and make due efforts to improve relations between the two countries and maintain regional stability.”The draft calls for the use of unmanned surveillance aircraft to increasingly patrol Japanese southwestern territory and standing up an amphibious force on Okinawa.    news.usni.org/2013/12/11/japan-seeks-expand-military-power-response-chinese-expansion

USS Ronnie Regan Sailors Sue for Cancers from Fukishima  Fifty-one crew members of the USS Ronald Reagan say they are suffering from a variety of cancers as a direct result of their involvement in Operation Tomodachi, a U.S. rescue mission in Fukushima after the nuclear disaster in March 2011. The affected sailors are suing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), alleging that the utility mishandled the crisis and did not adequately warn the crew of the risk of participating in the earthquake relief efforts.
Crew members, many of whom are in their 20s, have been diagnosed with conditions including thyroid cancer, testicular cancer and leukemia. The Department of Defense says the Navy took “proactive measures” in order to “mitigate the levels of Fukushima-related contamination on U.S. Navy ships and aircraft” and that crew members were not exposed to dangerous radiation levels.
Charles Bonner, attorney for the sailors, says the radiation the USS Ronald Reagan crew was exposed to extended beyond the tasks of Operation Tomodachi. Deployed ships desalinate their own water, so crew members were unknowingly drinking, cooking with, and bathing in contaminated water due to the ship’s close proximity to the disaster site, according to Bonner. The USS Reagan was ultimately informed of the contamination after a month of living approximately 10 miles offshore from the affected region.
The number of plaintiffs in the case could grow significantly as 150    america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-stream-officialblog/2013/12/16/uss-reagan-sailorsreportcancersafterfukushimarescuemission.html

Brazil: War Means Work, but NSA Insults Count too Brazil has rejected a contract for Boeing’s F/A-18 fighter jets in favor of the Swedish Saab’s JAS 39 Gripens. The unexpected move to reject the US bid comes amid the global scandal over the NSA’s involvement in economic espionage activities.
The announcement for the purchase of 36 fighters was made Wednesday by Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim and Air Force Commander Junti Saito. The jets will cost US$4.5 billion, well below the estimated market value of around US$7 billion.
Saito said the development of the fighters will occur in conjunction with Embraer and other unspecified companies.
The 12 Mirage aircraft currently in use by the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) will be retired at the end of this year. They were acquired by Brazil in 2005. As it waits for the new fighters, the FAB will use the F5 style, which will stay viable up to 2025.    rt.com/news/brazil-nsa-defense-contract-454/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

And the Winner is–The Bi-partisan Defense Budget! In reality, there was one clear winner: the bipartisan defense lobby, a category that does not apparently include wounded veterans, who must give up some of their pensions for the sake of restoring that public faith, not to mention funding the extra $22 billion for defense that will flow inexorably into the pockets of Lockheed (stock already up 55% this year), Raytheon (up 54%), Northrop (up 64%) and their peers. With the hearty endorsement of both parties, they have emerged triumphant from the budget wars at the expense of old-fashioned special interests such as veterans, the poor, the unemployed, children (57,000 kicked off Head Start) and the aged.
Thus, while some sequestered nondefense cuts have theoretically been restored, federal employees get soaked for higher pension contributions, military veterans (including the wounded) lose part of their projected raises, airline passengers have to fork out higher taxes — a total of $26 billion. Including the “savings” from not extending unemployment benefits ($25 billion), the nondefense sector suffers a net loss of $20 billion.
www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cockburn-budget-deal-defense-20131220,0,4067784.story#ixzz2oBUpCSW2

U.S. Steel Plant Explosion Near Detroit Kills Worker, Injures 2  Antonino Palazzolo, a 32-year-old remote-control locomotive operator who had worked at the company for almost two years, was killed in the explosion, according to an e-mailed statement from Courtney Boone, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh-based manufacturer. Two others had minor injuries and received medical treatment.
The company’s Great Lakes Works site, where the explosion occurred, is capable of about 3.8 million net tons of steelmaking per year, according to the company’s website. The plant is along the Detroit River in the Michigan towns of Ecorse and River Rouge.    www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-15/u-s-steel-plant-explosion-near-detroit-kills-worker-injures-2.html

A needed extension of federal emergency jobless benefits was absent from this week’s budget agreement, potentially leaving almost 5 million jobless workers in the lurch over the next 12 months, according to Department of Labor estimates.[1] Failure to extend the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program would affect jobless workers in every state.

As Figure 1[2] shows:
An estimated 1.3 million jobless workers now receiving EUC will receive no benefits after Christmas week if the program expires as scheduled.
An estimated 1.9 million people receiving regular state unemployment insurance (UI) payments, which typically run for a maximum of six months, will exhaust them in the first half of 2014 before they can find a job. If EUC expires, these workers will receive no further benefits.
An estimated 1.6 million people who lose their jobs in the first half of 2014 will exhaust their regular state UI in the second half of the year before they can find a job. If EUC expires, these workers will receive no further benefits.
In all, an estimated 4.9 million workers would lose out on EUC benefits by the end of 2014.

US Stocks Hit Record Highs High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6f6ebac-691e-11e3-996a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2oBX0qjkw
Global equities ended the last full trading week of 2013 in strong form, as the markets largely took the Federal Reserve’s decision to begin winding down its economic stimulus in their stride.
Indeed, US stocks raced to record highs, bolstered by a robust third-quarter GDP reading that, on the surface at least, appeared to vindicate the Fed’s move.    www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6f6ebac-691e-11e3-996a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2oBWpCVeP

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Judge, a Bush appointee, says mass NSA Spying Unconstitutional   “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” said Leon, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”  …Snowden praised the ruling in a statement made to journalist Glenn Greenwald, who received NSA documents from Snowden and first reported on the program’s existence.
“I acted on my belief that the NSA’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts,” said Snowden, who has received temporary asylum in Russia, where he is seeking to avoid U.S. prosecution under the Espionage Act for leaking NSA documents. “Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”
The ruling also comes as Congress is debating whether to end the NSA’s “bulk” collection of phone data or endorse it in statute. The White House, U.S. officials say, supports maintaining the program.    www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting-of-phone-records-is-likely-unconstitutional/2013/12/16/6e098eda-6688-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html

Obamagogue Tries to Prevent Judge From Ruling on Surveillance Efforts  In a set of filings in the two long-running cases in the Northern District of California, the government acknowledged for the first time that the N.S.A. started systematically collecting data about Americans’ emails and phone calls in 2001, alongside its program of wiretapping certain calls without warrants. The government had long argued that disclosure of these and other secrets would put the country at risk if they came out in court.
But the government said that despite recent leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that made public a fuller scope of the surveillance and data collection programs put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks, sensitive secrets remained at risk in any courtroom discussion of their details — like whether the plaintiffs were targets of intelligence collection or whether particular telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon had helped the agency.    www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/us/white-house-tries-to-prevent-judge-from-ruling-on-surveillance-efforts.html?hp

NYTimes (!) “Release the Torture Files  A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it is appalling that official reports about the extent and nature of the rendition, detention and torture that came in their aftermath are still being kept from the American public and even members of Congress charged with overseeing intelligence activities…Likely the closest to a full accounting the nation is going to get, the report is said to contain unsparing criticism of the program. News reports have said it chronicles the Central Intelligence Agency’s repeated misleading of the White House, Congress and the public about the value of brutal and lawless methods that yielded little valuable intelligence despite the claims of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other defenders of torture.   www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/opinion/release-the-torture-reports.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131220&tntemail0=y

The C.I.A. wrote a 122-page rebuttal to the Senate’s report, which was delivered by the agency’s current director, John Brennan, in June, four months after the committee’s deadline. It, too, remains under wraps.

Obamagogue’s Incredible Shrinking Presidency  Of course, Obamacare is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The list of policy disasters that preceded this latest fiasco is nearly endless, including everything from blanket pardons for the Wall Street big-wigs who took down the global financial system, to re-upping the Bush tax cuts, to appointing a commission of deficit hawks to slash Social Security and Medicare (Bowles-Simpson), to breaking his word on Gitmo, to reneging on his promise to pass Card Check, to expanding wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, to droning four-times as many civilians as the homicidal maniac he replaced as president in 2008.    Obama’s treatment of undocumented immigrants has been particularly shocking although the details have been kept out of the media, presumably because the news giants don’t want to expose the Dear Leader as a heartless scoundrel who has no problem separating mothers from their children, locking them up in privately-owned concentration camps and booting them out of the country with nothing more than the shirts on their backs.   www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/20/the-incredible-shrinking-presidency-of-barack-obama/

CIA Assassinating FARC in Columbia The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.
The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000.
Above: A Colombian Air Force member cleans an A-29 Super Tucano, a turboprop aircraft typically involved in strikes on FARC targets. (Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)
The previously undisclosed CIA program was authorized by President George W. Bush in the early 2000s and has continued under President Obama, according to U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic officials. Most of those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program is classified and ongoing. The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them.
That weapon is a $30,000 GPS guidance kit that transforms a less-than-accurate 500-pound gravity bomb into a highly accurate smart bomb. Smart bombs, also called precision-guided munitions or PGMs, are capable of killing an individual in triple-canopy jungle if his exact location can be determined and geo-coordinates are programmed into the bomb’s small computer brain.  The roster is headed by Mexico, where U.S. intelligence assistance is larger than anywhere outside Afghanistan, as The Washington Post reported in April. It also includes Central America and West Africa, where trafficking routes have moved in response to U.S. pressure against cartels elsewhere.
Asked to comment on U.S. intelligence assistance, President Juan Manuel Santos told The Post during a recent trip to Washington that he did not wish to speak about it in detail, given the sensitivities involved. “It’s been of help,” he said. “Part of the expertise and the efficiency of our operations and our special operations have been the product of better training and knowledge we have acquired from many countries, among them the United States.”

A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment.

Colombia and the FARC have been in peace negotiations in Havana for a year. They have agreed so far on frameworks for land reform, rural development and for allowing insurgents to participate in the political process once the war ends. The two sides are currently discussing a new approach to fighting drug trafficking.              www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/?hpid=z1

Ultra Dubious Homeland Security Boss Moved The official in charge of exposing wrongdoing inside the troubled Homeland Security Department has been transferred amid allegations that he abused his position, officials said Tuesday.
Charles K. Edwards was scheduled to appear before a Senate panel on Thursday to answer questions about allegations that he improperly employed his wife, misused travel funds and covered up details about a Secret Service prostitution scandal. He has denied any wrongdoing.
The Senate hearing was canceled after he left his post.
Edwards, a career civil servant, was the department’s deputy inspector general. But he had run the office since February 2011 because the White House had not nominated a new inspector general.
At his request, Edwards was reassigned to the department’s science and technology directorate, the research and development arm, officials said.
Senate investigators have been looking into allegations that Edwards held back details from reports about U.S. Secret Service agents who hired prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, while planning a presidential visit to the country in 2012.
Subordinates also said that Edwards improperly hired his wife as an auditor in his office, and gave bonuses to employees who helped him write a university dissertation for a doctoral course in information systems.
Before he stepped down, Edwards was overseeing an internal investigation of Alejandro Mayorkas, Obama’s pick to be the No. 2 official at Homeland Security.
Critics have said Mayorkas, the current head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, fast-tracked visas for foreign investors on behalf of businesses with political connections. Mayorkas has denied wrongdoing   www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-homeland-security-watchdog-20131217,0,2114225.story#ixzz2nnkDFq8M

Merkel to Obamagogue: NSA Spying is like the Stasi  In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.
The German chancellor also told the US president that America’s National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.
Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: “This is like the Stasi.”    www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/merkel-compares-nsa-stasi-obama

LA Copper Crimes and Nepotism  Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca maintained a special hiring program that granted preferential treatment to the friends and relatives of department officials, including some candidates who were given jobs despite having troubled histories, according to interviews and internal employment records reviewed by The Times.
The program, known as “Friends of the Sheriff,” has been in existence for at least eight years. Some high-ranking sheriff’s officials injected themselves into the vetting process to lobby for favored job candidates, records show.
Among those hired was a man convicted of sexual battery, according to court records. His friend — and contact with the department — was Baca’s driver. Another hired under the program was arrested last week on a federal weapons charge in connection with the FBI’s corruption investigation in the sheriff’s jails. His tie to the agency was his brother, a deputy.    www.latimes.com/local/la-me-friends-of-the-sheriff-20131219,0,901455.story#ixzz2nsbUq5Du  

Solidarity for Never

above, Mandela as portrayed by S. African rebels, MK fighters 

Quisling Rat Weingarten Who Snared Newark Teachers with Merit Pay Whines about the trap she set  The agreement between the district and the Newark Teachers Union included the state’s first large-scale use of performance bonuses for teachers found to be performing at a high level. It also included extensive provisions for teachers to take part in peer evaluations and the reviews of the final job ratings.
Weingarten cited what she called “grievance upon grievance” lodged by union members who say the district has not lived up to its pledges, which included additional support and coaching of lower-performing teachers.
Of Anderson, Weingarten said she has “turned her back and stopped listening to teachers’ voices. . . .She has said tough luck, and if you can’t do it, you’ll be fired.”
Anderson largely stayed out of the fray yesterday, leaving her spokesman to issue a statement criticizing the rally as a whole…In a phone interview, state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf was less reluctant to engage, and he strongly contested Weingarten’s specific claims.
He said an additional $50 million was spent to meet the agreement’s promises to teachers and other staff.
“I can assure you that the contract has been fully and honorably implemented,” Cerf said. “I am absolutely confident that all the components of the contract have occurred exactly as they were agreed upon.”
The bulk of the additional money came from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to the Newark schools.
Cerf added that the city teachers union subsequently blocked the district from gaining federal Race to the Top money for new technology and programming, because they union claimed it has not been kept apprised of the application.
“What Randi seems to have forgotten is this contract brought $50 million more into the pockets of Newark teachers,    www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/12/09/new-era-of-cooperation-in-newark-school-gives-way-to-animosity/

The Teacher “Union” Problem Within As teacher unions step up their calls to stop the “corporate agenda” in education and to confront the “privatization” movement, there is a far more real and serious threat facing teacher unions. The threat comes not from billionaires or charter schools or philanthropists. Rather, it comes from many teacher unions’ difficulty to modernize and reshape themselves in the midst of profound demographic changes of their members. At stake are the relevance and even existence of teacher unions–a force that historically has played such a vital role in American public school education.
Three basic demographic facts of today’s public school teachers should give teacher unions long pause before continuing to support policies that appeal primarily to a shrinking base of veteran teachers: 1) 52% of U.S. public school teachers have fewer than 10 years of experience (up from 25% in the 1980’s); 2) Approximately one million (or about 30%) of all U.S. public school teachers are expected to retire in the next five years; and 3) Today, there are more first year teachers in American classrooms than there are teachers at any other experience level.
As significantly, the views of most early career teachers differ from those of many veteran teachers. As a national surveyconducted by Teach Plus in 2012 found, early career teachers are more likely than their veteran peers to strongly support rigorous evaluations, performance-based compensation, and inclusion of student growth measures in teacher evaluations    www.teachplus.org/page/newsroom-6/news/december-2013-342.html

Boeing Union Forcing Workers to Vote until They Surrender Unionized workers at Boeing Co (BA.N) who resoundingly rejected a proposed contract last month will get a chance to vote on the company’s latest offer, the union’s national office said on Saturday, despite opposition to the revised deal from local labor leaders.
“I can confirm that a vote will take place,” Frank Larkin, a spokesman for International Association of Machinists, told Reuters. “But the date and details are still being finalized.”
In November, machinists at the Everett, Washington, plant where Boeing’s 777 jet is built voted 2-to-1 against the company’s initial offer.
The eight-year contract would have kept production of Boeing’s next jet – the 777X – in Washington state. But in exchange, management wanted to replace the workers’ pension plan with a 401(k)-style retirement savings account and raise their healthcare costs.
In the aftermath of that vote, Boeing said it would look for other locations to build the 777X, the only jet the company is likely to develop in the next 15 years.
Boeing also came back with a revised offer that included a signing bonus and some concessions. But leaders of IAM District Lodge 751, which represents the 31,000 workers, refused to put it up for a vote, saying the changes were not significant enough.    www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/21/us-boeing-union-vote-idUSBRE9BK0E520131221

AFGE Boss Sentenced  On November 1, Federck Petro, former president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2094, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to six months of home confinement and three years of probation for embezzling $112,477 from the Manhattan union, which represents VA hospital employees. He also was ordered to pay full restitution and a $100 special assessment. Petro, who had served as local president during February 2006-July 2008, wrote nearly 200 unauthorized union checks for his own benefit. He had been arrested in December 2011, and pleaded guilty in February of this year following a joint probe by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and the Veterans Affairs Department’s Office of Inspector General.

Spy versus Spy

Operation Mockingbird and Wurlitzer Redux: the WashPost and the CIA  News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.
The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon — which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.
Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.
And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure. Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
As Amazon’s majority owner and the Post’s only owner, Bezos stands to gain a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA feathers.
Amazon has a bad history of currying favor with the U.S. government’s “national security” establishment. The media watch group FAIR pointed out what happened after WikiLeaks published State Department cables: “WikiLeaks was booted from Amazon’s webhosting service AWS. So at the height of public interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access the WikiLeaks website.”
How’s that for a commitment to the public’s right to know?
Days ago, my colleagues at RootsAction.org launched a petition that says: “The Washington Post’s coverage of the CIA should include full disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of Amazon — and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the CIA.” More than 15,000 people have signed the petition so far this week, with many posting comments that underscore widespread belief in journalistic principles.     www.globalresearch.ca/the-washington-post-and-amazon-doing-business-with-the-cia/5362026

America’s Great Game in the Middle East  If hard to imagine today, there were two distinct moments when the United States was regarded as a beacon of hope to the peoples of the Middle East. The first opportunity was thrown away at the end of World War I when, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab leaders sued for either independence or American conservatorship, believing that the nation’s “disinterested benevolence” might save them from the imperial grasps of Britain and France. By turning his back on those desires, Woodrow Wilson consigned the region to its fate: a carving up by the European powers that created the fractious borders of today. At the end of World War II, however, with the British and French empires in rapid and terminal decline, the Americans were granted a do-over. It is this vitally important juncture in Middle Eastern history that is the subject of Hugh Wilford’s frustratingly uneven “America’s Great Game: The C.I.A.’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East.”    www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/books/review/americas-great-game-by-hugh-wilford.html

Breaking News! Companies (even in France) Spy on lots of people  A regional court in Versailles, near Paris, is now examining whether Ikea executives in France broke the law by ordering personal investigations — not only of Ms. Paulin but of hundreds of other people over the course of a decade.
A review of the court records by The New York Times indicates that Ikea’s investigations were conducted for various reasons, including the vetting of job applicants, efforts to build cases against employees accused of wrongdoing, and even attempts to undermine the arguments of consumers bringing complaints against the company. The going rate charged by the private investigators was 80 to 180 euros, or $110 to $247, per inquiry, court documents show. Between 2002 and 2012, the finance department of Ikea France approved more than €475,000 in invoices from investigators.    www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/business/international/ikea-employee-spying-case-casts-spotlight-on-privacy-issues-in-france.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Praise the Bad Bishop: William Montgomery Brown–““Banish Gods from the Skies and Capitalists from the Earth!” richgibson.com/BadBishop.htm

1 in 200 Women Say they Had a Virgin Pregnancy  An unbelievable-sounding new study finds that one in 200 young American women claims to have experienced a virgin pregnancy, à la the Virgin Mary.
The U.S. researchers looked into a long-term, confidential study about reproductive health, and found that 45 of the 7,870 women involved said they had become pregnant without ever having had vaginal intercourse or going through in-vitro fertilization, AFP reports. Of those, 31% had made a “chastity pledge” of the type popular among Christian groups. The research was published in the British Medical Journal.    www.freep.com/article/20131218/FEATURES08/312180101/1-in-200-women-say-they-ve-had-a-virgin-pregnancy-

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Tbf5IZfRc

 

ASA members vote 2-1 for academic boycott of Israel  A landmark in the boycott movement: In an election that attracted 1252 voters, the largest number of participants in the American Studies Association’s history, the majority of votes (66%) supported the boycott.    mondoweiss.net/#13872573135953&event=close

He’s not in the Hall? No Justice–No Peace!

 

So Long

 

 

 

Blame him