Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Alpine CA teachers authorize strike The Alpine Teachers Association has approved a strike authorization measure.
Teachers union President Gayle Malone announced the decision to trustees at the Alpine Union School District board meeting Thursday night in the Alpine Elementary School auditorium.
Malone reported that 83 percent of the membership of the teachers union attended a meeting Thursday afternoon, then held a secret pencil and paper vote. More than 80 percent voted in favor of the measure.
The action does not mean that the 91 teachers in the school district are on strike or that there will be an imminent work stoppage. Rather, it gives permission to the union’s executive board to call a strike “at such time as it believes necessary.”

Portland Students Fight Back for Teachers  High school students from Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon are joining their teachers in the fight against a reduction in benefits and worse working (and learning) conditions.
The campaign began with a walkout of about 200 students from the high school on last Friday, January 10th, and continued with a forced interruption of a meeting convened by Portland Public School district (PPS) on Monday evening.
“If you strike, we do too,” chanted a group of students and parents outside of the building, in solidarity with the teachers. The district meeting was quickly cancelled, and school board members moved into a closed-door executive session.
The protesters had gathered out of fear that PPS was going to ram through a contract that would have eased limits on classroom sizes and made it more difficult for teachers to secure health insurance through the district. Currently, the school district is hoping to uncap the current limit of 180 students per teacher for six to seven classes, and let it rise all the way up to 50/1 per class, as has happened in nearby Beaverton school district after officials removed such limitations. Furthermore, the changes to the district’s health insurance policy may end up costing each teacher about $11,000 more in coverage over a four year period.  http://www.alternet.org/activism/high-school-students-portland-protest-behalf-their-teachers

One hundred years ago–the Mother Jones riot:   Hundreds of strikers turned out for the Trinidad funeral of Nick Ricardo, a striker who died from typhoid fever. Later in the week, 200 women, “many with babes in arms,” flooded the lobby of the Columbian Hotel, also in Trinidad, to confront state Adj. Gen. John Chase, the field commander of the militia. The women were demanding the release of labor icon Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. Jones had returned to Trinidad and was quickly arrested under martial law. She had been transported to San Raphael Hospital, where she was kept under house arrest. Chase spoke to the women and said that Jones was “an inciter of riots” and that her incarceration was Gov. Elias Ammons’ idea. Chase said Jones was being well-fed and taken care of, and she could leave if she did not re-enter the strike district. – See more at: www.chieftain.com/news/2174855-120/week-chieftain-pueblo-1914#sthash.8TbpjgWi.dpuf

Marx: The working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate consequences of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; …that they are applying palliatives, not curing
the malady. They ought therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights…instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead  of using their organised forces as a lever for the fnal emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system. 

Table of Contents
Barbarism Rising: Detroit, Michigan, and the International War of the Rich on the Poor
Rich Gibson, San Diego State University
E. Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia
Kevin D. Vinson, University of The West Indies
Resisting Neoliberal Education Reform: Insurrectionist Pedagogies and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship
Julie Gorlewski, State University of New York, New Paltz
Brad Porfilio, Lewis University
Reimaging Solidarity: Hip-Hop as Revolutionary Pedagogy
Timothy Patrick Shannon, The Ohio State University
Patrick Shannon, Penn State University
Learning to be Fast Capitalists on a Flat World
Brian Lozenski, Zachary A. Casey, Shannon K. McManimon, University of Minnesota
Contesting Production: Youth Participatory Action Research in the Struggle to Produce Knowledge
Brian Lozenski, Zachary A. Casey, Shannon K. McManimon, University of Minnesota
Schooling for Capitalism or Education for Twenty-First Century Socialism?
Mike Cole, University of East London
Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context
Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
The Pedagogy of Excess
Deborah P. Kelsh, The College of Saint Rose
Undermining Capitalist Pedagogy: Takiji Kobayashi’s Tōseikatsusha and the Ideology of the World Literature Paradigm
John Maerhofer, Roger Williams University
Marxist Sociology of Education and the Problem of Naturalism: An Historical Sketch
Grant Banfield, Flinders University of South Australia
The Illegitimacy of Student Debt
David Blacker, University of Delaware
Hacking Away at the Corporate Octopus
Alan J. Singer, Hofstra University
A Tale of Two Cities ¬– and States
Richard Brosio, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
SDS, The 1960s, and Education for Revolution
Alan J. Spector, Purdue University, Calumet   networkedblogs.com/SrLbJ?ref=nf

Kidnapping your boss works!  Striking workers at a Goodyear tire plant in France agreed on Wednesday to accept severance pay that they said was three times as much as the company had initially offered, clearing the way for the facility to close after a bitter conflict that escalated into a “boss-napping.”The agreement provided “significant improvements in benefits” for the 1,173 employees of the plant in Amiens, 150 kilometers, or about 90 miles, north of Paris, Goodyear said in a statement. In return, the dominant union at the facility, the C.G.T., agreed to end the occupation of the plant and halt legal action meant to delay its closing.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/international/goodyear-reaches-deal-to-end-strike-in-france.html?emc=edit_tnt_20140123&tntemail0=y

above, NEA boss Van Roekel ($465,000 a year +) applauds shifty reactionary Ravitch

Against Ravitch  Here is Ravitch’s take on why people must support union executive Weingarten: “I have read many comments on the (her) blog that are critical of Randi. I let readers have their say, but this I believe. It serves no purpose for those of us opposed to teacher-bashing and corporate reform to fight among ourselves. We must stand together so that we will one day prevail over those who want to destroy public education and the teaching profession. We can’t win if we are divided. I will do nothing to help those who pursue a strategy of divide and conquer. They want us to fight among ourselves. I won’t help them.”
Ravitch wraps three lies in one paragraph:
(1) opposing “corporate reform,” to defend “public education,” means defending a myth and backing a corporate state. The myth is public education–never public but always capitalist, always segregated, always teaching, above all, falsehoods (nationalism, racism, religious “tolerance,” etc)
(2) We must unite with union bosses, which means uniting with even bigger bosses.
(3) The teaching “profession”–an appeal to baseless elitism: teachers have never set their own hours, wages, determined the curriculum or methods of study, nor the number of people who can get the job. And it is a job, a working class job. dianeravitch.net/2013/07/10/my-friend-randi-weingarten/
Good cop, bad cop–patriotic, religious, nationalist, class collaborationist rats–Ravitch/Weingarten. One way elites rule is to choose the leaders for the propertyless. Let us choose otherwise.  http://richgibson.com/ravitch2014.htm

Everything you need to know about Ravitch’s false flag opposition to the Common Core  richgibson.com/againstravitch.htm

The Little Red Schoolhouse

In Capital’s UC System, Boss’ Pay is Pretty Swell  The UC regents on Thursday hired an executive of a Canadian investment fund to be the chief manager of the university system’s $82 billion in endowment and pension investments and will pay him more than $1 million a year if he achieves good returns.
Although that pay package triggered little public discussion, the salary for another new executive hire attracted more opposition at the regents meeting here. Some regents opposed the $450,000-a-year salary for Claude Steele, who is becoming UC Berkeley’s provost and second-in-command. They complained that the pay is higher than that of some chancellors.
www.latimes.com/business/la-me-uc-investments-20140124,0,6627219.story#ixzz2rIliq0lj

San Diego State Bosses Want another Fee Hike (Prezzie got a $100,000 pay hike)  San Diego State students are back on campus for the start of spring semester Wednesday. One of the first questions they’ll face is whether they’re willing to increase the student fees they pay already by $200 to $500 per semester. (Fees have more than doubled in 7 years) www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jan/22/sdsu-students-asked-fund-faculty-hires/

Arne Duncan: The Education Agenda is a War agenda  But as the international PISA results demonstrate, our progress isn’t enough. Other countries are leapfrogging us at a time when education is vital to economic health in a global competition for jobs and innovation. Among the 65 countries and education systems that participate in PISA, the United States was surpassed by 27 in math and 14 in reading . That’s unacceptable.   www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arne-duncan-better-education-starts-with-honesty-about-achievement-gaps/2014/01/23/7f276928-7ed2-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

Capitalist Schooling IS Cheating–Philly  Over the course of a year, the district found disturbing patterns in parts of the system that resulted in three principals being fired last week for test cheating in one of the largest such scandals in the country.
Some administrators were giving answer keys to teachers who passed them on to students. In other cases, principals took completed exams home at night and doctored the answer sheets. And in some schools, teachers and administrators gathered secretly in conference rooms with test booklets, pencils and erasers and changed wrong answers.
“Any time you’ve got cheating going on by adults, that’s egregious,” said Michael A. Davis, general counsel to the Philadelphia school district, who described some of the findings of the inquiry.
The tests spanned three years, from 2009 to 2011, and involved 138 educators at 27 schools, three of them public charter schools. The three principals fired last week — Deidre Bennett at Lewis C. Cassidy Elementary, Michelle Burns at Kensington Urban Education High School and Marla Travis-Curtis at Lamberton Elementary School — were the first to be disciplined by the district. Twenty other educators have retired, resigned or been laid off for economic reasons, and another 37 are still employed by the district, awaiting disciplinary action.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/us/erased-answers-on-tests-in-philadelphia-lead-to-a-three-year-cheating-scandal.html

In Front of Detroit’s “Elite” Cass Tech High–Heroin Dealers work in Broad Daylight (video too)  Dietz shows heroin being peddled in broad day light after school, with addicts lining up to buy.
Students and parents expressed concern.
“The police, where are they?” asked senior Kayla Alexander in the report.
Dietz reports:
Kids keep their head down and don’t make eye contact as they make their way to the school bus, because in the Detroit’s Cass Tech High School, drug dealers are free to sell heroine on the streets in broad day light all day, every day, right in front of hundreds of school children.
“If the bus doesn’t come fast enough they’ll attack you, interrogate you with questions, make you feel uncomfortable,” said senior MaKayla Nixon.
During the report, an unidentified person for WDIV called police about the drug dealing.
Dietz reports police did not respond.
Dietz reported that in 2001, WDIV did a similar report about drug dealing outside Cass Tech and police then cracked down. They also showed a video of the then-Wayne County Prosecutor Mike Duggan talking about cracking down on the problem.  http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/7923/dealers_peddle_heroin_outside_cass_tech_detroit_police_ignore_calls_for_help?utm_source=Deadline+Detroit+Newsletter&utm_campaign=406da70138-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4d2ad8703-406da70138-73197837#.UuArJUvgERR

Cass Tech (above) QB Bodyslams Security Guard on Job 2 Days (video inside)  Four-star quarterback and Michigan State football recruit Jayru Campbell is in custody after he body slammed a security guard at Detroit Cass Tech High School.
Campbell, a junior and quarterback at Cass Tech, is shown on video slamming the security guard to the ground in a school hallway on Wednesday.
Michelle Zdrodowski, a spokeswoman for Detroit Public Schools, said Campbell will be disciplined internally according to the student code of conduct. Outside of the school, Zdrodowski said Campbell could be charged with misdemeanor assault and battery.  http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/detroit-cass-tech-football-star-jayru-campbell-slams-school-security-guard-to-ground/-/1719418/24066600/-/su4el6/-/index.html

Bourgie New Yorker Now backs test boycotts (new methods, old lies?) Allanbrook has changed her approach to testing. This year, while tests will be still administered at B.N.S., and children in the third and fourth grades will have as much practice taking them as they ever have, the school is actively and vocally preparing to support families who decide to opt children out of the testing. Alternative activities will be provided on those days, as will alternative ways of measuring children’s progress. (Among other methods, kids who opt out of state tests will be given alternative tests produced by the Department of Education, one in English language arts and one in math, each lasting just forty-five minutes.) Allanbrook says that her decision to speak out was motivated in part by thinking about the fifth-grade social-justice curriculum at the school, in which children who are about to graduate are asked to consider the question “What are we willing to stand up for?” “As parents and educators, this is the very question that we could be asking ourselves,” Allanbrook wrote in a letter to parents this week.   www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/01/the-defiant-parents-testings-discontents.html?mobify=0

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_x-RTI1kyA

The Toll Of 5 Years Of Drone Strikes: 2,400 Dead  As the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a U.K.-based non-profit, details on its website, five years ago the CIA conducted the first drone strikes of the Obama presidency. Although there were reports of suspected “militants” killed, at least 14 civilians also died that day.
After those initial mistakes, TBIJ notes, Obama rapidly ramped up the drone program in Pakistan and increased its use in Yemen and Somalia, two countries where al Qaeda affiliates expanded their presence during Obama’s presidency.
Obama recently told The New Yorker that he “wrestle[s]” with civilian casualties. But, he said, he has “a solemn duty and responsibility to keep the American people safe. That’s my most important obligation as President and Commander-in-Chief. And there are individuals and groups out there that are intent on killing Americans — killing American civilians, killing American children, blowing up American planes.”
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued a pair of reports in October fiercely criticizing the secrecy that shrouds the administration’s drone program, and calling for investigations into the deaths of drone victims with no apparent connection to terrorism. In Pakistan alone, TBIJ estimates, between 416 and 951 civilians, including 168 to 200 children, have been killed  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html

Schlosser: Almost Everything in Dr Strangelove was True  Despite public assurances that everything was fully under control, in the winter of 1964, while “Dr. Strangelove” was playing in theatres and being condemned as Soviet propaganda, there was nothing to prevent an American bomber crew or missile launch crew from using their weapons against the Soviets. Kubrick had researched the subject for years, consulted experts, and worked closely with a former R.A.F. pilot, Peter George, on the screenplay of the film. George’s novel about the risk of accidental nuclear war, “Red Alert,” was the source for most of “Strangelove” ’s plot. Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a top official at the Department of Defense had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles. At the Pentagon, the book was taken seriously as a cautionary tale about what might go wrong. Even Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara privately worried that an accident, a mistake, or a rogue American officer could start a nuclear war.
Coded switches to prevent the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons were finally added to the control systems of American missiles and bombers in the early nineteen-seventies. The Air Force was not pleased, and considered the new security measures to be an insult, a lack of confidence in its personnel. Although the Air Force now denies this claim, according to more than one source I contacted, the code necessary to launch a missile was set to be the same at every Minuteman site: 00000000.  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/strangelove-for-real.html

Vets Hit Retired Generals Supporting Pay Cuts  Veterans groups are taking aim at a group of retired generals and admirals who support the budget deal passed last month that cuts military retirement payments.
“Those who earn the most in military retirement shouldn’t side against the masses who also served and who are now being asked to sacrifice again,” said Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis. “The COLA penalty needs to be eliminated for all.”  http://m.military.com/daily-news/2014/01/16/vets-hit-retired-generals-supporting-pay-cuts.html?ESRC=army-a.nl

Cockburn on the Farcical Arab Spring What would Ahmed think of the Libyan revolution now? An interim government is nominally in control but the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi have been full of militia checkpoints manned by some of the 225,000 registered militiamen whose loyalty is to their commanders rather than the state that pays them. When demonstrators appeared outside the headquarters of the Misrata militia in Tripoli on 15 November demanding that they go home, the militiamen opened fire with everything from Kalashnikovs to anti-aircraft guns, killing 43 protesters and wounding some four hundred others. This led to popular protests in which many militias were forced out of Tripoli, though it’s not clear whether this is permanent. Earlier the prime minister, Ali Zeidan, was kidnapped by militia gunmen without a shot being fired by his own guards to protect him. (He was released after a few hours.) Mutinying militias have closed the oil ports to exports and eastern Libya is threatening to secede. The Libyan state has collapsed, for the simple reason that the rebels were too weak to fill the vacuum left by the fall of the old regime. After all, it was Nato airstrikes, not rebel strength, that overthrew Gaddafi.
It’s a similar story elsewhere in the Middle East. The uprisings of the Arab Spring have so far produced anarchy in Libya, a civil war in Syria, greater autocracy in Bahrain and resumed dictatorial rule in Egypt. In Syria, the uprising began in March 2011 with demonstrations against the brutality of Assad’s regime. ‘Peace! Peace!’ protesters chanted. But ‘if there was a fair election in Syria today,’ one commentator said, ‘Assad would probably win it.’ www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n01/patrick-cockburn/hazards-of-revolution

The Hidden History of the CIA’s Black Prison in Poland The CIA prison in Poland was arguably the most important of all the black sites created by the agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was the first of a trio in Europe that housed the initial wave of accused Sept. 11 conspirators, and it was where Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind of the attacks, was waterboarded 183 times after his capture.
Much about the creation and operation of the CIA’s prison at a base in one of the young democracies of Central Europe remains cloaked in mystery, matters that the U.S. government has classified as state secrets. But what happened in Poland more than a decade ago continues to reverberate, and the bitter debate about the CIA’s interrogation program is about to be revisited.  … in December, the European Court of Human Rights heard arguments that Poland violated international law and participated in torture by accommodating its American ally; a decision is expected this year.
“In the face of Polish and United States efforts to draw a veil over these abuses, the European Court of Human Rights now has an opportunity to break this conspiracy of silence and uphold the rule of law,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, which petitioned the court on behalf of a detainee who was held at the Polish site.  Agency executives tapped Mike Sealy, a senior intelligence officer, to run the Polish black site, according to former CIA officials. He was called a “program manager” and was briefed on an escalating series of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were formulated at the CIA and approved by Justice Department lawyers. These included slapping, sleep deprivation and waterboarding, a technique that involved pouring water over the shrouded face of the detainee and creating the sensation of drowning.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-hidden-history-of-the-cias-prison-in-poland/2014/01/23/b77f6ea2-7c6f-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html

Cheater Cheater Nuclear Eater   Top military officials were quick to voice outrage over revelations last week that 34 officers responsible for launching the nation’s nuclear missiles cheated on monthly proficiency tests, but few expressed surprise.
Cheating has been a fact of life among America’s nuclear launch officers for decades, crew members and instructors said. “When I saw that they got something wrong, I would say, ‘Go back and look at No. 5 again,’ ” said Brian Weeden, a former launch officer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana who said that he routinely asked new crew members to show him their test answers before they turned them in.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/us/harsh-penalties-prompt-rampant-test-cheating-nuclear-officers-say.html

Puppet Karzai Cuts a few strings (remember Diem, Hamid?)  Mr. Karzai’s growing antipathy toward the United States is no secret, and civilian casualties have proved to be one of the most corrosive issues between the allies. Yet the photographs and the video, handed out by Mr. Karzai’s office last week, have injected a new level of vitriol into the relationship and shown how the Karzai government’s political speech has been increasingly mirroring that of the Taliban — including the insurgents’ habit of twisting facts, or simply making them up when necessary.
The purpose of the dossier, according to other Afghan officials, was to justify Mr. Karzai’s stalling on signing a long-term security agreement with the United States and to improve the chances for peace talks with the Taliban by showing that he is no American stooge, as the insurgents have often derided him.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/world/asia/government-dossier-accusing-us-in-carnage-amplifies-doubts-about-karzai.html?hp&_r=0

Ukraine: Fascists Battle Militarists as barbarism rises  Protesters have armed themselves like Crusaders with plywood shields, often painted with a cross, against the stun grenades and rubber bullets from police lines. They broke up the pavement on nearby streets and squares, lobbing the chunks toward the police.
They also hurled firebombs, firecrackers and fireworks at riot police officers, many of whom were injured when firebombs spilled burning fuel on their uniforms and helmets. Meanwhile, pro-opposition websites have alleged that the police are wrapping their stun grenades with nails and pieces of metal in order to inflict injuries.
Many protesters are protecting their heads with helmets and even colanders. One man came in Medieval battle armor, and another fashioned himself a bow and arrow for the fight. One group of men made a massive catapult from boards to pelt firebombs a longer distance; when it was burned down in a police attack, they rebuilt it the next day.
Read more here: www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/24/3890207/in-ukraine-protests-resemble-medieval.html#storylink=cpy

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Oxfam: World’s Richest 1 Percent Control Half Of Global Wealth  Just 1 percent of the world’s population controls nearly half of the planet’s wealth, according to a new study published by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.
The study says this tiny slice of humanity controls $110 trillion, or 65 times the total wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion people.
Other key findings in the report:
— The world’s 85 richest people own as much as the poorest 50 percent of humanity.
— 70 percent of the world’s people live in a country where income inequality has increased in the past three decades.
— In the U.S., where the gap between rich and poor has grown at a faster rate than any other developed country, the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of post-recession growth (since 2009), while 90 percent of Americans became poorer.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/20/264241052/oxfam-worlds-richest-1-percent-control-half-of-global-wealth

In the US, the wealthiest one percent “captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009,” Oxfam reports. The bottom 90 percent actually lost wealth.  http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-worlds-85-richest-people-are-as-wealthy-as-the-poorest-3-billion/283206/

Jp Morgan’s Jamie Dimon (famous for saying to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s desperate beg for help during the financial collapse: “I would do anything for the United States but not at the expense of JP Morgan”) does ok JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) gave Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon a 74 percent raise to $20 million last year, bringing his pay closer to where it stood before he was penalized for faulty oversight of botched derivatives bets.
The board’s compensation package for Dimon, 57, who also serves as chairman, included $18.5 million in restricted stock, the New York-based lender said today in a regulatory filing. His salary was unchanged at $1.5 million and he got no cash bonus, according to the filing.
Board members decided to keep Dimon’s pay below previous peak levels after criminal and regulatory probes cost JPMorgan more than $23 billion in settlements during 2013.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/jpmorgan-increases-dimon-s-total-pay-to-20-million-for-2013.html

Obamagogue care Impact: US Retail Giant Target Eliminates Health Coverage for Part-Time Workers  Target has become the latest large retailer to eliminate health care benefits for its part-time workers. The Minnesota-based retail chain’s decision follows similar moves at Home Depot, Trader Joe’s and Forever 21. The move takes effect April 1.
In a statement on its web site, Target directly cites the launch of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as the main driver of its decision. Its move is one more indication that the implementation of the health care overhaul commonly known as Obamacare is undermining the employer-sponsored health care system in the US—the means by which the majority of the population receives health benefits.
Target cynically claims that the company is doing its part-time employees a favor by dropping their insurance, stating, “The launch of Health Insurance Marketplaces [ACA] provides new options for health care coverage that we believe our part-time team members may prefer.”
The retail giant claims that “by offering them insurance we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available [ACA] subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense.” The statement also notes that “less than 10 percent of our total team member population participates in our part-time plan,” arguing that the impact on the workforce will be minimal. www.globalresearch.ca/obamacare-impact-us-retail-giant-target-eliminates-health-coverage-for-part-time-workers/5366141

when will the RCP sell some Gold Mao replicas? And, where is the Gold Avakian? 

Leaked Records Reveal Offshore Holdings of China’s Elite….Files shed light on nearly 22,000 tax haven clients from Hong Kong and mainland China.  Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals.
The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by current President Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law and British Virgin Islands companies set up by former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and also by his son-in-law.
Nearly 22,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong appear in the files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Among them are some of China’s most powerful men and women — including at least 15 of China’s richest, members of the National People’s Congress and executives from state-owned companies entangled in corruption scandals.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, UBS and other Western banks and accounting firms play a key role as middlemen in helping Chinese clients set up trusts and companies in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore centers usually associated with hidden wealth, the records show. For instance, Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse helped Wen Jiabao’s son create his BVI company while his father was leading the country.  http://www.icij.org/offshore/leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-chinas-elite

Argentina: First to Fizzle?   Cities across Argentina are still unnerved by all the looting that broke out last month after police officers went on strike, protesting salaries eroded by rampant inflation. Residents fumed over blackouts that left them sweltering during a recent heat wave. Then the currency plunged this week, the steepest decline since the nation’s economic collapse in 2002, stirring fears that another major financial crisis could be around the corner.   www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/world/americas/argentina-eases-currency-controls-but-citizens-are-not-reassured.html?hp

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Alfred McCoy on Surveillance and Scandal What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies.
Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage — akin to blackmail — in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable.  http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175795/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_it’s_about_blackmail%2C_not_national_security/#more

Polling on the NSA-as-Stasi Scams For all the attention generated by the controversy over Edward Snowden’s disclosures of U.S. spying operations, much of the public has paid little attention to the details of the policy debate over government surveillance, polls have shown.
The latest evidence comes from a new Pew Research Center poll showing that half the public said they had heard nothing at all about President Barack Obama’s speech Friday outlining new restrictions on the National Security Agency. Only 8 percent of those surveyed said they had “heard a lot” about Obama’s plans.
Of those who said they had heard at least a little bit about the speech, the overwhelming majority said they thought the president’s plans would have little impact either on protecting privacy or on hindering the government’s fight against potential terrorist plots. About 1 in 5 said Obama’s plans would increase the protection of individual privacy and about 1 in 8 said it would make fighting terrorism more difficult.
Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/20/215165/public-largely-tunes-out-nsa-surveillance.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Oakland County (rich, Michigan) chief exec Brooks Patterson on Detroit: “Anytime I talk about Detroit, it’s not positive. Therefore, I’m a Detroit basher. The truth hurts, you know? Tough s—.
I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said,
‘What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.’  www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/01/oakland_county_executive_l_bro_16.html

NYTimes Editor: Obamagogue Administration most secretive ever   The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history.  “How secretive is this White House?” which I think is the most important question. I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.
I dealt directly with the Bush White House when they had concerns that stories we were about to run put the national security under threat. But, you know, they were not pursuing criminal leak investigations. The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.  http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/talk-to-al-jazeera/interviews-and-more/2014/1/21/jill-abramson-talkstojohnseigenthaler.html

Solidarity for Never

Richard C. Iannuzzi, President, NYSUT, and Arne Duncan, U.S. Education Secretary, head a round table with teams of teachers about reform and pilot program on teacher evaluations, at NYSUT headquarters (NYSUT is deeply in debt but the union boss keeps getting double digit raises–while a small war between opportunists rages in NYSUT)

Alternative Visions – Boeing Workers Tell Their Story of Force Concessions – 01/08/14 (audio and video)  prn.fm/alternative-visions-010814/

President Barack Obama declared himself to be one of Boeing’s top salesman, and asked the company’s CEO to award him a gold medal. “I expect a gold watch from Boeing at the end of my presidency because I know I’m on the list of top salesmen at Boeing,” he told numerous business leaders at a meeting of his CEO-heavy Export Council.  http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/19/obama-demands-gold-medal-from-boeing/

89% of People are NOT in Unions. Where should the organizing targets be?  In 2013, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were  members of unions–was 11.3 percent, the same as in 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.5 million, was little different from 2012. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.  Highlights from the 2013 data:
–Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.3 percent) more
than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent).
(See table 3.)
–Workers in education, training, and library occupations and in protective
service occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 35.3 percent for
each occupation group. (See table 3.)
–Men had a higher union membership rate (11.9 percent) than women (10.5
percent). (See table 1.)
–Black workers were more likely to be union members than white, Asian, or
Hispanic workers. (See table 1.)
–Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate
(24.4 percent), and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.0 percent). (See
table 5.)  Among occupational groups, the highest unionization rates in 2013 were in education,
training, and library occupations and protective service occupations (35.3 percent
each). Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (2.1 percent) and sales and
related occupations (2.9 percent) had the lowest unionization rates.  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Eye on the Counterfeit Left: the Postmodernist Rot of Grace Lee Boggs Pseudo-left groups such as Detroit’s Boggs Center, named after Grace Lee Boggs, have supported the drive to return society to its “agrarian roots” for years. They use Orwellian terms like “sustainable activism” to describe their retrograde plans, which are deeply hostile to Detroit workers. In fact, the grandparents and great-grand parents of many current-day Detroit workers escaped impoverished agrarian regions in the US and around the world to strive for a higher standard of living in the Motor City, which once employed hundreds of thousands in the auto industry.
The Boggs Center has written against the Hantz purchase on the grounds that Hantz is not a legitimate “community member” and that the urban farm should not be run by such a transparently elite businessman. Instead, the organization would no doubt prefer the land be handed over to aspiring “urban farming” entrepreneurs and Green capitalists with whom the Boggs Center is associated.
Detroit once had the highest standard of living in the US because of the efficiency of the assembly line and mass production on the one hand, and the militancy of the working class on the other, which fought many bloody battles to wrest rights and concessions from the ruling elite in an earlier period. The idea that urban gardens and farms can provide jobs and food to masses of people is a reactionary pipedream, aimed at blocking any struggle against the banks and corporations, which decimated the city through deindustrialization and are now trying to loot it through the bankruptcy process.   www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/22/hant-j22.html

Spy versus Spy

Why Are the Intelligence Budgets a State Secret? You can dig all you want through the trillion-dollar spending bill just approved by Congress and still not learn how much the country is spending on each of the intelligence agencies. That’s because those amounts are a state secret, and nowhere in President Obama’s call for greater oversight and transparency on Friday did he propose changing that status.
That was a missed opportunity. Not only do taxpayers not know where their money is going, or whether it is well spent, but most members of Congress don’t know, either. The amounts are closely confined to a few lawmakers who have the right security clearances. There is no public debate about the budgets, and no opportunity for outside groups or experts to weigh in.
As the 9/11 Commission report said, “when even aggregate categorical numbers remain hidden, it is hard to judge priorities and foster accountability.”  http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/why-are-the-intelligence-budgets-a-state-secret/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&emc=edit_tnt_20140118&tntemail0=y&_r=1

In live chat, Snowden addresses Obama’s NSA reforms
Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/23/215536/in-live-chat-snowden-addresses.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Cracks in the Empire  The Justice Department has filed a detailed complaint in a whistleblowers’ lawsuit it joined against a company that conducts security-background checks for nearly half of potential U.S. government hires, adding new detail to accusations that the firm knowingly conducted flawed investigations of individuals seeking security clearances.
The filing against Falls Church, Va.-based USIS includes information about alleged shortcuts the company took in reviewing security-clearance candidates and about a cavalier and joking approach taken by some USIS employees to submitting files to the government that had not undergone a full review.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-joins-lawsuit-against-usis-over-background-checks/2014/01/23/db16e244-8432-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html?hpid=z4

The Magical Mystery Tour

Chicago: The Rapist Priest Hustle Continues  Thousands of pages of secret church documents released Tuesday as part of a court settlement provide an unprecedented and gut-wrenching look at how the Archdiocese of Chicago for years failed to protect children from abusive priests.
The documents provide new details and insights into how the nation’s third-largest archdiocese quietly shuttled accused priests from parish to parish and failed to notify police of child abuse allegations. The paper trail, going back decades, also portrays painfully slow progress toward reform, accountability and openness.   Most of the 30 clergymen tied to the documents were not prosecuted. They were shielded by Roman Catholic Church officials who thought the men could be cured with counseling, by bishops blinded by a belief in second chances and forgiveness, and by leaders concerned a public scandal would damage the church’s image.  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-21/news/chi-chicago-priest-abuse-20140121_1_abusive-priests-secret-church-documents-john-de-la-salle

 

Will it be 5 or 22 years for Catholic priest caught with child porn?  Timothy Murray of Novi, a non-practicing Catholic priest and onetime pastor of St. Edith parish in Livonia, is to find out Thursday how long he will spend in federal prison for possessing and distributing child pornography.
Murray pleaded guilty to one count of possession and one count of distribution of child pornography in July and has been awaiting sentencing at home on bond.
Murray was removed from his post at St. Edith in 2004, after the Archdiocese of Detroit received an allegation that he had molested a 13-year-old boy in the 1980s. Murray admitted to the molestation, according to court files, but was never prosecuted because of the statute of limitations.
Murray’s sentencing will come days after news that the Vatican laicized — or dismissed from the priesthood — nearly 400 men in two years for sexual abuse accusations.
Murray’s case raises questions about why he was allowed to remain a Catholic priest,  http://www.freep.com/article/20140121/NEWS05/301210132/Catholic-priest-abuse-child-pornography-Lutheran

Village elders ordered gang-rape of woman for falling in love with man of different religion, say Indian police  Twelve suspects and the head of the council have been arrested for the Monday night attack, police said. The woman told police that she lost count of how many men raped her. She was hospitalized Thursday in serious condition.  TV news reports said the woman is a member of an ethnic tribal group and the man is a Muslim from a neighbouring village. The man visited the woman’s village, Subalpur, on Monday to propose marriage, but was caught by other villagers, and the man and woman were tied to a tree while the village council decided their fate, the reports said.
Police official C. Sudhakar said the village council ordered the man and woman to each pay a fine of 25,000 rupees ($400). The man’s family was able to pay, but when the woman’s family said they were too poor, the council ordered the gang rape  http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/01/23/village_elders_ordered_gangrape_of_woman_for_falling_in_love_with_man_of_different_religion_say_indian_police.html

Supremes Grovel Before Superstitious Women The U.S. Supreme Court said an order of Catholic nuns, for now, doesn’t have to fill out an Obama administration form that the religious group says might lead to contraceptive coverage for its employees.
The justices today said the Little Sisters of the Poor and potentially hundreds of other religious groups with objections to birth control can instead inform federal officials in writing of their views.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/nuns-don-t-need-to-fill-out-obama-contraceptive-form-court-says.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Barbarism Rises–Woman stripped, set on fire, stabs attacker with screwdriver in Detroit   Police are investigating a violent assault on a woman who was stripped naked and set on fire with a blow torch early Wednesday morning.
Police were called at 6:49 a.m. to Appoline near Plymouth, where they found the woman nude and injured, Detroit Police Officer Keisha Veasley said.
The woman, 23, told police she was walking when a man approached her, ripped her clothing off and set her on fire using the blow torch. The woman was taken to a local hospital. Her condition was described as stable.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140122/METRO01/301220067#ixzz2rCTZLKg7

Man suspected of using blowtorch on women in Detroit arraigned  The most recent alleged assault was 2 a.m. Wednesday, when the man allegedly attacked a 43-year-old woman near Plymouth and Meyers The woman told investigators the man ripped her clothes off and set her on fire with a blowtorch. Police said the woman escaped “by grabbing a tool and stabbing the man in the eye.”

“It was the victim’s unwavering desire to survive that gave her the strength to overcome her attacker. Throughout the investigative process, the victim remained steadfast in her sense of duty to ensure that this criminal was taken off the streets, ending his rein of terror for all women in and around the city of Detroit,” Detroit police said in a statement.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140125/METRO01/301250049#ixzz2rU9612fI

So Long