Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Seniority, Tenure, and Beyone Capitalist Schooling (Jack Gerson) at a deeper level, there is the effect of poverty on education. Over the past half century, numerous studies have shown that at least two-thirds of the variation in student test scores is attributable to poverty and poverty-related factors. In other words, even as measured by the poor yardstick of standardized tests, the overwhelming obstacle to student achievement in high-poverty schools is poverty itself. Thus, the overwhelming obstacle to the achievement of students of color is poverty, and this is overwhelmingly a problem of the race and class divisions of capitalist society. A real solution to the problems facing our schools means getting rid of the capitalist system all together and replacing it with a system based on human need, socialism. You’re not going to hear that from David Welch, Bill Gates, Barack Obama or Arne Duncan, so of course they are going to blame teachers instead.     www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/18/seniority-tenure-and-the-vergara-decision/

Doug Kellner: Critical Theory and the Crisis of Social Theory   if critical theory seeks to contribute to finding the way out of the contemporary crisis of social theory, it must itself develop new perspectives. In opposition to the previous model of “one-dimensional society,” critical theorists today should focus on the contradictions, conflicts, and crisis tendencies within contemporary capitalist societies. To the neglect of political economy and empirical research found in much critical theory, we should respond with theoretical analyses of developments within the capitalist economy and of changes in class stratification, the labor process, new technologies, the media, and politics. In opposition to the apolitical and even depoliticized versions of critical theory that continue to circulate, those who wish to revitalize critical theory should attempt to politicize it, to connect it with new social movements and existing political struggles. As we move into the 1990s and toward the end of the century, many theoretical and political tasks stand before us. If critical theory wishes to participate in the Left Turn needed to eliminate the current hegemony of the Right and to help to build a better society, it needs to develop both its analysis of the present situation and a new politics in order to become once again the cutting edge of radical social theory.     www.heathwoodpress.com/critical-theory-and-the-crisis-of-social-theory-douglas-kellner/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

All Formal Schooling is Capitalist Schooling: Here’s A “Public School that does well  Throughout the state and the country class sizes are on the rise. Classes of 30 or more are normal. Educators are stretching already taxed resources to transition to new standards. At the R. Roger Rowe School (Ranch School) average class sizes remain at 18 students per class. The difference here is the school’s unique partnership with the Rancho Santa Fe Education Foundation (RSFEF), which has increased its grant to the school to $1.1 million for the current school year.  …Students at the Ranch School have achieved scores in the top ranking of the state since 2003 when the testing began. Our school had the highest District Academic Performance Index (API) in San Diego County this year. The Middle School achieved its highest API score to date of 957. The Elementary School ranking was also 957, giving the school a top ranking in the State of California. Rankings established for “Similar Schools” in the state are 10 out of 10 for both the Elementary and the Middle School. This is the highest achievable score when compared to state schools with similar demographics…The RSFEF is asking that each family contribute their “Fair Share” cost per child of $1,709 ($1,140,000 divided by 667 students). This year the Cap & Gown level is $2,000 per student and the Benefactor level is $3,000 per student. The Foundation also relies heavily on the philanthropic contributions of the Scholars’ Circle. This group comprises 20 percent of the school’s families and local businesses who make multi-year commitments of $35K or more that fund 50 percent of the total grant to the school.       Your donation needed by Red Envelope Friday    www.ranchosantafereview.com/2013/10/10/small-classes-at-rancho-santa-fe-school-yield-solid-results/

The Rancho Santa Fe Education Foundation (RSFEF) is proud to recognize its corporate sponsors for the 2013-2014 school year. Since 1997, the RSFEF has been a source of vital funding that enables the extraordinary education experienced by students at R. Roger Rowe School. The cornerstone of the RSFEF is its Five Star Education Program, which focuses on small class size, specialized teachers, literacy excellence, integrated science and differentiated mathematics. This year the RSFEF is providing a grant of $1.1 million to the school district generously donated by school families. To help meet its goal of raising these important funds, the RSFEF hosts numerous events throughout the school year that would not be possible without the generous support of its corporate sponsors.  …“As one of San Diego County’s most generous corporate givers, Wells Fargo is proud to be a longtime supporter of the Rancho Santa Fe Education Foundation,” said Laura Stansberry, Southern California regional managing director for Wells Fargo Private Bank….Mossy Toyota generously provided the funds needed for an excellent marketing program for the RSFEF, enabling its members to share their vision of excellence with the school community. Frank Financial has made a generous contribution of underwriting the informational video presented at Back-to-School nights, and is also underwriting Field Day for the students    www.ranchosantafereview.com/2013/10/10/rancho-santa-fe-education-foundation-thanks-corporate-sponsors-for-2013-2014-school-year/

Compare Rancho Santa Fe And Detroit’s Ruined Schools Where class size goes up again and the budget is tanked    Detroit Public Schools are projecting a $49 million drop in revenue in the next fiscal year, larger classrooms and fewer administration employees. Still, there will be no school closings — the first time that has happened in six years, DPS officials said Friday. And no teaching positions will be cut.

The budget projects a student enrollment of 47,750, down about 2 percent. This past school year, the district had 49,011 students, DPS spokesman Steve Wasko said.

Even with the $49.3 million shortfall, the deficit is expected to drop from the current $127 million to $125 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year budget. Officials do not expect the district to show a positive fund balance until the end of the 2017-18 fiscal year.

Wasko said the decline was due to the district receiving less grant money than expected.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140620/SCHOOLS/306200120#ixzz35JPwxvki

Fake Dean at M.I.T. Resigns, Ending a 28-Year Lie Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became well known for urging stressed-out students competing for elite colleges to calm down and stop trying to be perfect. Yesterday she admitted that she had fabricated her own educational credentials, and resigned after nearly three decades at M.I.T. Officials of the institute said she did not have even an undergraduate degree.    www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html?_r=3

A Failure in KC, John Covington Loots Detroit Schools, then leaves  The abrupt departure of John Covington as chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority will have board members scrambling to appoint a new leader with less than a month to go until the district’s new fiscal year begins.Yet education experts say new leadership over the EAA, which operates Michigan’s lowest performing schools, is unlikely to change the district’s current academic focus on computer-based blended learning and student-center models.

Dan Varner, CEO of Excellent Schools Detroit, said Covington’s departure likely won’t impact the EAA if his deputy chancellor, Mary Esselman, stays on board and the new chancellor continues her policies.

Esselman followed Covington from Kansas City and implemented the district’s student-based learning model, which allows students to learn at their pace rather than in a traditional classroom sett  From The Detroit News:   www.detroitnews.com/article/20140616/SCHOOLS/306160089#ixzz34rr20Jgd

Next? A New Huckster Arrives to Help Organize Decay in Detroit Schools and paid $324,000 a year T he interim chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority said her first order of business will be to perform a full assessment of every department in the organization and make any necessary changes.

Veronica Conforme, introduced Wednesday morning to members of the community, school staff and media at Mumford High School, is stepping into her new post at a time when the EAA is deeply mired in controversy as Michigan’s first reform school district. It operates 15 of the state’s lowest performing schools, all located in Detroit.

Critics have raised questions about the school’s spending practices, its declining enrollment, financial stability and teacher turnover. Conforme said every aspect of the school will be examined.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140618/SCHOOLS/306180079#ixzz353dU2Jnc

The Scandals Continue at Southwestern College–Award Winning Student Paper calls out Top Bosses    Former Interim Vice President of Human Resources Lynn Solomita is a liar. Bold statement? Yes, but a true one. She was caught red handed when the Superior Court turned over a document she vehemently denied existed.

In one of the more brazen acts of mendacious behavior this institution has seen since the criminal trio of Raj Chopra, Nick Alioto and Yolanda Salcido slithered among us, Solomita has once again embarrassed Southwestern College and forces us to wonder if it is time to make sweeping changes at the top of the college leadership chart. SWC, like the Sweetwater Union High School District and San Ysidro School District, may have reached the point where it can only be saved by state intervention. We have lost faith in our administration to lead us competently and to behave ethically.

Solomita not only flat out lied to this newspaper and denied that she had written a letter about Arlie Ricasa’s employment status at the college, she also played our governing board like chumps.      www.theswcsun.com/weak-administration-needs-to-change/

Hawaii School Bosses Get Fat  Hawaii’s top education officials are getting raises.

The Hawaii Board of Education approved Tuesday salary raises for superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi, deputy superintendent Ronn Nozoe, assistant superintendents and complex area superintendents.

Beginning July 1, Matayoshi’s base salary will be $200,000. She was approved for a three-year term at the last BOE meeting on Tuesday, June 3.

Nozoe’s salary will move from $140,000 to $160,000, while assistant superintendents and complex area superintendents will see four percent increases.    khon2.com/2014/06/17/boe-approves-salary-raises-for-top-education-officials/

Zonie Schools Boss is nuts He likened welfare recipients to “lazy pigs.”

He blamed the Great Depression on Franklin D. Roosevelt and said FDR’s economic policies gave rise to Hitler.

He said Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was responsible for feeding 16 million African-Americans into abortion mills.

He is state schools Superintendent John Huppenthal, and he admitted Wednesday that he made those comments, along with hundreds of more mundane musings, in anonymous posts on political blogs.

The comments, under various pseudonyms including Falcon9 and Thucydides, have been appearing since 2011. www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/19/superintendent-anonymous-blog-posts/10835951/

NCTQ: Ed Schools Much Too Weak–especially El Ed (but failed to mention racism, opportunism, nationalism, cowardice, and sheer stupidity)   www.nctq.org/dmsView/Teacher_Prep_Review_2014_executive_summary

Essay Contest!  The Challenge:   The Global Defense Burden: How Can the U.S. and its NATO allies & partners more effectively share roles, missions, technology and hardware?

About the Global Defense Burden Essay Contest. In a constrained budget environment, how can the US realize the benefits of a globalizing defense market? Papers are welcome on any aspect of the topic from examining cost efficiency, improving innovation, industrial base implications, competition, scale, and technology transfer considerations. Contestants may cover any or all of these issues as long as they are examined within the context of leveraging the increasingly globalized defense market to provide the best defense for the Nation.    www.usni.org/global-defense-burden-essay-contest

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

RTV: All you need to know about ISIS  The world’s most committed and fanatical radical organization has only recently gone by its current name, after the unrecognized Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was proclaimed in April last year. Al-Sham has been most commonly translated from Arabic as the Levant, hence ISIL. It was previously known as Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic State of Iraq. (much more   rt.com/news/166836-isis-isil-al-qaeda-iraq/  )

CIA Napped Again–Rebels’ Fast Strike in Iraq Was Years in the Making   When Islamic militants rampaged through the Iraqi city of Mosul last week, robbing banks of hundreds of millions of dollars, opening the gates of prisons and burning army vehicles, some residents greeted them as if they were liberators and threw rocks at retreating Iraqi soldiers.

It took only two days, though, for the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to issue edicts laying out the harsh terms of Islamic law under which they would govern, and singling out some police officers and government workers for summary execution.

With just a few thousand fighters, the group’s lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many Iraqi and American officials by surprise. But the gains were actually the realization of a yearslong strategy of state-building that the group itself promoted publicly.
“What we see in Iraq today is in many ways a culmination of what the I.S.I. has been trying to accomplish since its founding in 2006,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS.,,,The group’s recent annual report, wrote Alex Bilger, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, makes clear that, “the ISIS military command in Iraq has exercised command and control over a national theater since at least early 2012,” and that the group is “functioning as a military rather than as a terrorist network.”,,,

with the outbreak of civil war across the border in Syria three years ago, the group saw new opportunities for growth. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria “invaded Syria from Mosul long before it invaded Mosul from Syria,” Mr. Fishman said.

The group gained strength in Syria through a two-pronged approach of launching strategic attacks to seize resources like arms caches, oil wells and granaries, while avoiding protracted battles with government forces that ground down Syria’s other rebels. In Iraq, government resistance crumbled in many areas it seized….

The group’s rise is directly connected to the American legacy in Iraq. The American prisons were fertile recruiting grounds for jihadist leaders, and virtual universities, where leaders would indoctrinate their recruits with hard-line ideologies. The group’s leader, Mr. Baghdadi, who is believed to have earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, relocated to Syria, according to the American government, which has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The group was formally rejected from Al Qaeda earlier this year after that organization’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, ordered it to withdraw to Iraq and leave operations in Syria to the local Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front. The split led to a bitter rivalry between the two groups, with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria competing with Al Qaeda for resources and standing in the wider international jihadist community.

Perhaps the best indication of how the group sees itself these days is a recent promotional video called “The Rattling of the Sabers.”

The hourlong video is a slickly produced, hyperviolent propaganda piece that idolizes the group’s fighters as they work for two of their main goals: founding an Islamic state and slaughtering their enemies, mostly the Iraqi security forces and Shiites.    www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/world/middleeast/rebels-fast-strike-in-iraq-was-years-in-the-making.html

They’re Back Already! Obama tells Congress U.S. deploying up to 275-300 troops to Iraq  – President Barack Obama told Congress on Monday the United States was deploying up to 275 military personnel to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the country’s embassy in Baghdad after militants seized control of the north of the country.

“This force is deploying for the purpose of protecting U.S. citizens and property, if necessary, and is equipped for combat,” Obama said in a letter to lawmakers. “This force will remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed.”

The president said he was notifying Congress under the War Powers Resolution.    www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/16/us-iraq-security-usa-warpowers-idUSKBN0ER2XU20140616

Note from ISIS to Michelle Obamagogue

Obamagogue To Congress:  I don’t need new permission on Iraq  ‘ll let you know what’s going on, but I don’t need new congressional authority to act, President Barack Obama told congressional leaders Wednesday about his upcoming decision on possible military intervention in Iraq.

The White House meeting sounded more like a listening session for the top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate about options for helping Iraq’s embattled Shiite government halt the lightning advance of Sunni Islamist fighters toward Baghdad that Obama is considering. According to a White House statement, Obama went over U.S. efforts to “strengthen the capacity of Iraq’s security forces to confront the threat” from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters, “including options for increased security assistance.”

Earlier, spokesman Jay Carney spelled out one limit to any U.S. help, saying: “The President hasn’t ruled out anything except sending U.S. combat troops into Iraq.”    www.cnn.com/2014/06/18/politics/us-iraq/

Maliki: I Won’t Quit for US Military Aid  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ruled out resigning from his post in return for US military aid in the ongoing battle with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  The ISIS takeover of a large portion of Iraq has the Obama Administration looking to intervene, but also looking to get rid of Maliki, who they blame for the sectarian tension in the nation.

Maliki’s spokesman insists that the US should stop worrying about Maliki and instead launch immediate operations to save the Iraqi government    news.antiwar.com/2014/06/19/maliki-i-wont-quit-for-us-military-aid/

Above, US Psy0ps response to ISIS Parody of Mrs Obamagogue

Great Job, Vets Admin! Now–Bonuses!! While many veterans across the country were being denied medical treatment and much needed hospital care by the Veterans Health Administration, employees with that agency were raking in millions of tax payer dollars over the past five years in bonuses and compensation.    www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/22/the-information-we-found-on-veterans-administration-bonuses-has-one-vet-calling-for-jail-time/

In Push to Assert Rights, China Plans to Send 2nd Oil Rig to Waters Near Vietnam  The day after tough talks between Vietnam and China that made no progress over a Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea, the Chinese government said Thursday it was sending a second rig to waters close to Vietnam.

The move, announced on China’s Maritime Safety Administration website, appeared to be a signal that China will press ahead to secure what it sees as its rights in the commercially and strategically vital waterway amid rising anxiety in the region.

Last month, in a contentious move, China sent its biggest oil rig, a prized $1 billion platform the size of a football field, to explore in an area 17 miles off the Paracel Islands claimed by both Vietnam and China. In what may be a more lasting act, China began shoveling sand and rock onto shoals and reefs in the Spratly archipelago, which is also contested, several months ago to create islands big enough to house buildings and surveillance equipment.    www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/world/asia/china-plans-to-send-second-oil-rig-to-waters-near-vietnam.html?_r=0

In the Militarized USA, the Padres (sic, among the worst people in history) play in Camo

He’s baaaack! Chalabi!  Ahmed Chalabi, the former leader of the exile Iraqi National Congress (INC), has met with the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and the senior state department official responsible for Iraq and Iran policy in recent days.

Chalabi, who has remained active in Iraqi politics, is viewed as “one of the several potential Shiite candidates for prime minister.”

By some accounts, Chalabi, a secular Shi’ite from one of the most prominent Iraqi families of the pre-Saddam Hussein period, is a central figure in the U.S.’s decision to remove the Iraqi dictator over a decade ago. An MIT and University of Chicago-trained mathematics PhD, Chalabi spent decades cultivating contacts in the U.S. government during a long and occasionally tumultuous career as a banker and academic. As Jane Meyer recounted in a 2004 New Yorker profile of Chalabi, he had the almost single-minded goal of convincing the U.S. to unseat Saddam Hussein from power. Read more: www.businessinsider.com/chalabi-could-be-the-countrys-next-prime-minister-2014-6#ixzz35L0nvxLQ

Afghans protest alleged election fraud  Supporters of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah took to the streets of the capital Saturday to protest alleged electoral fraud and what they say is the government’s failure to take it seriously. The demonstrations were small and peaceful, but the participants promised violence if their demands aren’t met.

Abdullah, a former foreign minister, has already rejected the official election results, weeks before they were due to be released, because he says they will be distorted by fraud.

He has asked the United Nations to oversee the vote-counting process and criticized Afghan President Hamid Karzai for colluding with his opponent, Ashraf Ghani.

Abdullah’s stance prompted concerns of civil unrest, as thousands of his supporters promised not to recognize the next president if it’s not Abdullah.    www.washingtonpost.com/world/afghans-protest-alleged-election-fraud/2014/06/21/86348a91-57cf-4428-88db-2dbc609b6d2a_story.html

Nationaists Vs Nationalists in the Ukraine crisis: US steps up sanctions on separatists  The US has imposed sanctions against separatists in eastern Ukraine, as the crisis there shows no sign of easing. The sanctions include asset freezes against seven pro-Russian leaders.

Western leaders have threatened additional sanctions against Russia, who they accuse of stoking tension in Ukraine. Moscow denies the claim. Both the separatists and Russia have dismissed a unilateral ceasefire called by Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko, the first step of his peace plan.

Overnight, the rebels carried out several attacks on Ukrainian troops, injuring a number of them, reports in Ukrainian media suggest.

In a separate development, President Vladimir Putin ordered forces in Russia’s central military district to be put on full combat alert for a week.    www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27952324

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Government Motors Murdered People–nobody Jailed  Members of Congress on Wednesday roundly criticized the Detroit automaker’s failure to recall 2.6 million older Cobalt and other cars for ignition switch problems, and charged that the problems went wider. With GM CEO Mary Barra appearing before a committee, the automaker came under scathing criticism for its failure to recall for more than a decade the cars that are linked to 13 deaths and 54 crashes.

“Our investigation tracks with the findings of the report: a maddening and deadly breakdown over a decade plagued by missed opportunities and disconnects,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “I find it very disturbing and downright devastating — to you, to GM, to folks in Michigan who live and breathe pride in our auto industry.” From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140618/AUTO0103/306180030#ixzz353eD62tq

Global refugee figure passes 50m for first time since second world war  UNHCR report says more than half of those displaced are children, with aid organisations reaching breaking point

80 Thousand Detroiters Face Water Shutoffs More than 80,000 Detroit residential customers have accounts that are delinquent, according to a report issued by the department in May.  www.aclumich.org/democracywatch/index.php/blog/entry/turning-off-the-tap%20

F-35: Looking at most expensive weapons system ever  In the rush to stay ahead of China and Russia, the Pentagon started buying the F-35 before testing it, breaking the traditional “fly-before-you-buy” rule of weapons acquisition. Now taxpayers are paying the price for mistakes that weren’t caught before production began. A Pentagon document obtained by 60 Minutes catalogues the “flawed . . . assumptions” and “unrealistic . . . estimates” that led to a $163 billion cost overrun on what was already the highest priced weapons system in history.    www.cbsnews.com/news/f-35-looking-at-most-expensive-weapons-system-ever/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Seventy-one years ago today, after a skirmish on the bridge to Detroit’s Belle Isle Park, the city exploded into the worst race riot in the city’s history. It was not the nation’s sole urban conflict of 1943, but it was the largest and last. It certainly involved white actors and hoodlums, and would leave a legacy of fear and distrust that the white political establishment would cultivate and exploit to stay in power.

What’s strange is that, for all the metro Detroiters who know the details of the 1967 “race riot,” relatively few are even aware of the 1943 disturbance. Perhaps that’s because it casts white Detroiters in ugly roles, acting out an urban lynching right on Woodward Avenue during the height of the battle against fascism. Nazi radio crowed about the bloodshed, attributing it to ““the internal disorganization of a country torn by social injustice, race hatreds, regional disputes, the violence of an irritated proletariat, and the gangsterism of capitalistic police.” After an orgy of violence that pit white crowds against hapless black Detroiters, the episode was quickly forgotten. The story certainly doesn’t dovetail with the narrative peddled in popular books, such as Tom Brokaw’s bestseller, The Greatest Generation. These “good old days” were forgettable — white mobs rampaging up and down Woodward Avenue, beating and stabbing black Detroiters.

The one great obstacle standing in the way of metro Detroit’s future remains race hatred. And we won’t be able to move beyond it until we can discuss it. And we can never discuss it intelligently until suppressed history, such as that fateful day seven decades ago, is brought to light and examined, as ugly as it is.    blogs.metrotimes.com/news-blawg/great-detroit-race-riot-raged-71-years-ago-today/

Obamagogue Breaks Rail Strike The Philadelphia region’s first commuter rail strike in 31 years was cut short Saturday after President Barack Obama intervened at the request of Pennsylvania’s governor.

The strike at the region’s transit system, Septa, began at 12:01 a.m. Saturday when 430 locomotive engineers and electrical workers walked off the job, following a multiyear contract dispute. The two sides have been at odds for more than four years over issues related to pensions and wages.    online.wsj.com/articles/philadelphia-rail-workers-go-on-strike-1402720498

Solidarity for Never

The NYC-UFT Sellout in Dollars (note the long, long, long lockdown contract) 

other city unions will now follow, we will be getting a total of 10% in raises for seven years plus a $1,000 signing bonus. That works out to less than 1.5% per year.

Specifically, this is how the CFO crunched the numbers:

2009-2010 = 4% raise
2010-2011 = 4% raise
2011-2012 = 0% raise but we will get a $1,000 signing bonus if we ratify the contract.
Nov 2012- April 2013 = 0% raise
May 1, 2013 = 1% raise
May 1, 2014 = 1% raise
May 1, 2015 = 1% raise
May 1, 2016 = 1% raise
May 1, 2017 = 2.5% raise
May 1, 2018 = 3.0% raise
Total: 18% (compounded it will be a little more)

For those of you expecting to go back in the fall and at least have the 4%+4% added to your pay, forget it.

The 4 % + 4% that other unions received in 2009-10 will not be added to our pay until the increases kick in one year at a time starting in 2015. Here is how the 8% will be added in:   iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-contract-retro-delayed-retro-denied.html

Spy versus Spy

CIA hatched plan to make demon toy to counter Osama bin Laden’s influence  For more than a decade, the CIA has deployed drones, satellites, spies, informants and tracking devices to thwart al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The spy agency also considered a plan to wage war with toys. Beginning in about 2005, the CIA began secretly developing a custom-made Osama bin Laden action figure, according to people familiar with the project. The face of the figure was painted with a heat-dissolving material, designed to peel off and reveal a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a demon, with piercing green eyes and black facial markings.

The goal of the short-lived project was simple: spook children and their parents, causing them to turn away from the actual bin Laden.      www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-hatched-plan-to-make-demon-toy-to-counter-bin-laden-influence/2014/06/19/cb3d571c-f0d0-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html

Unblinking Eyes Track Employees  A digital Big Brother is coming to work, for better or worse. Advanced technological tools are beginning to make it possible to measure and monitor employees as never before, with the promise of fundamentally changing how we work — along with raising concerns about privacy and the specter of unchecked surveillance in the workplace.

Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction. So a bank’s call center introduced a shared 15-minute coffee break, and a pharmaceutical company replaced coffee makers used by a few marketing workers with a larger cafe area. The result? Increased sales and less turnover.

Yet the prospect of fine-grained, digital monitoring of workers’ behavior worries privacy advocates. Companies, they say, have few legal obligations other than informing employees. “Whether this kind of monitoring is effective or not, it’s a concern,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

When Jim Sullivan began working as a waiter at a Dallas restaurant a few years ago, he was being watched — not by the prying eyes of a human boss, but by intelligent software.

The digital sentinel, he was told, tracked every waiter, every ticket, and every dish and drink, looking for patterns that might suggest employee theft. But that torrent of detailed information, parsed another way, cast a computer-generated spotlight on the most productive workers.    mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/technology/workplace-surveillance-sees-good-and-bad.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Above image from the Creationist Museum

Teaching creationism as scientifically valid now banned in all UK public schools  UK government: “The requirement on every academy and free school to provide a broad and balanced curriculum … prevents the teaching of creationism as evidence based theory in any academy or free school.”  “The parties acknowledge that clauses 2.43 and 2.44 of the Funding Agreement [which preclude the teaching of pseudoscience and require the teaching of evolution] apply to all academies. They explicitly require that pupils are taught about the theory of evolution, and prevent academy trusts from teaching ‘creationism’ as scientific fact,” one clause reads.

The funding agreement defines creationism as “any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution,” and goes on to note that this idea is rejected not only by the scientific community but most mainstream churches as well.

“It does not accord with the scientific consensus or the very large body of established scientific evidence; nor does it accurately and consistently employ the scientific method, and as such it should not be presented to pupils at the Academy as a scientific theory,” the agreement states.

The funding agreement notes that the discussion of beliefs about the origin of the Earth including creationism are permitted in religious education “as long as it is not presented as a valid alternative to established scientific theory.” Read more: www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/06/18/Teaching-creationism-as-scientifically-valid-now-banned-in-all-UK-public-schools/5631403128922/#ixzz35E84QW1G

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Detroit Chief of Police  DD: You’ve been an advocate of lawful citizens having guns and a lot of people have applauded you and some criticized you for that. Obviously you think it’s a good thing?

Craig: I think it’s good for people to protect themselves, their families and when necessary, protect someone from an imminent threat to their lives or facing great bodily injury. I’m not an advocate of violence. I do not promote vigilantism, I promoted life, I promote nonviolence, and I do promote law abiding citizens who are eligible to get a concealed weapons license, who are trained and who are responsible when faced with an imminent threat to their life. It’s the law that they can protect themselves.    www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/9602/chief_james_craig_detroiters_have_become_somewhat_desensitized_by_violent_crime

So Long

Gerry Goffin  

and if the empire’s got you down:

www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3485320188855&set=vb.1746922851&type=2&theater