Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxJ_y4LwOSY

The Best Education is school closed by reasoned civil strife and Freedom Schools—the Newark Boycott  The superintendent of schools in New Jersey’s largest district is defending the changes she is trying to implement and discouraging families from participating in a planned boycott of Thursday’s opening of the school year.

Cami Anderson, appointed by the state to run Newark’s schools, told The Associated Press in an interview that missing class hurts students. She said she will find other ways to hear concerns from parents over changes in the way students are enrolled and other educational issues.

Her remarks came as some parents planned to open Freedom Schools and hold their children out of classes in the public school system to protest the direction of the district and issues with a new enrollment system. It is unclear how many students may boycott, or for how long.
Read more:   www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/4/newark-superintendent-urges-parents-not-to-boycott

– Where are the students going if they’re not in school? To community centers and local churches acting as “Freedom Schools.” One of the centers has the capacity to hold 500 students, Brown said. The students have access to youth development specialists, they’re being taught a culturally relevant curriculum, there’s ample food and school supplies and even space for recess   www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2014/09/activists_declare_newark_public_schools_boycott_a_success.html

Coppers arrest minimum wage protesters (sullied by SEIU connections) around US Detroit — Mya Hill watched in dismay as Detroit police handcuffed protesters who blocked traffic on the city’s east side as part of a day of protests throughout the nation to prod fast-food chains to pay their employees at least $15 an hour.

The protests, which were planned for about 150 cities nationwide throughout Thursday, are part of the “Fight for $15” campaign. Since the protests began in late 2012, organizers have switched up their tactics every few months. Before Thursday’s protests, organizers said they planned to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience to draw more attention to the cause.

Protesters in Detroit had said they planned to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.

“I didn’t see any resistance or reaction by the people who were arrested,” said Hill, a protester who lives in Lincoln Park. “They were put into the back of police cars. I was proud of them for being so brave.”  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140904/BIZ/309040062#ixzz3CPjw8slM

Rouge Keynoter Alan Singer on The Beast–Pearson  disgruntled Pearson employees are starting to lambast the company online at www.glassdoor.com, a website that posts company reviews. Many of their complaints stem from a restructuring Pearson starting in May 2013 to focus on digital services and emerging (Third Word) markets. The “restructuring” led to a steep decline in net profits in 2012.

A former educational specialist at Pearson based in Oregon wrote: “There are still a few decent, intelligent, caring people at Pearson. They’re just few and far between and too scared for their own jobs to call attention to themselves . . . Many, many good people left or were fired and in their place you have lots of managers and executives who have no idea what their jobs entail or what products Pearson sells. It would be comical if it weren’t so sad.” This employee recommended to anyone working at Pearson, “Don’t Let the Door Hit You on Your Way Out.”

A current employee who not surprisingly wanted to remain anonymous wrote: “Too many chiefs and not enough team work . . . No concern with Pearson employees anymore.” A former Senior Sales Representative who left the company wrote: “If you are too fond of your neck, don’t join Pearson.” Still another wrote: “It was a very, very toxic environment to work in. At Pearson, especially in the corporate office levels, there is rampant nepotism and fairly shady insider business dealings.” And a Vice-President from New Jersey wrote: “Let’s not kid ourselves – the Pearson play is about standardized testing at the global level, and that includes in Higher Ed as well as K-12/Schools. They also want to become the school itself in many parts of the world. So they are riding the wave of privatization, and following the money. But can they survive the negative press they increasingly generate? And their own incompetence?”    www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-inside-the-belly-_b_5749708.html

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Classroom at the University of Lyon with markings on wall reading “DE L’HISTOIRE KARL MARX,” made during student occupation of parts of the campus as part of the May 1968 events in France.    platypus1917.org/2014/09/05/revolutionary-politics-thought-2/

Ohanian Attacks PDK for Lies About the Common Corpse  Phi Delta Kappan was once a highly regarded education journal. It offered research by Gerald Bracey every month and strong articles that didn’t shrink from challenging federal and corporate overreach. I’m proud to say I wrote some of those articles.

I’ve already complained about PDK’s Love letter to the Broad Foundation. Actually, that’s when I gave up my decades-long subscription to PDK and stopped following what they do. But I break my silence with the September 2014 issue, Support the Common Core with the Right Instructional Materials by Rachel Leifer and Dennis Udal. What I object to is PDK offering ink to employees of foundations touting programs their foundations fund. They do mention this:
Student Achievement Partners and many tools, organizations, and efforts mentioned in this article have received funding from the Hewlett Foundation and Helmsley Charitable Trust.)
They leave the “many tools, organizations, and efforts to the reader’s imagination. Roughly, what this means is they pull up praise from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

The article starts off by praising EngageNY curriculum materials. See for yourself what EngageNY promotes. In the lower grades they are script from E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge. I have described what it’s like to slog through the K12 version of this material exposing the primary grade set to the history of Western Civilization–with Africa and Asia thrown in. Chris Cerrone At the Chalk Face puts the cost for New York to develop this offal in the millions, and that’s just dollars. The psychic cost to kids is incalculable.

You think I overstate the issue? Take a look at 17 Days on One Short Story. The blogger at Perdido Street School concludes, “You can bet the children of the elites are not stuck reading 20% of Romeo and Juliet or spending a month on one short story.”    susanohanian.org/core.php?id=745

Freedom Fighter and LA School Boss Deasy (fake degree) pretends Ipads end poverty and racism Critics now look back on Deasy’s 2011 video testimonial as early evidence of what they believe was a myopic and headlong rush toward the iPad, one that ended last week with the superintendent suspending the troubled $1.3-billion program. The district originally had intended to supply an iPad, at a cost of $768 apiece, to every student, teacher and campus administrator in Los Angeles’ public schools.

Deasy once spoke as though tablets would be crucial in saving underprivileged students from an inferior, outdated education. With the huge purchase plan suspended, he has alternated between assertions of his acceptance of the slowdown as a chance to regroup and denunciations of others who he said had politicized the process.

As Deasy reached for the appropriate response, three school board members and the head of the teachers union called for an investigation into whether district administrators fairly conducted bidding for the unprecedented tech project.l Related

And several board members said they should have asked tougher questions early on and were too quick to defer to their crusading superintendent and an ongoing mission they believe in — closing the technological gap between Los Angeles’ poor students and their wealthier peers elsewhere.    www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-lausd-deasy-20140904-story.html

Good pals: Arne Duncan and Past NEA boss Van Roekel. The New NEA prezzie says he’s an honest man, despite her union’s assembled call for his resignation.

Mothers Hide your children: Arne and Michelle coming on a bus (hey NEA! Arne still employed!)  First Lady Michelle Obama will join U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in launching the fifth annual back-to-school bus tour Monday in Atlanta. This year’s “Partners in Progress” trip will include stops in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, highlighting the states’ commitment to encourage reform and innovation and help all students achieve success.

Duncan’s day will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET with an event at Spelman College where he will host a roundtable with students to spotlight the importance of teacher recruitment. Teachers are needed at all K-12 levels, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). A press availability will follow at 10:50 a.m. ET.

At 1:25 p.m. ET, Mrs. Obama will meet Secretary Duncan at Booker T. Washington High School – which opened in 1924 as the first public high school for African-Americans in Georgia that includes Dr. Martin L. King Jr. among its graduates. The First Lady will begin her visit to the school with a short tour of a college fair that will be set up for students. The tour will be covered by a pre-determined press pool.    www.ed.gov/news/media-advisories/first-lady-michelle-obama-secretary-duncan-launch-fifth-annual-back-school-bus

Whose History WIll Bill Gates Own? Beginning with the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, billionaires have long seen the nation’s education as a willing cause for their philanthropy — and, with it, their own ideas about how students should learn. The latest crop of billionaires, however, has tended to take the line that fixing our broken educational system is the key to unlocking our stagnant economy. Whether it’s hedge-fund managers like Paul Tudor Jones (who has given tens of millions to support charter schools) or industrialists like Eli Broad (who has backed “blended learning” programs that feature enhanced technology), these philanthropists have generally espoused the idea that education should operate more like a business. (The Walton Foundation, backed by the family that founded Walmart, has taken this idea to new heights: It has spent more than $1 billion supporting various charter schools and voucher programs that seek to establish alternatives to the current public-school system.) Often these patrons want to restructure the system to make it more efficient, utilizing the latest technology and management philosophies to turn out a new generation of employable students.     www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/magazine/so-bill-gates-has-this-idea-for-a-history-class.html

Big History (Gates) Video   www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history

AR15’s Ok For Compton School Coppers (and plenty others)  At a quiet July school board meeting, Compton school police chief William Wu matter-of-factly explained that his officers would need AR-15 semiautomatic rifles to adequately protect students and staff from a heavily armed shooter if such a nightmare unfolded on a campus.

With little fanfare or feedback from parents, the board unanimously approved the chief’s request to allow the rifles on campus. Little more was said until days before school started when news of the policy sparked a torrent of criticism from parents who are worried about having high-powered guns on campus and say the policy would contribute to Compton’s inaccurate reputation as a dangerous, gang-infested city.  Despite the local outrage, though, the board’s decision to allow semiautomatic rifles on campus isn’t unusual in the wake of high-profile shootings nationwide. In California, at least half a dozen school districts allow campus officers to carry high-powered rifles. School officials argue the guns are needed to prevent potential tragedies. Critics in Compton, though, say that the increased firepower will add fuel to an already volatile relationship between school police and students.    www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-compton-school-guns-20140901-story.html

Latest List of Grant Suckers Taking Gates Dollars to Hustle Common Core (Note our pals at NCSS)   susanohanian.org/core.php?id=748

Corruption is Endemic in Capitalist Schools Robert Davis, the controversial activist accused of stealing more than $125,000 from the cash-strapped Highland Park schools, pleaded guilty to two federal crimes Tuesday and could get 18 to 24 months in federal prison.

The development, outlined in a court filing, is a twist for Davis, who spent two years purportedly fighting government corruption and mounted serial lawsuits against the state and attempts to restructure Detroit’s finances. His guilty pleas came, coincidentally, before the start of Detroit’s bankruptcy trial.

Davis, 34, a Highland Park school board member, could spend two years or more in federal prison after pleading guilty to converting money from the school district for his own use and filing a false tax return, court records indicate. Sentencing is Dec. 9.

from The Detroit News:   www.detroitnews.com/article/20140902/METRO01/309020072#ixzz3CWHL2ymW

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

War Makes Strange Bedfellows–Two Great Satans Attack a Third  With American bombs raining down from the sky, Shiite militia fighters aligned with Iran battled Sunni extremists over the weekend, punching through their defenses to break the weekslong siege of Amerli, a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter.

The fight in northern Iraq appeared to be the first time American warplanes and militias backed by Iran had worked with a common purpose on a battlefield against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even though the Obama administration said there was no direct coordination with the militias.

Should such military actions continue, they could signal a dramatic shift for the United States and Iran, which have long vied for control in Iraq. They could also align the interests of the Americans with their longtime sworn enemies in the Shiite militias, whose fighters killed many United States soldiers during the long occupation of Iraq.
Continue reading the main story

The latest expansion of American military operations reflects how seriously Iraq has deteriorated since the withdrawal of American forces in 2011. But any decision to support the Shiite militias, who have proven more adept than the American-trained Iraqi Army, would come with its own set of challenges.

The militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were able to storm into Iraq in recent months in part because Sunnis felt so disenfranchised by the Shiite-led government of former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. If the United States is seen to be strengthening the hand of militias that terrorized Sunnis during the sectarian war of 2006 and 2007, the minority Sunnis might balk at participating in America’s long-term goal of a unity government.

Or, in a worst-case scenario, more Sunnis could align with ISIS fighters.

David Petraeus, a former top American military commander in Iraq who led the United States troop surge in 2007, months ago warned against such possibilities as the Obama administration, reeling from the fall of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, weighed military action against ISIS.

“This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias or a Shia-on-Sunni Arab fight,” he said at a security conference in London in June. “It has to be a fight of all of Iraq against extremists, who do happen to be Sunni Arabs.”      www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/middleeast/iraq.html

Who Lost Libya (that would be Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Obamagogue, and many more)?  militiamen have seized control of most Libyan government ministries in the capital, Tripoli, the transitional government acknowledged early Monday, in the latest sign of a dramatic deterioration of Libya’s trappings of statehood.

Energy-rich Libya has slipped ever deeper into chaos since the toppling of longtime dictator Moammar Kadafi in 2011. The armed groups that were allies in the fight to depose him have turned on one another, fighting for oil wealth and political control.

The government and the elected parliament last month decamped to the eastern city of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border, and Islamist-linked militias from the western city of Misrata hold sway in the capital, having driven out rival armed groups. Libya now has two competing parliaments, with each declaring the other illegitimate.l
In the latest chaotic development in Tripoli, gunmen surrounded government offices, threatened ministers with assassination and prevented employees from entering their workplaces, the transitional administration said in its statement, adding that “most of the ministries and institutions and commissions” in Tripoli were now outside its control.

It called on the armed groups to leave voluntarily — something that appears highly unlikely to happen. “May Allah preserve Libya,” the statement concluded.    www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-seize-government-ministries-libya-20140901-story.html

Biden, Crusader from the Heart of Darkness, promises to go to hell with Islamofascists ice President Joe Biden on Wednesday issued a sharp warning to ISIS militants, saying after the United States is done grieving the death of two American journalists, their killers will have to answer for their actions.

“They should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice,” he forcefully told an audience at an event on the New Hampshire-Maine border. “Because hell is where they will reside. Hell is where they will reside.”    www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/politics/joe-biden-isis-gates-of-hell/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

One of Twenty Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know (Stanford Project)  web.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php

Wage Inequality

Over the last 30 years, wage inequality in the United States has increased substantially, with the overall level of inequality now approaching the extreme level that prevailed prior to the Great Depression. This general characterization of the inequality trend oversimplifies, though, the actual pattern of change: The chart below shows that the trend at the top of the income distribution (the “upper tail”) is not exactly the same as the trend at the bottom of the distribution (the “lower tail”). “Lower-tail” inequality is measured here by taking the ratio of wages at the middle of the income distribution (i.e., the 50th percentile) to those near the bottom of the distribution (i.e., the 10th percentile); “upper-tail” inequality is measured by taking the ratio of wages near the top of the distribution (i.e., the 90th percentile) to those at the middle of the distribution (i.e., the 50th percentile of workers). We find that lower-tail inequality rose sharply in the 1980s and contracted somewhat thereafter, while upper-tail inequality has increased steadily since 1980.

Obamagogue: ““It’s a good thing that corporate profits are high,” he said. “I want American businesses to succeed. It’s a good thing that the stock market is booming.”   www.newsroomamerica.com/story/440795.html

Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances “Income
Median and mean inflation-adjusted before-tax family incomes moved in different directions
between 2010 and 2013.7 Overall, median income fell 5 percent between 2010 and
2013, from $49,000 to $46,700 (table 1).Mean income increased 4 percent, from $84,100 to
$87,200. The decline in median income coupled with the rise in mean income is consistent
with a widening income distribution during this period.8
Over the preceding three-year period, 2007–10, median and mean income both fell sharply
(8 percent and 11 percent, respectively). The changes for both the 2007–10 and 2010–13
periods stand in stark contrast to a pattern of substantial increases in both the median and
the mean dating back to the early 1990s.9
Some predictable patterns in income levels across demographic groups are observed in the
2013 SCF, and those patterns are largely consistent with prior surveys.10 Across age groups,
median and mean incomes show a life-cycle pattern, rising to a peak in the middle age
groups and then declining for groups that are older and increasingly more likely to be
retired. Income also shows a strong positive association with education; in particular,
incomes for families headed by a person who has a college degree tend to be substantially
higher than for those with lower levels of schooling. Incomes of white non-Hispanic families
are substantially higher than those of other families.11 Income is also higher for
homeowners than for other families, and income is systematically higher for groups with
greater net worth.12 … “the rising wealth share of the top 3 percent of families is mirrored by the declining share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent,”      www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2014/pdf/scf14.pdf

40 Percent of Michigan Households Cannot Meet Basic Needs A new study released Sunday finds 40 percent of Michigan households with at least one worker don’t make enough money to meet basic survival needs.

The report commissioned by the Michigan Association of United Ways focuses on people whose earnings are above the poverty line but still unable to cover expenses such as housing, transportation and health and child care.

Their households, according to the study, are 13 percent short of filling the gap between how much money wage earners take home and what they need to cover those expenses.

The United Way in 2009 coined the acronym ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed. The project, which focuses on people within that group, started in New Jersey and has spread to Michigan and several other states.

The report found that about 930,000 Michigan households fall within the ALICE criteria, and the number grows to 1.5 million when those below the poverty line are added.

“ALICE exists in populations all over the state,” said Scott Dzurka, president and chief executive of the Lansing-based association, which represents about 60 United Way chapters statewide that coordinate, promote and provide social and economic services.

“There are many perceptions out there about where poverty exists,” he added. “It’s not just an urban issue, it’s a rural issue.”
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140831/METRO06/308310021

Detroit is so broke that firefighters get emergency alerts through pop cans, coins, door hinges, pipes and doorbells (who is next?)    And they make these gizmos themselves — one involving a pop can that gets tipped over by an incoming fax. The clink of the can means there’s an emergency. Then there’s the chain-reaction gadget: a fax hits a door hinge, which then tugs on a wire, which then sets off a door bell.

“It sounds unbelievable, but it’s truly what the guys have been doing and dealing with for a long long time,” said Detroit Deputy Fire Commissioner John Berlin, adding technological upgrades are long overdue. “We’re in desperate need. We’re probably 30 years behind    www.freep.com/article/20140905/NEWS01/309050185/Detroit-fire-pop-can-fax

Feckless “No Strategy” Obamagogue does U-Turn on Immigration   President Obama will delay taking executive action on immigration until after the midterm elections, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who feared that acting now could doom his party’s chances this fall, White House officials said on Saturday.

The decision is a reversal of Mr. Obama’s vow to issue broad directives to overhaul the immigration system soon after summer’s end, and sparked swift anger from immigration advocates. The president made the promise on June 30, in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation.     www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/obama-said-to-delay-executive-action-on-immigration.html

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Solidarity for Never

Judas Goat

California Teachers Association Pimps Common Corpse Viewpoints: We all have to pitch in to make Common Core work
By Dean Vogel and Cheryl Scott Williams
The new school year brings one of the biggest transitions our state’s elementary and secondary education system has ever experienced. As students settle into new classrooms, our teachers are adjusting their instruction to help students meet expectations of the new Common Core state standards. It’s our job – as parents, business leaders, students, community members and educators – to look beyond both the hype and hysteria to ensure that students benefit from thoughtful, locally driven implementation.

Part of the challenge we’re facing is a lack of clear information about what the standards are and aren’t. They emphasize critical thinking, problem solving and inquiry-based learning – what students need to thrive in college and in today’s global economy. Far from prescribing what should be taught or how, the new standards outline what students should know while giving teachers the flexibility to decide how to help each student get there. Under Common Core, there are actually fewer standards, allowing teachers to slow down and students to explore each topic in depth.  Read more here: www.sacbee.com/2014/09/02/6665809/viewpoints-we-all-have-to-pitch.html

Spy versus Spy

Operation Mockingbird Lives  a former Tribune Washington bureau national security reporter submitted some of his work to CIA officials prior to publication, a practice banned by many media outlets, including Tribune.

Ken Dilanian, a former staff writer for the newspaper chain that includes the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, had a “closely collaborative relationship with the CIA,” according to the article, published Thursday by the online news site the Intercept.

In documents made public by the website, Dilanian appeared to promise positive news coverage and on occasion sent the CIA press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in a story eventually published by Tribune newspapers, according to the emails.l Related

“I’m working on a story about congressional oversight of drone strikes that can present a good opportunity for you guys,” Dilanian wrote in one email to a CIA press officer, explaining that what he intended to report would be “reassuring to the public” about CIA drone strikes, according to the Intercept.

In another exchange, the website reported, Dilanian sent a full draft of an unpublished report about drone strikes along with the subject line, “does this look better?” In another, he directly asks the agency officer: “You wouldn’t put out disinformation on this, would you?”    www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-tribune-dilanian-20140904-story.html

US Gov’s Secret Plans to Spy for US Corps  Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China’s infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say (emphasis in original): “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”

After that categorical statement to the Post, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras; economic summits; international credit card and banking systems; the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In response, the U.S. modified its denial to acknowledge that it does engage in economic spying, but unlike China, the spying is never done to benefit American corporations.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for instance, responded to the Petrobras revelations by claiming: “It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters…. What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of—or give intelligence we collect to—U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”

But a secret 2009 report issued by Clapper’s own office explicitly contemplates doing exactly that. The document, the 2009 Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review—provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—is a fascinating window into the mindset of America’s spies as they identify future threats to the U.S. and lay out the actions the U.S. intelligence community should take in response. It anticipates a series of potential scenarios the U.S. may face in 2025, from a “China/Russia/India/Iran centered bloc [that] challenges U.S. supremacy” to a world in which “identity-based groups supplant nation-states,” and games out how the U.S. intelligence community should operate in those alternative futures—the idea being to assess “the most challenging issues [the U.S.] could face beyond the standard planning cycle.”

Redactions in U.S. Memo Leave Doubts on Data Surveillance Program  The Justice Department has released a newly declassified version of a May 2004 legal memo approving the National Security Agency’s Stellarwind program, a set of warrantless surveillance and data collection activities that President George W. Bush secretly authorized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But questions about the program remain.

A more heavily redacted version of the memo had been released in 2011 as part of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The new version includes previously censored references to the existence of the data collection related to Americans’ phone calls and emails.

The Obama administration voluntarily reprocessed the memo from Jack Goldsmith, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in light of the fact that it had declassified the existence of the bulk phone and email data programs last year after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor.

The fuller release adds to the public record of an important historical episode. However, the government continued to redact crucial portions of the memo that would answer a primary remaining question about the history of Stellarwind: What prompted the Justice Department to conclude in early 2004 that one aspect of the program, which collected records about Americans’ emails in bulk, was illegal — even though it permitted other aspects, like warrantless wiretapping and the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, to continue?

“They have continued to keep redacted something very significant,” said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U.

The Justice Department’s conclusion that the email metadata program was illegal led to a March 2004 confrontation between White House and department officials in the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, after which nearly the entire top leadership of the department threatened to resign, prompting President Bush to agree to changes.

On May 6, 2004, Mr. Goldsmith, who had taken over as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel the previous year and had reached the conclusion that the Internet data program was illegal, completed a 108-page memo that fully reassessed all aspects of the program.

Mr. Goldsmith concluded that the president’s wartime powers both as commander in chief and under Congress’s authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda were sufficient to overcome requirements in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, for court approval for most of the program.

“The president has inherent constitutional authority as commander in chief and sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States,” he wrote. “Congress does not have the power to restrict that authority.”

But what Mr. Goldsmith said about the program that collected email data in bulk is less clear; two months later, in July 2004, the Justice Department would obtain a court order for that program from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which blessed it as authorized by FISA.

That legal theory would be extended in 2006 to the program that collects Americans’ phone call records in bulk.

Years later, parts of what had happened began to become public, starting with a December 2005 article in The New York Times that revealed the warrantless wiretapping portion of the program. The bulk phone and email metadata programs, however, remained secret until 2013, when they came to light in leaks by Mr. Snowden.

While the basic existence of the March 2004 crisis has been known, it was not until Mr. Snowden’s leaks that it became clear that it pertained only to the Internet metadata program. However, it has remained murky what Mr. Goldsmith objected to in light of his willingness to bless the rest of Stellarwind based on a sweeping theory of presidential wartime powers.

Those portions of the memo remain redacted in the newly released version.    www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/redactions-in-us-memo-leave-doubts-on-data-surveillance-program.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Slap on Wrist for Predator Priest  Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

An Ohio priest has pleaded guilty to soliciting sex and will be allowed to enter an early intervention program. We are disappointed by this outcome.

As part of Fr. James McGonegal’s plea deal once he has completed his early intervention program the case against him will be dismissed and wiped from his record. We believe this a dangerous move, because it will prevent parents, employers and guardians from having vital information about whom they let their children around.

It is not too late for any victims, witnesses or whistleblowers to come forward and report what they know about Fr. McGonegal.    www.snapnetwork.org/oh_priest_pleads_guilty_snap_responds

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Rosa Luxemburg and other international socialist leaders, including Karl Kautsky (Germany), Victor Adler (Austria), Georgii Plekhanov (Russia), Edouard Vaillant (France) and Sen Katayama (Japan).  (now who was the smartest, and probably most alone, person in this bunch?)

Never Give In.  Never. Never. Never.   AS protests swirled in Athens during the Greek financial crisis, a silver-haired octogenarian could be seen on the front lines, raising a fist at the riot police as they shot tear gas into his face. Other times, even on the same day, the same man might be standing in front of Parliament, insisting that lawmakers repudiate an austerity package demanded by the country’s creditors, which he said would only throw Greece into greater hardship.

It was not the first time that the man, Manolis Glezos, at 92 a celebrated Greek freedom fighter, had taken to the ramparts to fight for his beliefs. For more than 70 years, he has taken an activist’s role in the most critical moments of Greece’s modern history.

For his trouble, Mr. Glezos has gotten three death sentences; 12 years in prison, where he was tortured; and four years in exile.

Today, he is an iconic figure in Greece, a leftist who transcends ideology and a national symbol of resistance — beginning in 1941, when he and a friend, Apostolos Santas, ripped down the Nazi flag from the Acropolis, risking death as Hitler’s forces conquered Athens.

That brazen act was telegraphed the world over and inspired millions during one of Europe’s darkest hours.     www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/world/europe/since-nazi-occupation-a-fist-raised-in-resistance.html

So Long

“As students of poverty and inequality, we grew up with the classic first edition of The Undeserving Poor. Now, Michael Katz has undertaken a rigorous revision. But this new book is more than a second edition. It is an extraordinary analysis of shifts in academic research and political paradigms, as well as a global perspective on the question of poverty in America. Katz once again demonstrates that he is one of the most influential and creative social historians of our times.” –Ananya Roy, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Poverty Capital