Rouge Forum Dispatch: Hillbillary Rules!
We Say Fight Back!
Congratulations on the publication of (+ thanks Glenn)
Bernie and Hillbillary: the Sheepdog and the She-Wolf in Vegas
By Rouge keynoter Paul Street : I am struck by seven ugly things in this give-and-take. First, there is the former CIA employee Cooper’s ridiculous neo-McCarthyite identification of past opposition to the CIA and Reagan administration’s bloody and illegal war on Nicaragua as proof of one’s un-electability. As Robert Naiman noted on the Huffington Post, “Millions of Americans ‘supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua’ in the 1980s…..Opposing the CIA’s illegal war in Nicaragua was a mainstream, popular position at the time, as shown by the passage of the Boland Amendment by Congress. It’s only in the pro-war, pro-Empire bubble of big US media that having opposed the illegal CIA war on Nicaragua could be portrayed as an electoral liability without any evidence. The big media use of the term ‘electability’ is a convenient carrier for pro-war, pro-Empire prejudice…” Indeed.
Second, there is the inanity of Cooper reducing Sanders’ opening comments on social-democratic policies in “every other major country” to just “Denmark” – and of Sanders’ depressing failure to correct him on that inanity (though it should be noted that Sanders is wrong to claim that “every other major country provid[es] health care to all people as a right,.”)
Third, there is the childishness of Cooper’s suggestion that there is something odd about Sanders not considering himself “a capitalist.” As the historian Laurence Shoup reminds us in his latest book, “The two major classes in the United States today are a numerically small capitalist class and a very much larger working class. www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/20/bernie-and-hillary-the-sheepdog-and-the-she-wolf-in-vegas/
Monday is Hillbillary’s Birthday!
Kerry’s cosy dinner with Syria’s ‘Hitler’ Secretary of State and the man he likened to German dictator are pictured dining with their wives at Damascus restaurant before civil war broke out….
Guess what the Syria dictatorship did in its role as the U.S. government’s partner in the global war on terrorism. It did what dictatorships are good at: Torture. The Syrian dictatorship tortured people on behalf of the U.S. national-security establishment.
Why use Syria to torture people? Well, in that way U.S. officials could secure information from suspected terrorists, while at the same time, exclaiming, “We’re innocent! We had no idea that the information was going to be secured by torture when we renditioned the victim to one of our dictatorial partners.” www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43216.htm#.ViotI-7QQJk.facebook
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South African police fire teargas at students in university fees protests
Riot police in South Africa have fired teargas and stun grenades at hundreds of students who stormed the parliament precinct in Cape Town in protest at a proposed increase in university fees.
Police repeatedly attempted to disperse the students from the steps of the national assembly, with limited success, as the protesters tried to stage a sit-in to disrupt a mid-term budget speech being delivered by the finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene. At least one student was injured, and several students have been detained.
“We were pushed back by police with force. The stun grenade was shot right next to my ear. I still have the buzzing in my ear,” said Motheo Lengoasa, a student at the University of Cape Town, as others chanted and sang songs demanding the fees be reduced.
Earlier students lay prostrate on the ground in front of the entrance to the assembly building where Nene was speaking.
“This looks like 1976 all over again,” Lengoasa said, referring to the Soweto uprising where police killed at least 69 students who were protesting against plans to teach them in Afrikaans.
Many of South Africa’s universities have been hit by protests, some of them violent, by students demanding that the increase in tuition fees by as much as 11% be scrapped. Protests have taken place across the country, including in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom and Grahamstown.
The demonstrations began last week at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. Critics say the fee increase will further disadvantage black students, who are already relatively underrepresented.
The protesters have rejected a proposal from some student leaders, university dons and the higher education minister, Blade Nzimande, to cap fee increases at 6% for 2016, just above inflation…
University fees currently vary between institutions. In Johannesburg, Wits student leader Mcebo Dlamini told the Guardian that students – and especially black students – face a struggle to enter university, and do not have the money to pay for fee rises.
He said: “The reality of the matter is that in the country post-independence the black students have still been oppressed, we’re still marginalised, we struggle to get into universities … But we still get those distinctions and compete with those model C schools, the former apartheid schools.
“Now we are here, government and the universities are sidelining us,” he added, leading a 1,000-strong march through the city centre. “We are poor … We are calling for free education in our lifetime. Germany did it – we can do it.”http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/riot-police-tear-gas-student-protest-south-africa-university-fees-cape-town
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Texas’ Capitalist schools confuse slaves with immigrant workers A TEXAS high school student and his mother recently called attention to a curious line in a geography textbook: a description of the Atlantic slave trade as bringing “millions of workers” to plantations in the American South. McGraw-Hill Education, the publisher of the textbook, has since acknowledged that the term “workers” was a misnomer.
The company’s chief executive also promised to revise the textbook so that its digital version as well as its next edition would more accurately describe the forced migration and enslavement of Africans. In the meantime, the company is also offering to send stickers to cover the passage. www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/opinion/how-texas-teaches-history.html?emc=edit_ae_20151021&nl=todaysheadlines-asia&nlid=70661600&_r=2
Feds look at bank records in EAA, DPS corruption probe
The FBI and Justice Department subpoenaed personnel files and bank records or email account information for more than a dozen current and former officials at Gov. Rick Snyder’s K-12 Detroit reform district as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation, The Detroit News has learned.
Those former officials include ex-Chancellor John Covington, chief of staff Tyrone Winfrey and former Mumford High School Principal Kenyetta “K.C.” Wilbourn, according to federal grand jury subpoenas obtained by The News late Tuesday.
Federal agents also were interested in contracts with vendors who supplied education materials, student-to-student conflict resolution coaching and sporting goods, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The subpoenas offer new insight into an ongoing investigation into whether officials at the Education Achievement Authority and Detroit Public Schools received bribes or kickbacks from contractors. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2015/10/20/eaa-records-light-fbi-probe/74297526/
Sixth-graders bill education officials for time spent as standardized test guinea pigs After students in two sixth-grade math classes spent a week’s worth of class time field-testing a new standardized test, they’re demanding payment for their time. The Ipswich, Massachusetts, students have sent a letter to United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Matthew Malone, and the group developing the test, asking for that payment.
The students were randomly chosen to try out the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test. That meant spending 150 minutes in March and 180 minutes in May taking a trial test rather than being taught math. After hearing another teacher joke that they should be paid for that time, students approached their math teacher, Alan Laroche:
“The kids proceeded to tell me that PARCC is going to be making money from the test, so they should get paid as guinea pigs for helping them out in creating this test,” said Laroche. “So I said, ‘OK, if that’s the case and you guys feel strongly then there are venues and things you can do to voice your opinion, and one would be to write a letter and have some support behind that letter with petition.” […]
“I thought it was unfair that we weren’t paid for anything and we didn’t volunteer for anything,” said [student Brett] Beaulieu. “It was as if we said, ‘Oh we can do it for free.’”
Beaulieu used his math skills in the letter, determining that the two classes would collectively earn $1,628 at minimum wage for their 330 minutes of work. He then went on to figure out how many school supplies that amount could buy: 22 new Big Ideas MATH Common Core Student Edition Green textbooks or 8,689 Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils.
“Even better, this could buy our school 175,000 sheets of 8 ½” by 11″ paper, and 270 TI-108 calculators,” Beaulieu wrote.
Students and administrators signed on to a petition, and Laroche sent the request off to Duncan, Malone, and PARCC. They’re waiting for a response. www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/02/1303820/-Sixth-graders-bill-education-officials-for-time-spent-as-standardized-test-guinea-pigs?detail=emailclassic
Schooled Teen says he hacked CIA director’s AOL account
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a high school student who claims to have hacked into them.
CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post.
Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter about the use of “harsh interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, according to the hacker.
The FBI and other federal agencies are now investigating the hacker, with one source saying criminal charges are possible,nypost.com/2015/10/18/stoner-high-school-student-says-he-hacked-the-cia/
Michigan lawmakers under pressure to let retirees teach, get pension due to shortage of subs
Michigan lawmakers are under pressure to let retired teachers return to the classroom because of a shortage of substitutes and not enough full-time teachers in special education, pre-kindergarten and certain subjects.
A 2012 law allowing teachers who retired after mid-2010 to teach again without losing their pension expired more than 15 months ago. That left provisions of a 2010 teacher retirement incentive law on the books.
Pension and health care benefits must be suspended once retirees directly employed by a school district are paid more than one-third of their average final compensation in a year. Retirement benefits are off limits entirely for retirees hired by an independent contractor to perform a school’s “core services.”
Reasons for the substitute teaching shortage are varied, including an improved unemployment rate that has meant job seekers who might have taken a part-time job substitute teaching landed full-time positions in education or another field. But school administrators and the companies they contract with for substitutes say legislators also are at fault. www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan-lawmakers-under-pressure-to-let-retirees-teach-get-pension-due-to-shortage-of-subs/36029786
Capitalist UNC becomes moreso For several years, there have been indications that the state’s new leaders want to change the mission of public higher education in North Carolina. In 2013, the Republican governor, Pat McCrory, told William Bennett, a conservative talk-show host and former Secretary of Education, that the state shouldn’t “subsidize” courses in gender studies or Swahili (that is, offer them at public universities). The following year, he laid out his agenda in a speech at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Using the language of business schools, he urged his audience to “reform and adapt the U.N.C. brand to the ever-changing competitive environment of the twenty-first century” and to “[hone] in on skills and subjects employers need.” McCrory also had a warning for faculty members whose subjects could be understood as political: “Our universities should not be used to indoctrinate our students to become liberals or conservatives, but should teach a diversity of opinions which will allow our future leaders to decide for themselves.” www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/new-politics-at-the-university-of-north-carolina
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Congressional Research Service– Instances of Use of United States Armed
Forces Abroad, 1798-2015 (too long to quote) www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf
Delta Force Is Back in Iraq to help the US lose some more Friday morning, the Pentagon released the name of the first American serviceman to die in battle in the latest round of U.S. military involvement in Iraq: Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, age 39, killed during a raid by Kurdish and American commandos on an Islamic State prison near the town of Hawija that reportedly freed 70 hostages who were soon to be summarily executed.
Accompanying Wheeler’s name and age in the Pentagon’s release was a vague description of his unit: “Headquarters U.S. Army Special Operations Command.” That phrase is a euphemism, trotted out for the 12th time since 2003 to describe a soldier killed in Iraq. The official biographies of the soldiers described in this way follow a pattern: They are old for combat soldiers, usually in their 30s. They are veterans of the Army’s elite Special Operations units — the Green Berets or, in Wheeler’s case, the 75th Ranger Regiment. And they die in known insurgent hotbeds: Qaim, Ramadi and, Thursday, Hawaii
Friday morning, the Pentagon released the name of the first American serviceman to die in battle in the latest round of U.S. military involvement in Iraq: Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, age 39, killed during a raid by Kurdish and American commandos on an Islamic State prison near the town of Hawija that reportedly freed 70 hostages who were soon to be summarily executed.
Accompanying Wheeler’s name and age in the Pentagon’s release was a vague description of his unit: “Headquarters U.S. Army Special Operations Command.” That phrase is a euphemism, trotted out for the 12th time since 2003 to describe a soldier killed in Iraq. The official biographies of the soldiers described in this way follow a pattern: They are old for combat soldiers, usually in their 30s. They are veterans of the Army’s elite Special Operations units — the Green Berets or, in Wheeler’s case, the 75th Ranger Regiment. And they die in known insurgent hotbeds: Qaim, Ramadi and, Thursday, Hawija.
They are the fallen of the Army’s top-secret counterterrorist commando unit, Delta Force.
Delta has been at the heart of America’s succession of wars in Iraq — so much so that for the elite commando unit, it has been more like one long war with occasional breaks. First sent into the country in 1991 and then again in 2003, Delta left Iraq four years ago with the rest of the U.S. military. It reportedly returned last year after the Islamic State captured Mosul. It set up a headquarters for manhunting and hostage rescue missions near Irbil, the Kurdish city believed to have been the launching site for this week’s successful raid.
Delta Force’s existence, while classified, is an open secret. Former unit members thinly veil their affiliation with the Fort Bragg, N.C., unit on resumes and LinkedIn profiles with phrases such as “Special Mission Unit” and “Army Compartmented Element.” Memoirs describe training that molds veteran soldiers — and a few Marines — into “operators” who can work with little advance planning in active combat zones and postwar chaos alike, sometimes blasting into compounds with attack dogs barking and guns blazing and sometimes going unnoticed altogether. www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/10/23/what-the-armys-top-secret-commando-unit-delta-force-is-doing-back-in-iraq/
Despite five investigations into his illegal retaliations, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command is poised for advancement. The Washington Post reports that “Rear Admiral Brian L. Losey was investigated five times by the Defense Department’s inspector general after subordinates complained that he had wrongly fired, demoted or punished them during a vengeful but fruitless hunt for the person who had anonymously reported him for a minor travel-policy infraction.”
The inspector general “recommended that the Navy take action against Losey for violating whistleblower-protection laws” as three of the five staff members’ complaints were upheld in the years-long investigations. Furthermore, those suspected “whistleblowers” weren’t the ones who had filed the complaint against Losey in the first place, but rather just collateral damage in his campaign to clear his name.
The Navy decided NOT to punish Rear Admiral Losey, but instead promote him to two-star admiral. Losey contested all of the complaints against him, “asserting that the staff members were poor performers and that he had acted within his authority as a commander. www.ora.tv/offthegrid/article/2015/10/23/punish-a-whistleblower-get-a-promotion-thats-reportedly-the-navys-way
The F-35’s latest problem? The ejection seat. Four years before Pentagon officials discovered potentially life-threatening problems with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s ejection seat, a top official warned in an urgent memo that the escape system should be more thoroughly vetted before pilots were trained on the plane.
In an unsolicited dispatch to the top defense officials overseeing the $400 billion F-35 program, J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, said he was concerned that training flights would proceed even though the ejection seat system had not been fully tested.
His warnings were rejected by Pentagon brass, who pressed on with the controversial program, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post. But a series of recent tests revealed serious problems with the jet fighter’s escape system, the Pentagon acknowledged this month, creating potentially hazardous circumstances, especially for lighter-weight pilots. Those lighter-weight pilots face a “high” risk of danger, and the risk is deemed “serious” for mid-weight pilots, according to an internal risk assessment of the problem, which was obtained by The Post.
Lighter-weight pilots, those weighing less than 136 pounds, are now prohibited from flying the aircraft, officials said, until the problem is fixed www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/10/23/the-f-35s-latest-problem-the-ejection-seat/
St. Louis Officials Believe Arsons at 6 Black Churches Are Linked
Arsons at six predominantly black churches in this metropolitan area in recent days are believed to be connected, fire officials said on Tuesday.
The fires, all set in the entryway or door of a church, have taken place here since Oct. 8, the authorities said. The latest blaze was discovered on Sunday morning by those arriving for a service at Ebenezer Lutheran Church. www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/us/st-louis-officials-believe-arsons-at-6-black-churches-are-linked.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
October 25, 1983: The Grenada Invasion
The short story of the end of the Grenada Revo richgibson.com/GrenadaSpeech.htm
The Migrant crisis the US initiated
Almost 600,000 refugees and migrants have made their way across the Mediterranean to Europe this year and the majority of those have landed on the Greek islands closest to Turkey.
Migration experts say the numbers arriving on the islands have surged recently to as many as 7,000 a day, trying to reach Europe before the weather worsens.
The biggest numbers arriving in Greece are from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and some of the new arrivals on the island of Lesbos told BBC News their stories.
Ali Fellah, 24, Iraq
Ali came from Najaf with his wife and son, fleeing the advance of Islamic State (IS) militants and the breakdown of services such as basic drinking water. “I’m not thinking about me,” he says, “it’s about the future for my son.”
A H M E D R A S H I D www.ahmedrashid.com
Vets dismayed by VA payback rules on separation pay Stephen, a Marine Corps staff sergeant, agreed to leave service a few years ago when the Corps offered him voluntary separation pay in an effort to trim its personnel ranks.They gave him about $80,000 to leave, and at the time it seemed like a good deal. The money helped him buy a house in Texas and get started with a job as a financial planner.
But now the government wants that money back.
That’s because Stephen, who asked to be identified by his first name only, recently went to the Veterans Affairs Department and secured an 80 percent disability rating for a combination of post-traumatic stress, tinnitus and a jaw problem. The VA said he’s due an $1,800 monthly stipend.
But the VA won’t send him any checks until 2018 because federal law requires veterans to pay back any separation pay received before becoming eligible for disability benefits.
“I wasn’t aware of that, and that could have changed my decision altogether” about whether to accept the voluntary separation pay in the first place, Stephen said.
The 30-year-old former platoon sergeant, who deployed twice to Iraq, is now battling bureaucracy at the Pentagon and the VA in an effort to keep the money, which he has already spent. www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/benefits/veterans/2015/10/18/separation-pay-payback/73925870/
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
The numbers are staggering: US is ‘world leader’ in child poverty
America’s wealth grew by 60 percent in the past six years, by over $30 trillion. In approximately the same time, the number of homeless children has also grown by 60 percent.
Financier and CEO Peter Schiff said, “People don’t go hungry in a capitalist economy.” The 16 million kids on food stamps know what it’s like to go hungry. Perhaps, some in Congress would say, those children should be working. “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” insisted Georgia Representative Jack Kingston, even for schoolkids, who should be required to “sweep the floor of the cafeteria” (as they actually do at a charter school in Texas).
The callousness of U.S. political and business leaders is disturbing, shocking. Hunger is just one of the problems of our children. Teacher Sonya Romero-Smith told about the two little homeless girls she adopted: “Getting rid of bedbugs, that took us a while. Night terrors, that took a little while. Hoarding food..”
America is a ‘Leader’ in Child Poverty
The U.S. has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. As UNICEF reports, “[Children’s] material well-being is highest in the Netherlands and in the four Nordic countries and lowest in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the United States.”
Over half of public school students are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, and almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty. www.rawstory.com/2015/04/the-numbers-are-staggering-us-is-world-leader-in-child-poverty/
$5 a Day for Food, But Congress Thought it was Too Much.
Nearly half of all food stamp recipients are children, and they averaged about $5 a day for their meals before the 2014 farm bill cut $8.6 billion (over the next ten years) from the food stamp program.
In 2007 about 12 of every 100 kids were on food stamps. Today it’s 20 of every 100.
For Every 2 Homeless Children in 2006, There Are Now 3
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
Chicago police “disappeared” over 7,000 people, held them at secret torture camp
In February, the Guardian reported stories about the Homan Square, the Chicago Police Department’s off-the-books black-site, where (mostly black and brown) suspects are denied counsel while being brutalized into forced confessions.
Now, Spencer Ackerman is back with news of the Guardian’s spectacular lawsuit against the Chicago PD, in which they are seeking transparency about Homan Square. According to the initial tranche of documents, the total victim-count for the site totals over 7,000, spanning August 2004 to June 2015. They were overwhelmingly, disproportionately black and latinamerican.
The Guardian story includes biographies of some of the Homan inmates. They vary in their fine detail, but over and over again, they describe people arrested, denied counsel, subjected to harsh interrogation, and held in secrecy in a “police station” that doesn’t even have a phone number.
The 7,000 figure is probably low, as it reflects the number of survivors who were held there and subsequently charged; the CPD has not released figures on those who were released without charge. boingboing.net/2015/10/19/survivor-count-for-the-chicago.html
F.B.I. Chief Links Scrutiny of Police (militarized violence)With Rise in Violent Crime
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.
With his remarks, Mr. Comey lent the prestige of the F.B.I., the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency, to a theory that is far from settled: that the increased attention on the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals. But he acknowledged that there is so far no data to back up his assertion and that it may be just one of many factors that are contributing to the rise in crime, like cheaper drugs and an increase in criminals who are being released from prison
“I don’t know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year,” Mr. Comey said in a speech at the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Comey’s remarks caught officials by surprise at the Justice Department, where his views are not shared at the top levels. Holding the police accountable for civil rights violations has been a top priority at the department in recent years, and some senior officials do not believe that scrutiny of police officers has led to an increase in crime.www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/us/politics/fbi-chief-links-scrutiny-of-police-with-rise-in-violent-crime.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Solidarity for Never
UAW Ranks and Bosses who gave away nearly everything their grandparents fought and died for, and who gave away anything their children could inherit at Fiat Chrysler, Stumble on to Government Motors (now so sweetly profitable) The United Auto Workers will push for a richer deal with General Motors Co. than it did at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, where members overwhelmingly supported a sweetened, four-year contract in a second round of voting this week.
The union on Thursday announced GM as its second negotiating target. The notice came hours after the UAW confirmed that 77 percent of workers with Fiat Chrysler voted in favor of a revised contract that provides raises for all workers, including an eight-year progression intended to end the contentious two-tier wage structure that pays newer workers much less than veteran employees.
Increases in base wages, profit sharing, ratification bonuses and other lump sum payments are all on the table for the 52,700 UAW members covered at GM, industry insiders say.
On Thursday, members of UAW President Dennis Williams’ staff went to the bargaining table with GM’s bargaining team at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources. Talks were planned into the evening, Friday and over the weekend.
Over the past five weeks while Fiat Chrysler was the union’s focus, UAW bargainers continued to meet with representatives of GM and Ford Motor Co. to discuss non-economic issues. That means this new round of bargaining could move fairly quickly. www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-motors/2015/10/22/uaw-gm/74407652/
National Broadcasting for Capital and Empire runs ad for opportunist Opt Out (as they too opt in to capital and empire, and only discovered high stakes exams when merit pay kicked in) www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/school-history-social-protest-teacher-leading-opposition-excessive-testing/
Obamagogue and Arne call for less testing (teaching lies using methods so obscure students in capital’s schools can be done otherwise) and DSA’s social nationalists go wild! Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.
Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.
“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has announced that he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/obama-administration-calls-for-limits-on-testing-in-schools.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Spy versus Spy
Files in Lawsuit Against CIA Stolen in ‘Disturbing’ University Break-In
University of Washington police are investigating a break-in at the school’s Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) after files from a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were stolen from the center’s offices.
A computer and hard drive containing information from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on October 2 were stolen from the offices of Dr. Angelina Godoy sometime between Thursday and Sunday, according to police. The UWCHR is investigating whether the CIA illegally withheld information about human rights violations carried out by U.S.-backed El Salvador army officers during the country’s civil war against leftist rebels in the 1980s.
Godoy said “about 90 percent of the information” was taken in the break-in. The UWCHR has backups of the stolen files, but Godoy said the concern now is how the data might be used against rights workers in El Salvador who are involved in the lawsuit.
“What worries us most is not what we have lost but what someone else may have gained,” she said in a statement. “The files include sensitive details of personal testimonies and pending investigations.”
The break-in had “suspicious and disturbing” elements, the Seattle Times reported—including that it coincided with a campus visit by CIA director John Brennan, who gave a speech at the university’s law school Friday. www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/22/files-lawsuit-against-cia-stolen-disturbing-university-break?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork
The Magical Mystery Tour
The Vatican (god’s) Bank–wanna bet he doesn’t close it and give the money to the poor?
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
