Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fightback!

Critical Theories In the Twenty First Century:

A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies:

2012 Theme:

Critical Education Against Capitalism (call for proposals at web site)

Sponsored by:

Educational Foundations in the Department of Professional and Secondary Education at West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Co-hosted by: The Rouge Forum

Proposal Due Date: November 1^st 2012

Conference Date: November 17^th 2012

Location: West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA

Keynote Speakers:

Peter McLaren (UCLA)

Sandy Grande (Connecticut College)

Closing Event:

Discussion:   Critical Education Against Capitalism

web site:   www.ct21st.org/

The Coming Chicago Fubar The FUBAR is where Chicago’s schools are now headed as more than 400,000 children (including two in the family of this reporter) begin to prepare to return to classroom (or strike support work). At least Rahm knows the main words that will be used to describe the work of genius he has created by his prejudice against veteran educators, against real public schools, and against public sector workers and public sector unions. Under the quarter million dollar “Chief Executive Officer” of CPS, Rahm is replicating fuckups faster than …www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3476#comments

Boots and Oakland OWS “I’m not afraid to call myself a Communist,” the rapper and activist Boots Riley told me one morning last spring in the kitchen of his weather-beaten yellow Victorian house in Oakland’s Lower Bottoms section. “I think some people call themselves everything but, because they don’t want to associate themselves with the failures and mistakes that other folks who have called themselves Communists have made. But Christians don’t stop calling themselves Christians just because some other Christians made some mistakes.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/magazine/oakland-occupy-movement.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

above, the Coup CD cover pre-September 11

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Killer Marines Try to Convince Teachers they are Really Touchy Feely Nice Folk  … they were high school teachers, guidance counselors and administrators from school districts in the Los Angeles and Sacramento areas. All had accepted the Marine Corps’ invitation to spend four days at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, watching the training and talking to recruits, enlisted Marines and senior officers.
While some areas of the state embrace the military, the Los Angeles Unified School District, second largest in the country, has been more reticent. It gives recruiters no more access to students or their information than is granted to any other potential employer. Parents and older students also are allowed to restrict the release of personal information to military recruiters.
Some teachers in the district have launched “counter recruiting” efforts, warning students of physical danger, regimentation and loss of privacy and individuality that come with military service. Others put students on “don’t call” lists.
“The U.S. continues to fight in wars that are opposed by the public, and yet the military can recruit with little opposition because working-class kids have few job options,” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers and a critic of the Marine Corps program.  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marines-schools-20120729,0,4144935.story

Common Core Jumps Up in Tenn. Teachers will change the way they deliver lessons to students when the school year begins next week.
Tennessee is one of 46 states to adopt Common Core standards. The standards mean lessons will provide students with the most important knowledge and skills to compete in a global environment. The new standards will emphasize thinking, problem solving and creativity.
For instance, before adopting Common Core, Tennessee third-graders were expected to learn 113 different lessons in math; core standards now call for 25.   www.dnj.com/article/20120729/NEWS07/307290046/BACK-SCHOOL-Common-Core-puts-emphasis-problem-solving-creativity

AFT lets D.C. Fire 98 More Teachers D.C. school officials said Wednesday that 98 teachers were fired this week for poor performance, a large-scale dismissal that has become almost routine in the city but remains rare among school systems nationwide.  ..Of the teachers dismissed this week, 39 were rated ineffective on IMPACT, and 59 were rated minimally effective for the second year in a row.
“We owe it to our teachers to provide them with more and better curricular resources and professional development to ensure their success — and we’re doing that,” Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said in a statement. “But we owe it to our students and families to continue to move out the professionals who are not up to this incredibly difficult task.”
About two-thirds of all teachers were rated effective.
Teachers rated highly effective are eligible for bonuses of up to $25,000. This year, 988 teachers — or about a quarter of the teaching corps — earned that top rating, up from 663 last year….Washington Teachers’ Union President Nathan Saunders, one of the fiercest critics, said the evaluation system is flawed but has been improved through recent revisions. If a teacher with promise appears headed for a poor IMPACT rating, for example, a principal can now ask to waive the consequences and give the teacher another year to improve.
“It’s been softened up. It’s become more collaborative than when it was first introduced,” Saunders said.
The bonuses are expected to cost about $8 million this year, funded by outside donors, …  www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/98-dc-teachers-fired-for-poor-performance-school-officials-say/2012/08/01/gJQAu67vPX_story.html

So Ubiquitous, it’s Boring–More Test Cheats Last Thursday, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and officials from D.C. public schools and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) held a news conference to crow about results on tests administered in April. Proficiency rates on both reading and math sections of the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams were up slightly for many grades in schools across the district, the mayor said.
He took credit for those improvements – a 2.8 percentage point jump from 2011 to 2012 in the number of children proficient in math, a 0.5 point increase in reading proficiency. The results “are proof positive,” he said, that a program he introduced to make pre-kindergarten more widely available is already having an impact.
Over the past five years, proficiency gains are even larger – up 18.1 percentage points in math and 9.5 percentage points in reading since 2007. But when you look closely at the school-by-school results also released last week, some are discouraging, particularly at the very schools celebrated in 2008, 2009 and 2010 for their soaring proficiency rates. Several schools have seen proficiency skid alarmingly, dropping by half or more while the rest of the district was inching upward.
That’s evidence that adults – principals, test coordinators, perhaps teachers – cheated at some schools in those years when proficiency rates climbed. Then, when Chancellor Kaya Henderson and OSSE introduced tighter security measures in 2011, it became more difficult for the adults to cheat, and the kids’ scores and the schools’ proficiency rates dropped from their prize-winning peaks.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/what-it-means-when-test-scores-plummet/2012/07/27/gJQAaorcEX_blog.html

Florida Boss Quits as Test Scandals (yawn) Spread Gerard Robinson is resigning as Florida’s education commissioner at a time of growing discontent with — and a series of blunders involving — the state’s standardized test-based accountability system.  …recently embarrassed state officials miscalculated the grades given out to hundreds of schools and was forced to change them.
Not long before that, state officials panicked when only 27 percent of fourth-graders got proficient scores — down from 81 percent a year earlier — on a new FCAT writing test and students in other grades did poorly too. So what did they do? They lowered the passing score.   www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/florida-education-chief-resigns-amid-controversy/2012/08/01/gJQAT6oaOX_blog.html

above, a Detroit school in ruins. State takeovers built new schools, soon abandoned and stripped.

Detroit exemplifies the Stark Choice: Equality or Barbarism The Emergency Financial Manager of the Detroit Public Schools, Roy Roberts, replied to the American Federation of Teachers’ President, Randi Weingarten, and the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ President, Keith Johnson’s request to restore DFT’s collective bargaining rights with a simple, “No,” on Thursday, August 2. Weingarten and Johnson had led a protest march and rally to DPS headquarters on the opening day of the recent AFT convention (as reported earlier at Substance). Although Weingarten created a small spectacle outside Roberts’ office during the AFT convention last week (see Substance’s extensive coverage) when she led a chant of AFT members, “Negotiate! Negotiate!” Roberts was apparently able to ignore the president of the 1.5 million member national union with no cost to himself or those who put him in power.  http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3472&section=Article

So Long, Counterfeit “Labor College.” Bankrupt AFL-CIO needs more dough Faced with diminishing membership and revenues, organized labor is selling the site of its accredited institution of higher learning, the National Labor College, on 47 prime acres ripe for development just off the Capital Beltway here.
The campus, which was purchased by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. about 40 years ago, is 10 miles from the White House and a mile from the Food and Drug Administration, which recently consolidated its offices from 27 separate buildings elsewhere in Montgomery County.
The decision to sell reflects the decline of organized labor’s finances as well as the college’s shift to mostly online courses. The college also has been having financial difficulties, which were worsened last fall when a partnership on distance learning with the for-profit Princeton Review came apart.
The college has been running annual deficits of more than $6 million. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has heavily subsidized the college to keep it running, making the potential sale a welcome financial shot in the arm for the labor federation.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/realestate/commercial/national-labor-college-campus-owned-by-afl-cio-is-for-sale.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Above, half-wit AFL boss Richard Trumka pontificating before his “labor college”

Hong Kong Protests Social Fascist Chinese Ed System The new curriculum would be similar to the so-called patriotic education taught in mainland China. The materials, including a handbook entitled “The China Model,” describe the Communist Party as “progressive, selfless and united” and criticize multiparty systems, even though Hong Kong has multiple political parties.
Critics liken the curriculum to brainwashing and say that it glosses over major events like the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square crackdown. It will be introduced in some elementary schools in September and be mandatory for all public schools by 2016.   www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/thousands-protest-chinas-curriculum-plans-for-hong-kong-schools.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

More Powers for Campus Cops A new law that aims to address confusion over the authority of school district police departments has come under fire from some critics who say lawmakers have quietly increased school police powers under the guise of “cleanup language.”
The law, which goes into effect in January, removes wording in the state Education Code that used to say that school police departments are not vested with general policing powers. That language caused confusion among the public because the Penal Code says just the opposite – that school officers are authorized to do general policing.
The conflicting language created friction in Sacramento last year after accusations surfaced that the Twin Rivers Unified School District Police Department overstepped its authority by actively policing areas away from school campuses.   www.sacbee.com/2012/07/24/4653573/new-law-increases-school-police.html

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

above, the USS Maddox, centerpiece of the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident, August 4th, 1964, the excuse for the Vietnam War buildup. A Vietnam war unit   www.richgibson.com/vietnam/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Wl2M4yLkY

Fisk on Syria Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I’m not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I’m referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare.
While Qatar and Saudi Arabia arm and fund the rebels of Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite/Shia-Baathist dictatorship, Washington mutters not a word of criticism against them. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, say they want a democracy in Syria. But Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan’s dark ages.
Indeed, 15 of the 19 hijacker-mass murderers of 11 September, 2001, came from Saudi Arabia – after which, of course, we bombed Afghanistan. The Saudis are repressing their own Shia minority just as they now wish to destroy the Alawite-Shia minority of Syria. And we believe Saudi Arabia wants to set up a democracy in Syria?…But what US administration would really want to see Bashar’s atrocious archives of torture opened to our gaze? Why, only a few years ago, the Bush administration was sending Muslims to Damascus for Bashar’s torturers to tear their fingernails out for information, imprisoned at the US government’s request in the very hell-hole which Syrian rebels blew to bits last week. Western embassies dutifully supplied the prisoners’ tormentors with questions for the victims. Bashar, you see, was our baby.
Then there’s that neighbouring country which owes us so much gratitude: Iraq. Last week, it suffered in one day 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilian and wounding another 235. The same day, Syria’s bloodbath consumed about the same number of innocents. But Iraq was “down the page” from Syria, buried “below the fold”,  http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-syrian-war-of-lies-and-hypocrisy-7985012.html

The US Proxy War on Somalia Nearly 20 years after U.S. Army Rangers suffered a bloody defeat in Somalia, losing 18 soldiers and two Black Hawk helicopters, Washington is once again heavily engaged in the chaotic country. Only this time, African troops are doing the fighting and dying.
The United States is doing almost everything else.
The U.S. has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab, the Al Qaeda ally that has imposed a harsh form of Islamic rule on southern Somalia and sparked alarm in Washington as foreign militants join its ranks.
Officially, the troops are under the auspices of the African Union. But in truth, according to interviews by U.S. and African officials and senior military officers and budget documents, the 15,000-strong force pulled from five African countries is largely a creation of the State Department and Pentagon, trained and supplied by the U.S. government and guided by dozens of retired foreign military personnel hired through private contractors.   www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-somalia-20120729,0,1426936.story

US Formalizes Relationship with Syrian Jihadists, CIA assets, etc The U.S. government has authorized a U.S. group to provide financial and logistical support to the armed Syrian resistance, I report on the front page.
The waiver was received from the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) last week, Brian Sayers, of the Syrian Support Group, told Al- Monitor in an interview Friday.
“The OFAC decision is huge,” Sayers said. “It gets us the leeway to support the Free Syrian Army in broad terms.”
A photograph of the OFAC letter seen by Al Monitor showed that it was signed by a Treasury Department official on July 23. (The document has since been removed from the Internet.)
Sayers, an American who previously worked for six years in NATO operations in Brussels, was hired last spring by the Syrian Support Group to work Washington to “support the Free Syrian Army in different ways.”
But one Syrian source, speaking anonymously, suggested the Syrian Support Group’s mission is not only about lobbying the US government to provide support to the FSA, but also the reverse: to help turn the FSA into a more organized entity that could receive intelligence and other assistance from Western security agencies.  http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2012/07/1464/us-deepens-support-for-armed-syrian-rebels/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-deepens-support-for-armed-syrian-rebels

Who Lost the Iraqi Coppers? A new audit reports that the US State Department wasted over $200 million on the Iraq police training program, building massive compounds and setting up an elaborate scheme without ever successfully getting Iraq to agree to the basics of the plan.
The report says that one of the two compounds, in Basra, has been closed entirely while the other is open but scarcely used, as the State Department expressed “surprise” that Iraqis weren’t interested in the program.   news.antiwar.com/2012/07/30/audit-state-depts-iraq-police-scheme-a-total-flop/

Send a Letter! War with China: Bad Idea Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country. The initial “blinding campaign” would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.
The concept, the details of which are classified, has angered the Chinese military and has been pilloried by some Army and Marine Corps officers as excessively expensive. Some Asia analysts worry that conventional strikes aimed at China could spark a nuclear war.
Air-Sea Battle drew little attention when U.S. troops were fighting and dying in large numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the military’s decade of battling insurgencies is ending, defense budgets are being cut, and top military officials, ordered to pivot toward Asia, are looking to Marshall’s office for ideas.
In recent months, the Air Force and Navy have come up with more than 200 initiatives they say they need to realize Air-Sea Battle. The list emerged, in part, from war games conducted by Marshall’s office and includes new weaponry and proposals to deepen cooperation between the Navy and the Air Force.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/what-is-air-sea-battle/2012/08/01/gJQAlGr7PX_graphic.html

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

3rd California City Bankrupt The City of San Bernardino – with over 200,000 residents on the eastern tip of greater Los Angeles – “filed an emergency petition for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy” with a regional U.S. bankruptcy court, according to a news release from the city’s interim manager.
The other two to file recently were Stockton, with around 300,000 residents, according to 2010 U.S. census data, and Mammoth Lakes, a resort town, where visitors and seasonal residents outnumber the just over 8,000 permanent inhabitants.

Afghan Reconstruction–Fubar’d Hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars may have been wasted on poorly managed infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, a report to Congress says.
John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, found that project “planning, co-ordination and execution” had been weak.
Security costs were likely to rise in the short-term, he added, as private companies hand over to Afghan forces.
The US plans to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
The quarterly report released on Monday also found that several construction projects were so far behind schedule that they were unlikely to be completed before US troops leave the country. It said “a significant portion” of the US government’s $400m (£254m) investment in large infrastructure projects in fiscal year 2011 alone may have been wasted because of the poor planning.
The report also says the US Army has accepted contract construction so poor it prevented multi-million dollar police bases from being used.
The inspector general noted that one base was unoccupied because it has no viable water supply.
“Other deficiencies included leaking fuel lines, unconnected drain pipes, poorly built guard towers, and improperly installed heating and ventilation systems,” the report continues.
The inspector general said there was still time to improve the outcome of the projects in Afghanistan, but warned that time was running out.
The report notes that if Congress approves the Obama administration’s latest budget request the US will have allocated almost $100bn on Afghan reconstruction.  http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19052539

Second Israeli Self Immolates A second Israeli who set himself on fire in protest at economic difficulties has died of his injuries, the hospital treating him said on Wednesday.  Akiva Mafi, a 45-year-old, wheelchair-bound war veteran, doused his body in petrol and lit it at a bus station on July 30, after what friends described as a debilitating battle for welfare benefits.
He was the second such fatality after Moshe Silman, a debt-ridden member of a grassroots movement to lower the cost of living in Israel, self-immolated during a July 14 demonstration in Tel Aviv and died two weeks later.
Silman, 57, left a note accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government of “taking from the poor and giving to the rich”. Local media later reported similar suicide bids among others suffering economic hardship.   www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/08/01/world/middleeast/01reuters-israel-protests.html?ref=global-home

Solidarity Fornever

Can You Guess Who Is the Person
With the Sweetest Job in America?

By Harry Kelber

The man who has earned that title is Richard L. Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, a 12-million-member labor organization. So let me tell you why.

Trumka is not the richest man in the U.S., although it’s true that he is doing far better than most of us at a salary of $264,827 in 2010, which is about eight times the average salary of union members.

In 2011, just one year later, he had his salary increased to $293,750. That’s a 10 percent increase in one year. And without union members being told about the increase. How many of us got that kind of pay boost?

Trumka does not make as much as a corporate CEO, but he has something CEOs don’t have. They can be fired, but he can’t. “Rich” Trumka’s job is guaranteed even if the AFL-CIO suffers defeat after defeat. Now that’s job security.

“Rich” makes speeches and issues statements but he can’t point to a single thing he has accomplished to improve wages and benefits for working people. Look at Trumka’s record of failures:

He started a campaign to “Make Wall Street Pay” for the economic crisis. He vowed to continue the fight until the bankers paid up. The campaign ended two days later, without an explanation.

Trumka led the effort to get Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, claiming it was essential to enable the AFL-CIO to grow. He let President Obama renege on his promise to push EFCA and the campaign died. Rich also caved in on the Affordable Care Act, settling on compromises that turned into defeats.

“Rich” let Obama and the Republicans cut spending on hundreds of programs serving the Middle Class, as well as the poor, sick and elderly. He did nothing to fight back to save programs that were desperately needed.

Trumka has taken no action to fight for jobs, except to talk about it. He has no plan to mobilize the unemployed to fight for jobs. He shows no empathy for the plight of unemployed families. He is still going to get his $293,750, no matter how many millions of children live in poverty, without any help from the AFL-CIO. Trumka rarely mingles with Middle Class or Working Class folk. At a salary of close to $300,000 a year, he is rarely seen socially with working people

Trumka Acts Like A Dictator — and Gets Away with it!

A couple of years ago, Trumka arbitrarily decreed that the AFL-CIO NOW web site must not carry any news or information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There would be no official mention of the two wars in the official documents or public statements.

Broward Fl EA–Past prezzie in Jail for child Porn, new Prezzie charged with Massive Fraud To police investigators, the saga of Pat Santeramo is a story of unbridled greed. According to the Broward State Attorney’s Office, though paid an annual salary of up to $189,000, Santeramo wanted more. So he concocted a scheme with a Coral Springs construction company through which he diverted $165,000 in union funds to himself. He got kickbacks of up to $20,000 when Marstan Construction changed light bulbs, sprayed for ants, dyed a carpet or repaired an elevator. He also schemed to pick up $121,000 in accrued sick and vacation time with a fraudulent memo, investigators said.
Much of the stolen money, prosecutors said, went to pay for a $587,000 vacation home that he and his wife, Pasco County union leader Lynne Webb, bought in Martin County. articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-07-29/news/fl-pat-santeramo-fall-20120727_1_pat-santeramo-broward-teachers-union-union-boss

Another SEIU Boss Charged with Theft and More Not long ago, Tyrone Freeman was a rising star in the national labor movement, already the head of California’s biggest union local and a force in Democratic politics from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
Freeman’s quick climb up the ranks of the powerful Service Employees International Union burnished his reputation as an advocate for the disadvantaged, a man who helped improve the lot of some 190,000 workers paid about $9 an hour to care for the infirm.
On Tuesday, though, Freeman was indicted on federal charges of stealing from those workers to enrich himself – even billing the union for costs from his Hawaiian wedding. The 15-count indictment, which also contains allegations that he violated tax laws and gave false information to a mortgage lender, carries combined maximum prison sentences of more than 200 years.  …Citing records and interviews, the Los Angeles Times reported that Freeman funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of his union members’ hard-earned dues to his relatives and spent similar sums on a Four Seasons Resort golf tournament, expensive restaurants and a Beverly Hills cigar club.
Last month, his wife, Pilar Planells, pleaded guilty to an income tax charge in connection with more than $540,000 she received in union consulting payments at Freeman’s direction. She is expected to be sentenced to three years’ probation and must pay about $130,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties, according to court records.   www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/01/159190/ex-leader-of-major-california.html

Cops Have to Protect Fresno EA from Itself The Fresno Teachers Association on Friday replaced newly elected president Mai Summer Vue in its third election since April to choose a new leader. Eva Ruiz, who challenged Vue in the earlier elections, won the presidency in another runoff election that will likely be challenged.
Vue called Friday’s election results invalid and refused to leave the office she has occupied for less than a month at the FTA headquarters in northeast Fresno.
Union leaders called police to prompt her departure and a locksmith, who changed the building’s locks to keep Vue out.
Ruiz called the scene late Friday afternoon “tense,” adding that “the transition is not going as smooth as we had hoped.”
Police made no arrests; officers said their job was “to keep the peace.”   www.fresnobee.com/2012/07/27/2926072/fresno-teachers-union-elections.html

above, California Faculty Association blew off steam while negotiators prepped the sellout

The California Faculty Ass’n  Contract Sellout CFA, like every fake union in the US, sells labor peace in exchange for dues income (forced checkoff) so the labor bosses can live well, and not work, hand in hand with the Big Bosses, who live even better while both sectors pound down on students, not only via tuition increases, but with bulging class sizes and–worse: teaching lies using methods so arcane that students learn, as they did in k12, not to like to learn.
In this insane social system, reason itself is demolished. Let us be clear–the education agenda is a war agenda: class war and imperialist war. The rest is details.
I note that CFA circulated a contract summary that never says, “we negotiated a wage freeze,” nor does it mention the continuing wage hikes for CSU presidents, et al.
latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/cal-state-and-faculty-reach-agreement-but-no-pay-raises-included.html

What do the union tops lie about?

Everything important.

Proof?

A small sample www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3392&section=Article

Why will CSU faculty accept this sellout contract?

The same reason k12 teachers accept the counterfeit unions that take their dues while betraying their real interests:
*part the imperialist bribe (pay us and we will shut up about the wars’ impact in and out of the US)
*part the acceptance of the division of labor in capitalist society (unions do not unite people–they divide people along all kinds of lines; job, craft, race, public/private, etc),
*part because the vast majority of school workers believe they are agents of the state, now a corporate state, and when the Common Core arrives, to buttress the high stakes exams, those teachers will do what they are told to do,
*and in part because teachers are so thoroughly corrupted by their “specialties,” each designed to hide the reality of capitalism and imperialism and their irrational mechanics, that they whirl in hysteria when NEA bosses like Dennis Van Roekel, or AFT’s Randi Weingarten, or banksters’ pals like Biden or hucksters for the ruling classes like Ravitch, spin them–so easily.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers is nearly vanished, as is the entire school system. Corruption and incompetence, coupled with racism and exploitation, demolished both. When given the chance this summer, 86% of the DFT membership refused to join the union, pay dues. Only a judge’s order, reinstating forced dues check off, keeps the DFT alive—and able to make payments on the multimillion dollar building the DFT bosses bought–as they were losing thousands of members, year after year.

Resistance that ignores the current social context, capitalism in rapid decay, stagnating not merely in the economy but strangling human potential, is not resistance, but diversions–and it will lose.

Chicago remains a bright spot. We shall see how that turns, but waiting for it to happen is hardly enough. Should Chicago have to strike, no Chicago school worker should lose a dime while the strike is on. With nearly 4 million people in the school work force, that should not be hard to achieve.   R

How Many People Quit Wisconsin Public Sector Unions When Given the Chance? 50%. How many Chicago Teachers Union Members voted to Strike? More than 90%. What’s the difference?

A Study In The Insufficiency Of Liberalism: Chris Hedges And Amy Goodman For liberals, Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges are beloved figures. This is bad enough, but both are seen by some on the Left as radical. Goodman attends socialist conferences and frequently is a featured speaker. And Hedges has been boasting of his radicalism for years, most recently at OccupyWallStreet venues. Yet in the two videos below, we see how they, wittingly or not, serve the interests of the ruling class.   saveourcola.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/a-study-in-the-insufficiency-of-liberalism-chris-hedges-and-amy-goodman/

Fascism Emerges as a Popular Mass Movement

Obamagogue Still Clamps Down on Gitmo–Letter from the Prez of the US Bar The recent decision by the Obama administration to place onerous conditions and limitations on visits by lawyers with their clients detained at Guantánamo Bay is reminiscent of such ill-advised decisions.
Lawyers, who are essential to justice, must be permitted to meet and communicate confidentially with their clients at Guantánamo Bay without government interference or surveillance.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/opinion/visits-at-guantanamo.html

UC Davis’ Pepper Spray Cop out of A Job Lt. John Pike, the University of California, Davis police officer who became a focal point of last November’s pepper-spraying incident during a campus protest, is no longer employed by the university, a spokesman confirmed late Tuesday. UC Davis spokesman Barry Shiller said he could not discuss the details of Pike’s departure, but in response to queries from The Sacramento Bee, he said Pike was no longer employed there as of Tuesday.  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/31/159106/uc-davis-confirms-officer-at-center.html

Spy Versus Spy

Known as “Agent Hero,” Oleg Penkovsky  is credited with being responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oleg had been a Colonel in the Soviet GRU, and was supplying the Americans with information throughout the 1950′s and 1960′s. It was his information that allowed the analysts to find the silos and missile cargo in the low-resolution spy-plane photos. In 1963, he was tried and convicted of treason and espionage in Soviet courts, leading to his execution, though there is no known record of how this execution took place

Obamagogue’s Coppers to Citizens: Shut the F… Up F.B.I. agents on a hunt for leakers have interviewed current and former high-level government officials from multiple agencies in recent weeks, casting a distinct chill over press coverage of national security issues as agencies decline routine interview requests and refuse to provide background briefings.  The criminal investigation, which has reached into the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and the C.I.A., appears to be the most sweeping inquiry into intelligence disclosures in years. It coincides with Senate consideration of new legislation, designed to curb intelligence officials’ exchanges with reporters, that intelligence veterans and civil libertarians fear could be counterproductive and may raise constitutional issues.
The legislation approved last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee would reduce to a handful the number of people at each agency permitted to speak to reporters on “background,” or condition of anonymity; require notice to the Senate and House intelligence committees of authorized disclosures of intelligence information; and permit the government to strip the pension of an intelligence officer who illegally discloses classified information.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/us/national-security-leaks-lead-to-fbi-hunt-and-news-chill.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Pakistan’s Spy Chief–trained in the USA  (but why, after sending Pakistan $3 billion a year, is he a mystery?–and don’t forget Ray Davis) As befits any newly installed spymaster, a vague air of mystery surrounds Lt. Gen. Zahir ul-Islam, the head of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, who is visiting Washington in his official capacity for the first time on Wednesday.  American officials acknowledge they know little of General Islam, a tall man in his 50s with a flop of black hair, except that he comes across as taciturn, thoughtful and passionate about sports.
His first trip to the United States in 1984, he fondly told one American official recently, was to attend the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. A decade later, while attending a course at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., he adapted his cricket skills for use on a local baseball team. …“A lot hinges on this man,” one American official said. “And we just don’t know anything about him.”  www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/world/asia/pakistans-new-isi-chief-is-an-enigma-in-the-west.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The Magical Mystery Tour

Fanatical Priest Comforts Drone Assassins Air Force Lt. Col. Douglas Cunningham, a Roman Catholic priest, has a security clearance that allows him to be in the control room during active bombing missions. Since his arrival, Cunningham has tried to gain the trust of the pilots and crew members so he can see if the stress of switching between dropping bombs and helping their children with homework is starting to wear.
The hardest part for the crew sometimes is to get up and get out of the chair and go home to a comfortable bed, knowing that the soldiers in Afghanistan are still on the ground and still taking fire.
Cunningham tries to offer some comfort.
“I let them know, ‘If it wasn’t for you, they wouldn’t be as safe as they are over there, because we bring them a lot of security just watching over them,'” Cunningham said. “They are protecting life.”   www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drones-bases-20120729,0,3409139.story?page=2

Rapist KC Priest to Plead Out The Rev. Shawn Ratigan is expected to plead guilty Thursday in the federal child pornography case that spawned criminal charges against the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., and the bishop who leads it.
Ratigan, 46, previously pleaded not guilty to 13 felony charges that federal prosecutors filed last year in Kansas City, Mo. He is scheduled for a change of plea hearing Thursday afternoon, according to a notice posted Wednesday in online court records.  ….Ratigan is charged in U.S. District Court with six counts of producing child pornography, five counts of attempted production of child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography.
The allegations involve sexually explicit photographs of children ranging in age from 2 to 12 that were taken over a six-year period beginning in 2005, according to court documents.
His trial was to begin Aug. 27. It would have drawn national attention just weeks before the diocese and Bishop Robert Finn are scheduled for trial for allegedly failing to report suspected child abuse in the Ratigan case.   www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/01/159332/kansas-city-priest-expected-to.html

Superstitious Catholonazis Halt Birth Control in Philippines n the Philippines, a country of 96 million people, access to birth control is mostly limited to those with the means to buy it. A “reproductive health bill” in the national legislature seeks to change that: It calls for public education about contraceptives and government subsidies to make them available to everyone.
The church and like-minded opponents have stalled the legislation for 14 years. Following Vatican dictates, Philippine bishops oppose any “artificial” measures to prevent pregnancy, sanctioning only natural means such as periodic abstention from sex.
It’s one example of how religious and political forces affect women’s control over childbearing and, as a result, the trajectory of population growth in the developing world.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/population/la-fg-population-matters5-20120729-html,0,5897961.htmlstory

The Best and Worst in the History of the World

above, Montreal–credit to Dave

How Much Did Paterno Suck out of PSU? $13.4 million in retirement, plus this, and more Mr. Paterno, the football coach at Penn State, began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract, with the timing something of a surprise because the contract was not set to expire until the end of the 2011 season, according to university documents and people with knowledge of the discussions. By August, Mr. Paterno and the university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation, had reached an agreement.

Mr. Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/sports/ncaafootball/joe-paterno-got-richer-contract-amid-jerry-sandusky-inquiry.html?_r=4&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120714

To Assist in the Ongoing PSU Cover-up, the School Hired 2 PR firms: $2.5 million/12 months.

Officers walk past crushed cruisers at the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department in Newport, Vt.. Authorities say 34-year old Vermont farmer Roger Pion, apparently angry over recent charges of resisting arrest and marijuana possession, used a large tractor like a monster truck, destroying seven police vehicles. (Scott Wheeler / Northland Journal / AP)

Olympics in 2012?