Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Arrested for Speaking at Michigan State Trustees’ Meeting  It’s Dec. 12, the day before controversial speaker George Will is scheduled to address the winter graduating class.

The Michigan State University Board of Trustees meeting is packed with people who registered to speak in opposition to Will. Later in the meeting the board takes up a proposal to increase President Lou Anna K. Simon’s salary from $520,000 a year to $750,000 a year.

Noah Saperstein, 23, spoke up. He had not registered to speak on Simon — it wasn’t on the agenda.

“I said something to the effect of, ‘We have adjunct professors, why not an adjunct president?’” Saperstein told City Pulse.

Saperstein would be arrested moments later. The charge? Violation of an MSU disorderly conduct ordinance: “Disruption of normal campus building or area activities.” He faces 93 days in jail, he said, for speaking out of turn at a public meeting. Officials say he interfered with the operation of a building and he breached the peace.

Saperstein is a union organizer for the Graduate Student union funded by the American Federation of Teachers. The union represents 1,400 teaching assistants in 70 departments at MSU.

He said he stood up, and was joined by Spencer Perrenoud, 24, another organizer, but Perrenoud did not speak. Both men said they are known to MSU Trustees and administration as organizers. www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-11101-arrested-development.html

High School Teachers! A Safe Way to Teach Imperialism–Red Harry  Magdoff on Imperialism in Encyclopedia Britanica  www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/126237/colonialism-Western/25898/European-expansion-since-1763

Snowden wants the Same Deal Petraeus Got Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s American legal advisers, says Kucherena’s statement echoes what they’ve been saying all along. Were Snowden to return, he would face charges under the World War I-era Espionage Act.

“Snowden would be amenable to coming back to the United States for the kind of plea bargain that Gen. [David] Petraeus received,” Radack said, reacting to news that the former general admitted to providing classified information to his mistress while he led the Central Intelligence Agency.

It’s not the first time Snowden has publicly said he wants to return to the U.S.

In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams last May, he expressed a desire to return but not to “walk into a jail cell to serve as a bad example for other people who see something happen, some violation of the Constitution and think they need to say something about it.”read more: www.politico.com/story/2015/03/edward-snowden-wants-to-return-us-115697.html#ixzz3Ta0H1gDf

Review of Lauren Coodley’s “Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual – See more at: portside.org/2015-03-03/review-lauren-coodleys-upton-sinclair-california-socialist-celebrity-intellectual#sthash.K2PL7wYO.dpuf

Goslings online at babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003492611;view=1up;seq=13

It appears LA Voters Believe Lucy Parsons was Right As of Wednesday morning, turnout was 8.6%, according to numbers from the City Clerk’s office. That number will rise as more absentee and provisional ballots are counted

Who are main Hiring Agents at San Diego State? Cops. Mercs. Spies. High tech droners. The education agenda is a War Agenda  Subject: Invitation to the Career Services Security Clearance Symposium–March 10, 2015

Looking for a position with the US government or a defense contractor? Want to know what it takes to get a security clearance? Join a panel of employers discussing the types of security clearance and what you should expect during the clearance process. Scheduled panelists include representatives from the CIA, SPAWAR, Northrop Grumman and Accenture Federal. This program is not only an opportunity to learn about the security clearance process, but also an opportunity to meet and network with representatives from these organizations. Bring your resume!

The program will be held on Tuesday, March 10, 2015, from 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM in Templo Mayor at the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union.
10:00 – 11:00– Panel of employers will discuss their security policies, and answer questions from the audience.
11:00 – 12:00– Attendees can network individually with employers. Bring your resumes as employers may be hiring!
If you are unable to attend for the entire two hours, feel free to stay as long as you can, or join us just for the networking after the panel.

This event is open to all majors. No admission charge for current SDSU students, faculty, staff and SDSU alumni. Current students, please register at Aztec Career Center.
For questions/additional information, please contact

Detroit Federation of Teachers Marches in snow Against Bullying Bosses/for smaller classes

Congrats To Penguin on Release of Bargain Marxist Classic More than 1,700 bargain copies of The Communist Manifesto have sold in the last week, in the form of an 80p edition of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s call to the working classes to revolt.  The book is part of a collection of 80 works re-published on 26 February to mark the 80 years since Allen Lane launched the first Penguin paperbacks for sixpence each, the price of a packet of cigarettes. From Marx’s call to arms to Christina Rossetti’s disturbing poem Goblin Market, and from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist classic The Yellow Wallpaper to Samuel Pepys on the Great Fire of London, each “Little Black Classic” is 64 pages long and costs 80p.  www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/04/communist-manifesto-tops-bestsellers-penguin-little-black-classics

Detroit Mayor Won’t Release Locations of Broken Fire Hydrants: City would burn down Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration has declined a Motor City Muckraker request for public records that show how many fire hydrants are broken and where they are located across the city, saying the information would be used by an arsonist “to plan and start a mass fire in those specific areas.”

The request was part of our two-month investigation that revealed Thursday that the city has neglected hundreds, if not thousands, of broken hydrants in front of occupied houses, apartment high-rises, restaurants, downtown buildings and even three fire stations.

The city claimed to it knew about only 70 broken hydrants, so we wanted to see where they were and why they haven’t been fixed. But providing a list “would assist an arsonist to plan and to start a mass fire in those specific areas,” city attorney Ellen Ha wrote in a letter denying the Freedom of Information Act request. Never mind that broken hydrants are easy to find because they are either wrapped in yellow caution tape or have a yellow “out-of-service” disc attached to the front of them.  motorcitymuckraker.com/2015/03/06/city-releasing-records-of-broken-hydrants-would-start-a-mass-fire/

UC Irvine Students seek to ban all flags  The student resolution adopted Thursday by the legislative council of the campus’ Associated Students called for removing all flags from the common lobby area of student government offices.
Written by student Matthew Guevara of the school of social ecology, the resolution stated: “The American flag has been flown in instances of colonialism and imperialism” and notes that flags “construct paradigms of conformity and sets homogenized standards.”

The resolution passed on a 6-4 vote by the student legislative council, with two abstentions.

On Saturday, UC Irvine issued a statement saying the student government vote was “misguided.”

“This misguided decision was not endorsed or supported in any way by the campus leadership  www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uci-vote-to-ban-american-flag-others-misguided-20150307-story.html

Student Suspended for handing out Forms to Opt out of Tests Adelina Silva, a student at Capshaw Middle School in Santa Fe, told KRQE that she was handing out opt-out forms that are available on the school district’s website. Silva said that she took this action because she wanted parents of her classmates to know that there was an opportunity to opt out of the testing. “My goal here was to just let the parents know that they have the option,” she said.

The online test Silva was referring to is an assessment from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, and is commonly known as the PARCC test. The assessment is described by PARCC as a way to “measure whether students are on track to be successful in college and their careers.”  benswann.com/student-suspended-handing-out-standardized-testing-opt-out-forms/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

About to quit, Michigan School Boss Notes that School reform and economic reform are related!  Mike Flanagan is less than four months from retiring, but the state’s top education official delivered a hard-hitting message Tuesday, urging action on poverty to help underprivileged students learn.

“We can talk about the progress we’ve made with 19 percent of students being college ready in all four areas, and 70 percent of students ready in three areas, but we still need to do better,” he said during the Michigan Governor’s Economic Summit and the Governor’s Education Summit. “We must be cognizant of all kids being ready.”

Flanagan, who is stepping down July 1 after 10 years as state superintendent, praised Gov. Rick Snyder’s pre-K education initiative but said intervention needs to occur even before children are born.  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/03/03/michigan-school-superintendent-poverty-learning/24324037/

Michigan pays $4.9 Million to Use Capital’s Common Corpse  Michigan is paying $4.9 million this school year to continue its membership in a group developing standardized tests aligned with national Common Core education standards. A Missouri judge last week voided that state’s fees to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, calling the consortium an “unlawful interstate compact” to which Congress never consented.

It is not known if the Michigan Education Department will keep paying the fee in the next academic year. Spokesman Bill DiSessa told The Associated Press that the fee allows Michigan to include Smarter Balanced test items in new M-STEP exams this spring that are replacing the 44-year-old MEAP tests. The M-STEP is a stopgap after lawmakers rejected plans to administer the Smarter Balanced tests to roughly 800,000 students in grades 3-8 and 11th.r ead more at: www.monroenews.com/news/2015/mar/02/michigan-pays-49m-for-membership-in-common-core/

York on Strike, classes Suspended  In an unlikely twist of labour fate, Canada’s two largest universities are hit by strikes at the same time, throwing more than 100,000 undergraduates across the GTA into turmoil in the final stretch of the academic year.

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Whatever happens, we have got

Maxim Guns, and They have Not.
(Belloc)

above, Archangel Michael, Patron Saint of the 82nd Airborne, still.

Greenwald on the US in Syria and Ukraine—replays  It’s easy to forget that just two years ago, President Obama was determined to bomb Syria and remove the Assad regime, and U.S. establishment institutions were working to lay the groundwork for that campaign. NPR began dutifully publishing reports from anonymous U.S. officials that Syria had stockpiled large amounts of chemical weapons; the NYT was reporting that Obama was “increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down” Assad; Secretary of State John Kerry pronounced that forced removal of Assad was “a matter of national security” and “a matter of the credibility of the United States of America.”

Those opposed to the anti-Assad “regime change” bombing campaign argued that while some of the rebellion was composed of ordinary Syrians, the “rebels” the U.S. would arm and empower (i.e., the only effective anti-Assad fighters) were actually violent extremists and even terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda and worse. The people arguing that were invariably smeared as Assad apologists because this happened to be the same argument Assad was making: that the most effective fighters against him were jihadis and terrorists.

But that argument in D.C. was quickly converted from taboo into conventional wisdom the moment it was needed to justify U.S. involvement in Syria. The U.S. is now bombing Syria, of course, but rather than fighting against Assad, the Syrian dictator is (once again) America’s ally and partner. The rationale for the U.S. bombing campaign is the same one Assad long invoked: that those fighting against him are worse than he is because they are aligned with Al Qeada and ISIS (even though the U.S. funded and armed those factions for years and their closest allies in the region continue to do so).

A similar dynamic is at play in Russia and Ukraine. Yesterday, Obama’s top national security official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, told a Senate Committee “that he supports arming Ukrainian forces against Russian-backed separatists,” as the Washington Post put it. The U.S. has already provided “non-lethal” aid to Ukrainian forces, and Obama has said he is now considering arming them. Who, exactly, would that empower?  firstlook.org/theintercept/greenwald/

Who Lost the Afghan “Security” Forces” The number of Afghan security forces fell sharply during 2014, thanks partly to desertions and casualties, according to newly declassified U.S. military data released on Tuesday that could add to the debate over planned U.S. troop withdrawals.

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan hinges on the ability of Afghan forces to secure the country despite a still-resilient Taliban insurgency and increasingly limited support from the shrinking foreign forces supporting them.

President Barack Obama’s administration, which is under pressure from Kabul and Congress to slow the withdrawal, again signaled on Tuesday it was open to adjusting plans to cut U.S. forces by nearly half this year. Read more: www.businessinsider.com/r-desertions-casualties-cut-afghan-forces-sharply-in-2014-us-2015-3#ixzz3TSu9yJ1h

Who is winning in Iraq? Iran.  More openly than ever before, Iran’s powerful influence in Iraq has been on display as the counteroffensive against Islamic State militants around Tikrit has unfolded in recent days. At every point, the Iranian-backed militias have taken the lead in the fight against the Islamic State here. Senior Iranian leaders have been openly helping direct the battle, and American officials say Iran’s Revolutionary Guards forces are taking part.  www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/world/middleeast/iran-gains-influence-in-iraq-as-shiite-forces-fight-isis.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Cockburn: Isis is Proof of the Failure of the US War on “Terror”  Today al-Qaeda-type movements rule a vast area in northern and western Iraq and eastern and northern Syria, several hundred times larger than any territory ever controlled by Osama bin Laden. It is since bin Laden’s death that al-Qaeda affiliates or clones have had their greatest successes, including the capture of Raqqa in the eastern part of Syria, the only provincial capital in that country to fall to the rebels, in March 2013. In January 2014, ISIS took over Fallujah just forty miles west of Baghdad, a city famously besieged and stormed by US Marines ten years earlier. Within a few months they had also captured Mosul and Tikrit. The battle lines may continue to change, but the overall expansion of their power will be difficult to reverse. With their swift and multipronged assault across central and northern Iraq in June 2014, the ISIS militants had superseded al-Qaeda as the most powerful and effective jihadi group in the world.

These developments came as a shock to many in the West, including politicians and specialists whose view of what was happening often seemed outpaced by events. One reason for this was that it was too risky for journalists and outside observers to visit the areas where ISIS was operating, because of the extreme danger of being kidnapped or murdered. “Those who used to protect the foreign media can no longer protect themselves,” one intrepid correspondent told me, explaining why he would not be returning to rebel-held Syria.

This lack of coverage had been convenient for the US and other Western governments because it enabled them to play down the extent to which the “war on terror” had failed so catastrophically in the years since 9/11. This failure is also masked by deceptions and self-deceptions on the part of governments. Speaking at West Point on America’s role in the world on May 28, 2014, President Obama said that the main threat to the US no longer came from al-Qaeda central but from “decentralized al-Qaeda affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused on the countries where they operate.” He added that “as the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened extremist groups to come after us only increases.” This was true enough, but Obama’s solution to the danger was, as he put it, “to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists.” By June he was asking Congress for $500 million to train and equip “appropriately vetted” members of the Syrian opposition. It is here that there was a real intention to deceive, because, as Biden was to admit five months later, the Syrian military opposition is dominated by ISIS and by Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda representative, in addition to other extreme jihadi groups. In reality, there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.

An intelligence officer from a Middle Eastern country neighboring Syria told me that ISIS members “say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups … The resurgence of al-Qaeda–type groups is not a threat confined to Syria, Iraq, and their near neighbors. What is happening in these countries, combined with the growing dominance of intolerant and exclusive Wahhabite beliefs within the worldwide Sunni community, means that all 1.6 billion Muslims, almost a quarter of the world’s population, will be increasingly affected. It seems unlikely that non-Muslims, including many in the West, will be untouched by the conflict. Today’s resurgent jihadism, having shifted the political terrain in Iraq and Syria, is already having far-reaching effects on global politics, with dire consequences for us all.                www.unz.com/pcockburn/isis-is-proof-of-the-failed-war-on-terror/

Drone Pilots Bailing  The U.S. drone war across much of the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa is in crisis and not because civilians are dying or the target list for that war or the right to wage it just about anywhere on the planet are in question in Washington. Something far more basic is at stake: drone pilots are quitting in record numbers.

There are roughly 1,000 such drone pilots, known in the trade as “18Xs,” working for the U.S. Air Force today. Another 180 pilots graduate annually from a training program that takes about a year to complete at Holloman and Randolph Air Force bases in, respectively, New Mexico and Texas. As it happens, in those same 12 months, about 240 trained pilots quit and the Air Force is at a loss to explain the phenomenon. (The better-known U.S. Central Intelligence Agency drone assassination program is also flown by Air Force pilots loaned out for the covert missions.)  www.tomdispatch.com/post/175964/tomgram%3A_pratap_chatterjee%2C_is_drone_warfare_fraying_at_the_edges/

America’s Wars as Bloated Hollywood Productions  Like so many bloated Hollywood movies nowadays, America’s wars may bomb, but they always produce their own sequels.

Look at the latest news from Iraq and Afghanistan.  These wars have persisted for more than a decade, with several re-releases to include “surges” and repeats.  The latest from Iraq is preparations to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS, which promises a repeat of the level of destruction visited upon Fallujah in 2004.  In this there are echoes of Vietnam: in Mosul, we may have to destroy the city to save it.  Five Iraqi brigades, most likely supported by American airpower and some American troops on the ground (air controllers and Special Forces), are poised to strike as early as April.  Doubtless they’ll prevail, at least for the moment, as the city and its civilians pay a price so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat.  Mosul will be “liberated,” but just look what happened to Fallujah, which after the American “victory” in 2004 is now a devastated city retaken by elements of al-Qaeda in 2014.  contraryperspective.com/2015/02/22/americas-wars-as-bloated-hollywood-productions/

China to Increase Military Budget only 10% China said yesterday it would increase its military budget by “about 10 per cent” this year.

State media said it could be the lowest increase in five years, amid a slowdown in economic growth and close scrutiny from neighbouring countries.

The official figure will be released today as the national legislature starts its full meeting in Beijing, where Premier Li Keqiang is to make his annual government report.  www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1729201/china-increase-spending-military-10-cent-year-says-npc-spokeswoman

Thank Hillbillary, Susan Power +Rice Islamist militants are reported to have seized two oil fields in central Libya, as rival groups fight for control of the country. Forces guarding the Bahi and Mabruk sites retreated after running out of ammunition. It is not clear which group seized the oil fields. Libya’s internationally recognised government in Tobruk and its rivals Libya Dawn also conducted air strikes on each other’s positions.

Libya has been without an effective government since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in 2011.

Mabruk, about 310 miles (500km) east of Tripoli, is one of Libya’s biggest oil fields.  www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31719043

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAZy75RKb84

The combined net worth of the world’s billionaires has reached a new high in 2015 of $7.05 trillion, according to the latest compilation published by Forbes magazine on Monday.

There are a record 1,826 billionaires, each with an average wealth of $3.8 billion. Relative to last year, the world’s billionaires have increased their combined wealth by more than 10 percent, from $6.4 trillion in 2014, while the total number of billionaires has grown by 11 percent.

In introducing its report, Forbes noted the striking disconnect between the continued surge in the wealth of the world’s ultra-rich and the state of the world economy. “Despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro, the ranks of the world’s wealthiest defied global economic turmoil and expanded once again,” the magazine commented.  www.globalresearch.ca/wealth-of-worlds-billionaires-surges-past-7-trillion/5434717

Hillbillary Ducked FOIAs  Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013.

Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach.

“It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” said Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath who is a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.  www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

How about  them banksters? Hmm. So, what about pay? Are bankers being forced to take second jobs as Uber drivers? Hardly. Pay per employee for three of the top six banks is up from 2007, with compensation at Bank of America and Wells Fargo significantly outpacing inflation. It’s off only modestly at JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.  www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/business/dealbook/despite-changes-an-overhaul-of-wall-street-falls-short.html

Hillbillary sucks Foreign Foundation Money by the Millions Hillary Clinton’s political enemies believe they may have finally located her Achilles’ Heel.

In the days following a Washington Post report that the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments while Clinton served as secretary of state, and that a $500,000 contribution from the government of Algeria potentially violated an ethics agreement with the Obama White House, criticism of the Democratic presidential frontrunner has been pointed, especially from her would-be Republican rivals. and in the WAPO….

The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, foundation officials disclosed Wednesday.

Most of the contributions were possible because of exceptions written into the foundation’s 2008 agreement, which included limits on foreign-government donations.

The agreement, reached before Clinton’s nomination amid concerns that countries could use foundation donations to gain favor with a Clinton-led State Department, allowed governments that had previously donated money to continue making contributions at similar levels.  www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-gave-millions-to-foundation-while-clinton-was-at-state-dept/2015/02/25/31937c1e-bc3f-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html

Boss at Chrysler, bailed out by US taxpayers, owned by Italy, gets nice raise  Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne earned more than $38.06 million in 2014 when all of his bonuses and compensation are included, according to an annual report published by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Thursday.  www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2015/03/05/fiat-chrysler-ceo-compensation-marchionne/24461355/

A Sea of People Fight For Water in Sao Paulo (thank Freire’s opportunist politics) It was the first major public protest on the issue and involved people like the seamstress Maria Francisca da Conceição, 69, who walked, wearing her flip-flops, the 6300 meters that separate Largo da Batata, in Pinheiros neighborhood, and the Bandeirantes Palace in Morumbi, where is the official residence of the governor Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) is located. Maria Francisca has been a resident of an MTST occupation in Numa Pompilius, in the extreme east of the city of São Paulo, since early 2014, when she joined the homeless movement. A São Paulo native, she says she has always been afraid to end up under water, drowning (Sao Paulo is known for the heavy rains that often result in floods that stop the entire metropolis). She never imagined that she would go through the rigors of a drought.  ninja.oximity.com/article/A-sea-of-people-fighting-for-water-in-1

Detroit’s Glorious Fisher Building Foreclosed

Here’s a sentence with the power to make any Detroiter shudder: The Fisher Building is headed to auction this summer. Dwindling tenant numbers have pushed the Fisher into foreclosure, and now the 30-story Art Deco landmark faces the ultimate indignity: a stint on Auction.com.

As the anchor of New Center and one of Detroit’s most important landmarks, the stakes couldn’t be any higher. Except they are. The auction also includes the Albert Kahn Building, a smaller Art Deco building across 2nd Avenue. The two buildings add up to nearly one million square feet.        The Fisher’s symbolic value in Detroit can’t really be overstated. Opened in 1927, it’s the masterpiece of Detroit’s master architect, Albert Kahn. The dazzling lobby is rivaled only by that the Guardian Building. Because it stands alone in New Center, the Fisher’s tower sticks out of the Detroit landscape like the Washington Monument. At night, it’s visible for miles.       detroit.curbed.com/archives/2015/03/fisher-building-foreclosure-detroits-art-deco-masterpiece-heads-to-auction-this-summer.php

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Leaker Petraeus Gets Slapped Wrist for Giving Top Secret Material to Paramour David H. Petraeus, the best-known military commander of his generation, has reached a plea deal with the Justice Department and admitted providing his highly classified journals to a mistress when he was the director of the C.I.A.

Mr. Petraeus has agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, a misdemeanor. He is eligible for up to one year in prison but prosecutors will recommend two years of probation and a $40,000 fine.

The plea deal completes a spectacular fall for Mr. Petraeus, a retired four-star general who was once discussed as a possible candidate for vice president or even president. He led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the architect of a counterinsurgency strategy that at one time seemed a model for future warfare.

But the deal also ends two years of uncertainty and allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues. Even while under investigation, he has advised the White House on Iraq and terrorism issues.

The mistress, Paula Broadwell, is a former Army Reserve officer who had an affair with Mr. Petraeus in 2011, when she was interviewing him for a biography, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.”

and oh, yeah, the education agenda is a war agenda–class and empire’s wars Since leaving the C.I.A., the globe-trotting Mr. Petraeus has carved out a lucrative life for himself as a partner in Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, one of New York’s wealthiest — and most secretive — private equity firms, and also in academia as a paid public speaker. He has taught at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard.  www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/petraeus-plea-deal-over-giving-classified-data-to-lover.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

“The man got shot over a tent.”  www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lapd-shooting-20150302-story.html#navtype=outfit

www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/nyregion/attica-prison-guards-plead-guilty-in-2011-inmate-beating-case.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Attica Prison Guards Plead Guilty for Beating Prisoners but dodge jail Three guards accused in the brutal beating of an inmate at the state prison here in 2011 each pleaded guilty on Monday to a single misdemeanor charge and agreed to quit their jobs in a last-minute deal that will avert a trial but spare them any jail time.

The case was the first time that any state corrections officers had been criminally charged with a nonsexual assault of an inmate, officials said.

The plea arrangement was announced in State Supreme Court in Wyoming County just as the guards were to have gone on trial on charges of gang assault, filing false reports and evidence tampering.

Instead, the three guards, Sgt. Sean Warner, 39, and Officers Keith Swack, 39, and Matthew Rademacher, 31, pleaded guilty to official misconduct, a misdemeanor. As part of the agreement, according to Norman Effman, one of the defense lawyers, the guards agreed to resign from their jobs to avoid jail time. The agreement was accepted by Judge Michael M. Mohun after he dismissed the unusually large pool of jurors who had been summoned for the case.

Those Horndog Airmarshalls Protecting us  Federal air marshals assigned to protect commercial flights across the U.S. were furtively pulled from their assigned flights so they could meet for sexual trysts, get better routes or travel to cities they preferred, according to documents and interviews with current and former employees.

What began as an internal investigation into allegations of harassment and threats stemming from a spat between ex-lovers has expanded into a criminal inquiry focused on the Federal Air Marshal Service’s dispatch hub in Herndon, Virginia. More than 60 federal employees are under scrutiny as investigators look into whether flights considered at risk of hijacking or a terrorist attack were left without marshals on board, sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reveal.

At the center of the inquiry is Michelle D’Antonio, 48, who worked for the service for more than a decade until she was placed on administrative leave in December 2013. As a program specialist, she was responsible for coordinating delayed, missed or canceled flights and providing other logistical support, giving her access to sensitive government databases.

Instead, current and former employees say, she used her position to look up personnel files, identification photographs and flight schedules to pinpoint air marshals she was interested in meeting and possibly dating.

“She’s a ‘badge bunny’ – a woman who likes to date anybody with a badge,” said Lisa Duron, the newlywed wife of a San Diego-based air marshal, Roy B. Duron, who has acknowledged that he had a four-year affair with D’Antonio.  www.revealnews.org/article/did-air-marshals-abandon-high-risk-flights-for-sexual-trysts/?utm_source=Voice%20of%20San%20Diego%20Master%20List&utm_campaign=2092013397-RSS%20category%2Fpodcasts-products%2Fwhat-we-learned&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-2092013397-81862829&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-2092013397-81862829

Fifty Years on, Schools as Segregated as Ever–March 7th, 1965

Solidarity for Never

Labor Notes Editor thrilled he got a chance to speak to the police at the Al Shanker Inst (who cares about imperialism when the coppers pat you on the head?) Recently I was invited to speak at the Albert Shanker Institute, the think tank run by the American Federation of Teachers. I know, it kind of makes your head explode, right?

Spy versus Spy

CIA vs NSA–who shall rule the next bungled cyber war? the CIA has concluded it has been outflanked and outwitted on a critical front: digital tradecraft.

On Friday, the CIA acknowledged that it was time to move into the 21st century, saying it was creating a special division to conduct cyberespionage.

Along with crunching data to help identify and approach new spies to recruit, the CIA hopes to improve its ability to trace the “digital dust” that potential targets leave during activities such as using an ATM card, renting a car or moving through a city with a cellphone.

Rival spy agencies use those digital fingerprints to help track CIA operatives, and the agency wants to find techniques to help officers working undercover hide their tracks online.  www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-cia-cyber-espionage-20150305-story.html#page=1

Good Old FBI–Still Manufacturing Plots  The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency’s latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain ably documents, “it appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant.” One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBI’s plot: his mom had taken away his passport. Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain noted on Twitter that this case “sounds like another victory for the FBI over the mentally ill.”

In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month — after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol — these cases follow a very clear pattern:  firstlook.org/theintercept/greenwald/

The Magical Mystery Tour

According to a new Pew Research Center analysis, six-in-ten Americans (60%) say that “humans and other living things have evolved over time,” while a third (33%) reject the idea of evolution, saying that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” The share of the general public that says that humans have evolved over time is about the same as it was in 2009, when Pew Research last asked the question.

About half of those who express a belief in human evolution take the view that evolution is “due to natural processes such as natural selection” (32% of the American public overall). But many Americans believe that God or a supreme being played a role in the process of evolution. Indeed, roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.”  www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Live video–Octopus Feeding–Oregon SU  hmsc.oregonstate.edu/visitor-center/exhibits/octocam

www.youtube.com/watch?v=geaJu4JQGZw

Judge Judy, America’s Last Moral Compass, May Rule Forever  Judge Judith Sheindlin has signed on for five more televised years of sorting out rancorous rent disputes, adjudicating stranger-than-fiction dognapping cases and, as ever, zinging litigants as coming from a long line of idiots.

CBS Global Distribution, which syndicates “Judge Judy” around the world, on Monday said that the daytime program’s no-nonsense star had agreed to extend her contract through 2020, when she will be 77 years old. “Judge Judy,” currently in its 19th season, has been the highest-rated show in first-run syndication for the last five years, CBS said. It has lately been averaging roughly 10 million viewers. No terms were disclosed. Under her last contract, Judge Sheindlin earned an estimated $47 million annually.  artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/five-more-years-for-judge-judy/?module=WatchingPortal%C2%AEion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=6&version=internal&contentCollection=artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fartsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F03%2F02%2Ffive-more-years-for-judge-judy%2F&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0

So Long

Minnie Minoso  www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/sports/minnie-minoso-dies-treasured-white-sox-ballplayer.html

Below, Brian Carman….