Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

against perpetual war—time to march–again.

 

the good for the rest of you life No Blood for Oil Poster is available. Only a few left.

 

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
George Orwell

 

Congratulations on the publication of

The Little Red Schoolhouse

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Imperialist Warrior McRaven to Run U-Texas Systam On a conference call Tuesday evening, the University of Texas System Board of Regents unanimously named Admiral William H. McRaven the sole finalist to be the next chancellor of the system.

McRaven, a Navy Seal and current commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, is perhaps best known for designing and coordinating the successful operation to kill Osama bin Laden….Richard Fisher, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has also been under consideration for the chancellor post. According to one regent, former Proctor & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald, who was recently tapped to be the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, was also considered. Early on in the process, Gov. Rick Perry had reportedly pushed for Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Kyle Janek to get the job.  http://www.texastribune.org/2014/07/29/mcraven-named-sole-finalist-ut-system-chancellor/

The Obamagogue Congratulates his Idealized Commando (and loser of wars), McRaven, a name from Dickens.

Army generals say teacher preparedness tied to national security  A new report from some 450 pro-Common Core retired U.S. generals frames the preparedness of teachers as an issue of national security.

The group Mission: Readiness, which announced a new report dubbed “Too Poorly Educated to Serve” at Lipscomb University last week, says 70 percent of American youth cannot serve in the military because of either poor academic marks or being overweight.

But the organization, in its latest report, has pointed to Tennessee as a state doing the right things to change that — policies such as teacher evaluations and preparedness. It also applauded Lipscomb University’s College of Education, which the National Council on Teacher Quality recently ranked as the second best teacher prep program in the nation.

“Education reform in Tennessee is focused on increasing teacher effectiveness,” said retired Brigadier Gen. Thomas Swain. “Schools of education [like Lipscomb] are improving instruction while school districts are evaluating teachers more fairly.”

Mission: Readiness has been an ally in Tennessee staying the course with Common Core standards, having testified before the legislature last year in support of them.  http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2014/07/31/army-generals-say-teacher-preparedness-tied-national-security/13324539/

Reminder: Ross and RG–The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power The sky is, of course, falling. We are lambs among wolves. The core issue of our time is the relationship of rising color-coded social and economic inequality challenged by the potential of mass class-conscious resistance. This can now be summed up as life and death, an issue that most North Americans avoided during nearly eight years of war because, while the US supports one of the largest militaries in the world, its personnel amount to less than 1% of the population. The very real conflict also sets up a challenge often ignored: how can people become whole, that is, live reasonably meaningful intelligible lives in connection with others in the midst of a social collapse that can quickly become barbarizing?

If we are to face the crises of our day we must do what Nemesis author Chalmers Johnson claims most Americans cannot do: connect cause and effect, the whole with the parts, past-present-future–as Johnson rightly believes history is eradicated in America.

The task means connecting war with imperialism, economic collapse with capitalism, and the imperial project to designs on schools, what people know and how they come to know it. It also means connecting the solutions, that is, recognizing that fights in health care are necessarily fights in education, that the battles about immigration are also battles about wages, hours, and benefits. It means recognizing what is really afoot: class war, an international war of the rich on the poor: the social relations of capitalism. The economic restructuring through massive job  http://richgibson.com/edagenda_waragenda.html

Reminder: The Boss of the University of California System is the Former Head of “Homeland Security” , Janet Napolitano

Michigan tells Detroit PS it must craft a new plan for eliminating its deficit  Citing a $7-million spike in Detroit Public Schools’ deficit, state officials have told the district it must revise its plan for eliminating its budget shortfall.

State Superintendent Mike Flanagan recently sent a letter to DPS emergency manager Jack Martin saying the district has to submit a revised deficit-elimination plan that addresses, among other things, how a possible failure of the countywide school millage on Tuesday’s ballot would impact the district. DPS already has built a portion of the expected revenue from the millage into its budget projections for the coming school year.

The new plan and an amended budget are due Aug. 15, Flanagan said.

In mid-April, DPS submitted a plan that included a projected $120.3-million deficit for the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year. However, district officials said in June that the number would actually be about $127 million. The state couldn’t approve the plan because of the increase, Flanagan said.  http://www.freep.com/article/20140804/NEWS01/308040182/DPS-deficit-elimination-plan

Reminder: “The economic system will be embraced when, first, the perceived needs of individuals are congruent with the types of satisfaction the economic system can objectively provide. While perceived needs may be, in part, biologically determined, for the most part needs arise through the aggregate experiences of individuals in the society. Thus the social relations of production are reproduced in part through a harmony between the needs which the social system generates and the means at its disposal for satisfying these needs.

Second, the view that fundamental social change is not feasible, unoperational, and utopian is normally supported by a complex web of ideological perspectives deeply embedded in the cultural and scientific life of the community and reflected in the consciousness of its members. But fostering the “consciousness of inevitability” is not the office of the cultural system alone. There must also exist mechanisms that systematically thwart the spontaneous development of social experiences that would contradict these beliefs.

Belief in the futility of organizing for fundamental social change is further facilitated by social distinctions which fragment the conditions of life for subordinate classes. The strategy of “divide and conquer” has enabled dominant classes to maintain their power since the dawn of civilization. Once again, the splintered consciousness of a subordinate class is not the product of cultural phenomena alone, but must be reproduced through the experiences of daily life.

Consciousness develops through the individual’s direct perception of and participation in social life. Indeed, everyday experience itself often acts as an inertial stabilizing force. For instance, when the working population is effectively stratified, individual needs and self-concepts develop in a correspondingly fragmented manner. Youth of different racial, sexual, ethnic, or economic characteristics directly perceive the economic positions and prerogatives of “their kind of people.” By adjusting their aspiration accordingly, they not only reproduce stratification on the level of personal consciousness, but bring their needs into (at least partial) harmony with the fragmented conditions of economic life. Similarly, individuals tend to channel the development of their personal powers–cognitive, emotional, physical, aesthetic, and spiritual-in directions where they will have an opportunity to exercise them. Thus the alienated character of work, for example, leads people to guide their creative potentials to areas outside of economic activity: consumption, travel, sexuality, and family life. So needs and need-satisfaction again tend to fall into congruence and alienated labor is reproduced on the level of personal consciousness.  But this congruence is continually disrupted. For the satisfaction of needs gives rise to new needs. These new needs derive from the logic of personal development as well as from the evolving structure of material life, and in turn undercut the reproduction of consciousness. For this reason the reproduction of consciousness cannot be the simple unintended by-product of social experience. Rather, social relationships must be consciously organized to facilitate the reproduction of consciousness.  http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/education/bg/bg-ch-5.html

Houston teachers accused of cheating to get year’s severance  Four teachers accused in an HISD cheating scandal agreed Thursday to resignation packages that included a year’s salary, a deal described as a victory by an attorney for three of them.

A fifth Jefferson Elementary School teacher accused in the case had previously resigned to take another job and will not receive the severance payment, Houston Independent School District spokewsoman Sheleah Reed said. “This does bring a close to it,” Reed said of the agreement. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/5-teachers-accused-of-cheating-to-get-year-s-5675309.php

Sample Question for the NY Common Corpse  https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-common-core-sample-questions

“Fascist”  Pasadena City College president is leaving after rocky tenure  Mark W. Rocha will step down from his nearly $250,000-a-year job at the end of August, according to a statement from the college. The trustees soon will hire an interim president, according to the statement from spokeswoman Valerie Wardlaw….In an anonymous online survey conducted by some faculty, the majority of respondents said Rocha had done a poor job leading the school.

“Fascist approach to leadership,” one wrote. “Rocha is destroying PCC,” said another.  http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-pcc-president-20140808-story.html

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

US Trained Future ISIS Syrian rebels who would later join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.

The officials said dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq. Read more at www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/#LgbIXiTUjVEquOCa.99

Obamagogue, Who Helped Create ISIS in Syria, Promises to Bomb, but not shoot, Them For Months (read years)  Obama announced Thursday night he had authorized the U.S. military to launch targeted airstrikes if needed to protect Americans from Islamic militants in northern Iraq, threatening to revive U.S. military involvement in the country’s long sectarian war.

He also said the U.S. military had carried out airdrops of humanitarian aid to Iraqi religious minorities under siege by the extremists.

“Today America is coming to help,” he said in a late-night statement from the White House.

The announcements marked the deepest American engagement in Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew in late 2011 after nearly a decade of war.

Obama said the humanitarian airdrops were made at the request of the Iraqi government. The food and water supplies were delivered to the tens of thousands of Yazidis trapped on a mountain without food and water. The Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with ties to Zoroastrianism, fled their homes after the Islamic State group issued an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious fine, flee their homes or face death.

“The situation is nearing a humanitarian catastrophe,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said earlier. “We are gravely concerned for their health and safety.”

Obama, who has staked much of his legacy as president on ending the Iraq war, acknowledged that the prospect of a new round of U.S. military action would be a cause for concern among many Americans.

He vowed anew not to put American combat troops back on the ground in Iraq and said there was no U.S. military solution to the crisis.

“As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be drawn into fighting another war in Iraq,” Obama said.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140807/NATION/308070121#ixzz39mekQM6B

Airstrikes on ISIS Militants Have Begun, Kurds and Iraqis Say  Airstrikes on towns in northern Iraq seized by Islamist militants began late Thursday in what Kurdish and Iraqi officials called the first stage of an American-led intervention to blunt the militants’ advance and provide emergency aid to tens of thousands of refugees.

Kurdish and Iraqi officials attributed the bombing campaign to American forces. But the Pentagon firmly denied that American forces had begun a bombing campaign. Pentagon officials said it was possible that allies of the United States, either the Iraqi or Turkish militaries, had conducted the bombing.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Banner&module=span-ab-top-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

above IS controlled regions as of 8/8/14

Marine Corps Times–Why Obama’s campaign in Iraq could require 15,000 troops President Obama says it all the time – no combat troops will return to Iraq.

But many experts believe it will be extremely hard to achieve Obama’s newly expanded military mission there without more Americans on the ground.

“I think the slippery slope analogy is the right one for Iraq right now,” said Barry Posen, director of the Security Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On Thursday, Obama authorized a new open-ended operation in response to gains by the Islamic State militants in northern Iraq.

For now, the new mission relies on aircraft based outside Iraq. The U.S. will help defend the Kurdish city of Erbil from Islamic State fighters using “targeted air strikes,” Obama said. Those air strikes began Friday morning and included at least three separate bombings before noon, defense officials said.

The second mission is a commitment to protect some 40,000 Iraqi Yazidis who are trapped on a mountain surrounded by the militants. That began Thursday night with air drops of food and water for at least 8,000 people.

Military experts say tactical commanders will want more ground forces. Forward air controllers could provide more precise targeting information. U.S. advisers could support the Kurdish forces fighting the militants. And U.S. commanders may need to expand their intelligence effort on the ground.

In turn, U.S. forces might need a forward operating base with a security perimeter, more force protection and a logistical supply line. Medevac capabilities may require a helicopter detachment and a small aviation maintenance shed.  http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20140808/NEWS08/308080084/Why-Obama-s-campaign-Iraq-could-require-15-000-troops

Why Irbil? Oil. Again. US. warplanes and drones struck artillery and military vehicles of a militant Islamist group Friday in an effort to halt its advance toward this booming northern Iraqi oil center, now clogged with displaced people sheltering at churches, factories and construction sites.

The first U.S. military action in Iraq in the nearly three years since the last American combat troops left the country came just hours after it was authorized by President Obama, and appeared to reassure people in the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.

Residents described a sense of panic in recent days as fighters of the Islamic State, an offshoot of Al Qaeda that now controls large stretches of Iraq and neighboring Syria, pushed to within about 25 miles of Irbil.  …

Fighters with the Islamic State, feeding on anger among Sunnis over their treatment by the Shiite-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, took control of large pieces of northern and western Iraq in June, including Mosul, one of the largest cities in the country. They seized U.S.-supplied weaponry and vehicles as Iraqi army units disintegrated or fled. The army and Shiite militias have managed to halt the militants’ advance outside Baghdad, the capital.

The group also controls about a third of Syria.         www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-us-launched-first-airstrikes-in-iraq-20140808-story.html#page=1

Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack –Greenwald  The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

The relationship has, on at least one occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets.

The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.

President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”

Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility. firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/04/cash-weapons-surveillance/

Nothing Says “Sorry Our Drones Hit Your Wedding Party” Like $800,000 And Some Guns (see McRaven’s JSOC above)   On December 12, 2013, a drone struck and killed 12 members of a wedding party in Yemen. If the U.S., which claims the strike was clean and justified, didn’t pony up the $800,000 in cash and guns as reparations, then who did?  http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/wedding-party-drone-strikRa

A gunman believed to be an Afghan soldier opened fire Tuesday at a military academy in Kabul, killing a U.S. Army major general and wounding 14 others in one of the bloodiest fratricidal attacks of the 13-year war in Afghanistan.

The shooter, who was wearing an Afghan army uniform, wounded a German brigadier general and three Afghan officers before he was killed, officials said. Eight of the casualties were U.S. troops, senior Pentagon officials said.

Army Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55, the deputy commander responsible for training Afghan troops, was killed during what U.S. officials said was a routine site visit by coalition officers to Marshal Fahim National Defense University, an elite facility U.S. officials described as Afghanistan’s version of West Point.  http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-us-general-killed-20140805-story.html

Blue on Blue–angels The Navy has overhauled the selection process for Blue Angels pilots after a whistleblower exposed misbehavior on the elite air-show team, which included pornography and sexually-charged antics mixed with official business.

For the first time, personnel records of finalists will get in-depth scrutiny, and the chief of naval air training will have final authority over who is chosen for naval aviation’s premiere unit. Previously, only the squadron itself chose new members.

Just as the Navy is rolling out changes designed to put the Blue Angels house back in order, U-T San Diego has obtained copies of explicit comments and images that officers posted on the team’s cellphone messaging program sometime between 2011 and 2012.

The messages — which include photos of male genitalia, breasts and other nudity, homophobic slurs and sexist references — involved at least nine officers. At least three of the team’s current pilots were among the violators.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/aug/01/blue-angels-mcwherter-groupme-texts-frosch/

AWOL but on board Navy Captain  The ailing skipper of a San Diego-based Navy cruiser retreated to his cabin for several weeks in the middle of a recent deployment, leaving the crew to largely fend for itself.

A Navy investigation made public this week reveals that the Cowpens was in considerable disarray during a recent solo deployment that included a near-brush with a Chinese warship and providing disaster relief to the typhoon-rocked Philippines.

The skipper, Capt. Gregory W. Gombert, was also having an improper and “unduly familiar” relationship with the cruiser’s acting executive officer — something that caused consternation among the 330-member crew.

(Left to right) Capt. Gregory Gombert, commanding officer of USS Cowpens, Lt. Cmdr. Destiny Savage, Cowpens executive officer, Cowpens’ Command Master Chief Gabriel Keeton, and Manila American Cemetery superintendent, Master Chief Larry Adkison, at the Manila American Cemetery in this photo from March 2014.— U.S. Navy photo

The Navy removed Gombert and the ship’s command master chief, Master Chief Petty Officer Gabriel J. Keeton, from their positions on June 10. The reason given at the time was poor ship condition.

But the investigation shows that the problems on the Cowpens went deeper than equipment issues.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/aug/06/cowpens-gombert-savage-navy-jagman/

Who’s Got Johnny’s Guns? U.S. loses track of weapons shipped to Afghanistan  The Pentagon has shipped hundreds of thousands of small arms to Afghanistan over the past decade for that country’s Army, while creating an elaborate system to track their whereabouts, in hopes of keeping them out of the wrong hands.

Unfortunately, the system failed, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and for reasons that could easily have been foreseen.

The bookkeeping has been so slipshod that it’s not possible to say how many weapons are missing. At one place the auditors looked, the Afghan National Army Central Supply Depot in Kabul, the auditors looked at records for 4,388 small arms. But only 3,837 of those arms — a subset of the total there — could be located, representing an error rate of 12 percent.  http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/07/30/15178/us-loses-track-weapons-shipped-afghanistan

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Dog Suites: the master bathroom has a spa built for him and her modeled after a five-star resort, with dual showers and porcelain tile. Downstairs, there’s another spa, but this one is strictly for paws and fur.

Each floor plan for the new homes being built in Brea, in a development known as Avignon at Blackstone, includes an optional 170-square-foot “pet suite.” The suite includes a tiled washing station with leash tie-downs and a hand-held sprayer, a pet dryer, a cabinet with built-in bedding, a stackable washer/dryer combo (separate from the human laundry room), a flat-screen TV and a patio door that opens to a dog run.

The developer, Irvine-based Standard Pacific Homes, says it’s building homes with the lap dog of luxury in mind.

“It comes back to enhancing the lives of our homeowners who are pet owners,” said Danielle Tocco, a spokeswoman for Standard Pacific.

Pet-friendly residential design is gaining popularity as owners become more sensitive to their pets’ needs, said Jennifer Wolch, dean of the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley.

“Such inclusive designs range from apartment complexes with dog-washing facilities, cat-friendly interior design, dog runs, trails and parks, and entire communities oriented toward living with companion and other animals,” Wolch said.
But Michael Bianchi, managing broker for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties, said that after polling his network of 150 agents about the pet suites, he thinks Standard Pacific has taken pet-friendly offerings to a new level.

“Standard Pacific is the only builder offering it as a package,” Bianchi said. “The reality is, the amount of money people are spending on their pets is going through the roof. So why wouldn’t they?”  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pet-suites-20140808-story.html

One-third of USers have debts in Collections More than a third of the country is in trouble when it comes to paying debts on time; 35% of Americans have debt in collections, according to a study out Tuesday from the Urban Institute, which analyzed the credit files of 7 million Americans.

That means the debt is so far past due that the account has been closed and placed in collections. This typically happens after the bill hasn’t been paid for 180 days. It also means the debt has been reported to credit bureaus and can affect someone’s credit score.

The 77 million Americans with debt in collections owe an average of $5,200. That includes debt from credit card bills, child support, medical bills, utility bills, parking tickets or membership fees.

The share of delinquent households is “pretty disheartening,” says Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute. He calls the data a “powerful” reminder of the fact that many Americans are still battling for economic stability since the end of the recession.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/07/29/america-debt-loads/13152651/

The California Hour Glass Economy  The growth, though, belies a troubling imbalance. The fastest job creation has come in low-wage sectors, in which pay has declined. At the high end of the salary scale, a different dynamic has taken hold: rising pay and improving employment after rounds of consolidation.

Most distressing, middle-wage workers are losing out on both counts.

“People talk about it like an hourglass,” said Tracey Grose, vice president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “There are fewer opportunities for people in the middle.”  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-middle-class-jobs-20140808-story.html

As U.S. Speeds the Path to Deportation, Distress Fills New Family Detention Centers  After declaring the surge of Central American migrants crossing the border a humanitarian crisis, the Obama administration has shifted sharply to a strategy of deterrence, moving families to isolated facilities and placing them on a fast track for deportation to send a blunt message back home that those caught entering illegally will not be permitted to stay.

In a far corner of the New Mexico desert, in the town of Artesia, more than 600 women and children are being held in an emergency detention center that opened in late June. On Friday, officials began filling up a new center in Karnes City, Tex., for up to 532 adults and children, and they are adding beds to a center for families in Pennsylvania that now holds about 95 people.
Most of the debate over the illegal influx has centered on about 57,000 unaccompanied minors apprehended since October. But the number of minors with parents has increased even faster, nearly tripling to more than 22,000 so far this year from about 8,500 in all of 2013, according to the Pew Research Center. More than 40,000 adults and their children — an unprecedented number — were caught along the southwest border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.  Until recently, most families were released to remain in the United States while their deportation cases moved slowly through the courts. But that policy fueled rumors reaching Central America that if parents arrived with young children, they would be given permits to stay. To stop such talk, officials said, they are moving swiftly to expand family detention.www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/us/seeking-to-stop-migrants-from-risking-trip-us-speeds-the-path-to-deportation-for-families.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI9QzNVJK1s

If you seek a barbarized region, look around you: Detroit Gunman shoots at Detroit fire engine from roof of abandoned church  Firefighters didn’t call 911, saying police likely wouldn’t have responded because they are so understaffed. Mayor Mike Duggan’s office said today that police are investigating.

The shooting appeared to be random, Fire Commissioner Jonathan Jackson said. Engine 50 was featured in the critically acclaimed documentary “Burn.” This isn’t first time Detroit firefighters have been targeted.

Last summer, thieves gutted several fire stations. In December 2012, someone tossed a molotov cocktail at Engine 58′s quarters on the east side. And in September 2012, thieves stole a ladder and other equipment from a rig while it was at the scene of a fire.  http://motorcitymuckraker.com/blog/2014/03/19/gunman-shoots-at-detroit-fire-engine-from-roof-of-abandoned-church/

Hilbillary is Worse that just a dishonest opportunist cuckold  Hillary told one agent to ‘f*** off’ and another that his suit looked ‘cheap.’ Secret Service staff say guarding the former First Lady was ‘the worst form of punishment,’ author reveals in explosive new book   –Author Ronald Kessler claims agents confess that being on Hillary’s security detail is the worst duty assignment in the Secret Service
If agents driving her went over a bump, she’d swear at them
‘When she’s in front of the lights, she turns it on and when she’s not she’s a totally different person,’ says one agent
Arriving at a 4-F Club in upstate New York while campaigning, she saw cows and people in jeans. She was enraged
She asked a staffer, ‘What the f*** did we come her for? There’s no money here’
She insulted White House counsel Vince Foster and told him that he would never be more than a hick-town lawyer and wasn’t ready for the big time
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2713591/Hillary-told-one-agent-f-suit-looked-cheap-Secret-Service-agents-say-guarding-former-First-Lady-wasthe-worst-form-punishment-author-reveals-explosive-new-book.html#ixzz39SmVXSDt

TomGram–Who Rules Washington? Whatever happens with the report itself and despite the recent CIA apology, don’t expect the Senate to bring perjury charges against former CIA leaders for any lies to Congress. (It didn’t do so, after all, in the earlier case of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.) And don’t expect prosecutions of significant figures from a Justice Department that, in the Obama years, refused to prosecute even those in the CIA responsible for the deaths of prisoners.

The fact is that, for the Fourth Branch, this remains the age of impunity. Hidden in a veil of secrecy, bolstered by secret law and secret courts, surrounded by its chosen corporations and politicians, its power to define policy and act as it sees fit in the name of American safety is visibly on the rise. No matter what setbacks it experiences along the way, its urge to expand and control seems, at the moment, beyond staunching. In the context of the Senate’s torture report, the question at hand remains: Who rules Washington?  http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175876/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_who_rules_washington

Former US Allies–2 Khmer Rouge Leaders Are Convicted in Cambodia  A court on Thursday found the two most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, which brutalized Cambodia during the 1970s, guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life in prison.

The chief judge, Nil Nonn, said the court found that there had been a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia” and that the two men had been part of a “joint criminal enterprise” that bore responsibility. They were convicted of murder and extermination, among other crimes.

More than 1.7 million people died under the rule of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.
The proceedings of the tribunal, a joint effort of the Cambodian government and the United Nations, have been criticized for being extremely belated and for covering only a narrow sliver of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes. The judgments against the two men — Nuon Chea, 88, and Khieu Samphan, 83 — were the first handed down against the Khmer Rouge leadership, although a lower-ranking official, who ran a notorious prison for the regime in Phnom Penh, was convicted in 2010. Both defendants will appeal, their lawyers said…..

The verdict was broadcast live on Cambodian television and has been widely covered in the local news media. But among young people, there has been limited interest.

Some were not even aware that a verdict was being issued. Across the street from the courthouse on Thursday, a group of young garment workers from a nearby factory gathered to stare, wondering aloud what was taking place.

Nuon Chantha, 24, said she knew very little about the proceedings.

“I don’t have much time to pay attention to the hearing,” she said. “I spend most of my day working.”http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/asia/decades-after-khmer-rouges-rule-2-senior-leaders-are-convicted-in-cambodia.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHeadline&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

On the Side of Pol Pot: U.S. Supports Khmer Rouge by Jack Colhoun  For the last eleven years the United States government, in a covert operation born of cynicism and hypocrisy, has collaborated with the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. More specifically, Washington has covertly aided and abetted the Pol Potists’ guerrilla war to overthrow the Vietnamese backed government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, which replaced the Khmer Rouge regime.

The U.S. government’s secret partnership with the Khmer Rouge grew out of the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the U.S.-worried by the shift in the Southeast Asian balance of power-turned once again to geopolitical confrontation. It quickly formalized an anti-Vietnamese, anti-Soviet strategic alliance with China-an alliance whose disastrous effects have been most evident in Cambodia. For the U.S., playing the “China card” has meant sustaining the Khmer Rouge as a geopolitical counterweight capable of destabilizing the Hun Sen government in Cambodia and its Vietnamese allies.

When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia and drove the Pol Potists from power in January 1972, Washington took immediate steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a guerrilla movement.

Solidarity for Never

mulgrew-defends-common-core-punch-face-tools-article-1 AFT’s NYC  Michael Mulgrew defends Common Core: ‘You sick people need to deal with us and the children that we teach’

Teachers union honcho Michael Mulgrew unleashed a venomous screed directed at anyone who would dare threaten his beloved Common Core agenda.

“If someone takes something from me, I’m going to grab it right back out of their cold, twisted, sick hands and say it is mine! You do not take what is mine!” the head of the United Federation of Teachers shouted in a speech at a convention last month in Los Angeles.

The rant was posted Thursday to the Ed Notes Online blog.

“And I’m going to punch you in the face and push you in the dirt because this is the teachers’!” added Mulgrew.

“These are our tools and you sick people need to deal with us and the children that we teach. Thank you very much!”

The remarks came during a heated debate on a resolution regarding the American Federation of Teachers’ continued support of Common Core despite the union’s disappointment in how it was rolled out nationwide.

“I’ve heard the stories about how Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Joel Klein and a flying saucer full of Martians designed these things to brainwash us all,” said Mulgrew, mocking critics who deride Common Core as being imposed by billionaires and corporate bigwigs.

The bellicose tone spooked at least one audience member who asked to remain anonymous to avoid Mulgrew’s wrath.

“It was scary,” said the source. “People were saying that he shouldn’t be around children.”  Read more: www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/michael-mulgrew-defends-common-core-punch-face-tools-article-1.1895301#ixzz39rni7qbc

Unionites of UMWA rally for Dirty Coal The union miners, electrical workers and boilermakers attending the rally on Thursday came in 70 buses from a half-dozen states, united under this theme: Job and the U.S. economy are in grave danger if EPA’s rules are enacted.

“Our message today is not for the EPA,” said Donald Siegel, international vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, Third District. “Our message today is to the American people. It’s a simple message: pay attention.”

When the U.S. government says the EPA’s proposed rules won’t impact the economy, “They’re wrong,” he said, explaining that miners would lose their jobs and Appalachian communities would suffer.  http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2014/07/31/Coal-rally-draws-thousands-to-protest-EPA/stories/201407310292

Forbes Loves the Prezzie of the Student NEA (Tjaden) 

National Education Association Student Program Chair David Tjaden, who received his Master of Arts from the UI College of Education in 2012, has been named to the Forbes’ third annual “30 Under 30″ list in the education sector for the second year in a row.  http://www.forbes.com/pictures/lml45mkil/david-tjaden-25-student-program-chair-national-education-association/

Outgoing student chair: ‘We’re building a generation of education voters’  This year marks the last for NEA Student Program Chair David Tjaden. Starting with the 2012 election, he’s been in Washington DC and in campuses across the country with the student program’s 60,000 members, getting future educators engaged and excited about activism.

“How can we build a generation of educators who are completely clear and are completely certain about knowing the role they can play in affecting policy? That was the vision I came in with,” said Tjaden, a University of Iowa graduate. “We turn out some of the best educators in the country, and we’re active in community service. How can we add that third piece, advancing policy that supports teachers, and more importantly, supporting the students that will be in our classrooms?”

Since the 2012 election, which saw great wins for pro-public education candidates thanks in part to the youth turnout, Tjaden and his student program members have continued to advocate for important issues.  http://educationvotes.nea.org/2014/07/28/outgoing-student-chair-were-building-a-generation-of-education-voters/?utm_source=EdVotes&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Tjaden&utm_campaign=080214EdVotesEmail

NEA Wastes Millions on Bait-Switch “political action” Board Approves Funds for Campaigns

The NEA board agreed to move $10 million from the Ballot Measure Crisis Fund to NEA’s “behind the wall” campaign. The money will be used for political campaigns in the upcoming 2014 elections that are not coordinated with candidates. The campaign will be done with NEA staff. The NEA board also moved $750,000 from its contingency to the Washington Education Association to support a class size initiative effort.  http://illinoisneadirectors.org/2014/05/13/nea-board-meeting-washington-dc-may-2014/

Spy versus Spy

Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers  Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

Michael McFaul, the Ambassador the New Yorker loves, and who is also a top in the National Endowment for Democracy (CIA) which the NYer never got around to mentioning…In January, 2012, Michael McFaul, a tenured political scientist from Stanford and President Obama’s chief adviser on Russia through the first term, arrived in Moscow with his wife and two sons to begin work as the United States Ambassador. In Palo Alto and Washington, D.C., the McFauls had lived in modest houses. In Moscow they took up residence at Spaso House, a vast neoclassical mansion that was built by one of the wealthiest industrialists in imperial Russia. Spaso features a vaulted formal dining room and a chandeliered ballroom, where William C. Bullitt, the U.S. Ambassador in the thirties, used to throw parties complete with trained seals serving trays of champagne and, on one memorable occasion, a menagerie of white roosters, free-flying finches, grumpy mountain goats, and a rambunctious bear. One guest, Mikhail Bulgakov, wrote about the bash in his novel “The Master and Margarita.” Another, Karl Radek, a co-author of the 1936 Soviet constitution, got the bear drunk. The bear might have survived the decade. Radek, who fell out with Stalin, did not.

On his first night in Spaso, McFaul wearily climbed the stairs, from the stately rooms on the ground floor to the living quarters on the second, and he noticed along the way a wall filled with black-and-white photographs of his predecessors, including the “wise men” of mid-century: W. Averell Harriman, Charles (Chip) Bohlen, George F. Kennan. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/watching-eclipse

above, McFaul–patriot.

McFaul’s Stanford Bio  Biography:

Michael McFaul is the former director of CDDRL and deputy director of FSI at Stanford University. He also is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directs the Iran Democracy Project, as well as Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

He is also a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Eurasia Foundation, the Firebird Fund, Freedom House, the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX).  https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/faculty/michael-mcfaul

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mqAEslLB3M

AP: Obama Administration Program Secretly Sent Young Latin Americans To Cuba To Gin Up Rebellion  An Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail.

Beginning as early as October 2009, a project overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists.

In one case, the workers formed an HIV-prevention workshop that memos called “the perfect excuse” for the program’s political goals — a gambit that could undermine America’s efforts to improve health globally…

But their efforts were fraught with incompetence and risk, an Associated Press investigation found: Cuban authorities questioned who was bankrolling the travelers. The young workers nearly blew their mission to “identify potential social-change actors.” One said he got a paltry, 30-minute seminar on how to evade Cuban intelligence, and there appeared to be no safety net for the inexperienced workers if they were caught.

“Although there is never total certainty, trust that the authorities will not try to harm you physically, only frighten you,” read a memo obtained by the AP. “Remember that the Cuban government prefers to avoid negative media reports abroad, so a beaten foreigner is not convenient for them.”

In all, nearly a dozen Latin Americans served in the program in Cuba, for pay as low as $5.41 an hour.

The AP found USAID and its contractor, Creative Associates International, continued the program even as U.S. officials privately told their government contractors to consider suspending travel to Cuba after the arrest of contractor Alan Gross, who remains imprisoned after smuggling in sensitive technology.

“We value your safety,” one senior USAID official said in an email. “The guidance applies to ALL travelers to the island, not just American citizens,” another official said.

The revelations of the USAID program come as the White House faces questions about the once-secret “Cuban Twitter” project, known as ZunZuneo. That program, launched by USAID in 2009 and uncovered by the AP in April, established a primitive social media network under the noses of Cuban officials. USAID’s inspector general is investigating that program, which ended in September, 2012.

Officials said USAID launched “discreet” programs like ZunZuneo to increase the flow of information in a country that heavily restricts it. But the AP’s earlier investigation found ZunZuneo was political in nature and drew in subscribers unaware that the service was paid for by the U.S. government.  http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2014/08/04/usaid-program-sent-young-latin-americans-to-cuba-to-sew-dissent/

New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes The federal government has concluded there’s a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN.

Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden’s leaks.  The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration.

The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges.Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter “it seems clear at this point” that there was another.

Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity.In a February interview with CNN’s Reliable Sources, Greenwald said: “I definitely think it’s fair to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden’s courage and by the great good and virtue that it has achieved.”

He added, “I have no doubt there will be other sources inside the government who see extreme wrongdoing who are inspired by Edward Snowden.”  http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html

In Joseph Heller’s anti-war satire, “Catch 22,” the hero, Yossarian, is assigned to a censorship detail. He amuses himself by deleting all the adverbs and adjectives from soldiers’ letters, then all the articles, then everything but the articles, and so on. His job was to delete details that threatened operational security. The result was gibberish.

It seems the Central Intelligence Agency was inspired by Yossarian’s example.

The C.I.A. was given the task of censoring the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report denouncing none other than the C.I.A. for torturing prisoners, lying to its overseers in Congress about the torture, and exaggerating how much valuable information the torture provided (if any). The result was predictable and proof, if anyone still needed it, that having the subject of the report censor that report is a very bad idea.

When the White House approved the C.I.A.’s censorship (the term of art in Washington is “redaction”) and sent the report to the Hill, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, said in his usual sneering way that 85 percent of the report was intact and that half the blackouts were made to footnotes.

The issue, of course, is not merely how much is deleted, but what is deleted. On Monday, McClatchy reported that C.I.A. censors had blacked out the pseudonyms used to protect the identities of agents involved in the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. That, McClatchy said, rendered parts of the report unintelligible.

“Redactions are supposed to remove names or anything that could compromise sources and methods, not to undermine the source material so that it is impossible to understand  http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/c-i-a-hires-yossarian-to-censor-torture-report/?emc=edit_tnt_20140807&nlid=2254121&tntemail0=y

It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. 

The Magical Mystery Tour

Cheerleaders’ Bible banner suit heads to Texas Supreme Court  A group of Southeast Texas high school cheerleaders is asking the Texas Supreme Court to rule on whether banners emblazoned with Bible verses it displays at football games is protected free speech.

The Kountze Independent School District had initially banned the displays but later allowed them. However, the district retained the right to restrict the banners’ content.

A state appeals court in May ruled the cheerleaders are no longer at risk of being kept from displaying the banners because of the policy change. In a petition filed Wednesday, though, the cheerleaders’ attorneys contend the school district lacks the right to restrict the banners’ content because it’s the cheerleaders’ constitutionally protected private speech.  http://www.myfoxhouston.com/story/26217448/bible-banner-suit-heads-to-texas-supreme-court

Loser Bishop Atlanta’s Catholic archbishop has lost his bid to stop a clergy sex abuse and cover up lawsuit on a technicality. Shame on him for even trying.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory tried to get a case tossed out over the victim’s use of “Jane Doe,” rather than her actual name, in legal papers. This is a mean-spirited move designed only to help Catholic officials evade responsibility for heinous crimes. It is more befitting a cold-hearted CEO than a man who professes to be a caring shepherd.

In 2002, Gregory postured as a “reformer” when he headed the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as it enacted its first-ever nationwide church abuse policy (a policy we regarded then, and still regard now, as weak, vague and almost meaningless because it’s virtually never enforced).

The very least Catholic bishops can do is to fight victims, if they must, on the merits, not on the technicalities.

We are grateful to the appeals court for not letting Gregory get away with such a callous, self-serving maneuver.   http://www.snapnetwork.org/ga_catholic_bishop_loses_victim_wins_snap_responds

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Deeper Trick From Dick The Hughes theory of the Watergate breakin is—June 17, 1971, was four days after the New York Times began publishing the leaked “Pentagon Papers,” the classified Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Nixon worried that further leaks, including documents supposedly in a Brookings safe, would reveal his role in sabotaging negotiations that might have shortened the war. This fear caused Nixon to create the Special Investigations Unit — a.k.a. “the plumbers” — and to direct an aide to devise other proposals such as the one concerning Brookings. This aide suggested using the Internal Revenue Service against political adversaries, but added:

“The truth is we don’t have any reliable political friends at IRS. . . . We won’t be . . . in a position of effective leverage until such time as we have complete and total control of the top three slots at IRS.” Forty years later, the IRS has punished conservative groups, and evidence that might prove its criminality has been destroyed. Happy anniversary.www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-nixons-long-shadow/2014/08/06/fad8c00c-1ccb-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html

So Long

Plagiarizing Militarist Pulls out of Montana Election       Sen. John Walsh announced Thursday that he’s dropping out of the race for his Montana seat, cutting short a brief Senate career marred by accusations of plagiarism and dealing a blow to Democrats’ already-grim chances of keeping the spot.

Read more: www.politico.com/story/2014/08/john-walsh-senate-race-109823.html#ixzz39rq4WixH

Walsh, 53, is facing an investigation from the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he had obtained his master’s degree in 2007, after The New York Times reported last month that significant passages of his 14-page thesis had been lifted from other sources without proper attribution  Read more: www.politico.com/story/2014/08/john-walsh-senate-race-109823.html#ixzz39rpygPxH