Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

You are welcome to join us on FB to celebrate Mayday–remember to march! 

The Run-up to Mayday!

April 28 1965 – United States occupation of the Dominican Republic: American troops land in the Dominican Republic to “forestall establishment of a Communist dictatorship” and to evacuate U.S. Army troops.
1970 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally authorizes American combat troops to fight communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.
April 29/30 1945 Hitler Kills Himself
1945 Italy Surrenders to Allies.
1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.
1975 US Flees Vietnam   www.richgibson.com/vietnam/
1992 – Los Angeles riots

 

Artists Try to Prick Conscience of Drone Operators With Giant Portrait of Orphan in Pakistani Field  While a series of deadly bombings in Pakistan this week threatens to undermine peace talks between the government and the Taliban, a group of rights activists and artists have started a campaign to draw attention to the human cost of another sort of violence — American drone strikes aimed at militants, which have reportedly killed hundreds of civilians in recent years.
The centerpiece of the “Not a Bug Splat” campaign is a photograph of a child reportedly orphaned in one attack, which was made into an enormous poster and installed in a field in Pakistan to stare up at the pilots who operate the unmanned aerial vehicles by remote control. The project — the work of Pakistanis, Americans and the French street artist JR — takes its name from a piece of military software that generates computer models of the destruction a bombing raid might cause. When projected onto overhead images, those models are said to look something like the remains of a squashed insect on a windshield.  thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/artists-try-to-prick-the-conscience-of-drone-operators-with-giant-portrait-of-orphan-in-pakistani-field/

LA Direct Action vs Systematized Dropouts  It was a surreal scene for some, a traffic headache for others, as demonstrators set up 375 desks in neat rows Tuesday on the street in front of the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The stunt’s organizers said desks represented the roughly 375 students who dropped out of L.A. Unified schools each week during the 2011-2012 school year.
According to the California Department of Education, 8,748 L.A. Unified students dropped out during that school year. It’s a number organizers with the Communities for Los Angeles Student Success say they don’t want district officials to gloss over.
Drivers stymied by the demonstration were clearly frustrated as traffic officers directed traffic around it. But organizers said the issue of so many students dropping out school was also frustrating.
“We’re glad the drivers are upset, because we’re upset about students dropping out,” said Elmer Roldan, education program officer with United Way of Greater Los Angeles.”The most vulnerable students should benefit from the budget.”
Elmer was referring, in part, to a push by community activists for L.A. Unified to concentrate spending on the neediest students and schools.
The demonstration outside L.A. Unified’s headquarters was the second in as many days. On Monday, a citywide coalition of community groups and civil rights leaders unveiled the “student need index.” Taking into account test scores, dropout rates, gun violence, asthma rates and eight other factors that affect learning, the index indicates that the neediest schools are concentrated in southern and eastern Los Angeles as well as in Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley.  www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-desks-lausd-dropout-protest-20140408,0,4169072.story#ixzz2yL6QGJSo

Sun photo by Rick Flores “No cuts! No fees! Education should be free!”Voices of thousands of community college students thundered throughout the streets of Sacramento as they marched on the State Capitol to advocate for affordable higher education. Local Assembly Members Lorena Gonzalez, Marty Block and Ben Hueso heard the message.  www.theswcsun.com/students-march-for-access/

Ohanian: The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announced today grants to Smarter Balanced and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) totaling more than $1.6 million. These grants will fund a partnership between the two multi-state assessment consortia and the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), to further engage educators in the development of next-generation assessment systems. . . . These aren’t just tests; they are next-generation assessment systems.
And here’s more about this new partnership:
These grants fund the first formal partnerships between the two common assessment consortia and the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which together represent the majority of the U.S. teaching workforce. (emphasis added)
Note the terminology: US teaching workforce.
The unions already received Common Core millions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Now they have their hands out to Helmsley. Note: For good reason, Leona Helmsley was known as the Queen of Mean.
But to the unions, money is money and now we will watch for local “teacher ambassadors” pushing the tests in turnkey training
Teacher Ambassadors will provide turnkey training related to the new assessments to 1250 teachers across the Smarter Balanced states and assist in the development of exemplar lessons and professional learning modules that will meet the Quality Criteria for the Smarter Balanced Digital Library.
Smarter Balanced gets $785,000 to send out these drones (whoops! teacher workforce ambassadors to spread the message.  Randi Weingarten declares this “an important opportunity to bring teacher voice and expertise to the development and rollout of the assessments, which should serve to inform teachers and families and enhance instruction.”
Similarly, Dennis Van Roekel applauds the Helmsley Charitable Trust for “recognizing the importance of engaging educators and their unions in the development of the next-generation assessments.”  jonathanpelto.com/2014/04/06/susan-ohanian-21st-century-drones-destroyers-teachers/

 Petition to halt the Eradication of the Online Marx/Engels Archive   www.change.org/petitions/lawrence-wishart-no-copyright-for-marx-engels-collected-works

Monthly Review On Piketty’s Capital 21  Piketty talks to a specific audience. Perhaps he hopes enough capitalists will be far-sighted and realize that open oligarchy may stimulate mass rebellion. He thinks there are good people like himself who care about democracy and understand that it must be paired with capitalism. In U.S. terminology, he is a liberal, on its left flank. The people next to them on the political spectrum hold the same beliefs but profess socialism in one or another cloudy version. These are the social democrats.
They have had a rough time for a couple of generations. Capital, weakened by fundamental problems in its economy, became heavy-handed in a drive to raise the rate of exploitation. It dumped the old generation of social democrats whom it had coddled, the admirers of Walter Reuther, Michael Harrington, and Tom Hayden. A section of progressives are excited about Capital 21 because it might help revive social democracy.
For the rest of us, Capital 21 provides solid data about the very rich. Piketty’s work is a demonstration of the adage: follow the money. Good advice. But when you need deep understanding of society, follow the labor.  mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/andrews220314.html

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Joining Liberals and the Vacillating Reactionary Ravitch–In Testimony, Arne Duncan Continues to Distance Himself From Common Core  “I’m just a big proponent of high standards. Whether they’re common or not is secondary,” he told members of the House appropriations subcommittee that works on health, education, and other related issues.  blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2014/04/in_a_hearing_before_a.html

Driven by Capital, UC System Seeks More $   California high school seniors faced a tougher time winning a freshman spot at most of the UC campuses for the fall, with their chances at UCLA and UC Berkeley now fewer than one in five, according to a report released Friday.
Six of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses accepted a smaller number of California students than last year even though the number of applicants rose. Competition was fiercest at UCLA, where only 16.3% of state students were admitted, down from 17.4% last year, and at UC Berkeley, where 18.8% were accepted, compared with 21.4% last year.
Increased competition is part of a national trend this year at the most elite level of higher education. Even though the population of American high school graduates dropped a bit, students are applying to more colleges, and schools are recruiting more overseas, especially in Asia. In the most extreme example, Stanford University accepted only 5% of applicants; many other highly selective campuses reported record low rates.
In a controversial move, UC substantially increased the number of students from outside California who were offered admission to at least one campus. Those admitted from other states rose 8.9% from last year, to 12,840, and those from other countries were up 17.6%, to 12,905, according to the new statistics.
UC has been trying to enroll more non-Californians for the extra $23,000 a year those students pay in addition to regular UC tuition. Officials said they expect that 13% of all undergraduates will be from outside California in the fall, up from 12% this year and just 5% four years ago.  www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-uc-admit-20140419,0,3471945.story#ixzz2zIwq1B4Z

UCSD is selling our seats to the rich  Trustee Humberto Peraza’s off-the-cuff remark is the most concise description of the higher education holocaust that has played out at UCSD for a decade. UCSD flat out does not want Southwestern College students. We do not bring in as much cash as foreign students. Guilty as charged.
When indignant UCSD administrators throw their arms in the air and accuse the citizens of the South Bay of “throwing rocks,” consider the evidence. For 10 consecutive years the number of South Bay students admitted to UCSD has declined. Last year UCSD took 44 percent fewer SWC students than the year before. UCSD ended its Transfer Admission Guarantee and South Bay students are as rare at UCSD as snowmen in Kuwait.
UCSD administrators have methodically executed a strategy to eliminate local students from their own region’s UC. UCSD has all but sealed shut the doors for first-generation college scholars from working class families, most of them under-represented minorities. No one here is accusing UCSD of intentional racism, but discrimination does not always burn crosses and wear hoods.
UCSD likes to boast of a diverse student body with 68 percent of undergraduate categories as “students of color.” A closer look, however, tells a much different story. UCSD has the lowest levels of under-represented students in the UC system, even though it serves the county with the most. Most of UCSD’s students of color come from other countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China) and more affluent parts of America, and they pay much higher fees than local students of color (and rent pricey student housing).
UCSD’s enrollment of Latino students is 14.7 percent, the lowest in California. The statewide average is 22.5 percent. This is shameful considering San Diego County is one-third Latino.
African-Americans are 2.7 percent of the UCSD student body, also the lowest in California. UCSD ranks second to last in American Indian enrollment with 0.6 percent. San Diego County, however, has more American Indian reservations than any other in the U.S.
Surprise! UCSD has the highest percentage of profitable international transfer students with 19.5 percent. The state average is 11.5 percent.  www.theswcsun.com/ucsd-is-selling-our-seats-to-the-rich/

Another Capitalist College Boss Convicted Southwestern College EOPS Director Arlie Ricasa officially avoided a prison term this week when Judge Ana España sentenced her to 33 months of probation, a $4,589 fine and 80 hours of community service. Ricasa originally faced 33 criminal charges, including 16 felonies in the South Bay Corruption Case.  …In her plea, Ricasa admitted to taking $2,099 in illegal gifts, although the District Attorney’s Affidavit for Search Warrant stated Ricasa had taken in excess of $36,000. Deputy District Attorney Leon Schorr said Ricasa was not entitled to receive the large gifts she received from vendors, which exceeded the maximum of $420 legally allowed.  www.theswcsun.com/ricasa-sentenced/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

above, thanks to Leslie Dwyer at www.design4peace.com/

Like His Lying Finger Waggling Predecessor, John Kerry Just Gave Russia  “Final Warning” 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry provided Russia with a stern warning Thursday evening: Start complying with the de-escalation agreement brokered last week in Geneva, or face the wrath of new U.S. sanctions.
Read more: www.businessinsider.com/john-kerry-statement-ukraine-russia-putin-2014-4#ixzz303umWNUq

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiIP_KDQmXs

WaPo After the Wars Survey (extensive–this is a small part)  The 2.6 million Americans who volunteered to fight on IED-laden battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home with a panoply of problems borne out of their service. Consider the following from a newly released Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey:
18 percent were seriously injured while performing their duties.
34 percent say they have a service-connected disability.
52 percent say their physical or mental health is worse than it was before the wars.
41 percent report experiencing outbursts of anger, at least sometimes.
51 percent know a service member who has attempted or committed suicide.  The breadth of difficulties reported by veterans is wider than traditional metrics of casualties and injuries, and those tapping the most acute injuries. A 2008 Rand Corp. study sponsored by the military estimated that 31 percent were suffering from post-traumatic stress, major depression or a traumatic brain injury.
The Post-Kaiser poll also finds the aftershocks are hobbling veterans’ efforts to get back to normal. Half of those who left the military say their transition was difficult, while half say it was easy. The complaints range the gamut from jobs to culture shock to seeking benefits from a Department of Veterans Affairs backlogged with requests. Rather than separate, four in 10 remained in the military, either on active duty or in the Reserves or the National Guard.
Despite the serious war scars, virtually all veterans associated with the wars say they would do it again, knowing what they know now. That includes active military members, Reservists, those who are detached and those who were seriously wounded in combat.  www.washingtonpost.com/WaPonews/post-nation/wp/2014/03/31/iraq-and-afghanistan-the-physical-and-mental-toll-by-the-numbers/

BBC on the NY Times Faked “Russian Ops in the Ukraine” photos  Photos released by the Ukrainian government as “proof” of Russian soldiers on the ground in Donetsk leave many questions to be answered.
With thousands of Russian soldiers massed on Ukraine’s frontiers, any evidence that they are actually over the border, as was the case in Crimea in March, is being taken very seriously.  The low-quality, annotated images were handed to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on 16 April, as evidence that Russian “sabotage-reconnaissance groups” had been working with separatists in the Donetsk towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
According to a New York Times article, the photos and their descriptions were “endorsed by the Obama administration”. Distributing the images, the US state department said they confirmed the “connection between Russia and some of the armed militants in eastern Ukraine”.
However, the BBC has been unable to verify the pictures and there was no immediate response from the Russian government.
How damning are they?
The Ukrainian press release says the photos show the same heavily bearded gunman taking part in militant operations in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk this year, and in an operation in Georgia in 2008, when Russia fought a brief war with that former Soviet republic.
This would be damning evidence indeed but in the 2014 photos, the man’s greying beard appears to be black while in Georgia six years ago, the slimmer-looking man shown has a reddish beard. The Ukrainian government highlights a Russian special forces badge on the sleeve of the gunman in Georgia but such badges can be bought on the internet for less than $5 (£2.90).
Another set of photos purports to show the same masked gunman in both Crimea earlier and in the Donetsk region this month. However, while a similar combat uniform is worn in both photos, the masks are different, as is the way the pistol is worn on his belt.
Apart from the photo said to have been taken in Georgia, all of the images seem to be recent and there is nothing to suggest any of them were taken outside Ukraine.     www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27104904

Why suicide rate among veterans may be more than 22 a day  – Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. That’s a suicide every 65 minutes. As shocking as the number is, it may actually be higher.
The figure, released by the Department of Veterans Affairs in February, is based on the agency’s own data and numbers reported by 21 states from 1999 through 2011. Those states represent about 40% of the U.S. population. The other states, including the two largest (California and Texas) and the fifth-largest (Illinois), did not make data available.
Who wasn’t counted?
People like Levi Derby, who hanged himself in his grandfather’s garage in Illinois on April 5, 2007. He was haunted, says his mother, Judy Casper, by an Afghan child’s death. He had handed the girl a bottle of water, and when she came forward to take it, she stepped on a land mine.
When Derby returned home, he locked himself in a motel room for days. Casper saw a vacant stare in her son’s eyes. A while later, Derby was called up for a tour of Iraq. He didn’t want to kill again. He went AWOL and finally agreed to an “other than honorable” discharge.  Derby was not in the VA system, and Illinois did not send in data on veteran suicides to the VA.
Experts have no doubt that people are being missed in the national counting of veteran suicides. Luana Ritch, the veterans and military families coordinator in Nevada, helped publish an extensive report on that state’s veteran suicides.  www.cnn.com/2013/09/21/us/22-veteran-suicides-a-day/

VA’s response to congressional inquiries about patient deaths called ‘ridiculous’  A House of Representatives committee blasted the Department of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday over a lack of progress and accountability in the aftermath of at least 23 preventable veteran deaths that were the result of delays in treatment at VA medical centers across the country.
One of the centers to come under heat was the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., where six patients died as a result of not receiving care they needed, according to a VA report.
In the third full House Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing about patient safety, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the panel, along with other lawmakers, expressed frustration with the VA’s unresponsiveness to requests for information. These included the steps the department has taken to discipline those responsible, as well as how funding meant to reduce backlogs and improve care has been spent.
In a report released Monday, the VA said it has identified 76 patients in its health care system whose care warranted an “institutional disclosure,” or a formal notification that a problem with the patient’s VA care is expected to result in death or serious injury.
Of those 76 patients, 23 died, and the deaths were primarily the result of delays in gastrointestinal care, the report said. The report did not state when the patients died.
Read more here:  www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/09/223905/vas-response-to-congressional.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

From the book: The United States has the most secure geopolitical environment of any major nation, but sustains a defense budget that equals the combined budgets of the rest of the world. Cuts in the defense budget over the next five years, announced in January 2012, were extremely modest, amounting to a minuscule
1 percent real cut when factoring in inflation. The cuts in Army and Marine personnel over a five-year period ending in 2017 will leave these services larger than they were in 2005. The mere lowering of recruitment quotas and the retirement of officers and noncommissioned officers will cover the modest reduction of the 92,000 troops.
Those who criticize even these modest reductions fail to recognize that, over the past two decades, the Cold War has ended and the greatest strategic threat to the United States-the Soviet Union-has dissolved. Nevertheless, we barricade ourselves behind a national missile defense, fight wars in which no vital national security interests are at stake, and post hundreds of thousands of troops overseas. U.S. nuclear forces, which have no utilitarian value, remain the same, although President Obama persistently claims to support arms control and disarmament. The United States has become that militarized nation that President Dwight D. Eisenhower presciently warned against in his farewell address more than fifty years ago.
The United States lacks a strategic vision for a world without an enemy, and it continues to spend far more on defense, homeland security, and intelligence than the rest of the world combined. We are the only nation in the world that deploys its military primarily to support foreign policy rather than to defend our borders and people. U.S. corporations dominate the sales of military equipment, selling extremely sophisticated weapons to countries such as Saudi Arabia that have the hard currency to pay for them but lack the skill to use them. We have more than 700 military bases and facilities around the world; few other countries have any. We can deploy eleven aircraft carriers; among our rivals only China even plans to deploy one-and that is a revamped Ukrainian aircraft carrier, a carryover from the ancient Soviet inventory.

AFRICOM Goes to War on the Sly—U.S. Officials Talk Candidly (Just Not to Reporters) about Bases, Winning Hearts and Minds, and the “War” in Africa By Nick Turse …Here, however, is the reality as we know it today. Over the last several years, the U.S. has been building a constellation of drone bases across Africa, flying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions out of not only Niger, but also Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the island nation of the Seychelles. Meanwhile, an airbase in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, serves as the home of a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment, as well as of the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative. According to military documents, that “initiative” supports “high-risk activities” carried out by elite forces from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. U.S. Army Africa documents obtained by TomDispatch also mention the deployment to Chad of an ISR liaison team. And according to Sam Cooks, a liaison officer with the Defense Logistics Agency, the U.S. military has 29 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers. …For years, senior AFRICOM officers and spokesmen have downplayed the scope of U.S. operations on the continent, stressing that the command has only a single base and a very light footprint there. At the same time, they have limited access to journalists and refused to disclose the number and tempo of the command’s operations, as well as the locations of its deployments and of bases that go by other names. AFRICOM’S public persona remains one of humanitarian missions and benign-sounding support for local partners.

“Our core mission of assisting African states and regional organizations to strengthen their defense capabilities better enables Africans to address their security threats and reduces threats to U.S. interests,” says the command. “We concentrate our efforts on contributing to the development of capable and professional militaries that respect human rights, adhere to the rule of law, and more effectively contribute to stability in Africa.” Efforts like sniper training for proxy forces and black ops missions hardly come up. Bases are mostly ignored. The word “war” is rarely mentioned.
TomDispatch’s recent investigations have, however, revealed that the U.S. military is indeed pivoting to Africa. It now averages far more than a mission a day on the continent, conducting operations with almost every African military force, in almost every African country, while building or building up camps, compounds, and “contingency security locations.” The U.S. has taken an active role in wars from Libya to the Central African Republic, sent special ops forces into countries from Somalia to South Sudan, conducted airstrikes and abduction missions, even put boots on the ground in countries where it pledged it would not.
“We have shifted from our original intent of being a more congenial combatant command to an actual war-fighting combatant command,” AFRICOM’s Rick Cook explained to the audience of big-money defense contractors. He was unequivocal: the U.S. has been “at war” on the continent for the last two and half years. It remains to be seen when AFRICOM will pass this news on to the American public.     www.tomdispatch.com/post/175830/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom_becomes_a_%22war-fighting_combatant_command%22/

Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels  Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.
For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’  ,,,,The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false…………………Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”’  www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Droning on–“Massive and Unpredented” Strikes Prompt Retaliatory Assassinations of Four Yemeni Security Officers  An intensive bombing campaign carried out jointly by US drones and Yemeni government forces has left a reported 68 people dead in a three-day-long operation against al-Qa’ida suspects in the south of the country.
The “massive and unprecedented” operation – as one Yemeni official was quoted as describing it – marks a significant escalation in Yemen’s fight against the extremist group. As of today, officials said 65 militants were among the dead, as well as three civilians.
The US has targeted al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is based in Yemen, claiming it is the most dangerous al-Qa’ida affiliate in the world. A more likely explanation is that a drone campaign there is easy to conduct because the Yemeni government supports the attacks.
Al-Qa’ida affiliates and jihadist movements exactly similar to al-Qa’ida, such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), are much stronger in Iraq and Syria than they are in Yemen.  www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/23/blowback-from-drone-strikes-over-yemen/

Porn! Lewd Behavior! Sexual Harassment! The Navy???!!!  Navy says former Blue Angels chief allowed lewd behavior, pornography during time in Pensacola     blog.al.com/wire/2014/04/navy_says_former_blue_angels_c.html

Pervo Army Brass???!!!  Army general disciplined over mishandling of sexual-assault case in Japan  –The sexual misconduct complaints piled up on the desk of Maj. Gen. Michael T. Harrison Sr., the commander of U.S. Army forces in Japan. A colonel on his staff had been accused of having an affair with a subordinate, of drunken and inappropriate behavior with other women at a military club and lastly, of sexual assault.
But Harrison let most of the complaints slide or reacted with leniency, according to the Army. He had known the colonel for two decades and said he didn’t believe some of the allegations. In March 2013, when a Japanese woman accused the colonel of sexually assaulting her, Harrison waited months to report it to criminal investigators — a clear violation of Army rules, according to an internal investigation.     www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-general-disciplined-over-mishandling-of-sexual-assault-case-in-japan/2014/04/22/6339f268-ca2b-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Racism Blooming From Every Angle –A Driver’s Bloody Run-In With an Angry Detroit  Steve Utash had driven the same streets through this city for years on the way to his tree trimming jobs or his home in the suburbs. But one afternoon this month, along this familiar route, he found a side of Detroit he had never encountered, a Detroit where racial tension, churning just below the surface, can break into lawlessness in broad daylight. He found a side where people sometimes talk about meting out justice on their own, mostly because they say they cannot be sure when, or if, the police will show up.
As Mr. Utash drove his pickup truck on the city’s East Side, a 10-year-old boy suddenly stepped into the street, the authorities said, and Mr. Utash’s truck hit him. Mr. Utash pulled over to check on the boy, whose leg was broken and whose mouth was bleeding. Soon after, a crowd descended on Mr. Utash, 54, beating and kicking him until he lost consciousness and was left in critical condition. That Mr. Utash is white and the crowd African-American is only part of a broader, more complicated problem of crime and violence in a largely segregated metropolitan area. As church and civic leaders condemned the attack and some in the neighborhood stepped forward to identify those involved, Detroit began searching its soul to repair the damage.   www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/us/a-drivers-bloody-run-in-with-an-angry-detroit.html?hpw&rref=us&_r=3

above, Utash Family

Barbarism Rising: As Detroit rape kits sit untested, justice for victims is denied  –Nearly five years after the discovery of 11,000 abandoned rape evidence kits in a Detroit police warehouse sparked outrage, only about 2,000 of the kits have undergone DNA testing, allowing serial rapists to remain free and in some cases commit more attacks.
All the kits are finally expected to get tested this year because the state Legislature appropriated $4 million to send them to private labs.
As important as the DNA is, testing alone is only a part of the equation in getting justice for the hundreds of people who have been victimized and getting dangerous sexual predators off the streets. Testing on the kits has already produced more than 500 hits with named suspects on a national DNA database, but police and prosecutors haven’t even begun to follow up on more than 150 of those leads.  www.freep.com/article/20140421/NEWS06/304210022/old-rape-kits-not-tested-Detroit-police

`State of Black America’: Dismal and Getting Worse   The wealth gap between African-Americans and whites has expanded in recent years and is not likely to narrow without significant reductions in Black unemployment and changes in a system that favors the wealthy over poor and middle class Americans…..The report also found:
• Black median household income ($33,764) is about 60 percent of whites ($56,565), down from 62 percent before the recession.
• The poverty index for Blacks compared to whites is 29 percent — 28.1 percent of Blacks live in poverty vs. 11 percent of whites.
• Black-White unemployment equality is 50 percent or 2:1.
• When it comes to wealth, Blacks ($6,314) have only a 6 percent Equality Index when compared with whites ($110,500).
Unlike African-Americans, Hispanics saw their Equality Index with whites increase slightly, from 74.6 percent in 2013 to 75.8 percent in 2014, which was 4.6 percent higher than African-Americans.
In a chapter titled, “Policies of Exclusion Perpetuate the Racial Wealth Gap,” Thomas M. Shapiro wrote: “The dramatic and widening gap in household wealth along racial lines in the United States reflects policies and institutional practices that create different opportunities for whites and African-Americans. Personal ambition and behavioral choices are but a small part of the equation.”
Shapiro wrote, “In gross terms, the difference in median wealth between America’s white and African-American households has grown stunningly large.
The wealth gap almost tripled from 1984 to 2009, increasing from $85,000 to $236,500. The median net worth of white households in the study grew to $265,000 over the 25-year period compared with just $28,500 for the Black households.”
He said five factors account for two-thirds of the proportional increase in the racial wealth gap: number of years of home ownership, average family income, employment stability, college education and financial support and inheritance.
According to Shapiro, home ownership accounts for 27 percent of the growth in the racial wealth gap. He said reasons home equity rises dramatically faster for whites include:
• White families buy homes and start acquiring equity eight years earlier than Black families because they are more likely to receive family assistance or an inheritance for down payments.
• A larger up-front payment by white homeowners lower interest rates.
• Residential segregation places an artificial ceiling on home equity in non-white neighborhoods.
• The home ownership rate for white families is 28 percent higher than rates for Blacks.
“Hard evidence shows in stark terms that it is not just the last recession and implosion of the housing market that contributed to the widening racial wealth disparities,” Shapiro wrote. “Past policies of exclusion, such as discriminatory mortgage lending, which continues today, ensure that certain groups reap a greater share of what America has to offer while others are left out.”
No one expects the wealth gap to narrow without some reduction in unemployment.

  portside.org/2014-04-06/state-black-america-dismal-and-getting-worse

Capital’s Bulldog, Krugman: Worried About Oligarchy? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet  “It’s a real ‘eureka’ book,” says Krugman. “You suddenly say, ‘Oh, this is not—the world is not the way I saw it.’ The world in fact has moved on a long way in the last 25 years and not in a direction you’re going to like because we are seeing not only great disparities in income and wealth, but we’re seeing them get entrenched. We’re seeing them become inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagine we’re nothing like.”
The prediction embedded in Piketty’s book is that even as inequality has been on a steady rise for the last several decades, the truth is: we ain’t seen nothing yet.
As we go forward, according to Krugman, Piketty’s thesis says that even though inequality is already a huge problem, it’s going to get even worse     www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/18-8

Invade Canada! The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest  The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.
While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.
After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Losing the Lead: About the DataAPRIL 22, 2014
Losing the Lead: This simple table summarizes our story on American living standards.APRIL 22, 2014
Losing the Lead: Back Story: How We Found the Income DataAPRIL 22, 2014
Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it.  www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html

Stiglitz: Two of Eight Points on Inequality much of the inequality at the top can’t be justified as “just deserts” for the large contributions that these individuals have made. If we look at those at the top, they are not those who have made the major innovations that have transformed our economy and society; they are not the discoverers of DNA, the laser, the transistor; not the brilliant individuals who made the discoveries without which we would not have had the modern computer. Disproportionately, they are those who have excelled in rent seeking, in wealth appropriation, in figuring out how to get a larger share of the nation’s pie, rather than enhancing the size of that pie. (Such rent seeking activity typically actually results in the size of the economic pie shrinking from what it otherwise would be.) Among the most notable of these are, of course, those in the financial sector, who made their wealth by market manipulation, by engaging in abusive credit card practices, predatory lending, moving money from the bottom and middle of the income pyramid to the top. So too, a monopolist makes his money by contracting output from what it otherwise would be, not by expanding it.
Thirdly, the idea that one shouldn’t worry about inequality because everyone will benefit as money trickles down, has been thoroughly discredited.     www.nextnewdeal.net/stiglitz-why-inequality-matters-and-what-can-be-done-about-it

Hoping for Asylum, Migrants Strain U.S. Border  After six years of steep declines across the Southwest, illegal crossings have soared in South Texas while remaining low elsewhere. The Border Patrol made more than 90,700 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley in the past six months, a 69 percent increase over last year.
The migrants are no longer primarily Mexican laborers. Instead they are Central Americans, including many families with small children and youngsters without their parents, who risk a danger-filled journey across Mexico. Driven out by deepening poverty but also by rampant gang violence, increasing numbers of migrants caught here seek asylum, setting off lengthy legal procedures to determine whether they qualify.     www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/us/poverty-and-violence-push-new-wave-of-migrants-toward-us.html?hp

So Many Rich Wall Streeters in NYC, they Can’t Get a Jury to Try an OWSer  It is the most important question being asked of dozens of New Yorkers lined up as potential jurors for the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street activist accused of assaulting a police officer: what do you think of her protest movement?
Unfortunately for those keen on the swift procession of justice, a series of Manhattan residents who presented themselves at the criminal courthouse this week declared that they strongly disagreed with it – and could not promise to be impartial about one of its members.
“I’m involved in Wall Street things. I’m on the Wall Street side, not their side,” George Yih, one of a group of prospective jurors whose names were plucked from a tombola by the clerk, said under questioning from Judge Ronald Zweibel on Wednesday. “They can protest all they want, but they can’t brainwash my mind.”
Yih was removed from a shortlist for the panel that will decide if McMillan, 25, assaulted Officer Grantley Bovell by striking him with her arm at Zuccotti Park in March 2012. McMillan denies the felony charge and says that she was reacting to having one of her breasts grabbed from behind. She faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
But Yih’s remarks were only the first in a succession of criticisms against the anti-capitalist movement made throughout the day by other would-be jurors. Each said that he or she had ties to a finance industry that holds about one in nine jobs in New York City and pays more than a third of the total wages earned annually in Manhattan.
And as one after the other was rejected – either by McMillan’s attorneys, state prosecutors, or the judge – a jury selection process that the defence had hoped would be completed in one day reached the end of a second with only seven of the 12 jurors’ seats filled.
“For 20 years, my occupation has been, in some fashion, on Wall Street,” said Jason McLean, who said he was an equity trader living in Murray Hill with his wife, who was also an equity trader. “Everything I believe – my morals – are kind of the antithesis of what they represent.” He concluded: “I don’t know that I could be completely objective.”
“I like to think of myself as fair,” Alan Moore, who said his wife worked on Wall Street as a bond strategist for Credit Suisse, told the judge. “But in terms of Occupy Wall Street in general, I would give less credibility to that group than average.” Even to a witness in court? “Yeah,” said Moore. “They seem to be people moving a little outside regular social norms and regular behaviour. Therefore I don’t give them the same level of respect as people who follow the line.”
Requests by McMillan’s attorneys to exclude both McLean and Moore from the jury were granted by the judge, despite being challenged by Erin Choi and Shanda Strain, the assistant district attorneys representing New York. Even they, however, conceded that Mary Malone – an Upper East Side resident who previously worked for a bond fund and said: “I have really strong feelings about Occupy Wall Street and the people involved” – and Peter Kaled, a corporate finance worker from the Upper West Side who said that one of his friends had policed Zuccotti Park at the height of the protests, should not make the cut.  www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/trial-occupy-activist-cecily-mcmillan-jury-selection

Poor Fresno has Raisins, and Pistachios, and Meth Labs and Chop Shops and Pollution!  Fresno ranks No. 1 on California pollution list   nowhere are there more of the worst-afflicted areas than in Fresno — in particular a 3,000-person tract of the city’s west side where diesel exhaust, tainted water, pesticides and poverty conspire to make it No. 1 on California’s toxic hit list.
“I’m looking at this map, and all I see is red. We’re right here,” Daisy Perez, a social worker at the Cecil C. Hinton Community Center, said as she located the center of the red areas that represented the top 10% most-polluted census tracts in California. “It’s so sad. Good people live here.”
Pollution has long plagued the Central Valley, where agriculture, topography and poverty have thwarted efforts to clean the air and water. The maps released this week by the California Environmental Protection Agency show that eight of the state’s 10 census tracts most heavily burdened by pollution are in Fresno.
For residents of the state’s worst-scoring area, statistics tell only part of the story of what it is like to live there.
It’s a place where agriculture meets industry, crisscrossed by freeways. The city placed its dumps and meat-rendering plants there decades ago.
Historically, it was the heart of the city’s African American community. The Central Valley’s civil rights movement was centered in its churches. People referred to it as West Fresno, which meant a culture as well as a place.
These days, young community workers call it by its ZIP Code — the “93706 Zone.”
It’s home to a Latino community —
www.latimes.com/local/la-me-fresno-pollution-20140424,0,5860295.story#ixzz2zwvoP

Chicago Mag: The Truth About the murder rate in Chiraq   officers of different ranks and from different parts of the city recounted instances in which they were asked or pressured by their superiors to reclassify their incident reports or in which their reports were changed by some invisible hand. One detective refers to the “magic ink”: the power to make a case disappear. Says another: “The rank and file don’t agree with what’s going on. The powers that be are making the changes.”   www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/

Aetna: Late Obamagoguecare changes account for half of 2015 premium increases   Bertolini said about half of the company’s premium increases, whatever they turn out to be, will be attributable to “on the fly” regulatory changes made by the Obama administration. He cited as an example the administration’s policy of allowing old health plans that were supposed to expire in 2014 to be extended another three years if states and insurers wanted to.  www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/24/aetna-late-obamacare-changes-account-for-half-of-2015-premium-increases/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Too Big to Jail? Why Kidnapping, Torture, Assassination, and Perjury Are No Longer Crimes in Washington  he members of the national security state, unlike the rest of us, exist in what might be called “post-legal” America. They know that, no matter how heinous the crime, they will not be brought to justice for it. The list of potentially serious criminal acts for which no one has had to take responsibility in a court of law is long, and never tabulated in one place. Consider this, then, an initial run-down on seven of the most obvious crimes and misdemeanors of this era for which no one has been held accountable.
*Kidnapping: After 9/11, the CIA got into kidnapping in a big way. At least 136 “terror suspects” and possibly many more (including completely innocent people) were kidnapped off the streets of global cities, as well as from the backlands of the planet, often with the help of local police or intelligence agencies. Fifty-four other countries were enlisted in the enterprise. The prisoners were delivered either into the Bush administration’s secret global system of prisons, also known as “black sites,” to be detained and mistreated, or they were “rendered” directly into the hands of torturing regimes from Egypt to Uzbekistan. No American involved has been brought to court for such illegal acts (nor did the American government ever offer an apology, no less restitution to anyone it kidnapped, even those who turned out not to be “terror suspects”). One set of CIA agents was, however, indicted in Italy for a kidnapping and rendition to Egypt. Among them was the Agency’s Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady. He had achieved brief notoriety for overseeing a la dolce vita version of rendition and later fled the country for the United States. Last year, he was briefly taken into custody in Panama, only to be spirited out of that country and back to safety by the U.S. government.
*Torture (and other abuses): Similarly, it will be no news to anyone that, in their infamous “torture memos,” officials of the Bush Justice Department freed CIA interrogators to “take the gloves off” and use what were euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against offshore prisoners in the Global War on Terror. These “techniques” included “waterboarding,” once known as “the water torture,” and long accepted even in this country as a form of torture. On coming to office, President Obama rejected these practices, but refused to prosecute those who practiced them.   www.tomdispatch.com/post/175833/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_knowledge_is_crime/#more

Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret (Russ Bellant)  The element has a long history, of a long record that speaks for itself, when that record is actually known and elaborated on. The key organization in the coup that took place here recently was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], or a specific branch of it known as the Banderas [OUN-B]. They’re the group behind the Svoboda party, which got a number of key positions in the new interim regime. The OUN goes back to the 1920s, when they split off from other groups, and, especially in the 1930s began a campaign of assassinating and otherwise terrorizing people who didn’t agree with them.
As World War II approached, they made an alliance with the Nazi powers, they formed several military formations, so that when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, they had several battalions that went into the main city at the time, where their base was, Lvov, or Lwow, it has a variety of spellings [also ‘Lviv’]. They went in, and there’s a documented history of them participating in the identification and rounding up Jews in that city, and assisting in executing several thousand citizens almost immediately. There were also involved in liquidating Polish group populations in other parts of Ukraine during the war.
Without getting deeply involved in that whole history, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to this day defend their wartime role, they were backers of forming the 14th Waffen SS Division, which was the all-Ukrainian division that became an armed element on behalf of the Germans, and under overall German control. They helped encourage its formation, and after the war, right at the end of the war, it was called the First Ukrainian division and they still glorify that history of that SS division, and they have a veterans organization, that obviously doesn’t have too many of members left but they formed a veterans division of that.
If you look insignia being worn in Kiev in the street demonstrations and marches to the SS division insignia still being worn.   fpif.org/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-secret/

More Secret Jails:  A commission appointed by President Hamid Karzai to investigate detention facilities run by American and British forces in southern Afghanistan claimed Saturday to have uncovered secret prisons on two coalition bases, an allegation that could not be immediately confirmed but that was likely to further complicate relations between the Afghan government and its allies.
“We have conducted a thorough investigation and search of Kandahar Airfield and Camp Bastion and found several illegal and unlawful detention facilities run and operated by foreign military forces,” said Abdul Shakur Dadras, the panel’s chairman     www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/world/asia/afghan-panel-claims-to-find-secret-prisons.html?_r=0

Solidarity for Never

above, Nazi Puppet Quisling.  www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quisling

Rahmbo Charterizes 3 More Schools. CTU Whines only a Bit Chicago’s Board of Education listened to impassioned pleas for more funding and calls for a second chance before turning over three failing schools to a private operator, the Academy for Urban School Leadership, which conducts staff overhauls or “turnarounds.”
Gresham Elementary in the South Side’s Auburn-Gresham neighborhood, McNair Elementary in Austin on the West Side and Dvorak Math Science Technology Academy in North Lawndale will all see the ouster of their staffs — everyone from the principal to the lunchroom worker — at the end of the school year.
AUSL, which runs 29 other schools in the district, will then hire new staff for the schools and train them before reopening in the fall for the same group of students. AUSL is not a charter school, but is similar in that it is given autonomy by CPS over how to run its schools. AUSL schools hire teachers who are members of the Chicago Teachers Union.  www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-3-city-schools-handed-to-private-group-for-turnaround-20140423,0,4282951.story

Detroit Fed of Teachers Quisling bosses let another teacher get fired Dennis Cotton’s teaching career began at Thurgood Marshall Elementary in Detroit. It also ended there.
In just four years, Mr. Cotton was transferred to seven different classrooms, the average stay lasting about a semester. During his last two assignments, he was forced to teach kindergarten and art despite having no experience with either.
“They set me up for failure,” said Mr. Cotton, whose bulk of experience was teaching third through fifth grade. “Textbooks say that in order for a teacher to become competent in their abilities, one has to be in place for a minimum of two to three years. I only had a few short months.”
Mr. Cotton, whose experience is all too common at the cash-strapped school district, said he repeatedly tried to get reassigned, but his complaints fell on deaf ears, leaving underserved students with a well-intentioned, but unqualified teacher.
In the kindergarten class, for example, Mr. Cotton was assigned to a reduced-sized classroom with at-risk students. According to the Michigan Department of Education, those classes are designed to be taught by “highly qualified teachers who adjust instructional strategies to fit reduced class size.”
Mr. Cotton, who had no training to handle a specialized class for at-risk children, was given 17 students and little instruction in an old science classroom.
No matter whom Mr. Cotton asked for help – the Detroit Federation of Teachers, Principal Sharon Lee – he got nowhere. In the past, he and other struggling teachers would have had access to Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), a popular nationwide program that draws on expert teachers to assist both new and under-qualified staff.

Spy versus Spy

The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela  Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.
These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. This continues the pattern of financing from the US government to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela since 2001, when millions of dollars were given to organizations from so-called “civil society” to execute a coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. After their failure days later, USAID opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas to, together with the NED, inject more than $100 million in efforts to undermine the Chavez government and reinforce the opposition during the following 8 years.       www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/25/the-dirty-hand-of-the-national-endowment-for-democracy-in-venezuela/

Members of the Albert Shanker Institute  www.shankerinstitute.org/about/board/

The Shanker Institute Call For Common Content  We, the undersigned, representing viewpoints from across the political and educational spectrum, believe that whether children live in Mississippi or Minnesota, Berkeley or the Bronx, our expectations for their achievement should be equally high.
We therefore applaud the goals of the recently released Common Core State Standards, already adopted in most states, which articulate a much clearer vision of what students should learn and be able to do as they progress through school. For our nation, this represents a major advance toward declaring that “equal educational opportunity” is a top priority — not empty rhetoric.   www.shankerinstitute.org/curriculum/

Snowden to Receive Truth-Telling Prize  The Ridenhour prize for truth-telling will be given to Edward J. Snowden and Laura Poitras, the filmmaker and journalist who helped Mr. Snowden disclose his trove of documents on government surveillance.
The award, named for the Vietnam veteran who helped expose the My Lai massacre and later became an investigative journalist, is expected to be announced on Monday morning. It’s the latest honor for the reporting based on the top-secret material leaked by Mr. Snowden, who was a contractor for the National Security Agency.
While the public and Congress debate whether Mr. Snowden should be considered a hero, a criminal or both, journalism and public policy organizations have heaped praise on the reporting based on the disclosures.
In February, the Polk Award for National Security Reporting was given to four reporters for their work on the Snowden disclosures, Ms. Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, writing in The Guardian, and Barton Gellman, writing in The Washington Post. Last week, The Guardian was named newspaper of the year at the British Press Awards for its reporting on the surveillance. The Pulitzer Prizes will be announced on April 14.  www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/business/media/snowden-to-receive-truth-telling-prize.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Cheesus Christ, the grater story ever told much more here dangerousminds.net/comments/cheesus_christ_the_grater_story_ever_told

Beware of God–John Paul II crucifix crushes man in northern Italy  A 21-year old man has died after being crushed by a crucifix erected in honour of Pope John Paul II in northern Italy.
Marco Gusmini was killed instantly and one other man taken to hospital, Italian media reported.
Part of the 30m-high (100ft) sculpture collapsed at a ceremony ahead of the Pope’s canonisation. John Paul II and his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, are due to be declared saints on Sunday.  www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27145931

Priest, administrator indicted, accused of $700K theft from Troy parish Detroit — A Catholic priest and a parish administrator were indicted and accused of stealing almost $700,000 from St. Thomas More Church in Troy and blowing the cash on a condominium and other expenses.
The five-count indictment, unsealed Wednesday, charged the Rev. Edward Belczak, 69, of Troy and Janice Verschuren, 67, of Bloomfield Hills with stealing the money from the church and Archdiocese of Detroit between 2004 and 2012.
The stolen money allegedly included most of a $350,000 gift to the church from the family of a dead parishioner and cash donated by churchgoers during special Mother’s Day and Father’s Day collections, prosecutors alleged.
The duo tried to hide the alleged crime by creating false documents and submitting them to the Archdiocese, prosecutors allege. The documents under-reported the amount of the parish’s operating receipts.
From The Detroit News:  www.detroitnews.com/article/20140423/METRO02/304230061#ixzz2zwxzvrec

Rapist Herders Beatified by AntiChrist! Little can be done by Catholic officials to erase the pain of hundreds of thousands of deeply wounded men, women and children who have been sexually assaulted by clergy. But the church hierarchy CAN avoid rubbing more salt into these wounds by slowing down their hasty drive to confer sainthood on the pontiff under whose reign most of the countless, widely-documented clergy sex crimes and cover ups took place.
In more than 25 years as the most powerful religious figure on the planet, John Paul II did almost nothing to safeguard kids across the world. He repeatedly and effectively brought his unparalleled global influence to bear on other crucial issues but ignored or promoted stunningly complicit church officials. Church officials can’t have it both ways. They can’t claim to want victims to heal, while paying massive tribute to a man whom evidence shows turned a blind eye for decades to child sex crimes and elevated corrupt clerics like Cardinal Bernard Law.  www.snapnetwork.org/snap_statements/2011_statements/042911_snap_blasts_beatification_of_pope_john_paul_ii.htm

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Rivera’s Detroit Industry (Rouge Plant) Murals Made National Historic Landmarks  The beleaguered Detroit Institute of Arts’ most widely recognized piece of artwork is now a national landmark.
Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals are among four new national historic landmarks announced Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. The announcement was made as part of National Park Week.
From The Detroit News:  www.detroitnews.com/article/20140423/METRO01/304230097#ixzz2zwQraRvR

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Is About Obama’s Terror-Suspect Kill List, Say the Film’s Directors  “[Marvel] said they wanted to make a political thriller,” Joe Russo, who directed the film with his brother Anthony, tells Mother Jones. “So we said if you want to make a political thriller, all the great political thrillers have very current issues in them that reflect the anxiety of the audience…That gives it an immediacy, it makes it relevant. So [Anthony] and I just looked at the issues that were causing anxiety for us, because we read a lot and are politically inclined. And a lot of that stuff had to do with civil liberties issues, drone strikes, the president’s kill list, preemptive technology”—all themes they worked into the film, working closely with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.     www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2014/04/captain-america-winter-soldier-obama-kill-list-politics-drones-nsa

So Long
Edwin F. Kagin Dies at 73; Battled Religious Displays   His lawsuits challenged references to “almighty God” in Kentucky state legislation, the placement of 12-foot-high crosses on highways in Utah, and plans to include a 17-foot-tall steel-beam remnant of the World Trade Center, in the shape of a cross, in the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which is scheduled to formally open in New York next month.
In 1995, Mr. Kagin and his wife, Helen, founded a summer camp, Camp Quest, in Ohio, that has since become the model for a dozen others operating in the United States, Britain and Norway for the children of atheists, agnostics and others opposed to the religious overtones of many camp programs.  www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/politics/edwin-kagin-atheist-who-battled-religion-in-public-sphere-dies-at-73.html

Brecht Forum For 39 years the Brecht Forum has provided a vital space for Marxist popular education and movement building. Earlier today Brecht’s Board of Directors sent out an email entitled “An Ending Is Also a Beginning” announcing that the organization will soon be closing its doors. The closing was brought on by several factors — a difficult economic climate, soaring rents and the debts Brecht incurred at its former home in the West Village which it left for Brooklyn last fall. Brecht’s Board of Directors will hold a public meeting at the Brooklyn Commons on Wednesday April 16 at 7:30. For more, here’s the full statement released by the Board: – See more at:   indypendent.org/2014/04/12/brecht-forum-close-after-39-years#sthash.x0swSyQE.dpuf