Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Mexican peasant organizations have warned of a year of protests unless the federal government fulfills its promise to end the disastrous effects generated by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The organizations gave the warning in a review published in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada on Saturday.
All social and peasant organizations across the country were called on to join a national movement to demand President Enrico Pena Nieto to resolve rural problems, including abandonment, poverty, insecurity and migration.www.presstv.com/detail/2014/01/05/343799/mexico-farmers-warn-of-year-of-protests/

photo by D. Bacon–Mexicans Resist NAFTA

The organizers of the Sonoma State University Freedom from Fees Coalition are please to announce a decisive victory today. After receiving 1,265 e-mails from students, faculty, alumni, and their families & friends the President of Sonoma State University withdrew his plans to impose a $500 fee on all students.
In an e-mail statement to the campus President Armiñana, stated “We have also been receiving very detailed feedback from the Associated Student meetings. We hear the concern raised by students about the extra financial burden of this fee. We have decided, therefore, not to pursue the academic success fee at this time.”
Thank you everyone who pledge to never donate to SSU if the fee was implemented. This a solid win for low-income working class students. We are proud of our victory and encouraged that other campuses may think twice before trying to raise fees on students.

 

 

CA: Alpine teachers strike after union-district negotiations fail   Nearly 100 teachers from the Alpine Union School District hit the picket lines Thursday after salary negotiations failed.
The district, which has an operating budget of about $14.7 million, proposed a 6.58 percent salary cut for the current school year while the union proposed a 4.58 percent cut.
Members of the Alpine Teachers Association gave their board permission to strike after their salaries were already cut by 7.58 percent. The strike comes after 16 months of negotiations failed.  http://www.10news.com/news/alpine-teachers-strike-after-union-district-negotiations-fail-022014

Why the UIC Strike Matters In a city divided by wealth, our educational institutions reflect an organized hierarchy that is segregated, like our neighborhoods, into haves and have-nots. It is often easy to point out disparities in our K-12 system and to talk about equalizing funding and minimizing property tax inequalities. Few however, pay much attention to the inequalities of higher education in our city. Higher education in Chicago is also a tale of two cities. Within our metropolitan region, we have some of the most prestigious and competitive research universities in the world, alongside top-tier regional public and private colleges. Increasingly however, these institutions serve and cater to those who are able to pay $30,000 to 50,000 a year for tuition, fees, room and board. Even with scholarships and financial aid, many of these colleges and universities are outside the reach of everyday Chicagoans.  http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/25671948-452/a-tale-of-two-cities-why-the-uic-faculty-strike-matters.html

Song Embedded: The Mighty UIC Strike adjunctcrisis.com/2014/02/20/mighty-mighty-uic-strike/

UMich Students Fight Racist Enrollment  University of Michigan students plan to hold an all-night protest over what they say is low minority enrollment and inclusion on campus.
The 12-hour “Speak Out” event is scheduled to begin Tuesday night and run through Wednesday morning. It’s being hosted by the United Coalition for Racial Justice, a group comprised of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140218/SCHOOLS/302180048#ixzz2tjzMHFAK

Time to Prep Lessons on the Ludlow Massacre of April 1914  New York Times’ account of the massacre — April 21, 1914—The Ludlow camp is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror imparalleled [sic] in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes which had been dug for their protection against the rifles’ fire the women and children died like trapped rats when the flames swept over them. One pit, uncovered [the day after the massacre] disclosed the bodies of 10 children and two women.//// Socialist writer Upton Sinclair’s open letter to Rockefeller — April 28, 1914–I intend to indict you for murder before the people of this country. The charges will be pressed, and I think the verdict will be “Guilty.”http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/rockefellers-ludlow/

Mother Jones: “Sit Down and Read. Educate Yourselves for the Coming Conflict.” motherjonesmuseum.org/Bibliography.htm

Happy Birthday (1848):

Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems….The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.  …It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.  http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm

Conference Notice: CAPITALIST MARKETS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)
Capitalist Markets in Higher Education: Utopias or Possibilities
Date – Wednesday, 16 April 2014: 14.00-16.00
Venue – University of Bath, Bath, UK
Network – South West Regional Network  http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/capitalist-markets-in-higher-education/

French Author Summary: Marx was right  Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” described by one French newspaper as a “a political and theoretical bulldozer,” defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism.
Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, does not stop there. He contends that capitalism’s inherent dynamic propels powerful forces that threaten democratic societies.
Capitalism, according to Piketty, confronts both modern and modernizing countries with a dilemma: entrepreneurs become increasingly dominant over those who own only their own labor. In Piketty’s view, while emerging economies can defeat this logic in the near term, in the long run, “when pay setters set their own pay, there’s no limit,” unless “confiscatory tax rates” are imposed.
Piketty’s book — published four months ago in France and due out in English this March — suggests that traditional liberal government policies on spending, taxation and regulation will fail to diminish inequality. Piketty has also delivered and posted a series of lectures in French and English outlining his argument.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/opinion/capitalism-vs-democracy.html?_r=2

 Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the labourer. (Marx)

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Will School Workers Sop up the Pentagon’s History of the US’ Wars on Vietnam?  In 2012, the Pentagon kicked off a 13-year program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, complete with a sprawling website that includes a “history and education” component. Billed as a “public service” provided by the Department of Defense, the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration site boasts of its “resources for teachers and students in the grades 7-12” and includes a selection of official government documents, all of them produced from 1943-1954; that is, only during the earliest stages of modern U.S. involvement in what was then called Indochina.
The Vietnam War Commemoration’s educational aspirations, however, extend beyond students. “The goal of the History and Education effort,” according to the site, “is to provide the American public with historically accurate materials and interactive experiences that will help Americans better understand and appreciate the service of our Vietnam War veterans and the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.” To that end, the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration offers an interactive historical timeline.

above, a faked narrative of Nixon’s truly secret bombing of Cambodia. 

…Take the August 2, 1964, “Gulf of Tonkin Incident.” It was a key moment of American escalation and, by the looks of the Pentagon’s historical timeline, just what President Lyndon Johnson made it out to be when he went on television to inform the American people of “open aggression” on the part of North Vietnam. “The USS Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin,” reads the entry. A later one mentions “U.S. Naval Vessels being fired upon by North Vietnamese on two separate occassions [sic].” Case closed. Or is it?  The official story, the one that kicked off a cycle of U.S. military escalations that led to millions of casualties in Indochina, went like this: the USS Maddox, a destroyer, was innocently sailing through the Gulf of Tonkin when it was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on August 2, 1964. President Lyndon Johnson, showing great restraint, refused to respond militarily. Two nights later, the North Vietnamese attacked again, targeting the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy and prompting the president to take to the airways to announce that “renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply.” Johnson sought and Congress quickly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — giving the president carte blanche to repeatedly intensify the war in the years to come.
But as it turned out, there was nothing innocent about those U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin (as the President had implied). A claim of two separate attacks on U.S. Navy ships turned out to be untrue and the congressional resolution had not been drafted in the wake of the supposed attacks, but had been written months before, in anticipation of an opportune incident. In addition, the single attack by those torpedo boats occurred in the wake of a maritime raid on the North Vietnamese coast — part of a covert program of attacks that Johnson had approved months earlier. After reviewing the history of the incident, it seemed to me that the timeline was on distinctly shaky ground, but I decided to get a second opinion and went to the man who wrote the book on the subject, Edwin Moïse, author of Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. He did me not one, but two better. He also pointed out apparent errors in the July 11, 1964, entry, “Joint Chiefs of Staff Unveiled ‘94 Target List,’” and criticized the August 4, 1964, entry, which offers nothing more than a title: “Two U.S. Aircraft Downed.”
“I think this is simply false,” he told me by email. “I am not aware of any U.S. aircraft downed that day and I think I would know.” These planes, he suspected, were actually lost the following day while flying missions “in retaliation for the (imaginary) second Tonkin Gulf Incident on August 4th.” The August 2nd Tonkin Gulf entry, he added, was “not quite accurate” either and was only “marginally useful” insofar as it was “close enough to the truth to allow readers to go looking for more information.”   www.tomdispatch.com/post/175808

The Student Loan Yoke  Until 2009, young adults with student loan debt were more likely to own homes and were more likely to have car loans outstanding than were people of the same age without student loans. Those loans had enabled many of them to obtain college degrees and earn more money, qualifying them for mortgages. Those with student loans generally had better credit scores than those who did not.
But now the opposite is true. “Young people with student loans are less likely to buy a house,” said Wilbert van der Klaauw, a senior vice president of the New York Fed’s research and statistics group.
Those with student loan debt also are less likely to have taken out car loans. They have worse credit scores. They appear to be more likely to be living with their parents.  In other types of personal loans, those who owe the most are the most likely to default, for obvious reasons. But the opposite is true for student loans. “This suggests that borrowers who default are overwhelmingly noncompleters,” said Rohit Chopra, the student loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “These borrowers take on some debt but do not benefit from the wage increase associated with a degree.”
A lot of people are defaulting. The New York Fed report shows that while seriously delinquent personal loans have generally been declining since early 2010, delinquent student loans have been soaring. The report, for the fourth quarter of 2013, showed that 11.5 percent of such loans were at least 90 days behind in payments. In credit cards, traditionally the type of loan most likely to default, the rate was just 9.5 percent.
Actually, those figures seriously understate the problem. They ignore the fact that nearly half the student loans outstanding do not currently require any payment at all, either because the student is still in school or because the student has taken advantage of other ways to defer payment…. One thing the federal student loan program does not lack is ways to collect the money. Bankruptcy will usually not cancel student loans, and the government has the power to seize income tax refunds and garnishee wages as needed. Some parents who guaranteed student loans that have defaulted find the money taken out of their Social Security checks. For a student, a default can destroy a credit record, making it hard even to rent an apartment, let alone buy a home.
And even those who manage to stay current on their loans will be significantly less well off than their predecessors. They are presumably less likely to contribute to 401(k) retirement accounts.                www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/business/economy/the-hefty-yoke-of-student-loan-debt.html?ref=education

After 11-year-old dies, “Ethan Rediske Act” is filed  Last week, we shared the story of 11-year-old Ethan Rediske, a Maitland boy with profound disabilities whose mother spent much of Ethan’s life — and even his final days — fighting off standardized tests that Ethan was physically incapable of taking. (“Mother of dying, disabled boy fights school-test bureaucracy.”)
Andrea Rediske, for instance, knew it made no sense for her son, who couldn’t speak and was fed through a tube, to be asked about how a peach tastes.
Or to ask a blind child to point to a picture of a monkey. (That’s another real-life example for another student in Orange County.)
Or to then professionally evaluate those kids’ teachers based on how the kids score on tests they could never really take.
Theoretically, Florida provides waivers for students with profound disabilities. But it’s a cumbersome process that involves local teachers, county-level administrators and state officials — all the way up to the Florida’s Education Secretary, who must personally review and sign every waiver.  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/blogs/taking-names/os-after-11yearold-dies-ethan-rediske-act-is-filed-20140214,0,230056.post

Obamagogue College Evaluation System: Deepen Segregation by Class + Race Under Mr. Obama’s plan, colleges that performed well in the ratings would be rewarded with additional federal dollars while colleges that performed poorly would lose some aid. Skeptics fear such a system would punish colleges that serve many low-income and minority students and would encourage open-access institutions to tighten their entrance criteria or dumb down their standards.
At Tuesday’s session, Peter L. Mora, president of Atlantic Cape Community College, in New Jersey, asked how the administration would guard against the redistribution of federal dollars to more-selective colleges with wealthier students.  http://chronicle.com/article/Community-College-Leaders-Give/144715

Back at Ol Miss (as racist as the rest of the US ed system)  On the campus of the University of Mississippi, a few hundred yards from a monument honoring Confederate soldiers, a statue of the university’s first black student, who enrolled in 1962 amid rioting that left two people dead, stands as what administrators call a powerful symbol of progress.
But when two unidentified men placed a noose around the bronze neck of James Meredith this week and left behind a flag with the Confederate battle emblem, it set into motion a new round of soul-searching in a place where past and present still restlessly coexist. www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/us/racist-episodes-continue-to-stir-ole-miss-campus.html?ref=us

Michigan (mostly Detroit) Shell Game Re-doubled:  Michigan cancels EAA’s exclusive responsibility for state’s failing schools  State Superintendent Mike Flanagan on Tuesday officially notified the EAA and its chancellor, John Covington, that the state was terminating contract language that gave the recovery district sole responsibility to take over the lowest-performing schools in Michigan through 2026….Covington, who is under a four-year, $1.6 million contract with the state to run the EAA, said Wednesday that cancellation of the exclusivity clause does not spell the end of the EAA. Rather, he said, it allows Flanagan to pursue more options to turn around low-performing schools, such as allowing intermediate districts or charter schools to take over the state’s most troubled schools.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140219/SCHOOLS/302190100#ixzz2tojBRjoK

In Michigan’s Common Core, Evidence dissolves Background?  “You need to find the evidence,” Painter told 30 high school students as they studied a short story about a woman who feels elation at her newfound independence upon hearing her husband is dead. “There is no right or wrong answer. You need to show your understanding.”
Looking for textual evidence is not something Painter would have asked her students to do every day in class more than a year ago. Under the state’s prior education standards, teachers spent much of their time explaining to students what they were reading and providing background.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140219/SCHOOLS/302190025#ixzz2tojacAs8

UCSD–Where Money Really Matters Last year wasn’t the best in the ethics department for the University of California San Diego. The nadir was reached with release of an email by the university after a public records act request. It revealed social science dean Jeff Elman to be discussing the getting of cash from Qualcomm billionaire Irwin Jacobs to pay the professorial salary of ex-Republican assemblyman-turned-Democrat Nathan Fletcher, a once and future candidate for mayor.  “Those monies would have to come from development funds (e.g., Friends), or else we’d have to do some laundering,” wrote Elman. “However, my guess is that there are people like Irwin Jacobs and others who have contributed to Fletcher [redacted] and they might be willing to provide these monies — or even more.”
Whether or not the disclosure has anything to do with it, UCSD is now looking for a director of conflict of interest. Says a recent job notice: “This position conducts reviews of National Science Foundation and Public Health Service research as well as all privately sponsored research (non-profit, for-profit, etc.) and gifts for early identification and resolution of any issues that could be perceived as a Conflict of Interest.”   www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2014/jan/22/radar-conflicted-interests/

UMICH Football Coach Hoke’s possible new title: J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family head football coach  What can a $10 million gift to Michigan get you? Naming rights and endowment for the head football coach. If approved by the U-M Regents at Thursday’s meeting, Brady Hoke will be the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family head football coach effective March 1.The family, which has donated to and supported various departments and schools at U-M, also has naming rights for the football locker room.
Stanford, Northwestern, Boston College and Vanderbilt are among schools with endowed coaching positions. Several Ivy League schools also have endowed positions. This is the first endowed coaching position at Michigan.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140217/SPORTS0201/302170080#ixzz2tcVx2d81

Those Ubiquitous Naughty School Scamsters again–SUNY Canton, Potsdam vice president accused of theft  
Feb 13, 2014 — The woman in charge of finances at both SUNY Canton and SUNY Potsdam has been indicted on theft charges in Georgia. Natalie Higley is charged with stealing from the state college where she used to work.
According to the Bainbridge Post-Searchlight newspaper, Natalie Higley and three other former employees of Bainbridge State College are accused of conspiring as a group to steal college property and then lying about it.
In an indictment from a grand jury in Georgia Superior Court, the group is alleged to have stolen a Ford tractor, a golf cart, an ice machine and several other objects, with the intent to sell them.
Higley is currently the vice president for Business Affairs and Administration for both SUNY Canton and SUNY Potsdam. She took on the joint position two years ago, splitting her time between the two campuses.  http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/24055/20140212/suny-canton-potsdam-vice-president-accused-of-theft

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

“Empire as a way of life will lead to nuclear death…I do not want the empire. There are better ways to live, and better ways to die.” (William Appleman Williams) 

Empire Under Obama–US Covert Military Operations Obama’s global terror campaign is not only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has come to rely upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries (as Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq), he has escalated the world of ‘covert warfare,’ largely outside the oversight of Congress and the public. One of the most important agencies in this global “secret war” is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC for short.
JSOC was established in 1980 following the failed rescue of American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran as “an obscure and secretive corner of the military’s hierarchy,” noted the Atlantic. It experienced a “rapid expansion” under the Bush administration, and since Obama came to power, “appears to be playing an increasingly prominent role in national security” and “counterterrorism,” in areas which were “traditionally covered by the CIA.”[1] One of the most important differences between these covert warfare operations being conducted by JSOC instead of the CIA is that the CIA has to report to Congress, whereas JSOC only reports its most important activities to the President’s National Security Council.[2] andrewgavinmarshall.com/2013/10/23/americas-secret-wars-in-over-100-countries-around-the-world-empire-under-obama-part-3/

Uncle Sam Does Not Negotiate With Terrorists, nor Pay Ransoms (psst–Taliban, give Sam a call)  In an effort to free American captive Bowe Bergdahl before the bulk of U.S. forces leave Afghanistan this year, the Obama administration has decided to try to resume talks with the Taliban and sweeten an offer to trade Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the Army sergeant, current and former officials said.
Five members of the Afghan Taliban who have been held at Guantanamo for years would be released to protective custody in Qatar in exchange for the release of Bergdahl, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2009 and is thought to be held in Pakistan by the Haqqani network, an allied insurgent group.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-seeks-prisoner-swap-with-taliban-to-free-army-sgt-bowe-bergdahl/2014/02/17/f142ed50-9590-11e3-afce-3e7c922ef31e_story.html?hpid=z1

Distorting Russia –How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.  The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.
There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War….The Sochi Games will soon pass, triumphantly or tragically, but the potentially fateful Ukrainian crisis will not. A new Cold War divide between West and East may now be unfolding, not in Berlin but in the heart of Russia’s historical civilization. The result could be a permanent confrontation fraught with instability and the threat of a hot war far worse than the one in Georgia in 2008. These dangers have been all but ignored in highly selective, partisan and inflammatory US media accounts, which portray the European Union’s “Partnership” proposal benignly as Ukraine’s chance for democracy, prosperity and escape from Russia, thwarted only by a “bullying” Putin and his “cronies” in Kiev….

But the most crucial media omission is Moscow’s reasonable conviction that the struggle for Ukraine is yet another chapter in the West’s ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATO’s eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia, a US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia….Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup.
Americans are left with a new edition of an old question. Has Washington’s twenty-year winner-take-all approach to post-Soviet Russia shaped this degraded news coverage, or is official policy shaped by the coverage? Did Senator John McCain stand in Kiev alongside the well-known leader of an extreme nationalist party because he was ill informed by the media, or have the media deleted this part of the story because of McCain’s folly?  http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia#

In Ukraine, fascists, oligarchs and western expansion are at the heart of the crisis  It’s a story we’ve heard in one form or another again and again – not least in Ukraine’s western-backed Orange revolution a decade ago. But it bears only the sketchiest relationship to reality. EU membership has never been – and very likely never will be – on offer to Ukraine. As in Egypt last year, the president that the protesters want to force out was elected in a poll judged fair by international observers. And many of those on the streets aren’t very keen on democracy at all.
You’d never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings. One of the three main opposition parties heading the campaign is the hard-right antisemitic Svoboda, whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok claims that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” controls Ukraine. But US senator John McCain was happy to share a platform with him in Kiev last month. The party, now running the city of Lviv, led a 15,000-strong torchlit march earlier this month in memory of the Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose forces fought with the Nazis in the second world war and took part in massacres of Jews.  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukraine-fascists-oligarchs-eu-nato-expansion

Russian Radio: Ukraine: sick fascist filth and gangland violence as political opposition  With the release of a recent conversation between the US Ambassador to Ukraine and Victoria Nuland plotting the downfall of the current legitimate elected government in Kiev, it is clear who is behind the attempted coup in Ukraine. US backed “activists” with sniper rifles and hand guns are openly firing on police something that would not be tolerated anywhere in the world but which is being portrayed by western leaders as being legitimate opposition protest behavior. However such cold-blooded murder would lead to brains being swept off the street in their cities.  http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_02_20/Ukraine-sick-fascist-filth-and-gangland-violence-as-political-opposition-Rick-Rozoff-6467/

Oligarch Billionaire Freed, Ukraine Coup Wins for the Moment, US Celebrates (watch them twist as in Egypt)   Abandoned by his own guards and reviled across the Ukrainian capital but still determined to recover his shredded authority, President Viktor F. Yanukovych fled Kiev on Saturday to denounce what he called a violent coup, as his official residence, his vast, colonnaded office complex and other once impregnable centers of power fell without a fight to throngs of joyous citizens stunned by their triumph.
While Mr. Yanukovych’s nemesis, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, was released from a penitentiary hospital, Parliament found the president unable to fulfill his duties and exercised its constitutional powers to set an election for May 25 to select his replacement. But with both Mr. Yanukovych and his Russian patrons speaking of a “coup” carried out by “bandits” and “hooligans,” it was far from clear that the day’s lightning-quick events would be the last act in a struggle that has not just convulsed Ukraine but expanded into an East-West confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War. www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/world/europe/ukraine.html?hp&_r=0

Who is Playing in Venezuela? NED (CIA)  http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/latin-america-and-caribbean/venezuela

Remember NED and Chavez? Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is accusing the United States of spending over $1 million in helping his opponents attempt to oust him from power.
In a recent speech Chavez said “The government of Washington is using the money of its people to support–not only opposition activities–but acts of conspiracy.”
Chavez cited recently made public documents that detail how the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy has backed anti-Chavez projects and recall referendums in Venezuela. The documents were obtained by investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood through the Freedom of Information Act and have been posted on the site venezuelafoia.info run by the Venezuelan Solidarity Committee.
According to the Miami Herald all of the money is going to opposition groups determined to unseat Chavez. www.democracynow.org/2004/3/4/hugo_chavez_accuses_u_s_of

What is Now “Misconduct” Forces More Soldiers Out  The number of U.S. soldiers forced out of the Army because of crimes or misconduct has soared in the past several years as the military emerges from a decade of war that put a greater focus on battle competence than on character.
Data obtained by The Associated Press shows that the number of officers who left the Army due to misconduct more than tripled in the past three years. The number of enlisted soldiers forced out for drugs, alcohol, crimes and other misconduct shot up from about 5,600 in 2007, as the Iraq war peaked, to more than 11,000 last year.
The data reveals stark differences between the military services and underscores the strains that long, repeated deployments to the front lines have had on the Army’s soldiers and their leaders.
It also reflects the Army’s rapid growth in the middle part of the decade, and the decisions to relax standards a bit to bring in and retain tens of thousands of soldiers to fill the ranks as the Pentagon added troops in Iraq and continued the fight in Afghanistan.
The Army grew to a peak of about 570,000 soldiers during the height of the wars, and soldiers represented the bulk of the troops on the battlefields compared with the other services.
“I wouldn’t say lack of character was tolerated in (war) theater, but the fact of the last 10 or 12 years of repeated deployments, of the high op-tempo — we might have lost focus on this issue,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s top officer, told the AP last week. “Sometimes in the past we’ve overlooked character issues because of competence and commitment.”  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-exclusive-misconduct-forces-soldiers-22532490

Resisting Rape in the Military  Q. What’s the most shocking story you’ve heard?
A. I received an email from a female officer with 18 years in service that said, “The first advice when you get there [Afghanistan] is always carry a knife, even in the daylight. Almost every woman carried a knife, not for battle against the Taliban, but to use against the person who tries to rape her.”
The other piece of this that is so egregious is the cynical use of errant medical diagnoses to dispose of victims. Not only is their career ended, it affects their ability to find future employment or even get proper medical care.  Q. When do you feel like Protect Our Defenders will have accomplished its mission?
A. Our goal is to end retaliation, victim blaming and misogyny, and to fundamentally reform the system by removing the commander’s ability to set aside justice or to preclude justice. Our servicemen and women deserve a professional and unbiased justice system equal to the system afforded to the civilians they protect. Your boss should not have the power to decide whether a rape or sexual assault allegation is prosecuted. They don’t have the necessary legal skills and, for many, it’s impossible to be objective.
Q. Why does the military continue to battle sexual assault scandals more than 20 years after Tailhook?
A. For many years, they’ve seen this issue as a public relations problem  http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20140216/NEWS06/302160008/Group-shines-light-victim-backlash-military-sex-assaults

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The 2012 Kappa Beta Phi neophyte class.

Undercover at a Party of the Finance Capitalists The first and most obvious conclusion was that the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality. No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sector’s foibles. Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.
The second thing I realized was that Kappa Beta Phi was, in large part, a fear-based organization. Here were executives who had strong ideas about politics, society, and the work of their colleagues, but who would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting. Their cowardice had reduced them to sniping at their perceived enemies in the form of satirical songs and sketches, among only those people who had been handpicked to share their view of the world. And the idea of a reporter making those views public had caused them to throw a mass temper tantrum.
The last thought I had, and the saddest, was that many of these self-righteous Kappa Beta Phi members had surely been first-year bankers once. And in the 20, 30, or 40 years since, something fundamental about them had changed. Their pursuit of money and power had removed them from the larger world to the sad extent that, now, in the primes of their careers, the only people with whom they could be truly themselves were a handful of other prominent financiers. nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

Detroit Bankruptcy Attacks Pensions/wages. Who Is next?  Detroit’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy this year largely hinges on significant cuts to city workers’ pensions and retiree health benefits
For some retirees, the plan brought the news they have feared most.
“They might as well just go and shoot me,” said Donald Smith, 69, who worked for the city as a parking enforcement officer and receiving clerk for 29 years and gets about $850 a month in pension payments. “I already have to make choices between food and medicine. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
In the plan, which probably will be amended in the weeks ahead, police, firefighters and those departments’ retirees will take a 10% cut to their current pension payment. The pensions of all other city employees and retirees will be cut more than three times as much: 34%. Neither group will receive cost of living adjustments in the future.   www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-detroit-bankruptcy-20140222,0,3941443.story#ixzz2u6gVlexQ

How is it for post-invasion Grenada? despite all the drama in our political history over the years, and the worldwide publicity we received since the happenings in 1974 and the years immediately following — our economy has not benefitted as it should, and here we are forty years thereafter with unemployment well over fifty percent and the daily living conditions of our people in very serious straits.  http://nowgrenada.com/2014/02/celebrations-stress-ahead/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Clapper Reads From the Bush/Cheney/Nixon Playbook to Fear-Monger Over Transparency  James Clapper, President Obama’s top national security official, is probably best known for having been caught lying outright to Congress about NSA activities, behavior which (as some baseball players found out) happens to be a felony under federal law. But – like torturers and Wall Street tycoons before him – Clapper has been not only shielded from prosecution, and not only allowed to keep his job; he has has now been anointed the arbiter of others’ criminality, as he parades around the country calling American journalists “accomplices”. Yesterday, as Wired’s Dave Kravets reports, the “clearly frustrated” Clapper went before a Senate committee (different than the one he got caught lying to) to announce that the Snowden disclosures are helping the terrorists:
We’re beginning to see changes in the communications behavior of adversaries: particularly terrorists. A disturbing trend, which I anticipate will continue . . . Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school on U.S. intelligence sources, methods, and tradecraft. And the insights they’re gaining are making our job in the intelligence community much, much harder. And this includes putting the lives of members or assets of the intelligence community at risk, as well as those of our armed forces, diplomats, and our citizens.
As Kravets notes, “Clapper is not the most credible source on Snowden and the NSA leaks.” Moreover, it’s hardly surprising that Clapper is furious at these disclosures given that “Snowden’s very first leak last June” – revelation of the domestic surveillance program – “had the side-effect of revealing that Clapper had misled the public and Congress about NSA spying.”  https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/12/james-clapper-says-transparency-helps-terrorists-like/

Clapper: I shouldn’t have lied so much; Americans Like Fascism anyway  Hindsight being what it is, Clapper now insists that the US should’ve told the American public they were being surveilled from the start, saying if they’d just announced it publicly after 9/11 “most Americans would probably have supported it.”  http://news.antiwar.com/2014/02/17/us-spy-chief-we-shouldve-admitted-to-call-surveillance/

Border Patrol Kills Immigrant   A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a rock-throwing suspect Tuesday morning in a mountainous area about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said.
The agent was hit in face with a rock thrown by an immigrant without legal status and then fired his gun, according to San Diego County Sheriff’s Lt. Glenn Giannantonio.  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fatal-border-shooting-san-diego-20140218,0,908258.story#ixzz2tjzbJ91U

above, Ford, proud to accept medal from Nazis, was publisher of The International Jew, a forgery that blames the Jews for all the world’s ill, still popular today. 

Detroit Shinola Clockmaker to Produce Clock Celebrating Nazi Henry Ford  The design is based of a yet-to-be-released pocket watch that will honor Henry Ford as part of Shinola’s Great Americans series.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140221/BIZ/302210113#ixzz2u7r8fvnI

Solidarity for Never

Detroit’s Bailed Out Auto Bosses Desperate to Keep Quisling UAW in Power   The United Auto Workers’ membership and dues are down sharply from just six years ago. In another sign of weakness, the union suffered a stunning defeat this month when it tried to organize a Tennessee factory run by labor-friendly Volkswagen.
The rejection, by a close vote, was a major setback in the union’s effort to expand in the South, where non-union, foreign companies such as VW, Nissan and Hyundai are rapidly growing.
But instead of relief, Detroit’s three automakers — Ford, Chrysler and General Motors — are increasingly anxious about the 78-year old union’s future.
For them, it’s a “devil you know” situation. They worry that the 382,000-member UAW could be absorbed by a more hostile union. Such a merger could disrupt a decade of labor-management peace that has helped America’s auto industry survive the financial crisis and emerge much stronger, according to a person with knowledge of executive discussions.  ….Even as it struggles, the UAW remains the wealthiest union in the nation, with assets of more than $1 billion at the end of 2012. Officials point to a revived U.S. auto industry and more hiring at UAW-represented factories, moves that have stabilized membership dues that have been falling since 2006.
Still, the union’s loss at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., heightened concerns about how it can grow.
Annual dues collected were down more than 40 percent to $115 million from 2006 to 2012, as the union’s ranks fell by 30 percent. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140222/AUTO01/302220028#ixzz2u6eFiues

WAPO runs ad for False Flag anti-high-stakes testing grouplet dominated by nationalist Dems, NEA, and AFT Quislings With resistance to standardized test-obsessed school reform growing around the country, three dozen local, state and national organizations and individuals have now banded together in an alliance to expand efforts to bring sanity to education policy. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/21/anti-testing-groups-form-alliance-to-bring-sanity-to-education-policy/

Background of the Deception in the Anti Testing Movement SOS, claiming de rigeur grassroots status, reveled in corporate press coverage of actor Matt Damon. He delivered a rouser citing his teacher-mother. Liberal TV comedian Jon Stewart tossed in a video. Even professional poverty huckster, Jesse Jackson, signed on as did the usual suspects from By Any Means Necessary, a front of the Revolutionary Workers League. Christians tossed in hope from God.
The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers offered money, perhaps hush money. Two days after the SOS rally, the NEA V.P Eskelsen praised the organizers while NEA hyped its own contribution, taking credit when they could not deflect and demolish. The following day, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel praised the “Deficit Ceiling” deal which promises a vicious attack on poor and working people as “Better than a catastrophe.”
A good deal of venom was aimed at US schools’ overseer, Arne Duncan, equivalent to a Cardinal of schools, but Kozol was a rare speaker who aimed at the Pope, Obama, who hired Duncan and maintains him in robes. Kozol felt “betrayed.”  http://richgibson.com/SOS.htm

NEA’s $465 thousand a year Boss Van Roekel Notices a Few Problems with Common Core, and more Double Talk NEA has been called upon to oppose the standards. It would be simpler just to listen to the detractors from the left and the right who oppose the standards. But scuttling these standards will simply return us to the failed days of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), where rote memorization and bubble tests drove teaching and learning. NEA members don’t want to go backward; we know that won’t help students. Instead, we want states to make a strong course correction and move forward.  http://neatoday.org/2014/02/19/nea-president-we-need-a-course-correction-on-common-core/?utm_source=nea_today_express&utm_medium=email&utm_content=dvr_ccss&utm_campaign=140212neatodayexpress

Spy versus Spy

Rare Photos and Video of NSA  firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/new-photos-of-nsa-and-others/

The Magical Mystery Tour

Above, Medieval “ArchBishop” Myers

A Church so Poor it has to close schools—builds a Mansion For generations, this blond brick Catholic elementary school tossed a lifeline to the immigrants who, wave upon wave, washed ashore here. The Archdiocese of Newark closed it two years ago. Church officials offered deep regrets; the church’s wallet is thin to the touch these days….All of which brings me along a winding and narrow road that switches back and forth across the wooded Capoolong Creek to a splendid 8.5-acre spread in the hamlet of Pittstown. This is rural and rather affluent Hunterdon County, 49 miles from Mater Dei.
John J. Myers, the archbishop of the Newark Archdiocese, comes to this vacation home on many weekends. The 4,500-square-foot home has a handsome amoeba-shaped swimming pool out back. And as he’s 72, and retirement beckons in two years, he has renovations in mind. A small army of workers are framing a 3,000-square-foot addition….This new wing will have an indoor exercise pool, three fireplaces and an elevator. The Star-Ledger of Newark has noted that the half-million-dollar tab for this wing does not include architects’ fees or furnishings.
There’s no need to fear for the archbishop’s bank account. The Newark Archdiocese is picking up the bill….So many leaders of the church have served it so badly for so many decades that it’s hard to keep track of their maledictions. Archbishop Myers provides one-stop shopping. He is known to insist on being addressed as “Your Grace.” And his self-regard is matched by his refusal to apologize for more or less anything.
It was revealed last year that a priest seemed to have broken his legally binding agreement with Bergen County prosecutors to never again work unsupervised with children or to minister to them so long as he remained a priest. When next found, he was involved with a youth ministry in the Newark Archdiocese.
Parishioners in Oradell, N.J., also discovered that the archdiocese had allowed a priest accused of sexual abuse to live in their parish’s rectory. A furor arose, and last summer the archbishop sat down and wrote an open letter to his flock. He conceded not a stumble. Those who claim, he wrote, that he and the church had not protected children were “simply evil, wrong, immoral and seemingly focused on their own self-aggrandizement.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/nyregion/a-church-so-poor-it-has-to-close-schools-yet-so-rich-it-can-build-a-palace.html

above: Flying Spaghetti Monster: won’t rape kids, no dues, no buildings, no doctrine, exists, and has pirates!

L.A. Archdiocese settles final priest abuse case for $13 million  The settlement ends a decade of abuse litigation that cost the Catholic Church more than $740 million.  The church reached the $13-million agreement with 17 victims last week, on the eve of a trial scheduled to begin Feb. 14 over the alleged acts of Father Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera, a visiting cleric from Mexico who police believe molested more than two dozen boys over nine months in 1987.
Eleven men, who were ages 7 to 12 when they were allegedly abused by the priest, were scheduled to appear in court to testify that Cardinal Roger Mahony and his aides had enabled the priest to flee just days before police were notified.  The massive payout to more than 500 victims — far larger than sums paid elsewhere — have been financially devastating for the L.A. church, which sold off real estate, took out a $175-million loan and tapped $115 million set aside for cemetery maintenance to pay the settlements. Last year, the church explored the possibility of a $200-million capital campaign to help repay the loan.
It wasn’t only church coffers that took a hit from the long-running litigation: The diocese’s standing in the community suffered as tens of thousands of internal church records became public, containing revelations that archdiocese leaders knew the intimate details of priests’ abuses and nonetheless shielded molesters from law enforcement.  http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-archdiocese-settlement-20140219,0,3112522.story#ixzz2togqkByD

On the Hunt for Fard–Nation of Islam convention returns to its Detroit roots  The Nation of Islam traces its roots to Detroit, where in the 1930s Wallace Fard Muhammad formed a movement devoted to empowering African-Americans and others to improve their lives.
The group returns to its birthplace this week for Saviours’ Day, a four-day convention for thousands of supporters to mark its founding and inspire followers for the future.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140219/METRO01/302190026#ixzz2tokTJ0tn

Fighting Over Darwin, State by State  The debate over whether and how to teach public school students about evolution may be an old one, but it shows no signs of abating. Indeed, in the last decade, questions about what students should learn about Darwin’s theory have been debated in more than half the states in the union and at every level of state government, from legislatures to courts to local school boards.
In the past, some states banned the teaching of evolution or required that it be taught alongside the Judeo-Christian story of creation. But a number of landmark Supreme Court decisions have blocked these options. More recently, many states have considered laws giving teachers the freedom to question scientific theories including evolution, and such laws have been enacted in Louisiana and Tennessee (see below). In several other states, including Colorado and Florida, similar bills were introduced but did not pass. In Missouri, Oklahoma and Virginia, measures are currently being considered.
Supporters of these measures argue that they promote “academic freedom” and encourage teachers and students to think critically and to question long-held scientific theories and explanations. Those who oppose these laws counter that such efforts could replace scientific fact with religiously based notions in the classroom, leaving students with a gap in their understanding of life’s origins and development.
What follows is a sampling of recent action in 13 states in which the teaching of evolution has stirred controversy and debate.  http://www.pewforum.org/2009/02/04/fighting-over-darwin-state-by-state/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

American Scientific Barbarism The nation that put the first man on the Moon is failing to make the grade today when it comes to basic knowledge of the solar system and other fundamental scientific insight.
That’s according to a new survey which concludes that while most Americans have a world of information at their fingertips, and show tremendous enthusiasm for new technology, they also lack fundamental knowledge of basic science.
Out of a total of nine questions on subjects related to physical and biological sciences, the average score in the survey was a narrowly passing 6.5 correct answers, according to a survey of 2,200 Americans conducted by the National Science Foundation. The result was announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held Friday.
For example, only 74 percent correctly answered that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Meanwhile, fewer than half (48 percent) of study participants were aware that human beings evolved from earlier species of animals, the celebrated scientific nostrum first demonstrated by British naturalist Charles Darwin in his 1859 book, “On the Origin of Species.”
That is despite the United States’ apparent fondness for so-called “informal science education.” The survey has revealed that almost 60 percent of Americans have visited at some point a zoo, natural history museum or a science and technology museum.  http://rt.com/usa/science-education-survey-americans-178/

Detroit woman opens fire when 3 teens break into home  Three teens face home invasion charges after trying to break into a west side house, only to flee when the homeowner, a mother of two, pulled out her 19-caliber rifle and opened fire.
The incident, which happened at about 7:30 pm Monday in the 7400 block of Woodrow Wilson, was captured on surveillance video, which shows one teen kicking in the door of the house, while two of his companions linger a few feet away.
Once the door is kicked open, the three teens, ages 14, 14 and 15, enter the house — only to scamper out a few seconds later amid the sound of gunfire.
The homeowner warned the teens she was armed before they entered the house, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said.
“She advised the suspects she was armed with a gun, but they indicated they didn’t believe her,” Craig said.
“She fired shots to protect her children. None of the shots took effect.
“I believe she did the right thing,” said Craig, who has repeatedly said he thinks legally armed citizens can deter crime. “It sends a message.”
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140219/METRO01/302190120#ixzz2tq3MOuWK

More Guns than Ever! Gun makers in the United States produced a record number of weapons in 2012, as new government data suggests Democratic presidents may actually be a boon to firearms manufacturers.
According to numbers released by US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, more than 8.5 million guns were produced in 2012, compared to about 6.5 million in 2011. That’s a 31 percent increase, and the highest number recorded since the agency began tracking gun production in 1986.  http://rt.com/usa/gun-production-us-hits-record-150/

Ain’t Misbehavin’ Fats Waller – See more at: www.20sjazz.com/videos/piano/aint-misbehavin-.html#sthash.f0QreBRI.dpuf

Sonny Clay and the Eccentric Harmony Six  www.20sjazz.com/videos/hot-jazz/jambled-blues.html

So Long

until they let him go again–Chapo Guzman