Rouge Forum Dispatch: Hearalding Minerva’s Owl!
November 17th, 2013 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
And the Winner at Most Influential Scholar is…How do you judge an academic? Can you compare scholars from different fields on equal footing? Whose work had the bigger impact down field, Albert Einstein or Ada Lovelace?
These seem like impossible questions to answer, but as reported by Nature, a team of information scientists out of Indiana University, Bloomington, think they’ve found a way. And, according to them, the most influential scholar is… Karl Marx.: blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/11/karl-marx-is-the-worlds-most-influential-scholar/#ixzz2kmwUbyLt
Boeing Workers Reject Sellout Contract Members of a union representing thousands of Boeing employees voted late Wednesday to reject a controversial labor deal that would have cut compensation but have kept assembly of the company’s new 777X jets in Washington State, raising the chance that Boeing will move more production away from its traditional manufacturing base in the Seattle area.
In a ballot that was seen as a bellwether for the state of organized labor in America, 67 percent of the members of the local branch of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted against the eight-year contract extension, according to a statement posted on the union’s website. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/boeing-workers-reject-labor-deal-in-washington-state.html
Detroiters fight bankruptcy on Pensions
www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-detroit-bankruptcy-race-20131110,0,1560272.story#axzz2kHNKP4dS
Thousands of angry Bangladeshi workers who stitch clothes for leading Western brands downed tools and took to the streets Monday to demand higher wages, forcing 100 factories to close, police said.
Police said several hundred of the workers tried to attack factories and vehicles during the protests in the garment hub of Ashulia on the outskirts of Dhaka, forcing officers to fire tear gas in response.
The workers are demanding a steeper wage hike to $100 per month than the rise to $67 approved last week by the Minimum Wage Board after rounds of meetings with industry, unions and government representatives. “There were an estimated 30,000 workers who came out of their factories and took to the streets,” industrial police inspector Abdus Sattar told AFP.
“Several hundred of them went unruly and tried to vandalise properties. So we dispersed them by firing tear gas,” he said, adding that several protestors were injured.
Some 100 factories were forced to shut down during the protests, which come after a string of recent disasters that killed more than 1,000 people and have highlighted the garment industry’s low pay and poor conditions. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/11/tear-gas-fired-as-thousands-of-angry-bangladesh-garment-workers-strike/
Congratulations on the publication of
Whither Paraguay? Insurgencies by groups like the Paraguayan People’s Army, which has been meticulously picking off security forces in remote frontier settlements, planting bombs under police vehicles, and kidnapping and killing wealthy Paraguayans, find a lot less maneuvering room in Latin America these days.
Around the region, many such groups have been hunted down or incorporated into leftist political parties as military dictatorships gave way to democracies and dissent began emerging in different forms. Even where guerrillas persist, they are significantly winnowed down, like the Shining Path in Peru, or pursuing peace talks with the government, like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Then there is Paraguay, one of Latin America’s poorest and most unequal nations. Even as the economy booms, the Paraguayan People’s Army is evolving from a ghostlike irritant for the authorities in Asunción, the capital, into a broader security threat in a backcountry that is already a hub for traffickers of marijuana, defiantly cultivated here on sprawling plantations, and Andean cocaine smuggled into Brazil and Argentina. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/world/americas/guerrillas-step-up-campaign-in-paraguay.html
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Biden Buddy, Bruce, To Boss Broad Bruce Reed, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff for nearly three years, will leave the administration next month to lead the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Los Angeles-based philanthropic group that backs efforts to change public schools, the White House and the foundation announced Wednesday.
Reed, who has served in senior positions in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, leaves Biden’s inner circle just as the vice president weighs making a third run for the White House, an effort that would potentially pit him against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Although best known for his involvement in the arts and the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles, Broad’s education foundation has been one of the largest backers of a variety of efforts to change urban public schools. www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-bruce-reed-broad-foundation-20131112,0,7561686.story#axzz2klcO5akR
Deasy (he of the fake Degree) Wins another Round in the LA Ipad Scam A divided Board of Education agreed Tuesday to move ahead with a trimmed-down plan to provide iPads to Los Angeles students, but an evaluation will look at whether the project should proceed.
During a heated debate over the $1-billion project, board members raised numerous concerns, including whether the contract with Apple needs to be reconsidered and whether high schools should be provided laptops instead of tablets.
The decision, by a 6-1 vote that left no one happy, means that the distribution of iPads can continue as planned by schools Supt. John Deasy for this year. He had previously decided to scale back his original timetable after problems emerged during the rollout on 47 campuses this fall. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1113-lausd-20131113,0,1290815.story#axzz2kVv4OUlC
Detroit Plans to Irradicate Illiteracy in FIVE years (using LA consultants–Cuba did it nearly for free in two) Beyond Basics, a child-centered literacy nonprofit aimed at youth in the lowest performing schools since 2002, and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History have united in an effort to host a summit conference to “eradicate illiteracy in the city of Detroit within five years.” The conference, “Literacy: We Are the Change,” is set for Thursday at the museum , 315 E. Warren Ave., in Detroit.Registration and networking are scheduled for 8 a.m., followed by plenary speakers at 9 a.m., roundtable discussions at 10 a.m. and a strolling lunch at 11:30 a.m.
The two plenary speakers will be Martin Gomez, vice dean of the University of Southern California Libraries and former head of the Los Angeles Public Library system, and Carol Goss, president of the Skillman Foundation.
Roundtable discussions will be conducted by Jared David, Jared W. Finney High School; Lou Glazer, Michigan Future Inc.; and Dr. Glenda Price, Detroit Public Schools Foundation, among others.
This conference is free, however, space is limited. To attend, you must RSVP by sending an email to rsvp@chwmuseum.org, or by calling (313) 494-5863. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20131113/LIFESTYLE/311130023#ixzz2kn2j42AC
LA’s Shell Game: Funding WHICH Poverty Schools? More than two dozen local schools face reduced funding next year as the Los Angeles school district funnels more federal money to campuses with a higher percentage of low-income students.
The tighter budgets affect 28 schools next year, including the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, Chatsworth and Westchester high schools and Walgrove Elementary. Some of these schools are relatively high-performing academically.
Contingents from these schools argued for a reprieve at the Board of Education’s meeting last week. But a measure to restore the funding fell just short of a majority on the seven-member body.
The proposal would have returned federal anti-poverty dollars to schools where just under half the students come from low-income families. L.A. Unified gets this funding for every low-income student, but the money doesn’t necessarily follow the student. Instead, the dollars go to schools with the highest concentration of poverty. The goal is to address the cumulative effects of intense pockets of poverty, which describes much of the nation’s second-largest school system http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1117-school-funds-20131117,0,1565791.story#axzz2kt5V32pq
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Navy Brass: Warmongers as Whoremongers The U.S. Navy is reeling from a bribery scandal featuring prostitutes and payoffs for classified details on fleet movements, amid concerns the spiraling investigation will ensnare more senior officers.
Three officers have been charged in recent weeks and two more are under scrutiny in a corruption case threatening to turn into one of the biggest scandals in the Navy’s history.
Officials acknowledge the full extent of the case has yet to be revealed and that other members from top echelons of the navy could have taken part in an alleged scheme to provide multimillion-dollar ship service contracts to a Singapore-based firm.
“We believe that other naval officers, and perhaps some Navy civilians, may be implicated in this scandal,” Navy spokesman Admiral John Kirby said.
“We are going to let the investigation take us where it may,” he told AFP, declining to offer more details pending the outcome of the probe.
Officials say the case could rival the Tailhook sexual assault scandal that shook the Navy in 1991 and focus a spotlight on recurring fraud linked to the Pentagon’s vast network of contractors.
The case centers around contracs to provide food, water, fuel, trash removal and other services to American ships visiting ports in Asia.
Prosecutors accuse Francis Leonard, CEO of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, of conspiring to bribe naval officers and officials with prostitutes, luxury travel and other perks to secure the contracts.
The Malaysian businessman, known as “Fat Leonard” by naval officers, allegedly persuaded the commanders to have their vessels visit ports served by his firm.
He also allegedly had moles in the Navy’s investigative service, paid to inform him about criminal probes into his company’s dealings.
Leonard then bilked the Navy, overcharging for services or fabricating expenses, sometimes with the knowledge of his partners in the military, authorities allege.
In return, Francis allegedly arranged female escorts, posh hotel rooms and even Lady Gaga concert tickets for officers visiting Singapore or Malaysia, according to the charges.
“Yummy . . . daddy like,” one officer, Commander Jose Luis Sanchez, allegedly wrote in a Facebook message after he was told in emails of the prostitutes on offer. Newsmax.com www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/US-military-crime-Malaysia/2013/11/13/id/536355#ixzz2kmsZywco
Navy Corruption Part 2 Federal authorities are investigating three senior Navy intelligence officials as part of a probe into an alleged contracting scheme that charged the military $1.6 million for homemade firearm silencers that cost only $8,000 to manufacture, court records show.
The three civilian officials, who oversee highly classified programs, arranged for a hot-rod auto mechanic in California to build a specially ordered batch of unmarked and untraceable rifle silencers and sell them to the Navy at more than 200 times what they cost to manufacture, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senior-navy-civilians-investigated-in-alleged-scheme-to-defraud-military-for-16-million/2013/11/12/74383ffa-4bbb-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html?hpid=z4
Four More Marines Blown up at Pendleton The Marine Corps released the names Thursday night of the four Marines killed while clearing unexploded ordnance at the base Wednesday.
Two of the men were from California: 28-year-old Staff Sgt. Mathew R. Marsh of Long Beach, who had been a Marine since 2003, and 27-year-old Sgt. Miguel Ortiz of Vista, a Marine since 2006.
Also killed were 31-year-old Gunnery Sgt. J. Mullins of Bayou L’Ourse, La., an 11-year Marine Corps veteran, and 32-year-old Staff Sgt. Eric W. Summers of Poplar Bluff, Mo., who has been in the Marine Corps for 13 years.
The Corps also said one Navy hospital corpsman and two Marines near the accident scene had minor injuries.
The four Marines who died were bomb removal technicians www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57612467/four-marines-killed-at-camp-pendleton-are-identified/
Opium Doing Just Fine in Afghanistan Afghan opium cultivation has reached a record level, with more than 200,000 hectares planted with the poppy for the first time, the United Nations says.
The UNODC report said the harvest was 36% up on last year, and if fully realised would outstrip global demand.
Most of the rise was in Helmand province, where British troops are preparing to withdraw.
One of the main reasons the UK sent troops to Helmand was to cut opium production. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24919056
Kablooey in Kabul A powerful car bomb that exploded near the site where Afghan elders are set to vote on a long-term security agreement with the United States killed at least 10 people on Saturday, rattling central Kabul and underscoring the insurgency’s desire to prevent an American presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/world/asia/explosion-in-kabul.html?ref=international-home
‘It’s like the United States government is subsidizing the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network’ – U.S. Senator —Despite repeated warnings, US ‘subsidizing’ Afghan companies with ties to terrorism – report 12 Nov 2013 American taxpayers have unwittingly paid more than $150 million to companies throughout the Middle East that are known to have helped finance terrorist attacks on US soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, according to a new internal US government report. At least 43 companies based in Afghanistan were found to have ties to terrorist networks according to findings by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the leading US oversight authority on reconstruction in Afghanistan. SIGAR’s report seems to suggest that the very groups being targeted by the US through counter-insurgency operations sometimes become the beneficiaries of the federal government through contracted work. “It’s like the United states government is subsidizing the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, those groups that are trying to shoot and kill our soldiers,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a member of the Senate’s Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, told ABC News. http://www.legitgov.org/Its-United-states-government-subsidizing-Taliban-Al-Qaeda-Haqqani-network-US-Senator
$500 Million New Hospital to Care For Cannon Fodder at Pendleton Medical care for Marines and their families is getting a first-class upgrade at Camp Pendleton.
Base officials offered a preview of their new four-story naval hospital recently. If you were expecting Quonset huts and double-wide trailers, think again.
The new $500 million Navy hospital looks like something out of the pages of Architectural Digest magazine. The lobby is filled with stylish furniture, works of art and lots of natural light. There’s an atrium and even a Zen garden on one of the upper floors.
Capt. Mark Kobelja, commanding officer of the Naval Hospital, said the design elements were chosen with a specific purpose in mind.
“For example, we know that natural light definitely improves the pain scores and overall well-being and speed of recovery for patients,” Kobelja said. www.kpbs.org/news/2013/nov/15/camp-pendleton-unveils-new-500-million-naval-hospi/
Libya: Disintegrated by USA (Sam Powers and Obamagogue) At least 31 people have been killed and 235 injured in clashes in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, officials say, after militiamen opened fire on protesters.
The demonstrators had marched to the headquarters of the Misrata militia to demand that it leave Tripoli.
Hours after the incident, armed men returned to storm the compound, where militiamen are still holed up.
The Libyan government has been struggling to contain numerous militias who control many parts of the country. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24959938
Bumbled Benghazi Brings Bribes The US has been quietly offering as much as $10m (£6.2m) since January for information about the attack on a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
The state department confirmed the reward in a letter to a Republican lawmaker who questioned them about it.
The appeal had not been published on its Rewards of Justice site because of security concerns, the department said.
Four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, died in the attack on 11 September 2012. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24965925
Nearly two years after a video of U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters in Afghanistan became an Internet sensation, the case has triggered a rare and escalating fight over the way the military sought to punish the service members who were implicated.
Maj. James Weirick, a Marine lawyer assigned to the case, is taking on the chief of the Marine Corps, Gen. James F. Amos, alleging that the criminal investigation was compromised after the commandant demanded harsh punishment for the suspects before they had their day in court. …The urination scandal was among the embarrassing episodes for the Marine Corps during the last decade of war, calling into question the military’s ability to adequately investigate war crimes. Its muddled handling comes as Afghan officials are debating whether to support keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014, which would require Kabul to extend immunity from prosecution by the Afghan authorities to U.S. forces that remain behind.
The military dropped its case against Capt. James V. Clement, the sole officer charged in the urination case in September, shortly before Weirick was to testify about his concerns. Three enlisted Marines who appear in the video have pleaded guilty to a range of charges that include wrongful possession of unauthorized photos of casualties and failure to report mistreatment of human casualties. Five other Marines received nonjudicial punishments. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/marine-corps-fight-escalates-over-handling-of-case-involving-troops-urinating-on-corpses/2013/11/15/a70a26ba-4e2b-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z4
Syria: America’s Jihadists Cling on Syrian government forces have recently ousted rebels from a string of suburbs outside Damascus, threatening their yearlong control of territory south of the capital city, cutting supply lines and surrounding strongholds that one fighter called their “last castle” in the area. Around the northern city of Aleppo, rebels are also newly on the defensive. They are demanding that all fighters mobilize against a government offensive or face consequences in Islamic courts.
These recent battlefield successes — allowing the government to threaten rebel strongholds in and around Syria’s two main cities — prompted Syria’s prime minister, Wael al-Halqi, to declare on Thursday that the government was heading for an “astounding victory,” just as President Bashar al-Assad prepares for peace talks that the United States and Russia hope to convene by year’s end. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/world/middleeast/syrian-governments-forces-gain-but-a-siege-war-goes-on.html?ref=international-home
November 17: 1967 – Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports that he had been given on November 13, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson tells the nation that, while much remained to be done, “We are inflicting greater losses than we’re taking…We are making progress.”
1970 – Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai Massacre.
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
(Reminder and follow the Money to the Pharmas and Insurance Biggies) Matt Taibbi on Obamagogue Care (Griftopia, p175).
Obamacare had been designed as coldly cynical political deal: massive giveaways to Big Pharma in the form of monster subsidies, and an equally lucrative handout to big insurance in the form of an individual mandate granting a few already-wealthy companies 25-30 million new customers who would be forced to buy their products at artificially inflated, federally protected prices.
The essence of Obamacare was two ruthless power plays fused at the hip. It was the federal government seizing control of a sector of America’s private industry worth about 16% of GDP. And it was the same sector of private industry in turn seizing permanent control of America’s taxable income, for converting to private profit. What was little understood by the public…is that the Obama administration tried to pay for the first power play by green lighting the other.
Rahm Emanuel’s (idea) was to buy the insurance and pharma industries’ acquiescence to the gentlest of regulatory regimes by giving them back the one thing they had to trade: the power to tax the public. …
Really, Obamacare was designed as a straight money trade. The admihnistration meant to deal away those billions in subsidies and the premiums from involuntary customers in exchange for the relevant industry’s campaign contributions for a few election cycles.
Slowly Slowly Catching on to Obamagogue’s Lies This week’s Quinnipiac University poll found Obama’s job-approval rating at its lowest ever, 39 percent. More ominous: Only 44 percent say Obama is honest and trustworthy, while 52 percent say he is not; that’s the first time more thought him untrustworthy than trustworthy. Polls show Obama’s personal favorability rating has dropped in tandem. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-does-health-care-fumble-mean-game-over-for-obama/2013/11/15/77dc0b0a-4dfa-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html?tid=pm_pop
Round #2 of Food Stamp Cuts Would ban 170 thousand vets and millions of poor At least 900,000 veterans rely on SNAP. www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/veterans-food-stamp-cuts-republicans-snap
What to do When your own ruling class is completely befuddled about everything important?
China’s Capitalist House of Cards Signs of social dysfunction abound. Young people, who while away their days in Internet cafes or pool halls, say that only a small fraction of them have jobs. The elderly are forced to take menial work to make ends meet. Neighborhood and family structures have been damaged.
Most worrying are the suicides, which local residents say have become an all-too-familiar sign of despair.
As China pushes ahead with government-led urbanization, a program expected to be endorsed at a Communist Party Central Committee meeting that began Saturday, many worry that the scores of new housing developments here may face the same plight as postwar housing projects in Western countries. Meant to solve one problem, they may be creating a new set of troubles that could plague Chinese cities for generations.
“We’re talking hundreds of millions of people who are moving into these places, but the standard of living for these relocatees has actually dropped,” said Lynette Ong, a University of Toronto political scientist who has studied the resettlement areas. “On top of that is the quality of the buildings — there was a lot of corruption, and they skimped on materials.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/new-china-cities-shoddy-homes-broken-hope.html?ref=international-home&_r=5&
China: Brewing Baby Boom The Chinese government will ease its one-child family restrictions and abolish “re-education through labor” camps, significantly curtailing two policies that for decades have defined the state’s power to control citizens’ lives, the Communist Party said Friday. …“Xi Jinping may have the most concentrated power of any Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping,” said Xiao Gongqin, a professor of history in Shanghai who closely follows Chinese politics and advocates “neo-authoritarian” rule to protect the march of market overhauls. “Politically, he has pursued an ideological tightening, because he wants to prevent the kind of explosion in political demands that could come in a relaxed environment. That’s the biggest danger for any government entering a period of reform.” www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/world/asia/china-to-loosen-its-one-child-policy.html?ref=international-home
American Aristocracy Appoints Caroline K to Japan Embassy Caroline Kennedy was sworn in on Tuesday to be the U.S. envoy to Tokyo. Kennedy is one of the highest profile (if not the highest profile) members of the U.S. diplomatic corps, and her new role was marked in a fashion one might expect. Secretary of State John Kerry administered the oath at a private ceremony at the State Department headquarters, followed by a reception at the Japanese ambassador’s residence at which Kerry — and plenty of other dignitaries interested as much in the swank company as the fine sushi sure to be served — was slated to attend. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/wp/2013/11/12/caroline-kennedy-sworn-in-as-ambassador-to-japan/?hpid=z5
The jobless rate for all U.S. veterans was just 6.9 percent in October — slightly lower than it is for the population as a whole.
But the unemployment rate for veterans who have served since 9/11 stood at 10 percent, with 246,000 out of work. That’s the same rate as it was a year ago, and it’s a higher jobless rate than it is for non-veterans, after adjusting for age and demographic factors. That is, even when you factor in the dismal U.S. economy, recent veterans are still having trouble finding work.
Why is unemployment for recent vets so high? Three recent reports tried to take stock of the situation facing “Gulf War II veterans.” Here are a couple of additional factors, in no particular order: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/11/recent-veterans-are-still-experiencing-double-digit-unemployment/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
DEMOGRAPHICS OF HOMELESS VETERANS
13% of the homeless adult population are veterans
20% of the male homeless population are veterans
68% reside in principal cities
32% reside in suburban/rural areas
51% of individual homeless veterans have disabilities
50% have serious mental illness
70% have substance abuse problems
51% are white males, compared to 38% of non-veterans
50% are age 51 or older, compared to 19% non-veteranshttp://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/#facts
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSMVcgAQt1E
Russo-Fascists Send Pussy Riot to Siberia Pussy Riot leader Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is now in a prison hospital near Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia, a Russian official said Tuesday.
“Tolokonnikova has arrived in the Krasnoyarsk territory, where she will serve the rest of her term,” Vladimir Lukin, presidential human rights envoy told the Interfax news agency. “I was told [by Russian prison system authorities] she is in [the prison] hospital at her own request.”
Tolokonnikova, 24, and two bandmates were sentenced in August 2012 to two years each behind bars for hooliganism after engaging in what they called a punk prayer at a cathedral in downtown Moscow in the middle of the February 2012 presidential campaign. The band members’ song begged the Virgin Mary to get rid of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who later won the election. www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-pussy-riot-songstress-now-serving-time-in-central-siberia-20131112,0,6182023.story#axzz2kTFtfn58
The United States Has More People In Jail Than High School Teachers And Engineers There are 1.57 million people in federal and state prison (does not even include county and local jail) according to the Department of Justice. That’s above the nation’s 1.53 million engineers and 1.05 million high school teachers.
Mexico: Corrupt Cops Lead agents to 19 More Bodies Investigators have dug up 19 bodies in western Mexico after questioning nearly two dozen police officers who confessed to working with a drug cartel and led agents to a series of mass graves, an government official said Friday.
Officials said that more bodies could be found as the excavation of eight graves continues. Some of the bodies were gagged and showed signs of torture, said the federal prosecutors official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the press.
Neither the identities of the victims nor the motive for the killings have been released, but the area near the border between Jalisco and Michoacan states is the site of a turf war between the Knights Templar and the New Generation cartels. The graves were located in La Barca in a remote area by Lake Chapala, which is popular among tourists and American retirees. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/16/20-bodies-found-inmexicomassgrave.html
Solidarity for Never
AFT Boss Sucks up to Common Core (backing edu-mother superior Darling Hammond) If the Common Core is sunk—by default or design—it will undercut our ability to give all kids access to what they need to succeed and, of course, will undermine confidence in public education. That’s why we must insist it be done right—and not give in to those who are rooting for these standards, and public schools themselves, to fail. http://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/nytimes/column110313.cfiestes
Spy versus Spy
above, Russian sleeper spy, Anna Chapman http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/anna-chapman-russian-sleeper-agents-arrested-awarded-kremlin-top-medal-article-1.190482
Secret Service Agent Finds Woman So Hot, He loses his Bullet The latest Secret Service scandal has raised an unusual question: How does an agent manage to leave a stray bullet behind?The issue comes up in the case of two senior supervisors removed from President Obama’s protective detail. The case began when one of the men allegedly left a Secret Service bullet in the room of a woman he met at the Hay-Adams Hotel bar in May. According to two former Secret Service agents, the answer is straightforward: Senior supervisor Ignacio Zamora Jr. was likely attempting to clear a round from the chamber of his Service-issued Sig Sauer P229 semiautomatic pistol in order to secure it after joining the woman in her room.
The agency’s standard operating procedure requires that all armed agents carry their weapon with a fully loaded magazine of 12 bullets, along with a 13th round already loaded in the chamber and ready to fire, the former agents said. There is no safety device on the weapons because they must be ready in case of emergencies, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-does-a-secret-service-agent-manage-to-leave-behind-a-bullet-in-a-hotel-room/2013/11/15/ed83a6a2-4e1c-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?tid=pm_pop
Who Stuffed the Spook into the Locked Bag? Himself? Gareth Williams, 31, a Welsh-born mathematician involved in code-breaking work, was found dead on Aug. 23, 2010, by police officers who entered his London apartment. His naked body was curled in a fetal position inside a sports bag in an otherwise empty bathtub. In a twist worthy of a spy movie, the bag was padlocked, but the keys to the lock were inside the bag, beneath the decomposing body. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/world/europe/death-of-british-intelligence-analyst-in-bag-called-accidental.html?ref=international-home&_r=1&
The Magical Mystery Tour
Ending a nearly monthlong manhunt, security forces killed the husband of a suicide bomber who blew up a public bus last month in the city of Volgograd, Russian officials said Saturday. Officials said the husband, Dmitri Sokolov, 21, was killed, along with four others identified as rebels, by security forces in Dagestan, a violence-plagued republic in the North Caucasus.
The bus bombing in Volgograd, which is about 900 kilometers (559 miles) south of Moscow, had unnerved the authorities because of its randomness and because instances of Muslim insurgent violence outside the Caucasus are relatively rare.
The bomber, Naida Asiyalova, blew herself up on a crowded No. 29 bus in the center of the city, killing six other passengers in a fiery blast that was recorded by the dashboard camera of a car traveling behind. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/world/europe/russian-manhunt-ends-as-bus-bombers-husband-is-killed.html?ref=international-home
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI7lZQG5Mcc&feature=youtube_gdata
Russian judge decided not to consider criminal charges Monday against a shock artist who nailed his scrotum to Moscow’s Red Square. en.ria.ru/russia/20131111/184642162/No-Charges-For-Shock-Artist-Over-Red-Square-Stunt.html
So Long
Tina Turner renounces her U.S. citizenship to become Swiss