Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjTeqEL8J0g

Tony Detroit’s Photos are here  www.iphoneogram.com/u/2001065  If you seek a barbarized region, look around you. 

WarMonger/WhoreMonger Petraeus Chased at CUNY The retired four-star general and former CIA director — whose career ended in scandal last year — was heckled by roughly a dozen protesters following his first lecture at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College on Monday, according to a 90-second video posted online Wednesday that has been viewed more than 130,000 times.
“Why are you teaching at CUNY?” one heckler screamed as Petraeus walked near Central Park. “What do you have to say, huh?”
The hecklers seemed more enraged by Petraeus’ 37-year military career, which culminated in his commanding U.S. forces in Afghanistan, than the adultery scandal which prompted his resignation from the CIA in November.
Petraeus, 60, was also blasted as a “scumbag” and a “war criminal” by the angry throng. The heckling became so intense at one point that Petraeus walked into the street and dodged oncoming traffic — including a city bus — as his critics closely followed.
“Petraeus out of CUNY! Petraeus out of CUNY!” the hecklers continued.
Read more: www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/12/petraeus-heckled-by-throng-critics-after-teaching-seminar-at-new-york/#ixzz2eu9pt4d9

Admiral William Fallon on Petraeus: “He’s an ass kissing little chicken shit.” (The Operators, by Hastings, p346). 

Teaching for Change: Social Education and Critical Knowledge of Everyday Life or My Pedagogical Creed by E. Wayne Ross    www.academia.edu/4470379/Teaching_for_Change_Social_Education_and_Critical_Knowledge_of_Everyday_Life_or_My_Pedagogical_Creed

Congratulations of the Publication of

Petraeus Round Two

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4xMBIiqJaY

Sy Hersh Still Fighting Back  He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.
Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.
The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.
“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” he declares in an interview with the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

Accelerators: First Tunisia, now perhaps China  A day after her husband, Xia Junfeng, was put to death for killing two urban management officials in a case that captivated the nation, Ms. Zhang said she welcomed the distraction provided by the crush of strangers, many of whom had traveled from the Chinese capital Beijing, 400 miles away, to this former industrial powerhouse in China’s rough-and-tumble Northeast.
“I just don’t want to be alone with my thoughts,” she said.
But after waging a highly public campaign to save her husband’s life, Ms. Zhang said she hoped the last gasp of media attention might help achieve his last wish: to clear the name of Mr. Xia, an unlicensed street vendor whose lawyers contend was acting in self-defense when he stabbed to death the men who were beating him. “As long as I am breathing, I will fight to establish his innocence,” she said.
Even if government censors in the end blocked most sympathetic media coverage of Mr. Xia’s death, they failed to dampen public sympathy for him. In the hours after he was administered a lethal injection, Chinese social media were swamped with emotional messages that described Mr. Xia’s execution as a miscarriage of justice. Many postings sought to compare his unlucky fate to that of Gu Kailai, the daughter of a Communist revolutionary hero and wife of a once-powerful Chinese politician who was spared death last year despite her conviction for murdering a British businessman.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/world/asia/her-husbands-execution-then-a-bag-of-ashes.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

The Little Red Schoolhouse

High Stakes Exams, High Stakes Cheats  Three schools in the county are among more than two dozen in California to get stripped of their state test rankings over allegations that teachers blatantly cheated or violated protocols for administering assessments.
Lafayette Elementary and Mar Vista Academy — both in San Diego — had their Academic Performance Index ratings disqualified after the San Diego Unified and Sweetwater Union school districts discovered testing irregularities and reported them to the state. Clear View Elementary School in Chula Vista also was flagged for cheating, and the incident in question is under review by the Chula Vista Elementary School District.  www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/sep/27/tp-3-schools-in-county-penalized-over-test/

Harvard Cheats Back on Campus   Dozens of Harvard students who were forced to take a year off in the university’s worst cheating scandal in memory are returning this month to some painful moments on a campus that has been changed by their actions.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/education/students-accused-of-cheating-return-awkwardly-to-a-changed-harvard.html?ref=global-home&_r=4&

Forbes Lists the Billionaires’ University (Harvard first)  Want your kid to become one of the richest people in the world? Send them to Harvard.
The Cambridge, Mass., school tops our first-ever billionaire college study with an alumni base that features 54 10-figure titans, more than 5% of the world’s billionaires. Of those 54 plutocrats, 11 received an undergraduate degree, 41 earned a master’s, doctorate or juris doctorate, and two earned two degrees.    www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/billionaire-study-harvard-stanford-business-billionaires-colleges-09-wealth.html

Plenty of Money for Wars (backed by teachers’ unions) and cuts for capital’s schools More than two-thirds of U.S. states are spending less per child on schools than they were five years ago, a study found, showing how slowly governments are replacing funding that was cut because of the recession.
At least 34 states will devote less on kindergarten through 12th grade on a per-pupil basis during the current school year than in 2008, once inflation is taken into account, according to a report released today by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which tracks the impact of government decisions on those with low incomes.    www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-12/most-states-school-funding-tumbles-since-recession-study-finds.html

Counterfeit Critics Call RaTT a Flop  Others were more blunt in their criticism of the Race to the Top critique. “The report released today by the Broader, Bolder group shows the extent to which adults invested in blocking needed education reforms will go to defend their interests. This is intellectual dishonesty of the worst kind by very smart people who know better,” said Charles Barone, policy director of Democrats for Education Reform. “To call this junk science is an insult to junk. Fred Sanford is turning over in his grave.”
Read more: www.politico.com/story/2013/09/race-to-the-top-for-education-a-flop-report-finds-96709.html#ixzz2euCO83E5

After Years Of NCLB and RaTT Hysteria, applied full on by the vast majority of teachers–nothing but docility, obedience, witless loyalty, killed curiousity and a dislike of learning. That’s not success?  Scores on the SAT college entrance exam were largely stagnant for a third year, although African-American students made slight gains, the College Board said Thursday.
Average scores in reading, math, and writing were the same in 2012 and 2013.
Students scored an average 496 in reading, down one point from 2011. Average math scores have remained stuck at 514 over the last three years. And the average writing score, 488, was down one point from 2011.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130926/SCHOOLS/309260062#ixzz2gEegC0qO

Detroit: Send your kid to our Failed System Where Every Teacher was fired or we will arrest you  Michigan law requires all students who turned 11 before 2009 to attend school regularly until age 16. Those who turned 11 on or after Dec. 1, 2009, must attend school regularly until they are 18 (unless they graduate before then). Parents whose children do not attend school regularly face prosecution for educational neglect, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail or a $50 fine.   Michigan law requires all students who turned 11 before 2009 to attend school regularly until age 16. Those who turned 11 on or after Dec. 1, 2009, must attend school regularly until they are 18 (unless they graduate before then). Parents whose children do not attend school regularly face prosecution for educational neglect, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail or a $50 fine.

It is 2014 and U Alabama still has segregated sororities (but then the whole US school system…) From the governor to a U.S. attorney, state and other leaders say they want to find a way to permanently end racial segregation in the University of Alabama’s Greek system. But for now they’re treading lightly in forcing change on sorority row.
Racial segregation in the system was thrust into the spotlight this month when the student newspaper quoted a member of an all-white sorority who said alumnae blocked undergraduates from accepting a qualified prospective member because she was black.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130923/SCHOOLS/309230029#ixzz2gEkjSUy6

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

The Obamagogue; the latest mouthpiece of empire, following the Carter doctrine, following the Roosevelt Corollary following the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny: ” “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region,” Obama told the General Assembly in New York.
The nation, he said, will confront external aggression against allies and partners in the region.
“We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world,” Obama said. While the United States is reducing its oil imports, the world still depends on Middle Eastern oil and gas. A severe disruption could destabilize the global economy.  www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=120847

Who Lost Syria to AQ (the fizzle of the empire)   As diplomats at the United Nations push for a peace conference to end Syria’s civil war, a collection of some of the country’s most powerful rebel groups publicly abandoned the opposition’s political leaders, casting their lot with an affiliate of Al Qaeda. As support for the Western-backed leadership has dwindled, a second, more extreme Al Qaeda group has carved out footholds across parts of Syria, frequently clashing with mainline rebels who accuse it of making the establishment of an Islamic state a priority over the fight to topple President Bashar al-Assad.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/world/middleeast/syria-crisis.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Barbarism Rising: Philippines  Fighting intensified in the embattled southern Philippine city of Zamboanga on Saturday as hopes for a quick cease-fire with Muslim rebels evaporated amid some of the most serious violence to strike the troubled region in years. The six-day standoff with the rebels in Zamboanga, one of the most vibrant trading cities in the southern Philippines, is believed to have left at least 55 people dead. It has also raised fears of a setback in the government’s efforts, backed by the United States, to calm insurgencies and fight terrorism.
The government says most of the dead are rebels fighting government troops. The forces are firing mortar rounds and battling street by street to take back several seaside neighborhoods from the militants. www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/world/asia/philippine-leaders-descend-on-strife-torn-city-amid-crisis.html?ref=global-home

US Holds  3 times the Chem WMDs Syria Does Three decades after the U.S. started destroying its own chemical weapons, the nation’s stockpile stands at more than 3,000 tons — about three times what the U.S. now says Syrian President Bashar Assad controls.
While the U.S. has made significant progress eradicating 90 percent of the 31,500 tons it once possessed, the military doesn’t expect to complete destruction until 2023.
Experts say it’s probably simpler to make chemical weapons than to get rid of them.
“Disposal requires such rigorous processes to ensure there is no pollution or residual agent,” said Susannah Sirkin, international policy director for Physicians for Human Rights, which has been monitoring weapons of mass destruction for more than two decades. “On average it is costing about 10 times more to destroy than it did to make the munitions.”    news.yahoo.com/us-arsenal-lessons-syria-chemical-weapons-071108793–politics.html

Israel and WMD’s   Israel has 80 nuclear warheads and the potential to double that number, according to a new report by U.S. experts.
In the Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, proliferation experts Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris write that Israel stopped production of nuclear warheads in 2004.
But the country has enough fissile material for an additional 115 to 190 warheads, according to the report, meaning it could as much as double its arsenal. .. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, leaked the country’s alleged nuclear secrets to a British newspaper, and said Israel had at least 100 nuclear weapons. Vanunu was later convicted of espionage and treason and was released from jail in 2004 after serving 17 years.    www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-israel-nuclear-weapons-20130915,0,4117406.story

Letters to America’s Most Radical Mag, the New Yorker, About Gas and the High Moral Ground  Coll does not mention that since the Second World War the biggest user of lethal chemicals in warfare has been the United States. During the Vietnam War, more than ten million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across Vietnam, causing untold numbers of people (including U.S. troops) to die or become sick, and hundreds of thousands of birth defects, which continue to this day. Hundreds of thousands of tons of napalm were also used in Vietnam. More recently, the U.S. used depleted uranium munitions in both the Gulf and Iraq Wars, leaving a legacy of death, cancer, and birth defects; white phosphorus was used as a weapon in Fallujah. The U.S. government can deny these facts, and Coll can fail to mention them, but they are there for those who care to look.
Jan Henle
New York City

Coll makes a distinction between chemical weapons and conventional ones, saying that gases “travel unpredictably” and that they can cripple survivors. These qualifications can be made about conventional weapons, too. Estimates of the civilian-death toll of American drone strikes in Pakistan range from dozens (the U.S. government’s claim) to hundreds. One Pakistani report places the number at more than a thousand, a significant portion of the total casualty count. None of this suggests that we should look the other way when dictators commit atrocities, but the West’s insistence that chemical weapons are uniquely horrible downplays the moral costs of our own military action, and lowers the political barriers to foreign intervention. If we are to intervene in Syria in defense of innocent civilians, we should do so regardless of how those atrocities were committed, and we must acknowledge that, in the process, we will certainly be contributing to “collateral damage” as well. Daniel Margolis  Zurich, Switzerland

Coll mentions that the Reagan Administration looked the other way when Saddam gassed the Kurds. In the interest of furthering democratic deliberation, it would be appropriate to mention, as Foreign Policy did last month, that the C.I.A. gave Saddam coördinates so that his gas rockets could strike Iranian troops more accurately.
Robert Shetterly Brooksville, Me.    www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2013/09/23/130923mama_mail

Diagnosing PTSD is EASY. You can do it yourself.    www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/dsm5_criteria_ptsd.asp

So why are 900,000 vets waiting 18 months for a diagnosis? 

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

“Empire as a way of life means nuclear death.” William Appleman Williams

Yeow! The Rich got Richer and the Poor Poorer, by a Lot!  The income gap between the richest 1% of Americans and the other 99% widened to a record margin in 2012, according to an analysis of tax filings.
The top 1% of US earners collected 19.3% of household income, breaking a record previously set in 1927.
Income inequality in the US has been growing for almost three decades.
Overall, the pre-tax incomes of the top 1% of households rose 19.6% compared to a 1% increase for the rest of Americans.
And the top 10% of richest households represented just under half of all income in the year, according to the analysis. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24039202

Imperialism MUST blow back on the “home” work force The U.S. industrial comeback, an idea embraced by President Barack Obama and some economists as 12 years of factory-job losses gave way to three annual gains, is now sputtering. Even with nonfarm payrolls up 1.1 percent in 2013 to 136.1 million, manufacturing has stagnated at less than 12 million. Factories added more than 500,000 positions after falling in February 2010 to the lowest since 1941.
That left the factory workforce through August about 13 percent smaller than the 13.7 million when the U.S. fell into recession in December 2007. In 2000, the tally was 17 million.
“I know all of us are concerned about manufacturing, but it’s not going to come home to the degree that it used to be,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said at a Sept. 5 event in Dallas.
Cost Disadvantage
Higher taxes and employee benefits boost U.S. manufacturing costs to 9 percent more than the average of the country’s nine-largest trading partners, according to a Sept. 3 report by a team of JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts.
For GE, higher U.S. expenses mean sending assembly of high-intensity discharge lamps to Budapest from a factory with 160 workers in Ravenna, Ohio.
“This particular product that was at Ravenna was made more cost competitively in Hungary,” said Christopher Augustine, a spokesman for Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE.
Hungary is GE’s global production center for that product line, just as fluorescent-lamp output is centered elsewhere in Ohio, in Bucyrus, Augustine said. Many of those lights go to U.S. customers, he said.
Expanding Abroad
Honeywell has cut its U.S. workforce by 5,000 positions to 52,000 since 2007 while adding 15,000 employees abroad, for a total of 80,000 outside the country.
Strongsville is one of two avionics repair shops closing in the U.S., along with one in Irving, Texas, said Steve Brecken, a Honeywell spokesman. U.S. operations are being consolidated in Renton, Washington, and Wichita, Kansas, and part of the work is being transferred to a U.S.-based contractor, he said. Morris Township, New Jersey-based Honeywell is expanding outside the U.S. at shops in Singapore and Shanghai to meet rising demand there, Brecken said.
“The world has opened up and it’s providing more choices for manufacturers that are global companies and supply a global customer base,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist for Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. “We’re going to continue to see a globalization of manufacturing.”    www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-13/factory-rebirth-fizzles-in-u-s-as-work-shipped-overseas.html

Project Censored on the Personifications of US Capital:  In this study, we decided to identify in detail the people on the boards of directors of the top ten asset management firms and the top ten most centralized corporations in the world. Because of overlaps, there is a total of thirteen firms, which collectively have 161 directors on their boards. We think that this group of 161 individuals represents the financial core of the world’s transnational capitalist class. They collectively manage $23.91 trillion in funds and operate in nearly every country in the world. They are the center of the financial capital that powers the global economic system. Western governments and international policy bodies work in the interests of this financial core to protect the free flow of capital investment anywhere in the world. …. Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the US and Europe holding approximately 63 percent of that total; meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth.33 The World Bank reports that in 2008, 1.29 billion people were living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day, and 1.2 billion more were living on less than $2.00 a day.34 Thirty-five thousand people, mostly young children, die every day from starvation.35 So while millions suffer, the TCC financial elites seek returns that speculate on the rising cost of food, and they do this in cooperation with each other in a global system of TCC power and control.   www.projectcensored.org/financial-core-of-the-transnational-corporate-class/

The most striking number in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Sept. 17 report on income and poverty isn’t about poverty. It’s about middle-class, working America. According to the Census, American men who work full time year-round earned less in real terms in 2012 than they did in 1973.
So much for a rising tide lifting all boats. Gross domestic product has nearly tripled since 1973, when President Richard Nixon was still flashing his V sign, but the gains have gone mostly to the people at the top.
Last year, the Census report shows, men who worked full time year-round had median earnings of $49,398. That’s a decline of 4 percent from 1973, adjusted for inflation. “We’ve had 40 years of stagnation,” says Sheldon Danziger, the new president of the Russell Sage Foundation, which funds research on improving living conditions in the U.S. “Things just don’t trickle down,” he says. “If the full-time, full-year male workers aren’t benefiting from economic growth, why should we expect the poor to be?”    mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-17/growth-isnt-trickling-down-to-the-middle-class-let-alone-to-the-poor

Shocking New Research Reveals Obama’s Legacy Could Be an America of Aristocrats and Peons  New research from inequality experts Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez has revealed that we now have the biggest gap between the rich and rest of America since economists began tracking data a century ago.  This isn’t supposed to happen following an economic crisis. After the Great Depression, Roosevelt’s New Deal programs worked to prevent wealth from piling back up at the top. And over the past two decades, the percentage of income claimed by the wealthy dropped after each recession. But in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the top 1 percent has gobbled up nearly all of the income gains in the first three years of the “recovery” — a stupifying 95 percent. Economic inequality is even worse than it was before the crash. In fact, last year the rich took home the largest share of income since 1917 with the exception of only one year: 1928.   …The bailouts, which handed boatloads of money to bankers, can’t be blamed entirely on President Obama. But ever since then, the policies of his administration have pretty much fixed things so that those who caused the crisis have benefited, while those who didn’t paid for it. He has surrounded himself with Wall Street apologists as economic advisors, despite the existence of extraordinary economic minds like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz who could offer sound and sensible guidance. Every chance Obama has to correct this mistake, he seems to double down and brings on another 1 percenter.
Is this an accident?
Let’s take a look at the years from 2009 -2012. While working people were sweating it, the richest Americans have enjoyed a fabulous ride. For example, if you were in the top 1 percent in 2012, lucky you — your income soared on average by 20 percent . And if you were in the top 0.01 percent, you probably bought a bigger yacht because your income was up by more than 32 percent on average . As for everybody else? They shared a measly 1 percent rise.       www.alternet.org/economy/obama-legacy-income-inequality?akid=10934.1074977.pRdhZe&rd=1&src=newsletter896373&t=3

Scumbag Wife of Jailed Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick (Cass Tech Grad) “Show me the Money!”

Why KKKwame’s (the racists’ fave mayor) is going to cost Detroit more millions, and reward the big banks  If Judge Steven Rhodes allows it, Detroit could pay off two global banks that steered the city into a disastrous gamble in 2005 that backfired, inflating an already-overwhelming budget shortfall and jeopardizing the city’s access to casino tax revenue.
At issue is a 2005 deal engineered by then-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, UBS and Merrill Lynch-backed SBS Financial Products The city borrowed $1.44 billion in variable-rate debt to eliminate its unfunded pension liabilities. It was the financial equivalent of a Hail Mary pass that was not only intercepted but returned for a touchdown  … Orr has offered to pay UBS and Bank of America at least 75 cents on the dollar while other creditors may receive as little as 10 cents on the dollar and city retirees’ pensions could be cut.
Complicating matters is that Orr acknowledges the banks might not deserve special treatment legally, yet he still plans to pay them off instead of pursuing a potentially costly legal battle to challenge their rights.    www.freep.com/article/20130925/NEWS01/309250023/Detroit-swaps-legality-pension-Kevyn-Orr-Chapter-9-bankruptcy-debt

Government Motors Needs a Tax Break  The Detroit City Council Tuesday approved a 12-year tax abatement for General Motors Co. — worth an estimated $599,508 — that could help persuade the automaker to build two logistics facilities at its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant.From The Detroit News:   www.detroitnews.com/article/20130924/AUTO0103/309240098#ixzz2fqdS46jp

Doubly Bailed out Italian Chrysler Lays off 500 workers Chrysler has laid off 500 employees at its Jeep plant in Toledo even though it has not started shipping its all-new Jeep Cherokee SUV — the automaker’s most important new product this year.
For months, Chrysler has said that Jeep Cherokees will arrive at dealerships by the end of the third quarter of this year, or by Sept. 30.
However, production issues have slowed release of the Cherokee at least twice.   www.freep.com/article/20130923/BUSINESS0103/309230130/Toledo-Jeep-plant-layoffs

AIG CEO: Anger over AIG bonuses ‘just as bad’ as lynchings  AIG’s CEO Robert Benmosche — who came in to rescue the company after the 2008 financial crisis — told the Wall Street Journal that the outrage over the bonuses promised to AIG’s members was just as bad as when white supremacists in the American South used to lynch African Americans:
The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitchforks and their hangman nooses, and all that — sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.”
Yes, enduring some public criticism for receiving multimillion-dollar bonuses after helping crash the global economy is a lot like being hanged from a tree by your neck until you die.    www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/24/aig-ceo-anger-over-aig-bonuses-just-as-bad-as-lynchings/

Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn’t apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It’s time to stop the public giveaways to America’s richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams.    www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/

Lets Drug Test and Force to Work the Really Big Welfare Kings and Queens on Wall Street, but no!   Bills that would deny unemployment benefits to people who refuse to take drug tests required by employers and that would mandate community service for people receiving public assistance were approved in the state Senate and a House committee Wednesday.
The drug-testing bill, which passed the House Commerce Committee on a 12-4 vote with three Democrats passing on the issue, would deny unemployment benefits for people who either refused to take a drug test required by an employer or tested positive.
The community service bill, which passed the Senate on a 27-9 vote, would require people receiving food stamps or other welfare benefits to participate in community service or other work-related activities in order to be eligible for the assistance. www.freep.com/article/20130918/NEWS06/309180135/food-stamps-welfare-community-service-drug

The Ponzi-slime under the perfect sun in San Diego  Douglas McClain Jr. was sentenced to 15 years in prison today (Sept. 23) and ordered to pay $81.7 million in restitution for his lending scheme which defrauded people in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Panama, China, England, and Belgium.
According to evidence presented at trial, McClain’s Argyll Equities did business in San Diego, California, Florida, Texas, and Georgia. He would falsely represent that Argyll would lend money to corporate executives who would pledge stock as collateral.
McClain would promise the stock would not be sold unless the loan defaulted. However, according to evidence presented at trial, Argyll would sell the stock immediately, thus giving the company the appearance of having money to lend. Borrowers were told their stock would be returned when the loan was paid off. But McClain gave phony excuses on why he could not return the stock that he had already sold.
Read more: www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/sep/23/stock-swindler-sentenced-to-15-years/#ixzz2fsg6gn3B

San Diego Part 2–Insider Trading is not a fluke, it is business Jing Wang, a former executive vice president and president of global business operations at Qualcomm, was today (Sept. 23) charged with insider trading in stock of Qualcomm and Atheros, a company Qualcomm bought.
As a senior Qualcomm executive, Wang was repeatedly warned not to use material, non-public information in stock transactions. The broker involved was Gary Yin, formerly a senior vice president of the San Diego office of Merrill Lynch, a unit of Bank of America.
According to information released by the U.S. Attorney’s office, Jing Wang spoke with Yin on how to set up a secret account in the British Virgin Islands that would conceal his trading activities. Jing Wang set up the account and his brother in China, Bing Wang, was falsely listed as the beneficial owner of the nominee account at the tax haven.
As a senior executive, in 2010 Wang learned that Qualcomm would boost its dividend and buy back some of its stock (a maneuver that normally raises the stock price.) Prior to the announcement, Wang told Yin to buy as much Qualcomm stock as he could to stash in the offshore account, according to the indictment.
Read more: www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/sep/23/ex-qualcomm-exec-vp-charged-with-insider-trading/#ixzz2fsgZL4kf

Detroit–where incompetence and corruption ruled all of life–the pensions: Detroit’s municipal pension fund made payments for decades to retirees, active workers and others above and beyond normal benefits, costing the struggling city billions of dollars and helping push it into bankruptcy, according to people who have reviewed the payments.
The payments, which were not publicly disclosed, included bonuses to retirees, supplements to workers not yet retired and cash to the families of workers who died before becoming eligible to collect a pension, according to reports by an outside actuary and other people with knowledge of the matter….Detroit has nearly 12,000 retired general workers, who last year received pensions of $19,213 a year on average — hardly enough to drive a great American city into bankruptcy. But the total excess payments in some years ran to more than $100 million, a crushing expense for a city in steep decline. In some years, the outside actuary found, Detroit poured into the pension fund more than twice the amount it would have had to contribute had it paid only the specified benefits.

And then the city’s contributions were not enough. So much money had been drained from the pension fund that by 2005, Detroit could no longer replenish it from its dwindling tax revenue. Instead, the city turned to the public bond markets, borrowed $1.44 billion and used that to fill the hole.
Even that did not work. In June, Detroit failed to make a $39.7 million interest payment on that borrowing — the first default of what was soon to become the biggest municipal bankruptcy case in American history.
Detroit said at the time that making the interest payment would have consumed more than 90 percent of its available cash. And besides, the hole in its pension fund was growing again, and it needed another $200 million for that.
When Detroit went to the bond market, it acknowledged that it needed cash for its pension fund but did not explain its long history of paying out more than the plan’s legitimate benefits, including the bonuses, known as “13th checks,” which were reported this month by The Detroit Free Press.    dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/undisclosed-payments-cost-detroit-pension-plan-billions/?hp

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

All the Houston Cops in this Video are Still at Work

NSA (America’s Stasi)  is Watching You   Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.  The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.
The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.   www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-citizens.html?ref=global-home

Greece: Fascist Golden Dawn on the March  The photo splashed on the cover of a Greek newspaper this weekend shocked a nation: Pavlos Fyssas, a Greek rapper whose music inveighed against far-right groups, lay dying in a pool of his own blood as his girlfriend cradled him in her arms, moments after he was stabbed in the heart.  The suspect has been linked to Greece’s neo-fascist Golden Dawn party. Almost as chilling are accusations by some witnesses that a squad of police officers stood by as a group of burly, black-clad party members chased Mr. Fyssas down.      www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/world/europe/greece-in-anti-fascist-crackdown-investigates-police.html?ref=global-home&_r=2&

India: Hindu Fascism Rising  Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat and a strong proponent of Hindutva was anointed by BJP as its candidate for Prime Minister in 2014 Indian Parliament elections. Conspicuously absent, was the BJP’s senior-most leader LK Advani, a hardline Hindutva adherent and another prime ministerial aspirant, who refused to support the decision, holding out till the end against all attempts to bring him on board. Other dissenters like Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi, grudgingly fell in line. Ms Swaraj sat next to Mr Modi and listened intently as he promised a BJP victory next year. Advani has reportedly told Rajnath Singh that today’s Modi announcement will plunge the BJP into “political disaster.”
The BJP’s allies Shiv Sena and Akali Dal have already thrown their weight behind Modi. However, a third important ally, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United, opted out of the alliance months ago, in opposition to Modi’s alleged involvment in the 2002 Gujarat riots and his Hindutva ideology.   www.countercurrents.org/cc130913.htm Hindutva is a virulent fascist ideology which holds a Hindu supremacist world view.

Barbarism Rising: US Military Training Contract Killers (surprise)  His nickname was Rambo. He was a sergeant in the Army, and he trained soldiers to be snipers. But after leaving the military in 2004, the authorities say, he put his skills to work in a less honorable way: earning a living as a contract killer.  This past spring, the onetime sergeant, Joseph Hunter, 48, and two other former soldiers agreed to murder an agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and one of that agency’s confidential informers, both in Liberia, for a total of $800,000, federal prosecutors said on Friday in Manhattan.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/nyregion/former-army-sergeant-became-contract-killer-authorities-say.html?ref=global-home

Solidarity for Never

above, a classic reissued: www.scribd.com/doc/106238989/The-American-Federation-of-Teachers-and-the-CIA-by-George-N-Schmidt

NEA, AFT, and Liberals Love the vacillating nationalist reactionary Diane Ravitch. Why? Because she loves capitalism, imperialism and god. Why do you think she is not a cop?   Join Noted Education Historian, Activist and Author Diane Ravitch
on Her California Speaking Tour sponsored in part by the CTA/NEA
Dr. Diane Ravitch, a leading education activist, author and historian, has become the voice of reason in speaking out for educators and against the corporate education reform agenda. CTA is encouraging educators to come and hear Diane Ravitch as she tours California over the next two weeks. Using her insight from decades on the inside of the education “reform” movement, she is now the leading voice against No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, high-stakes testing, and corporate-backed education reforms. She has been called a “whistle-blower extraordinaire” by the Wall Street Journal.
We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to join Ravitch as she discusses the current state of schools, what’s wrong, and how they can become so much better. She will also be discussing her newest book, Reign of Error, The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
In an interview with National Public Radio, Ravitch stated, “I am totally opposed to the status quo. The status quo was the one that was created 10 years ago by the No Child Left Behind legislation, and this has turned schools into testing factories. And teachers know this is wrong; educators know it’s wrong.”
The forums are being are being held in Sacramento, Berkeley, Stanford, Los Angeles and Northridge. Don’t miss this opportunity to be intrigued, informed and inspired by the person many call the “anti-Rhee” and who truly believes students come first.

Against Ravitch Nothing significant is going to happen if it takes place behind the leadership of the vacillating reactionary Dianne Ravitch and the union bosses who lionize her.
Still a patriot, still a nationalist, still god-blessing everything in sight, still favoring the exploitation that is at the root of capital and its state, as well as the empire’s wars, there is a reason why she is hugged by unionite heads like the presidents of the NEA and AFT who allowed the militarization of schooling, helped create the No Child Left Behind Act and its Democratic inheritor, the Race to the Top, who poured millions of dollars and volunteer hours into electing the easily recognized demagogue, Obama, and who now oversee the wreckage of teachers wages, benefits, and their very jobs….The core issues of our time are:
*US capitalism in a real crisis of finance and industry,
* imperialism (lost and losing two wars and starting a new one),
*growing imperial competition,
*and the now-existing corporate state which is running the schools in its own interests.
The rapid emergence of the US corporate state, a key prop for fascism, taking power in somewhat new garb, but retaining its core aspects, including a government that is in reality an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich. Within that committee they iron out their differences (finance vs industrial capital, for example, and minor differences too—all at play as capital’s values of “me first” meet the need for class rule) then turn on the mass of people with a vengeance, inside and outside the US.
While American public education has always been a myth (forever segregated by class and race, always promoting lies like nationalism), that is especially true now. Some Substance writers have been the most prominent critics of the demolition of whatever there was of public education, and the turn to capitalist schooling–within the corporate state.
What is defensible about the key aspects of capitalist schooling: the regimentation of the curricula and eradication of history, racist and anti-working class high-stakes testing, and militarization in poor or working class areas?
But Ravitch wants to “defend public education,” not because she has changed sides, but because she is a reactionary defender of empire and exploitation, just like the union bosses who hug her.
The pap that drifts out of the treacherous Ravitch deserves critique, not applause. Her march is to the voting booth. Those who think they can vote the rich out of their money and weapons should silence themselves and get busy with writing self critiques about how they influenced others to vote for the current demagogue, and their take on fascism, in schools and out.
Working solely behind Ravitch’s lead, for example, backing Democrats, as she and her unionite backers urge, BREEDS fascism.   (more)    richgibson.com/againstravitch.htm

Below, Van Roekel and the Vacillating reactionary and liberal Fave Ravitch, laughing at the ranks

NEA’s $465,000/year boss Van Roekel Pimps the Common Core  National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel is wrapping up a five-city “back-to-school” tour aimed in part at encouraging teachers to embrace the Common Core academic standards. He’s getting an earful: At every stop, he says, his members tell him they are terrified that the tougher Common Core tests will be used to label more schools as failing and more teachers as ineffective, with punitive consequences. That leaves Van Roekel to perform a delicate balancing act.
Pro Education caught up with Van Roekel at a forum at a school in Somerville, Mass., where he told teachers he would “fight like crazy” for the standards — but also pledged to “fight like crazy against the misuse and abuse of tests.” He told the crowd of teachers — who didn’t appear entirely convinced — that the standards would raise rigor across the country and would “make sure kids learn what they need to know in the 21st Century.” When people tell him they oppose the Common Core, Van Roekel said his response is always the same: “What do you want as an alternative?”    www.politico.com/morningeducation/0913/morningeducation11631.html

Tweedle Dee Born Rich Kozol Praises Tweedle Dum Patriot Ravitch  Again and again, she returns to this: “Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation,” which make for a “toxic mix.” Public schooling in itself, she emphasizes, is “in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.”
In her zeal to deconstruct that narrative, Ravitch takes on almost all the well-known private-sector leaders and political officials — among them Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, Wendy Kopp and Michelle Rhee — who have given their encouragement, or barrels of their money, to the privatizing drive. It isn’t likely they’ll be sending her bouquets. Those, on the other hand, who have grown increasingly alarmed at seeing public education bartered off piece by piece, and seeing schools and teachers thrown into a state of siege, will be grateful for this cri de coeur — a fearless book, a manifesto and a call to battle. www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/books/review/reign-of-error-by-diane-ravitch.html?pagewanted=all

Against Kozol  He wants capitalist schools without capitalism.
That, in my eyes, is a real mistake. Over time, it becomes misleadership. I believe the plan behind Kozol is “Vote Democratic,” or, at the very least, “vote in mass.”
The Masters will never adopt the ethics of the Slaves. Never. Not without a bitter fight. That fight has to be a real fight and some principals will need to be made more than miserable.
Voting will not solve the problems we face. Worse things could be done than casting a ballot, but voting should be at the bottom of the activist list.
Why? The answer lies in a practical answer to what appears to be a philosophical questions: Why have government? Why have schools? Who are “we” and what is our relationship with others in this world? That is a question usually absent in social studies classes; the US government or something like it is assumed to be the highest form of human development.    www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/07/11/18287090.php

Why Did NEA Give $1.5 Million of Member Money to the Bankrupt and Corrupt AFL-CIO ?  http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/

Obamagogue to Saps at AFL-CIO on Health Care: F You. The federal government on Friday rejected pleas from labor unions for a dispensation from President Obama’s health care law. The decision, likely to infuriate some of Mr. Obama’s closest political allies, denies federal tax credits to workers who receive health coverage under employee benefit plans sponsored by more than one employer. Such plans are common in construction and other industries.
Under the 2010 health care law, the tax credits will be available starting next year to low- and moderate-income people who buy private insurance in state-based marketplaces known as exchanges. The administration’s decision was made by the Treasury Department, but almost surely approved by the president.
The Treasury said its conclusion resulted from a straightforward reading of the 2010 health care law, which says that workers are not eligible for premium tax credits if they have been offered affordable coverage under an employer-sponsored plan that provides minimum value.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/us/politics/administration-rejects-union-pleas-on-health-law.html?emc=edit_tnt_20130914&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Union Tops, Mystics and others Grovel Before the Obamagogue who won’t bail out Detroit  Labor leaders took their turn visiting the White House on Friday to talk about what can and should be done for bankrupt Detroit, while also cautioning the Obama administration that the financial problems experienced in southeast Michigan may soon be felt in many other metropolitan areas across the U.S.
Calling for a plan that would not only address Detroit’s concerns but also serve as a playbook for future crises, the group — which included the UAW’s Bob King and others — left the hour-long meeting touting few specifics, but saying the groundwork was laid for a response that could help address Detroit’s issues by attracting new jobs and development.
“They are very much aware of the problem,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said after the meeting. “This is not only a Detroit problem. … This is an issue that confronts urban centers across the country.”
The meeting was one in a series that administration officials have been engaged in as they attempt to give voice to the various groups impacted by the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. While a federal bailout has been ruled out, the Obama administration has still been trying to coordinate a response to the crisis.    www.freep.com/article/20130913/NEWS06/309130105/detroit-bankrupt-obama-pastors-congress-crises

More Proof the US Labor Movement and US Workers’ Interests have only contradiction in common   Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), said he sees “great value” in labor finding different groups to align with politically. But the federation needs to stick to representing workers rather than become a social movement itself, according to the union chief.
“However, to say that we are going to grow this labor movement by some kind of formal partnership, membership, status, place in this federation, I am against. This is the American Federation of Labor. We are supposed to be representing workers and workers’ interests,” Schaitberger said. “We are not going to be the American Federation of Progressive and Liberal Organizations.”
Others in labor, especially in the building and construction sectors, have aggressively pushed back against the proposal. Those unions have clashed repeatedly with environmental groups over building the Keystone XL pipeline.  Read more:   thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/320939-unions-push-back-against-labors-ties-to-progressive-groups#ixzz2fshtb5tc
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Spy versus Spy

Washington, D.C., September 4, 2013 – Recent press disclosures about National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance activities — relying on documents provided by Edward Snowden — have sparked one of the most significant controversies in the history of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Today, the nongovernmental National Security Archive at The George Washington University posts a compilation of over 125 documents — a Web resource — to provide context and specifics about the episode. 
The Snowden leaks have generated broad public debate over issues of security, privacy, and legality inherent in the NSA’s surveillance of communications by American citizens. Furthermore, news coverage has explored the story on many levels, from the previously unknown scope of the NSA’s programs, to public and congressional reactions, to Snowden’s personal saga, including his attempts to evade U.S. authorities and avoid extradition to the United States.
Today’s posting covers the full range of these topics, featuring documents from the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the NSA itself, among other sources. The records include:
White House and ODNI efforts to explain, justify, and defend the programs
Correspondence between outside critics and executive branch officials
Fact sheets and white papers distributed (and sometimes later withdrawn) by the government
Key laws and court decisions (both Supreme Court and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)
Documents on the Total Information Awareness (later Terrorist Information Awareness, or TIA) program, an earlier proposal for massive data collection
Manuals on how to exploit the Internet for intelligence    www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/

A Surpriser From George Will on the CIA and the Bay of Pigs Secrets Fifty-two years and many misadventures later, the invasion still fascinates as, in historian Theodore Draper’s description, “one of those rare events in history — a perfect failure.” It had a perverse fecundity.
It led to President John Kennedy’s decision to demonstrate toughness by deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam….In 1972, the Bay of Pigs made a cameo appearance in the Watergate shambles, which involved some Cubans and Americans active in the invasion. On the June 23 “smoking gun” Oval Office tape, Richard Nixon directs his aide H.R. Haldeman to urge the CIA to tell the FBI to back off from investigating the burglary by saying, “Look, the problem is that this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing.”
Surely this “thing” should be studied as deeply as possible. Unfortunately, the CIA, which you might think had made every mistake possible regarding the invasion, is now making another. It is resisting attempts to force the release of the fifth and final volume of its official history of it.
This autumn, a federal appeals court is expected to hear arguments about disclosing the document written in 1981 by CIA historian Jack Pfeiffer, who retired in 1984 and died in 1997. The National Security Archive, a private research institution and library, is arguing that no important government interest is served by the continuing suppression of a 32-year-old report about a 52-year-old event.   www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-cia-still-battles-over-the-bay-of-pigs/2013/09/1/243ff162-1bc5-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html?hpid=z3

NSA Pretends it’s Google to Spy on Web The NSA used ‘man in the middle’ hack attacks to impersonate Google and fool web users, leaks have revealed. The technique circumvents encryption by redirecting users to a copycat site which relays all the data entered to NSA data banks.
Brazilian television network Globo News released a report based on classified data divulged by former CIA worker Edward Snowden on Sunday. The report itself blew the whistle on US government spying on Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, but hidden in amongst the data was information the NSA had impersonated Google to get its hands on user data. rt.com/news/nsa-disguised-google-spy-801/

Valentine on the Fake Left and Black Propaganda  As soon as Kevin Drum at Mother Jones absolved the CIA of spewing poison gas as a provocation, many on the Liberal Left cautiously threw their weight behind Obama and the thrill of waging a punitive war on Syria.
“Perhaps regime change is a good idea,” Tom Hayden speculated in The Nation.
Left paterfamilias Noam Chomsky, who generally shows an appreciation for the subtleties of covert action, claimed that America is not supplying its Al Qaeda mercenary army with arms – even though Eric Schmidt at The New York Times reported over a year ago that CIA officers in Turkey were “helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arm.”
As if Hayden fomenting war and Chomsky covering for the CIA isn’t irony enough, Drum cleared the CIA in response to allegations of a provocation made by Rush Limbaugh. Which raises the question, what are the facts about the CIA’s penchant for “provoked responses” like the one in the Tonkin Gulf that started the Vietnam War?
Simply stated, black propaganda is one of many criminal but legally deniable things the CIA does. It often involves committing a heinous crime and blaming it on an enemy by planting false evidence, and then getting a foreign newspaper to print the CIA’s scripted version of events, which sympathetic journalists in America broadcast to the gullible public.
In the case of Syria, the CIA is using cooked Israeli “intelligence” as a catalyst – which is why, as Johnstone and Bricmont explain, the “intelligence” is so “dubious.”    www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/16/the-cia-the-press-and-black-propaganda/

Brazillian Prezzi Denounces US Spying (and hugs the Chinese as her main trading partner)  Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has launched a blistering attack on US espionage at the UN general assembly, accusing the NSA of violating international law by its indiscriminate collection of personal information of Brazilian citizens and economic espionage targeted on the country’s strategic industries.
Rousseff’s angry speech was a direct challenge to President Barack Obama, who was waiting in the wings to deliver his own address to the UN general assembly, and represented the most serious diplomatic fallout to date from the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Rousseff had already put off a planned visit to Washington in protest at US spying, after NSA documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the US electronic eavesdropping agency had monitored the Brazilian president’s phone calls, as well as Brazilian embassies and spied on the state oil corporation, Petrobras.    www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/24/brazil-president-un-speech-nsa-surveillance

The Magical Mystery Tour

It is the anniversary of the closing of the Magdalene Laundries (slave labor camps)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOMT4YeFsuc

 

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that
you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable
to the world… The world changes according to the way people see it,
and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
James Baldwin in “James Baldwin Writing and Talking.” Interview by Mel Watkins. The New
York Times Book Review, September 23, 1979.

Idiot NYC Coppers Try to Assassinate Mentally Ill Man IN TIMES SQUARE, Shoot Two Women Instead  Confronted by an agitated man who at one point lay down in the middle of a crowded intersection in Times Square, two police officers fired shots late Saturday evening at the man, striking two bystanders instead, the police said. Both bystanders are women from Manhattan, and happened to be walking in the vicinity when the police officers opened fire, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference at Bellevue Hospital Center early Sunday morning.
A bullet hit one woman, 54, in the leg, fracturing her tibia and fibula, Mr. Kelly said. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital where she was expected to undergo surgery. The other woman, 35, suffered a graze wound to the buttock. She was treated at Roosevelt Hospital and was in the process of being released, Mr. Kelly said.
Both women were shot on the northeast corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue in Times Square.

Blast from the Past  richgibson.com/bullhornGibson.jpg

So Long

Saul Landau  Saul Landau, a prolific, award-winning documentary filmmaker who traveled the world profiling political leaders like Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Chile’s Salvador Allende and used his camera to draw attention to war, poverty and racism, died Monday night at home in Alameda, Calif. He was 77 and had been battling bladder cancer for two years.  The director, producer and writer of more than 40 documentaries had continued to work almost until his death. He regularly submitted essays to the Huffington Post and elsewhere, sometimes writing from his hospital bed. He was also working on a documentary on homophobia in Cuba.
His documentaries tackled a variety of issues, but each contained one underlying theme: reporting on a subject that was otherwise going largely unnoticed at the time, whether it was American ghetto life, the destruction of an indigenous Mexican culture or the inner workings of the CIA.
His most acclaimed documentary was likely 1979′s “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang,” which examined the effects of radiation exposure on people living downwind from Nevada’s above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. The film received a George Polk Award for investigative reporting and other honors.
Landau told the AP one of the documentaries he was most proud of was “The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas,” which looked at the 1994 rebellion by the impoverished indigenous people of southern Mexico. Landau traveled to Chiapas to interview, among others, the masked revolutionary leader known as Subcommandante Marcos.    variety.com/2013/film/news/saul-landau-documentary-filmmaker-dies-at-77-1200608232/

Chin Peng  The ethnically Chinese, Malayan political activist and guerrilla leader Chin Peng, who has died aged 89, fought both with the British and against them. For his exploits during the second world war he was appointed OBE, and after it he led the abortive communist campaign to take over Malaya.
Chin was the last of the major guerrilla commanders who fought colonialism in Asia after 1945, a group including Sukarno in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia and Aung San in Burma.
When Malaya gained independence from Britain in 1957, and six years later merged into today’s Malaysia, Chin continued his struggle for communist control of the new state from exile until a peace agreement was signed in 1989. At this point the Malaysian government flatly refused to allow him to return, a ban which has been extended to his remains.

 

Good luck to our side,

r