Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

India: Cops Attack Students Last night police swooped down upon dozens of students of Delhi University to arrest them. 15 of them were arrested and one was run over by the police car. The student run over is critical and admitted in the hospital. This midnight raid, carried out with clinical precision was not being carried out against some terror group or some political party. These were just ordinary students sitting on a hunger strike to demand that all outstation be given hostel accommodation by the University.    indiaopines.com/turmoil-in-delhi-university-student-arrests/#

Opting Out of the Big Tests (but the core question is: Why Have School?)  “I’m opposed to these tests because they narrow what education is supposed to be about and they lower kids’ horizons,” said (TFA’s) Jesse Hagopian, a teacher at the Seattle school. “I think collaboration, imagination, critical thinking skills are all left off these tests and can’t be assessed by circling in A, B, C or D.”  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130908/SCHOOLS/309080025#ixzz2eLDGYmxV

Mexico’s School Workers Continue Direct Action Battle vs Counterfeit “evaluation” System  Teachers have complained that the overhaul left them with no job security and did little to address shortages of materials and other needs in the classroom, especially in poor regions. Some of the more vigorous protests have taken place in southern and western Mexico, where poverty is highest.  “We do need a reform, but one that stems from our basic needs,” Irais Zárate, a teacher from Oaxaca State, said last weekend during a protest.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world/americas/mexico-passes-a-softened-bill-to-evaluate-teachers.html?src=recpb

9-13; Mexico: Cops Attack Teachers  Police in Mexico City have clashed with protesters during an operation to clear a square occupied by striking teachers.

Riot police used tear gas and water cannons to remove the protesters from the city’s main square, the Zocalo.

Striking teachers had been camped out there for weeks. Some responded with petrol bombs as police moved in after a government deadline passed.

The teachers have been demanding changes to education reforms approved by President Enrique Pena Nieto.

The authorities said they wanted to clear the Zocalo for the Independence Day celebrations at the weekend.

Most of the protesters left peacefully by Friday’s deadline. But some stayed on, and police backed by armoured vehicles and helicopters clashed with missile-throwing protesters on the square and in nearby streets. Officers tore down the teachers’ temporary shelters and put out small fires started by the demonstrators and made a number of arrests.

The BBC’s Will Grant in Mexico City says government’s aim of clearing the square has been achieved – but the sight of riot police and armoured vehicles in the country’s most emblematic plaza is not the image of unity it wanted to portray hours before Pena Nieto’s first Independence Day as president begins.

Congratulations on the Publication of

Huge Crack in Empire–Troops Oppose Syria Attack by Three to One o the list of skeptics who question the need for air strikes against Syria, add an another unlikely group — many U.S. troops.

“I haven’t heard one single person be supportive of it,” said an Army staff sergeant at Fort Hood who asked not to be identified by name.

A Military Times survey of more than 750 active-duty troops this week found service members oppose military action in Syria by a margin of about three to one.  The survey conducted online Monday and Tuesday found that about 75 percent of troops are not in favor of air strikes in response to reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to kill civilians in that country.

A higher percentage of troops, about 80 percent, say they do not believe getting involved in the two-year-old civil war is in the U.S. national interest.

The results suggest that opposition inside the military may be more intense than among the U.S. population at large. About 64 percent of Americans oppose air strikes, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll published Monday.

The Military Times survey is an unscientific sampling of Military Times readers and reflects the views of many career enlisted members and officers.

For many troops, money is a key consideration. Troops question the cost of bombing Syria at a time when budget cuts are shrinking their pay raises, putting their benefits package at risk and forcing some of their friends to separate involuntarily.

“We don’t have money for anything else but we have a couple hundred million dollars to lob some Tomahawks and mount an expensive campaign in Syria?” said Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Larue, a 39-year-old maintenance expert at Fort Eustis, Va., referring to the precision-guided missiles that are likely to be used in any strike.    www.militarytimes.com/interactive/article/20130911/NEWS/309110009/Troops-oppose-strikes-Syria-by-3-1-margin

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Krugman Discovers Class War in Capitalist School  Toxic Inequality
A couple of days ago the Times published a fascinating portrait of a society being poisoned by extreme inequality. The society in question is, in principle, highly meritocratic. In practice, inherited wealth and connections matter enormously; those not born into the upper tier are, and know themselves to be, at a huge disadvantage. Furthermore, you can clearly see some of the other costs of inequality — for example, expenditure cascades, in which the less well-off feel compelled to go into debt in an attempt to keep up.

The society in question? The Harvard Business School, where students who can’t spend lavishly on social events are effectively in an inferior class, and borrowing to keep up appearances is apparently common.

The point is not that we should weep for middle-class HBS students, most of whom still have better prospects than the great majority of Americans. It is, instead, that what’s going on at HBS is a microcosm of what’s happening to America, and an excellent illustration of the harm extreme inequality can do.    krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/toxic-inequality/

Scabrous Michigan EA on Common Core begging to sellout

Susan Ohanian Follows the Money behind the Common Core    vtdigger.org/2013/09/10/ohanian-begging-the-question/

More Parents Dodge Big Tests, but not war and capitalist schooling  While his eighth-grade classmates took state standardized tests this spring, Tucker Richardson woke up late and played basketball in his Delaware Township driveway.

Tucker’s parents, Wendy and Will, are part of a small but growing number of parents nationwide who are ensuring their children do not take standardized tests.

They are opposed to the practice for myriad reasons, including the stress they believe it brings on students, discomfort with tests being used to gauge teacher performance, and concern that test prep is narrowing curricula down to the minimum needed to pass an exam.

From The Detroit News:   www.detroitnews.com/article/20130908/SCHOOLS/309080025#ixzz2ekWOv7KZ

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Albright on the Moral High Ground and the Murder of Children

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4PgpbQfxgo

Putin Spanks His tethered Corgi: Obamagogue. Source? God!  My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html

Chemical Weapons and the USA’s Brave Stand Against Harming Children

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJxb7CY13uc

Where did Syria Get those WMD’S? USA. Europe. Russia. Iran. And more   Syria’s top leaders amassed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union and Iran, as well as Western European suppliers and even a handful of American companies, according to American diplomatic cables and declassified intelligence records.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/world/middleeast/with-the-world-watching-syria-amassed-nerve-gas.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130908&_r=3&

The US” Brave Stand against Using Chemical Weapons and WMD’s on Children

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev2dEqrN4i0

Complication: If Assad Really believes the Jihadists used WMD’s, how much chemical weaponry must he hide?  Syria will start handing over information on its chemical weapons to international groups a month after it signs the Chemical Weapons Convention, President Bashar Assad has told a Russian TV channel.

Damascus has agreed to a Russia proposal to put its chemical weapons stockpiles under international control.

“Syria is handing over its chemical weapons under international supervision because of Russia,” Assad said in an interview with state-run news channel Rossiya-24. “The US threats did not influence the decision.”
Within days Damascus promises to submit to the United Nations all documents required for joining the chemical weapons ban treaty. A month after Syria signs the Chemical Weapons Convention it will start handing over information on chemical weapons to international organizations.    rt.com/news/assad-syria-russia-proposal-773/

Blame Lawrence: Syria, the Raw Material (TEL’s seminal study)  http://telstudies.org/writings/works/articles_essays/1915_syria_the_raw_material.shtml

Obamagogue’s Private Army Deepens his War on Syria  The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.    www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-to-syrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html

Jihaddists in Syria So Happy to Get Weapons from Saudi Wahibbis  Saudi Arabia, quietly cooperating with American and British intelligence and other Arab governments, has modestly increased deliveries of weapons to rebels fighting in southern Syria, the rebels say.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-say-saudi-arabia-is-stepping-up-weapons-deliveries.html

Who Lost Afghanistan?  Nolay Base takes direct fire almost every day from the Taliban. With more forces lost here than almost any other district in the country, the Afghan soldiers seldom leave the installation, and mostly refuse to conduct missions — too dangerous, they say. And when soldiers head out to go on brief home leaves, a growing number of them desert rather than return, their commanders say.

“It’s difficult to find local people who are against the Taliban,” said the executive officer of the brigade here, Col. Abdulhai Neshat. “This place is like a prison.”

In this corner of Helmand Province, widely agreed to be the most critical running battle in the country today, Afghan forces are in trouble    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/world/asia/afghan-army-struggles-in-district-under-siege.html?pagewanted=all

Barbarism Rising. AQ seizes Christian Village A coalition of Syrian rebel groups that includes members of al Qaida took control of one of the oldest Christian villages in the world on Sunday, raising concern about the potential destruction of ancient shrines and churches.
Read more here:   www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/08/201495/al-qaida-fighters-among-rebels.html#emlnl=McClatchys_10_Best_Read#storylink=cpy

100 Page Russian Report: Assad didn’t use gas   Russia says a deadly March sarin attack in an Aleppo suburb was carried out by Syrian rebels, not forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, and it has delivered a 100-page report laying out its evidence to the United Nations.

A statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry website late Wednesday said the report included detailed scientific analysis of samples that Russian technicians collected at the site of the alleged attack, Khan al Asal in northern Syria. The attack killed 26 people.

A U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, confirmed that Russia delivered the report in July.

The report itself was not released. But the statement drew a pointed comparison between what it said was the scientific detail of the report and the far shorter intelligence summaries that the United States, Britain and France have released to justify their assertion that the Syrian government launched chemical weapons against Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The longest of those summaries, by the French, ran nine pages. Each relies primarily on circumstantial evidence to make its case, and they disagree with one another on some details, including the number of people who died in the attack.

The Russian statement warned the United States and its allies not to conduct a military strike against Syria until the United Nations had completed a similarly detailed scientific study into the Aug. 21 attack. It charged that what it called the current “hysteria” about a possible military strike in the West was similar to the false claims and poor intelligence that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Read more here:   www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/05/201268/russia-releases-100-page-report.html#emlnl=McClatchys_10_Best_Read#storylink=cpy

German Intel Disputes US Take on Gas Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper.

The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.

The Obama administration has blamed the attack on Assad. The evidence against Assad was described over the weekend as common sense by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Read more here:   www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/09/201515/intercepts-caught-assad-rejecting.html#emlnl=McClatchys_10_Best_Read#storylink=cpy

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago, according to an updated study by the prominent economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.

The top 1 percent took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans, one of the highest levels on record since 1913, when the government instituted an income tax.

The figures underscore that even after the recession the country remains in a new Gilded Age, with income as concentrated as it was in the years that preceded the Depression of the 1930s, if not more so.   …The share of Americans working or looking for work is at its lowest in 35 years.    economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/

Obamagogue Turns Economy over to Romney’s Bain  President Barack Obama’s new top economic deputy is a former management consultant who worked for Gov. Mitt Romney’s Bain & Company investment firm.

The appointment of Jeff Zients as head of the National Economic Council is likely to annoy some union officials and some liberal groups who are focused on declining working-class wages and growing poverty, and it clashes with the populist anti-business invective used by Obama and his aides on the 2012 campaign trail to paint Romney as uncaring. Read more:   dailycaller.com/2013/09/13/obama-picks-bain-executive-as-top-economic-advisor/#ixzz2epp2piFk

Obamagogue Gave $12.9 Trillion to the banksters, but not a dime to his Detroit Voters  In the wake of Detroit’s historic Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing, the Obama administration is intensifying efforts to reach out to Detroit business, foundation and labor leaders for help identifying ways to better use federal funds to help the Motor City.

The White House convened a meeting the Friday before Labor Day weekend to discuss Detroit’s struggling finances and to determine how the city could maximize existing federal programs and grants. It was attended by some of Detroit’s most prominent business and community leaders, four cabinet officers and key presidential advisers.

“It was a very productive meeting,” said former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, declining to discuss details. He was one of a small group that included Quicken Loans Inc. Chairman Dan Gilbert, Rock Ventures LLC CEO Matt Cullen, Kresge Foundation CEO Rip Rapson and Henry Ford Health Systems CEO Nancy Schlichting.

White House officials explicitly ruled out any federally financed bailout or special legislation to support the cash-strapped city. Instead, they pushed for ways the administration could help the city’s business and political leadership leverage existing federal tools to speed the restructuring and soften the blow of bankruptcy.
From The Detroit News:   www.detroitnews.com/article/20130910/METRO01/309100031#ixzz2ekTRLuuY

Will the Rivera Murals Be Sold in the Detroit Bankruptcy?

 

Gutting Food Stamps and Head Start, Yet Ready for Another War

Downtown Detroit Blacked out for 48 Hours and Counting  Wednesday’s outage forced hundreds of city workers and students to leave early, stranded some on the People Mover and in elevators in buildings and delayed major court cases, including a preliminary hearing for Grosse Pointe Park man Robert Bashara as well as Abraham Pearson, who escaped from police custody at Frank Murphy on Monday.
From The Detroit News:   www.detroitnews.com/article/20130912/METRO01/309120067#ixzz2ejFTiuUZ

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

“During the first wave of Nazi terror,” writes Doherty, “the commentary from the motion picture industry journalists and Hollywood producers reflects the natural befuddlement of cool businessmen up against hot-headed fanatics.” Mild jests and veiled allusions to Hitler were cut. When Breen could do nothing, often local or state censorship did the job. The German consul in Los Angeles, Dr. Georg Gyssling. He was always interested about forthcoming movie projects, and if there was any hint of a film that might impugn the honor of Hitler or the glory of the Fatherland, he was quick to get complaints to Breen, heads of studios, or Washington politicians. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, mostly actors more radical than their bosses, butted heads with Gyssling frequently

War? What war? It’s Fashion Week in NYC!!!  EVERY time Fashion Week returns to the city, the subways crowded with long-legged adolescents with stylish shoes and wary eyes, I can’t help but think about myself at age 14. That’s how old I was when I started working in the fashion industry. I had wanted to go new places, to try bold new things. But I soon learned that this was a world where young women’s rights were worth less than the clothing they wore. In Italy, I was hired for a bathing suit shoot. The photographer made me stand in a freezing pool for hours, then screamed in my face when my skin turned an unattractive shade of blue. In Mexico, I was given drugs, then coerced into going topless for a shoot. I learned the hard way that my body was not my own.    www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/opinion/my-life-as-a-warrior-princess.html

Solidarity for Never

The Demonstration the AFL-CIA Dues Eaters did not want to happen 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_z3ZdWXbHs

Obamagogue to Union Bosses: Shut up about Obamafakecare, Inequality, and War  White House officials, including top Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, were on hand at this week’s AFL-CIO convention to pressure union leaders not to voice their growing angst with Obamacare in the form of a strongly worded resolution blasting the president’s government healthcare overhaul.   www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/12/White-House-Scrambles-To-Silence-AFL-CIO-Obamacare-Criticism

What did the “Reinvigorated AFL-CIA Say about imperialist warfare? Not a Peep.

Spy Versus Spy

Ex-CIA chief pleads for pardon from Italy in rendition case
A former CIA station chief convicted in absentia for kidnapping an Egyptian Muslim cleric in Milan has asked Italy for a pardon, BBC reported. Robert Seldon Lady was sentenced to nine years in jail for helping abduct Abu Omar in 2003. Omar was tortured in Egypt before being released. Lady was briefly detained in Panama in July due to an international arrest warning after his sentencing, though he was released before Italy could process an extradition request. Lady asked Italian President Giorgio Napolitano for “personal forgiveness and legal pardon” in a letter, saying he did not mean to violate Italian sovereignty nor strain US-Italy relations. Lady wrote the abduction plot had been “vetted by very high officials,” and that he was advised his team of 23 was following US, Italian and international law. Lady is believed to be in the US.    rt.com/news/line/2013-09-13/#50835

NSA Sends US Information to Israeli Zionists  The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process “minimization”, but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.    www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents

NSA Silencing Professors  A professor in the computer science department at Johns Hopkins, a leading American university, had written a post on his blog, hosted on the university’s servers, focused on his area of expertise, which is cryptography. The post was highly critical of the government, specifically the National Security Agency, whose reckless behavior in attacking online security astonished him.

Professor Matthew Green wrote on 5 September:
I was totally unprepared for today’s bombshell revelations describing the NSA’s efforts to defeat encryption. Not only does the worst possible hypothetical I discussed appear to be true, but it’s true on a scale I couldn’t even imagine.

The post was widely circulated online because it is about the sense of betrayal within a community of technical people who had often collaborated with the government. (I linked to it myself.)

On Monday, he gets a note from the acting dean of the engineering school asking him to take the post down and stop using the NSA logo as clip art in his posts. The email also informs him that if he resists he will need a lawyer. The professor runs two versions of the same site: one hosted on the university’s servers, one on Google’s blogger.com service. He tells the dean that he will take down the site mirrored on the university’s system but not the one on blogger.com. He also removes the NSA logo from the post. Then, he takes to Twitter.    www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa-matthew-green-takedown-blog-post-johns-hopkins

National Public (corporate state) Radio Builds $210 Building, Lays off 10% of Staff  Washington-based NPR disclosed a buyout plan Friday that it hopes will reduce its 840-member payroll by about 10 percent over the next year. NPR said the buyout is necessary to close a persistent deficit, projected at $6 million in its upcoming fiscal year.  …In April, it opened its new headquarters building in the shadow of the Capitol, a $201 million edifice complete with in-house restaurant with an executive chef, health-care facilities, an employee gym and gift shop….Separately, NPR disclosed in a tax filing Friday that it paid its former chief executive, Vivian Schiller, nearly $679,000 in salary and severance in 2011, after Schiller resigned following a 26-month tenure marked by two damaging episodes….It also paid Ellen Weiss, the news director Schiller forced to resign in the wake of the Williams debacle, $246,319 in severance that year.    www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/npr-to-offer-employee-buyouts/2013/09/13/72ba0d30-1c8a-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story_1.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Another Sinister Detroit Pol Discovers Young boys, then God  Former City Council President Charles Pugh officially quit his job on City Council on Friday and said he is moving on from the city where he became a household name in TV news and parlayed his celebrity into a role as one of Detroit’s top elected officials, only to disappear when allegations surfaced of inappropriate behavior with a high school student.

“I needed some time to recover from this situation that hit me like a tsunami,” Pugh told the Free Press by phone this afternoon from a location he wouldn’t disclose, although he was spotted in recent days attending a session of an association of black journalists in New York. “I’m doing a lot better now. I’m moving on, by the grace of God.”   www.freep.com/article/20130913/NEWS01/309130119/Pugh-resigns-Detroit

Members of the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is taking news about two abuse case settlements to call on the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh to better notify the public when a priest has been accused of sexual misconduct.

The priests in question had both worked in Pittsburgh, though the abuse allegations come from other places they worked.

“Any time that there’s a priest who has been accused in the court of law, we are under the impression that the Pittsburgh Diocese will automatically reach out to the churches, reach out to the congregations, let them know and actively pursue to see if there are any victims,” said SNAP’s Frances Samber. “But they’re not doing that in the case of these two priests and we’re just asking why.”

A sex abuse cases against priests Alan E. Caparella and Richard Deakin were settled in separate states outside of Pennsylvania.

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

On December 7th, 2007 the Marlins agreed to trade Miguel Cabrera and Dontrell Willis to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Cameron Maybin, pitcher Andrew Miller, catcher Mike Rabelo and minor league pitchers Eulogio De La Cruz, Dallas Trahern and Burke Badenhop.    blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2013/08/marlins_trade_cabrera_the_wors.php

So Long

Imagine the achievements in a world beyond capital

Jean Anyon  

many of you already know, we have lost a brilliant scholar, teacher, mentor, parent, and friend in the last twenty-four hours. Dr. Jean Anyon, whose work has impacted the lives of so many, passed suddenly but peacefully last night after a long battle with cancer. While her body battled inwardly to fend off the disease that ultimately consumed her, she worked tirelessly to dedicate her time, passion, and energy to her life’s work of teaching and contributing to — and often resisting — the academic canon.    opencuny.org/mediated/2013/09/08/how-do-i-even-express/