Why Are Things As They Are?

 We Say Fight Back!

The Rouge Forum Conference Facebook Page  https://www.facebook.com/events/793215820695881/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

Haitian Teachers Set to Strike  The Executive Council of the National Union of Teachers’ College Graduates of Haiti (UNNOH) informs the Haitian teaching body, pupils, college students, trade unions, other social organizations and our international partners that the Minister of Education has suspended, for two months now, the negotiations begun last November, following the two-day teachers’ strike and demonstration November 13-14, 2012.
The Minister, Pierre Vanneur, who announced publicly that he was authorized by the government to negotiate with the teachers’ unions for real solutions to problems and for satisfaction of our just demands, has maintained for quite some time a guilty silence concerning these negotiations.
To get things moving again we have to intensify mobilizing our movement. Therefore one week of a rolling strike will be observed in the schools starting Monday January 28. To kick off this strike, a new nation-wide march is being organized on that date.
Our demands are the same as in November: back pay, minimum living wage, legal status for the teaching profession, the education budget to rise to 34% of the national budget, decent working conditions, a union voice in social security policy, a real quality public school system, vaccination against cholera in all schools and colleges, one hot meal a day for all students and teachers, and measures to protect the environment.  http://www.psc-cuny.org/unnoh

Portland Teachers Authorize Strike Portland Public Schools teachers have authorized the first strike in the history of Oregon’s largest school system and set a walkout date: Feb. 20.
Nearly 3,000 Portland Association of Teachers members gathered behind closed doors at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Wednesday and emerged after about an hour with a firm yes vote to walkout.
“We are sad but empowered,” said Rosa Parks Elementary teacher Stephanie Windham. “It was an uproar. We are united.”
The precise language they endorsed — “PAT shall call a legal strike” — sounds definitive, but the vote does not automatically trigger a walkout. Schools will be open and fully staffed Thursday.
Instead, Wednesday’s decision gives union negotiators permission to authorize a strike if continued negotiations do not yield a contract  http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/portland_public_schools_teache_26.html

Illinois-Chicago Faculty Votes to Authorize Strike  Faculty members at the University of Illinois at Chicago voted overwhelmingly last week to authorize a possible strike, following 17 months of contract negotiations with the institution. Joe Persky, professor of economics and president of the University of Illinois at Chicago United Faculty, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors, said in a statement that he hoped to resolve contract negotiations without a strike. Mediation sessions have been scheduled through January.
But if the union decides a strike is necessary, 10 days’ notice will be given, as required by law. About 80 percent of voters, both on and off the tenure track, showed up for the election, and 95 percent approved of a possible strike, according to the union. The faculty association says it’s pushing for more equitable compensation for non-tenure-track professors and shared governance, among other issues.
Read more: www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/12/09/illinois-chicago-faculty-votes-authorize-strike#ixzz2sIPuRuxj
Inside Higher Ed

Below, Ewart Layne Discusses his book on the Grenada Revo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gzYrBJUNRI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUlRKqiONx0IAxmx499Tl8jQ

Refusal to Testify Wins a Brooklyn Man His Freedom  The grand jury for which Mr. Koch was subpoenaed appeared to be examining events from 2008, when a bicyclist approached the armed forces recruiting center in Times Square, then pedaled away before a homemade bomb exploded, damaging the center but harming nobody. Mr. Koch, who has identified himself as an anarchist, said that investigators believed that he had heard a conversation in a bar about who was behind the episode but that he remembered no such event….Ultimately, few of those involved in Mr. Koch’s grand jury narrative, which stretches over more than four years, would appear to be gratified by the results. Mr. Koch, a former student at the New School, experienced conditions that he called “remarkably unpleasant.” Prosecutors failed to elicit his testimony. And Judge Keenan dedicated several pages of his opinion to a discussion of the “perverse results” of a 30-year-old ruling that provided the precedent to release him.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/nyregion/in-switch-refusal-to-testify-wins-a-brooklyn-man-his-freedom.html?hpw&rref=nyregion

Skinny Puppy band demands $666,000 for music used in Gitmo torture  Canadian electro-industrial band, Skinny Puppy, has invoiced the US government for $666,000, after its music was used at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility as an instrument of torture.
The band says its music has been played at the Guantanamo base in Cuba as part of the interrogation process for detainees. The facility was set up in 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 US terrorist attacks.
“We sent them an invoice for our musical services considering they had gone ahead and used our music without our knowledge and used it as an actual weapon against somebody,” keyboardist Cevin Key told CTV News.
“I am not only against the fact they’re using our music to inflict damage on somebody else, but they are doing it without anybody’s permission,” he added.
Key had ‘insider knowledge’ regarding the usage of his music, learning from a fan who also served as a guard at the prison camp that the music had been used. After sending the documents to the Pentagon, Key said that they are even contemplating the possibility of a lawsuit.   rt.com/news/skinny-puppy-torture-music-032/

THE Plan from a Vacillating Reactionary and the sap who destroyed SDS (today’s grant sucking liberal and yesterday’s tearrorist) on how to revamp capitalist schooling  truth-out.org/opinion/item/21690-this-school-is-not-a-pipe#13918934427031&action=collapse_widget&id=3801713

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Susan Ohanian on NEA/AFT and the Common Core Voices of Support
NOTE: As these undated videos show, NEA and AFT leaders provided early and enthusiastic support for the Common Core. Both claim their teacher members helped create the Standards. Notice how Randi cleverly speaks from a classroom engaged in discussing Charlotte’s Web.
Your union dues at work.
2011 salaries:
Dennis Van Roekel — $460,060
Randi Weingarten — $493,859
NEA Official Position
Our teacher members have provided input to the Standards. . . and will continue to work with the initiative on the roll-out of the Standards and with our affiliates to implement the Standards in their state . . . . in ways to ensure great education for every student.
NEA applauds this first step and views these
standards as a lever to raise the quality of American public education.– Dennis Van Roekel NEA President

AFT Official Position
Having Common Core Standards are important. . . make sure there’s a common focus for what kids are able to do across the country. . . .
The most important thing for us as the American teachers movement was to make sure they were also reality based. . . We had teachers from across America travel into Washington last summer to actually help make sure they were really real and user friendly both to children and to teachers.– Randi Weingarten AFT President— Dennis Van Roekel and Randi Weingarten
Voices of Support  http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=660

Facebook page promotes campus repairs over iPads in L.A. schools  Critics of a $1-billion school computer project in Los Angeles have launched an increasingly popular Facebook page asserting that the money should be spent instead on campus repairs.
The page, called “Repairs Not IPads,” was started anonymously but has been supplied with ample comments and pictures by school staff. The images include missing ceiling tiles, broken sinks and water fountains, ant invasions, dead roaches and rat droppings.
The creators describe the page as, “a place for teachers & the community to document neglected school repairs while construction bond $$ is diverted to purchase iPads.” www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-facebook-ipads-20140206,0,5763779.story#ixzz2soGMLg63

CA Middle School Principal Responds to Journalist’s Criticism : “Who is this Susan luzzaro bitch?!”  Throughout 2013, the Reader reported on Castle Park Middle School’s extracurricular priorities: recruiting Sweetwater students to Alliant, a costly private university; extending the Steven Hawking charter school into the Castle Park Middle site; questionable spending for secretary of education Arne Duncan’s visit; squabbling with SBCS/Promise Neighborhoods about money and data-sharing.
A series of emails, recently acquired by the Reader through a public-record request, demonstrate how far Castle Park principal Robert Bleisch will go in order to keep himself aligned with Sweetwater superintendent Ed Brand’s agenda.   www.sandiegoreader.com/news/politics/ 

Conference of Hispanic Christians endorses Common Core  Critics of a $1-billion school computer project in Los Angeles have launched an increasingly popular Facebook page asserting that the money should be spent instead on campus repairs.
The page, called “Repairs Not IPads,” was started anonymously but has been supplied with ample comments and pictures by school staff. The images include missing ceiling tiles, broken sinks and water fountains, ant invasions, dead roaches and rat droppings.
The creators describe the page as, “a place for teachers & the community to document neglected school repairs while construction bond $$ is diverted to purchase iPads.”
www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-facebook-ipads-20140206,0,5763779.story#ixzz2soDI2fOd

NY School Boss Fights for Common Corpse Schools chancellor Carmen Fariña defended the politically besieged Common Core curriculum during a meeting Wednesday evening with a group of P.T.A. presidents from District 15.
Fariña began her long tenure as an educator as a teacher at P.S. 29 in the Brooklyn school district, eventually becoming superintendent where she worked with then-councilmember Bill de Blasio and helped shape his philosophy on education.
“Testing itself is not the issue,” she said, when asked about the controversy over increased standardized testing. “I do think Common Core is the way to go. … It hasn’t been implemented well.”  http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/02/8539912/fariña-defends-common-core-meeting-education-allies

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q0pvDWgScM

Forgetting Diem–Karzai Arranged Secret Contacts With the Taliban  President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has been engaged in secret contacts with the Taliban about reaching a peace agreement without the involvement of his American and Western allies, further corroding already strained relations with the United States.
The secret contacts appear to help explain a string of actions by Mr. Karzai that seem intended to antagonize his American backers, Western and Afghan officials said. In recent weeks, Mr. Karzai has continued to refuse to sign a long-term security agreement with Washington that he negotiated, insisted on releasing hardened Taliban militants from prison and distributed distorted evidence of what he called American war crimes.
The clandestine contacts with the Taliban have borne little fruit, according to people who have been told about them. But they have helped undermine the remaining confidence between the United States and Mr. Karzai, making the already messy endgame of the Afghan conflict even more volatile.   www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/world/asia/karzai-has-held-secret-contacts-with-the-taliban.html?hp&_r=2

US Navy sailors seek £600m damages from owners of Fukushima nuclear power plant  Dozens of American sailors who assisted Japan during the 2011 nuclear disaster are suing the operators of Fukushima power plant for more than £612 million (US$1bn) in damages, claiming that they have become sick from radiation exposure.
The sailors were on board the USS Ronald Reagan super-carrier when it was diverted to northeast Japan following the devastation of the March 11, 2011 earthquake which triggered a tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster.
As they helped rescue victims and evacuate disaster zones, the claimants allege that they drank, bathed and waded through water contaminated with radiation from the damaged nuclear power plant and were reportedly exposed to radioactive plumes.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10624946/US-Navy-sailors-seek-600m-damages-from-owners-of-Fukushima-nuclear-power-plant.html

Who’s Behind the Counterfeit Ukrainian “Uprising”?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ievwGQnyVpg

The National Endowment for Democracy (CIA and Home to Diane Ravitch) in Ukraine  www.ned.org/ru/where-we-work/eurasia/ukraine

The Belgrade US-Financed Training Group Behind the Carefully-Orchestrated Kiev Protests     The recent protests in Ukraine have the stench of a foreign-orchestrated attempt to destabilize the government of Viktor Yanukovych after he walked away from signing an EU Association Agreement that would have driven a deep wedge between Russia and Ukraine. Glamor-star boxer-turned political guru, Vitaly Klitschko, has been meeting with the US State Department and is close to Angela Merkel’s CDU political machine in Germany. The EU association agreement with Ukraine is widely resisted by many EU member states with deep economic problems of their own. The two EU figures most pushing it—Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski—are both well known in the EU as close to Washington. The US is strongly pushing the Ukraine EU integration just as it had been behind the 2004 failed “Orange Revolution” to split Ukraine from Russia in a bid to isolate and weaken Russia. Now Ukrainians have found evidence of direct involvement of the Belgrade US-financed training group, CANVAS behind the carefully-orchestrated Kiev protests. A copy of the pamphlet that was given out to opposition protestors in Kiev has been obtained. It is a word-for-word and picture-for-picture translation of the pamphlet used by US-financed Canvas organizers in the 2011 Cairo Tahrir Square protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak and opened the door to the US-backed Muslim Brotherhood. – See more at: www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/01/07/us-ngo-uncovered-in-ukraine-protests/#sthash.BstfeX8X.dpuf

JFK/RFK and Some Myths About the Empire (Blum)  On April 30, 1964, five months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was interviewed by John B. Martin in one of a series of oral history sessions with RFK. Part of the interview appears in the book “JFK Conservative” by Ira Stoll, published three months ago. (pages 192-3)
RFK: The president … had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.
MARTIN: What was the overwhelming reason?
RFK: Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall.
MARTIN: What if it did?
RFK: Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world. Also it would affect what happened in India, of course, which in turn has an effect on the Middle East. Just as it would have, everybody felt, a very adverse effect. It would have an effect on Indonesia, hundred million population. All of those countries would be affected by the fall of Vietnam to the Communists.
MARTIN: There was never any consideration given to pulling out?
RFK: No.
MARTIN: … The president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there …
RFK: Yes.
MARTIN: … And couldn’t lose it.
RFK: Yes.   www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/07/jfk-rfk-and-some-myths-about-american-foreign-policy/

When Tigers Fight: The China/Japan Cultural Wars, a prelude—The exhibit cataloged the life of Ahn Jung-geun, a young Korean nationalist, who more than 100 years ago, assassinated an aging Japanese politician, the first overseer of Japan’s colony in Korea. Ms. Gao had never heard of Mr. Ahn — not many in China have — but she was impressed by his daring, striking at Japan by shooting the politician, Hirobumi Ito, at the rail station.
“I’m indignant at Japan, and this man is a hero,” she said. “The things Japan has done lately has forced China and South Korea to launch an anti-Japanese campaign. This shows heroism has no borders.”
The Chinese government’s recently opened tribute to Mr. Ahn is more than just a historical exercise. In the escalating feud between China and Japan, the Chinese leadership is running an anti-Japanese public relations campaign at home and abroad that amplifies its case against Japan, once its colonizer — starting right here in Manchuria in 1931 — and now a lesser economic power anxious about China’s increasingly muscular maritime claims.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/world/asia/china-exhibit-part-of-an-anti-japan-campaign-reflects-an-escalating-feud.html?hp

 

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities. (Marx: Capital) 

Paul Street: Obamaphelia The disorder has “left” and right varieties. In its “progressive,” liberal, and “left” version, Obamapheliacs insist that their hero is committed in his heart to peace and social justice but experiences frustration in his desire to advance those goals by the Republicans and their big business backers. The president needs and even wants activists and movements to push him left, providing the grassroots muscle to “make” him do progressive things, “left” Obamapheliacs feel. For neo-McCarthyite, right-wing Teapublican Obamapheliacs channeling the “paranoid style” of “conservative” politics first diagnosed by the renowned liberal historian Richard Hofstader,[2] Obama is a “big government” socialist who wants to overthrow “free market” capitalism, redistribute wealth downward, elevate blacks and other minorities over whites, and dismantle U.S. global military power.
While the two variants view each other as mortal enemies, they share the same basic delusion about the United States’ 44th president, ignoring mountains of proof showing beyond any serious doubt that he is a conservative friend and agent of America’s highly unequal capitalist system, imperialism, and (curiously enough) white supremacism.
This shared hallucination started early on. As Obama’s first budget was rolled out in the early spring of 2009, John MacArthur, then president of Harper’s Magazine, observed that both right and left had collaborated in the creation of a “fantasy” – in “an absurd reading of Obama” as “commit[ted] to left-wing ‘change.”

Senate Fails to Pass Three-Month Extension of Jobless Aid   The Senate failed to move forward on a three-month extension of assistance for the long-term unemployed on Thursday, leaving it unlikely that Congress would approve the measure soon while undercutting a key aspect of President Obama’s economic recovery plan.
Fifty-nine senators, including four Republicans, voted to advance the legislation, falling one vote short of the 60 needed to break a Republican filibuster effort.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/us/politics/senate-fails-to-advance-unemployment-extension.html

Obamagogue signs farm bill that cuts food stamps  The $800 million annual cut will cost 850,000 food stamp recipients about $90 per month.
Read more: www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-obama-signs-farm-bill-cuts-ny-food-stamps-article-1.1606703#ixzz2snz9tmCH

The Revolving Door from the Legislature to the Big Bucks Federal ethics rules are intended to limit lobbying by former senior officials within one year after they leave the government. Yet even after the ethics rules were revised in 2007 following a lobbying scandal, more than 1,650 congressional aides have registered to lobby within a year of leaving Capitol Hill, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from LegiStorm, an online database that tracks congressional staff members and lobbying. At least half of those departing aides, the analysis shows, faced no restrictions at all.
The rules are particularly loose in the House of Representatives, where aides and lawmakers enjoy significant leeway in hopping from job to job — and from government pay to six- and seven-figure private sector salaries dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/law-doesnt-end-revolving-door-on-capitol-hill/?_php=true&_type=blogs&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140202&_r=0.

Is your Fave Historian among the Saps who Endorsed Imperial Obamagogue (like Bacevich)? hnn.us/article/44958

Welcome Relief for Homeowners, Until the Tax Bill Arrives  Come tax time, JPMorgan Chase will be able to write off the $1.5 billion in debt relief it must give homeowners to satisfy the terms of a recent settlement.
But the homeowners who receive the help will have to treat it as taxable income, resulting in whopping tax bills for many families who have just lost their homes or only narrowly managed to keep them.
They are not alone. A tax exemption for mortgage debt forgiveness, put in place when the economy began to falter in 2007, was allowed to expire on Dec. 31, leaving hundreds of thousands of struggling homeowners in financial limbo even as the Obama administration has tried to encourage such debt write-downs.
Congress routinely allows tax breaks to expire and then reinstates them, usually retroactively, as it did last year. But the stakes are high for families dealing with large declines in their home values, and reinstatement of the tax breaks is more uncertain because of a movement in Congress to broadly overhaul the tax code, which, despite its long-shot prospects in an election year, could end up eclipsing smaller tax issues.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/business/economy/lenders-see-write-off-while-underwater-homeowners-face-stiff-taxes.html?hp&_r=1

Red Wings Make Plunkett of Tammany Hall Proud—In Bankrupt Detroit they get a publicly financed stadium and land for $1  The $650 million plan to create a 45-block entertainment district anchored by a new hockey arena for the Red Wings won a crucial victory Tuesday when the Detroit City Council approved a land transfer deal in front of a large, sometimes boisterous crowd.
Within the next few months, the public will get to see what the arena will look like, officials said. And the state will begin selling $450 million in bonds, backed by local property taxes, to pay for the new arena. It could be completed for the 2016-17 hockey season.
“This was one of the last major legislative hurdles to get through, so things can really start to get going now,” said George Jackson, president and CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., the quasi-public agency that promotes economic development in the city. The DEGC has been working on the deal for years.
The land transfer involves swapping properties between the owner of the Red Wings, the city and two quasi-public agencies.
Under the land swap deal, the Wings’ owners would get dozens of properties for $1, according to city documents. Those properties are in area within the 45-block district mapped out for the arena.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140204/METRO01/302040069#ixzz2sgahGI9m

An Inventive Millionaire Defense: A Madman Made me Do It  A former Bernard Madoff executive on trial for aiding his $17 billion Ponzi scheme should be barred from calling a witness on corporate psychopaths to claim he was relentlessly manipulated, prosecutors said.
Paul Babiak, described by a defense lawyer as “one of the world’s leading experts on corporate psychopaths,” shouldn’t be allowed to testify for Daniel Bonventre, the ex-operations chief of Madoff’s broker-dealer unit, because he’s never met Madoff or diagnosed him, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Schwartz said in a filing yesterday in Manhattan federal court.
Babiak, an author and licensed psychologist, can’t “reliably diagnose Mr. Madoff as a psychopath and testify about his skills in manipulating those around him on the basis of news reports and YouTube videos,” Schwartz wrote.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-06/madoff-ex-aide-corporate-psychopath-defense-challenged.html

Lose $160 Million–become Top Boss at NY Times  Mark Thompson, the former director general of the BBC, offered a general apology to a parliamentary committee on Monday for the failure of an expensive digital project, but he insisted that he had never knowingly misled Parliament or the BBC Trust, its oversight board.
Mr. Thompson, now the president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, testified with other former BBC officials before the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which has been looking into allegations of overspending and bad management at the BBC, which is largely financed by the public.
The central issue on Monday was a $205 million project, called the Digital Media Initiative, intended to transfer all of the BBC’s production and archived materials to a digital format. The project ran into many difficulties, and the effort was suspended in October 2012, with a net loss of $160 million.   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/world/europe/former-bbc-executive-apologizes-for-failure-of-digital-project.html?hp&_r=1

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Hersh Still Silenced on Obamagogue’s Sarin Lies  A new piece by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh argues that the Obama administration’s case against Syria over a sarin gas attack last August relied on cherry-picked intelligence.
Hersh’s piece was not published in the New Yorker, where so much of his work appears. And it apparently was not of interest to the Washington Post either (Huffington Post, 12/8/13). Instead, Hersh’s article appears in the London Review of Books (12/8/13).  Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin.
Hersh bases this on “interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present,” who argue that the White House does not possess intelligence to support its claims that the Assad regime was responsible for the attack. One even compares it to the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964.   http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/12/09/hersh-syria-sarin-story-was-bought-by-the-mainstream-press/

Hersh on Sarin in London Review of Books www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

Cops who shot women during Dorner stakeout will return to field Eight Los Angeles police officers who violated department policy when they mistakenly opened fire on two women during the hunt for Christopher Dorner will be retrained and returned to the field, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a department-wide message Wednesday.
Read more: fox5sandiego.com/2014/02/05/officers-in-dorner-mistaken-id-shooting-will-be-returned-to-field/#ixzz2snyTOw00

RTV: ‘Ukraine police show incredible restraint, US officers would respond with deadly force’  To protect their own lives and people caught in the unrest, US police would respond with deadly force if confronted by violent rioters like those operating in Ukraine, Chuck Joyner, an ex-CIA and FBI agent told RT, sharing his professional assessment.
RT: Footage of the violence in Kiev has been broadcast around the world. As a consultant to law enforcement on the use of force, how would you react in such a situation?
Chuck Joyner: The videos that I saw were very disturbing, and the police officers, in my mind showed incredible restraint. In the United States, in that situation, they would have been just fine using deadly force.  http://rt.com/op-edge/ukraine-police-brutality-force-529/

Actor Hoffman Dies as Afghan Heroin Hits Epidemic Levels The death, from an apparent drug overdose, was confirmed by the police. Mr. Hoffman was found in the apartment by a friend who had become concerned after being unable to reach him. Investigators found a syringe in his arm and, nearby, an envelope containing what appeared to be heroin.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/movies/philip-seymour-hoffman-actor-dies-at-46.html?hp&_r=0

Solidarity for Never

Labor chief lauds UAW (corporate state) atapproach on organizing  Labor Secretary Thomas Perez on Sunday praised the United Auto Workers embrace of a German-style labor works council as the Detroit union seeks to organize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“I applaud the UAW for your flexibility and your new approaches to organizing workers, including embracing a new collaborative model of the works council, which has been highly successful in Germany, but it has not yet tried here in America,” Perez told about 1,500 UAW workers and retirees at the UAW’s annual political action conference here. “I applaud your leadership in those issues because it is so indeed critically important as we move forward.”
The UAW has been working to establish a German-style “works council” at the VW Tennessee plant. Last month, the general counsel’s office of the National Labor Relations Board recommended that allegations raised by some VW workers be dismissed, a move that could set the stage for a vote by the 1,550 workers at the plant on whether to allow the UAW to represent employees.
Vice President Joe Biden will address the four-day UAW conference on Wednesday, said Mary Beth Cahill, the director of the UAW’s Washington office.
UAW President Bob King said last month he hopes workers will decide whether to join the UAW before his tenure as president ends in June.
Perez praised the UAW “for making sure that we weren’t in the ‘Mad Men’ era, that we were in the era of the 21st century — that’s what you’ve been doing,” he said. He said autoworkers had to sacrifice during the 2008-09 restructuring. “You had to take a haircut, a big haircut,” he said.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140202/AUTO01/302020052#ixzz2sIOIGbkp

NEA’s Own Elected Leaders Conclude They Are Disconnected From Members   In the wake of persistent membership losses, the National Education Association began a review of its organizational structure in an effort to improve efficiency and cut costs. Part of the project included a survey of NEA’s board of directors, state affiliate officers, Representative Assembly delegates and rank-and-file members.

The survey response rate itself suggested a problem. Thirty-eight percent of those holding an elected position responded, but only 10 percent of the rank-and-file did so. Since part of the survey sought to gauge member involvement, NEA was not off to a roaring start.

Each answer was analyzed in aggregate as well as within the governance level to which each respondent belonged. The first consensus was “NEA’s governance structure is too large and cumbersome to be effective.” A number of respondents referred to the union as “top-heavy” and disconnected from rank-and-file members. Even within the top levels of the organization, some leaders expressed a desire to remove levels of governance, or reduce the size of representative bodies.
Few members of each group said that the work of any level of the union’s governance structure was “relevant to their work as an educator.” Coupled with that was a desire for NEA to focus more on education issues and less on everything else. Even when education was the main topic, many at every level felt that the annual Representative Assembly (RA) and the board meetings did not spend enough time on business and spent too much time on ceremony.   www.eiaonline.com/2014/01/21/neas-own-elected-leaders-conclude-they-are-disconnected-from-members/

Spy versus Spy

Media Blacks Out New Snowden Interview The Government Doesn’t Want You to See  This past Sunday evening former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down for an interview with German television network ARD. The interview has been intentionally blocked from the US public, with virtually no major broadcast news outlets covering this story. In addition, the video has been taken down almost immediately every time it’s posted on YouTube.
In contrast, this was treated as a major political event in both print and broadcast media, in Germany, and across much of the world. In the interview, Mr. Snowden lays out a succinct case as to how these domestic surveillance programs undermine and erode human rights and democratic freedom.
He states that his “breaking point” was “seeing Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress” denying the existence of a domestic spying programs while under questioning in March of last year. Mr. Snowden goes on to state that, “The public had a right to know about these programs. The public had a right to know that which the government is doing in its name, and that which the government is doing against the public.”
Read more: benswann.com/media-blacks-out-new-snowden-interview-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-see/#ixzz2so1xLZrf
Shocker!  Snowden Docs: British Spies Used Sex and ‘Dirty Tricks’  ritish spies have developed “dirty tricks” for use against nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into “honey traps.”
Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and exclusively obtained by NBC News describe techniques developed by a secret British spy unit called the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG) as part of a growing mission to go on offense and attack adversaries ranging from Iran to the hacktivists of Anonymous. According to the documents, which come from presentations prepped in 2010 and 2012 for NSA cyber spy conferences, the agency’s goal was to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications.
Both PowerPoint presentations describe “Effects” campaigns that are broadly divided into two categories: cyber attacks and propaganda operations. The propaganda campaigns use deception, mass messaging and “pushing stories” via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. JTRIG also uses “false flag” operations, in which British agents carry out online actions that are designed to look like they were performed by one of Britain’s adversaries….. One intelligence official also said that the newest set of Snowden documents published by NBC News that describe “Effects” campaigns show that British cyber spies were “slightly ahead” of U.S. spies in going on offense against adversaries, whether those adversaries are hackers or nation states. The documents also show that a one-time signals surveillance agency, GCHQ, is now conducting the kinds of active espionage operations that were once exclusively the realm of the better-known British spy agencies MI5 and MI6.   www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/snowden-docs-british-spies-used-sex-dirty-tricks-n23091

FBI Files on Significant Dates In World Communist Movements (and much more)  https://archive.org/stream/foia_FBI_MONOGRAPH-Significant_Dates-Events.PDF/FBI_MONOGRAPH-Significant_Dates-Events#page/n0/mode/2up

Buck Davis: Roots of the NSA: How the White Panthers “Saved the Movement” and the FISA Court was Created (long but interesting if you knew the players)  The FISA Court (one of whose first judges was the Honorable Ralph Guy, who was the U.S. Attorney when the Keith case started in Michigan in 1970) supposedly protects U.S. citizens from warrantless electronic surveillance. Progressives have complained that the Court (secretive, one-sided, loaded with compliant judges) is a joke. But it was still not responsive enough for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and they simply ignored it on many occasions. After the Snowden releases, there have been congressional calls to strength FISA. But with the National Security Agency and the FISA Court judges admitting that even they do not understand how all of these electronic surveillance and data gathering programs work, it is nothing but a fig leaf, and a shriveled one at that. History has shown that we cannot legislate or litigate our way to liberation  http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/roots-nsa-how-white-panthers-saved-movement-and-fisa-court-was-created?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark 

Pervo San Diego Mayor’s Campaign Manager a Snitch The former campaign manager for ex-San Diego Mayor Bob Filner is one of two confidential witnesses who cooperated with federal investigators in a probe into illegal campaign contributions, U-T Watchdog has learned.
Ed Clancy, 45, is the person identified in a federal complaint filed last month as “Confidential Informant #1,” sources with knowledge of the probe confirmed. They did not want to be identified because of the ongoing campaign corruption investigation.
Clancy went on to serve as the manager of bicycle programs in Filner’s short-lived administration at a salary of $65,000 per year. Clancy worked from January 2013 through Filner’s departure in August amid accusations that the mayor sexually harassed numerous women.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/07/ed-clancy-foreign-money-probe-informant/

The Magical Mystery Tour

Vatican policies allowed priests to rape, molest children, UN committee says   The Vatican “systematically” adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, a UN human rights committee said today , urging the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes.
In a devastating report hailed by abuse victims, the UN committee severely criticized the Holy See for its attitudes toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion and said it should change its own canon law to ensure children’s rights and their access to health care are guaranteed.
The Vatican promptly objected and its UN ambassador accused the committee of having betrayed the international body’s objectives by allowing itself to be swayed by pro-gay ideologues. He said it appeared the committee simply hadn’t listened when the Holy See outlined all the measures it took to protect children….. No Catholic bishop ever has been sanctioned by the Vatican for sheltering an abusive priest, and only in 2010 did the Holy See direct bishops to report abusers to police where law enforcement requires it. Vatican officials acknowledged that bishop accountability remains a major problem and suggested that under Francis, things might begin to change.   www.freep.com/article/20140205/NEWS07/302050087/Vatican-U-N-child-abuse

Legionaries of Christ Denounce Rapist pervo Founder, Marcial Maciel Degollado  A Roman Catholic order whose late founder lived a double life as a pedophile and womanizer officially denounced him on Thursday and apologized to his “many victims.”
The Legionaries of Christ, which former members said was run like a secretive cult, accused the founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who died in 2008, of “reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior” as head of the order from its founding in 1941 until Pope Benedict XVI removed him in 2006.
Once a favorite of the Vatican because it drew many young Catholics to religious vocations and made sizable financial donations to the church, the order has been in Vatican receivership since 2010 and came close to being disbanded.  For decades, the Vatican dismissed accusations by seminarians that Father Maciel had abused them sexually, some when they were as young as 12. The order’s rules forbade criticizing the founder or questioning his motives. Pope John Paul II strongly backed Father Maciel, even as criticism of him mounted.
The order was long admired by the church for its dynamic growth and fund-raising prowess, and it had many wealthy conservative benefactors who saw it as a bulwark against liberalism in the church.
In 2006, a year after John Paul’s death, a Vatican investigation concluded that the previously denied accusations of molestation were true. Benedict ordered Father Maciel to retire to a life of “prayer and penitence.”
After his death, Vatican investigations found that Father Maciel had also fathered several children with at least two women, visited them regularly and sent them money.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/world/legionaries-of-christ-denounce-founder-marcial-maciel-degollado.html

In Search of Fard, and Intensified Barbarism, the NOI Returns to Detroit  The Nation of Islam will return to its roots when it holds its annual convention in Detroit later this month, a gathering that’s expected to draw up to 30,000 visitors to Detroit over four days.
One of the oldest Muslim and black nationalist organizations in the U.S., the Nation of Islam usually holds its annual gathering in Chicago, where the group is based. But it will be held in Detroit this year for the first time since 2007, when about 50,000 packed Ford Field to hear its leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan, speak. Farrakhan will speak on Feb. 23 at Joe Louis Arena on the last day of the convention.
Called Saviours’ Day, the event celebrates the birthday of Wallace Fard Muhammad, who founded the Nation of Islam in Detroit in 1930. The Nation of Islam’s first temple still exists in Detroit, where its message of black empowerment resonates in the largest black-majority city in the U.S.  http://www.freep.com/article/20140206/NEWS01/302060020/Nation-of-Islam-Detroit-Farrakhan

Cardinal Disobeys God’s Conduit–Publishes Notes  Defying a pope’s explicit instructions is not a widespread habit among Roman Catholic cardinals, especially when the pope in question is immensely popular, on the verge of sainthood and no longer able to object.
So the decision by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz to publish a book of Pope John Paul II’s personal notes, even though the pope’s last will and testament requested that he burn them, has attracted no small helping of controversy and moral indignation.
The book, “I Am Very Much in God’s Hands,” is due to be published Wednesday in Poland, John Paul’s native land. And many in the abidingly Catholic and conservative country are greeting it as an unholy betrayal — not least because Cardinal Dziwisz, now the archbishop of Krakow, was John Paul’s secretary throughout his pontificate, and one of his closest confidants.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/world/europe/entrusted-to-burn-john-paul-iis-notes-cardinal-publishes-them-instead.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

above, early blog

Judge in ‘affluenza’ case rules out jail time for teen driver  A Texas judge on Wednesday ruled out jail time for a teenager whose defense expert argued he suffered from “affluenza” that led him to drive drunk, crash and kill four people in June.
At the time of the crash, the 16-year-old driver had seven passengers in his Ford F-350, was speeding and had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit, according to testimony at trial. He struck and killed four pedestrians: Brian Jennings, 43; Breanna Mitchell, 24; Shelby Boyles, 21; and her mother, Hollie Boyles, 52.
Two 15-year-olds were thrown from the bed of the pickup and severely wounded, according to a statement from prosecutors.  Sergio Molina suffered a brain injury and is no longer able to move or talk, and Soliman Mohmand suffered broken bones and internal injuries, according to the statement.
When the teenager went on trial in December, prosecutors sought a sentence of 20 years in state custody.
The defense expert, a psychologist, testified that the teen’s cushy upbringing, which resulted in his affluenza, prevented him from connecting bad behavior with its consequences.
After three days of testimony, the teen confessed to intoxication manslaughter, and Texas District Judge Jean Boyd sentenced him to 10 years’ probation. During his probation, he is barred from driving and consuming alcohol.
At the time, Boyd did not sentence the teen in connection with two intoxication assault charges for those injured in the crash.
Prosecutors this week pressed for the same 20-year sentence in association with those charges.
Boyd closed Wednesday’s hearing in Fort Worth, barring the public and the news media despite prosecutors’ objections. She then declined to enter a separate verdict on the assault cases.
Instead, Boyd ordered the teen to be sent to a locked rehabilitation facility paid for by his parents, according to a prosecutors’ statement. The family previously offered to pay for a $450,000-a-year treatment center in California. Their attorney could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
“It is our hope that the attention drawn by this case highlights the dangers associated with driving while intoxicated, and will ensure that a tragedy such as this one will never happen again,” said Tarrant County Assistant Dist. Atty. Riley Shaw.
www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-affluenza-case-no-jail-time-20140205,0,7398579.story#ixzz2soENpP8b