Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Life travels upward in spirals.
Those who take pains to search the shadows
of the past below us, then, can better judge the
tiny arc up which they climb,
more surely guess the dim
curves of the future above them.

Schools Not Banks Blog With Video of OEA Action vs BoA: On April 4, nearly 100 Oakland teachers and supporters shut down Wells Fargo Bank’s Oakland City Center branch for three hours, demanding an end to the Great Bank Heist: Bail Out Schools Not Banks and End Foreclosures.Among those who joined the action were longshore workers from ILWU Local 10, who shut down the Port of Oakland and other west coast ports for the entire day. Also present were a group of homeowners whose mortgages were being threatened by Wells Fargo. This was the third and most successful action OEA and allies have held at Wells Fargo branches throughout the city. More actions are planned in the coming weeks. schoolsnotbanks.blogspot.com/2011/04/april-4-oakland-rally-to-bail-out.html

Noted with Great Surprise, Obamagoge announces candidacy on April 4th, the Day of the AFL-CIO and NEA’s Fake Rallies. “Dennis, the education agenda is a war agenda. It is a class war and empire’s war agenda. That’s our social context and now we see war to the third power. Are you willing to follow the real path Dr King took before he was killed and speak out against imperialist warfare–for which workers always get the bill? Are you willing to follow Dr King, who was backing a workers’ strike when he was killed, and call for a national school workers’ strike, somewhat like the Michigan Education Association is voting on right now?” www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2154&section=Article

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Warrior Dunc Hunter Spills the Beans: The Ed Agenda=War: if you hear Arne Duncan speak or the President speak on education, you could substitute Michele Bachmann in there, for the most part. They sound very Republican-ish, they might be at the American Enterprise Institute giving a speech on education. In broad terms, we all can agree on 90% of what everybody’s talking about, but where the rubber hits the road is the implementation…and the fine-tuning and the fine details. www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2166&section=Article

Chicago Teachers Union Learns to Love Charter Schools (dues): the Chicago Teachers Union is seeking to organize all 85 of the schools…Unionization of charter schools is a major step for the Chicago Teachers Union. Though charter teachers in other cities have formed unions, Chicago is one of the first where the public school system’s major union has directed the effort, according to the American Federation of Teachers. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/us/08cncharter.html?ref=education

Holy Crap! Too Many Students are Passing the Idiot Meap! Make it Worse! Much Worse! Dumber! Faster! Harder! Michigan students are passing the MEAP in droves, according to results released Thursday. But state officials warn that the results will look much different next year, when the bar for passing the exam will rise substantially.

The goal is to have students demonstrate that they are ready for college and careers. “We want to provide an authentic view of where students are academically,” state Superintendent Mike Flanagan said Thursday. www.freep.com/article/20110401/NEWS05/104010417/Most-kids-pass-MEAP-s-about-get-harder?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

Detroit and its Schools on the Precipice: We could witness the end of the Detroit Public schools and a near-eradication of the once-proud Detroit Federation of Teaches (DFT)–quickly followed by an assault on the suburban Michigan Education Association (MEA) , part of the National Education Association which has, for 25 years, let black Detroit swing in the wind. richgibson.com/skyfalling.htm

Calif’s Community Colleges Face a Thorough Gutting: With state budget talks halted, the 112-campus system faces an $800-million cut in funding for the coming school year. The system may have to enroll 400,000 fewer students. Chancellor Jack Scott calls the situation a tragedy for students. www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0331-community-colleges-20110331,0,7036490.story

So Long, Bimbo: | Cathleen P. Black, a magazine executive with no educational experience who was named New York City schools chancellor last fall, stepped down Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced.

Mr. Bloomberg called Ms. Black into his office Thursday morning and urged her to resign, officials said, ending a tumultuous and brief tenure for the longtime publisher. Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference that he and Ms. Black had agreed that a change was required….“It’s been a great privilege to serve the city of New York and the mayor for three months,” she said. “I have loved the principals, the teachers and the kids. Dennis Walcott is a great guy. We have a wonderful relationship and I wish everybody the best.”
“I went out, I bought a new pair of running shoes today, so I’m off,” she added.

The Chicago Connection: Annenberg/Ayers/Obama/Ayers: the campaign to give LSC’s the power to fire teachers and several hundred school principals – was championed, not by grassroots minorities groups, but by business interests headed by Thomas Ayers. Ayers, by coincidence, happens to be the father of Obama’s pal the former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. Tom Ayers also has impeccable corporate credentials, which include heading Commonwealth Edison for seven years in the seventies, and serving on the board of General Dynamics, Searle, Chico Pacific, Zenith, Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago and the Chicago Tribune.

This may possibly explain his son Bill Ayers’ “magical ability” to secure foundation funding. Ayers wrote the grant to secure Annenberg funding for the CAC and he credits himself as one of its co-founders. He was also influential in getting his buddy Barack Obama, a 34 year old with no educational credentials whatsoever, appointed as CAC’s first chairman, for which he received an annual salary of $70,000 (in addition to the substantial income from his law practice)…

This raises the tricky question of how Obama’s pal Bill Ayers transformed himself from a bomb making terrorist to a tenured Professor of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and an pre-eminent education reformer. Tarpley, like other authors and researchers, alleges the Weather Underground was actually a US intelligence creation, formed with the specific objective of infiltrating and shutting down SDS. This view is substantiated by FBI documents that came to light 1973 revealing the role of agent provocateurs in infiltrating and instigating much of the violence attributed to the Weathermen – which Ayers used to have his weapons and bomb making charges dismissed.

considerable circumstantial evidence supports these allegations. First and foremost is the striking “coincidence” that many of the Weather Underground leadership were, like Bill Ayers, the sons and daughters of wealthy members of the corporate elite. Second is the report of contemporary SDS members that the Weathermen, who did no fundraising to speak of, appeared to have unlimited funds to spend on organizing and military style training. Third are their classic (successful) Cointelpro style tactics in destroying SDS. And last the troubling question of how Bill Ayers can openly brag about his terrorist activities in his 2002 book Fugitive Days – and yet instead of facing the death penalty for conspiracy to commit murder, enjoys status and privilege as a tenured Professor of Education.blogs.alternet.org/refugee/tag/carl-oglesby/

Mark Rudd on Ayers’ Terrorist Weatherment: “We did the Work of the FBI” hpronline.org/interviews/mark-rudd-weather-underground-activist/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor!

Escobar: The Dirty US/Saudi Deal on Bahrain and Libya:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxVWckPZX0A&NR=1

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to “seduce” three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution…Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that’s just a “kinetic military action”…This is NATO’s first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO’s first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN’s weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its “strategic concept” approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).

Gaddafi’s Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean – the mare nostrum of ancient Rome – becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO “partnerships”. The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Moreover, two members of NATO’s “Istanbul Cooperation Initiative” – Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That’s too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.

According to the Obama administration’s own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for “US outreach” – such as in Bahrain and Yemen – may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for “regime alteration”, from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals.www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html

Stratfor on Obamagogue’s Fake Conscience Stain War: The application of minimal and insufficient force, combined with the unwillingness of people like Gadhafi and his equally guilty supporters to face The Hague, creates the framework for a long and inconclusive war in which the intervention in favor of humanitarian considerations turns into an intervention in a civil war on the side that opposes the regime.

This, then, turns into the problem that the virtue of the weaker side may consist only of its weakness. In other words, strengthened by foreign intervention that clears their way to power, they might well turn out just as brutal as the regime they were fighting. It should be remembered that many of Libya’s opposition leaders are former senior officials of the Gadhafi government. They did not survive as long as they did in that regime without having themselves committed crimes, and without being prepared to commit more.

In that case, the intervention — less and less immaculate — becomes an exercise in nation-building. Having destroyed the Gadhafi government and created a vacuum in Libya and being unwilling to hand power to Gadhafi’s former aides and now enemies, the intervention — now turning into an occupation— must now invent a new government. An invented government is rarely welcome, as the United States discovered in Iraq. www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110404-immaculate-intervention-wars-humanitarianism?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110405&utm_content=readmore&elq=4f6a2c0f89f74e7f837e5ef6623cd638

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR1z9xl2PeY

Sudan: Real Lessons of the Double Headed Social Media Sword: Faced with a clear opening-round defeat, the movement is doing something that questions the assumptions about the role of social media in enabling the Arab revolts: It’s going old school, revolutionary-style, and shunning many of the technologies that are credited with mobilizing the other uprisings.

Through a network of carefully vetted small cell groups — each knowing only what it has to — activists now pass messages face to face in secure locations. The identities of members of the core leadership team are carefully guarded, kept secret even from most of the movement’s members.
They’re settling in for the long haul, an acknowledgement that revolutions are rarely as spontaneous as they may appear on TV.
The young people here have learned that technology can be a dangerous, double-edged sword.
Facebook and text messages? Compromised. Promoting a protest online? A good way to get everyone arrested. www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/06/111637/sudans-government-crushed-protests.html

War Mongering Liberals: War really is tiring. The media serially blamed a supposedly lazy Ronald Reagan for napping during military operations abroad. George W. Bush was criticized for cutting brush at his Texas ranch while soldiers fought and died in Iraq. Obama rendered all such presidential criticism as mere nitpicking when he started aerial bombardment in the midst of golfing, handicapping the NCAA basketball tournament and taking his family to Rio de Janeiro.
The road to Damascus? After Bush’s interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, many war-weary Americans believed that we would never again get involved in a Middle East war. But now, with Obama’s preemptive bombing of Libya, giddy American interventionists are again eyeing Iran, Syria — and beyond!
In short, Obama turned America upside down when he bombed Libya — and in ways we could have scarcely imagined.www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/05/111461/commentary-war-mongering-liberals.html

CFR: Cracks in NATO’s Farcical Coalition: the danger for the coalition, looking forward, is the ambiguity that prevails on the question of the mission’s scope and objectives. The Turks, for example, have been quite explicit in arguing that the UN authorization of the mission restricts NATO to the protection of civilians. That essentially would mean bombing campaigns only against Qadaffi’s forces that are going after civilians. Now we are into a stage in the fighting in which at times it appears that NATO forces have become the air force of the rebels, in which they may therefore be supporting offensive operations. If things head down that road and NATO begins to arm the rebels, we will see some pretty serious divisions emerge within the NATO coalition.www.cfr.org/libya/libyas-strains-nato/p24582

Hey Dictator! The US is an Unreliable Ally! The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president, even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office, according to American and Yemeni officials.

The Obama administration had maintained its support of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in private and refrained from directly criticizing him in public, even as his supporters fired on peaceful demonstrators, because he was considered a critical ally in fighting the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda. This position has fueled criticism of the United States in some quarters for hypocrisy for rushing to oust a repressive autocrat in Libya but not in strategic allies like Yemen and Bahrain …

Washington has long had a wary, careful relationship of mutual dependence with Mr. Saleh. The United States has provided weapons, and the Yemeni leader has allowed the United States military and the C.I.A. to strike at Qaeda strongholds. The State Department cables released by Wikileaks gave a close-up view of that uneasy interdependence: Mr. Saleh told Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, that the United States could continue missile strikes against Al Qaeda as long as the fiction was maintained that Yemen was conducting them. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/middleeast/04yemen.html?hp

Come Clean! Who Lost Yemen? Saleh is barely clinging to power amid a popular uprising in Yemen that is unfolding more or less along the lines that Ahmar predicted. Several previously undisclosed U.S. diplomatic cables, provided by the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks, show that influential Yemenis and U.S. allies repeatedly warned U.S. diplomats of Saleh’s growing weakness in 2009 and 2010. But despite those warnings, the Obama administration continued to embrace Saleh and became increasingly dependent on him to combat an al-Qaeda affiliate that was plotting attacks against the United States from the Arabian peninsula. www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-was-told-of-plot-to-overthrow-yemen-leader/2011/04/07/AFBCY7xC_story.html

Hey Troops! The US is Trying to Bribe the Enemy! The United States pledged $50 million Wednesday to jump-start a slow-moving program to encourage Taliban members in Afghanistan to stop fighting and support the government. ..U.S. officials here are voicing more-open support for a political settlement, a shift from last year, when many insisted that the time for negotiation was after the military had hammered insurgents into a weakened state.www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-pledges-more-money-for-peace-program-in-afghanistan/2011/04/06/AFn87hqC_story.html

ROTC  Back at Columbia with Profs’-Puppet Student Approval:

More than four decades after Columbia University, the heart of the Vietnam-era student movement, banned R.O.T.C. from campus in a moment of 1960s antimilitary rage, the University Senate voted overwhelmingly on Friday to support efforts to bring the group back. ..The vote — 51 to 17, with 1 abstention — came in support of a Senate resolution to “explore mutually beneficial relationships with the armed forces of the United States, including participation in the programs of the Reserve Officers Training Corps.” It followed a series of sometimes venomous campus meetings and found its impetus in President Obama’s signing three months ago of a bill to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/nyregion/02rotc.html?hpw

Pakistan ($1 Billion a year US) Rejects US Critique: Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas has rejected the White House report that gave a harshly critical assessment of Pakistan’s
efforts towards “defeating the insurgency” thriving in the country…The bi-annual assessment to US Congress not only painted a grim picture of the deficits in Pakistan’s counter-insurgency efforts, but also mentioned the reluctance of the Pakistan military in accepting “US-provided helicopter maintenance teams,” part of a broader concern about letting American troops operate openly on the ground in Pakistan.

The report alleged that along with Afghanistan, Pakistan continues to be the operational base of Al Qaeda and its affiliates threatening global peace, and noted that the Pakistani military’s effort to clear militants from Mohmand, a part of the northwest Pakistan’s tribal areas, was failing for the third time in two years. www.dailyindia.com/show/433621.php

The Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

“Public” Freddy and Fannie Pay Execs Millions: The companies, whose fates are to be decided by Congress this year, paid a combined $17 million to their chief executives in 2009 and 2010, the two full years when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were wards of the state, the report found. The top six executives at the companies received $35.4 million over the two years. Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over in September 2008, the companies’ mounting mortgage losses have required a $153 billion infusion from taxpayers. Total losses may reach $363 billion through 2013, according to government estimates. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/01pay.html?ref=business

Children In Detroit are Hungry and have no Books. Ford Boss Collects $26 Million+ for One Year: Ford paid President and CEO Alan Mulally $26.5 million and Executive Chairman Bill Ford $26.4 million in salary, bonus and long-term stock options and awards last year, by far the industry’s most lucrative pay packages.

Mulally has led the Dearborn automaker through the industry’s deepest recession since the Great Depression without Ford accepting taxpayer assistance, as its two domestic competitors accepted in 2009.

Ford earned $6.6 billion in 2010, up from $2.7 billion in 2009.

Both Mulally and Ford received salaries of $1.4 million for 2010. Bill Ford, who received no salary in the previous two years, also retroactively received pay for 2008 and 2009, bringing his total salary for the last three years to $4.8 million. www.freep.com/article/20110401/BUSINESS0102/110401051/Ford-pays-Mulally-26-5M-Bill-Ford-26-4M-auto-industry-s-top-packages?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Above, Fascist Henry Ford Awarded Nazi Medal

The Heavens Weep

What’s the Japanese CP Doing? Fundraising for the government!

He reported on the ongoing efforts made by the JCP task forces in Tokyo and in the disaster-hit region. As well as JCP Dietmembers, JCP local members and local assembly representatives, who are often victims themselves, are working hard to help others in difficulty, showing the founding spirit of the JCP to lessen hardships on the people. He said that national solidarity in this respect bore fruit in raising over 250 million yen in donations called for by JCP organizations nationwide for disaster relief. Shii said that the activity should be enhanced.www.jcp.or.jp/english/jps_2011/20110324_03.html

Meltdown! Who Pays? Taxpayers. Japan’s taxpayer, not the nuclear industry or insurers, will cover most of the cleanup cost from the worst accident since Chernobyl, a financial rescue that may spur moves by nations to make companies assume more liability.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., in its 13th day fighting to avert a meltdown at its Fukushima plant 220 kilometers (135 miles) north of Tokyo, at most is required to cover third-party damages of 120 billion yen ($2.1 billion) under Japanese law. Should the government declare the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that flooded its reactors an “exceptional” act of God, the utility may be off the hook in paying compensation that may be demanded by injured workers, farmers and shareholders. www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/nuclear-cleanup-cost-goes-to-japan-s-taxpayers-may-spur-liability-shift.html

Solidarity Forever!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oK4ifNOzb0

One of Michigan’s richest districts Couldn’t Concede fast Enough so Educators hit with 10% Paycut: After 18 months of failed negotiations, the West Bloomfield school board voted 5-2 to impose a 10 percent pay cut Thursday night, a day after teachers said they learned about the move when they opened their paychecks.

Some teachers also will lose payments for seniority, since the board froze what’s called step payments….Pam Zajac, district spokeswoman, said five of its six bargaining units, including administrators, have already agreed to a 10percent wage cut, 5 percent last year, 5percent this year. And spending has been cut by $1.6 million over the past five years.

“We’ve done everything that we can,” Zajac said.

Hundreds of Metro Detroit teachers picketed outside the high school before the school board meeting.

Kim Pilarski, president of the West Bloomfield Education Association, said the teachers union offered to cut salaries by 5percent this year and 4 percent next year.www.detnews.com/article/20110401/SCHOOLS/104010379/1026/West-Bloomfield-teachers-see-pay-cut-by-10-percent

Emerging Fascism

Obamagogue: My Bloody Hands Are Tied! Military Tribunals!

The Obama administration, ending more than a year of indecision with a major policy reversal, will prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other people accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks before a military commission and not a civilian court, as it once planned…it marked a significant moment of capitulation in the Obama administration’s largely frustrated effort to dismantle counterterrorism architecture left behind by former President George W. Bush. President Obama, in one of his first initiatives, had announced his intention to close the Guantánamo prison in a year, a goal that he failed to fulfill.www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/us/05gitmo.html?scp=4&sq=guantanamo%20military%20tribunals&st=cse

China Crackdown Continues: By targeting Mr. Ai, the authorities are expanding a campaign against dissent that has roiled China’s embattled community of liberal and reform-minded intellectuals. In recent weeks dozens of people have been detained, including some of the country’s best known writers and rights advocates. At least 11 of them have simply vanished into police custody. Two weeks ago, Liu Xianbin, a veteran dissident in Sichuan Province, was sentenced to 10 years on subversion charges.

Last week Yang Hengjun, a Chinese-Australian novelist and democracy advocate whose blog postings are avidly followed on the mainland, disappeared in southern China as he tried to leave the country. Mr. Yang reappeared four days later, claiming he had been ill, but many friends interpreted his cryptic explanation as a roundabout acknowledgment that he had been detained by the police. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/asia/04china.html?hp

Really, Who Killed Rodrigo Rosenberg, and Why? (after 200,000 murders in Guatemala in 30 7ears): “Guatemala is a good place to commit a murder, because you will almost certainly get away with it,” a U.N. official has said. www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann

Spy Versus Spy

Missionary, CIA Agent, Drug Runner, DEA Agent. WarCiminal. Nice. Mr. Young’s father, Harold, was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency and led intelligence-gathering forays into southern China in the years after Mao Zedong’s Communist takeover.

William Young followed his father’s path and joined the C.I.A. after serving in the United States Army. In the early 1960s, as the war in Vietnam escalated, Mr. Young assembled an army of local tribespeople in neighboring Laos, a force that at its peak reached several thousand men. Missionaries were the best assets the Americans had in the region, Mr. Lintner said. “They spoke local languages and were respected.”

Mr. Young led his fighters into battles against Communist forces and directed the construction of airstrips to be used by Air America, the C.I.A.-financed airline that supplied the hill tribes with weapons and supplies. Among those he recruited was Vang Pao, the ethnic Hmong warrior who later led the C.I.A.-backed anti-Communist forces, and who died in January.www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/asia/04young.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Terrorist CIA Agent Posada Gets Civilian Trial. Why Not Others? Not Guilty? Really?

Federal prosecutors argued Thursday that an elderly ex-CIA agent’s Cold War service to the U.S. doesn’t excuse his lying during immigration hearings about sneaking into the country and masterminding a wave of deadly 1990s bombings in Cuba.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ex-cia-agents-trial-concludes-with-prosecution-alleging-perjury-defense-claiming-entrapment/2011/04/07/AFPH6CtC_story.html

Magical Mystery Tour

My Imaginary Friend told me to bomb Your Imaginary Friend: On the video, a pastor named Wayne Sapp is seen igniting a kerosene-drenched copy of the Koran with a plastic lighter. Pastor Jones and members of the church watch the book burn for several minutes while several photographers snap pictures.

Finally, Mr. Jones says, “That actually burned quite well.”..Mr. Jones declined a request to be interviewed. In a statement, he demanded that the United States and United Nations take “immediate action” against Muslim nations in retaliation for the deaths on Friday in Afghanistan. At least 12 people were killed when thousands of protestors stormed a United Nations center in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

“The time has come to hold Islam accountable,” Mr. Jones said.

Supremes Ok Funding to Superstitious Schooling: today’s decision damages one of this nation’s defining constitutional commitments,” referring to the interpretations of the establishment clause as limiting “the government’s power to subsidize religious activity.” www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/04/28scotus.h30.html?tkn=VZBFPGjt3HGunslbIiDvsShcLhqByYgVEx%2B6&cmp=clp-ecseclips

Worst Thing in the History of the World

Barbarized Adults in Dress Up Do Assaults About  Baseball: Authorities released new details Friday about the Giants fan who allegedly was severely beaten by two apparent Dodgers fans at the end of the Dodgers’ opening day game.According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the assailants, clad in Dodgers attire, began taunting the victim with expletives. As the victim, 41, and his friends attempted to walk away from the assailants, the victim was hit from behind and fell to the ground, police said.

The two men then kicked and punched the victim as he lay on the ground. The victim’s friends attempted to help him and they too were hit by the assailants.
“The man suffered a serious head injury during the assault after the game,” said LAPD Sgt. Sanford Rosenberg, watch commander at the Northeast Division station.
The attack occurred about 8:30 p.m. Thursday in Parking Lot 2 when the two assailants approached three people wearing Giants apparel.latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/giants-fan-was-attacked-from-behind-by-dodger-fans-lapd-says.html

Second Worst Thing: Detroit’s Only Militant Strike Collapses: Musicians’ union president Gordon Stump said that although the players are taking a nearly 25 percent cut in their salaries, they were able to avoid some of the work rule changes that “would have significantly changed the very nature of the job, and would have given the managements of other orchestras the impetus to try and gain those conditions in their orchestras.” www.detnews.com/article/20110408/ENT01/104080433/DSO-musicians-vote-to-end-strike

UNcategorizable:

Homeland Security Course: Active Shooter Bothering You?

training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/IS907.asp

Best Thing in the History of the World:

Kahlo Standing on the Border between Mexico and the United States

Second Best thing in History of the World: Wiki bounces Another Ambassador: Ecuador on Tuesday asked U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges to leave the country “as soon as possible” after a diplomatic cable provided by WikiLeaks revealed that she had speculated that President Rafael Correa was turning a blind-eye to rampant corruption in the police department.
The dust-up comes after Spain’s El País newspaper on Monday published the comunique from 2009 in which Hodges laid out corruption charges against the former commander general of Ecuador’s police, Jaime Hurtado, and requested that his U.S. visa be revoked.
Hodges also speculated that Correa must have known about Hurtado’s corruption when he appointed him, but “may have wanted to have a (police) chief whom he could easily manipulate.”http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/05/111590/wikileaks-claims-second-us-ambassador.html

So Long Manning Marable