Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

100 Million Strike in India! Last week was a historic moment for the Indian working class.
Irrespective of political ideology or affiliation, 20-21 February saw around 100 million workers come together in one of the biggest strikes in world history.  http://www.equaltimes.org/opinion/when-100-million-indians-went-on-strike

The Little Red Schoolhouse

High Lead Levels Mean Low Test Scores The greater the lead poisoning in a Detroit Public Schools student’s blood, the higher the likelihood he or she will do poorly on achievement tests — even after accounting for contributing factors such as poverty. That’s the finding of a collaborative study that provides one of the most detailed assessments yet of the impact of lead poisoning on students’ learning ability.
Detroit has some of the highest levels of child lead poisoning among all large U.S. cities, largely because of the city’s older housing stock and the prevalence of lead paint usage in the 1970s and earlier, according to the study, set for publication in next month’s American Journal of Public Health. www.freep.com/article/20130225/NEWS06/302250140/High-lead-poisoning-linked-to-lower-test-scores-in-DPS?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

The Air Force on the legacy of MLK “Dr. King would be proud to see our Global Strike team – comprised of Airmen, civilians and contractors from every race, creed, background and religion – standing side-by-side ensuring the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal remain the credible bedrock of our national defense. . . Our team must overlook our differences to ensure perfection as we maintain and operate our weapon systems. . . Maintaining our commitment to our Global Strike team, our families and our nation is a fitting tribute to Dr. King as we celebrate his legacy.”  http://www.afgsc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123333051

In Race to the Real Top, California 11th in US in Kiddie Incarceration California has more incarcerated youth than any other state in the nation and has the 11th-highest youth confinement rate, according to a report released Wednesday.  http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_22675185/california-ranks-11th-nation-youth-incarceration-rate-report

Why People Think Twice about Sending Kids to Detroit’s failed Capitalist Schools The lawyer for a Detroit teacher who says she was fired after criticizing the district’s handling of a sexual assault said Thursday he will fight an appeals court ruling that threw out a $750,000 verdict in her favor.
The Michigan Court of Appeals ordered a new trial Wednesday, but narrowed the alleged violations of law in the case filed by Beverly Garvin, who alleged violations of the Michigan Civil Rights Act and the First Amendment.
Under the ruling, she can maintain her lawsuit against certain school officials on the First Amendment claims, but not the school board or the district. The appeals court dismissed the civil rights part of the case.
Garvin was a Detroit teacher in 2004 when a fourth-grade girl alleged she was forced into a sex act by other students. Garvin said the principal and other school officials didn’t do enough to help the girl and others after the incident.
Her lawyer, Tom Pabst of Flint, said the case isn’t not over.
“I’m appealing to the Supreme Court because the Court of Appeals was wrong on this decision,” said Pabst. “In reversing her civil rights case, they’re saying a 9-year-old girl getting violated by boys in a public school is not a civil rights violation and no reasonable person thinks it is. I think that is outrageous.”  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130227/SCHOOLS/302270418#ixzz2M9JD7kFA

Constant surveillance in US schools

With Every Detroit School Worker Fired, Philly gets in Line. Who is Next? Some bullet points:
First, the financials – as already reported, pay cuts 13 percent for those who make $55,000 and above, with lesser cuts for those who earn less. (Employees who make under $25,000 would take a 5 percent cut.)
But there would also be benefit givebacks. Teachers and other Philadelphia Federation of Teachers members who are paid over $55k would have to pay 13 percent toward their benefits, and so on – same percentages as the pay cut.
Employees whose spouses or domestic partners are eligible for health coverage through their employer but take district insurance instead would pay a $70 surcharge. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Health and Welfare Fund, which has long administered benefits, would cease to exist; the district would administer benefits.
There would be no more sabbaticals for teachers who’ve worked 20 years. Termination pay for employees who leave or retire would be reduced to $160 per day, as opposed to the current daily rate teachers are paid.
There would be no more “steps” – graduated salary levels within categories of employees. There would be no more elevated pay categories for teachers with master’s degrees, master’s plus 30 credits, doctorates, and “senior career teachers” – those at the highest pay scale.   www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/193560191.html

Obamagogue’s Lap Poodle, Arne, Lied 4 times (meaning he spoke) “I was on a call yesterday, people are starting to give RIF [reduction in force] notes,” Duncan said in a meeting with reporters Feb. 21, three days before his appearance on CBS. “Schools are already starting to give teachers notices.”
Oddly, however, the Education Department for days was unable to cough up the name of a single school district where these notices had been delivered. Then, on Wednesday, Duncan appeared before the White House press corps and produced a name — Kanawha County in West Virginia — with a major league caveat. “Whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know,” he said.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/4-pinocchios-for-arne-duncans-false-claim-of-pink-slips-for-teachers/2013/02/27/dac86324-8115-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_blog.html?hpid=z2

What follows are the Opening Lines from a Current College President’s “dissertation” This is a grounded theory that explains conflict in the academic workplace. The core variable is realigning, which is a basic social process that individuals experience in social organizations, such as workplaces. Realigning is the process by which certain behaviors are employed to bring individuals back in alignment with the system’s core values or to realign individuals to a change in the organization’s core values. The aim of realigning behaviors is to diminish the impact of the individual who is perceived as not being in alignment and include actions to erode, isolate, and separate that individual. Therefore, realigning may include removing an individual from the organization. The theory explains the conditions, stages, and processes in which realigning occurs. The primary condition of social organizations is existence of core values at the organizational level. Organizational core values determine the context in which conflict arises. Conflict in terms of core values leads to the stages of the realigning process. The four primary stages and processes are presented here as changing tides, countering, justifying, and, resolving. The significance of this theory is that it is centered in the concept of organizational values, which provides a holistic understanding of workplace conflict rather than looking only at individual behaviors. The theory presents a framework within which to understand how conflict arises, the purpose of conflict, the forms conflict takes, and the consequences of conflict.”  http://www.edu-papers.com/realigning-a-grounded-theory-of-academic-workplace-conflict/

Capitalists Love Obamagogue’s Capitalist PreSchool Scheme to Produce loyal/Obeidient Kiddies As two longtime corporate executives who have been engaged in education for decades, we have no doubt about the answer to this question. Children who attend high-quality preschool do much better when they arrive in kindergarten, and this makes an enormous difference for their later success. The data on preschool is overwhelmingly positive. Although some studies suggest that the positive impact decreases over time, this is mainly attributable to differences in the quality of preschool and of the schooling that follows — not a deficiency in preschool itself.
The effectiveness of quality early childhood education has been affirmed by many business-related groups, including ReadyNation, a coalition of business leaders, organized in 2006.
The Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the United States Chamber of Commerce, found in a 2010 report that “for every dollar invested today, savings range from $2.50 to as much as $17 in the years ahead.”   www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/opinion/the-business-case-for-early-childhood-education.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production.

Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Fisk: The Stages of the AQ War (barbarians vs barbarians as we plunge into pre-feudalism) Stage one was to “provoke the ponderous American elephant into invading Muslim lands where it would be easier for the mujahideen to fight it”. Stage two: The Muslim nation wakes from its long sleep and is furious at the sight of a new generation of crusaders intent on occupying large parts of the Middle East and stealing its valuable resources. “The seeds of the hatred towards America that al-Qa’ida was banking on,” Atwan says, “were planted when the first bombs dropped on Baghdad in 2003.” In fact, as I outlined after the invasion, an oblique message from Bin Laden just before the Bush adventure – typically ignored by the CIA – actually urged al-Qa’ida members to co-operate with the hated Baathists against US forces. This was the first call from al-Qa’ida to collaborate with other groups – hence the plague of al-Qa’ida units which are fighting alongside other rebel organisations in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Mali and now Syria.
Stage three is a Nato-al-Qa’ida conflict in a “triangle of horror … in Iraq, Syria and Jordan”. In part four, “Al-Qa’ida becomes a global network that … makes enfranchisement exceptionally easy”. In part five, the US military budget “is crashed into bankruptcy and economic meltdown ensues”. The sixth stage is the “overthrow of the hated Arab dictators. Finally, “the ultimate clash of civilisations and a mighty, apocalyptic battle”. Al-Zawahiri, by the way, is always quoting the Yale historian Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which sees economic collapse as the basis for the collapse of empires.  http://www.zcommunications.org/war-on-terror-is-the-wests-new-religion-by-robert-fisk

There Will Be No Peace Dividend After Afghanistan By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
Nearly 12 years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began, a war-weary America is getting ready to leave. But there will be little in the way of a peace dividend for the US economy once the fighting stops.
The direct costs of the war are already $700bn. The original mission was to root out al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But in 2003, the US shifted nearly all of its attention and resources to Iraq. The Taliban regrouped and strengthened in Afghanistan, making the conflict far more expensive. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda shifted operations into Pakistan, Yemen and Mali, where France this month sent troops.

Who Lost This Key Afghan Province to the Afghans? The Afghan government on Sunday banned elite American forces from operating in a strategic province adjoining Kabul, citing complaints that Afghans working for American Special Forces have killed and tortured villagers in the area.  The ban is scheduled to go into effect in two weeks in the province, Maidan Wardak, which has long been seen as a crucial link in the defense of the capital against the Taliban. If fully enacted, it would effectively remove the American military’s main source of offensive firepower from the area, which lies southwest of Kabul and is used by the Taliban as a staging ground for attacks on Kabul.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/world/asia/afghanistan-orders-us-troops-from-key-province-of-wardak.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

Oopsie! We Lied about things improving in Afghanistan. Yeow! They’re worse! American officials, when looking to quickly illustrate progress in Afghanistan, have in the past few months highlighted a 7 percent drop last year in what they call “enemy-initiated attacks.” Fewer attacks, the reasoning went, meant Afghans were safer and the Taliban were weaker.   The problem: There was no decline. The numbers were wrong.
The American-led NATO coalition said Tuesday that it had discovered a clerical error in its reporting and that the number of enemy-initiated attacks — defined as attacks with guns, mortars, rockets or improvised explosive devices — remained constant from 2011 to 2012.   …In fact, the same measure, when looked at over a wider sample of years, actually depicts a drastic growth in violence since 2009, when American commanders first began inching toward a counterinsurgency strategy that focused on reducing violence rather than solely on battling militant   www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/world/asia/coalition-says-afghan-attacks-didnt-fall-after-all.html?ref=global-home&_r=0

At Least 30 Afghan Police Killed in 48 Hours Showing that the insurgency’s goal of attacking Afghan police is not shifting, a series of attacks on Afghan police have left at least 30 of them killed over the past 48 hours, with IED attacks targeting police in the Kunar Province today. The largest single incident of the period came Wednesday, of course, when an insider attack hit the US-backed Afghan Local Police (ALP), with other members of the force poisoning and killing 17 of them before leaving, apparently to join the Taliban.
It wasn’t an isolated incident though, as a series of IEDs today killed eight in Kunar, while another insider attack among ALP forces saw two fresh recruits attacking and killing two others on their way to a checkpoint. Other bombings and shootings killed three others nationwide.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for each of the attacks, but it is often unclear whether insider attacks are really being carried out by Taliban infiltrators or simply discontented recruits. Either way, the poorly paying job of Afghan police officer keeps getting more dangerous, a fact that will surely continue to weigh on recruitment efforts.  http://news.antiwar.com/2013/02/28/at-least-30-afghan-police-killed-in-48-hours/

US Backed Nato Returns to Murdering Children–sorry about that Two boys out collecting firewood with their donkeys were killed by weapons fired from a NATO helicopter, Afghan and American military officials announced Saturday. The new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., promptly issued an apology and said the killings were an accident.
The victims, Toor Jan, 11, and Andul Wodood, 12, were brothers and had been walking behind their donkeys in the Shahed-e-Hasas district of Oruzgan Province when the helicopter fired on them, according to Afghan officials in the district. The two donkeys were killed as well.
General Dunford said that coalition forces had opened fire on what they thought were insurgent forces, and killed the boys by accident. “I offer my personal apology and condolences to the family of the boys who were killed,” General Dunford said.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/world/asia/two-afghan-boys-accidentally-killed-by-nato-helicopter.html?ref=global-home

Broken Iraq At least 34 people were killed and 70 more were wounded in a string of attacks. The most significant violence took place in the capital and in towns south of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, 19 people were killed and about 40 more were wounded in a double bombing near a stadium in the Shoala district. In a common tactic, the first bomb drew responders to a second bomb waiting for them. One person was killed and seven more were wounded during a separate bombing in Shurta al-Rabea.
Four people were killed and at least seven more were wounded in Mahmoudiya, during a multiple bombing that included a hand grenade blast. A militant detonated the grenade as security forces were trying to arrest him. At least six bombs exploded nearby.
A blast killed three people and wounded 15 more in Aziziya.
Gunmen killed two Sahwa members, one of them a commander, in Sabbaghiya.
In Hawija, a sniper killed a soldier.
An I.E.D. killed two policemen and wounded a third one in Mosul.
Gunmen in Falluja killed a policeman.
Police killed a suicide car bomber in Kirkuk.   original.antiwar.com/updates/2013/02/28/baghdad-bloodbath-34-killed-70-wounded-in-attacks/

Reagan and the Guatemala Extermination Campaigns A newly discovered document reveals that President Reagan and his national security team in 1981 approved Guatemala’s extermination of both leftist guerrillas and their “civilian support mechanisms,” a green light that opened a path to genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages, reports Robert Parry.  http://consortiumnews.com/2013/02/21/how-reagan-promoted-genocide/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Sequestration Means Enhanced attacks on Working people until the world resembles Detroit

above, one of thousands of burned and wrecked Detroit homes.

Detroit: The Most Miserable City in the USA

1. Detroit, Mich.
2. Flint, Mich.
3. Rockford, Ill.
4. Chicago, Ill.
5. Modesto, Calif.
6. Vallejo, Calif.
7. Warren, Mich.
8. Stockton, Calif.
9. Lake County, Ill.
10. New York, N.Y.

www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/22/172687598/which-is-the-most-miserable-u-s-city-detroit

below, the feet of Johnny Redding stick out of the ice in the basement of a  large abandoned Detroit building. Redding was seen by young men playing hockey. They notified the police. Days passed. Nothing. They notified the EMTs. Days passed. Nothing. They called the press. Photos appeared on the front pages. Three days later the fire department chopped out the body of Johnny Redding. The city collapses. Barbarism rises, worldwide.

Government Motors To Raise top bosses $, Big boss =$11.1 Million (thanks taxpayers!) General Motors Co. wants to pay its chief executive $11.1 million in total compensation this year — an increase of more than 20 percent over 2012 – and offer raises to most of its highest paid executives, according to a document turned over to Congress.
The Detroit automaker, which received a $49.5 billion bailout in 2008 and 2009, must get approval for the pay packages for its top 25 executives from the Treasury Department, as a condition of its government bailout.
According to a copy of the proposal obtained by The Detroit News from a source familiar with the documents, GM is proposing raises for 18 of its top 25 executives for 2013, with each of those making at least $1.8 million.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130225/AUTO0103/302250430#ixzz2LyqKGWA1

So Long Detroit Governance, Pensions, Contracts (after all, the teachers are gone) Detroit — Gov. Rick Snyder said Friday he is prepared to sideline Detroit’s elected officials and bring in an emergency manager to handle the city’s affairs in an unprecedented effort to stave off financial collapse.
The move, which the city has 10 days to appeal, would make Detroit the largest American city ever to operate under state control and could effectively leave the mayor and nine City Council members out of a job.
Snyder said Friday he concurs with a review team report released last week that concluded Detroit is in a state of financial emergency. He praised city leaders for working to fix problems, but said it’s clear the consent agreement forged in April hasn’t worked swiftly enough.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130302/METRO01/303020334#ixzz2MSBRNZfD

Remember “Buy American!”? GM Wants to Triple Sales in China General Motors wants to more than triple its Cadillac sales in China by 2015 after appointing a new global leader for the brand.
The automaker today revealed a goal of selling more than 100,000 Cadillacs in China in 2015.
In 2012, GM sold 30,010 Cadillacs in China, exactly two more than it sold in 2011 despite 11.3% growth for overall GM vehicle sales in China last year.   www.freep.com/article/20130225/BUSINESS01/130225083/GM-wants-triple-Cadillac-sales-China-by-2015

Americans saw their income drop so dramatically in January that it marked the deepest one-month decline in 20 years. – See more at: money.cnn.com/2013/03/01/news/economy/income-spending-saving/#sthash.H51uch7G.dpuf

Euro Zone Reports Record Joblessness and Low Inflation (because finance capital HATES inflation) Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone climbed to 11.9 percent in January from 11.8 percent the previous month, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
For the 27 nations of the European Union, the jobless rate was 10.8 percent, up from 10.7 percent in December. All of the figures were seasonally adjusted. www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/business/global/euro-zone-unemployment-rose-to-new-record-in-january-as-inflation-eased.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Whistleblower Hero Bradley Manning Pleads out and Says “Why”  (see the video) Sitting at the defence bench in a hushed courtroom, Manning said he was sickened by the apparent “bloodlust” of a helicopter crew involved in an attack on a group in Baghdad that turned out to include Reuters correspondents and children.
He believed the Afghan and Iraq war logs published by the WikiLeaks website, initially in association with a consortium of international media organisations that included the Guardian, were “among the more significant documents of our time revealing the true costs of war”. The decision to pass the classified information to a public website was motivated, he told the court, by his depression about the state of military conflict in which the US was mired.
Manning said: “We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions. I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general [that] might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.” www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/28/bradley-manning-trial-plea-statement

Petition to Thank Bradley Manning act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7433

White House Memo Reveals Scheme to Confiscate Guns The National Rifle Association claims it has obtained a Justice Department memo that notes President Obama’s gun control initiatives would be ineffective without seizing citizens’ assault rifles and requiring a federal gun registration.
It’s not clear how the NRA obtained a memo under the name of one of the Justice Department’s leading crime researchers, but its authenticity has not neither been challenged by the White House nor Justice Department.
The NRA is using the memo in advertisements, zeroing in on the statement claiming that the success of universal background checks would depend on “requiring gun registration” and that gun buybacks would not work “unless massive and coupled with a ban.”
The memo also says that requiring background checks for gun purchases would not be enough to address gun violence and that it could lead to more unlawful weapons sales among those not able to pass or not willing to subject themselves to a background check.  http://rt.com/usa/nra-gun-ban-confiscation-419/

Even the Politicos Fave Scribbler Is Offended To recap: Woodward recently wrote a commentary for The Post that placed the sequester debacle on Obama’s desk and accused the president of “moving the goal posts” by asking for more tax increases.
Before his piece was published, Woodward called the White House to tell officials it was coming. A shouting match ensued between Woodward and Gene Sperling, Obama’s economic adviser, followed by an e-mail in which Sperling said that Woodward “will regret staking out that claim.”  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-the-obama-white-house-threat-to-bob-woodward-matters/2013/03/01/f5d36d5e-82b3-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html?hpid=z3

Fascism, then and now, Worse than They Thought THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.  What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.
“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.
“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”…Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”. www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?ref=global-home

So Long, Voting Rights Act (if it mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it anyway) The life of the Voting Rights Act may be short, for all of that changed this past week when the far-right’s favorite Justice, Antonin Scalia, uttered something remarkable from the bench when he called the Voting Rights Act “a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Yep, he went there. He went there in a very Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh kind of way. He went where no Justice in my lifetime has gone. He went where I expect political conservatives to play, to the sandbox of the Rand Pauls and Steve Kings of our political world. He went where I’ve never heard a Supreme Court Justice blatantly go: into the politics of race.  http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/02/voting-rights-the-supreme-court-and-obamas-most-important-legacy/

Solidarity for Never

Mexico’s School Worker’s Union Boss (bizillionaire) finally busted (Grab Van Roekel too!) The leader of Mexico’s powerful teachers’ union, the largest labor syndicate in Latin America, has been arrested on accusations that she embezzled millions of dollars in union funds for personal expenses, including California residences, cosmetic surgery and artwork, the country’s attorney general announced Tuesday night…. the prosecutor, Jesús Murillo Karam, said in a televised statement that the arrest had stemmed from the suspicious transfer of $200 million from the National Union of Education Workers, which has 1.5 million members, into the private accounts of three individuals. He said Ms. Gordillo had then used the accounts, in American and Swiss banks, to pay for credit cards; two houses in Coronado, Calif., near San Diego; unspecified art; plastic surgery; and other personal expenses.
He said that the transactions occurred between 2008 and 2012, including the transfer of about $2.1 million to an account at a Neiman Marcus department store in San Diego between March 2009 and January 2012, and that as many as 80 union accounts were being examined for irregularities.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/world/americas/leader-of-mexican-teachers-union-arrested.html?_r=0

AFL-CIO vs the Earth: Build Keystone! The A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions, has issued an apparent endorsement of the Keystone XL oil pipeline — apparent because it enthusiastically called for expanding the nation’s pipeline system, without specifically mentioning Keystone.  And while some union leaders said the federation’s stance stopped short of an official endorsement, the nation’s building trades unions — eager for the thousands of jobs the pipeline would create — issued a statement saying the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s stance was a clear endorsement of the Keystone pipeline.
The labor federation’s embrace of the pipeline, even with some ambiguity, will give President Obama some political cover as he weighs whether to approve the pipeline, which would carry more than 700,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil each day to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.   www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/business/energy-environment/afl-cio-backs-keystone-oil-pipeline-if-indirectly.html

Wayne State Union Dues Eaters Seek to Lock down dues income with EIGHT YEAR contract: After months of negotiating, Wayne State University and its faculty union have reached a tentative, eight-year contract, officials announced in a news release Tuesday.
The agreement, which replaces the contract that expired July 31, will be formally voted on by the union’s 1,950 faculty and staff on March 6.
It included unspecified changes in wages and benefits, according to the release, and also establishes committees to explore technology use and the “changing realities” of health care benefits.
“As always, there is give and take on both sides, but we believe this is a fair contract,” Charles Parrish, president of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement.”Most importantly, tenure, job security and academic freedom have been preserved. This will allow our faculty to continue their excellent work in teaching and research.”
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130226/SCHOOLS/302260422#ixzz2MAV8SFFH

UAW Bosses Help Silence Rank and File Protest Alex Wassell, a member of a dissident labor group called the Committee for the Eight Hour Day and Overtime Pay, helped organize a protest on Thursday against a controversial new work schedule that would require many employees to work Saturdays and require others to alternate between day and night shifts.
“He violated one of our codes of conduct. He engaged in an activity constituting, or appearing to constitute, a conflict with the interest of the company,” said Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson. “He released information that was not authorized relating to quality.”
Tinson appeared to be referring to internal company documents obtained by The Detroit News that show serious quality issues at the automaker’s Warren Truck Assembly Plant. The News made it clear to the company that Wassell was not the source of those documents. He is not employed at the Warren Truck factory, but at Chrysler’s stamping plant next door.
Tinson said Wassell, who has worked for Chrysler for 20 years, is being suspended without pay indefinitely.
Wassell, for his part, declined to comment, saying he was afraid of further retaliation by the company.
“It’s raw deal,” said Martha Grevatt, another prtest organizer and member of the Committee for the Eight Hour Day and Overtime Pay. “We’ll back him.”
The United Auto Workers did not sanction Thursday’s protest, and UAW leaders have said they support the new work schedule because it means more jobs.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130302/AUTO0101/303020376#ixzz2MS0QhU1H

Spy versus Spy

Operation Mockingbird and the family Jewels Paul Scott, the late syndicated columnist, was so paranoid about the CIA wiretapping his Prince George’s County home in the 1960s that he’d make important calls from his neighbor’s house. His teenage son Jim Scott figured his dad was either a shrewd reporter or totally nuts.
Not until nearly 45 years later did the son learn that his father’s worries were justified. The insight came in 2007 when the CIA declassified a trove of documents popularly called “the family jewels.” The papers detailed the agency’s unlawful activities from long ago, including wiretapping the Scott home in District Heights. The operation even had a code name: “Project Mockingbird.”  Jim was floored: The CIA really did eavesdrop on Dad.
Now Jim, 64, a retired Navy public relations officer who lives in Anne Arundel County, is waging an operation of his own against the agency. For the past five years, he has sought to declassify and make public any documents Langley might still have on his father and why he was wiretapped.
So far, the CIA has released to Jim a handful of intriguing documents. But Jim has been trying to compel the agency to cough up more. A federal declassification review panel is reviewing Jim’s case and could decide as soon as this month whether to direct the CIA to release more Mockingbird documents.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/long-ago-wiretap-inspires-a-battle-with-the-cia-for-more-information/2013/03/02/8ebaa924-77b0-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html?hpid=z2

The Magical Mystery Tour

Voice of God Silenced! Evil Runs Amok! Infallibility Vacated!!Sky Falling! All Sequestered!

Second Nominee For Pope! Kirby Hinsley, Founder of the Universal Life Church (deceased, but what the, ah, hell)

Hinsley inspired the first breakthrough Faith-Based Vaccine! richgibson.com/Vaccine.htm

In existence since 1959, the Universal Life Church is headquartered in Modesto, California, and has congregations around the world. The sun never sets on the Universal Life Church. ULC ministers come from all walks of life and spiritual traditions. Our common thread is our adherence to the universal doctrine of religious freedom:
“Do only that which is right”.   www.ulc.net/

People Make Gods! Gods Don’t Make People! The Divine Farce If the recent report from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica is true than it turns out that the first Pope to resign his post in almost six hundred years did so, at least in part, due to the existence of a faction of gay Vatican officials being blackmailed by outsiders of a ‘worldly influence’. This sordid affair apparently emerged from an investigation by a three Cardinal team that Pope Benedict XVI set up to look into the leaking of documents by the Pope’s own butler, Paolo Gabriele, who saw leaking the Pope’s personal correspondence to an investigative journalist as a noble act meant to spur reform in an organization dominated by infighting and corruption.  …Much of the largesse has been used in settling child abuse cases to the tune of more than $2 billion dollars since 1950. This week controversy swirls around Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, where the largest such settlement was reached, voting in the concave given his role in reshuffling accused priests. The same is true for Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland and Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium. Meanwhile in Britain Cardinal Keith O’Brien announced his resignation amid accusations of inappropriate contact with younger priests. This leaves Britain without a voting cardinal.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/28/the-divine-farce/

Brit Rapist Shield Bishop Ducks Away Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has been accused of committing “inappropriate acts” in his relations with three priests and one former priest, the newspaper The Observer reported Sunday. The accusations, which date back to the 1980s, have been forwarded to the Vatican.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/world/europe/cardinal-keith-obrien-accused-of-inappropriate-acts.html?ref=global-home

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Happy Birthday! 40 Years on:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=328WhjAXpcs

So Long