Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To him its use-value belongs during one working-day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working-day?

At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule [the outermost limit], the necessary limit of the working-day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour.

Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of “saving” and “abstinence.” Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development  (Marx–Capital  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm)

The City of Oakland has agreed to pay Scott Olsen $4.5 million to compensate him for devastating brain injuries he suffered when an Oakland Police officer shot him in the head with a “less lethal” munition on October 25, 2011, during a demonstration in support of Occupy Oakland. The lead filled “bean bag” round, fired from a 12 gauge shotgun, shattered Mr. Olsen’s skull and permanently destroyed part of his brain. The settlement in Olsen v. City of Oakland, 3:12-cv-06333, is pending final approval by the Oakland City Council. Mr. Olsen was represented by attorneys Jim Chanin, Rachel Lederman, and Julie Houk.  “After serving two tours of duty as a United States Marine in Iraq, Scott Olsen could never have imagined that he would be shot in the head by an Oakland Police officer while he was peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights in support of the budding “Occupy” economic justice movement,” said Rachel Lederman. “Scott was 24 years old when the shooting and ensuing brain damage robbed him of what had been a promising career as a computer network and systems administrator.”
Jim Chanin said, “There was no dispute that Scott Olsen never posed a threat and was protesting peacefully. He was shot because OPD commanders decided to simultaneously use chemical agents to disperse the demonstrators and have officers shoot impact munitions at anyone who might be throwing something — even though this violated their own written policies. The obviously foreseeable result was that the officers shot people who were desperately trying to flee the scene, including Mr. Olsen.”

Congratulations on the Publication of 

From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product.
Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.

And the publication of

Jack London, 100 Years on: “Revolution, a Short Essay” No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the revolution that overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of to-day. Instead of compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of life by conciliation and by removal of some of the harsher oppressions of the working-class, it antagonizes the working-class, drives the working-class into revolution. Every broken strike in recent years, every legally plundered trades-union treasury, every closed shop made into an open shop, has driven the members of the working-class directly hurt over to socialism by hundreds and thousands. Show a workingman that his union fails and he becomes a revolutionist. Break a strike with an injunction or bankrupt a union with a civil suit, and the workingmen hurt thereby listen to the siren song of the socialist and are lost forever to the political capitalist parties.
Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the capitalist class offers. It is true, it offers some few antiquated notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no longer efficacious. Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the Declaration of Independence and of the French Encyclopedists is scarcely apposite to-day. It does not appeal to the workingman who has had his head broken by a policeman’s club, his union treasury bankrupted by a court decision, or his job taken away from him by a labor-saving invention. Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious and constitutional to the workingman who has experienced a bull pen or been unconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this particular workingman’s hurt feelings soothed by reading in the newspapers that both the bull pen and the deportation were preeminently just, legal, and constitutional. “To hell, then, with the Constitution!” says he, and another revolutionist has been made -by the capitalist class.
In short, so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing to lengthen its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it. The capitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive. The revolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive. They offer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom — the things that sting awake the imagination of the people, touching their hearts with the fervor that arises out of the impulse toward good and which is essentially religious in its nature.  http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/Revolution/revolution.html

100 years ago in Colorado:

Mayor Rahm sends in the ISAT inspectors to Drummond elementary school  ! Central office inspectors really were interrogating kids without parent notification at Drummond elementary school about their teachers and the ISAT.  …”I got a call at 10:30 [AM] from a parent who said something crazy is going on,” says Jonathan Goldman, chair of the Drummond LSC. “Two CPS inspectors from the law department were pulling kids from the class one by one.”
Goldman says he doesn’t know how many kids were called in for questioning. But they were as young as third-graders. And they were being asked about the ISAT. “They were pulling in kids as young as eight years old,” says Goldman.
Explanation! The ISAT is a standardized test that CPS officials insists kids take even though they—the officials—are phasing it out.
Over the last few weeks, it’s been the subject of a minirevolt. Hundreds of parents have requested that their children opt out of taking it. And dozens of teachers—including several at Drummond—declared that they could not in good conscience give it.
In response, CPS officials threatened to punish teachers who don’t give the test, perhaps by stripping them of their state certification, thus making them virtually unemployable. Here—read all about it.  http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/03/21/mayor-rahm-sends-in-the-isat-inspectors-to-drummond-elementary

The Little Red Schoolhouse

US Gov’t Discovers Segregated Capitalist Schools have Racist Practices, Uses info to boost Racist RATT  Racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school, to have less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with less experience, according to comprehensive data released Friday by the data released Friday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil RightsDepartment of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
In the first analysis in nearly 15 years of information from all of the country’s 97,000 public schools, the Education Department found a pattern of inequality on a number of fronts, with race as the dividing factor.
Black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students. A quarter of high schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students do not offer any Algebra II courses, while a third of those schools do not have any chemistry classes. Black students are more than four times as likely as white students — and Latino students are twice as likely — to attend schools where one out of every five teachers does not meet all state teaching requirements.
“Here we are, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the data altogether still show a picture of gross inequity in educational opportunity,” said Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Civil Rights Project. In his budget request to Congress, President Obama has proposed a new phase of his administration’s Race to the Top competitive grant program, which would give $300 million in incentives to states and districts that put in place programs intended to close some of the educational gaps identified in the data.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/school-data-finds-pattern-of-inequality-along-racial-lines.html?ref=education

California’s High Stakes Test Shell Game With federal approval finally in hand to give a Common Core-aligned practice test this spring, the State Board of Education took the inevitable next step this week. It suspended the Academic Performance Index, the chief measure of schools’ academic growth or progress, for this year and next.
A reconstituted API will resume in 2015-16, incorporating results from the Smarter Balanced assessments, the new Common Core tests for English language arts and math that will be given to students in grades 3 to 8 and grade 11.
California is doing a Smarter Balanced field or practice test this year and formally launching the operational Smarter Balanced test in spring 2015. That test will provide the base API. Results from the 2016 test will provide the growth API, a basis for comparison and calculation of a school’s three-digit API number.
California is in the first stages of transforming its school and district accountability systems, including the creation of new standardized tests in nearly every subject. It is also rethinking the components of the API itself.
Last year, with the passage of AB 484, the state Legislature terminated the administration of nearly all California Standards Tests, the tests measuring students’ knowledge of the old state academic standards, and authorized the transition to new higher quality tests in all subjects, starting with Smarter Balanced assessments in English language arts and math. (Existing science tests in grades 5, 8, and 10, required by federal law, are continuing.) AB 484 also mandated a fresh start by explicitly banning the comparison of schools’ California Standards Tests scores with the Smarter Balanced scores. The state board’s vote to suspend the API officially creates a two-year hiatus.  http://edsource.org/2014/state-board-makes-it-official-no-api-scores-for-next-two-years/59387#.Uye52_ldWSo

During the 2009-10 school year, at least 20,000 students in California were arrested or ticketed – and more than 90 percent of whom were minority students. More than 30,000 California students were referred to law enforcement the same year.   www.politicopro.com/login/

The Atlantic Still Can’t figure out: Why have school? Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire—regardless of a parent’s race, class, or level of education.
Do you review your daughter’s homework every night? Robinson and Harris’s data, published in The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement With Children’s Education, show that this won’t help her score higher on standardized tests.  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/and-dont-help-your-kids-with-their-homework/358636/#comments

Bit Test Answers to Why have School? www.counterpunch.org/2010/09/07/why-have-school/

Michigan Expands its Bad Bank School System (already a dual failure)  For the second time in the past year, the Michigan House on Thursday narrowly approved legislation expanding a statewide district’s size and ability to take over persistently low academic achieving schools.
The legislation, long sought by Gov. Rick Snyder, would allow the Education Achievement Authority to expand to a maximum of 50 schools, including the 15 schools it operates in Detroit.
The House passed the measure 56-54 with several changes, sending the bill back to the Senate for a second time — 364 days after first passing the EAA legislation.
Supporters said the bill overhauls a 2009 school reform law, which they argue has been ineffective because of a lack of action by the State Board of Education and the Michigan Department of Education.
“If they had done their job, we would not be here,” said state Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills.
The vote represented a slim victory for Snyder and House Education Committee Chairwoman Lisa Posthumus Lyons, who is the bill’s chief sponsor.
“For too long, too many of Michigan’s kids have been left behind by consistently failing schools,” said Lyons, R-Alto.
The bill creates options other than the EAA for failing schools, in response to concerns among lawmakers and educators about the state recovery district’s infancy and ability to turn around poor-performing schools.
“We still have a lot of work to do, but the results so far are very promising for our children,” EAA Chancellor John Covington said in a statement.
Under the bill, schools could be taken over by the state’s school reform office if they remained in the bottom 5 percent of test scores for two years, instead of three years under the current law.
Last month, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan ended a 15-year contract that gave the EAA exclusive authority to run schools placed in the school reform district.
Democratic lawmakers said the bill is an attempt to prop up Snyder’s struggling EAA, which has been dogged by declining enrollment, financial problems and teacher turnover during its two years of running schools formerly operated by Detroit Public Schools.   From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140320/POLITICS02/303200131#ixzz2wZ3GrH7z

San Diego State campus latest to impose mandatory ‘success fee’   San Diego State University is the latest Cal State campus to impose a mandatory “student success fee,” a controversial new charge that critics have blasted as a sidestep around the system’s commitment to freeze tuition.
Students in the fall will pay $50, with the fee increasing over the next four years to $200 per semester. This is in addition to the current annual tuition of $5,472 and other campus-based enrollment fees that average more than $1,200.
The San Diego campus was among several — Fullerton, Dominguez Hills and Fresno — that were considering the success fees to help pay for basic educational services such as faculty hiring, increased class offerings, counseling and other needs.
Nine other campuses — including Los Angeles, Long Beach and Northridge — already charge such fees, which must be approved by Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White but not by the Board of Trustees.
San Diego State President Elliot Hirshman, in a blog post Friday, said the fee had been approved by White after a number of student forums and the recommendation of a campus advisory committee.  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-college-fees-20140317,0,1998288.story#ixzz2wS6wDUPx

Bill Gates calls on teachers to defend Common Core  Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who is spending part of his considerable fortune trying to improve U.S. public education, called on teachers Friday to help parents understand the new Common Core academic standards in an effort to beat back “false claims” lobbed by critics of the standards.
“There are many voices in this debate but none are more important or trusted than yours,” Gates told several thousand educators gathered in the District for the inaugural conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a nonprofit organization that runs a voluntary system to certify teachers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was a sponsor of the conference; it has awarded about $5 million to the board since 2010.  …Standardization is especially important to allow for innovation in the classroom, said Gates, who used an analogy of electrical outlets.
“If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive,” he said. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers, he said.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/bill-gates-calls-on-teachers-to-defend-common-core/2014/03/14/395b130a-aafa-11e3-98f6-8e3c562f9996_story.html

Portland State University pays 23 administrators $150K or more  Portland State University’s faculty are on a path to strike next month if they and the administration can’t agree on a new labor contract. Spending on administrators versus teaching faculty is one signficant point of contention.
So the fact the university pays at least 23 administrators more than $150,000, including eight paid more than $200,000 a year, rankles faculty union leaders.
Faculty leaders say the administration should direct more money to teaching faculty and less to administration and real estate. President Wim Wiewel and his administration have pledged to freeze pay for administrators making more than $100,000 but say they can only afford faculty raises of 2 percent a year.
Increased spending on administration — broadly defined to include PSU executive managers and all others not covered by the university’s two main unions — has increased to 23 percent of the university’s discretionary budget. Sizable raises for a subset of top administrators have helped drive that trend.  http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/03/portland_state_university_has.html

After 20 years of Takeovers and Union Sellouts, Detroit schools’ deficit jumps $39 million in 3 months Five years after it fell under state control, Detroit Public Schools is still struggling to fix its finances, with its deficit ballooning $38.8 million in the past three months, to a projected $120 million.
Since the state took control March 2, 2009, DPS has shrunk steadily: It lost 37,000 students, shut 100 school buildings and shed 5,000 employees. Annual budgets have been slashed by $500 million in five years. Deficits have risen and fallen; borrowing continues.
DPS partly attributes the rising debt to shortfalls of $10.7 million thisyear in property tax revenue and $21 million in Title I aid.
Federal Title I aid goes to schools with lots of low-income students. DPS had budgeted $130 million in Title I money for 2013-14 but now expects only $109 million. It originally expected $68.4 million in property tax revenue, but now says it will receive just $57.7 million because collection rates have fallen.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140320/SCHOOLS/303200042#ixzz2wXwLEP5r

What’s Not in the Common Core History? Capitalism (exploitation). Imperialism (war). Fascism (here). Racism(more). . According to both the draft and revised frameworks, “Free enterprise is a pillar of the United States economy and is based on the principle that individuals and businesses are free to make their own economic choices as they participate in these markets.”
But is “free enterprise the pillar of the United States economy”? I cannot find free enterprise described in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, or the other “founding” documents, or imbedded in the Constitution of the United States. They describe religious freedom, democratic government, rights of individuals, and the structure of government, but not free enterprise, the rights of corporations, or the influence of hedge funds.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/common-core-capitalism-an_b_5003377.html

A slap on the wrist for Another School Felon Sweetwater Union High School District board member Pearl Quiñones pleaded guilty in the South County political corruption case on Tuesday, in a deal that will remove her from office.
Quiñones was one of 15 people indicted in December 2012 by a grand jury in a wide ranging probe of pay-to-play between contractors and officials from three school districts.
Prosecutors alleged the administrators and board members were plied with fancy meals, expensive trips and gifts by construction executives in exchange for multimillion dollar contracts using voter-approved school bond funds.
Quiñones in particular received from contractors tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds, meals at Morton’s steakhouse, “Jersey Boys” play tickets and help pursuing paid state appointments.
“I support those who support me!” she wrote to one contractor in an email obtained by prosecutors.
Even as the corruption scandal played out, Quiñones was honored as grand marshal of the Sweetwater High School homecoming parade in October 2012 and was handily re-elected in November of that year. She faced 27 charges, including bribery, perjury, accepting gifts above limits prescribed by the state, and conspiracy. She pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy and one misdemeanor charge of accepting gifts above state limits.  The felony mandates her removal from office and allows her to avoid any time behind bars.
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said when the indictments were unsealed in January 2013 that the investigation — which stems from stories initially reported by U-T Watchdog in 2010 — was the worst corruption scandal in her 10-year tenure.
As the case has played out, no one has pleaded guilty to a bribery charge and none of the nine people who have pleaded so far have been saddled with a felony. All either pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanors or had the charge dropped from a potential felony to a misdemeanor during sentencing by Superior Court Judge Ana Espana.
Unlike others in the case whose felony guilty pleas were reduced to misdemeanors at sentencing, Quiñones will not have that option. She can ask the court after she has completed any probation term for reduction and elimination of the charges on her record. She declined a reporter’s request for comment.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/mar/18/quinones-pleads-out-south-bay-corruption/

Who is the Current Eops Director at Southwestern College?  Sweetwater school district trustee Arlie Ricasa will resign her seat from the school board after pleading guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge of accepting gifts above state limits.
Ricasa, 49, becomes the first elected official from Sweetwater to plead guilty and lose her seat in the South Bay schools corruption and gift-giving probe by the District Attorney.
She entered her plea in front of South Bay Superior Court Judge Ana Espana in a courtroom where more than a dozen of her supporters watched the brief proceeding.
Ricasa will not serve any jail time under the plea deal, which included the provision that she give up her seat by Thursday.
Her plea deal represents a significant reduction from the original charges against her, 29 counts including bribery, extortion, perjury, conflict of interest, wrongful influence and conspiracy.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Dec/18/arlie-ricasa-sweetwater-guilty/

Another Sweetwater CA Board Member forced to Quit While Teachers plan Strike  A Sweetwater Union High School District board member indicted in a public corruption case pleaded guilty Tuesday to a felony conspiracy charge and a misdemeanor count of accepting gifts above the state limit.
Pearl Quinones, 61, is scheduled to be sentenced April 28. As a result of her felony conviction, Quinones will have to give up her school board position, officials said. www.10news.com/news/sweetwater-district-board-member-pearl-quinones-pleads-guilty-in-corruption-case  A large majority of Sweetwater Union High School District teachers voted in favor of a strike, it was announced Friday.  www.10news.com/news/sweetwater-union-high-school-district-teachers-vote-in-favor-of-strike-031414

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

MARCH 19, 2003: Bush launches invasion of Iraq  We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. [ABC This Week, 3/30/03]
APRIL 1, 2003: Pfc. Jessica Lynch recovered by U.S. forces. What the Pentagon framed as a heroic rescue was later revealed to have been staged. [Guardian, 5/15/03] APRIL 9, 2003: Saddam Statue Toppled The Los Angeles Times later reported that the fall was “stage-managed” by the Army. [LAT, 7/3/04]
APRIL 11, 2003: Donald Rumsfeld: Stuff happens
Think what’s happened in our cities when we’ve had riots, and problems, and looting. Stuff happens! … Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here. [DoD briefing, 4/11/03]
APRIL 16, 2003: Bush signs $79 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq [DoD, 4/16/03]
APRIL 23, 2003: USAID Administrator Andrew Nastios Claims Rebuilding of Iraq Could Be Accomplished With $1.7 Billion
TED KOPPEL: I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US.
[…]KOPPEL: You’re saying the, the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion. No more than that?
NATSIOS: For the reconstruction. And then there’s 700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don’t competitively bid ’cause it’s charities that get that money.
KOPPEL: I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?
NATSIOS: That is our plan and that is our intention. And these figures, outlandish figures I’ve seen, I have to say, there’s a little bit of hoopla involved in this. [ABC, Nightline, 4/23/03]
MAY 1, 2003: Mission Accomplished
[M]y fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. [Bush, 5/1/03]   Nearly 4,500 U.S. servicemembers were killed in more than eight years of war and about 30,000 wounded. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died, troops and civilians, as the U.S. deposed Saddam’s regime and beat down an insurgency backed by al-Qaeda terrorists and sectarian revenge killings that threatened to destroy the country. [USA Today, 12/15/11]  thinkprogress.org/report/iraq-timeline/  (more thinkprogress.org/report/iraq-timeline/)

Who Broke Iraq??? Thirty-seven people were killed on Friday in a wave of bombings and attacks across Iraq, and eight soldiers were kidnapped, security officials said.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/world/middleeast/iraq-hit-by-wave-of-bombings-and-attacks.html?hp&_r=0

Puppet with a death wish Karzai: “Karzai: We Don’t Need U.S. Troops In Afghanistan”  Afghanistan’s outgoing president said the Afghan military is ready to handle security missions without the help of the United States and reiterated his opposition to a deal that would allow a residual American force to remain in the country
Afghan President Hamid Karzai signaled his defiance of the United States in his final address before the country’s parliament Saturday, claiming U.S. troops are not needed in Afghanistan as his military is ready to take over entirely.
Karzai also reiterated that he would not sign a security agreement with the United States that would allow American soldiers to stay in Afghanistan to help train and mentor Afghan troops and hunt down al-Qaeda, the Associated Press reports.  http://time.com/26055/karzai-we-dont-need-u-s-troops-in-afghanistan/

Reminder:

www.marxists.org/reference/archive/perlman-fredy/1984/nationalism.htm

Untimely Death Blows Afghan Election Wide Open By Ahmed Rashid. When US General Joseph Dunford, the senior coalition commander in Afghanistan, addressed the Senate Armed Services Committee on 12 March, he spoke largely to the four walls and empty seats in a room that once used to be packed with journalists, diplomats and academics analysing every twist of US policy in Afghanistan. The empty room illustrated how Afghanistan has disappeared from the top of the agenda of US and European policy makers and public and media consciousness. However, in a few weeks, Afghans go to the polls to elect a new president.

A fraud-free election and a peaceful political transition from President Hamid Karzai to a new president, accepted by the majority of the people, will ultimately matter far more for the future stability of Afghanistan and the region than speculation about the US troop withdrawal or the machinations of the Taliban. Yet critically, even after thousands of dead and $1 trillion (£602bn) spent, no-one has a clue as to the outcome of the elections or what will happen next. A series of recent events has left Afghans and the international community even more uncertain as to the outcome of the elections on 5 April and whether they will be free and fair.

The untimely death of Vice-President Marshal Mohammed Fahim has left a huge vacuum in Mr Karzai’s plans to get his favoured candidate – the former Pashtun national security adviser Zalmai Rassoul – elected. As the leader of the powerful Panjsheri Tajiks and the designated leader of the former Shura-e Nezar or what used to be called the Northern Alliance made up of all the non-Pashtun ethnic groups and warlords, Mr Fahim’s powers of wheeling and dealing with those groups were vital to Mr Karzai’s plans. Mr Karzai needs to appoint a successor quickly who has to be a Tajik, or the leading opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah – who commands the partial support of the Northern Alliance vote bank and is ahead in the polls – could become the undisputed leader of both the Tajiks and all non-Pashtuns. The half Tajik, half Pashtun Mr Abdullah viewed Mr Fahim as an incompetent and scheming rival – the two never got on – but Mr Abdullah now has everything to gain from the leadership vacuum that his death has created. ….   The hasty departure of Western troops, the major reduction of any electoral role for the United Nations by the international community, the unwillingness of any global body to carry out serious monitoring of the polls and the overall lack of international attention to the polls are likely to help create another constitutional crisis. Tragically for Afghans, the West is already washing its hands of the polls. If there is rigging, the losing candidates will unite against the government and Kabul. Many Afghans are not willing to tolerate another fraudulent election. The need for a free and fair election is paramount for the country and the region.        www.ahmedrashid.com/wp-content/archives/pakistan/articles/pdf/untimelydeathblowafghanelectionwideopen.pdf

Nine Killed in Taliban Attack on Kabul Hotel Nine people were killed when gunmen broke into a hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul and attacked diners on Thursday evening.
Two children and four foreign nationals were among the dead, the official said.
Special forces shot the gunmen. The Taliban said it was behind the assault.
The Afghan government has blamed the attack on Pakistan’s ceasefire with the Taliban, which it says has enabled the militants to focus on targeting Afghanistan, correspondents report.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26675253

Five Things About the Importance of Crimea to Russia (Forbes) 2. Why Russia Wants It
Crimea looms large in Russian history. It was the site of the Crimean War fought in the 1850’s against the French, British and Ottoman Empire . Although Russia lost, the bravery of its soldiers is still a source of Russian pride, much like The Alamo in Texas. Its resort city of Yalta hosted the famous talks between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill.
Yet Russia’s interests in Crimea go far beyond nostalgia. As important as the region is for Russian pride, as the map below shows it looms even larger in the geopolitics of the region. The naval base at Sevastopol, on Crimea’s southwestern tip, is Russia’s only warm water naval base and its primary means of extending force through the Mediterranean. It has been alleged that the port city has been used extensively to supply Bashar al-Assad throughout the current civil war in Syria. And while the lease agreement with Ukraine regarding the base remains valid until 2047, the majority of the Black Sea coastline is held by NATO allies except for Georgia on the east, which is actively seeking NATO membership, and Ukraine in the north.
Put simply, without a naval base in Crimea Russia is finished as a global military power.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/03/01/5-things-you-should-know-about-putins-incursion-into-crimea/

Crimeans vote overwhelmingly to join Russia  Crimeans have voted overwhelmingly to break away from Ukraine and join Russia in a referendum today that has alarmed the former Soviet republic and triggered the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.According to results of an exit poll announced first on Russian media, 93 per cent of voters backed a union with Moscow, 60 years after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Ukrainian, gifted Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on an apparent whim.The outcome of today’s vote was never in doubt, although the main organiser said the figure was premature and that preliminary results would be announced later.Thousands of people filled Lenin Square in the centre of Simferopol, Crimea’s capital, and waved Crimean and Russian flags in a festive celebration of what most locals wanted.   “We cannot be any worse off than we are now,” said Lyudmila Sergeyevna, a 64-year-old who was born in Simferopol and has lived on the peninsula all her life.  http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to-join-russia-1.1727351

above, Ukrainian Nazi Igor Mazur

US Fave Leader of Ukraine’s Right Sector rails against Putin, Russia’s military and Jewish oligarchs  This is not to say he supports Ukrainian oligarchs, who he says are all Jewish. The oligarchs care only for their trans-national business empires, for making money. They don’t really care for Ukraine, he says, so he doesn’t really care for them.
When asked if all Ukrainian oligarchs are actually Jewish, he shrugs. When asked if Yulia Tymoshenko, one time Ukrainian prime minister and an oil and gas oligarch is Jewish, he says only, “We don’t know for sure. We think she has some Jewish blood in her.”
But he estimates that among the thousands nationwide who support the Right Sector, a full 1 percent are Jewish.
Beyond this, he notes that the Right Sector, which has its roots among soccer hooligan clubs, has no expansionist designs. They care only for Ukraine. And even inside Ukraine, he disputes the apparent Putin claim that he is pulling any strings in the government.
“I wish,” he says. He lists a few members of Parliament and some military leaders whom he says care about what he thinks. “But I’m afraid our liberal partners are in charge in Kiev.”
Not that he thinks that’s a good thing. Too much time has been wasted in “peaceful negotiations.” He says Ukraine’s failure to confront the Russian military has cost his country. They should have responded with force when as many as 38,000 Russian troops spread out from Russian bases in Crimea and occupied the Black Sea peninsula that is part of Ukraine.  Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/15/221347/leader-of-ukraines-right-sector.html#emlnl=Most_Popular_This_Week#storylink=cpy

Bill Blum on the National Endowment for Democracy (Diane Ravitch’s home) and the Ukraine  The National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against states not in love with US foreign policy, is Washington’s foremost non-military tool for effecting regime change. The NED website lists 65 projects that it has supported financially in recent years in Ukraine. 5
The descriptions NED gives to the projects don’t reveal the fact that generally their programs impart the basic philosophy that working people and other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government intervention in the economy, and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy, reform, and growth; and the merits of foreign investment in their economy are emphasized.
The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” 6
NED, receives virtually all its financing from the US government ($5 billion in total since 1991 7
), but it likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO. Its long-time intervention in Ukraine is as supra-legal as the Russian military deployment there  http://williamblum.org/aer/read/126

America’s Jihadists Conduct Mass Executions Jihadist rebels have carried out mass executions of detainees in Syria, UN human rights investigators say.
The commission of inquiry’s latest report documents several incidents blamed on the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
Government forces are meanwhile accused of sharply increasing their use of indiscriminate weapons, such as barrel-bombs, against civilians.
The report was released before a debate at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In a separate development, the US state department told the Syrian government that it must immediately suspend its diplomatic and consular missions in the US and withdraw all personnel who were not US residents.
The newly appointed US special envoy, Daniel Rubenstein, said the order was a response to the Syrian embassy’s decision to suspend consular services, as well as the “atrocities the Assad regime has committed”.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26626363

US navy Seals take over oil tanker seized by Libyan rebels  American navy Seals have seized a North Korea-flagged tanker that had been loaded with crude oil at a rebel-held port in eastern Libya, the Pentagon said on Monday.The operation to take control of the Morning Glory took place a week after Libya failed to prevent the tanker from leaving the rebel-controlled eastern port of Es Sider loaded with an estimated $20m (£12m) cargo, in a crisis that has brought the country to the brink of civil war.             “The Morning Glory is carrying a cargo of oil owned by the Libyan government’s national oil company,” said John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. “The ship and its cargo were illicitly obtained from the Libyan port of Es Sider.”                  There were no casualties in the operation, which took place in international waters off the coast of Cyprus late on Sunday night. The raid was authorised by the US president, Barack Obama, after receiving a request for assistance from Tripoli. The Seals boarded the 21,000-tonne tanker using helicopters and fast boats from a warship, the USS Roosevelt.                          The Pentagon said a US navy crew was piloting the tanker towards an unnamed Libyan port where it will be handed to government control….. the US raid took place amid growing fears that Libya is headed towards breakup, with rebel forces in the eastern province of Cyrenaica declaring last week their intention to sell oil independently.
Rebel leaders have been blockading eastern oil ports since last summer, calling for autonomy for Cyrenaica and a greater share of Libya’s oil wealth.     http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/17/navy-seals-oil-tanker-morning-glory-libyan-rebels?CMP=ema_565

Guilty plea in Navy bribery scheme  A former executive with a Singapore-based defense contract firm pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court Tuesday to conspiracy to commit bribery in a worldwide Navy payoff scandal.
Alex Wisidagama, ex-general manager of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, admitted his role in bribing Navy officials and overbilling the Navy by some $20 million for services provided at Southeast Asian ports.
He entered his plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jan Adler, and could face up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced on June 13.
Wisidagama, 40, was the company’s general manager for global government contracts.
Glenn Defense is owned by his cousin, Malaysian businessman “Fat” Leonard Francis. The company has been supplying the Navy ships with port services, such as fuel, trash removal and tugboats, for 25 years.
Both men were arrested in San Diego last fall and have remained in custody.
Francis was indicted on charges of plying two Navy commanders and a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent with cash, prostitutes and luxury travel in exchange for inside information on contracts and, later, on the fraud investigation.   federal complaint filed in October against Wisidagama alleged that starting in 2011, he conspired with others in the company to submit high bids from non-existent competitors so Glenn Defense would win the multimillion dollar port service contracts.
In a one-year span, the company submitted 177 false competitive bids just for services in Phuket, Thailand, the complaint stated. The company also allegedly overcharged the Navy by $3 million for five fuel purchases.
This is the second guilty plea in the case. The NCIS supervisory agent, John Beliveau, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes to provide Francis with information about the case.
Navy Cmdr. Jose Luis Sanchez and Cmdr. Michael Misiewicz face the same charge of accepting bribes. They have pleaded not guilty.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/mar/18/navy-bribery-wisidagama-leonard-glenn/

Blubbering General Wants to Keep his Dough  Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair broke down in tears Wednesday at his sentencing hearing, asking the judge to allow him to retire at a reduced rank instead of dismissing him from the Army, which would deprive him of military benefits and “punish” his family for his adulterous affair with an captain.
“I have squandered a fortune of life’s blessings, blessings of family, work and friendship,” the one-star general said in court. “I have put myself and [the] Army in this position with my selfish, self-destructive and hurtful acts.”
He said he “failed as a leader” and apologized to his accuser and the two officers he pressured to send him nude photos of themselves.
[Updated 12:35 p.m. PDT March 19: Prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss Sinclair, which would eliminate the military benefits he earned over his 27-year career. Army Maj. Rebecca DiMuro said Sinclair used his reputation as an inspirational commander to take advantage of young, impressionable female officers.
“The general’s actions hurt not only him, they hurt all officers in command,” DiMuro said.]
www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-general-sinclair-sex-trial-sentencing-20140319,0,28452.story#ixzz2wRRMp72l

Blubbering Works! (plus military cronyism, corruption, chauvinism, and a big wink from the boys on the court, etc)  An Army general accused of sexually assaulting a subordinate, was sentenced today by a military judge. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair was fined $20,000 and received a letter of reprimand. He could have received up to 25 years in jail for the initial charges. The case fell apart because of credibility problems with the accuser; a plea deal dropped the more serious charges. Now, the sentence has infuriated membesr of Congress and victims advocates. NPR’s Tom Bowman has the latest. www.npr.org/2014/03/20/291976979/following-plea-deal-generals-misconduct-gets-fine-and-reprimand

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Indian arms imports almost triple China, Pakistan: study    India remains the biggest buyer of arms in the world, importing nearly three times as many weapons as its nearest competitors China and Pakistan over the last five years, a Swedish think tank said.
The total volume of arms sales was up 14 percent in 2009-13 compared to the previous five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Indian imports of major weapons rose by 111 percent in the last five years compared to 2004–08. Its share of total global arms imports increased from 7 to 14 percent, SIPRI said.
India replaced China as the world’s biggest arms buyer in 2010. With its domestic defence industry struggling to manufacture high-tech arms, India is in the midst of a defence spending binge as it struggles to keep up with better-equipped Chinese forces and a range of military challenges in its volatile neighbourhood.

More than 100 immigrants rescued from Texas ‘stash’ house  More than 100 suspected illegal immigrants have been rescued from a Texas “stash” house where smugglers had allegedly held them pending payment.
On Wednesday police found people ranging in age from five to 47 after hearing a report from a distressed relative of missing migrants.
Conditions in the house were squalid, and the people were stripped of clothes and shoes to hinder their escape.
The former captives face deportation at the conclusion of the police inquiry.
“The smell and conditions were just awful,” Houston Police Department spokesman John Cannon told the Houston Chronicle.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26669962

Billions from Drug Cartels Flow into US Banks The Sinaloa Cartel, headquartered on Mexico’s northern Pacific Coast, is constantly exploring new ways to launder its gargantuan profits. The State Department reports that Mexican trafficking organizations earn between $19 and $29 billion every year from selling marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines on the streets of American cities.
And Sinaloa is reportedly the richest, most powerful of them all, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The capture last month of the Mexican druglord Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman has cast a spotlight on the smuggling empire he built.
One key to the Sinaloa Cartel’s success has been to use the global banking system to launder all this cash.
“It’s very important for them to get that money into the banking system and do so with as little scrutiny as possible,” says Jim Hayes, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for the New York office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. He was lead agent in the 2012 case that revealed how Sinaloa money men used HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, as their private vault.
ICE says in 2007 and 2008, the Sinaloa Cartel and a Colombian cartel wire-transferred $881 million in illegal drug proceeds into U.S. accounts.
According to a subsequent investigation by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, cartel operatives would sometimes deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in a single day using boxes designed to fit the exact dimensions of the teller’s window at HSBC branches in Mexico.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/03/20/291934724/awash-in-cash-drug-cartels-rely-on-big-banks-to-launder-profits

Detroit plans mass water shutoffs over $260M in delinquent bills (be creative Detroiters)
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has a message for Detroit residents and companies more than 60 days late on their water bills: We’re coming for you.
With more than half of the city’s customers behind on payments, the department is gearing up for an aggressive campaign to shut off service to 1,500-3,000 delinquent accounts weekly, said Darryl Latimer, the department’s deputy director.
Including businesses, schools and commercial buildings, there are 323,900 Detroit water and sewerage accounts; 164,938 were overdue for a total of $175 million as of March 6. Residential accounts total 296,115; 154,229 were delinquent for a total of $91.7 million.
The department halts cutoffs through the winter because of complications associated with freezing temperatures, such as damaged pipes. But this spring, a new contractor has been hired to target those who are more than two months behind or who owe more than $150 — twice the average monthly bill of $75.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140321/METRO01/303210035#ixzz2wdCDC7mA

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Obamagogue Most Secretive Prezzie Ever The administration cited national security concerns a record 8,496 times as an excuse for withholding information from the public, a 57% increase from the year before
Barack Obama came to office promising a new era of transparency in government. What he has delivered is something closer to the opposite, a new analysis from the Associated Press makes plain: the most secretive presidency in American history. And it’s worse now than when his presidency began.
According to the Associated Press analysis, which covers 99 federal agencies over six years, the Obama administration censored more documents and delayed or denied access to more government files than ever before. In 2013, the administration cited national security concerns a record 8,496 times as an excuse for withholding information from the public. That’s a 57% increase over the year before  and more than double the number in Obama’s first year in office.
At some agencies—like the National Security Agency, which has seen a surge in requests amid the controversy stemming from revelations about mass domestic surveillance—requests for information were almost uniformly denied or heavily censored last year. The NSA blacked out or refused to release records in 98 percent of requests in 2013.  http://time.com/27443/study-obama-administration-more-secretive-than-ever/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fswampland+%28TIME%3A+Swampland%29

The White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years  On May 10, 2013, John Brennan presented CIA’s response to the Senate Intelligence Committee Torture Report to the President. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.
The fight between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee over the Committee’s Torture Report – which Dan Froomkin covered here – has now zeroed in on the White House.
Did the White House order the CIA to withdraw 920 documents from a server made available to Committee staffers, as Senator Dianne Feinstein says the agency claimed in 2010? Were those documents – perhaps thousands of them – pulled in deference to a White House claim of executive privilege, as Senator Mark Udall and then CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston suggested last fall? And is the White House continuing to withhold 9,000 pages of documents without invoking privilege, as McClatchy reported yesterday?
We can be sure about one thing: The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret.
Some time before October 29, 2009, then National Security Advisor Jim Jones filed an ex parte classified declaration with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in response to a FOIA request by the ACLU seeking documents related to the torture program. In it, Jones argued that the CIA should not be forced to disclose the “source of the CIA’s authority,” as referenced in the title of a document providing “Guidelines for Interrogations” and signed by then CIA Director George Tenet. That document was cited in two Justice Department memos at issue in the FOIA. Jones claimed that “source of authority” constituted an intelligence method that needed to be protected.   firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/13/president-obama-covering-presidencys-role-torture-4-years/

Mexico–Journalists’ main bully: The gov’t  The international press freedom organization Article 19 presented its 2013 report on press freedom in Mexico on Tuesday, which reported that, while the number of journalist killed in the country fell in 2013, cases of non-fatal violence against journalists increased by almost 60 percent — making it the most dangerous year for journalists in Mexican history.
The five states featuring the highest number of aggressions against journalists in 2013 were Mexico City with 47, Veracruz with 43, Chiapas with 31, Tlaxcala with 25 and Oaxaca with 23.
All five of these states saw a significant increase in the number of aggressions against journalists in 2013 — during the entire period between 2007 and 2012, there were 26 violent incidents targeting journalists in Mexico City, 19 in Veracruz, 18 in Oaxaca and six in Chiapas — but the most dramatic spike was seen in Tlaxcala, were there were only two violent incidents targeting journalists between 2007 and 2012, one of the lowest rates in Mexico.
According to the report, six out of every 10 aggressions against journalists are committed by government employees. Some 99 percent of these aggressions have gone unpunished.  http://www.thenews.com.mx/index.php/nation-articulos/20014-journalists’-main-bully-the-gov’t

Solidarity for Never

After Doing Nothing When Every Detroit Fed of Teachers member was fired in 2013, who does the dullard President (who sued to keep forced dues) blame? The members. The greatest challenge today, however, is overcoming the defeatist, apathetic demeanor of our members. Too many
have simply given up. Too many have asked what’s the use? Too many have simply accepted that the legislature, the governor, and the EM have all the power so why fight it? http://dft231.mi.aft.org/files/march2014.pdf

Illinois Electoral Shell Game: IEA Spends Millions backing lesser evil Republican, and loses  Statement on the results of the March 18, 2014 primary election from IEA President Cinda Klickna
It is disappointing, but not surprising, that a candidate who outspent his opposition so overwhelmingly was able to win a four-way race.
Despite the outcome, we have no regrets about our support for Kirk Dillard. Senator Dillard was and is a longtime friend of IEA. He was the only electable candidate in the Republican race for governor to support public education and the rights of working people.
IEA is an advocacy organization. Our commitment to advocacy required that we do all we could to ensure that the gubernatorial nominees for both political parties support public education and the rights of workers.  http://www.ieanea.org/2014/03/18/iea-presidents-statement-on-the-march-18-primary-election-results/

Spy versus Spy

Leaked File Details U.S. Phone Monitoring Abroad  (empire’s today NYTimes won’t name the countries) The National Security Agency is recording all telephone calls and their routing data in one foreign country and retaining that information for a month so that it can be analyzed later, according to a report based on a top secret intelligence document.
Similar but less comprehensive efforts exist in at least four other foreign countries, according to a classified 2013 document provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former agency contractor.
The collection effort was first disclosed on Tuesday by The Washington Post, which cited a classified summary of the program, code-named Mystic. The Post account said that the summary, also leaked by Mr. Snowden, noted that “every single” phone call in one foreign country was saved for 30 days before being purged.
With each new disclosure of N.S.A. spying programs and their deep reach into communications around the globe, the data known to be retained by the agency grows. Still, it is not surprising that spy agencies can now record every call in a country, given the declining costs of data storage, said John Villasenor, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is also affiliated with the Brookings Institution.
The 2013 N.S.A. document referring to a potential expansion of the program briefly describes it. “Capabilities will offer near-real time, complete access” to that country’s phone network, the document says, “and provide for retrospective tasking and near real-time access/delivery of metadata as required.”
The Mystic program already records phone calls in at least four other foreign countries, the document says. It says that the program records only “targeted communications” in those countries. At the request of the office of the director of national intelligence, The New York Times withheld their names because of national security concerns.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/us/leaked-file-details-us-phone-monitoring-abroad.html?hp&_r=0

N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers  American officials have long considered Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the United States for fear that the company would create “back doors” in its equipment that could allow the Chinese military or Beijing-backed hackers to steal corporate and government secrets.
But even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors — directly into Huawei’s networks.
The agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart, according to N.S.A. documents provided by the former contractor Edward J. Snowden. It obtained information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches that Huawei boasts connect a third of the world’s population, and monitored communications of the company’s top executives.   One of the goals of the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was to find any links between Huawai and the People’s Liberation Army, one 2010 document made clear. But the plans went further: to exploit Huawai’s technology so that when the company sold equipment to other countries — including both allies and nations that avoid buying American products — the N.S.A. could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if ordered by the president, offensive cyberoperations.           www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?hp

CIA suspends chief of Iran operations over workplace issues
The CIA’s chief of Iran operations was placed on paid administrative leave and sent home from agency headquarters after an internal investigation found he had created an abusive and hostile work environment that put a crucial division in disarray, according to current and former officials.
Officers and analysts in the Iran operations division, which coordinates spying on Iran and its nuclear program, were informed at a meeting last week at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., of the decision to suspend Jonathan Bank, a veteran officer and member of the senior intelligence service.
Three former officials said the Iran operations division was in open rebellion to Bank’s management style, with several key employees demanding transfers.
“Iran is one of most important targets, and the place was not functioning,” one of the former officials said.
In 2010, Bank was pulled out as CIA station chief in Islamabad after newspapers in Pakistan, India, England and elsewhere published his name in connection with a court case, and the agency said he had received death threats. U.S. officials believe Pakistan’s intelligence service leaked the name in a dispute over CIA drone attacks in the country’s tribal belt.
Bank, now 46, previously served at CIA stations in the Balkans, Moscow and Baghdad, former agency officials said. He also was a top assistant to James Pavitt, who from 1999 to 2004 headed the CIA’s operations arm, now known as the National Clandestine Service.
The former CIA officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. Bank is technically undercover, but his name has been public since the 2010 incident. He did not respond to email messages requesting comment.
Dean Boyd, the agency’s chief spokesman, said he could not comment on a personnel issue.
“As a general matter, the CIA expects managers at all levels to demonstrate leadership skills and foster an environment that helps their employees perform at the highest levels to achieve agency objectives,” Boyd said. “Whenever that doesn’t happen, we examine the situation carefully and take appropriate action.”
Several former CIA officials said they could not remember a senior manager being suspended over workplace issues, but management problems are a recurring challenge at the agency.    According to a Los Angeles Times report in July, an internal CIA workplace survey in 2009 found that those who left the spy agency frequently cited bad management as a factor, particularly in the clandestine service. In interviews, former officers said they felt poor managers suffered no consequences.
www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-cia-workplace-20140317,0,2858175.story#ixzz2wH3NXvu0

US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency’s top lawyer insists  The senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated unequivocally on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data, contradicting months of angry denials from the firms.
Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies – both for the internet collection program known as Prism and for the so-called “upstream” collection of communications moving across the internet.
Asked during a Wednesday hearing of the US government’s institutional privacy watchdog if collection under the law, known as Section 702 or the Fisa Amendments Act, occurred with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained,” De replied: “Yes.”
When the Guardian and the Washington Post broke the Prism story in June, thanks to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, nearly all the companies listed as participating in the program – Yahoo, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL – claimed they did not know about a surveillance practice described as giving NSA vast access to their customers’ data. Some, like Apple, said they had “never heard” the term Prism.
De explained: “Prism was an internal government term that as the result of leaks became the public term,” De said. “Collection under this program was a compulsory legal process, that any recipient company would receive.”
After the hearing, De said that the same knowledge, and associated legal processes, also apply when the NSA harvests communications data not from companies directly but in transit across the internet, under Section 702 authority.
The disclosure of Prism resulted in a cataclysm in technology circles, with tech giants launching extensive PR campaigns to reassure their customers of data security and successfully pressing the Obama administration to allow them greater leeway to disclose the volume and type of data requests served to them by the government.  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants-knew-nsa-data-collection-rajesh-de

The Magical Mystery Tour

By Bad Bishop William Montgomery Brown:

The author of Teachings of Marx for Girls and Boys, William Montgomery Brown (1855 – 1937) or as he was also known, “Bad Bishop Brown,” was an Anglican clergyman from Ohio is remembered as the first Anglican Bishop to be tried for heresy since the Reformation. Additionally Brown, who evolved in his lifetime from being a missionary and the Bishop of Arkansas to a committed Marxist, was the first member of the clergy in America to be deposed (of any denomination) for being a heretic.  (poster here dangerousminds.net/comments/teachings_of_marx_for_girls_and_boys)

How Degenerate is Mandella’s ANC? “Only God can cure cancer “….and more  GOD was again a topic of conversation for the African National Congress (ANC) last week, this time in Parliament. He seems to be cropping up everywhere the party speaks these days.His latest appearance follows Education Minister Angie Motshekga saying: “We believe nothing can defeat prayer.”Confirmation followed that the “we” in question was indeed the ANC when Mcebisi Skwatsha declared: “God is with the ANC and that is why we will win the 2014 general elections.”Well, except for the Western Cape. There God is obviously on the Democratic Alliance’s side. He seems undecided on where he stands politically in Gauteng. But God, it turns out, is also a doctor, with a keen interest in cancer and its treatment.

Last week, the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Mario Oriani-Ambrosini returned to Parliament after some months off for cancer treatment. The entire House applauded as he rose to make his first member’s statement since his return.

He said that “millions of people are going through the hell of being cancer patients” and that they “suffer and die, possibly unnecessarily, because in this country and in other countries the government has not come to the table to fund research and expedite approval procedures even where there is no profit to be made”.

He called on Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to “establish in this country a centre that can bring together different treatments of cancer”.

It was the minister’s response, however, that left many baffled and bemused, for Motsoaledi has done much to establish himself as a no-nonsense straight shooter who cares more about excellence and outcomes than does the average member of Cabinet. On this particular subject, however, he was, shall we say, off with the fairies?

Here, according to Hansard, is the essence of his reply: “I wish to emphasise that in the final analysis, human life is in the hands of God; only He has the final say and only He can declare what works and what doesn’t. The rest of us are just trying our best. But beat by beat I believe He reveals to us, as human beings, the techniques of what works and what doesn’t.

“I want to believe these techniques are revealed to various people among us. These people come in various styles and shapes: some will use prayer; others will use ordinary water; some will use chemicals and roots; and others will use bones and all other things human beings use in their desperation to find answers.  http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/10/29/god-will-cure-cancer-when-hes-good-and-ready

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=65o1gCO51G4

 

 

So Long

Lawrence E. Walsh, Prosecutor in Iran-Contra Scandal    In the end he won convictions, but many were overturned, and six defendants were pardoned by Mr. Reagan’s successor, George Bush, who was vice president during the events of Iran-contra. Mr. Walsh belatedly tried to confront his critics. Abandoning his earlier reserve, he called many Reagan administration officials brazenly deceptive. In a 1997 memoir, “Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up,” he concluded that Mr. Reagan must have known of the basic details of the Iran-contra operation and that the president’s advisers had tried to shield him by concealing records and personal notes. That shield — a firewall, as Mr. Walsh described it — was only reinforced by Mr. Bush’s pardons.
“What set Iran-contra apart from previous political scandals,” he wrote, “was that a cover-up engineered in the White House of one president and completed by his successor prevented the rule of law being applied to perpetrators of criminal activity of constitutional dimension.”  …In his book, Mr. Walsh said that he had found a model for his time on the Iran-contra case in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” in which a fisherman labors long and hard to catch a marlin. When he does, he lashes it to the side of his skiff, only to have sharks strip the flesh before he gets to shore.
“As the independent counsel, I sometimes felt like the old man,” he wrote. “More often I felt like the marlin.”

Scott Asheton, the original drummer and a founder of the influential rock band the Stooges, died on Saturday in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 64.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU