Rouge Forum Dispatch: The Opposite of Love is not Hate, it’s…..
Indifference
We Say Fight Back!
New Jersey Students Seize School Bosses’ Office As their sit-in at the office of their schools superintendent went into its third day, student activists in Newark, N.J. are firm in their demands that the superintendent should either speak with them about a controversial new program or resign.
The eight protesters, members of the Newark Student Union (NSU), say they will not leave until Superintendent Cami Anderson meets with them to discuss her One Newark program, which was implemented in September 2014, two and a half years after she was appointed by the state to run Newark’s struggling schools.
One Newark requires the city’s students, from kindergarten through high school, to reapply for acceptance at 100 different Newark schools, including some charter schools and non-traditional public schools. An algorithm decides which schools the students will attend.
Anderson says that the program will increase schooling options for students. The student activists say that the program forces them to attend schools in inconvenient locations and devalues the rights of black and Latino classmates.
The protestors say they will remain in the offices until Anderson agrees to meet with them and attend a meeting of the Newark Public Schools Advisory Board, a parent group. Short of that, they’d like to see her resign. america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/19/new-jersey-students-refuse-to-end-sit-in-protest-at-superintendents-office.html?utm_content=main&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Congratulations on the publication of
and the second edition of
This urgently needed collection exposes the neoliberal architecture of the Obama administration’s initiatives within and beyond education. These careful essays describe the economic, political, and philosophical formations underlying this administration’s market-driven approaches to teaching and learning, as well as revealing the ideological strategies through which elites sell their one-sided policies to the public. Carr and Porfilio have compiled an engaging and indispensable resource for researchers, educators, and activists interested in understanding and confronting the contemporary corporatization and instrumentalization of education. Noah De Lissovoy, Faculty of Education, University of Texas at Austin
Top Research Fellows are Protesting Across India When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru on Tuesday he met enthusiastic students and inspected research projects. He did not see the hundreds of research fellows who were wearing black arm bands in protest and in solidarity with thousands of their peers across the country. Their cause was to bring to the government’s notice the delay in a promised salary hike. The IISc protesters had considerately postponed expressing their outrage till after Modi left the venue.
Research students across India have been carrying out a concerted social media campaign for more than a year now to get their fellowship amounts increased. The Department of Science and Technology, the University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Human Resources Development are the three main agencies that grant fellowships to scholars across the country. In October last year, the DST finalised an increase in stipends that ranged from 55% for Junior Research Fellows from Rs 16,000 to Rs 25,000 to 66% for research associates from Rs 24,000 to Rs 40,000. In contrast, the starting salary for a graduate joining a mid- to large-size technology company in a city like Bengaluru will be between Rs 25,000 and Rs 40,0000 with an annual increment of 15% in a normal year. The DST memo was followed by a UGC announcement in December of a 55% hike in 15 fellowship schemes.
While the announcements brought some relief to researchers they were disappointed that the DST and UGC would implement these hikes from October and December respectively instead of from the start of the financial year – April 2014. Most labs haven’t started getting the increased payments due to them from either agency. scroll.in/article/707789/Why-top-research-fellows-are-protesting-across-India-%28and-not-getting-much-attention%29
Steelworkers Still Striking Oil and Flying American Flags The United Steelworkers, which represents 30,000 U.S. oil workers, called on four more plants to join the biggest strike since 1980 as talks dragged on with Royal Dutch Shell Plc, negotiating a labor contract for oil companies.
The USW, with members at more than 200 refineries, fuel terminals, pipelines and chemical plants across the U.S., asked workers late Friday at Motiva Enterprises LLC’s Port Arthur refinery in Texas, the nation’s largest, to join a nationwide walkout on Saturday, and issued notices for three other plants to go on strike in 24 hours.
This brings the work stoppage — which began on Feb. 1 at nine sites from California to Texas and expanded to two BP Plc refineries in the Midwest a week later — to 12 refineries and 3 other facilities. The union has rejected seven contract offers from Shell, which is representing companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.
An agreement would end a strike at U.S. plants that account for almost 20 percent of the country’s refining capacity. It’s the first national walkout of U.S. oil workers since 1980, when a work stoppage lasted three months. The USW represents workers at plants that together account for 64 percent of U.S. fuel output.
“The industry’s refusal to meaningfully address safety issues through good faith bargaining gave us no other option but to expand our work stoppage,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard in a statement late Friday. There are no talks scheduled for Saturday, according to the USW. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-20/u-s-oil-workers-to-reject-7th-contract-offer-amid-strike
Pasco Protests Grow over killer coppers The rallying cry in Ferguson was “Hands up, don’t shoot!” In New York, it was “I can’t breathe!” In Pasco these days, the protest signs say things like, “It was just a rock!!!”
In a case with unmistakable echoes of Ferguson, Mo., and New York, demonstrators have gathered every day during the past week in front of City Hall to demand answers in the deadly police shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant and former orchard worker who the authorities say was throwing rocks at officers.
The Feb. 10 killing — captured on cellphone video by an onlooker — was the fourth by law enforcement officers in Pasco in less than a year. It has prompted calls for a federal investigation and disrupted this fast-growing agricultural center of 68,000, where more than half the residents are Hispanic but few are members of the police force or the power structure. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/killing-by-police-in-a-washington-town-stirs-protests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
The Little Red Schoolhouse
New Seuss on the way……
CIA’s Randi Weingarten, also of AFT, easily steps in front of Opt Out “Movement”
To the Editor:
Chad Aldeman says he wants to keep the status quo — high-stakes annual testing in grades three to eight and once in high school.
In January, the American Federation of Teachers and the Center for American Progress issued a set of principles for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. At its core was a commitment to equity, and a robust accountability system that uses multiple measures and counts standardized tests once each in elementary, middle and high school.
Such a system would limit the high-stakes testing that is taking the joy out of learning and the innovation out of teaching, and frankly did not accomplish the intended purpose — to ensure that every child would be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
We believe that annual testing has a role: to provide information and diagnostics on student progress, but not as a basis for imposing high-stakes, punitive consequences. High-stakes testing shouldn’t drive federal policy; the needs of our children should. That’s why our plan takes the focus off high-stakes tests and returns the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to its original goal — equity.
Half of public school students live in poverty. More than 30 states fund public education below pre-recession levels. We need to level the playing field and ensure that all kids have equal access to things like computers, smaller class sizes, nurses and counselors — even when their communities can’t afford them.
RANDI WEINGARTEN President American Federation of Teachers Washington www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opinion/how-useful-are-standardized-tests.html?_r=0
The Reactionaries Who Easily Step inside the liberal anti-common core (silent on wars and capital) “movement” Among the most vocal opponents to the new standards are conservative, Tea Party Republicans, who are ideologically opposed to any expansion of the federal government—something they inaccurately equate to the Common Core initiative. And these politically motivated critics, who have rallied against a national system of learning standards for decades, have their own conspiracy theories about the Common Core, too. These include claims that the the standards will turn students gay, that it preaches an anti-American agenda, and that Muslim Brotherhood and communists shaped the content. …
Now, amid all the backlash, an unlikely subculture appears to be emerging in the anti-Common Core world: suburban parents. Even U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has taken note of the trend, who last November told a group of superintendents that “white suburban moms” were resisting the implementation of the Common Core. His theory? “All of a sudden … their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
I happen to live in a middle-class suburb outside of New York City—one that could easily be considered the capital of “white suburban moms.” And I’m realizing Duncan was on to something: Their wrath is real, and it’s based largely on misperception and widespread fearmongering perpetuated by the Tea Party skeptics and anxious state policymakers.
My friends and neighbors post links almost daily on Facebook to articles claiming the Common Core “curriculum,” as they perceive it, is destroying American youth. It has single-handedly taken recess away from kids, they argue. The upcoming tests demoralize kids and teachers. The new curricula and tests are an assault on an otherwise idyllic world where kids used to learn naturally—like those lucky children in Finland. Instead of actually instilling knowledge in students, teachers drill irrelevant facts into kids’ heads in order to game the testing results. And since the new exams will be taken on computers, hackers might even reveal the test results…
Teachers have fostered parental protests, too. Teachers’ unions were initially very supportive of the Common Core, and educators helped shape its goals. However, support from educators began to wane in the past year, when state legislatures started to create policies tying test scores to their pay, largely through new teacher-evaluation systems. The new stipulations have caused unrest among teachers across the country, including those in my suburban New Jersey school district, adding a new layer of politics to the Common Core. www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/suburbia-and-its-common-core-conspiracy-theories/385424/#disqus_thread
The Pearson Wing of Capitalists’ Education “The line between profit and profiteering can seem pretty fuzzy,” said Cathy Davidson, director of the Futures Initiative and a professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. “If you have an exclusive contract with a massive educational system, is that really just earning a profit, or are you profiting at the public’s expense?” Davidson said. “That’s the line many people, including myself, find very troubling.”
In an interview last spring, Pearson CEO John Fallon defended the company’s profits as appropriate, in part, because they finance investments to improve education around the world.
“We are a profit-making enterprise,” Fallon said. “We don’t exist unless we have the profits to sustain a billion dollars or more in research. But profits do not define us.”
Profit margins for Pearson’s work with public institutions are hard to determine. Where they can be tracked, they’re sizable.
A 2012 contract with California State University projected that Pearson would earn $12 million over five years for marketing, enrollment and student support services — a healthy markup considering the company estimated it would spend $5.5 million to provide those services. The deal fell apart two years later, in part, because of the university’s concern over costs.
And the business plan for Pearson’s 2010 joint marketing venture with an online public school in Florida projected gross profit margins would hit 85 percent within a few years. That deal, too, fell apart as sales didn’t come close to meeting expectations.
One of Pearson’s most successful deals to date puts the company in charge of marketing and supporting online degree programs for Arizona State University in exchange for more than half of student tuition revenue. Read more: www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026_Page2.html#ixzz3SQLxzXxq
West Virginia Criminalizes Teaching Social Problems First Attention West Virginia civics teachers.
Legislation was introduced this week in the West Virginia House of Delegates (HB 2107) that would prohibit the teaching of “social problems, economics, foreign affairs, the United Nations, world government, socialism or communism until basic courses in American state and local geography and history are completed.”
And if the teacher teaches “social problems” first?
He or she will be charged with a misdemeanor crime and fined.
Oklahoma Bans AP History An Oklahoma legislative committee overwhelmingly voted to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History class, persuaded by the argument that it only teaches students “what is bad about America.” Other lawmakers are seeking a court ruling that would effectively prohibit the teaching of all AP courses in public schools.
Oklahoma Rep. Dan Fisher (R) has introduced “emergency” legislation “prohibiting the expenditure of funds on the Advanced Placement United States History course.” Fisher is part of a group called the “Black Robe Regiment” which argues “the church and God himself has been under assault, marginalized, and diminished by the progressives and secularists.” The group attacks the “false wall of separation of church and state.” The Black Robe Regiment claims that a “growing tide of special interest groups indoctrinating our youth at the exclusion of the Christian perspective.”
Fisher said the Advanced Placement history class fails to teach “American exceptionalism.” The bill passed the Oklahoma House Education committee on Monday on a vote of 11-4. You can read the actual course description for the course here. … Efforts by conservative school board members in Colorado to make the Advanced Placement U.S. History course “more patriotic,” prompted a walk-out by students. Under the changes proposed in Colorado “students would only be taught lessons depicting American heritage in a positive light, and effectively ban any material that could lead to dissent.” In South Carolina conservatives asked the College Board to exclude any material with an “ideological bias,” including evolution. Similar efforts are underway in Georgia and North Carolina. thinkprogress.org/education/2015/02/17/3623683/oklahoma-lawmakers-vote-overwhleming-ban-advanced-placement-history-class/
The San Diego School Board, Pleasantly Nestled in the US’ Most Militarized County, seeks a decrease in high stakes exams NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED,that the Board of Education of the San Diego Unified School District calls on the U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the “No Child Left Behind Act,”eliminate the federally mandated, annual testing requirement in each of Grades 3 through 9, and at least once in Grades 9 through 12;promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability;and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators; and www.boarddocs.com/ca/sandi/Board.nsf/files/9TLNRB609850/$file/Revised%20Resolution%20ESEA%20Testing%202-10-15.pdf
Newest in the Detroit School Shell Game in Search of False Hope: Autonomous Schools The leader of the Education Achievement Authority unveiled a plan Tuesday to restructure all 15 direct-run and charter schools to operate autonomously in the state-run recovery district.
The plan proposed by Chancellor Veronica Conforme includes measures to streamline the EAA’s operations, provide school leaders with leadership training, hold schools and their leaders accountable for performance and improve support for principals and teachers.
She called it the beginning of a new chapter for the EAA.
“It’s time to act,” Conforme said during a special meeting of the district’s board of directors and executive committee. “We need to work on how best to move student achievement.”
Conforme told the board members she’s been talking with community members, Detroit Public Schools and charter operators for the past couple of months, “and we’re excited about changes to ensure children receive the education they deserve.”
She outlined four pillars of the rebuilding strategy:www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2015/02/17/education-achievement-authority-schools-restructuring-michigan/23567583/
Detroit Schools Mentor and City Councilman Inveigling Teen to Sext him (long live Otis Mathis)
PUGH: “But i wanna see your body. Front and back. So the video has to show everything. lol. #EVERYTHING.” (May 31, 2013)
TEEN: “It just feels weird :-” (June 1, 2013)
PUGH: “Strip down, then set up the cam, then walk around a little bit … Lemme know and I’ll bring your cash when I get the iPod. Please erase these messages bro.” (June 2, 2013)
TEEN: “Everything between us has to stop my mom knows what is up and is going to report you, dnt text back.” (June 4, 2013) www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/02/17/pugh-lawsuit-texts/23560563/
With Fake Degree Deasy Gone, LAUSD discovers it cannot afford an Ipad for all
“I don’t believe we can afford a device for every student,” said Cortines, who added that the district never had a fleshed-out framework for how the devices would be used in the classroom and paid for over time.
“Education shouldn’t become the gimmick of the year,” Cortines said in a meeting Friday with several reporters. www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-la-school-district–computers-20150220-story.html
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
About that Model Arab Spring in Libya When Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 by U.S. forces, Iraq War advocates boastfully celebrated the event as proof that they were right and used it to mock war opponents (Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, for instance, gleefully exploited the event to demand that Howard Dean admit his war opposition was wrong). When Muammar Gaddafi was forced by NATO bombing in August 2011 to flee Tripoli, advocates of U.S. intervention played the same game (ThinkProgress gleefully exploited the occasion to try to shame those who objected to the illegality of Obama’s waging the war even after Congress voted against its authorization: as though Gadaffi’s fleeing could render legal Obama’s plainly illegal intervention).
Once Gadaffi was brutally killed by a mob, advocates of intervention threw a giddy party for themselves, celebrating their own rightness and righteousness and declaring Libya a model for future Western interventions. Upon Gadaffi’s fleeing, The New York Times, which editorially supported the war, published a front-page article declaring: “U.S. Tactics in Libya May be a Model for Other Efforts.” While acknowledging that “it would be premature to call the war in Libya a complete success for United States interests,” the paper noted that events had given “Obama’s senior advisers a chance to claim a key victory for an Obama doctrine for the Middle East that had been roundly criticized in recent months as leading from behind.”
Leading war advocates such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nick Kristof celebrated themselves as humanitarian visionaries and chided war opponents for being blinkered and overly cynical about the virtues of American force. British and French leaders descended upon Libya to strut around like some sort of conquering heroes, while American and Canadian officials held pompous war victory ceremonies. Hillary Clinton was downright sociopathic, gloating and cackling in an interview when told about Gadaffi’s death by mob: “We came, we saw, he died.” Democratic partisans were drowning in similar bravado (“Unlike the all-hat-no-cattle types we are increasingly seeing over there, [Obama] may take his time, but he does seem to get his man”).
CFR: IS is Not a Terrorist Group-The AQ Strategy Won’t Work (long, worth it)Consider first the tremendous U.S. military and intelligence campaign to capture or kill al Qaeda’s core leadership through drone strikes and Special Forces raids. Some 75 percent of the leaders of the core al Qaeda group have been killed by raids and armed drones, a technology well suited to the task of going after targets hiding in rural areas, where the risk of accidentally killing civilians is lower.
Such tactics, however, don’t hold much promise for combating ISIS. The group’s fighters and leaders cluster in urban areas, where they are well integrated into civilian populations and usually surrounded by buildings, making drone strikes and raids much harder to carry out. And simply killing ISIS’ leaders would not cripple the organization. They govern a functioning pseudo-state with a complex administrative structure. At the top of the military command is the emirate, which consists of Baghdadi and two deputies, both of whom formerly served as generals in the Saddam-era Iraqi army: Abu Ali al-Anbari, who controls ISIS’ operations in Syria, and Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, who controls operations in Iraq. ISIS’ civilian bureaucracy is supervised by 12 administrators who govern territories in Iraq and Syria, overseeing councils that handle matters such as finances, media, and religious affairs. Although it is hardly the model government depicted in ISIS’ propaganda videos, this pseudo-state would carry on quite ably without Baghdadi or his closest lieutenants. …More below
ISIS does not need outside funding. Holding territory has allowed the group to build a self-sustaining financial model unthinkable for most terrorist groups. Beginning in 2012, ISIS gradually took over key oil assets in eastern Syria; it now controls an estimated 60 percent of the country’s oil production capacity. Meanwhile, during its push into Iraq last summer, ISIS also seized seven oil-producing operations in that country. The group manages to sell some of this oil on the black market in Iraq and Syria—including, according to some reports, to the Assad regime itself. ISIS also smuggles oil out of Iraq and Syria into Jordan and Turkey, where it finds plenty of buyers happy to pay below-market prices for illicit crude. All told, ISIS’ revenue from oil is estimated to be between $1 million and $3 million per day.
And oil is only one element in the group’s financial portfolio. Last June, when ISIS seized control of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, it looted the provincial central bank and other smaller banks and plundered antiquities to sell on the black market. It steals jewelry, cars, machinery, and livestock from conquered residents. The group also controls major transportation arteries in western Iraq, allowing it to tax the movement of goods and charge tolls. It even earns revenue from cotton and wheat grown in Raqqa, the breadbasket of Syria. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143043/audrey-kurth-cronin/isis-is-not-a-terrorist-group?cid=nlc-foreign_affairs_this_week-021915-isis_is_not_a_terrorist_group_5-021915&sp_mid=48064185&sp_rid=cmdAcmljaGdpYnNvbi5jb20S1
IS’ Base and Mass Appeal (and Saddam’s Revenge) Paris (AFP) – The Islamic State group has learned from the mistakes of past jihadist movements and established a near-impregnable base of support within Iraq and Syria with spectacular appeal to many of the world’s Sunni Muslims, a new book has warned.
The authors of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror”, published this month in the US, spoke to dozens of fighters and members of the group to understand its allure and how it justifies its brutal tactics.
In a telephone interview with AFP, one of the authors, Syrian-born journalist Hassan Hassan, said it was vital to understand that some of the group’s core religious beliefs were widely shared.
“It presents itself as an apocalyptic movement, talking about the end of days, the return of the caliphate and its eventual domination of the world,” said Hassan, who lives in Abu Dhabi where he works as a researcher for a think tank.
“These beliefs are not on the margins — they are absolutely mainstream. They are preached by mosques across the world, particularly in the Middle East.
“ISIS takes these existing beliefs and makes them more appealing by offering a project that is happening right now,” he said, using an alternative name for IS.
Hassan’s research along with co-author Michael Weiss — a US-based journalist — gave them a rare insight into IS training camps for new recruits, which vary in length from two weeks to one year. news.yahoo.com/built-near-impregnable-mass-appeal-book-155052600.html
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_Oau0j_B8
Obamagogue Selling Killer Drones Worldwide The Obama administration will permit the widespread export of armed drones for the first time, a step toward providing allied nations with weapons that have become a cornerstone of U.S. counterterrorism strategy but whose remotely controlled power to kill is intensely controversial.
The new policy, announced Tuesday after a long internal review, is a significant step for U.S. arms policy as allied nations from Italy to Turkey to the Persian Gulf region clamor for the aircraft. It also is a nod to U.S. defense firms scrambling to secure a greater share of a growing global drone market.
But in a reflection of the sensitivity surrounding sales of the lethal technology to allied countries, some of which have troubling records on human rights and political freedoms, the new policy lays out principles that foreign governments must embrace to receive the aircraft. www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-cracks-open-door-to-the-export-of-armed-drones-to-allied-nations/2015/02/17/c5595988-b6b2-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html?tid=sm_tw
Srian Jihadists offered ability to call in US Airstrikes The US and Turkey have reached a tentative deal to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels, according to officials from both countries, amid reports that commanders will be given authority to call in air strikes.
The Pentagon has previously said it was planning to send more than 400 troops, including special forces, to work with opposition forces at sites outside Syria.
At the same time The Wall Street Journal reported that some rebels will be equipped with pick-up trucks modified with mounted machine guns as well as radios for calling in US airstrikes – an approach modelled on that used to successful effect by Kurdish forces in Kobane last month.
American and Turkish officials said an agreement on training fighters on Turkish soil would be signed within days.
“Negotiations have been concluded and an agreement text will be signed with the US regarding the training of the Free Syrian Army in the coming period,” said Tanju Bilgic, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman, according to Reuters.. The US is planning to train some 5000 Syrian fighters a year under the plan as part of an effort to strengthen the fractured rebel movement against the government of President Bashar al-Assad and extremist groups.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the initial training would focus on helping rebels hold ground and resist fighters allied with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
The first training sessions are to last between six and eight weeks. The training will focus on helping the rebel forces hold territory and counter Islamic State fightersﾗnot to take on the Syrian army.
Four to six-man units will be equipped with rugged Toyota Hilux vehicles, GPS and radios so they can identify targets for airstrikes. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11419243/Moderate-Syrian-rebels-to-be-given-power-to-call-in-US-air-strikes.html
Another good antidote to the coming deluge of lies about our win in Vietnam
I’m a US Army Vietnam combat veteran who served four tours in Vietnam (1967-68-69-70-71). Most of my tours were spent out in the field. For part of one tour I held a rear echelon clerical job that involved the use of intelligence documents up to my security clearance of Top Secret.
Whenever some one asks me to recommend a good non-fiction book about the Vietnam war, this book is my first recommendation followed by “Fire in the Lake”. I have bought about 30 copies of this book over the years to give to people I want to know the unvarnished truth about the war.
It is a tough book to read. The author, a US Army officer compiled the books content from after action reports written by officers who served in Vietnam. The author makes no secret of the fact that he did not serve in Vietnam.
He uses the words of the US Armys own officers to create a damning indictment of the US Armys conduct of the war. The Army continues to ask its serving officers to prepare the type of “after action” reports summerized in this book. It is the armys way of generating “lessons learned” educational materials to improve its performance in
present and future wars. This type of self criticism has greatly improved the conduct and caliber of US Army officers since the debacle of Vietnam www.amazon.com/Self-Destruction-Disintegration-United-States-Vietnam/dp/0393013464
Hillbillary’s Warmongering Record If reason and justice prevailed in this country, you’d think that the recent series of articles in the Washington Times concerning the U.S.-NATO attack on Libya in 2011 would torpedo Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.
Clinton as U.S. Secretary of State at that time knew that Libya was no threat to the U.S. She knew that Muammar Gadhafi had been closely cooperating with the U.S. in combating Islamist extremism. She probably realized that Gadhafi had a certain social base due in part to what by Middle Eastern standards was the relatively equitable distribution of oil income in Libya.
But she wanted to topple Gadhafi. Over the objections of Secretary of “Defense” Robert Gates but responding to the urgings of British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, she advocated war. Why? Not for the reason advertised at the time. (Does this sound familiar?) Not because Gadhafy was preparing a massacre of the innocents in Benghazi, as had occurred in Rwanda in 1994. (That episode, and the charge that the “international community” had failed to intervene, was repeatedly referenced by Clinton and other top officials, as a shameful precedent that must not be repeated. It had also been deployed by Bill Clinton in 1999, when he waged war on Serbia, grossly exaggerating the extent of carnage in Kosovo and positing the immanent prospect of “genocide” to whip up public support. Such uses of the Rwandan case reflect gross cynicism.)
No, genocide was not the issue, in Libya any more than in Kosovo. According to the Washington Times, high-ranking U.S. officials indeed questioned whether there was evidence for such a scenario in Libya. The Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that a mere 2,000 Libyan troops armed with 12 tanks were heading to Benghazi, and had killed about 400 rebels by the time the U.S. and NATO attacked. It found evidence for troops firing on unarmed protestors but no evidence of mass killing. It did not have a good estimate on the number of civilians in Benghazi but had strong evidence that most had fled. It had intelligence that Gadhafy had ordered that troops not fire on civilians but only on armed rebels….
Hillary, that supposedly astute stateswoman, believed that the Arab Spring was going to topple all the current dictators of the Middle East and that, given that, the U.S. needed to position itself as the friend of the opposition movements. Gadhafy was a goner, she reasoned, so shouldn’t the U.S. help those working towards his overthrow?
Of course the U.S. (or the combination of the U.S. and NATO) couldn’t just attack a sovereign state to impose regime change. It would, at any rate, have been politically damaging after the regime change in Iraq that had been justified on the basis of now well discredited lies. So the U.S. arm-twisted UNSC members to approve a mission to protect civilians in Libya against state violence. …While championing the rights of women and children, arguing that “it takes a village” to raise a child, Clinton has endorsed the bombing of villages throughout her public life. Here are some talking points for those appalled by the prospects of a Hillary Clinton presidency. www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/11/the-warmongering-record-of-hillary-clinton/
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
by MXMASHA amazyble.com/creativity/not-afraid-express-real-feelings-concerning-breach-justice-world/
What Came Of Barbarized Detroit’s Walking Man When he was given a car? Robertson’s neighborhood is a cauldron of the poor, the defeated, the desperate. A landscape of charred houses, vacant lots, and busted bottles. It’s only a half-mile from the new light-rail line that will connect Midtown college kids with the revitalized downtown and its casinos, $12 cocktails, and lofts of young white professionals who still register their cars at their parents’ homes in the suburbs because insurance there is cheaper.
The rail will stop a half-mile short of Robertson’s Detroit, and it won’t connect him or the rest of the city to the bus terminal. In Robertson’s Detroit, the school year began with 100 children in a single kindergarten class. In Robertson’s Detroit, 18,000 families are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure this year because they can’t afford the property taxes. In Robertson’s Detroit, unemployment hovers around 40 percent. There are no miracles here. That is, until Robertson went viral.
After that, everybody knew him. And everybody wanted something. The neighborhood started showing up on his porch with their palms out, though Robertson has yet to receive any of the money. His girlfriend — the one who owns the house and charges him 200 bucks for the bedroom — demanded a payout, he said. So did her ex-husband who lives with them. So did her adult son who lives with them. So did the other dude who lives with them.
To make it worse, the day after Robertson received his new car, he clipped the neighbor’s house (he accidentally goosed the accelerator while on his snow-covered driveway). Now the neighbor wants to get paid too. news.vice.com/article/detroits-walking-man-walks-on?utm_source=vicenewsemail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=News_EN&utm_campaign=VICE%20News
One Element of Re-Colonizing Detroit: Arson Nationwide fire data support Detroit’s reputation among firehouses as the arson capital of the United States.
“It’s been that way for years. Every time you’d go to a seminar, you meet up with investigators nationwide and all they want to talk about is Detroit,” said Jon Bozich, who retired in 2001 as the chief of the city’s Arson Squad. “People used to say the arsons would only stop when the city runs out of fuel. It hasn’t happened yet.”
Detroit has averaged 3,800 to 6,000 suspicious building fires annually for years. Of those, about 700 to 1,000 are usually investigated and confirmed as arson, according to department statistics.
Nationwide, no city with a population of at least 300,000 has as many suspicious fires or arsons per capita, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports and the National Fire Incident Reporting System of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2015/02/18/detroit-arson-capital-data/23614487/
Contrary to the NYTimes, The Rich Have not gotten poorer The headline of a recent New York Times piece by The Upshot’s managing editor David Leonhardt is eye-opening and not at all subtle: “Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis.” Unfortunately, the article that follows does not back up the sweeping conclusion of the headline.
In fact, the piece, based on a new study of income inequality by George Washington University economist Stephen Rose, is misleading, and its headline is flat-out wrong. The story has two huge problems: It fails to mention wealth inequality at all, and the income inequality data on which it is based does not support the story’s breathless “everything you know about inequality in America is wrong” opening lines.
The first problem is the big one: There’s a huge distinction between income inequality and wealth inequality. Leonhardt knows this, and throughout the piece takes care to note that he is referring to income inequality, not wealth inequality. But he never explains why he’s using that modifier, which may confuse some less-knowledgeable readers, if they even notice. At times, he seems to use this omission in the service of the broad headline. www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/17/inequality-upshot-new-york-times_n_6702264.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Government Motors gives Execs $9.6 Million General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra is one of a dozen executives recently granted company stock worth $9.6 million, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A Feb. 11 SEC filing states Barra will receive 79,639 restricted shares of GM stock as part of a long-term incentive compensation program for top executives.At Friday’s closing price of $37.62, the shares were valued at nearly $3 million. The number of shares, part of her yearly compensation, is up from 69,214 shares for 2014.
Overall, more than 254,000 shares were granted to 12 executives. The shares will vest annually in three equal installments beginning on Feb. 11, 2016, meaning they can’t immediately be sold.
Of the executives, Barra, by far, received the most shares. Following her were President Dan Ammann at 29,865 shares; Executive Vice President and Head of Global Product Development and Purchasing Mark Reuss at 25,385 shares; and CFO Chuck Stevens at 19,081 shares. www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-motors/2015/02/16/barra-gm-shares/23509901/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP4OUY3ed5w
Detroit: The Worst City For Child Poverty–still etroit continues to have more children living in extreme poverty than any of the nation’s 50 largest cities, according to a national report released Thursday.
More than 59 percent of Detroit children lived in poverty in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the national Kids Count report, an annual project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The number of poor Detroit kids increased 34 percent since 2006, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Skillman Foundation.
It’s part of a statewide problem in Michigan, where one in four children live in extreme poverty, according to the report. The number of Michigan children mired in poverty increased 35 percent over six years, to nearly 25 percent.
More than a half-million Michigan kids were found to be living in poverty, defined as $23,600 or less a year for a two-parent family of four. Among African American children, 48 percent were living in poverty statewide.
“It’s just stunning to think of the level of deprivation that represents, and what we know (about) how living in poverty over an extended period of time does to children,” said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count project director for Michigan at the Michigan League for Public Policy. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2015/02/18/detroit-childhood-poverty-ranking-kids-count-report/23657355/
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
When Americans Lynched Mexicans THE recent release of a landmark report on the history of lynching in the United States is a welcome contribution to the struggle over American collective memory. Few groups have suffered more systematic mistreatment, abuse and murder than African-Americans, the focus of the report.
One dimension of mob violence that is often overlooked, however, is that lynchers targeted many other racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, including Native Americans, Italians, Chinese and, especially, Mexicans.
Americans are largely unaware that Mexicans were frequently the targets of lynch mobs, from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century, second only to African-Americans in the scale and scope of the crimes. One case, largely overlooked or ignored by American journalists but not by the Mexican government, was that of seven Mexican shepherds hanged by white vigilantes near Corpus Christi, Tex., in late November 1873. The mob was probably trying to intimidate the shepherds’ employer into selling his land. None of the killers were arrested. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/when-americans-lynched-mexicans.html?smid=fb-share
Solidarity for Never
For this, the Long March? China Pumping out billionaires China’s world-best stock market rally made January the busiest month for IPOs in a year. It also created a bundle of new billionaires.
In the first six weeks of 2015, the world’s second-biggest economy hatched about two dozen billionaires, many of whom are riding initial public offerings that investors are driving to their daily price-trading limits — a frenzy that harkens back to the IPO market of the late 1990s. Among the high-fliers are an airline, a video-game developer and a drug-store chain.
“IPOs have become very hot investment products in China,” said Ronald Wan, chief China adviser at Hong Kong-based Asian Capital Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based corporate advisory firm. “So all the controlling IPO shareholders become very rich afterwards — they become billionaires.”
After a 14-month standstill beginning in October 2012, IPOs resumed in China last year. More than 20 new stocks started trading in January, the most since the same month a year earlier. The offerings follow a 49 percent rise in the Shanghai Composite Index, the world’s best-performing index in 2014. While the Shanghai index is little changed this year, the Shenzhen Composite Index, the smaller of China’s two stock exchanges, is up 12 percent in U.S. dollar terms, Asia’s highest returns and trailing just Russia and Saudi Arabia globally. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-16/china-churning-out-billionaires-like-it-s-1999-with-soaring-ipos
AFT Tries to Lock Teachers into Dues Paying TEN year Contract. Teachers sue/win The Michigan Employment Relations Commission ruled Friday that teachers in the Taylor Public School District are not bound by their contract to pay union dues for the next 10 years, saying the provision violates the state’s right-to-work law.
Michigan’s law, which took effect in 2013, makes it illegal to require employees to join a union or pay fees comparable to union dues as a condition of employment. A number of teachers unions negotiated new contracts shortly before the law took effect to avoid falling under the measure, which makes financially supporting a union voluntary.
The Taylor Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers Michigan blasted the ruling and vowed to appeal. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2015/02/13/teachers-right-work-michigan-ruling/23384091/
Syriza HoneyMoon Ending in Greece as “Compromises” Spring out With a deal, of sorts, to keep Greece in the eurozone, prime minister Alexis Tsipras marked his first month in office this weekend acknowledging that only now does the hard work begin.
Facing a 48-hour deadline to produce a list of reforms that could make or break his insolvent country’s future, the anti-austerity leader admitted the honeymoon was over for a government that had sent ripples of hope through Europe.
In a sombre address, hours after a dramatic meeting of euro group finance ministers in Brussels, Tsipras said that, while Athens under the stewardship of his radical left Syriza party had for the first time embarked on “real negotiations” with its creditors, a “long and difficult ” struggle lay ahead.
“We have won the battle but not the war,” he said. “We showed that Europe can be an arena of negotiation and mutually acceptable compromise and not an arena for exhaustion, submission and blind punishment … but negotiations did not end yesterday.” www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/21/syriza-greece-debt-deal-eu-alexis-tsipras
Spy versus Spy
AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.
In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”
With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
As part of the covert operations against Gemalto, spies from GCHQ — with support from the NSA — mined the private communications of unwitting engineers and other company employees in multiple countries. firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/
NACLA on Washington’s Spying Eyes the U.S. government maintains its uneasy silence about the kidnapping and probable murder of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico—or, for that matter, about the estimated 100 thousand Mexicans killed since the recommitment to the drug war in 2006—it is worth remembering that the United States maintains the largest and most elaborate international surveillance network in the world. Which, then, is the more troubling interpretation of events: that U.S. State Department and National Security Agency (NSA) officials know who is responsible for these horrific crimes but are choosing not to say, or that despite untold billions of dollars of investment in spy programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant, Washington still has no clue?
Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about the NSA’s global surveillance practices sparked outrage around the world, but nowhere more than in Latin America, where U.S. efforts to project its influence have long been concentrated. Anger rose as the scoops piled up: that the NSA’s Fairview program colluded with local telecom companies to steal Brazilians’ Internet and phone data; that secret NSA listening stations were operating out of Panama City, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico City; that the Agency had tapped into the personal emails and texts of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and Mexico’s then-president Felipe Calderón; that the spying targeted not only drug trafficking and suspected terrorism but also corporate matters and everyday citizens’ private lives. Now that the dust has settled, we should ask: Did the NSA disclosures, and the criticism they provoked, represent a historic break in hemispheric relations? Or was this just business as usual, another insult added to the ongoing injury of U.S. hegemony in the Americas?
On the one hand, the NSA and other U.S. government branches, from the Central Intelligence Agency to the State Department, have been collecting voluminous data on Latin American internal affairs since their inception. nacla.org/article/washington%E2%80%99s-prying-eyes
US Embedding Spyware on Computers (like reporters in war zones) The United States has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers and networks it has targeted in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and other countries closely watched by American intelligence agencies, according to a Russian cybersecurity firm.
In a presentation of its findings at a conference in Mexico on Monday, Kaspersky Lab, the Russian firm, said that the implants had been placed by what it called the “Equation Group,” which appears to be a veiled reference to the National Security Agency and its military counterpart, United States Cyber Command.
It linked the techniques to those used in Stuxnet, the computer worm that disabled about 1,000 centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. It was later revealed that Stuxnet was part of a program code-named Olympic Games and run jointly by Israel and the United States.
Kaspersky’s report said that Olympic Games had similarities to a much broader effort to infect computers well beyond those in Iran. It detected particularly high infection rates in computers in Iran, Pakistan and Russia, three countries whose nuclear programs the United States routinely monitors.
Some of the implants burrow so deep into the computer systems, Kaspersky said, that they infect the “firmware,” the embedded software that preps the computer’s hardware before the operating system starts. It is beyond the reach of existing antivirus products and most security controls, Kaspersky reported, making it virtually impossible to wipe out.
In many cases, it also allows the American intelligence agencies to grab the encryption keys off a machine, unnoticed, and unlock scrambled contents. Moreover, many of the tools are designed to run on computers that are disconnected from the Internet, which was the case in the computers controlling Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/technology/spyware-embedded-by-us-in-foreign-networks-security-firm-says.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Gathering of the Coppers: 7th World Congress of Education International Education International’s 7th World Congress, which is held every four years, is the supreme governing body of the organisation. The next Congress will be held in Ottawa, Canada, in the Ottawa Convention Centre (OCC) from July 21st to July 26th, 2015. The Congress provides an opportunity for representatives of EI affiliates from all over the globe to meet and decide on the policies and strategies which the organisation will implement for the following four year period. It helps to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between their members — teachers and education workers from across the world. Delegates consider the major contemporary issues affecting their organisations, the international teacher trade union movement, the trade union movement generally, and the on-going struggle to achieve quality public education for all.
Awards
A highlight of every World Congress is the presentation of the EI Awards, when Education International honours outstanding individuals.
The Albert Shanker Police Agent Education Award is given to a teacher or education employee in recognition of his or her personal contribution to education.
The Mary Hatwood Futrell (ex NEA boss) Human and Trade Union Rights Award is given to a national or local union leader or activist who has undertaken courageous and exemplary action to defend and promote human and trade union rights. www.ei-ie.org/congress7/
UTLA Moves to “legalize” a Strike After seven months and 18 rounds of cantankerous contract talks, Los Angeles Unified administrators and leaders of the district’s 35,000-member teachers union finally found common ground Wednesday when United Teachers Los Angeles made its first legally required step toward a strike.
The so-called “impasse” was declared by UTLA, after negotiators emerged from talks Wednesday divided by more than $800 million per year, including 3.5 percentage points in pay raises and roughly $500 million in funding for additional teachers to reduce class sizes.
In a statement titled “LAUSD Agrees With UTLA’s Declaration of Impasse,” Superintendent Ramon Cortines welcomed the legal action as a chance to reach an agreement in front of a mediator.
“I’ve been disappointed and frustrated by the lack of progress toward an agreement,” Cortines said. “It’s my hope that the appointment of a mediator will lead to an expeditious settlement that ultimately supports our students and the district at large.”
A mediator will be called in if California’s top labor authority, the Public Employment Relations Board, agrees with UTLA’s case for an impasse. Should a mediator fail to resolve the conflict, a fact-finding panel will be formed with one UTLA representative, one LAUSD representative and one neutral party. While the panel will recommend settlement terms, neither side is bound by those recommendations. www.dailybreeze.com/social-affairs/20150218/lausd-teachers-union-moves-closer-toward-a-strike
The Magical Mystery Tour
How Come God Needs A State, a Bank, and an Interpreter? Open the Vatican Bank! Francis, who has worked hard to carve out a reputation as a reformer, is facing one of his most daunting challenges when it comes to the Catholic Church’s finances, particularly the Vatican Bank. Since World War II — when the bank was created as the equivalent of the Federal Reserve combined with a commercial bank — it has operated with few checks and balances. Over the decades, it has become embroiled in seemingly endless scandals that include questions about wartime profiteering with Nazis, gigantic business schemes and political slush funds. The Vatican did not even have a law against money laundering until 2011. Some previous popes — including Paul VI in the 1960s and John Paul II in the 1980s — had promised upon their election to tame the church’s unruly finances. But they were inevitably defeated by entrenched powers inside Vatican City who pretended to embrace reforms while working surreptitiously to maintain the bank’s outlier status. The issue facing the church is whether Francis, riding a remarkable wave of international popularity and goodwill, can accomplish what frustrated his predecessors. www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-posner-vatican-bank-20150215-story.html
Powerful Psycho Zionist Urges Jews to Leave Europe for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Sunday that his government was encouraging a “mass immigration” of Jews from Europe, reopening a contentious debate about Israel’s role at a challenging time for European Jews and a month before Israel’s national elections.
Speaking the morning after a Jewish guard was fatally shot outside a synagogue in Copenhagen in one of two attacks there, the remarks echoed a similar call by the prime minister inviting France’s Jews to move to Israel after last month’s attacks in Paris. Critics said then that the expression of such sentiments so soon after the Paris shootings was insensitive and divisive. Such sentiments also go to the heart of the complexity of Israel’s identity and its relationship with the Jewish communities of the diaspora, whose support has been vital. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/middleeast/netanyahu-urges-mass-immigration-of-jews-from-europe.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=I-LZKo74VGg
Pennsylvania Judge Gets 28 years for selling kids to jails Disgraced Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for conspiring with private prisons to sentence juvenile offenders to maximum sentences for bribes and kickbacks which totaled millions of dollars. He was also ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution.
In the private prison industry the more time an inmate spends in a facility, the more of a profit is reaped from the state. Ciavearella was a figurehead in a conspiracy in the state of Pennsylvania which saw thousands of young men and women unjustly punished and penalized in the name of corporate profit.
According to allgov.com Ciavearella’s cases from 2003 – 2008 were reviewed by a special investigative panel and later by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and it was found that upwards of 5,000 young men and women were denied their constitutional rights, and therefore all of their convictions were dismissed and were summarily released.
During his sentencing Ciavarella was defiant, claiming he had broken no laws and claimed the money he received was a legitimate ‘finder’s fee.’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod said comments such as these were typical of Ciavarella, according to the local reporting of citizensvoice.com: www.examiner.com/article/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced-to-28-years-prison-for-selling-teens-to-prisons
Inmates to be Transferred after rebellion in TX prison A federal prison in South Texas over the next week will transfer up to 2,800 inmates to other institutions in the area, after a riot on Friday rendered the facility uninhabitable, an official said.
Inmates at the Willacy County Correctional Center, who took control of the prison using pipes as weapons, were compliant on Saturday evening as negotiations with the authorities continued.
Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said in a phone call that about 2,800 low-security offenders and illegal immigrants will be transferred to other facilities.
“Staff are continuing to communicate with the inmate population in an effort to regain complete control of the facility, which is now uninhabitable due to damage caused by the inmate population,” the bureau said in a statement.
The Valley Morning Star newspaper reported fires were set inside three of the prison’s 10 housing units. It was not immediately clear what caused the riot. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/inmates-to-be-transfered-after-riot-at-texas-prison.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
So Long
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Uo1nNt6LU
Phil Levine–Detroit Poet
In his poem “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968,” for instance, Mr. Levine wrote:
A winter Tuesday, the city pouring fire,
Ford Rouge sulfurs the sun, Cadillac, Lincoln,
Chevy gray. The fat stacks
of breweries hold their tongues. Rags,
papers, hands, the stems of birches
dirtied with words. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/arts/philip-levine-former-us-poet-laureate-who-won-pulitzer-dies-at-87.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZUYn-oNp94
