{"id":10565,"date":"2013-05-05T15:37:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-05T23:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=10565"},"modified":"2013-05-05T16:02:47","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T00:02:47","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-draft-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-draft-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: Birthday Edition!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/span><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

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The\u00a0Rouge Forum 2013 will be held at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI on May 16-19.
\nThe theme of this RF2013 is \u201cWinning the Class Struggle Against Corporate Education Reform\u201d
\nThe Rouge Forum brings together academic presentations and panel discussions, performances, community building, and cultural events.
\nJoin us in Beautiful Downtown Detroit! \u00a0 \u00a0http:\/\/rougeforumconference.wordpress.com\/<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Gil Gonzalez on the Release of<\/strong><\/p>\n

www.youtube.com\/watch?v=l1QGw5Bs6V4<\/a><\/p>\n

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General Strike in Greece \u00a0and Marches World Wide <\/strong>As workers around the world observed the international Labor Day holiday with demonstrations and rallies, thousands of Greeks walked off their jobs on Wednesday in the second general strike against government austerity measures this year, shutting down tax offices, leaving state hospitals to operate with emergency employees and disrupting public transportation. The Greek protest came as workers in Asia, including Bangladeshis infuriated by the lethal collapse of a garment factory, demonstrated in cities including the capitals of Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Istanbul, riot police officers sprayed throngs of people with water and tear gas as they gathered for a rally, defying an official ban.
\nLabor unions in Spain called for rallies in more than 80 cities, news reports said, while protests were also scheduled in Portugal. In France, the bitterly divided labor movement called for hundreds of demonstrations across the country, with rival union confederations holding separate marches. <\/strong> www.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/02\/world\/europe\/greeks-stage-general-strike-against-austerity.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y<\/a><\/p>\n

Happy Birthday!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Little Red Schoolhouse<\/span><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

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Did We Remind that the Education Agenda is a War Agenda? Navy Loves STEM schooling <\/strong>Although women make up about half of the United States workforce, they represent just 24 percent of careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In order to correct this, major nonprofit groups have been organizing STEM enrichment camps for middle- and high-school girls, driven by the philosophy that more women will pursue STEM careers if their interest is piqued at an early age.
\nBut recently, some girls-only STEM programs have gone beyond fostering interest in science and math among the next generation of women. Branches of the U.S. military \u2013 in particular, the Navy \u2013 have increasingly been using these programs to market the military to girls as young as 11 and 12. \u00a0http:\/\/comdsd.org\/article_archive\/NavyandSTEMeducation.html<\/p>\n

Segregated Capitalist Schooling in the Corporate State <\/strong>Here\u2019s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.
\nWhether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.
\nWhat is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.
\nOne way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Another Shocker–School Reform Related to Poverty (but never to capitalism itself) <\/strong>That pattern of poor performance was compounded by the fact that what little growth school districts enjoyed accrued heavily to higher-income and white students, not to the low-income and minority students who were supposed to benefit. Closing schools neither improved student outcomes nor saved districts money, and even the strong charters in these three cities delivered more mixed benefits than commonly reported. This is a critical story that, despite the public data, will come as a surprise to many: these supposedly successful reforms are doing little good and more than a little harm….Perhaps most troubling, in some cases, no students really gained ground; rather, increases were due simply to changes in the composition of the student body. Disaggregation of the data showed this to be the case with respect to both reading and math scores among fourth graders. \u00a0http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/answer-sheet\/wp\/2013\/04\/29\/the-gap-between-school-reform-rhetoric-and-reality-in-3-cities\/ <\/strong><\/p>\n

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Detroit School Boss from Failed Government Motors (who fired every teacher) declares “Mission Accomplished” \u00a0and is praised by DFT <\/strong>Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said: “There were those in Lansing that wanted him to blow this district up, and he thought about the kids and the impact upon them, so he decided rather than to blow it up to fix it up.”
\nFrom The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20130503\/SCHOOLS\/305030363#ixzz2SSG7ZbhL<\/a><\/p>\n

Hey Detroit! JP Morgan is your Friend, your Friend, your Friend <\/strong>Gov. Rick Snyder joined Detroit Public Schools this morning in announcing $1.5 million in grants from JPMorgan Chase to turn three schools in southwest Detroit into community centers with added social services.
\nJPMorgan Chase has committed a $1-million grant to Southwest Solutions, a local nonprofit agency, to provide an array of services at Western International High School, Harms Elementary and Maybury Elementary over the next three years that would include financial literacy, screening for eligibility for benefits and home repair loan programs.
\nThe services will work in tandem with the state Department of Human Services\u2019 Pathways to Potential program that last year placed DHS caseworkers, called success coaches, in schools to identify resources and assistance to students and families. Western will get a new success coach.
\n\u201cThis is an exciting day,\u201d Snyder said.
\nThe funding will help to bolster DPS\u2019s new five-year strategic plan announced earlier this month that aims to turn schools into community centers that could provide social services for up to 12 hours every day. The strategic plan is part of an effort to attract and retain students. DPS is down to 50,000 students, about a third the size the district was a decade ago. \u00a0 www.freep.com\/article\/20130429\/NEWS01\/304290094\/Detroit-schools-get-1-5-million-grant-JP-Morgan-Chase<\/a><\/p>\n

No $ for Early Childhood Ed, but Millions for Karzai <\/strong>A new report released Monday shows that funding for preschool programs across the country fell by an unprecedented $500 million in the 2011-12 school year as enrollment stalled and more programs saw a drop in quality than improvement.
\nThe report also says that in 2011-12, the latest year for which information is available, only 28 percent of all 4-year-old children in the country were in state-funded preschool programs, and 15 states actually reduced pre-K enrollment. D.C. public schools served more 4-year-olds in preschool than 15 states with programs, and more 3-year-olds than all but five states, it says. (See D.C., Virginia and Maryland reports below.) \u00a0 \u00a0http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/answer-sheet\/wp\/2013\/04\/29\/study-preschool-funding-sees-unprecedented-single-year-drop\/<\/p>\n

Al Jazerra on Capitalist Education and Reform Failures <\/strong>Multiple research in the US has shown that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And now the Equity and Excellence report, commissioned by the US Congress, says the US education system is largely to blame. \u00a0The study says: “Ten million students in US’s poorest communities … are having their lives unjustly and irredeemably blighted by a system that consigns them to the lowest-performing teachers, the most run-down facilities, and academic expectations and opportunities considerably lower than what we expect of other students.”
\nSo what has become of the American dream? Despite growing up with economic hardships do you still have the opportunity for prosperity and financial success through hard work?
\nIt is a notion that President Barack Obama recently alluded to in his inaugural address: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”
\nHowever, the report on education says that in no other developed country has the system stacked the odds against so many of its children.
\nTo discuss this, Inside Story Americas is joined by guests: Sean Reardon, a professor of education and sociology and author of The Widening Income Achievement Gap; Mary Bruce, a senior education adviser for the public policy firm, Civic Enterprises; and Sylvia Allegretto, the co-chair for the Centre on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California.”It’s a shocking state right now. We have one in four children in this country living in poverty, increasingly children lack housing, healthcare and basic food security in some cases in concentrated and segregated areas, and then we are spending less money in schools in the education of those who are the least able to get education outside of school. This builds up a kind of inequality that doesn’t exist in most of the industrialised nations around the world.” \u00a0 www.aljazeera.com\/programmes\/insidestoryamericas\/2013\/02\/201322211124074638.html<\/a><\/p>\n

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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War Means Work and $$$: Building Tanks the Military Doesn’t Want <\/strong> Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.
\nLawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.
\nBut senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”
\nIt’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.
\nYet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.
\n“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.
\nWhy are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.
\nKeeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located.
\nIf there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics. \u00a0 \u00a0 From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20130428\/POLITICS03\/304280328#ixzz2RnM2pwQd<\/a><\/p>\n

Tens of Millions of $ From CIA to Gangster Afghan Karzai <\/strong> For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan\u2019s president \u2014 courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. \u00a0ll told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
\n\u201cWe called it \u2018ghost money,\u2019 \u201d said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai\u2019s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. \u201cIt came in secret, and it left in secret.\u201d \u00a0 www.nytimes.com\/2013\/04\/29\/world\/asia\/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=1&amp<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Karzai: The Money Will Keep Flowing from CIA <\/strong>The C.I.A.\u2019s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured that the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed. \u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/05\/world\/asia\/karzai-said-he-was-assured-of-cash-deliveries-by-cia.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y<\/p>\n

Who Lost Afghanistan? <\/strong>If the lawlessness, poverty, and endemic corruption of Afghanistan are indicative of anything, it is that the multi-billion dollar efforts to restore stability in the region have been an abject failure.
\nAs the scheduled 2014 reduction of American-led NATO troops moves closer, the occupying forces leave behind a state where none of their initial goals have been realized.
\nThe Afghan central government is weak and hopelessly corrupt, the national armed forces are disorganized and resentful of foreign presence, the Taliban still wield notable influence, women remain extremely marginalized, Afghans are trapped in abject poverty, and the occupiers themselves continue to shoulder the responsibility for heavy civilian causalities.
\nTens of billions have been poured into Afghanistan over the past decade, but the fact is that official figures of aid and financial resources spent in the country on paper do not come close to what was actually doled out to US proxies.
\nReports confirm that tens of millions of US dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai since his installation in 2004.
\nThe report states that the \u2018ghost money\u2019 paid to Karzai’s office was not subject to oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid or the CIA’s formal assistance programs, and much of it went to \u201cwarlords and politicians, many with ties to the drug trade and in some cases the Taliban.\u201d
\nThe report also cites an anonymous US official who claimed, “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States.” These revelations should not only raise the eyebrows of US taxpayers \u2013 the disingenuous reality of American funds finding their way into the pockets of the Taliban should raise blood pressures. \u00a0 rt.com\/op-edge\/afghanistan-corruption-failure-stability-835\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Below, War Criminal Pals Laugh at the People of the World<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Bill Blum on the Terrorists <\/strong>What is it that makes young men, reasonably well educated, in good health and nice looking, with long lives ahead of them, use powerful explosives to murder complete strangers because of political beliefs? I\u2019m speaking about American military personnel of course, on the ground, in the air, or directing drones from an office in Nevada.
\nDo not the survivors of US attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere, and their loved ones, ask such a question?
\nThe survivors and loved ones in Boston have their answer \u2013 America\u2019s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
\nThat\u2019s what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber has said in custody, and there\u2019s no reason to doubt that he means it, nor the dozens of others in the past two decades who have carried out terrorist attacks against American targets and expressed anger toward US foreign policy. 1 Both Tsarnaev brothers had expressed such opinions before the attack as well. 2 The Marathon bombing took place just days after a deadly US attack in Afghanistan killed 17 civilians, including 12 children, as but one example of countless similar horrors from recent years. \u201cOh\u201d, an American says, \u201cbut those are accidents. What terrorists do is on purpose. It\u2019s cold-blooded murder.\u201d \u00a0 williamblum.org\/aer\/read\/116<\/a><\/p>\n

Israel Goes to war with Syria <\/strong>The Syrian government immediately blamed Israel for the explosions, whose power appeared to far outstrip that of any weapons in the rebels\u2019 arsenals. Israeli officials refused to confirm that Israeli forces had carried out the strikes, which the Syrian deputy foreign minister, speaking on CNN, called \u201can act of war.\u201d
\nWith much still unexplained about the effects and motivations of the attack, it rattled the region, which has lived in fear that the Syrian war will lead to a wider conflict. \u00a0 \u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/06\/world\/middleeast\/after-strikes-in-syria-concerns-about-an-escalation-of-fighting.html?ref=global-home&_r=0<\/p>\n

Israel and Depleted Uranium Shells <\/strong>Israel used “a new type of weapon”, a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.
\n\u201cWhen the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake,\u201d said the source, who was present near the attack site on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday morning.
\n\u201cThen a giant golden mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted uranium shells.\u201d \u00a0 rt.com\/news\/syria-israel-uranium-air-strike-847\/<\/a><\/p>\n