Louisiana Makes Bold Bid To Privatize Public Education

(The neoliberal agenda is rapidly accelerating across the country. The privatization of everything is the plan. This is the main reason they demoed the economy.)

from Reuters

Louisiana is embarking on the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools….

… The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

[read the rest, here]

Syria: Vladimir Putin contemplates sending CSTO peacekeeping force

(Has Clinton baited Russia into Syria like Zbigniew Brzezinski baited the Soviet Union into Afghanistan? Same M.O. at work with terrorist organizations (al Qaeda) doing the dirty work. South Ossetia comes to mind as well. Remember that little operation? Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton demands that Assad be removed from power due to the Houla Massacre that is now proven to have been committed by the terrorists she herself supports.)

from Voltaire Network

The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin, plans to deploy a peacekeeping force to Syria to prevent a possible slide towards civil war [1]

Putin asked the Secretary General of the Organization of Collective Security Treaty (CSTO), Nikolai Bordyuzha, to make a proposal to this effect. This peaceful initiative is antithetical to the NATO military intervention envisaged by the West.

Mr. Bordyuzha immediately made it known that the CSTO is capable of deploying in Syria without delay a force of 20,000 well-trained “blue fur hats.” The CSTO is made up by Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

This force would be tasked to mediate between the national army and the armed opposition … and to detain foreign fighters. The U.S. Permanent Representative to the Security Council, Susan Rice, raised the possibility for NATO to intervene militarily in Syria without a UN mandate. Vladimir Putin has not indicated whether the CSTO peacekeeping force would act with or without a Security Council mandate.

Bolivia’s president talks of nationalizing all natural resources

(If this story is accurate you can expect another fast track regime change plan to be implemented in Bolivia in the next few months. You can’t have upstart South American leaders talking about nationalizing resources to better the lives of the people those resources actually belong to while good American companies lose out. It’ll be yet another foreign policy initiative the fauxgressives have to ignore prior to the upcoming election.)

from the AFP

Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales, who has nationalized some utility companies, raised the possibility Sunday of making all natural resource-related industries property of the state.

“Another policy ought to be how we recover, or nationalize, all natural resources, so they are in the people’s hands under state administration,” Morales told a social summit.

The socialist leader of South America’s poorest nation said that “utilities (such as electricity, water and telecommunications) never should be private businesses.”

[read the rest, here]

Unwelcome Guests: Work Visa Programs Cheat Global Labor, Build Global Capital

by Michelle Chen, In These Times

When immigration comes up in Washington, politicians either politely ignore the issue or engage in lively debate on how best to punish and get rid of undocumented workers. Yet lawmakers give a strikingly warm embrace to certain types of immigrants. Those are the “legal” ones who enter with special visas under the pretext of having special skills or filling certain labor shortages–like Silicon Valley tech jobs or seasonal blueberry harvesting. So what makes one kind of immigrant valuable and another kind criminal?

So-called guestworker programs attest to the arbitrary politics of immigration that has generated a perfectly legal, global traffic in migrant labor. A new report by the advocacy group Global Workers Justice Alliance reveals how various federal visa programs funnel workers into special high-demand sectors, like amusement park staff or computer programmers. Like their “illegal” counterparts, these workers are inherently disempowered: they may be dependent on employers for legal status in the U.S., have their wages regularly stolen, or suffer sexual or physical abuse. Many lack the access to the health care and overtime pay that citizen workers often take for granted. As products of globalization, they’re sometimes compelled to endure virtual indentured servitude to provide critical wage remittances to their families back home.

[read the rest, here]

A Rare Admission That Money Trumps Everything Else

by David Sirota, In These Times

Headlines transmit information in its rawest form – and the best of headlines crystallize indelible truths. Such was the case this week when the New York Daily News blared this simple but iconic headline: “Cuomo: Minimum Wage Harder to Get Than Gay Marriage.”

The story quoted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) claiming that the effort to raise wages for the poorest of his constituents represents a “broader and deeper” divide than the recent successful fight to legalize same-sex matrimony in the Empire State. Though the piece quickly dissolved into the ether, it should have received more attention because it is an important Rosetta Stone—one that translates this era’s inscrutable political rhetoric into a clear admission that money trumps everything else.

[read the rest, here]

White Guy Dresses Up Like Zombie Chases Black People in Miami: Finally Gets His Ass Beat

UPDATE: Now they have zombie kitties. It’s begun.

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It’s being labeled as a prank. White guy ties a tie around his head and throws some fake blood on his face and shirt then chases people around in Miami making zombie sounds. In the end it looks like he almost gets shot and then a couple of guys playing handball seem to turn the tables on him. If he wasn’t a zombie to start with, he probably is now.

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Reporter Mike Elk physically blocked from asking Honeywell CEO a question

You don’t dare embarrass a member of the corporate elite in Washington DC while the sycophants are hanging on looking for a handout from Honeywell’s massive corporate welfare. How could someone be so uncouth as to ask them a question about union busting and venting radioactive gasses into the air when there is so much money to be made by simply sucking up and keeping quiet?

Good write-up on the incident at Common Dreams.

And go here to read Mike Elk’s article on the event.

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Syria Finds 800-Man Death Squad Guilty Of Houla Massacre

Barack Obama is Guilty of Murder, It’s Just That Simple

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE: There are some good articles on this topic. Check out Firedoglake, Black Agenda Report, and Glenn Greenwald

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Jeremy Scahill went on MSNBC yesterday morning and said something that I have been writing for years, that by his own admission, Barack Obama is guilty of the murder of scores of innocent people in Yemen, including but not limited to 14 women and 21 children according to the Amnesty International report on the Dec. 17th 2009 cruise missile attack authorized by the Peace Prize “winning” president himself.

“Terrorist”?

Though I give him credit for that aspect of his appearance on the show, I have to remind everyone of the kinds of people who are designated “terrorists” in the first place and the real reason the Obama administration is bombing Yemen (it ain’t to protect our “freedoms” if that’s what you think) and Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia.

“This is a memo that describes how we are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran.” Gen. W. Clark 2007