Campbell Brown To Hammer De Blasio For Not Being Reformy Enough

Keshia Clukey at Politico NY:

ALBANY — Campbell Brown, the former news anchor turned anti-teacher tenure advocate, is hoping her keynote address Wednesday night to the Business Council of New York State's annual conference will spur its members to focus attention on education reform.

...

Brown said she will focus her speech on student achievement and income inequality and that the keynote, which she will deliver at The Sagamore Resort in Bolton Landing, will also take issue with New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, whose policies “not only have been inadequate but, in many situations, have made the situation worse.”

“We can’t afford to have incremental changes. We don’t need any more speeches. We need real change,” Brown said.

We can't afford incremental changes - we need drastic, sudden, dramatic change.

Interestingly enough, Brown gets lumped in politically with "conservatives".

In fact, her husband Dan Senor was one of the "conservatives" who helped bring drastic, sudden, dramatic change to Iraq. 

That went well, didn't it?

So you know the drastic, sudden, dramatic change Brown wants to bring to the education system will go just as swimmingly.

When Brown says de Blasio's policies “not only have been inadequate but, in many situations, have made the situation worse," she can look to husband Dan and the policies he helped engineer in Iraq as a model.

Rumsfeld Wants Kudos For Iraq War Screw-Ups

Unfreakingbelievable:

As noted earlier, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, marking a war that saw up to 134,000 Iraqi civilians killed and has cost the U.S. $2 trillion and counting, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tweeted that “all who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.”

So glad Gates Foundation Education Week decided to go to Rummy to get "leadership lessons".

Apparently one Rumsfeld can pass along is how to be a clueless asshole.

All those deaths, all that money wasted, the car bombs are STILL going off in Iraq - and Rumsfeld wants a pat on the back for a "job well done!"

You can't make this stuff up.

I don't know what's worse - Rumsfeld wanting a pat on the back for the Iraq war or Gates Foundation Education Week thinking he'd be a good go-to for "leadership lessons."

Heckuva Job

From Reuters:

(Reuters) - A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shi'ite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda have vowed to step up attacks on Shi'ite targets since the start of the year in an attempt to provoke sectarian confrontation and undermine Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.

Tuesday's bombs exploded in a busy Baghdad market, near the heavily fortified Green Zone and in other districts across the capital. A suicide bomber also attacked a police base in a Shi'ite town south of the capital, officials said.

"I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground. People were running and shouting everywhere," said Ali Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City.

A decade after U.S. and Western troops swept Saddam from power, Iraq still struggles with insurgents, sectarian friction and political feuds among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

In a sign of concern over security, the cabinet on Tuesday postponed local elections in two provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for up to six months because of threats to electoral workers and violence there, according to Maliki's media adviser Ali al-Moussawi. The polls will go ahead elsewhere on April 20.

58% of Americans say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting.

Who exactly are the 42% who either think the war was worth fighting or aren't sure about it?

Ten years after the war, we've left the place a slaughter ground.

And it all it cost was a couple of trillion bucks.

That really is a heckuva job.

This Is Why They Want Bradley Manning And Julian Assange Silenced And Imprisoned

The Guardian reports the following:

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country's descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.

After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding.

Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus's "eyes and ears out on the ground" in Iraq.

"They worked hand in hand," said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. "I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there ... the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture."

Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. "Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee," claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.

"Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts."

 Is it just me or do those allegations, if true, amount to war crimes by Petraeus and Rumsfeld?

So glad Education Week got an interview with Rummy last week about education leadership in schools!

He sure does have a lot to teach us about illegal detentions, torture and war crimes.

No wonder the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to get Assange and they've already got Manning.

The evidence of war crimes is mounting.

Making The World Safe For American-Style Fast Food

The Daily News reports Baghdad is experiencing a growth in homegrown, American-style fast food restaurants:

BAGHDAD — Baghdad's embattled residents can finally get their milkshakes, chili-cheese dogs and buckets of crispy fried chicken. Original recipe or extra spicy, of course.

A wave of new American-style restaurants is spreading across the Iraqi capital, enticing customers hungry for alternatives to traditional offerings like lamb kebabs and fire-roasted carp.

The fad is a sign that Iraqis, saddled with violence for years and still experiencing almost daily bombings and shootings, are prepared to move on and embrace ordinary pleasures - like stuffing their faces with pizza.

Iraqi entrepreneurs and investors from nearby countries, not big multinational chains, are driving the food craze. They see Iraq as an untapped market of increasingly adventurous eaters where competition is low and the potential returns are high.

"We're fed up with traditional food," said government employee Osama al-Ani as he munched on pizza at one of the packed new restaurants last week. "We want to try something different."

Among the latest additions is a sit-down restaurant called Chili House. Its glossy menu touts Caesar salads and hot wing appetizers along with all-American entrees like three-way chili, Philly cheesesteaks and a nearly half-pound "Big Mouth Chizzila" burger.

...

"Everybody likes to eat and dress up. This is something that brings people together," he explained. "People tell us: `We feel like we're out of Baghdad. And that makes us feel satisfied.'"

...

Dining out in Iraq is not without risk. Ice cream parlors, restaurants and cafes were among the targets of a brutal string of attacks that tore through Iraq on Aug. 16, leaving more than 90 people dead.

Iraqis say the chance to relax in clean surroundings over a meal out is worth the gamble. For them, the restaurants are a symbol of progress.

"This gives you a feeling the country's on the right track," said Wameed Fawzi, a chemical engineer enjoying Lee's fried chicken strips with his wife Samara.

Ah yes - you know your country's on the right track when you too can take the family out to a restaurant and eat some food that will eventually give you heart disease, diabetes and a stroke.

It will be total progress when Iraqis can go out to these places without worrying about car bombs killing them while they eat their french fries.

Just another example of how the United States is adding value the world over - first we destabilize the country so that mass slaughter continues to be a monthly occurrence then we provide the environment for the local entrepreneurs to run American-style fast food joints while we steal all the oil and natural resources.

What a country!

Bash The Teachers: Jonathan Alter Edition

In a new series entitled BASH THE TEACHERS, I will take a look at various anti-union, teacher-bashing corporate journalists and pundits (e.g., Jonathan Alter, Tom "Mustache of Understanding" Friedman, Evan Thomas, Nicholas Kristof, David "Bobo" Brooks, Joe Klein, David Broder et al.), examine their journalism and /or punditry records using the same rigorous performance-based standards they call for using on unionized teachers, see just how much "added value" they are giving their readers and decide whether they need to be swept out of journalism by Michelle Rhee's broom.

This series starts today with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

At Common Dreams, Peter Hart has written a good overview on why the elite corporate-owned media - both conservatives and "liberals" - scapegoat unionized teachers and push unproven or disproven reforms like merit pay and charter schools in order to improve the public education system.

If the article doesn't want to make you pull what little hair Jonathan Alter still has in his head out of it, good for you.

As for me, I couldn't help but want to do just that after I read quotes like these:

When someone like Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (7/13/10) declares that liberals oppose school vouchers “because they are protecting the teachers’ unions,” the only surprise might be his uncharacteristic restraint. Nominally liberal pundits like Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who wrote (2/12/07) that Democrats are “wrong to kiss up to teachers unions,” are hard to distinguish from O’Reilly on this issue.

...

Six years later (7/21/08), Alter had removed the gloves, pounding the “Paleolithic teachers unions” and predicting that middle-of-the-road voters would rally behind “a Democratic candidate willing to show he can slip the ideological stranglehold of a retrograde liberal interest group.” As if the point weren’t clear enough, Alter advised then-candidate Barack Obama to lay out his demands to teachers and tell them “they must change their focus from job security and the protection of ineffective teachers to higher pay and true accountability for performance—or face extinction.”

Alter, btw, works for a news magazine that has gone from losing $5 million a year in 2007 to $30 million a year in 2009, was sold by its owner, Kaplan University, for $1, and has over one million readers in the last nine years.

Under the value-added system corporate journalists like Alter push, teachers must add value to their students test scores every year or be fired.

Yet somehow Alter, who works at a news magazine that has increased its dollar losses six-fold in just three years, has seen its revenue drop 30% during that same time period and has lost over one million readers over the last nine years, doesn't think the same "high performance" standards that he applies to schools and teachers should be applied to news magazines or journalists like himself.

So much for true accountability for performance.

But that's just the free-market values that Alter himself professes need to be used on the public education system in order to improve it. It points to Alter's hypocrisy on the issue, but doesn't show just how WRONG he has been on many issues.

So let's take a look at the quality of Alter's punditry and see if he is "adding value" (i.e., getting stuff right) there.

First, Jonathan Alter supported the Iraq war beforehand, saying

I now support military action for four basic reasons:

1. Collective Security: Under U.N. Resolution 1441, which has been clearly violated by Saddam Hussein, military action would be in the context of nearly 90 years of collective security—an essential prerequisite for intervention in today's world.

2. Nuclear Security: The national security policy of the United States should be encapsulated in four words: "The club is closed." While little can be done about those countries that already have nuclear weapons, we should focus great energy and attention on limiting entrance to the nuclear club, especially among rogue states. Colin Powell was not convincing on al-Qaida/Iraq connections, but he was persuasive on Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. We cannot afford to wait until Iraq obtains such weapons and blackmails the region—as North Korea is doing now.

3. September 11: While war against Iraq may increase terrorism in the short run, it is, on balance, more likely to decrease it in the long run. Even if al-Qaida is not operating in Iraq right now, Iraq has been friendly with terrorists. Generally speaking, the fewer rogue states, the fewer places for terrorists to hide. Until 9/11, stability was preferable to upheaval in the Middle East. Now, change is the best option. War is always a leap in the dark, but even the chance of greater regional democracy—and thus less of the displaced anger that fuels terrorism—makes the risks worth taking.

4. Credibility: If Saddam disarms now, war should be avoided. But if he continues to cheat and retreat in the next few weeks, a decision by the United States to back off and delay would be interpreted as weakness in the Middle East. Osama Bin Laden hit us on 9/11 because he thought we were soft and would not respond. Weakness now would further embolden Saddam Hussein.

The war did NONE of those things that Alter claimed it would - the Iraq war did NOT keep other countries from entering the nuclear weapons country club. In fact, while the U.S. and its allies were bogged down in Iraq, Iran got much closer to getting nuclear weapons.

Nor did the Iraq war DECREASE terrorism in the long run as Alter claimed it would. There have been two attempted domestic terrorism attacks in the last year alone (the Detroit plane bombing, the Times Square bombing) and it is very likely that both of those terrorists were radicalized in part by the U.S. war in Iraq.

Nor did our macho sword-waving against Saddam make Bin Laden and Al Qaida less emboldened. Rather, it gave them the opportunity to gain more followers by using the bloodbath in Iraq as proof-positive that the United States as a country and Americans as a people were anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, it diverted resources from our actual attempts to find Bin Laden, and further put a tremendous financial burden on this country as we fight two simultaneous wars on credit whilewe cannot even keep our freaking roads paved anymore.

Yet somehow Alter, who was wrong on ALL the reasons he gave for going to war with Saddam, still has his job even after it is clear that he didn't "add value" to his readers by reciting Judy Milleresque nonsense in the pages of Newsweek about the war.

Let us also not forget that Alter promoted the use of torture in a November 2001 Newsweek column entitled "Time To Think About Torture," saying that the United States is now a fundamentally different place and that anybody who isn't in favor of torturing terror suspects was hopelessly pre-September 11th:

In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to... torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren't talking at all.

Couldn't we at least subject them to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap? (The military has done that in Panama and elsewhere.) How about truth serum, administered with a mandatory IV? Or deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings? (As the frustrated FBI has been threatening.) Some people still argue that we needn't rethink any of our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they're hopelessly "Sept. 10"--living in a country that no longer exists.

...

We can't legalize physical torture; it's contrary to American values. But even as we continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we'll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that's hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.

Notice how Alter, who no doubt sees himself as a "good guy," won't go so far as to sanction physical torture here in the U.S., but has has no problem turning terror suspects over to "our less squeamish allies" to do the torturing for us. He acknowledges this is "hypocritical," but seems to work under the preconceived notion that we have to use "whatever works," law and ethics be damned. He doesn't know if it actually works (he uses Abu Nidal and the Philippine police as examples of instances when torture works, but doesn't explain exactly how), but for Alter that's not the point. As he said in his pro-Iraq war piece, even when we don't know what the effects of a particular action are going to be, "change is the best option."

In fact, that is often Alter's take on policy.

Something's not working - change it!

Which brings me to the education issue.

Alter has some ideas - make the entire public education system into KIPP.

More test prep.

Standardized tests in every grade and every subject.

9.5 hour school days and shortened summer vacations to get ready for those tests.

"Thin" teacher contracts and no work protections.

Fire teachers based on test scores from all the tests added to the school day.

Never mind that the "change" Alter wants to bring may be short-sighted and bring all kinds if unintended consequences upon us (as the Iraq war did - emboldening Iran and giving them a better opportunity to pursue nuclear arms because the U.S. was bogged down in two other wars) or worse -may be antithetical to our nature (as either torturing suspects or turning them over to countries to our dirty work ought to be) and lead to all kinds of very easily predicted consequences (i.e., the United States was vilified across the world as a nation of torture.)

For Alter, the system has completely failed and only complete "change" undo the damage.

Never mind that he doesn't really know if the system has completely failed because he is only regurgitating Gates Foundation/pro-privatization talking points in his columns on reform.

As Diane Ravitch has noted here, the system is not in the crisis that the Obama administration or the corporate journalists claim it is, that many traditional public schools across this nation actually work and work better than charter schools, that doesn't stop Alter from saying things like

supporting accountability with teeth and more charter schools should be a litmus test for anyone serious about proving he or she is not just another hack.

You see, Alter has a pre-conceived Elite Washington Village notion that OF COURSE teacher accountability and pay tied to test scores and thousands of addtional charter schools across this nation are just the "change" needed to bring the system out of crisis, even though the CREDO study has already proven that on average most charter schools are no better than traditional schools while 37% actually perform worse and the additional standardized tests that have to be added to every grade in every subject to hold teachers "accountable" will ensure a very regimented, test prep-based education system that will actually undercut the development of creative, free-thinking, innovative students.

For Alter, facts don't matter. Being wrong in the past about stuff doesn't matter. Pushing behavior antithetical to moral human character doesn't matter. Working for a news magazine that has clearly outlived its usefulness and is millions of dollars in debt doesn't matter (I guess only schools are supposed to be survive by the free market principles Alter so loves...news magazines get a pass.)

What matters is pushing his Gates Foundation talking points about "accountability" while bashing teachers unions and any politician who doesn't automatically roll over for the charter school and accountability movements.

What matters is supporting the conventional wisdom of the Washington Village Elite on education (and so many other issues, as well) and disparaging anybody else who dares to break from that view.

Yet in ten years, when it becomes clear that adding additional standardized tests in every grade/subject at least twice a year and forcing teachers to "add value" to their students scores or be fired has made the education system worse, and when it becomes clear that blowing up the public education system and replacing it with non-unionized charters as has been done in New Orleans isn't the "magic bullet" reformers claim it is, will Alter take responsibility for all the crap he has written about education reform and teachers over the years?

I'm sure he will - just as he has acknowledged being wrong about advocating torture or how beautiful invading Iraq would turn out to be.

Oh, right, He didn't take responsibility for that stuff.

Okay, I guess we'll just have to sweep Jonathan Alter out the door with Michelle Rhee's broom - stick side up.

Next in the series: Tom Friedman.

Mission Accomplished?

Barack Obama on August 2, 2010:

As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. (Applause.) Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31st, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. (Applause.) And that is exactly what we are doing -- as promised and on schedule. (Applause.)

...

Today -- even as terrorists try to derail Iraq’s progress -- because of the sacrifices of our troops and their Iraqi partners, violence in Iraq continues to be near the lowest it’s been in years. And next month, we will change our military mission from combat to supporting and training Iraqi security forces. (Applause.) In fact, in many parts of the country, Iraqis have already taken the lead for security.

The NY Times today:

BAGHDAD — In one of the broadest assaults on Iraq’s security forces, insurgents unleashed a wave of roadside mines and a more than a dozen car bombings across Iraq on Wednesday, killing dozens, toppling a police station in the capital and sowing chaos and confusion among the soldiers and police officers who responded.

The withering two-hour assault in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in the north, was as symbolic as it was deadly, coming a week before the United States declares the end of combat operations here. Wednesday was seemingly the insurgents’ reply: Despite suggestions otherwise, they proved their ability to launch coordinated attacks virtually anywhere in Iraq, capitalizing on the government’s dysfunction and perceptions of American vulnerability.

For weeks, there had been sense of inevitability to the assaults, which killed at least 51 people, many of them police officers. From the American military to residents here, virtually everyone seemed to expect insurgents to seek to demonstrate their prowess as the United States brings its number of troops below 50,000 here. But the anticipation did little to prepare security forces for the breadth of the assault. Iraqi soldiers and police officers brawled at the site of the biggest bombing in Baghdad, and residents heckled them for their impotence in stopping a blast that cut like a scythe through the neighborhood.

“A bloody day,” Khalil Ahmed, a 30-year-old engineer, said simply, as he stared at the cranes and bulldozers trying to rescue victims buried under the police station.

“From the day of the fall of Saddam until now, this is what we have — explosions, killing and looting,” he said. “This is our destiny. It’s already written for us.”

I'm not saying combat troops should stay or anything, but I'd go light on the "Iraqi security forces are up to the task" jive.

Iraq is a mess. It will be worse as we continue to disentangle from it. We caused that mess, we have made it worse over the course of the years we were there, and we are not taking moral responsibility for our actions.

Now President Accountability has no intention of doing anything about Iraq because he has staked HIS legacy on Afghanistan.

Unfortunately for President Accountability, the situation in Afghanistan is worsening even as he puts more troops and resources into that war.

Here is an update of THAT situation:

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — As the Taliban spread their tentacles across the formerly peaceful north of Afghanistan, upcoming elections are proving a target for the insurgents.

Across the northern provinces of the war-torn country, Afghans doubt the country can hold free and fair parliamentary polls on September 18 in a rapidly deteriorating security situation.

Worst affected is Kunduz, in the northeast, though authorities in Balkh, Faryab and Jawzjan provinces noted the encroachment of Taliban insurgents who are trying to create a battleline marking their area of control.

According to people in the region, the Taliban are on the march.

"Taliban fighters are no longer just in limited numbers in our village, they are now in their hundreds," said Mohammad Feda, 22, from Boka village in Balkh.

Sitting in front of his shop on the Balkh-Jawzjan highway, Feda said Taliban numbers had grown so much in recent months they now had a visible presence in many villages in the area, day and night.

People in Balkh, Chimtal, Chahar Bolak and Sholgara districts in Balkh province told AFP the Taliban were regrouping ahead of the elections, causing concern about how safe they will be in casting their votes.

"Elections can't be held, no one can go to polling stations because the Taliban have warned people not to participate," said an official in Chahar Bolak with the Independent Election Commission (IEC), which oversees the polls.

"I have lived in Chahar Bolak all my life, but now sometimes I cannot go there due to the insecurity," he said, speaking on condition he not be named.

Yeah, heckuva job you're doing with YOUR war, Barack.

Sounds almost as bad as the one your running from in Iraq.

Can you write how the rest of the war plays out?

I can.

Obama and company stay in Afghanistan for as long as they can politically, then point to some jive ass propaganda as "proof" of stability and announce a slow withdrawal.

And the next day insurgents will kill and maim hundreds of people.

But we leave anyway.

Leaving the joint worse than before we went in.

That's the American way.