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Neoliberal arts college: how finance is changing the soul of higher education

British university lecturers and teaching staff went on a nationwide strike for the fifth time in six months this week to protest against pay cuts and, more generally, against the increasing marketization of the country's higher education system. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) walked out on Thursday in the latest event from a lengthy struggle against the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government's finance-dominated restructuring of Britain's higher education system.

The vast majority of universities in Britain are still public institutions, but like many American universities there has been an ongoing restructuring of higher education that removes public funding and replaces it with either private cash, or austerity. The backdrop of this is that chancellors and wardens of universities are being given above-inflation pay rises (last year's averaged 5.1%) while teaching staff have suffered a 13% pay cut in real terms since October 2008, while arts and humanities departments have suffered job losses and closures after their funding was halved in 2010.

Operation Nazification

Annie Jacobsen's new book is called Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America. It isn't terribly secret anymore, of course, and it was never very intelligent.

Jacobsen has added some details, and the U.S. government is still hiding many more. But the basic facts have been available; they're just left out of most U.S. history books, movies, and television programs.

U.S. spending extraordinary amounts on 'guard labor'

America's gun culture costs lives and feeds our fears. Consider the most recent injustice in Florida, the verdict in the Michael Dunn case, and the most recent news about America's "guard labor."

In Jacksonville, Fla., Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old white man, was aggravated by the loud rap music coming from an SUV filled with four black teenagers in a convenience store parking lot. An exchange of insults ensued. Dunn, who was armed and clearly dangerous, claimed that he was threatened by Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old high school senior, and later claimed he saw the barrel of a shotgun coming from the SUV. There was no shotgun; no other witness saw anything that might resemble a shotgun. Dunn opened his door and fired 10 shots into the SUV as it drove away, killing Jordan Davis. Dunn then drove away without calling the cops, and without ever mentioning that the boys had a shotgun.

Under Florida's inane "Stand Your Ground" law, however, Dunn had the right to use lethal force to defend himself if he "reasonably" thought his life was threatened. Dunn's lawyer said, "I don't have to prove the threat, just that Mike Dunn believed it." The Jacksonville jury found

Obama's nuke-powered drone strike on America's energy future

So the “all the above” energy strategy now deems we dump another $6.5 billion in bogus loan guarantees down the atomic drain. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has announced finalization of hotly contested taxpayer handouts for the two Vogtle reactors being built in Georgia. Another $1.8 billion waits to be pulled out of your pocket and poured down the radioactive sink hole.

While Fukushima burns and solar soars, our taxpayer money is being pitched at a failed 20th century technology currently distinguished by its non-stop outflow of lethal radiation into the Pacific Ocean. solarornukes

Take that $6.5 or $8.3 billion and invest it right now in wind, solar, sustainable bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave energy, LED light bulbs, building insulation and Solartopian south-facing windows.

The money is to pump up a pair of radioactive white elephants that Wall Street won’t touch. Georgia state “regulators” are strong-arming ratepayers into the footing the bill before the reactors ever move a single electron—which they likely never will.

China's military advances thanks to the Pentagon

BANGKOK, Thailand -- U.S., Thai and other military forces have begun Cobra Gold, the largest multinational exercise in the Asia-Pacific region, including 17 Chinese troops for the first time, a move perceived in China as proof that Beijing's "regional military impact" cannot be ignored.

Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, opened the Feb. 11-21 Cobra Gold 2014 exercise at Camp Akatosarot, about 230 miles north of Bangkok, on Tuesday (Feb. 11).

"Cobra Gold truly replicates the dynamic security environment we find ourselves in today, and what we will face in the future," Adm. Locklear said at the ceremony.

This year's Cobra Gold includes more than 13,000 participants from various nations, Adm. Locklear said.

It is the 33rd time the U.S.-Thai annual event has been held in Thailand, which is a U.S. treaty ally.

About 9,000 U.S. troops are training alongside 4,000 from Thailand, plus 80 Singaporeans, 120 from Japan, 300 South Koreans, 160 from Indonesia, and 120 from Malaysia.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, along with Laos, Vietnam and several other nations are observers.

State of emergency clamped on Bangkok to stop vigilante protesters

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The government clamped a "state of emergency" on Bangkok and surrounding provinces starting on Wednesday (Jan. 22), empowering security forces to detain people without charge, ban public gatherings, impose curfews, tighten media censorship, and establish no-go zones.

"The government has not yet specified what authorities it will invoke under the decree," the U.S. Embassy said in an e-mailed "Security Message for U.S. Citizens" on Tuesday (Jan. 21) hours after the announcement.

The 60-day-long emergency decree came in response to Bangkok's worsening political violence in which grenades and gunfire injured 29 people at an anti-government protest on Sunday (Jan. 19), two days after a grenade killed one protester and injured 36 others.

A total of 10 people on all sides have perished in Bangkok during the past 11 weeks of anti-government protests.

"The cabinet decided to invoke the emergency decree to take care of the situation and to enforce the law," Caretaker Deputy Prime Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said on Tuesday (Jan. 21).

I felt threatened

Protesters block some voting to weaken Thailand's government

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Anti-election protesters on Sunday (Feb. 2) blocked nearly 10 percent of Thailand's 93,000 polling stations to prevent the quick formation of a new government, despite millions of people voting to replace Parliament's House of Representatives.

After the polls closed, anti-government protesters threatened more disruptions in Bangkok's streets on Monday (Feb. 3), to continue their increasingly violent bid to topple the popular Caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

On Sunday (Feb. 2), protesters manned makeshift barricades in Bangkok and southern Thailand to stop voters, election officials and the distribution of ballots.

Officials said 89 percent of the country's polling stations conducted elections peacefully, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Protesters blocked voters at 438 of Bangkok's 6,671 polling stations, while in southern Thailand no voting could be held in nine provinces where anti-election sentiment was also widespread, the BBC said.

Associated Press put the number of blocked stations in Bangkok at 488, plus "hundreds of polling stations in the south."

The great moral issue of our time

Increasing wealth and income inequality in the United States is the great moral and economic issue of our time. It speaks to whether we will be a nation with a vibrant and growing middle class, or an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of incredibly wealthy families control our economic and political life.

In America today, the top 1% owns 38% of our country's financial wealth. The bottom 60% owns all of 2.3%. In the last several years, 95% of all new income has gone to the top 1%. Sadly, we recently learned that in 2012 the top 40 hedge fund managers in the country earned $16.7 billion dollars, as much as 300,000 public school teachers combined -- almost a third of all high school teachers in America. How's that for national priorities!

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