100 Years of Western Meddling in the Middle East (Or, Is the Friend of the Enemy of my Enemy's Friends an Enemy - Always?)

 In the timeline below, I'm not even including Afghanistan, long a proxy war between the US and Russia ... nor am I including the usual focus on Israel and Palestine. This is just an overview - a brief timeline - of the chaos that has been caused in a large part by the US, Britain, and France in the nations of Iran, Iraq, and Syria over the last 100 years. Follow along....if you can.....

1911:  WWI: Russia and Britain occupy Iran.  Britain stays10 years.

1916:  Britain and France develop the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret Plan to divide the entire middle east outside of the Arabian peninsula.

1920: Britain receives Palestine, Jordan, and what is now Iraq, and installs Sunni elites into power. France occupies what is today Syria and Lebanon. France transfers some Lebanese territory to Syria, and continues occupation of both until 1946.

1921:  Britain withdraws from Iran, and Reza Khan becomes Shah of Iran.

1941: WWII begins. Iraqis overthrow puppet British government in Iraq. Britain and Russia occupy Iran and Iraq to guarantee oil supplies for the Allied effort. Shah Reza Khan is deposed by the superpowers; his son Reza Pahlavi is installed as new Shah of Iran in return for western access to oil. Britain stays in Iraq until 1948.

1943: Lebanon gains independence from France; Britain occupies both Lebanon and Syria to avoid alliances with Germany.

1948: State of Israel established. Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria declare war on Israel. Syria undergoes years of internal revolts following their defeat, many based on ethnic and religious rivalries.

1951: Iranians elect Mosaddegh as Prime Minister.

1953: Mosaddegh nationalizes oil fields, and is subsequently overthrown in US-UK led coup d’etat. The Shah assumes complete control and crushes opposition with torture and secret police with US-UK support.

1958: Iraqis revolt against British-installed Monarchy and Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist party assumes control.

1966: Ba’athist Party also takes control in Syria, but the group is divided between pro and anti Iraq factions.

1970:  The Anti-Iraq wing of the Ba’athist Party, supported by the military, overthrows the Syrian government and installs anti-Iraq Ba’athist Hafez el-Assad as leader.

1975: Civil War breaks out in Lebanon.

1976: Syria begins a 30 year occupation and effective control of Lebanon.

1978: Iranians revolt against the Shah; The Iranian Revolution installs Ayatollah Khomeini in a  theocratic state.

1979: US refuses to return the Shah to Iran to face trial; students take Americans Embassy hostage for 444 days.

1980: Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invades Iran, receiving financial, military, and chemical weapons from the US.

1988: Hussein’s Iraq launches chemical genocide against Kurdish minority in northern Iraq.

1990: Iraq annexes Kuwait.  US, France, UK, and Syria enter the Gulf War against Hussein; Kurds rebel in the north.

1998: US President Clinton signs Iraq Liberation Act, calling for “regime change” in Iraq.

2000: Syria’s Hafez el-Assad dies; his son Bashar al-Azzad takes control.

2001: Al Qaeda attacks the United States.  US State Department meets with Iran secretly in Switzerland to obtain cooperation on the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and al qaeda throughout the region.

2002: President Bush refers to Iran as being part of the “Axis of Evil” and US-Iran relations deteriorate quickly.

2003: US-led coalition enters Iraq and overthrows Hussein. Shi’ite led coalition government installed, with a semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

2005: A series of assassinations of Lebanese officials is blamed on Syria’s Assad; protests and pressure from the west result in Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

2008: Lebanon’s new Cabinet establishes Hezbollah, a Shi’ite paramilitary organization, with legal status. Hezbollah is committed to driving the Americans, French, and British out of the Levant, is funded by Iran, and allied with Syria’s Assad in the Syrian Civil War.

2011: US Troops leave Iraq, and Sunni-Shi’ite struggles accelerate. The “Arab Spring” spreads to Syria and full-scale civil war ensues, resulting in over 100,000 deaths and 2 million refugees.  Anti-Assad forces include Kurds and ISIS (“Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”) allies in the northeast of Syria.

2014: The Sunni-dominated ISIS military assume effective control over eastern Syria, and begin successful invasion of Western Iraq. 

News outlets and US Government Hawks reduce the march of ISIS to that of "al qaeda linked militants" - a simpleton's version.

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Honeybees and a Tale of Two Companies: Mann Lake vs. Monsanto

 Honey bees, crucial in the pollination of many U.S. food crops, continue to die off at an alarming rate.  Total losses of managed honey bee colonies was 23.2 percent nationwide for the 2013-2014 winter, according to the annual report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the "Bee Informed Partnership," a group of honeybee industry participants.

The death rate for the most recent winter, October 2013 through April 2014, follows a 30.5 percent loss reported for the winter of 2012-2013, and a 21.9 percent loss in 2011-2012.  At this rate, bee populations have been dying at a rate the U.S. government says is economically unsustainable. Honey bees pollinate plants that produce about a quarter of the food consumed by Americans, including apples, almonds, watermelons and beans, according to government reports.
Scientists, consumer groups and bee keepers say the devastating rate of bee deaths is due at least in part to the growing use of pesticides sold by agrichemical companies to boost yields of staple crops such as corn.  On May 9 the Harvard School of Public Health released a study that found that two widely used neonicotinoids — a class of insecticide — appear to have significantly harmed honey bee colonies over their winter dormant period. 

"With the damning evidence mounting, pesticide companies can no longer spin their way out of this crisis," said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer who specializes in food issues. 

The guilty parties? Monsanto Co (whose executives have close ties with both the Obama Administration and with Bill and Hillary Clinton) and DuPont,  both of whom are responsible for producing the majority of the defoliant Agent Orange which affected generations of Americans during the post-Vietnam war years.   

Last year, organic farmers were outraged to discover that the Illinois Department of Agriculture had actually seized and destroyed healthy bee colonies belonging to a scientist who spent 15 years developing a strain that was resistant to the toxic effect of Monsanto’s chemical Roundup.

Meanwhile, the entire European Union has enacted an outright ban on the use of neonicotinoids on crops, home lawns, and gardens

But in the small town of Hackensack, Minnesota, a small company named Mann Lake Limited   stands as David against Goliath.

The company was started by Betty and Jack Thomas, who were hobby beekeepers 30 years ago. But as bees and supplies grew scarce, they took matters into their own hands.  

“Let’s start a little bee keeping supply business as a cottage industry out at the lake,” Jack said.

It wasn’t long before business boomed. They now employ 350 people, making their business larger than the town in which they are located. Those 350 employees make everything from the hives to the food bees eat in the off season. They supply beekeepers large and small, from Minnesota to the Middle East, and have recently opened a new facility in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

“When you are a hobby beekeeper you start out with the equipment which we make,” Jack said. “Now you need bees to put in that equipment.”  And so, millions of bees arrive at Mann Lake Limited in early May, after a 30-hour nonstop run from California, where the new bees are bred. They come in 2,000 wooden crates, stacked onto pallets.  Each box holds a queen, and 15,000 worker bees.

Nationwide, the problems that both commercial and hobby beekeepers have is keeping their bees alive and away from the pesticides that appear to be annihilating them. 

“Always in the back of the mind is: What else can we do?” Jack said. “Where can we expand? What new products can we come up with?”

It’s all to give bees a fighting chance. 

Betty and Jack, like some other socially responsible businesses such as Juan Valdez Coffee and New Belgium Brewing,  have since turned their business over to their employees through an employee stock ownership plan.  In essence, their business’ “worker bees” are also now the owners “the colony,” and all share a vision to prevent a catastrophic collapse of the nation’s food supply.

One can only hope that as in the biblical story, David defeats the mighty Goliath.

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NBA: Legal Route is to Toss Clippers as an NBA Team

From the just-released Summary of Termination Charges (last paragraph says it all):

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Fed Logic: Let Stranded Marine Mammals Die (Because you might hurt them if you help them)

It is a tale of twisted logic that only a government bureaucracy could create.

Each year, particularly in the spring, marine mammals find themselves stranded on sand bars and beaches along America’s coasts. Seals, dolphins, small whales and other critters somehow make a wrong turn and find themselves beached and unable to return to the water. Many of these strandings occur on shifting tidal sand bars and barrier beaches, particularly in places like Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, the north shore of Massachusetts, and Fire Island and Montauk in New York. Without human assistance, many die.

At the same time, in order to protect sea mammals from harassment, the federal government prohibits anyone from coming within 150 feet of a sea mammal, unless they are part of a recognized rescue partner organization. Trained, certified volunteer responders may not operate without an oversight organization over them on location; this is a provision of the 1992 Marine Protection Act, which set up the “Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program,” administered by NOAA.

On Wednesday, NOAA admitted one flaw in this arrangement: there is only one such "certified" partner organization in the region qualified to respond to mammal strandings: the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and they only respond to calls on Cape Cod.

It has no such partner organizations anywhere else in New England. A panicked request to the Towns of New England was issued by NOAA this week to try and find some partners.

So, under Government logic:

If an animal is stranded, you may not help.

Only NOAA-certified volunteers working under a parent organization can assist the distressed animal.

There are no such organizations in most of the northeast.

So, if a whale or seal is stranded, it must be left to die. Because, like, if you just go and assist it, you might hurt it.

Huh?

This is a prime example of what I call “The Cult of License,” or the tendency for Americans (or at least their government) to believe that regular people can’t do anything without Government Certification.

In a national disaster, you’re not supposed to help a neighbor, but just listen to government orders (helping your neighbor evacuate is called “Self-dispatching” in FEMA terminology.) You’re not supposed to braid your neighbor’s daughter’s hair without a cosmetology license. You’re not supposed to home educate your children without a teaching license. You’re not supposed to sell homemade cupcakes without a commercial kitchen license. On and on and on…

Last year, on Fire Island, I came across a newborn fawn separated from its mother by a cyclone fence. And yes, I worked to reunite the two, and came within inches of the fawn to direct its steps home.

And, I got news fer ya… if I see a stranded mammal, as a human being, I will help it.

So arrest me already.


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Marois and the PQ: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory in Québec

I freely admit to being a Francophile. In junior high school, when many of my friends were taking Spanish as their “foreign” language (a decision that makes a lot of sense in New York), I enrolled in French, and continued taking it through high school. Two years ago I took an intensive conversation-immersion class at the college where I teach in January, just to brush up on my skills, skills that come in handy on my annual March vacation in Québec. And in fact, in five days, I will once again be travelling to Montréal, proudly sporting a fleur-de-lis tattoo on my left shoulder, diving into mounds of Poutine and eating myself silly at a Sugar Shack.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I am following the upcoming Provincial elections in Québec with some fascination and interest. Just two years ago, on this blog, I chronicled (and predicted) the rise to power of Pauline Marois and le Parti Québécois, with their vision of an independent Québec (Separatists Poised for Québec Election) And I must admit, whether we are discussing Scotland, Kurdistan, or the Tuaregs of Mali, I sympathize with people-groups seeking their right to self-determination. As the largest and most significant French-speaking and French-cultured people in the entire western hemisphere, Québec sovereignty is something I can support – at least theoretically.

But, with the elections only 16 days away (April 7), it appears that Marois and the PQ will suffer a deserved defeat.
If it is possible to go overboard on a principle, the PQ has found a way to do it.

In their efforts to preserve what is unique about Québec, the Province has won concessions from the rest of Canada on a variety of issues, most notably immigration. Canada scores and rates potential immigrants based on a number of factors, including job skills, education, etc. Québec won a concession that permits that province to give “extra points” to would-be immigrants for whom French is their mother tongue.

One unforeseen consequence of this (being that there are so few places where French is spoken as the primary language) is that Québec has seen an increase in immigrants from places like Algeria, Morocco, and Lebanon, all places where French colonialism’s tentacles established French as the national language.

But, from at least one perspective, that creates an entirely new set of “Un-Québec” problems: these immigrants and students are Muslim. Some were burkas or other religious head gear. And if there is any way to bring out an ugly xenophobia or a parochial mindset, it is to drop immigrant Muslims into the midst of a French culture that already sees itself as “under siege” by a dominant English-speaking Canada.

And so, Marois unveiled the party’s “Charter of Values,” which purports to codify in law the values that identify Québec’s uniqueness. Within that Charter are provisions that make it illegal to wear conspicuous religious symbols (Jewish yarmulkes, Muslim burkas, and Sikh headgear) in government offices or as government employees. In Québec, that means not only the huge government sector, but schools and hospitals as well. In a well-publicized (and ridiculous) exercise in linguistic zealotry, the province’s Language Police went after a Montréal restaurant for printing the word “pasta” on a menu (“pasta” is Italian, and not French, and therefore a violation of new requirements mandating business be conducted in French.) Other PQ candidates have pushed the sovereignty issue way too hard, forcing Marois to concede that the borders would remain open, promising continued use of Canadian currency, and insisting that a Québecker would continue to sit on the governing board of the Bank of Canada, none of which are credible promises that an independent Québec could guarantee.

To be fair, the majority of Francophones support the Charter of Values. However, minorities, Anglophones, civil libertarians, and younger people have begun to roll their eyes at the intolerance coming from the PQ. Protests have sprung up, especially in Montréal. On Tuesday, The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne released a public statement saying Quebec sovereignty would create "very real concerns" for the First Nations community. “If Quebec ultimately chooses to separate, I would advise our Council and community to hold our own vote in order to determine whether we would stay within the borders of Quebec or separate ourselves,” said Chief Mike Kanentakeron Mitchell.


Having defeated all other parties just two years ago, the PQ appears to be heading for crushing defeat in just two weeks. The most recent polls are in significant agreement:

45 per cent of likely voters currently intend to vote for the opposition Liberal Party, compared to just 32 per cent for Pauline Marois’ PQ. A third party, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) was in third place with 13 per cent, though it is likely that the Liberals and the CAQ would form a coalition together to keep the PQ out of power altogether.

Some of the strongest opposition to the PQ is coming from Montréal, long a cosmopolitan crossroads in Québec, and the center of a student uprising against tuition hikes that help defeat the Liberal Party two years ago and catapult the PQ to power (Montréal Students, Labor, Citizens ). It would appear that the PQ has lost this group of voters. In fact, within moments after completing this post, the following news item came across my feed:

"...Some 75.7% of voters in the riding of Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques, in downtown Montreal is French. However, since last Monday, more than half of the people who have to get the right to vote for the first time are English or allophones. This is a demographic phenomenon observed in several districts of the metropolis, and a concern at the highest levels for electoral authorities..." (Original: Quelque 75,7 % de l’électorat de la circonscription de Sainte-Marie–Saint-Jacques, au centre-ville de Montréal, est francophone. Pourtant, depuis lundi dernier, plus de la moitié des personnes qui se présentent pour obtenir le droit de voter pour la première fois sont anglophones ou allophones. Un phénomène démographique observé dans plusieurs circonscriptions de la métropole, et qui inquiète au plus haut point les autorités électorales. - Le Devoir: libre de penser)

It will be an interesting visit this year. I expect to be welcoming Liberal Party Leader Philippe Couillard as the next Premier in Québec.

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Pearson PLC and the Mis-Education of America's Youth

Sounding like the grumpy old man I have become, I often shake my head and complain about the lack of basic knowledge among young people today when it comes to government, history, geography, literature, and civics. Ask a college-aged student about the branches of government and Constitutional provisions, and one gets blank stares or impassioned (though incorrect)pronouncements more often than accurate answers. I know I have not been alone in throwing my hands up and asking, “what are they teaching these kids?!” (And I’m a teacher!)

Well this week I found at least one of the answers – and it lies in the textbooks and textbook companies being chosen.

Pearson PLC is one of the largest textbook manufacturers in the United States, with sales in 70 countries. Like most large text publishers, they seek multi-million dollar monopoly contracts to supply books for all public schools throughout a state via state education departments. But they have also wrapped their tentacles around more than just printing books, as they have now become the predominant publisher of testing systems as well (in spite of a 2012 discovery in New York State that at least 30 of their answers on such student tests were incorrect.)

Last year, I was hired by Pearson on a temporary contract to grade qualifying exams submitted by new teachers. These were individuals who were seeking to become certified public school teachers, and they took essay tests relating to their chosen subject area. As a college business teacher, I was selected to help grade aspiring high school business teacher exams.
We were told to grade essays on a 1-4 scale. If a candidate at least "grasped some of the issues", we were instructed to grade that essay a 3 out of 4 - a passing grade. It was a group effort, whereby scores were agreed upon by consensus, and I was constantly critiqued for scoring essays too low. I was also overruled.

The most frustrating part is that we were told specifically that we could not reduce our scoring for spelling, grammar, or organization.

Yes, that’s right. America’s next generation of teachers: spelling, grammar, and organization are unimportant for the purposes of obtaining teacher certification. Perhaps that's part of the problem...

But now I've run across this textbook gem, currently making the rounds on Facebook… I'd like to say it's a hoax, but, I am sad to say, it’s been verified.

The American Nation, a Pearson textbook (ISBN 0131817159), is a mandated textbook used throughout New York State. On page 237, the text discusses the Constitutional Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Rather than allowing the Constitution’s words to speak for themselves, and rather than drawing on legal principles, the text explains the Second Amendment this way:

“Each state has the right to maintain a militia, an armed force for its own protection. Today, the militia is the National Guard. The national government and the states can and do regulate the private ownership and use of firearms.”

That’s not fact: that's pure political sentiment. As a matter of Constitutional Law, it is a complete failure.

In striking down the Firearms Control Regulations Act as unconstitutional, the U.S. Court of Appeals held as follows:

“[The Second Amendment] protects an individual right to keep and bear arms…the [right] was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad)."

They also noted that though the right to bear arms also helped preserve the citizen militia, "the activities [the Amendment] protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia." The court determined that handguns are "Arms" and concluded that thus they may not be banned by the District of Columbia.

On appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)), the Court affirmed the decision, holding that text and history of the Second Amendment demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms, not a right restricted to national guards or formal militias.

Pearson’s textbook is absolutely, legally, and ethically, incorrect. And if you wonder why today’s young people don’t understand their government, country, or history, here is a prime example why.


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One Quarter Million Views as of Today....

On June 15, 2005, I began this blog with a post expressing my annoyance at Congressional investigations into "performance enhancing substances" in Major League Baseball. The combination of breast-beating self-righteousness along with an obvious complete lack of understanding regarding anything they were talking about was making me crazy. 9 years later, I am no less disgusted with self-righteous politicians passing new regulations about things they know nothing about in an endless quest for power and control. And scrolling through these 409 posts has been like a 'walk down Memory Lane."

Back in 2005, I didn't even know that the NSA existed. Back in 2005, gay marriage was not legal anywhere in the US. Who would have thought that in the 9 years this blog has been in existence that such a tidal change would have occurred in the quest for marriage equality? What a long, unbelievable ride it's been...and it's all been chronicled right here.

As of today, according to Google Analytics, this page has now been visited 250,000 times - one quarter million readers from every continent, including translations into multiple languages.

Wow. Thank you to all of you who have enabled this blog - merely one's man's hobby, an effort to chronicle world and national events - to grow and survive this long.

Thom .

6 DAYS UNTIL OPENING DAY!!!

Join my fantasy league while you're at it!

Illiterate Graduates? Blame Politicians, not Teachers

I have written many blog posts about the functional and cultural illiteracy of young people. We all have stories of entire classes of college freshmen unable to write essays, calculate a percent change, identify nations on a map, or distinguish between U.S. Constitutional clauses and mere political slogans.  I have often stated that something is terribly wrong with our educational system…but this article will be different.

This is not about criticizing students, or, for that matter, their teachers.

It is an indictment of politicians who hold teachers and schools “accountable” for these problems, while themselves being a significant contributing cause to the problem.

As the President of a teacher’s union at a local community college, I have watched in amazement as the politicians and bureaucrats have fought us tooth and nail each time we have sought to improve teaching and learning. If you are one who has assumed that the blame for students’ poor performance can be laid at the feet of their teachers…please reconsider. What follows are just two of the head-shaking realities.

Currently, adjunct college teachers around Massachusetts are voting on a new contract. This new contract includes an incredible “win” for labor that we fought long and hard for – a requirement that Management actually evaluate new Adjunct Faculty before they receive reappointment rights.

Yes, you read that correctly: we, the teachers in the union, have been asking for new teachers to receive timely, helpful, substantive evaluations from school administrators soon after being hired to help them become better teachers.

Management has fought us on this. For Years.  

Finally, they agreed to this in our new proposed contract…as long as there were no repercussions if they failed to get around to it.

Yes, folks, this is the reality of teaching in 2014.

In a separate process, the state’s Board of Higher Education is implementing a brand new approach to math course delivery throughout our colleges.  

The Boston politicians, taking their cues from Washington, are concerned that it is taking students too long to graduate from college (ignoring the fact that many students are also working due to a financial crisis none of them created.)  Another reason for this is the need for many students to take what are called “developmental" math courses (in days past these were called “remedial” math courses.)  Many students arrive at the college doors with a high school diploma…and critically poor math skills.

In our school there are three levels of sequential math courses that our instructors use simply to get many of these students *ready* to take their first college-level math. That’s three semesters of developmental math – which, of course, means that students will not be able to simply walk in and walk out of college like a revolving door.

One would think that our politicians would be concerned with this, and would allocate teaching and support dollars to our K-12 system to beef up math instruction.

But no.  Instead, they are attempting to find a way to get these students in and out of college without being tripped up by such annoying subjects as math.

We have been asked to consider removing math requirements from courses and programs.  We are being asked to consider allowing students to take developmental math at the same time they are taking the very courses they need those math skills for. As a business and economics teacher, I can not imagine having to instruct students in basic financial statements, stock fluctuations, and economic analysis while they are still attempting to master the concepts of decimals and the order of operations - but apparently, that makes sense to Boston politicians.

We have been asked to reconsider whether math is really even necessary in many of our programs.  At one community college in the state, the administration has been moving forward to allow students to receive college credit for remedial courses whose subject matter is essentially at a high school level – another effort to simply process students through the institution in a timely fashion without actually expecting them to have accomplished college-level work.

This de-construction of math curricula is a precursor, I fear, to the next step in this process: a re-examination of the English curriculum, which is another subject where there are significant developmental needs among our students.

When all is said and done, the politicians will no doubt claim victory: they will point to increased graduation rates, and more timely completion of degrees. 

The losers will be our students, who will continue to lack basic skills; our teachers, who will be blamed for turning out illiterate graduates; and our society, which will continue to be frustrated over poor employee performance even after our politicians have declared ‘victory.’

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