Seems Like Only Yesterday

This find by Clever Sister is a heartwarmer.

Though I'd say the term "Harlem Rennaisance" wasn't in use during Ms. Barker's career, bravo to David Shuff, for this lovely video.

Oh, By The Way...

Documents obtained by Der Spiegel reveal how ISIS grew from seemingly nowhere, and who was its mastermind—

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn't widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years....

...when the architect of the Islamic State died, he left something behind that he had intended to keep strictly confidential: the blueprint for this state. It is a folder full of handwritten organizational charts, lists and schedules, which describe how a country can be gradually subjugated.

If he was an indirect product, he was nevertheless a product of the US invasion of Iraq. So was his scheme: religion used as the pretense for a brutal power grab.

What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover. It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an "Islamic Intelligence State" -- a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany's notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.
This blueprint was implemented with astonishing accuracy in the ensuing months. The plan would always begin with the same detail: The group recruited followers under the pretense of opening a Dawah office, an Islamic missionary center. Of those who came to listen to lectures and attend courses on Islamic life, one or two men were selected and instructed to spy on their village and obtain a wide range of information....

The spies were told to note such details as whether someone was a criminal or a homosexual, or was involved in a secret affair, so as to have ammunition for blackmailing later. "We will appoint the smartest ones as Sharia sheiks," Bakr had noted. "We will train them for a while and then dispatch them." As a postscript, he had added that several "brothers" would be selected in each town to marry the daughters of the most influential families, in order to "ensure penetration of these families without their knowledge."

The spies were told to note such details as whether someone was a criminal or a homosexual, or was involved in a secret affair, so as to have ammunition for blackmailing later. "We will appoint the smartest ones as Sharia sheiks," Bakr had noted. "We will train them for a while and then dispatch them." As a postscript, he had added that several "brothers" would be selected in each town to marry the daughters of the most influential families, in order to "ensure penetration of these families without their knowledge."

The spies were to find out as much as possible about the target towns: Who lived there, who was in charge, which families were religious, which Islamic school of religious jurisprudence they belonged to, how many mosques there were, who the imam was, how many wives and children he had and how old they were. Other details included what the imam's sermons were like, whether he was more open to the Sufi, or mystical variant of Islam, whether he sided with the opposition or the regime, and what his position was on jihad. Bakr also wanted answers to questions like: Does the imam earn a salary? If so, who pays it? Who appoints him? Finally: How many people in the village are champions of democracy?

The agents were supposed to function as seismic signal waves, sent out to track down the tiniest cracks, as well as age-old faults within the deep layers of society -- in short, any information that could be used to divide and subjugate the local population. The informants included former intelligence spies, but also {Syrian] regime opponents who had quarreled with one of the rebel groups. Some were also young men and adolescents who needed money or found the work exciting. Most of the men on Bakr's list of informants... were in their early twenties, but some were as young as 16 or 17.

... there is a constantly recurring, core theme, which is meticulously addressed in organizational charts and lists of responsibilities and reporting requirements: surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping.

...

Sharia, the courts, prescribed piety -- all of this served a single goal: surveillance and control.

Digby links the report to what was already known about the Neo-Cons' post-invasion Iraq adventure, observing —

I think we always knew that the seeds of the current debacle were being planted during that period. But I didn't know before this latest article that ISIS specifically stemmed from Saddam's old coterie. It's certainly possible that his original idea has simply morphed into a catch-all terrorist "brand" kind of like Coke or Kleenex. But the fact that it was originally cooked up by Saddam's old henchmen as a way to re-take their territory using the current religious fanaticism of the moment as an inspiration is yet another terrifying lesson in the perils of blowback.

Check-Offs

It's not hard to fill in the boxes of the "Atlanta Cheating Scandal" story.

Demonizing public shools: check
Locating accountability at the bottom: check
Meting out disproportionately harsh punishment to those deemed accountable: check
Those punished happen to be black: check, check, anddouble-check

Charles Pierce observes—

... the ahistorical explosion of bullshit that is Judge Jerry Baxter, who called the convictions of eight former Atlanta school administrators in connection to a fairly massive scandal involving cheating on standardized tests "the sickest thing that ever happened in this town." (Somewhere in the bowels of a SuperMax in Colorado, Eric Rudolph finds himself off the hook.)...

After listing the individual prison sentences, Diane Ravitch adds—

...all of the convicted educators lost their license, their pensions, and five years of compensation.

If only all those bankers who nearly destroyed the economy in 2008 had been dealt with as harshly. But they were "too big to fail."

Richard Rothstein makes it all clear—

Eleven Atlanta educators, convicted and imprisoned, have taken the fall for systematic cheating on standardized tests in American education. Such cheating is widespread, as is similar corruption in any institution—whether health care, criminal justice, the Veterans Administration, or others—where top policymakers try to manage their institutions with simple quantitative measures that distort the institution’s goals. This corruption is especially inevitable when out-of-touch policymakers set impossible-to-achieve goals and expect that success will nonetheless follow if only underlings are held accountable for measurable results.
...

Certainly, educators can refuse to cheat, and take the fall for unavoidable failure in other ways: they can see their schools closed, their colleagues fired, their students’ confidence and love of learning destroyed. That would have been the legal thing to do, but not necessarily the ethical thing to do. As one indicted teacher told the judge before the trial, "I truly believed that I was helping these children stay in school just one more year," something from which they would have benefited far more than being drilled incessantly on test-taking strategies so they could pass tests legally.

As Pierce says—

The sentences are preposterous, but the sentences are not about the crimes involved. The sentences are a message that the power in this country is behind the "reform" grifting movement no matter what the cost to children or to public education in general. They will have their testing. (Ravitch finds one New Jersey superintendent who "hopes" kids will feel bullied by the testing regime. Bravo, sir.) It doesn't matter even if the people sharing in the grift -- like, say, the people involved in designing and running the computers on which the testing system depends -- are any good at their jobs or not. They will have their testing, and I include the current administration in this, come hell, high water, or hangin' judges, and you best not offend against it, or you are the worst thing that ever happened to Atlanta. Leo Frank wept.

Two Eulogies

The passing of historian Stanley Kutler, at 80.

Despite the range of his work, he acknowledged in a 1998 interview with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "I guess it's my lot in life to be identified with Nixon."

That was an unanticipated result of the 1992 suit Kutler and Public Citizen filed against the National Archives, which held over 3000 hours of Oval Office tapes. Until the plaintiffs won, only 63 hours had ever been made public (at the time of the Watergate hearings and prosecutions).

Although the unvarnished conversations reverberated with incriminating observations by Nixon and his inner circle, Professor Kutler said his lawsuit had as much to do with securing access as revealing culpability.

"This is all about establishing further precedent, to make things more transparent," he said in 2011.

Still, the tapes provided Professor Kutler with grist for a book that became a standard reference on Watergate, "Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes"; a play that he wrote, "I, Nixon"; and a television program that he created with the comedian Harry Shearer, "Nixon's the One" a series of vignettes that enacted transcripts from the tapes verbatim. Mr. Shearer described it as "dark comedy."

The tapes, Professor Kutler said, "alternately amused and appalled" him.

"Here, we have both exceptional candor and a practiced level of deceit; the display of a constant calculus of political considerations; the exhibit of raw, human emotions; and, above all, the revelations of extraordinary, illegal, seemingly unprecedented presidential behavior and power," he wrote in "Abuse of Power." "These tapes are the bedrock in laying bare the mind and thoughts of Richard Nixon."

"In the end," Professor Kutler wrote, "Nixon's tapes convicted him.

From Harry Shearer, tributes to "two Stanleys."

Shearer on his collaboration and friendship with Kutler, "a historian who made history"—

Courage is a virtue we're taught to associate with generals, and athletes... Stanley Kutler, history professor in the little college town of Madison, Wisconsin, had the balls to stand up to the former president of the United States and his financial supporters, and to see the battle through to victory. ... What Stanley Kutler gave us is a gift that will keep giving, not just to comedians, and historians, but to anyone curious about those with powerful really act, and talk, and think.

The other eulogy was for Stan Freberg.

Who was not a professional historian, yet among his accomplishments—