The closely guarded internal financial workings of the Sonoma State Academic Foundation may be about to see the light of public review.

Robert Karlsrud, dean emeritus of the SSU School of Social Sciences, is concerned that the administration of the Sonoma State University Academic Foundation is concentrated in just a few top officials at the school, and particularly that the finances of the campus and its foundation are directed by the same individual:  Laurence Furukawa-Schleret, SSU's Vice President for Administration & Finance and Chief Financial Officer.

The high priority given to fund-raising for the construction of the Green Music Center by the Arminana administration has rankled many on campus, especially as the cost of the structure sopared to $120 million. The partially completed building, seen here earlier in the construction process, still needs around $20 million to be finished, and even then, says Karlsrud, it may be a fiscal drai for many years to follow.

SB 218, by San Francisco State Senator Leeland Yee, was prompted in part by the public disclosure of the SSU Foundation’s loans to a former board member. The bill has passed the state legislature and is now awaiting the governor’s signature to become law.  Dean Karlsrud says the campus community is also waiting to see if the measure has any real teeth.

Karlsrud's detailed critique of the Foundation's fiscal operations was published online by the  Empire Report.

Armed conflict throughout the world has been declining over the past decade, according to the Canadian research group, Project Ploughshares.

Many of the current wars still underway around the globe get little, if any, coverage in America’s mainstream media. And that may actually be a good thing, as Project Ploughshares Executive Director John Seibert explains.

The most recent report on global wars shows none continuing anywhere in the western hemisphere, but there’s a less obvious downside to what at first blush looks like good news.

The research of Project Ploughshares forms the basis of the recent documentary film, Soldiers of Peace  which will be shown Sunday afternoon at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa as part of a local observation of the International Day of Peace . Click on nthe icon below to see a graph of the number of armed conflicts tallied by Project Ploughshares each year over the past decade.

You can also read the Project Ploughshares annual report here, and watch the trailer for Soldiers of Peace here:

A group representing several thousand former Sonoma County employees is suing the county to roll back a reduction in health care benefit for the retirees.

Former Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Greg Jacobs, vice president of the Sonoma County Association of Retired Employees (SCARE), contends the county has ample fiscal resources to keep paying the retirees’ promised health care benefits.

Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown says that while the board made the cuts reluctantly, albeit on a 5-0 vote, other counties have had to take even harsher actions.

The famous rum-making Bacardi family has deep roots in their native Cuba, where they first supported, then vehemently opposed the Castro-led revolution.

NPR Correspondent Tom Gjelten (below)  says he was surprised to find how deeply intertwined the histories of Cuba and the Bacardi family had been for over a century.

The Bacadi family were still strong backers of the revolution led by Fidel Castro (center, below) when they marched into Havana to claim power in 1959, although that changed 20 months later when their rum distillery and other business properties were seized by the new government.