Rouge Forum Dispatch: Truth is in the Whole
We Say Fight Back!
“Read Marx. Make Class War.” (E.W.R.)
with a very little trickery, the internet archive still works www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Conference in Cuba
“Socialism for the Twenty-first Century”
“The Influence of Philosophy and the Social Science
on the Cultural Heritage of the countries of the American Mediterranean”
November 19 to November 21, 2014. www.globallearning-cuba.com/new-political-science-2014.html
Ukraine: Nationalists vs Nationalists Around 20 self defense members were killed and four were captured in Mariupol during the fight at the city police department, while law enforcement authorities have one dead and five injured, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in comments delivered by Interfax. voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_05_09/Ukrainian-armed-forces-enter-Mariupol-two-people-killed-eight-wounded-media-1264/
Fredy Perlman: The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism
richgibson.com/PerlmanNationalism.htm
Nationalism was proclaimed dead several times during the present century:
– after the first world war, when the last empires of Europe, the Austrian and the Turkish, were broken up into self~determined nations, and no deprived nationalists remained, except the Zionists;
– after the Bolshevik coup d’etat, when it was said that the bourgeoisie’s struggles for self-determination were henceforth superseded by struggles of workingmen, who had no country;
– after the military defeat of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, when the genocidal corollaries of nationalism had been exhibited for all to see, when it was thought that nationalism as creed and as practice was permanently discredited.
Yet forty years after the military defeat of Fascists and National Socialists, we can see that nationalism did not only survive but was born again, underwent a revival. Nationalism has been revived not only by the so-called right, but also and primarily by the so-called left. After the national socialist war, nationalism ceased to be confined to conservatives, became the creed and practice of revolutionaries, and proved itself to be the only revolutionary creed that actually worked.
Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation. The claims of the revolutionary nationalists have been broadcast to the world by the two oldest continuing hierarchic institutions surviving into our times: the Chinese State and, more recently, the Catholic Church. Currently nationalism is being touted as a strategy, science and theology of liberation, as a fulfillment of the Enlightenment’s dictum that knowledge is power, as a proven answer to the question What Is to be Done.
To challenge these claims, and to see them in a context, I have to ask what nationalism is – not only the new revolutionary nationalism but also the old conservative one. I cannot start by defining the term, because nationalism is not a word with a static definition; it is a term that covers a sequence of different historical experiences. I’ll start by giving a brief sketch of some of those experiences. (more at link above)
Rouger Bill Boyer on Stage:
Cowardly WarMonger Rice Cancels Rutgets Speech: Protesters Win! Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had been invited to give the commencement address at Rutgers University in New Jersey this month, said on Saturday that she would no longer give the speech. Her announcement came after weeks of protests by some students and faculty members over the university’s decision to invite her.
Protesters had argued that Ms. Rice should not have been selected as the speaker because of her involvement in the Iraq war during the Bush administration. Students staged a sit-in last week outside the office of the university’s president, Robert L. Barchi, to protest the speech, scheduled for May 18th. www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/nyregion/rice-backs-out-of-rutgers-speech-after-student-protests.html
May 10 1914: Bouck White, pastor of the Church of the Social Revolution thrown out of Rockefellers’ Calvary Baptist Church re: #Ludlow protest.
Young Rockefeller was well known for saying it was possible to acquire millions and not violate the Sermon on the Mount. When Rockefeller defended the company’s policies and actions after Ludlow and blamed the deaths on union agitators, it was too much for White to bear.
White’s book, The Call of the Carpenter (1911) was one of the bestselling books among socialists and anarchists at the time. White portrayed Jesus’ goal as founding “an empire of humanity” in which the last would be first and the mighty would be laid low by expanding equality, liberty and democracy. All these goals were in sync with socialism; the institutional churches had distorted Jesus’ mission.
Mother Jones used the same themes in many of her speeches.
Rather than an “invasion,” White merely sought to ask questions during the service at the time it was usually allowed. He brought along 150 of his parishioners, including members of the Industrial Workers of the World.
The Rockefellers, alerted to White’s plans, stayed away from church that week amidst high security. For more on Bouck White and the conception of Jesus among radicals at this time, see Dave Burns, The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus (Oxford 2013)
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Obamagogue and LapPoodle Want Immigrant Kids to Learn Lies, Obedience, and Loyalty in Capitalist schools Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Education Secretary Arne Duncan issued a strong warning on Thursday to public school districts nationwide not to deny enrollment to immigrant students in the country illegally.
The Justice and Education Departments jointly issued an update of guidelines they published three years ago, reminding districts that they “may be in violation of federal law” if they turn students away because the children or their parents do not have immigration papers. The guidelines clarify what documents schools can and cannot require to prove that students live in their districts.
“Sadly too many schools and districts are still denying rights to undocumented children,” Mr. Duncan said on a conference call with reporters. “That behavior is unacceptable, and it must change.” He added, “Our goal must be to educate, not to intimidate.” h
Michigan’s “Choose a Capitalist School” Shell Game At what point does the state say enough is enough? Last summer, the Legislature paved the way to dissolve two districts that had also run out of money: Inkster and Buena Vista. That legislation was narrowly tailored to those districts, however.
Perhaps it’s time to expand the option of closing districts in extreme fiscal distress. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140509/OPINION01/305090006#ixzz31G6FITjK
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5G7seNlbA
Resegregation, 60 Years Later In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, the small town of Tuscaloosa, Ala., had quickly become a model example of school integration and reaped many of its rewards. But within a single generation, the city has managed to become one of the most rapidly resegregating school districts in the country.
So what went wrong?
ProPublica’s Nikole Hannah-Jones details in her latest report how gerrymandering of school attendance zones and, surprisingly, support from a small pocket of black elites has transformed Tuscaloosa’s education system into a remnant of its former glory. Central High School today doesn’t have the same caliber of teachers or curriculum as its integrated sister school, Northridge. Central is also on a state watch list and has been plagued with low graduation rates — all problems associated with segregated schools, which the Supreme Court thought it had addressed 60 years ago. www.propublica.org/podcast/item/podcast-resegregation-60-years-later/?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter
NCLB? Nothing. RaTT? Nothing. Kids? Losing. Capitalism? Just fine, thanks. U.S. high school seniors, whose school years have encompassed the sweeping education initiatives of two presidents, failed to demonstrate improvement in math or reading on a national exam.
Only 38 percent of those tested in 2013 scored as proficient readers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” released today by the Education Department. Three-quarters failed to show math proficiency. The scores were little changed from 2009, when the test was last given.
“Stagnation is unacceptable,” David Driscoll, chairman of the board that administers the test, said in a statement. “Achievement at this very critical point in a student’s life must be improved to ensure success after high school.”
The seniors were in the first grade when President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law. The program called for schools to demonstrate yearly progress and to show that all students are proficient on state standardized tests by 2014. Most states have received waivers under President Barack Obama, whose Race to the Top program has pledged $4.35 billion in state grants in four years to boost education standards. www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-07/high-school-seniors-in-u-s-fail-to-show-reading-math-progress.html
Philly School Cheats Join that Long Line The culture of cheating was so blatant at Cayuga Elementary, authorities said, that the principal broadcast orders to tamper with tests over the loudspeaker.
Five educators were arrested Thursday and accused of tampering with public records, forgery, conspiracy and other crimes – the first such charges brought in a Pennsylvania cheating investigation expected to yield more arrests.
Charged Thursday were Evelyn Cortez, 59, Cayuga’s principal until last week, and teachers Jennifer Hughes, 59, Lorraine Vicente, 41, Rita Wyszynski, 65, and Ary Sloane, 56, who had been principal of Bethune Elementary.
The five were immediately suspended by the Philadelphia School District. Because they have not been convicted, they will still collect pay. Read more at www.philly.com/philly/education/20140509_State__A__quot_culture_of_cheating_quot__at_Philadelphia_school.html#vjquBkdhA8O1V1C4.99
Piling on: Houston Crooks The Houston school board agreed Thursday night to fire five Jefferson Elementary teachers accused of helping students cheat on state exams last year, district officials said.
The trustees did not discuss the decison or name the teachers, but district spokeswoman Tiffany Davila-Dunne confirmed the terminations, which stemmed from a recent investigation into cheating allegations. Attorneys for the teachers have said they are innocent. They now can appeal their firings to the Texas Education Agency. http://blog.chron.com/k12zone/2014/05/hisd-board-wrap-up-cheating-funding-and-books/
Another Former Detroit teacher gets 3 years in prison for defrauding district A former Detroit Public Schools teacher was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday for her conviction for defrauding the district, U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade said.
A federal court jury found Domonique Campbell, 39, guilty of program fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and tax charges, following a five-week trial in August 2013.
Campbell’s mother, Sandra Campbell, 60, a former DPS contract accountant and school board candidate, was sentenced in December to 70 months in federal prison for her role in the scheme.
Between 2004 and 2008, prosecutors say the pair obtained more than $530,000 from DPS through a scheme in which orders were placed with the Campbells’ sham company for books and educational materials that were never provided to the schools. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140506/SCHOOLS/305060101#ixzz31G7Z14We
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Blum: The Russians are Coming Again! “The Russians are coming … again … and they’re still ten feet tall!”
So, what do we have here? In Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere the United States has been on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. But not in Ukraine. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in Ukraine the United States is on the same side as the neo-Nazi types, who – taking time off from parading around with their swastika-like symbols and calling for the death of Jews, Russians and Communists – on May 2 burned down a trade-union building in Odessa, killing scores of people and sending hundreds to hospital; many of the victims were beaten or shot when they tried to flee the flames and smoke; ambulances were blocked from reaching the wounded. Try and find an American mainstream media entity that has made a serious attempt to capture the horror. 1
And how did this latest example of American foreign-policy exceptionalism come to be? One starting point that can be considered is what former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates says in his recently published memoir: “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, [Defense Secretary Dick Cheney] wanted to see the dismemberment not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.” 2
That can serve as an early marker for the new cold war while the corpse of the old one was still warm. Soon thereafter, NATO began to surround Russia with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members, while yearning for perhaps the most important part needed to complete the circle – Ukraine.
In February of this year, US State Department officials, undiplomatically, joined anti-government protesters in the capital city of Kiev, handing out encouragement and food, from which emanated the infamous leaked audio tape between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, former US ambassador to NATO and former State Department spokesperson for Hillary Clinton. Their conversation dealt with who should be running the new Ukraine government after the government of Viktor Yanukovich was overthrown; their most favored for this position being one Arseniy Yatsenuk.williamblum.org/aer/read/128 My dear, and recently departed, Washington friend, John Judge, liked to say that if you want to call him a “conspiracy theorist” you have to call others “coincidence theorists”. Thus it was by the most remarkable of coincidences that Arseniy Yatsenuk did indeed become the new prime minister.
Thanks to Leslie Dwyer–posters and art available at www.design4peace.com/ghosts-of-war/ghostwar-2/#main
Ukraine! Who are the masked men? Yuri, who appears to be in his mid-50s, is in many ways an ordinary eastern Ukrainian of his generation. A military veteran, he survived the Soviet collapse to own a small construction business in Druzhkovka, about 15 miles south of here.
But his rebel stature has a particular root: He is also a former Soviet special forces commander who served in Afghanistan, a background that could make him both authentically local and a capable Kremlin proxy.
In this war, clouded by competing claims on both sides, one persistent mystery has been the identity and affiliations of the militiamen, who have pressed the confrontation between Russia and the West into its latest bitter phase.
Moscow says they are Ukrainians and not part of the Russian amed forces, as the so-called green men in Crimea turned out to be.
Western officials and the Ukrainian government insist that Russians have led, organized and equipped the fighters.
A deeper look at the 12th Company — during more than a week of visiting its checkpoints, interviewing its fighters and observing them in action against a Ukrainian military advance here on Friday — shows that in its case neither portrayal captures the full story.
The rebels of the 12th Company appear to be Ukrainians but, like many in the region, have deep ties to and affinity for Russia. They are veterans of the Soviet, Ukrainian or Russian Armies, and some have families on the other side of the border. Theirs is a tangled mix of identities and loyalties.
Further complicating the picture, while the fighters share a passionate distrust of Ukraine’s government and the Western powers that support it, they disagree among themselves about their ultimate goals www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/europe/behind-the-masks-in-ukraine-many-faces-of-rebellion.html
The Pentagon announced Wednesday that it is dispatching a team of US military advisers to Nigeria to aid the government of President Goodluck Jonathan in rescuing over 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram, which has threatened to sell them into slavery.
British officials told the media that the UK is prepared to send SAS Special Forces units and intelligence-gathering aircraft to the West African country if asked for assistance.
With 174 million people, Nigeria is Africa’s largest country and boasts the largest gross domestic product (GDP) on the continent. It is also Africa’s largest oil producer, ranking eighth in the world in terms of petroleum exports and accounting for 5 percent of US foreign oil imports. It also ranks number four in terms of liquefied natural gas exports.
The deployment of military advisers—who are to be accompanied by FBI and CIA agents and other US officials—was worked out Tuesday in a discussion between President Barack Obama and President Jonathan. It marks a major advance in the steadily escalating military intervention of Washington and its allies throughout the region.
There have been calls from members of Congress for a more aggressive US intervention, including from Senator Susan Collins (Republican of Maine), who demanded that US Special Forces troops be sent to rescue the girls.
Obama, in an interview with ABC News, suggested that the US intervention against Boko Haram would expand, declaring that “this may be the event that helps to mobilize the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organization that perpetrated such a terrible crime.”
To promote such an escalation, the US administration and the corporate media have mounted a major campaign around the kidnapped girls, seeking to exploit the natural indignation and horror over their fate. www.globalresearch.ca/washington-sends-military-personnel-to-nigeria/5381287
Rashid: India Risks Desatbilizing Afghanistan (Rashid) India’s decision last week to pay for arms and equipment from Russia to boost the strength of the Afghan National Army (ANA) could be a dramatic game-changer in the region – as well as a step fraught with escalation in regional rivalries. Pakistan is almost certain to look critically at the deal and accuse India, its rival, of trying to outflank it. For the last few years India has tactfully declined to say yes to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s repeated pleas for the Indian supply of heavy weapons for the ANA, such as long range artillery, tanks and aircraft. Spending billions of dollars in the past decade, the United States has rebuilt the ANA, but it has made sure that it remains a lightly armed force with defensive rather than offensive weapons. Both the US and India seemed to have been careful in not upsetting Pakistan, which has been critical of the size of the ANA and will most certainly react if the ANA receives offensive weapons. Until recently there have been high tensions between the Pakistan military and the ANA along their disputed, porous and unmarked border, with the Afghans repeatedly accusing Pakistan of wilfully allowing the Taliban to cross from their havens in Pakistan to fight the Americans and the ANA. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have no control over large parts of their common border. www.ahmedrashid.com/wp-content/archives/afganistan/articles/pdf/indiarisksdestabilisingafghanistan.pdf
Big Time Squirt Gun Fight China has accused Vietnam of ramming its ships in a disputed part of the South China Sea amid concerns that a tense maritime standoff between the two countries could boil over into armed conflict.
Chinese ships have been ramming into and firing water cannons at Vietnamese vessels trying to stop Beijing from putting an oil rig in the South China Sea 130 nautical miles off Vietnam’s coast, according to officials and video footage on Wednesday. Several boats have been damaged and at least six Vietnamese people on board have been injured, officials said.
China is “deeply surprised and shocked” by Vietnam’s actions, Yi Xianliang, deputy director general of the foreign ministry’s department of boundary and ocean affairs, said at a press briefing on Thursday afternoon. “From 3 May to 7 May, in a short period of five days, Vietnam has dispatched 35 vessels of various kinds which rammed Chinese ships as many as 171 times,” he said.
Yi added that China’s operations in the area were “legitimate, justified and lawful”, and had been ongoing for a decade. “I don’t think we have any reason to stop such operations,” he said.
Elsewhere in the area, the Philippines arrested 11 Chinese fishermen for catching endangered turtles, angering Beijing and further exposing regional strains.
China has recently been harassing Vietnam and Philippine vessels and fishermen in the potentially oil and gas rich waters it claims almost entirely – a shaky stance to many international law experts. www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/china-accuses-vietnam-ships-south-china-sea-oil-rig
US Spies Kill “Armed Civilians” in Yemen Capital A United States Special Operations commando and a Central Intelligence Agency officer in Yemen shot and killed two armed Yemeni civilians who tried to kidnap them while the Americans were in a barbershop in the country’s capital two weeks ago, American officials said on Friday.
The two Americans, attached to the United States Embassy, were whisked out of the volatile Middle East nation within a few days of the shooting, with the blessing of the Yemeni government, American officials said.
News of the shootings comes at a perilous moment for the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, whose collaboration with American drone strikes against suspected members of Al Qaeda is already a subject of seething resentment in Yemen. Yemenis believe, with some evidence, that the drone strikes often kill nearby civilians as well as their targets, so any indication that Mr. Hadi’s government helped conceal the killing of Yemenis by American commandos could be prolematic.
Violence in the country is increasing, and on Friday, militants attacked a checkpoint outside the presidential palace, apparently in retaliation for the government’s roughly 10-day offensive against Qaeda strongholds.
Exactly what the two Americans were doing at the time of the shooting on April 24 is unclear www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/world/middleeast/us-officers-kill-armed-civilians-in-yemen-capital.html?hp&_r=0
US Veterans Scandal: Shinseki Not Quitting America’s top veterans’ affairs official has said he will not resign over claims that as many as 40 people died while waiting for medical treatment in the service’s healthcare system.
Eric Shinseki, the US Secretary for Veterans Affairs, said he is “angry” over the allegations of practices at a number of VA hospitals.
Whistleblowers have claimed that staff at one, in Phoenix in Arizona, created a fake waiting list to hide the true numbers of those awaiting treatment.
Names of those who died, it is claimed, later disappeared from the list.
Mr Shinseki placed the hospital’s director and two other officials on indefinite leave last week while the department’s inspector general probes the claims.
Debbie Allen says her husband Mel, a Vietnam veteran who was a patient at the Phoenix hospital, died of bladder cancer after the tests and diagnosis were delayed for six months. http://news.sky.com/story/1258059/us-veterans-scandal-shinseki-not-quitting news.sky.com/story/1258059/us-veterans-scandal-shinseki-not-quitting
US Backed Jihadists Want Anti-Aircraft Missiles The head of the Syrian opposition says that he will ask the Obama administration to provide antiaircraft missiles and will try to convince American officials that the weapons would not fall into the wrong hands.
In an interview on Tuesday night, Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, president of the opposition coalition, also confirmed reports that Syrian rebels had received American TOW antitank missiles and said the shipment had enabled the opposition to demonstrate that it was able to use and maintain control of advanced American weaponry.
Mr. Jarba, who is visiting Washington for the first time, plans to meet with a senior Pentagon official, leading members of Congress and Secretary of State John Kerry. A White House official said President Obama was expected to see him.
In an effort to present a unified front to the Americans, Mr. Jarba is accompanied by Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, the new leader of the military wing of the Syrian opposition.
The trip came as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria appears to have gained the upper hand in the civil war www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/syria-rebel-leader-says-hell-ask-us-for-anti-aircraft-missiles.html
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Fed Chair Janet Yellen won’t tell Bernie Sanders whether U.S. is democracy or oligarchy She said money was often the deciding factor in which voices were heard during the political process, but she stopped short when Sanders asked if the United States had ceased to be a capitalist democracy but had instead become an oligarchy.
“I prefer not to give labels, but there’s no question we’ve had the trend toward growing inequality, and I personally find it very worrisome trend that deserves the attention of policy makers,” Yellen said. www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/08/fed-chair-janet-yellen-wont-tell-bernie-sanders-whether-u-s-is-democracy-or-oligarchy/
So Long Empire! China poised to pass US as world’s leading economic power this year High quality global journalism requires investment.
The US is on the brink of losing its status as the world’s largest economy, and is likely to slip behind China this year, sooner than widely anticipated, according to the world’s leading statistical agencies.
The US has been the global leader since overtaking the UK in 1872. Most economists previously thought China would pull ahead in 2019. www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d79ffff8-cfb7-11e3-9b2b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz31CHVclQ4
demagogue pimps for Walmart
Large employers could shift nearly all workers’ health coverage to marketplace by 2020
A new investor report predicts that Standard & Poor’s 500 companies could shift 90 percent of their workforce from job-based health coverage to individual insurance sold on the nation’s marketplaces by 2020.
If all U.S. companies with 50 or more employees followed suit, they could collectively save $3.25 trillion through 2025, according to the report by S&P Capital IQ, a division of McGraw Hill Financial.
Standard & Poor’s 500 companies could save $689 billion over the same period if they did likewise, the report found. Savings for S&P 500 companies could top $800 billion if health care inflation remains at the traditional 7.5 percent rate over the next decade, the report estimates.
If realized, the larger move to marketplace coverage would shift more of the cost and responsibility for employee health insurance to workers themselves.
Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/05/01/226155/report-large-employers-could-shift.html#emlnl=Most_Popular_This_Week#storylink=cpy
Hedge Fund Moguls’ Pay Has the 1% Looking Up Hedge fund managers heavily populate the so-called 1 percent in the United States. And they are getting richer.
The 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers in the United States took home a total of $21.15 billion in compensation in 2013, according to an annual ranking published on Tuesday by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.
They earned that hefty sum in a year when most hedge fund managers fell short of the market’s returns. The multibillion-dollar payday is the highest since 2010, and it is 50 percent more than in 2012, according to the survey.
David A. Tepper, the 56-year-old founder of Appaloosa Management, maintained his spot atop the list, bringing in $3.5 billion last year, after earning $2.2 billion in 2012. Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors ranked No. 2 after pocketing $2.4 billion, while John A. Paulson of Paulson & Company took home $2.3 billion, ranking No. 3. dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/hedge-fund-moguls-pay-has-the-1-looking-up/
“Buy American” Fiat Chrysler Offered Every Journalist A Free Tablet Yesterday Automotive News’ Nick Bunkley, who was at Fiat Chrysler’s headquarters in Auburn Hills, said via Twitter that the automaker set aside tablets for journalists to use during the presentation. And then they let them keep them afterward. As Bunkley himself said sardonically, “Ethics, schmethics,” right . jalopnik.com/fiat-chrysler-offered-every-journalist-a-free-tablet-ye-1572883681
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nng0GxzKeQE
Occupy Wall Street Protester Convicted of Elbowing a Cop Who She Says Grabbed Her Breast Few of the thousands of protesters arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park ever saw the inside of a courtroom. One of the exceptions, a young woman named Cecily McMillan, was convicted Monday of elbowing police officer Grantley Bovell during demonstrations on March 17, 2012. She faces up to seven years in prison. Here’s a version of the video of the incident that the jury saw:
Barbarism Rising: The Utash Attack A boy lay on the ground outside the nearby gas station, crying after a pickup hit him. The driver, Steven Utash, pulled over and got out to check on him. People gathered, upset by the child’s cries, and soon someone took a swing. The next thing anyone knew, Utash was on the ground, a mob forming around him, kicking and punching. ..The neighborhood is rife with poverty and other deeply rooted problems…Wonzey Saffold is Wonzey Saffold, but he’s also — according to various law enforcement and court records — Dujuan Saffold, Juan Saffold, Kwon Saffold Lewis, Kwon Lewis, El Lewis, Kjuan Lewis, Keshawn Thompson, Keshaun Thompson, Nigel Gray, Nyjuel Nyjuel Gray, Nyjuel Cummings and Low.
Saffold, 30, is the oldest of the five Detroiters charged in the attack on Utash, 54, of Clinton Township. Records show Saffold has maneuvered through the court system for years using different names and birth dates.
Now he’s facing his most serious charges to date: assault with intent to murder and assault with intent to do great bodily harm.
Utash’s head injuries were so severe from the beating, he spent a month in a hospital and was transferred only last Tuesday to a rehabilitation facility.
Other suspects in Utash’s attack — Bruce Wimbush Jr., 17, James Davis, 24, and Latrez Cummings, 19 — are also each charged with assault with intent to murder and assault with intent to do great bodily harm. A 16-year-old, whom the Free Press is not identifying because he is charged as a juvenile, is facing counts of ethnic intimidation and assault with intent to do great bodily harm.
Surveillance footage shows that the accident on Morang happened in an instant: The young boy steps off of the curb and is hit by the truck.Witnesses say the child screamed as he lay in the street.
According to police, when the 16-year-old was interrogated about the assault, he said he had been hanging out with three guys, including someone named Bruce. After the child was struck by the truck, the teen asked Utash, who had stopped, whether he was going to check on the boy. Utash said yes, they went over to the child and, the juvenile told police, that’s when he hit the driver twice in the head and walked away.
When the juvenile was asked why, he said: “Out of anger.” www.freep.com/article/20140504/NEWS01/305040094/utash-beating-detroit-neighborhood
Texas cop shoots 93-year-old woman to death while responding to 911 call The Hearne Police Department officer killed elderly woman known to neighbors as ‘Miss Sully’ while responding to emergency call about a female waving a gun. Witnesses say the policeman fired five times at Pearlie Golden.
Read more: www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-shoots-death-93-year-old-woman-answering-911-complaint-article-1.1783289#ixzz31Lwl9IPE
Solidarity for Never
ALL AMERICAN UNIONISM IS A PSY-OPS State union fails to seize control of Modesto Teachers Association office The California Teachers Association moved to seize control of the Modesto Teachers Association office Monday, on the eve of a vote to leave the state organization. But MTA says police rebuffed the takeover and the vote will proceed Tuesday as scheduled.
“All they have is a scrap of paper saying they’ve imposed trusteeship,” said Rafael Ruano of the law firm Goyette and Associates Inc. of Gold River, who said he was speaking for MTA leadership. “They took an internal CTA vote and said, ‘We’re taking over MTA,’ and there’s no legal basis for them to do it.”
In a phone call Monday night, Ruano said the state group’s efforts to seize control of MTA bank accounts and property were unsuccessful, and that a court order would have been required to take such actions.
The office drama began Monday afternoon, when CTA trustees Bill McMurray and Rhonnie Tinsley arrived to assume control of the local chapter’s headquarters in the 800 block of Coffee Road.
“We can’t allow this election to go on, because we believe it’s unlawful. The results would be null and void,” said Jonathan Goldman, CTA communications manager, on Monday evening from the group’s Burlingame headquarters. Goldman said by state rules, disaffiliating takes a two-thirds vote of the membership, which was not the plan in Modesto.
Read more here: www.modbee.com/2014/05/05/3326057/state-union-fails-to-seize-control.html#storylink=cpy
Nevada: Unionites vs the Citizens and vs Other Unionites (unions, mainly, divide people) Nevada AFL-CIO opposes proposed margins tax to fund public schools– The Nevada State AFL-CIO on Friday voted to oppose the margins tax measure to fund public education that is on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.
Also known as the Education Initiative, Question 3 would impose a 2 percent business “margins tax” designed to raise an estimated $700 million a year for public schools.
The measure is opposed by many Nevada businesses and elected officials, including Gov. Brian Sandoval. It was put on the ballot by the Nevada State Education Association, which represents teachers. www.reviewjournal.com/politics/nevada-afl-cio-opposes-proposed-margins-tax-fund-public-schools
Sold out ANC–With about 95% of ballots counted, the ANC has 62.5% of the popular vote, putting Jacob Zuma on course to retain presidency South Africans have voted resoundingly to extend the ANC’s 20-year rule, ignoring leadership scandals and economic malaise in a wholesale display of loyalty to the party once led by Nelson Mandela.
Final results were expected on Friday, but with about 95% of the ballots counted the ANC had 62.5% of the popular vote, signalling a parliamentary majority big enough to hand President Jacob Zuma a second five-year term.
The party looks set to fall short of the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution, and its share of the vote will have fallen for second consecutive election, down from 66% at the last poll, in 2009. www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/09/anc-south-african-elections-zuma
TFA grad, Liberal ISer and test resistor loses Seatle Election
www.seattlewea.org/images/static_content/ELECTIONS/2014%20Seattle%20Education%20Association%20Officer%20Elections%20-%20RESULTS%20NOT%20CERTIFIED.pdf
Spy versus Spy
CIA torture report won’t be made public for months The release of the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques _ widely denounced as torture _ is certain to take much longer than the 30 days sought by Senate Democrats.
The panel’s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at the beginning of April that she hoped the CIA would complete by now the process of excising from the report information deemed harmful to national security.
The procedure, however, likely will take months, several experts said. That’s because it’s complex and time-consuming. Not only does the CIA have to review information that came from its archives, but other U.S. intelligence agencies as well as the Pentagon and the State Department have to evaluate material that they provided, they said.
“You can’t get this done in a month and do a serious job,” said Mark Lowenthal, a former senior CIA intelligence analyst. “You only get one shot at scrubbing it.”
As for the inevitable charges that the CIA is dragging its feet, Lowenthal said: “It’s the cost of doing business and you ignore it.”
Some experts, however, believe that there are key portions of the report that could be quickly reviewed and released without disclosing sensitive information such as the identities of intelligence sources, which could endanger lives or compromise ongoing counterterrorism operations.
Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/05/07/226831/despite-senate-hopes-of-speedy.html
Arms Cache Most Likely Kept in Texas by the C.I.A. In passing references scattered through once-classified documents and cryptic public comments by former intelligence officials, it is referred to as “Midwest Depot,” but the bland code name belies the role it has played in some of the C.I.A.’s most storied operations.
From the facility, located somewhere in the United States, the C.I.A. has stockpiled and distributed untraceable weapons linked to preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the arming of rebels and resistance fighters from Angola to Nicaragua to Afghanistan.
Yet despite hints that “Midwest” was not actually where it was located, the secrecy surrounding the C.I.A. armory has survived generations of investigations. In a 2007 essay on the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra affair, for example, a congressional investigator noted that the facility where the C.I.A. had handled missiles bound for Iran remained classified even as other “incredible things were unveiled during the hearings.”
But three years ago, it became public that the C.I.A. had some kind of secret location at Camp Stanley, an Army weapons depot just north of San Antonio www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/us/arms-cache-most-likely-kept-in-texas-by-the-cia.html
The Magical Mystery Tour
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2zfTwz_aI
Vatican Goes After U.S. Nuns and Women On Monday, the National Catholic Reporter reported that the Vatican rebuked the largest umbrella organization for U.S. nuns for planning to honor Sister Elizabeth Johnson, a theologian whose work has been criticized by U.S. bishops for containing “misrepresentations” and doctrinal errors. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) was sharply criticized by the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, in a speech that was made public on Monday. He said that after this disagreement, all LCWR honorees must be pre-approved by the Vatican, a reform first proposed under Pope Benedict XVI after an investigation concluded that U.S. nuns were promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” The LCWR would only comment that Mueller’s staff was “respectful and engaging.” www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/05/06/vatican-goes-after-u-s-nuns-and-women.html
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Don’t Miss This video: Ross Sister does the damn thing… in 1944 www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=612829115454322&set=vb.366101510127085&type=2&theater
Power of May 4 in China Many of the students who occupied Tiananmen Square claimed inspiration from the May Fourth Movement of 1919, a student protest movement incited by outrage over China’s poor treatment in the international settlement after the First World War. The 1919 protests came during a period of intellectual flux, called the New Culture Movement, when students and intellectuals embraced iconoclastic currents of thought from abroad, famously summed up by one of their advocates as “Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy.”But the Chinese Communist Party also claimed the May Fourth Movement as part of its patrimony – a patriotic campaign that paved the way for the spread of Marxism and the founding of the party in 1921. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied student protests in China, answers questions about why May 4 mattered in 1989: sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/q-a-jeffrey-wasserstrom-on-history-dissent-and-the-power-of-may-4-in-china/
Fingerbuster (Willie Lion Smith) www.20sjazz.com/videos/film-archive/fingerbuster.html
Poverty Pimp Update–Petition worker for U.S. Rep John Conyers is a fugitive A petition circulator hired by U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ campaign has a criminal record and is a fugitive, the Michigan Department of Corrections confirmed Thursday evening.
Daniel A. Pennington, 23, is a probation absconder outof Battle Creek, according to Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Michigan Department Corrections.
Court records show Pennington pleaded guilty to a second-degree home-invasion charge in 2012 in Battle Creek and did not fulfill his probation requirements. www.freep.com/article/20140509/NEWS01/305090024/John-Conyers-petition-circulator-wanted-fugitive
So Long
a reminder