Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

After Bitter battle, Baja Farmworkers win 50% Raise and a grower,mis-leader, government double cross  a volatile farm labor strike that crippled exports from one of Mexico’s key agricultural regions ended Thursday night with an unprecedented accord that boosts wages as much as 50% for thousands of laborers in Baja California.

While considered a landmark achievement for a farm labor movement in Mexico, the mood was subdued after labor leaders learned that the federal government was pulling its offer to provide government subsidies to reach the 200-peso daily wage rate — about $13 — sought by laborers.

The agreement reached after a six-hour negotiating session calls for a three-tiered compensation system. Large farms will pay workers 180 pesos per day; medium farms, 165 pesos; and small farms, 150.

Since most work at large agribusinesses, the wage increase amounts to about $4 per day for many of the estimated 30,000 workers in the region 200 miles south of San Diego.

“This isn’t the agreement that laborers were hoping for … but we made significant gains,” farmworker leader Fermin Salazar said after the meeting.
After the meeting at a salon in a San Quintin restaurant, Baja California state officials beat a hasty retreat, fearing that news of the accord could upset laborers. Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid had to push his way through an angry crowd yelling epithets and banging on his SUV.

“Coward! Rat!” yelled the crowd.  The deal appeared to conclude a nearly three-month strike in the San Quintin Valley that was marked by fierce clashes between police and protesters, drawing international media coverage. Large U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart, Costco and Safeway, import berries, tomatoes, cucumbers and other produce from the region.  www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-baja-farm-labor-20150604-story.html

Radical Artists fight Re-Colonization of Detroit

motorcitymuckraker.com/2015/05/31/15-images-artist-mocks-surveillance-consumerism-with-and-without-billionaires-permission/

Vietnam Forever: The Unknown US Torture Whistleblower The witness reported men being hung by the feet or the thumbs, waterboarded, given electric shocks to the genitals, and suffering from extended solitary confinement in what he said were indescribably inhumane conditions. It’s the sort of description that might have come right out of the executive summary of the Senate torture report released last December. In this case, however, the testimony was not about a “black site” somewhere in the Greater Middle East, nor was it a description from Abu Ghraib, nor in fact from this century at all.

The testimony came from Vietnam; the year was 1968; the witness was Anthony J. Russo, one of the first Americans to report on the systematic torture of enemy combatants by CIA operatives and other U.S. agents in that long-gone war. The acts Russo described became commonplace in the news post-9/11 and he would prove to be an early example of what also became commonplace in our century: a whistleblower who found himself on the wrong side of the law and so was prosecuted for releasing the secret truth about the acts of our government.

Determined to shine a light on what he called “the truth held prisoner,” Russo blew the whistle on American torture policy in Vietnam and on an intelligence debacle at the center of Vietnam decision-making that helped turn that war into the nightmare it was. Neither of his revelations saw the light of day in his own time or ours and while Daniel Ellsberg, his compatriot and companion in revelation, remains a major figure for his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers, Russo is a forgotten man.

That’s too bad. He shouldn’t be forgotten.  www.tomdispatch.com/post/176004/tomgram%3A_barbara_myers%2C_the_unknown_whistleblower/

Violence and Boycotts On Eve of Mexico’s Electoral Shell Game n the eve of nationwide elections in Mexico, demonstrators have laid siege to election board offices, torched ballots and vowed to otherwise disrupt voting as public anger at the government and the political establishment boils over.

A movement is also afoot among some Mexicans to boycott the vote or deliberately invalidate ballots cast in Sunday’s midterm elections, which will choose nine state governors, 16 state legislatures, 500 members of the federal Congress and 887 mayors.  …

Disaffection with the government has been compounded by a sluggish economy, corruption scandals and several suspicious mass killings attributed to authorities, including the case of 43 rural college students rounded up by police eight months ago and never seen again, save for a bone fragment from one student found in a mass grave.

It is the violence that has grabbed headlines in the days leading up to the election. Three candidates were assassinated in the last month, and another was beheaded in March. Others have been threatened or temporarily kidnapped. By one count, 19 people were slain in incidents directly connected to the campaign season, which started in February.  www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-elections-20150606-story.html#page=1

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Edu-Doxy Byrd-Bennett Out at Chicago (no bid contracts again, as Deasy)

Byrd-Bennett has resigned as chief executive of Chicago Public Schools amid a federal investigation into a $20.5 million no-bid contract.In a letter dated last week, Byrd-Bennett said she planned to step down Monday.  She did not give any reasons for her decision.

Byrd-Bennett has been on paid leave since mid-April, when school officials released wide-ranging subpoenas from the federal investigation.  Her paid leave was scheduled to end next week, and she had not been expected to return to her post.

Capitalist Schools Run over with Corruption: Ohanian on Byrd-Bennett  susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8964

Barbara Byrd-Bennett Timeline, with Annotations

• August 1996 — November 1998: Supervising Superintendent of the Chancellor’s District in New York City [from her resume: The Chancellor’s District serves as a national model for turnaround school efforts]

• November 1998 — February 2006: As Cleveland Schools CEO, Byrd-Bennett defended the use of Compass Learning and other “drill and kill” programs, telling a Baltimore Sun reporter, “I would argue that there is very little intervention [for struggling students] that isn’t rote. For some things, you just have to learn facts to build to higher-order skills.”NOTE: How did attendance rates jump? from 89% in 2001 to 93.8% in 2002? Absent students were counted ‘present’ if they were given make-up assignment. ( District staff aimed to skew absence data, Janet Okoben, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 17, 2005)

• November 2003 Secretary of Education Rod Paige announces Byrd-Bennett’s appointment to NAEP governing board.
  See How NAEP Labels a Reader

• February 2006 –March 2009: Superintendent-in-Residency for Harcourt School Publishers. In her “disclosure statement to Detroit Public Schools in 2009,” she describer duties as “working with school superintendents, principals, and literacy coaches of grades K-12 in 12 districts throughout the country . . . ..” She resigned this position to take job with Detroit Public Schools. She gave “verbal disclosure” at time of her hiring; on advice of her attorney, on financial disclosure statement for “other income” she wrote “not applicable.” See auditor’s report Review of DPS Procurements with Federal Dollars, Report o. 2011-1008, July 29, 2011 for more details. much more www.susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1414

above, vacillating reactionary Ravitch wins “Dewey Award” from AFT-CIA boss Weingarten.

The Byrd-Bennett, Ravitch Connection at the CIA’s Al Shanker Institute Hopefully, the curriculum issue is starting to emerge from the shadows. Two efforts have more promise than most: E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation is plugging away at aligning its successful curriculum sequence to the new Common Core Standards. Also, the Common Core organization (no relation to the Common Core Standards effort) is developing curriculum maps aligned with the new Common Core English language arts standards. (Full disclosure: E.D. Hirsh is a board member of the Albert Shanker Institute. Barbara Byrd Bennett and Diane Ravitch, who are also our board members, and Toni Cortese, our secretary treasurer, are Trustees of Common Core.)  www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/curriculum-missing-link

Byrd-Bennett, Stealing from Children, has a habit of choosing her employers as contractors going back to Detroit and before Embattled Chicago Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has links to another private education firm which did business with the Chicago Public Schools, and in 2011, auditors in Detroit investigated still another potential conflict with one of the world’s largest textbook companies.

When she was hired as Chicago schools chief three years ago, Byrd-Bennett listed a company called Catapult Learning, where she said she was employed as Senior Advisor for Planning. Last September, Catapult was listed as one of 60 vendors on the receiving end of a three-year agreement to provide professional development services to the Chicago schools at a cost of $66 million. Byrd-Bennett was one of three signatories to that agreement….

In Detroit, where she served as “academic auditor,” officials commissioned an official audit to determine how federal funds were used on a trio of high-dollar contracts. As part of that investigation, it was determined that Byrd-Bennett had worked as a “superintendent in residency” at one of the vendors, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which she had not revealed on her financial disclosure documents. The Detroit schools had contracted with the company for a variety of services, listed as “managed instruction and professional development” as well as “supplemental textbooks,” at a cost of $52.3 million.

According to the auditor’s report, in a section of her Financial Disclosure asking for sources of outside income, Byrd-Bennett wrote “not applicable as non-employee of DPS (Detroit Public Schools) on the advice of her attorney.”: www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/barbara-byrd-bennett-300720551.html#ixzz3bsRfSkBR

In Chicago, as in the US, the Education Agenda is a war agenda–class and empire’s wars On Saturday, May 23, Mayor Rahm Emanuel recognized Gregory Holmes, CMAB Battalion Commander, as the 2015 CPS JROTC Cadet of the Year. The two enjoyed this year’s Memorial Day Parade together from the Reviewing Stand. CMAB’s All-Service Color Guard for the CPS JROTC department led the parade down State Street on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. See videos here.  www.chicagomilitaryacademy.org/apps/video/

Unionites Cower in WI—So Long, Tenure Facing national attention and an onslaught of petitions and lobbying by University of Wisconsin professors, a Board of Regents committee on Thursday voted against formally opposing controversial changes to faculty tenure proposed by Republicans in the state Legislature, neglecting another motion asking lawmakers to strip the tenure changes from law.

The vote came after a sometimes contentious debate in a large UW-Milwaukee meeting room filled with faculty and others who oppose the tenure changes. Ultimately, a group of four Regents, all appointed by Gov. Scott Walker, voted against pressuring the Legislature to change course and instead directed a Regents task force on tenure to include a discussion of when and how tenured professors can be fired or laid off.

Two Regents appointed by former Democratic governor Jim Doyle, along with state schools superintendent Tony Evers, voted against it. An amendment by Evers to voice opposition to the tenure changes with state lawmakers failed. host.madison.com/news/local/education/university/uw-system-regents-committee-rejects-proposal-to-fight-controversial-tenure/article_23e46e2f-f03e-54d3-b5e2-b4be9a31aeee.html#ixzz3cLMMpxt3

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

The Full Collection of “Terminal Boots” (above) www.youtube.com/channel/UC_KWQ7hNVeRGYT23LK4Jt5w

The Insane Pivot to the Pacific–add the Army The Senate Armed Services Committee has joined the push to give the Army a much larger role in the Pacific. The hard part, ironically, may be getting the Army to go along.

Why should soldiers do more in the Pacific, a theater traditionally dominated by pilots, Marines, and, above all, sailors? The Pacific, obviously, is full of water. But it’s also full of islands — and some of the larger islands are US allies: Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. The Army’s potential role there isn’t limited to defending against invasion. The Army already has missile defense radars in Japan (the Raytheon AN/TPY-2) and may deploy THAAD anti-missile batteries to South Korea.

But why stop at defensive systems, ask lawmakers like House seapower chairman Randy Forbes. China’s Second Artillery Force already has long-range land-based missiles that can attack US and allied ships far out at sea. What if the US and its allies fielded land-based anti-ship systems of their own? That might deter — or in the last resort, defeat — a Chinese land grab for disputed islands like the Senkakus or the Spratlys.

 Pushed by Forbes, the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act requires a Pentagon report “as to the feasibility, utility, and options for mobile, land-based systems to provide anti-ship fires.” That’s an idea endorsed by former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

The Senate’s version of the bill goes much further.

It calls for “a comprehensive operational assessment of a potential future role for U.S. ground forces in the island chains of the western Pacific in creating anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in cooperation with host nations to deter and defeat aggression in the region.” The capabilities specified for study include land-based anti-ship missiles and more. The full list, with our commentary in italics:  breakingdefense.com/2015/05/sasc-pushes-bigger-army-role-in-pacific-vs-china/

Shocker! Bush, Cheney, et al (and ALL) LIED!!!

Host Chris Matthews asked Morell about a statement Cheney made in 2003: “We know he [Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Here’s the conversation that followed:

MATTHEWS: Was that true?

MORELL: We were saying—

MATTHEWS: Can you answer that question? Was that true?

MORELL: That’s not true.

MATTHEWS: Well, why’d you let them get away with it?

MORELL: Look, my job Chris—

MATTHEWS: You’re the briefer for the president on intelligence, you’re the top person to go in and tell him what’s going on. You see Cheney make this charge he’s got a nuclear bomb and then they make subsequent charges he knew how to deliver it…and nobody raised their hand and said, “No that’s not what we told him.”

MORELL: Chris, Chris Chris, what’s my job, right? My job—

MATTHEWS: To tell the truth.

MORELL: My job—no, as the briefer? As the briefer?

MATTHEWS: Okay, go ahead.

MORELL: As the briefer, my job is to carry CIA’s best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it. My job is to not watch what they’re saying on TV.

The discussion went on:

MATTHEWS: So you’re briefing the president on the reasons for war, they’re selling the war, using your stuff, saying you made that case when you didn’t. So they’re using your credibility to make the case for war dishonestly, as you just admitted.

MORELL: Look, I’m just telling you—

MATTHEWS: You just admitted it.

MORELL: I’m just telling you what we said—

MATTHEWS: They gave a false presentation of what you said to them.

MORELL: On some aspects. On some aspects.  www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/michael-morell-bush-cheney-iraq-war

Marine Corps “Rebrands” For Recruitment The new branding effort coincides with a renewed recon recruiting campaign. It begins its push starting this summer. A separate study is underway to determine how best to man, train and equip the community. Recon and MARSOC have a complicated relationship. When then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld directed the Marine Corps to establish a special operations component, which he did early in the war on terrorism, the service raided its recon units to do so. To this day recon continues to cede men to MARSOC, which offers big-time cash incentives to find and keep the best of the best, though the churn is not as constant as it once was.  www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2015/06/01/marine-corps-reconnaissance-new-branding-recruiting-campaign/28094363/

but anti-enlistment talk probably will not defeat an empty stomach, no jobs, etc.

Drunken Spec Ops Boss Removed The commander of U.S. Special Operations forces in Central and South America was removed from his post last year after he repeatedly became intoxicated in public, including during a deployment to Peru, documents show.

Army Brig. Gen. Sean P. Mulholland, who oversaw U.S. commandos on counternarcotics missions and training assignments in the region, also got into altercations with civilians on two occasions last year after drinking at a golf club bar near his Florida headquarters, according to military records.

Mulholland, 55, was removed as commander in August.  www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/special-ops-commander-reprimanded-for-repeated-public-intoxication/2015/06/03/73cba24c-0a09-11e5-95fd-d580f1c5d44e_story.html?hpid=z1

IS Video (in English) recruiting jihadists (They aren’t barbarians. They are educated. They are just religious—the ideology of death). www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/06/islamic-state-touts-jihadists-from-the-balkans.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LongWarJournalSiteWide+%28The+Long+War+Journal+%28Site-Wide%29%29

Unable to combat armed superstition with “People make gods; gods don’t make people–you have evil fairies dancing in your heads” the US has no grand strategy, no strategy, and is left with fly-by-day tactics—losing.

SEAL TEAM 6: Another Wing of Obamagogue’s Private Assassin Squad, perhaps winning battles, losing the wars (see just above) as they build barbarism world wide Special Operations troops struck a seemingly endless succession of targets. No figures are publicly available that break out the number of raids that Team 6 carried out in Afghanistan or their toll. Military officials say that no shots were fired on most raids. But between 2006 and 2008, Team 6 operators said, there were intense periods in which for weeks at a time their unit logged 10 to 15 kills on many nights, and sometimes up to 25.

The accelerated pace caused “guys to become fierce,” said a former Team 6 officer. “These killing fests had become routine.”

Special Operations commanders say the raids helped unravel Taliban networks. But some Team 6 members came to doubt that they were making much of a difference. One former senior enlisted SEAL member, pressed for details about one mission, said, “It became so many of these targets, it was just another name.”

“Whether they were facilitators, Taliban subcommanders, Taliban commanders, financiers, it no longer became important,” he added.

Another former Team 6 member, an officer, was even more dismissive of some of the operations. “By 2010, guys were going after street thugs,” he said. “The most highly trained force in the world, chasing after street thugs.” (and the Times is still lying about Jessica Lynch’s “rescue) www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/world/asia/the-secret-history-of-seal-team-6.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Nobody RICOs Banksters As of this week, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland are felons, having pleaded guilty on Wednesday to criminal charges of conspiring to rig the value of the world’s currencies. According to the Justice Department, the lengthy and lucrative conspiracy enabled the banks to pad their profits without regard to fairness, the law or the public good.

Besides the criminal label, however, nothing much has changed for the banks. And that means nothing much has changed for the public. There is no meaningful accountability in the plea deals and, by extension, no meaningful deterrence from future wrongdoing. In a memo to employees this week, the chief executive of Citi, Michael Corbat, called the criminal behavior “an embarrassment” — not the word most people would use to describe a felony but an apt one in light of the fact that the plea deals are essentially a spanking, nothing more.

As a rule, a felony plea carries more painful consequences. For example, a publicly traded company that is guilty of a crime is supposed to lose privileges granted by the Securities and Exchange Commission to quickly raise and trade money in the capital markets. But in this instance, the plea deals were not completed until the S.E.C. gave official assurance that the banks could keep operating the same as always, despite their criminal misconduct. (One S.E.C. commissioner, Kara Stein, issued a scathing dissent from the agency’s decision to excuse the banks.)  www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/banks-as-felons-or-criminality-lite.html?_r=1

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHyzAbV6nuM

The relentless quest for cheaper labor at the Happiest Place on Earth The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”  www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html?_r=0

Manhole Covers explode as underground fire spreads in Detroit Firefighters rushed to downtown Detroit Saturday night after fire was discovered spreading underground shortly before 10 p.m.

At least two manhole covers exploded, and several buildings lost electricity after an apparent power surge. Lights were seen pulsating on downtown buildings.

Firefighters first spotted flames underneath three manhole covers near Randolph and E. Grand River at 9:45 p.m. and called for extra help.

“It’s starting to go from manhole to manhole,” a firefighter told dispatchers.

Firefighters said they were worried about the fire growing as crowds grew larger downtown.

DTE arrived about an hour later to investigate whether a gas leak was the cause. motorcitymuckraker.com/2015/05/30/manhole-covers-explode-as-underground-fire-spreads-in-downtown-detroit/

Re-Colonizing Detroit by Dehydration The City of Detroit began shutting off water access to residents behind on payments Tuesday, with thousands at risk of losing access.

According to the Detroit Free Press, 64,769 delinquent residential customers owe the city’s water department a combined $48.9 million.

That figure tops the estimated 41,000 individuals who Food and Water Watch (FWW), an advocacy group, says lacked any water as of January (there is likely overlap between the groups).

The city started sending out shut-off warnings May 11. According to the Free Press, Mayor Mike Duggan is proceeding with the shutoff orders over the wishes of city council members, who voted on May 12 to freeze the shutoff until an assistance plan to help affected residents was enacted.

FWW’s Lynna Kaucheck says Duggan tried implementing one last year that gave discounts to qualified residents, but that program proved too expensive for most residents.

above, Gropenfuherer and pal Daddy Nunez

Gropenfuhrer’s Deal to Let Murderer off light confirmed by court California Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday that Arnold Schwarzenegger was within his rights as governor when he reduced the prison sentence for Esteban Nuñez, the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez.

Esteban Nuñez pleaded guilty in May 2010 to voluntary manslaughter and assault in the Oct. 4, 2008 death of Luis Santos, 21, a student at San Diego Mesa College. Three co-defendants also pleaded guilty.

Schwarzenegger reduced the sentence in an executive order in late December 2010 but didn’t announce it until hours before he left office.

A San Diego County Superior Court upheld the move despite a lawsuit from the victim’s family. Tuesday’s ruling by the California 3rd District Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s decision.

After a night of heavy drinking, Esteban Nuñez and the three others attacked Santos because they had been rejected from a fraternity party, according to documents.

Nuñez later bragged to his friends that his father would use his influence to keep them from facing charges, according to documents.  www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-esteban-nunez-sentence-reduction-upheld-20150602-story.html

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Coppers Killing People  at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.

“These shootings are grossly under­reported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”  ●About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.  www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html?hpid=z1

Imperialism and the Fascist Homeland Culture Following a report in May the U.S. Department of Defense paid $5.4 million to 14 National Football League teams for salutes to the military and other advertising, three U.S. senators are making a push to stop the federal government from spending money to honor American veterans at sporting events.

The Atlanta Falcons Football Club LLC was paid $1,049,500 from 2011 to 2014 by the DoD — more than any other National Football League team, according to a report from NJ.com. www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2015/06/04/washington-sees-push-to-stop-nfl-patriotism-for.html

TSA is not Fascism. It is for your own good. Safety ABC News first reported Monday that undercover agents were able to smuggle prohibited items, such as mock explosives or weapons, through TSA checkpoints in 67 out of 70 attempts. ABC cited anonymous officials who had been briefed on the inspector general’s report.

In a statement issued Monday evening, Johnson said, “The numbers in these reports never look good out of context, but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation security.” www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-tsa-airport-screening-20150601-story.html

Solidarity for Never

Opportunists Unite! You have nothing to lose but your pretense of principles!

The Conference, what we proposed:

1. A dialogue for those who are committed to left politics outside of the two-party system
2. To discuss the “why” goals of running and winning in elections
3. To share experiences and reflections of campaigning
4. To share challenges after being elected to office and strategies for opening 
political space for social movement

Aims and Objectives:

1. To promote independent political action
2. To build cooperation among disparate movements, candidates, left/progressive 
parties
3. To develop and adopt a means for continued networking, conversation and cooperation after the conference  leftelect.org/details-from-launching-conference/

Prepping Unionites, Labor Bosses Grovel For Hillbillary Hillary Rodham Clinton made an appeal for an endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers this week, suggesting in a private meeting with union officials that critics have turned teachers into “scapegoats for all of society’s problems.”

“From what I’ve seen, all of the evidence, and my own personal experience, says that the most important and impactful thing we can do for our public schools is to recruit, support and retain the highest-quality educators,” Mrs. Clinton said before a question-and-answer session with teachers, according to the union, which released her remarks.

“It is just dead wrong to make teachers the scapegoats for all of society’s problems,” she said. “Where I come from, teachers are the solution.” Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were first reported by BuzzFeed.

Mrs. Clinton, as well as two other Democratic presidential hopefuls, former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, appeared at the union’s executive council meeting this week. But even allies of Mr. O’Malley and Mr. Sanders acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton is likely to earn the federation’s backing.   www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/04/appealing-to-union-hillary-clinton-calls-teachers-scapegoats/

Despite Unionite Dues-eater Opposition, LA minimum wage hike moves ahead Labor leaders also pressed to include some controversial wording that could exempt unionized companies from the wage requirements if management negotiates a waiver with workers. Business groups have attacked that idea as a gambit to prod more companies to unionize.  www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-minimum-wage-union-exemption-20150529-story.html

Unionites Should Back Prison Guard and Copper Unions  Federal prosecutors have opened a new front in their investigation of Rikers Island, embarking on a far-reaching examination of the financial dealings of Norman Seabrook, the powerful president of New York City’s correction officers’ union.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan is looking into whether Mr. Seabrook has enriched himself over the course of his two decades running the union, according to a copy of a subpoena served on the union about two weeks ago that was reviewed by The New York Times.

In the subpoena, prosecutors directed the union, the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, to turn over a long list of documents. They included “cash deposits” from union funds “made into personal accounts” belonging to Mr. Seabrook, his wife and the union’s treasurer, Michael Maiello, as well as information about two trips to Israel that Mr. Seabrook took, in 2010 and 2014.

Among other matters, the federal prosecutors appear to be investigating whether executive board members used union money to finance personal purchases. Prosecutors requested information on security systems that have been installed “in any private residence” of union board members.

The subpoena requested records of all the union’s political contributions, as well as travel vouchers for trips to Albany by members of the union’s executive board in 2014 and 2015.

Mr. Seabrook has amassed tremendous political clout as the head of his 9,000-member union and long used his endorsement of candidates, or the threat that he would withhold it, as a lever to gain better financial deals for the union, like higher pension benefits. During the last round of elections, the union gave out nearly half a million dollars in political donations, mostly to candidates for state offices.  www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/nyregion/rikers-inquiry-expands-to-include-union-chief-norman-seabrooks-financial-dealings.html?hpw&rref=nyregion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

Spy versus Spy

Still Patriotic and Naive, Edward Snowden Ignores the Mass Popularity of Fascism TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.

Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned to the United States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as un-American, even treasonous.

Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.

Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.

Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated.

This is the power of an informed public.  www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/opinion/edward-snowden-the-world-says-no-to-surveillance.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150604&nlid=1526508&tntemail0=y&_r=1

Snowden Shows US’ NSA actually Expanded spying

Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified NSA documents.

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.  www.propublica.org/article/new-snowden-documents-reveal-secret-memos-expanding-spying

US Intelligence Agencies, and Obamagogue, back Lunatic Gambian dictator and thwart his overthrow  In the predawn hours of Dec. 30, according to court documents and interviews with people involved in the operation, the U.S.-based conspirators teamed with other dissidents to assault the Gambian presidential palace. They expected to find it lightly guarded. Instead, they ran into an ambush. Four people were killed. Those who survived fled the country.

Afterward, the Justice Department charged four U.S. residents with taking part in or supporting the failed coup, saying they had violated the Neutrality Act of 1794, an obscure law that prohibits Americans from taking up arms against countries that enjoy peaceful relations with the United States.

What the U.S. government did not disclose, however, was that it had been monitoring the plotters and had secretly tipped off West African authorities to the travel of at least one of them. In doing so, U.S. officials may have at least indirectly helped to protect the president of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, who has drawn international condemnation for his dismal human rights record, his violent rhetoric against gay people and bizarre beliefs such as his claim to have concocted an herbal cure for AIDS….

Dressed in white tribal robes, Jammeh was ushered into the White House on Aug. 5 for a handshake with a smiling President Obama. It was a diplomatic home run for Jammeh, whose government widely circulated a photograph of the encounter.

Jeffrey Smith, an advocacy officer for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, said that, from Jammeh’s perspective, the photograph’s underlying message back home was invaluable: “He was saying, ‘There’s nothing you can do to oppose my rule. The strongest nation in the world and the strongest man in the world stand behind me.’ ”http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-a-reviled-african-ruler-survived-a-coup-hatched-in-the-united-states/2015/05/31/a9fc1772-0485-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html?hpid=z1

FBI Spy Planes Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009.

For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans’ privacy.

“It’s important that federal law enforcement personnel have the tools they need to find and catch criminals,” said Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “But whenever an operation may also monitor the activities of Americans who are not the intended target, we must make darn sure that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans.”

The FBI says the planes are not equipped or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance. The surveillance equipment is used for ongoing investigations, the FBI says, generally without a judge’s approval.

The FBI confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.  bigstory.ap.org/article/4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da045/fbi-behind-mysterious-surveillance-aircraft-over-us-cities

The Magical Mystery Tour

For decades, leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have been reassigning, excusing and overlooking sexually abusive priests among their ranks. Some received additional retirement benefits. In August, a top church lawyer, shocked at what she saw, brought the story to MPR News. What happened next is still unfolding.  (quick summaries all over this page) minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/catholic-church/

above, top church leaders knew of this rapist above and the “archbishops” hushed it all up.

For-sale signs have been posted outside several properties owned by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as it seeks to pay creditors.   KSTP-TV reports the properties with the for-sale signs include the chancery and the archbishop’s residence in St. Paul near the cathedral, as well as three other properties in St. Paul and another in Northfield.

Archdiocese chief financial officer Tom Mertens told the TV station that it was a difficult decision to try selling the properties because of their “significance and history.” He said it will be cheaper to rent spaces.

Mertens said there are no offers so far on the properties.

The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in mid-January amid a wave of clergy abuse lawsuits.www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/27/for-sale-signs-archdiocese-buildings

Magic beats Superstition–Fun Video aeon.co/video/technology/magician-doug-mckenzie-everyday-technology-made-magical/?fb_ref=Default

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Texas (AP) — A U.S. Border Patrol helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in Texas after it was fired upon.

The incident happened about 5 p.m. Friday while the aircraft was patrolling the Rio Grande near the border city of Laredo.

Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar tells the Laredo Morning Times that out of five shots believed to have been fired at the helicopter, two hit their target.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Sara Melendez says no one aboard the aircraft was injured. The helicopter landed safely.

There was no immediate word on whether the gunfire came from the Mexican side or the U.S. side.  news.yahoo.com/border-patrol-helicopter-fired-upon-forced-land-texas-034942866.html

50 Years Ago this week

NYTimes Reporter risks the lives of his wife and small children so he can keep a job reporting in Deli FOR weeks the breathing of my 8-year-old son, Bram, had become more labored, his medicinal inhaler increasingly vital. And then, one terrifying night nine months after we moved to this megacity, Bram’s inhaler stopped working and his gasping became panicked.

My wife called a friend, who recommended a private hospital miles away. I carried Bram to the car while my wife brought his older brother. India’s traffic is among the world’s most chaotic, and New Delhi’s streets are crammed with trucks at night, when road signs become largely ornamental. We undertook one of the most frightening journeys of our lives, with my wife in the back seat cradling Bram’s head.

When we arrived, doctors infused him with steroids (and refused to provide further treatment until a $1,000 charge on my credit card went through). A week later, Bram was able to return home.

When I became a South Asia correspondent for The New York Times three years ago, my wife and I were both excited and prepared for difficulties — insistent beggars, endemic dengue and summertime temperatures that reach 120 degrees. But we had little inkling just how dangerous this city would be for our boys.  www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/holding-your-breath-in-india.html?_r=0

Video Inside: Detroit Woman shoots at Carjackers–357 with 9mm backup  She goes by C.C. and didn’t want her full name to be used in this story. She took a wrong turn at Alma and Garnet avenues on her way to the hairdresser’s. While making a u-turn three men approached her car and tried to take it. They went as far opening to the door and shooting at her. There are two bullet holes.

However, the bold thieves learned they were messing with the wrong Detroiter.

“When I see him with the gun as he approached me to take the car, I lifted my gun up on the door and I began to shoot,” said C.C. “So when he shot I was shooting back.”

She keeps her gun — .357 caliber Sig Sauer G2 — in the side door of her vehicle. She has a concealed carry permit. It’s her weapon of choice which she has trained with at area ranges. It holds 13 hollow point rounds. She emptied the clip at the thieves who scurried away near some abandoned homes.  m.clickondetroit.com/news/detroit-woman-shoots-at-wouldbe-carjackers/33382756

Video: Model T: Early Taylorism  safeshare.tv/w/ShbgvwazCZ

So Long