We Say Fight Back!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs10yQZ796s

The core issue of our time is the potential of mass, class-conscious, direct action met by the reality of rising fascism. The crux of this is class war, often deflected into race/national/religious/opportunistic wars. 

Congratulations to Wayne Ross on the publication of:

Theodore W. Allen wrote that “the history of class struggle in the U.S. could be interpreted as a five-stage cycle in which:

1) The normal course of capitalist events brings on a deterioration of the conditions of the laboring classes.

2) The substance of the white-skin privileges becomes somewhat drained away by increased insecurity and exploitation.

3) The laboring-class “whites” manifest, to a greater or lesser extent, a tendency to make common cause with laboring-class Blacks against capital.

4) The ruling class moves to re-substantiate the racial privileges of the white workers vis-à-vis the Blacks.

5) The white workers take the bait, repudiate solidarity with Black laboring people and submit themselves without radical protest to exploitation by the privilege-givers.”

See “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” by Jeffrey B. Perry at www.jeffreybperry.net/works.htm

Democratic Party Primaries: “Progressives” as Political Contraceptives

James Petras

How the Elite Deal With Sparks of Revolt

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half”

—Jay Gould

Metanoia Films has released a new documentary, Plutocracy: Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule). It’s the first entry of a multi-part series directed by filmmaker Scott Noble. The movie assembles a rich historical mosaic which examines the constitutional roots of democratic elitism in the United States, the subsequent emergence of the labor movement during industrialization, and the various schemes employed by private capital to sabotage popular mobilization.Plutocracy is available online and can be viewed free of charge. Your author, who helped to edit the script, would deem the film time well spent.  www.filmsforaction.org/articles/how-the-elite-deal-with-sparks-of-revolt/

.“Veteran journalist Diana Johnstone captures the imperial worldview of Hillary Clinton in memorable detail. Hillary the Hawk, as U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, never saw a weapons system she did not support, nor a U.S. war practice she did not endorse.”

The Little Red Schoolhouse

NEA Cheers “New” Capitalist Schooling in the Decaying empire 

School is a prison — and damaging our kids

Longer school years aren’t the answer. The problem is school itself. Compulsory teach-and-test simply doesn’t work

Parents send their children to school with the best of intentions, believing that’s what they need to become productive and happy adults. Many have qualms about how well schools are performing, but the conventional wisdom is that these issues can be resolved with more money, better teachers, more challenging curricula and/or more rigorous tests.

But what if the real problem is school itself? The unfortunate fact is that one of our most cherished institutions is, by its very nature, failing our children and our society.

School is a place where children are compelled to be, and where their freedom is greatly restricted — far more restricted than most adults would tolerate in their workplaces. In recent decades, we have been compelling our children to spend ever more time in this kind of setting, and there is strong evidence (summarized in my recent book) that this is causing serious psychological damage to many of them. Moreover, the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school.  www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damaging_our_kids/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Which school boss is paid as much as 5 teachers?

www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/nov/16/teacher-superintendent-compensation/

Student Debt in America: Lend With a Smile, Collect With a Fist

The American student loan crisis is often seen as a problem of profligacy and predation. Wasteful colleges raise tuition every year, we are told, even as middle-class wages stagnate and unscrupulous for-profit colleges bilk the unwary. The result is mounting unmanageable debt.

There is much truth in this diagnosis. But it does not explain the plight of Liz Kelley, a Missouri high school teacher and mother of four who made a series of unremarkable decisions about college and borrowing. She now owes the federal government $410,000, and counting.

This is a staggering and unusual sum. The average undergraduate who borrows leaves school with about $30,000 in debt. But Ms. Kelley’s circumstances are not unique. Of the 43.3 million borrowers with outstanding federal student loans, 1.8 percent, or 779,000 people, owe $150,000 or more. And 346,000 owe more than $200,000.

Ms. Kelley’s debt woes are also mostly a matter of interest, not principal, a growing problem for the nation’s student debtors. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the number of active borrowers enrolled in college has declined to roughly nine million today from about 12 million in 2010. Yet the total amount of outstanding debt continues to increase, because many borrowers are not paying back their older loans.  www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/upshot/student-debt-in-america-lend-with-a-smile-collect-with-a-fist.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Hundreds more Marines needed for special duty assignments

More Marines will be tapped for special duty assignments in 2016 to fill hundreds of open recruiter school seats, drill instructor billets, and to help ensure the right mix of infantrymen in combat instructor courses.

A recent adjustment at Marine Corps Combat Instructor Courses has created a need for several hundred more Marines to fill specific SDAs this fiscal year, according to Marine administrative message 549/15.

The changes were driven by the need to maintain “a predominantly infantry mix” of instructors at the schools of infantry on both coasts, said Yvonne Carlock, a spokeswoman for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.

While non-infantry Marines are always needed to fill critical instructor billets at Marine Combat Training Battalion, the more specialized infantry classes are taught by appropriate experts.  www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2015/11/21/hundreds-more-marines-needed-special-duty-assignments/76065426/

MSF Initial Reaction to US Military Investigation into Kunduz Attack

The US version of events presented today leaves MSF with more questions than answers. It is shocking that an attack can be carried out when US forces have neither eyes on a target nor access to a no-strike list, and have malfunctioning communications systems. It appears that 30 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied lifesaving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and “roughly matched” a description of an intended target.

The frightening catalogue of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of US forces and violations of the rules of war. The destruction of a protected facility without verifying the target—in this case a functioning hospital full of medical staff and patients—cannot only be dismissed as individual human error or breaches of the US rules of engagement. MSF reiterates its call for an independent and impartial investigation into the attack on our hospital in Kunduz. Investigations of this incident cannot be left solely to parties to the conflict in Afghanistan.  www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/msf-initial-reaction-us-military-investigation-kunduz-attack

Fight Sexism. Kill for the Empire Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s landmark decision Thursday to open all jobs to women in the military was greeted by many as a sign of changing times and a move toward true gender equality. But it also raises a related question: Will women be required for the first time ever to register for military drafts, and is it constitutional if they are not?

The Selective Service System has existed for decades, and is used to provide the U.S. military with enough manpower when it is short-handed in a time of war. A variation of it was adopted in 1917, ahead of World War I, and it has been updated over the years.  www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_29204821/combat-women-raises-draft-question

Germany Joins the World Religious/Imperialist War in Syraq The 1,200-strong Bundeswehr task force’s deployment in Syria approved by the German parliament Friday might be reinforced by elite special forces, the KSK, according to local media.

Emirates Secretly Sends Colombian Mercenaries to Yemen Fight

The United Arab Emirates has secretly dispatched hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Yemen to fight in that country’s raging conflict, adding a volatile new element in a complex proxy war that has drawn in the United States and Iran.

It is the first combat deployment for a foreign army that the Emirates has quietly built in the desert over the past five years, according to several people currently or formerly involved with the project. The program was once managed by a private company connected to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, but the people involved in the effort said that his role ended several years ago and that it has since been run by the Emirati military.

The arrival in Yemen of 450 Latin American troops — among them are also Panamanian, Salvadoran and Chilean soldiers — adds to the chaotic stew of government armies, armed tribes, terrorist networks and Yemeni militias currently at war in the country. Earlier this year, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia, including the United States, began a military campaign in Yemen against Houthi rebels who have pushed the Yemeni government out of the capital, Sana.  www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/world/middleeast/emirates-secretly-sends-colombian-mercenaries-to-fight-in-yemen.html

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The wealthiest dozen Americans own more than the bottom half

A report out today provides a powerful image that will help people understand how extreme concentration of wealth has become in America — an issue at the core of our economic, political and social woes over the past 35 years.

“America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet — now own more wealth than the bottom half” of Americans, according to the report, by Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, both veteran analysts of inequality in America.

But there’s a big problem with that memorable image: It seriously understates just how much wealth these 20 people have.

Probably just 12 or 15 of those at the top own as much as America’s worst-off 160 million people. That’s about $732 billion on each side of that equation. For the top 20, it averages $36 billion each; for the bottom half, $4,575 each……..

Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, provided nearly half the contributions to the presidential candidates in both parties, though giving was heavily skewed to Republicans.

The result is policies that take from the many and redistribute to the already rich few through stealth techniques that rarely make the news but can be found in the public record. Among these policies are a failure to enforce the laws of business competition, severe restrictions on unions and subsidies galore for big companies.  america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/12/the-wealthiest-dozen-americans-own-more-than-the-bottom-half.html

China’s yuan gains IMF reserve status

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that China’s currency, the yuan, will join the fund’s basket of reserve currencies.

Currently just the US dollar, the euro, the yen and the pound are in the group.

The IMF said the yuan “met all existing criteria” and should become part of the basket in October 2016.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde said it was “an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system”.

She added it was also a recognition of the progress that the Chinese authorities have made in the past years in reforming China’s monetary and financial systems. www.bbc.com/news/business-34957580

Tommy John, son to baseball parents: Wake up

The message: If your child is crisscrossing the state on year-round traveling teams, uncorking curveballs before he shaves or banging out nightly bullpen sessions in the backyard, hit the brakes.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said Andrews, who has conducted procedures on John Smoltz, Roger Clemens and scores of other stars. “Parents are pushing, coaches are pushing. There’s a lot of capitalism going on. Parents are paying out of the wazoo for pitching coaches, travel teams and those things. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/nov/27/tommy-johns-to-baseball-families-wake-up/

Queen gets a pay rise at the poors’ expense

Queen Elizabeth will be 90 years old on the 21st of April next year and she has just been rewarded for her longevity with a 7% pay rise from Tory madman and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne in yesterdays Spending Review. It should be noted that there will be £12bn cuts to the welfare budget as reported by the BBC, yet Britain’s and arguably the worlds greatest benefits recipient will have her funding bumped up to a meagre £42.9m next year – up from £40.1m as reported in the Mirror.

Fresh from attempting scandalous cuts on Tax Credits and the implementation of a tampon tax (which has been roundly approved by the lads in Parliament) luckily the money is going to a woman who will hit 90 in a little under 5 months. Further to this scandalous pay increase are the levels of cuts to Education and health as well as to the Celtic realms of Wales, Scotland and Ulster. Wales with its large plantation of English transmigrants loses 4.5% of revenue whilst Ulster loses 5%. This is also the figure in Scotland, a “Country” that would love to have its time over again at the Referendum.

Fresh from attempting scandalous cuts on Tax Credits and the implementation of a tampon tax (which has been roundly approved by the lads in Parliament) luckily the money is going to a woman who will hit 90 in a little under 5 months. Further to this scandalous pay increase are the levels of cuts to Education and health as well as to the Celtic realms of Wales, Scotland and Ulster. Wales with its large plantation of English transmigrants loses 4.5% of revenue whilst Ulster loses 5%. This is also the figure in Scotland, a “Country” that would love to have its time over again at the Referendum.

Queen gets a pay rise at the poors expense.

Mark Zuckerberg did not donate $45 billion to charity. You may have heard that, but that was wrong.

Here’s what happened instead: Mr. Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle.

Sorry for the slightly less sexy headline.

Mr. Zuckerberg is a co-founder of Facebook and a youthful megabillionaire. In announcing the birth of his daughter, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, declared they would donate 99 percent of their worth, the vast majority of which is tied up in Facebook stock valued at $45 billion today.

In doing so, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His P.R. return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Mr. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having, in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other.   www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/business/dealbook/how-mark-zuckerbergs-altruism-helps-himself.html

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Cover-up in Chicago THERE’S been a cover-up in Chicago. The city’s leaders have now brought charges against a police officer, Jason Van Dyke, for the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. But for more than a year, Chicago officials delayed the criminal process, and might well have postponed prosecution indefinitely, had it not been for a state court forcing their hand.

They prevented the public from viewing crucial incriminating evidence — first one police car’s dashboard camera video; now, we learn, five such videos in total. And these senior officials turned a blind eye to the fact that 86 minutes of other video surveillance footage of the crime scene was unaccountably missing

The Cook County prosecutor, Anita Alvarez, must have had probable cause to indict Officer Van Dyke for the Oct. 20, 2014, shooting death of Mr. McDonald the moment she viewed the police dash-cam video, after her office received it two weeks later. That video, in her own words, was “everything that it has been described to be by the news accounts. It is graphic. It is violent. It is chilling.”

Ms. Alvarez, and other city leaders, surely knew they would have to indict Mr. Van Dyke for murder as soon as the public saw that footage. “I have absolutely no doubt,” Ms. Alvarez finally said www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/opinion/cover-up-in-chicago.html?_r

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vth2NMfXmlE

Islamic State-affiliated ‘news’ agency praises San Bernardino shootings Earlier today, ‘Amaq News Agency, which is linked to the Islamic State’s online propaganda operations, released the statement above praising the shootings in San Bernardino, California. The message was released on the website for ‘Amaq and disseminated on Twitter.

‘Amaq has not claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the “caliphate.” Instead, the media group says that “supporters” of the Islamic State killed 14 people and wounded 17. The statement also noted the husband and wife responsible were from Pakistan.

Thus far, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s organization has not issued an official declaration on the massacre. The jihadists may do so in short order, but their rhetoric thus far is consistent with an act of terror that was inspired by the Islamic State, but not directed by it.

For example, the message from ‘Amaq notes that the killings in San Bernardino were carried out not long after the coordinated assault in Paris on November 13 and a suicide bombing in Tunisia on November 24. The Paris operation was organized by Islamic State officials and members based in Syria, according to numerous accounts. And within hours the Islamic State issued an official claim of responsibility in several languages. The same was true in the case of the Tunisia bombing, which was quickly claimed by the Islamic State’s followers in North Africa.

In the case of Paris, the Islamic State said “soldiers of the Caliphate” were responsible. Indeed, the terrorists were known members of group. In the case of Tunisia, the Islamic State’s message said that a “knight from the knights of martyrdom” struck presidential guards. In both instances, the official statements were formatted in the same fashion, with white text, a blue body, and a red header. This is, in fact, the format the Islamic State’s international network uses for most claimed attacks.

It is worth noting that with respect to San Bernardino, no such statement has been disseminated  www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/12/islamic-state-affiliated-news-agency-praises-san-bernardino-shootings.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LongWarJournalSiteWide+%28The+Long+War+Journal+%28Site-Wide%29%29

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ieyzRaUjc
As vice president, Dick Cheney was a prime architect of the worldwide torture regime implemented by the U.S. government (which extended far beyond waterboarding), as well as the invasion and destruction of Iraq, which caused the deaths of at least 500,000 people and more likely over a million. As such, he is one of the planet’s most notorious war criminals.

President Obama made the decision in early 2009 to block the Justice Department from criminally investigating and prosecuting Cheney and his fellow torturers, as well as to protect them from foreign investigations and even civil liability sought by torture victims. Obama did that notwithstanding a campaign decree that even top Bush officials are subject to the rule of law and, more importantly, notwithstanding a treaty signed in 1984 by Ronald Reagan requiring that all signatory states criminally prosecute their own torturers. Obama’s immunizing Bush-era torturers converted torture from a global taboo and decades-old crime into a reasonable, debatable policy question, which is why so many GOP candidates are now openly suggesting its use. prorevnews.blogspot.com/2015/12/torture-architect-cheney-honored-with.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+prorevfeed+%28UNDERNEWS%29

They just ate him,’ mom says about dog attack on son

Detroit — Lucillie Strickland says she has been “constantly” reliving in her mind the sight of her 4-year-old son being mauled by four pit bulls Wednesday.

“They pulled him from me and (dragged) him under the fence. They just ate him,” said Strickland, a 33-year-old wife and mother of seven, breaking down in tears.

Strickland was walking with her 4-year-old son Xavier to nearby Thurgood Marshall school, when four pit bulls charged from the back of a home in the 15500 block of Baylis around 12:25 p.m. Wednesday. They attacked her child as she tried to fight them off. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2015/12/03/owner-pit-bulls-deadly-attack-still-custody/76714712/

Solidarity for Never

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXiAQO4SuVE

South Africa’s ANC Betrays Miners’ Widows Thirteen months on and SABC and etv will still not screen Emmy award winning documentary, Miners Shot Down. As congratulatory messages continue to flow from all directions including political parties, amandla.mobi members ask why the SABC and etv will still not show the documentary to all South Africans.

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Marikana Massacre last year, widows and family members of those killed in Marikana, traveled from the Farlam Commission of Inquiry to the studios of SABC and etv.

Along with social justice organization, amandla.mobi, they hand delivered over 4000 signatures demanding they screen Marikana documentary Miners Shot Down. Both SABC spokesperson Kaiser Kganyago and etv group head Monde Twala accepted the petition and promised widows, family members and activists they would respond with an answer by the 15th September 2014.

According to amandla.mobi Executive Director Koketso Moeti, both the public broadcaster and free to air channel failed to keep their promise to the widows and over 4000 campaign signatories.

“SABC spokesperson Kaiser Kganyago ignored all phone calls, voice messages, SMSs and emails from our members demanding he honors his commitment. The SABC has failed to act in the interest of the public and TV license holders, and ensure the stories of those killed in our first ‘post-apartheid’ massacre were told.”  www.blackagendareport.com/sabc_snubs_marikana_widows

Steelworkers Locked out–AFL-CIA does nothing  For two years, Chris Cummings, a maintenance mechanic, worked 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. six days a week to help prepare for the opening of a gigantic $1.2 billion steel rolling mill that was supposed to bring hundreds of secure, well-paying jobs to the Allegheny River Valley.

But then Mr. Cummings’s employer, Allegheny Technologies, locked him and his co-workers out after their union, the United Steelworkers, balked at accepting the far-reaching concessions that the company said were essential to help compete against domestic rivals and Chinese imports.

Since Aug. 15, Allegheny has locked out 2,200 workers at 12 plants in six states in what has become one of the nation’s largest and longest work stoppages in years.

As unions have weakened in recent decades, more corporations have turned to lockouts to wring givebacks from their workers. www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/business/in-pennsylvania-a-steel-mill-and-its-workers-at-a-crossroads.html

Clark County School District (CCSD) support workers have voted overwhelmingly to join the Teamsters Union, the Employee-Management Relations Board (EMRB) announced today. There are more than 11,000 support workers in the bargaining unit.

The vote for Teamsters Local 14 was a decisive win over the current bargaining representative at CCSD, with nearly 82 percent of workers voting to join the Teamsters over the Education Support Employees Association (ESEA). The unit is made up of a wide range of support workers, including clerical, custodial, maintenance, school bus and cafeteria workers who maintain and operate America’s fifth-largest school district.www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/

1) The 4,500-member Memphis-Shelby County Education Association formally disaffiliated from the Tennessee Education Association and NEA. Eighty-one percent of the local’s representative assembly delegates voted to disaffiliate, exceeding the required two-thirds majority.

No public response yet from TEA or NEA, and the Memphis board of directors is “working to establish a new national affiliation.” I honestly haven’t the foggiest notion which national organization that might be, but I’m very curious.

In light of the vote margin and the size of the Memphis local, I think it unlikely that TEA or NEA can forcibly establish a trusteeship to head this off. By itself this is a big loss for NEA, and is even worse because it might act as a model for other disaffected locals.

2) The Alabama Education Association Delegate Assembly approved changes to its constitution in an effort to end the NEA trusteeship over the state affiliate. www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/

The working class is entitled to ask: Is this a movement that has a progressive character? Do the demonstrators deserve at least critical support? The answer to both questions is no.

These protests are not part of a movement for social equality or civil rights. Rather, they are of a typically middle class character and represent a very familiar and toxic element of bourgeois politics: the fight amongst different factions within the wealthiest ten percent for a more favorable distribution of wealth at the top. The extreme concentration of wealth among the top 1 percent generates resentment and grievances within broader sections of the affluent middle class, and the various factions seek to stake their claims to wealth, privilege and positions of influence by utilizing the politics of race, gender, sexual orientation and nationality.

This approach is central to the politics of the most affluent section of the African American middle class and their political representatives. Far from raising broader demands to improve the material conditions facing the broad mass of the working population, including African American workers, the protesters demands are insular and self-serving. www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/04/wils-d04.html

UAW Skilled Trades Add New Layer of Enemies at VW  The United Auto Workers union gained entry to Volkswagen AG ’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant after a group of skilled tradesmen voted to create a collective bargaining unit at the auto maker’s only U.S. facility.

The vote passed with 71% of the workers who voted agreeing to form the bargaining unit. The vote was 108 for and 44 against.

The vote pertains to a small group of skilled tradesmen but allows the UAW to set up a bargaining unit for them to negotiate for wages, benefits and work rules with the German auto maker, and will open the door to wider representation. The group includes a little more than 160 electricians, welders and other repair workers that maintain the assembly line.

Volkswagen said in a statement that it plans to appeal the decision to the National Labor Relations Board.  www.wsj.com/articles/uaw-wins-victory-at-vw-chattanooga-plant-as-workers-vote-to-unionize-1449283820

“New Men” of Cuban Caudillo Socialism Flee North A year after President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced with great fanfare their plans to normalize relations, an old source of tension has stubbornly returned, with a rush of Cubans trying to get to the United States.

The number of unauthorized Cubans arriving in the United States nearly doubled in fiscal 2015, rising to 43,159 from 24,278 the previous year, according to U.S. border officials, and the surge appears to be accelerating. The vast majority are coming not in rickety boats or rafts but right through U.S. ports of entry at the border with Mexico. Combined with the more than 20,000 who are issued immigration visas annually under existing accords, it amounts to the largest influx of Cubans into the United States in decades.

“It is three times as large as the rafter crisis of 1994,” said Miami immigration lawyer Wilfredo Allen.

Not since the Mariel boatlift of 1980, he said, when 125,000 landed in South Florida, have so many Cubans headed north.www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-other-migrant-crisis-cubans-are-streaming-north-in-large-numbers/2015/12/05/3160772e-992f-11e5-aca6-1ae3be6f06d2_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_cuba-920pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Spy versus Spy

Civilian Deaths Raise Questions About C.I.A.-Trained Forces in Afghanistan

A series of home raids by C.I.A.-trained Afghan counterterrorism forces in the last month resulted in the deaths of at least six innocent civilians, according to Afghan government officials, reviving an issue that has been a chronic source of tension between Afghanistan and the United States.

The deaths happened over the course of three raids in the restive eastern province of Khost, the officials said, including a Nov. 20 episode in which a husband and wife were killed with two American advisers present. The raids were conducted by the Khost Protection Force, one of the regional units known as counterterrorism pursuit teams, set up by the C.I.A. to fight the Taliban, the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda.

The C.I.A. has trained thousands of Afghan forces for such missions — around 3,500 in the Khost Protection Force alone. But from the start, some senior Afghan officials have considered them a problem, accused of human rights abuses and seen as largely unaccountable.

The C.I.A. began dismantling or shrinking the teams as the agency began a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan in recent years. And control of the pursuit teams was officially shifted to the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, from the C.I.A. two years ago, at the request of Afghan officials. But some now say the remaining Afghan counterterrorism forces are still largely unaccountable to the government.www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/world/asia/afghanistan-civilian-casualty-khost.html

A. Roy on Snowden I asked Ed Snowden what he thought about Washington’s ability to destroy countries and its inability to win a war (despite mass surveillance). I think the question was phrased quite rudely—something like “When was the last time the United States won a war?” We spoke about whether the economic sanctions and subsequent invasion of Iraq could be accurately called genocide. We talked about how the CIA knew—and was preparing for the fact—that the world was heading to a place of not just inter-country war but of intra-country war in which mass surveillance would be necessary to control populations. And about how armies were being turned into police forces to administer countries they have invaded and occupied, while the police, even in places like India and Pakistan and Ferguson, Missouri, in the United States—were being trained to behave like armies to quell internal insurrections.

Ed spoke at some length about “sleepwalking into a total surveillance state”. And here I quote him, because he’s said this often before: “If we do nothing, we sort of sleepwalk into a total surveillance state where we have both a super-state that has unlimited capacity to apply force with an unlimited ability to know (about the people it is targeting)—and that’s a very dangerous combination. That’s the dark future. The fact that they know everything about us and we know nothing about them—because they are secret, they are privileged, and they are a separate class…the elite class, the political class, the reso­urce class—we don’t know where they live, we don’t know what they do, we don’t know who their friends are. They have the ability to know all that about us. This is the direction of the future, but I think there are changing possibilities in this….”https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-shall-we-love/

Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

You can read and download the full document here. To get a sense of just how “timeless”—according to the CIA itself—such instructions remain, see the abridged list below, courtesy of Business Insider. You will laugh ruefully, then maybe shudder a little as you recognize how much your own workplace, and many others, resemble the kind of dysfunctional mess the OSS meticulously planned during World War II.

Organizations and Conferences

• Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
• Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
• When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.
• Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
• Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
• Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
• Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Don’t miss:

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Below, Detroit Mansion

Police Chief Craig: Armed Detroiters cut terror risk

The city’s police chief said he believes violent extremists would be reluctant to target Detroit, as they had Paris last month, for fear armed citizens would shoot back.

“A lot of Detroiters have CPLs (concealed pistol licenses), and the same rules apply to terrorists as they do to some gun-toting thug,” Chief James Craig said. “If you’re a terrorist, or a carjacker, you want unarmed citizens.”

Oakland University criminal justice professor Daniel Kennedy agreed that terrorists would be reluctant to attack armed citizens.

“We don’t have laboratories where we can test these theories, but there is something to the argument that terrorists want a high body count — and if they can only shoot a few people before they’re taken out themselves, it wouldn’t have the kind of impact they want.www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2015/12/01/police-chief-says-armed-detroit-cut-terror-risk/76592116/

A thief disguised as a security guard hit the jackpot outside the Greektown Casino Friday morning when he stole several bags of loot from an armored truck that was parked along the curb, making off with more than $500,000, according to Detroit police.

No one was hurt. There were no weapons, and no threats were made, police said. www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/11/27/cops-500k-armored-truck-heist-greektown-suspicious/76455268/

“The FBI has taken the lead on the investigation because it seems to be of a suspicious nature,” Assistant Police Chief Steve Dolunt said, without elaborating. “Detroit police are working with the FBI on this heist. We’re still looking at video to see how this person escaped.”

Welcome to the US Lori Berenson New Yorker Lori Berenson, who was convicted of aiding leftist rebels in Peru 20 years ago, returned to her hometown on Thursday.

Lengthy Rand Analysis of the Shining Path of Peru www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2005/R3781.pdf

So Long

Nancye