We Say Fight Back!

Rolling Sickout Protests Close Detroit Schools

Michigan’s state school superintendent called Friday on Detroit teachers to stop the sickouts that have caused repeated school closures this week and over the past two months…Friday’s closures brought to five the number DPS buildings that were closed at least one day this week because of teacher sickouts, a tactic former Detroit Federation of Teachers president Steve Conn takes credit for implementing. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2016/01/08/detroit-schools-closed/78496416/

Congratulations on the publication of:

The Emergency Manager who poisoned Flint’s Water is now the EM of Detroit Schools:

An Open Letter to Darnell Earley from 4th Grade DPS Teacher, Pam Namyslowski
I have been a teacher in Detroit Public Schools for 24 years. I feel the need to respond to some of the comments you made during your press conference this week. You described the actions of protesting teachers as “unethical”. I’m curious, then, how you would characterize the learning conditions of the children of Detroit Public Schools that have existed for years. These deplorable learning conditions happen to also be the teachers’ working conditions. We deal with unsafe environments – both in the neighborhoods surrounding our schools and often within the schools themselves. Unlike you, students and teachers do not have a driver and security guards. Students who travel to and from school pass numerous abandoned, dangerous buildings and have been robbed, assaulted, and raped. Teachers have been victims of violent crimes and have had their vehicles and personal property damaged and/or stolen, sometimes repeatedly. They suffer verbal abuse and some have been assaulted by angry students or parents. Many schools have numerous plumbing problems in the lavatories, drinking fountains, and sinks. Many outdated school buildings are crumbling – roofs, floors, windows, doors, and locks that are broken or in desperate need of repair. Far too many classrooms are overcrowded, creating conditions that are not even safe, let alone conducive to learning. I’m wondering where the concern and outrage over that is? https://www.facebook.com/notes/save-michigans-public-schools/an-open-letter-to-darnell-earley-from-4th-grade-dps-teacher-pam-namyslowski/980843988663838

The Mind: the most revolutionary weapon–interview with Nelson Peery Marx and Engels were clear about this: The most revolutionary weapon in the world is the human mind. If you don’t win that, you’re not going to win anything.platypus1917.org/2015/11/29/revolutionary-weapon-interview-nelson-peery/

Only pressure on South Africa’s elites can ease university fee stress

There is a new student movement sweeping South Africa’s universities. Its enemies? Excessive fee increases and underpaid workers.

The next step in this fight could be taken beyond university campuses. The final battle will be fought at South Africa’s National Treasury and Reserve Bank for four simple reasons:

1. There needs to be more state funding for higher education. Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene could make this happen when he delivers his medium-term budget policy statement on October 21 – but he won’t;
2. The South African state has the ability to raise such funding from financial markets, corporations and rich people;
3. The social spending component of the fiscus has been far too low; and
4. Interest rates should be decreased. This would allow for more state borrowing and reduce South Africans’ extreme debt load, including that of recent graduates whose repayment rates are miserable…  If students continue to ally with underpaid university workers and link class and race as well as they have so far, the challenge ahead is crystal clear: target the men who control the finances…..theconversation.com/only-pressure-on-south-africas-elites-can-ease-university-fee-stress-49376

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Above, Rouger Bill Boyer in a Detroit school

DPS debt payments mount to unsustainable levels

The debt payments of Detroit Public Schools — already the highest of any school district in Michigan — are set to balloon in February to an amount nearly equal to the school district’s payroll and benefits as the city school system teeters on the edge of insolvency.

Detroit Public Schools has to begin making monthly $26 million payments starting in less than a month to chip away at the $121 million borrowed this school year for cash flow purposes and $139.8 million for operating debts incurred in prior years. The city school system’s total debt payments are 74 percent higher from last school year.

The debt costs continue to mount while Gov. Rick Snyder and the Legislature remain at odds over how to rescue Michigan’s largest school district. A bankruptcy of the district could leave state taxpayers on the hook for at least $1.5 billion in DPS debt.

The school district’s payroll and health care benefits are projected to cost $26.8 million in February — meaning the debt payments will be 97 percent of payroll. General fund operating debt payments that exceed 10 percent of payroll are “a major warning flag,” municipal bond analyst Matt Fabian said.

“That’s extremely high,” said Fabian, managing director of Municipal Market Advisors in Concord, Massachusetts, who also followed the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy case. “That’s no longer, really, a normal school district. The school district has turned into a debt-servicing entity. It’s making its own mission impossible.”

As a result, the Detroit district won’t have enough cash to pay any bills in four months.  /http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2016/01/04/detroit-schools-debt-payments/78240726

Detroit Public Schools has terminated its first ombudswoman following an internal investigation into allegations of misconduct.

Carol Banks, a former member of the Detroit Board of Education, was terminated Dec. 4 “as a result of the district’s investigation,” said Michelle Zdrodowski, a spokeswoman for Detroit Public Schools, in an email to The Detroit News.

Banks had been on unpaid administrative leave since September during the investigation. She was appointed to the $60,000-a-year post last year.

Separately, Banks is a paid employee at City Hall, working as chief of staff to District 3 City Councilman Scott Benson.

The district has said the investigation was spurred by a Fox 2 News report that questioned how many hours Banks was truly putting in between her part-time work in Benson’s office and full-time role with the school district.  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2015/12/22/detroit-public-schools-ombudswoman-terminated/77758302/

Student Slaps Florida Public Schools With Suit for Refusing to Teach Evolution Because It Contradicts the Bible

A Boca Raton man and his young son are suing the boy’s Florida school district for neglecting to teach the theory of evolution because of religious beliefs, WPBF reports.

Brandon Silver may only be 11, but he joined his attorney dad, Barry Silver, in slapping the  Palm Beach County school board with the 18-page suit.

“It’s such a magnificent story and it’s being neglected. The students are being deprived of learning from it because certain religious people don’t like the story because it contradicts the Bible and we think it is terrible that children shouldn’t learn the truth about where they came from,” Barry Silver told the station.

The lawyer said he’d be happy to resolve the lawsuit without litigation if the school board talks to him and fixes the problem.  www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/student-slaps-florida-public-schools-suit-refusing-teach-evolution-because-it

Now We’re back: Why Have School?

As schools open throughout the US, one typically ignored question needs to be asked in every classroom: Why have school? Why are we here?

Let’s step back a moment in order to put school in its proper, social, perspective.

Schools are the centripetal organizing point of de-industrialized North American life, and much of life elsewhere. Evidence: School workers, not industrialized workers, are by far the most unionized people in the USA, more than 3.5 million union members. School unions are growing, if slowly, while industrial unions collapse, evaporate, because, in part, industry evaporates, and because industrial union leaders abandoned the heart of unionism—the contradictory interests of workers and employers. Nearly one-half of the youth in high school today will be draft-eligible in the next seven years.

What is going on in schools?  www.counterpunch.org/2010/09/07/why-have-school/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Ramadi: “We had to Destroy the City to Save it”  As his armored vehicle bounced along a dirt track carved through the ruins of this recently reconquered city on Wednesday, Gen. Ali Jameel, an Iraqi counterterrorism officer, narrated the passing sites.

Here were the carcasses of four tanks, charred by the jihadists of the Islamic State. Here, a police officer’s home that the jihadists had blown up. Here, a villa reduced to rubble by an airstrike. And another. And another.

In one neighborhood, he stood before a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood. He paused when asked how residents would return to their homes.

“Homes?” he said. “There are no homes.”

The retaking of Ramadi by Iraqi security forces last week has been hailed as a major blow to the Islamic State and as a vindication of the Obama administration’s strategy to fight the group by backing local ground forces with intensive airstrikes.

But the widespread destruction of Ramadi bears testament to the tremendous costs of dislodging a group that stitches itself into the urban fabric of communities it seizes by occupying homes, digging tunnels and laying extensive explosives.  www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/world/middleeast/isis-ramadi-iraq-retaking.html

Islamic State releases photos from captured Libyan town of Bin Jawad

The Islamic State Libyan “province” has released photos from the town of Bin Jawad on the Mediterranean coast. Earlier this week, the jihadists released a statement saying they had “managed to take complete control over the coastal city.” It is likely that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s followers were operating in Bin Jawad for several months beforehand, but the claimed capture of the town is part of a new offensive against Libya’s oil facilities in neighboring areas.

The photos show the Islamic State’s fighters burning cigarettes in Bin Jawad. This is a common motif in the jihadists’ propaganda, as it demonstrates that their radical version of sharia law is now being implemented in the territory under their control. Indeed, that is likely the purpose of the photos: to show that the “caliphate” is in charge in Bin Jawad, Libya.

Separately, the Islamic State-linked ‘Amaq news agency has produced a short video, just over a minute long, from the coastal town. The video depicts various buildings, a market, and key roadways as being in the jihadists’ possession. Screen shots from the video can be seen below. www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/01/islamic-state-releases-photos-from-captured-libyan-town-of-bin-jawad.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LongWarJournalSiteWide+%28The+Long+War+Journal+%28Site-Wide%29%29

 

www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/05/5-facts-about-sunnis-and-shiites-that-help-makes-sense-of-the-saudi-iran-crisis/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_wv-sunni-shiite-5pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Vietnam’s (US puppet) military is steeling itself for conflict with China as it accelerates a decade-long modernisation drive, Hanoi’s biggest arms buildup since the height of the Vietnam War.

The ruling Communist Party’s goal is to deter its giant northern neighbour as tensions rise over the disputed South China Sea, and if that fails, to be able to defend itself on all fronts, senior officers and people close to them told Reuters.

Vietnam’s strategy has moved beyond contingency planning. Key units have been placed on “high combat readiness” – an alert posture to fend off a sudden attack – including its elite Division 308, which guards the mountainous north.

The two countries fought a bloody border war in 1979. The likely flashpoint this time is in the South China Sea, where they have rival claims in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos.

“We don’t want to have a conflict with China and we must put faith in our policy of diplomacy,” one senior Vietnamese government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. “But we know we must be ready for the worst.”

Most significantly, Hanoi is creating a naval deterrent largely from scratch with the purchase of six advanced Kilo-class submarines from Russia.

In recent months, the first of those submarines have started patrolling the South China Sea, Vietnamese and foreign military officials said, the first confirmation the vessels have been in the strategic waterway.  uk.reuters.com/article/uk-vietnam-china-conflict-insight-idUKKBN0U004820151218

 

Sexual assault reporting rises at U.S. service academies Reports of sexual assault at the three U.S. service academies jumped 55 percent in academic year 2014-2015 while sexual harassment complaints also rose, according to a new Defense Department report.

The Pentagon review of sexual harassment and assault reports at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York; the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland; and the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, found that 91 reports were filed during the school year ending May 2015, with more than half of those — 54 — filed as unrestricted, meaning they can be fully investigated by the military commands and law enforcement.  www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2016/01/08/reports-sexual-assaults-spike-military-academies/78496948/

The U.S. military released a video (embedded)Saturday showing what it says is an Iranian military vessel firing several unguided rockets near the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and other Western warships and commercial craft.

The incident occurred Dec. 26 in the Strait of Hormuz. Navy officials released the video to Military Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The images show what appears to be an Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel firing rockets from a distance of about 1,370 meters.

Officials with U.S. Central Command first disclosed details about the incident last month. Approximately 20 minutes before the incident occurred, the Iranians had announced over maritime radio that they would be carrying out a live-fire exercise, officials said.  www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2016/01/09/navy-video-shows-iranian-rockets-launched-near-truman-other-warships/78554342/

North Korea Says It Has Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb

— North Korea declared on Tuesday that it had detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

The assertion, if true, would dramatically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.

In an announcement, North Korea said that the test had been a “complete success.” But it was difficult to tell whether the statement was true. North Korea has made repeated claims about its nuclear capabilities that outside analysts have greeted with skepticism.

“This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula,” a female North Korean announcer said, reading the statement on Central Television, the state-run network. www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/world/asia/north-korea-hydrogen-bomb-test.html

Cuckqueen Hilbillary and the Libya Failure  The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.

But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency…www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/

Hillary’s Death Squads

A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the  part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Panic early!

Dow Tumbles Nearly 400 Points on China Worries

Dow industrials, S&P 500 are off to their worst-ever starts to the year

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 400 points Thursday as steep falls in Chinese equities spilled over to global markets

Thursday’s selloff came after the People’s Bank of China made its largest downward adjustment to the yuan since August. The country’s stock market fell more than 7% amid concerns about capital flight from the Asian giant, and China’s stock markets stopped trading after only 30 minutes, ending the shortest trading day in their history after the newly installed mechanism to limit volatility was triggered for the second time this week.

The Dow industrials dropped 392.41 points, or 2.3%, to 16514.10. The S&P 500 dropped 2.4%. Both indexes are off to their worst starts ever, with the Dow down 5.2% over the first four trading days of the year and the S&P 500 off 4.9%.

The Nasdaq Composite, which declined 3% on Thursday, is having its worst start since 2000, down 6.4%.  www.wsj.com/articles/global-stocks-fall-on-china-volatility-1452156855

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 167.65 points, or 1%, to 16346.45 on Friday, leaving it down 6.2% for the week in its worst-ever five-day start to a year.

Shares slumped in afternoon trading, as investors became increasingly unwilling to enter the weekend owning U.S. stocks. The blue-chip index had spent most of the session largely unchanged following a stronger-than-expected U.S. payrolls report.

On Friday, the S&P 500 declined 1.1% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1%. For the week, the S&P 500 fell 6% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 7.3%.  www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/TDJNDN_201601089792/us-stocks-fall-capping-turbulent-week.html

The devaluation of the Chinese yuan marks a crisis in capitalism

Flint’s Poisoned Water The water in Flint, Mich. is poisoned. On Tuesday, many months after its residents rightly suspected its water might be tainted and sickening, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency. On Thursday, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said the cash-poor city might need to come up with as much $1.5 billion to fix its water system, a sad coda to a crisis that stems from a broken down city looking to save money anywhere it could.

But who exactly to blame, and how far up the state this scandal runs, is still being debated.  gawker.com/how-much-did-michigan-governor-rick-snyder-know-about-f-1751873977

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Solidarity for Never

Another Former Florida Teachers Union chief goes on trial Wednesday

The fraud and racketeering trial of former Broward Teachers Union President Pat Santeramo is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale.

Santeramo, 68, could face the rest of his life in prison if convicted of one count of racketeering, one count of conspiracy, and multiple counts of grand theft, money laundering, and organized fraud. He resigned as head of the union in late 2011 after serving for 10 years.

Santeramo is accused of stealing more than $300,000 in union funds through kickbacks from a contractor and the personal use of union credit cards. According to court documents, one contractor supplied inflated invoices to the union for services such as killing ants and fixing toilets, then paid Santeramo a cut in cash.

The alleged payments ranged from $1,000 to $20,000, and added up to more than $160,000.

He is also charged with forging documents to receive $121,000 in unjustified sick and vacation pay when he resigned from the union.

Four of the state’s charges against Santeramo are first-degree felonies carrying a maximum 30-year prison term.  www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-santeramo-trial-preview-20160105-story.html

Dues Eaters Panic: Forced Dues and the Supremes

Mr. Elrich and nine other California teachers have sued the union, saying that they are being forced to pay to support positions with which they disagree, in violation of the First Amendment. Their lawsuit, if it is successful, will be the culmination of a decades-long legal campaign to undermine public unions.

And there is good reason to think they will win. The Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in the case on Monday, has twice suggested that the First Amendment bars forcing government workers to make payments to unions.

“Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a significant impingement on First Amendment rights,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority in 2012 in one of the cases. Inviting a new legal challenge, he wrote, “We do not revisit today whether the court’s former cases have given adequate recognition to the critical First Amendment rights at stake.”

The new case is that challenge. The court’s decision, expected by June, will affect millions of government workers of all kinds and may deal a sharp financial and political blow to public unions. (The ruling is unlikely to have a direct impact on unionized employees of private businesses, as the First Amendment restricts government action and not private conduct.) www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/us/politics/union-fees-friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

US unionism born with racism The black, white and Hispanic craftsmen toil amid the bones of New York City’s unfinished office towers, threading air-conditioning ducts through ragged walls and ceilings, guiding the gleaming metal tubes from one set of hands to another.

Their union, Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers, was featured this year in advertising highlighting the changing face of the construction industry. “Opportunity. Diversity. Middle class careers,” reads one of the ads run by the city’s building trades association. “This is what union construction looks like.”

But the multiracial tableau obscures a stark racial divide: The union’s white members have received more work and larger pensions, data show. In contrast, minority members, who have lagged for decades, often struggle to find steady jobs and to earn enough credit to retire on time with full pensions.  www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/nyregion/minority-sheet-metal-workers-in-new-york-start-getting-back-pay-after-decades-of-bias.html?emc=edit_th_20151221&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=2254121

Spy versus Spy

youtu.be/64xBtImXfmM

The Magical Mystery Tour

South America has become a safe haven for the Catholic Church’s alleged child molesters

Jennifer — who is identified only by her first name because she still suffers trauma from the alleged incident — is by no means the only parishioner to accuse Father Federico Fernandez Baeza of abuse.

Fernandez arrived in San Antonio in the early 1980s. By 1983, prosecutors had charged him with exposing himself to two young girls in a local swimming pool. A year later, he had begun ritually abusing and raping two young boys in his care, according to a 1988 lawsuit filed by a local family. The abuse continued for two years, the lawsuit claimed.

The priest was never convicted of a crime. Instead the church negotiated a large cash settlement, and Fernandez promptly relocated to Colombia, where he continued working for the Catholic Church. In May, GlobalPost traced him to the picturesque seaside city of Cartagena. He’s currently a senior administrator and priest at a prestigious Catholic university, enjoying all the privilege, respect and unfettered access to young people that comes with being a member of the clergy.

*****

Fernandez is just one of scores of Catholic priests who have been accused of abusing children in the United States and Europe, but who have avoided accountability simply by moving to a less-developed country.

Even as Pope Francis has touted reform of the Vatican’s safeguards against child abuse, GlobalPost has found that the Catholic Church has allowed allegedly abusive priests to slip off to parts of the world where they would face less scrutiny from prosecutors and the media.

In a yearlong investigation, we tracked down and confronted five such priests. All were able to continue working for the church despite serious accusations against them. When we found them, all but one continued to lead Mass, mostly in remote, poor communities in South America.

Some of these men faced criminal investigations, but went abroad without charges being brought against them. One of the priests admitted to GlobalPost that he had molested a 13-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he can never work again in the US. He continues to preach in a small Peruvian fishing village.  www.globalpost.com/article/6649016/2015/09/14/us-priests-accused-child-sex-abuse-find-refuge-south-american-churches?utm_source=Voice%20of%20San%20Diego%20Master%20List&utm_campaign=cf5c6d9b3d-Morning_Report&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-cf5c6d9b3d-81862301&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-cf5c6d9b3d-81862301

231 children abused in German Catholic choir

Allegations that more than 200 boys in a Catholic-run choir and two connected schools in Germany were abused over the span of several decades, some of them sexually, have brought the church’s abuse scandal uncomfortably close to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose older brother directed the famous Bavarian choir during that time.

The allegations were reported by an attorney, Ulrich Weber, who had been hired by the Diocese of Regensburg last year to investigate claims of abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir and two feeder schools between 1953 and 1992.

Weber told a news conference in Berlin on Friday that at least 50 of the 231 alleged victims made “plausible” claims of sexual abuse.

Benedict’s brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, conducted the historic choir from 1964 to 1994. Asked if Ratzinger, now 92 and still living in Regensburg, had known of the abuse, Weber said: “After my research, I must assume so.”  www.freep.com/story/news/world/2016/01/09/children-abuse-german-catholic-choir-pope-benedict-xvi/78554334/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Happy Birthday Joan

.

So Long

Rebecca