We Say Fight Back!

Denver teachers are on the brink of a strike. Here’s how we got here and what could be next.

For the first time in 25 years, Denver teachers are fed up enough to walk out.

Last week, 93 percent of Denver Classroom Teachers Association members who voted supported going on strike. The vote came after teacher pay negotiations between the teachers union and the school district broke down Jan. 18, leaving the teachers without a contract that governs the district’s complicated salary-and-bonus system.

The day after the strike vote, Denver Public Schools asked state labor officials to intervene and try to broker a deal between the two sides. That request put the strike on hold. The union has since filed a response asking the state to stay out of it.

Gov. Jared Polis has until Feb. 11 to decide whether to get involved. Teachers cannot legally strike while a decision is pending.

While the district and the union wait for the answer, their negotiators are returning to the bargaining table. The two sides are set to meet Thursday at 5 p.m.

How did we get here and what happens next? This Q&A is meant to answer those questions.

Ninety-three percent favoring a strike is a landslide. How many teachers voted?
It’s unclear. The strike vote was an internal union matter, and the union has not released the numbers. Leaders did say the election was conducted electronically by a third party.  www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2019/01/30/denver-strike-explainer/

Results of Oakland teachers’ strike vote to be announced on Monday

The union that represents Oakland teachers said on Friday that teachers are wrapping up four days of voting on a strike authorization proposal and the results of the vote will be announced on Monday afternoon.

The Oakland Education Association said if the authorization proposal is approved it would allow union leaders to call a strike, if necessary, to win the smaller class sizes, living wages for educators and
additional student resources that educators are fighting for, including more counselors and school nurses.

Contract talks between the school district and the union have been going on for about a year and a half.

The teachers’ union said Friday is the second and final day of a hearing with a state-appointed neutral fact-finder who is tasked with helping to resolve the contract negotiations by issuing a non-binding report, which is expected by Feb. 15.

The union, which represents 3,000 educators in the Oakland Unified School District, said it can legally strike after the report is issued.

Oakland teachers have noted that the last time they went on strike in 1996 it lasted for more than two months.

The union said the strike vote results will be announced at a news conference at its representative council meeting at 4 p.m. on Monday at Oakland Technical High School at 4351 Broadway.  www.ktvu.com/news/results-of-oakland-teachers-strike-vote-to-be-announced-on-monday

Oakland Students Walkout to Support of Teachers, Protest Against School Closure

Students from Oakland Technical High School walked out of class Friday morning in support of teachers who they feel are underpaid.

The walkout comes the same day the week-long strike authorization vote wraps up which would authorize the Oakland Teachers Union to decide if the teachers will go on strike depending on what the Oakland Unified School District offers them in the new contract.

Higher wages and issues of overcrowded classrooms are some of the issues being discussed. In the past week, the district decided to close down a Roots International Academy in east Oakland to deal with its current budget issues.

“Teachers are fired up and we cannot take it anymore. And the district is only escalating the problem. Especially with the closure of Roots,” said Harley Litzelman.    www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oakland-Students-Plan-Walkout-in-Support-of-Teachers-505186521.html

From coast to coast, a new wave of teachers’ strikes could be brewing

Strikes Costing Matamoros, Mexico, Bosses $50 million a day

www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/factories-matamoros-losing-usd-50-million-day-amid-strikes

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Millions in administrator bonuses revealed as Denver teachers prep for strike

youtu.be/jRNj8kZOkjc

Kalamazoo schools report zero expulsions after ‘paradigm shift’ to restorative discipline (meaning one kid can wreck the education of 30–restorative justice would mean the end of capitalist schooling)

A major shift in discipline practices at Kalamazoo Public Schools has staff coaching students toward resolution rather than issuing punishments and moving on. As a result, the already decreasing number of district-wide expulsions dropped to zero in the 2017-18 school year.

The decrease in expulsions over the last decade is the direct result of the district’s use of restorative practices, staff told the Board of Education Thursday, Jan. 25. Nkenge Bergan, director of student services, and Rikki Saunders, director of special education, gave the report at the school board’s Thursday meeting.

Restorative practices, like daily class meetings or conflict resolution meetings, allow students to remain in school and learn resolution skills, Bergan said. Students learn to resolve differences while considering the perspective of others using skills like peer mediation, peace circles and mentoring, she said.

“We’re trying to give them a skill that will serve them well as adults,” Bergan said.

Under former disciplinary practices, teachers and administrators doled out consequences to students who misbehaved and everyone moved forward, she said. But that model does not correct underlying issues, Bergan said.  www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2019/01/kalamazoo-schools-report-zero-expulsions-after-paradigm-shift-to-restorative-discipline.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=mlivedotcom_sf&fbclid=IwAR0rdgmJoJW0XiXw0cp_hBj-Tf5mG-JynVU59XdB0R6OiMi8G4TNQuJe3uw

As freezing rain poured down on Virginia last week, a student dressed in only a light red sweater made a mad 40-yard dash from her modular trailer classroom across the parking lot into the warmth of McLean high school in Fairfax county.

Due to overcrowding, more than 22,000 students in Fairfax county receive their education in cheaply constructed plywood trailers, often with visible signs of green mold, like those parked next to the baseball fields next to McClean high school.

Those trailers, the poor state of school funding in general, low teacher pay and now the huge tax breaks the state is giving to lure in Amazon have led the teachers to strike on Monday, the start of the latest in a series of strikes by educators across the US.

In Fairfax county, the third richest county in America, there are over 800 trailers serving as temporary classrooms because the school district cannot afford to build new classrooms.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/27/virginia-teachers-strike-amazon-tax-breaks?fbclid=IwAR3-au0VrKN97FyPRSXEYNnrvkqm2FxIvX2xsh8mCUZZWgsVsDMgePdz9wo

Michigan schools stink because we stopped paying for them

Here’s the plain truth: We Michiganders have been lying to ourselves.

We tell ourselves that there is nothing more important than our children, that we are striving to build a better state for them to inherit, that nothing is too good for them. That they are our futures.

But it’s hard to reconcile that worthy sentiment with a new Michigan State University report’s findings: Compared to other states, Michigan ranks dead last when it comes to growth in education funding.

While other states have increased the amount of money they spend on education, Michigan’s inflation-adjusted allocation has dropped 30 percent since 2002. It’s worse for at-risk kids, for whom school funds have dropped 60 percent since 2001

First, the state started diverting money meant for schools to other purposes. Instead of serving as a dedicated funding stream for schools, the school tax dollars the state collects have become a slush fund for balancing the budget, the report’s authors say. It’s an ongoing trend; before leaving office, former Gov. Rick Snyder approved the transfer of more school taxes for road repairs and environmental cleanup.  www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2019/01/25/michigan-schools-funding-report/2666277002/?fbclid=IwAR3Sg1kxj2biiBGfU0v5BD_AkhFVBmD2QsSpKWS75QmxGbmmE6Nsq6LsiU4

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader

Training from the “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions”

On October 5, 2005, with Chávez’s popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan “student leaders” arrived in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.

The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to leaked internal emails from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA,” CANVAS “may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”

CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame — and Hollywood-level promotion — by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic.

This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called “Clausewitz of non-violent struggle.” Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. Robert Helvey, to conceive a strategic blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington’s unipolar domination.  grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/?fbclid=IwAR3CCvvM9Pr_m5GkKKKlbYFhmkzX3FM1hlJ7kXlnc2sRowbLYrcwNXI51xc

AP Exclusive: Anti-Maduro coalition grew from secret talks

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The coalition of Latin American governments that joined the U.S. in quickly recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president came together over weeks of secret diplomacy that included whispered messages to activists under constant surveillance and a high-risk foreign trip by the opposition leader challenging President Nicolas Maduro for power, those involved in the talks said.

In mid-December, Guaido quietly traveled to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to brief officials on the opposition’s strategy of mass demonstrations to coincide with Maduro’s expected swearing-in for a second term on Jan. 10 in the face of widespread international condemnation, according to exiled former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, an ally.  www.apnews.com/d548c6a958ee4a1fb8479b242ddb82fd

The History – and Hypocrisy – of US Meddling in Venezuela

There isn’t a nation in the Western Hemisphere that hasn’t at one time or another found itself caught in the far-reaching tentacles of U.S. imperialism. Venezuela is certainly no exception. Washington has been meddling in its internal affairs since the 19th century and it continues to do so to this very day, when the specter of yet another U.S.-backed coup, or even a direct American military intervention, looms larger by the day.

A Long History of Meddling

During most of the 20th century, U.S. interference in Venezuela was mostly about oil, but that wasn’t always the case in earlier times. Washington’s involvement in the 1895 boundary dispute between Venezuela and Britain was a key event in the emergence of the United States as a world power as the Grover Cleveland administration, invoking the Monroe Doctrine prohibition against European colonization of the Americas, successfully sided with Venezuela. The Cleveland administration, which noted that “today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent,” issued thinly veiled threats of war against Britain, which eventually acquiesced to U.S. demands.  www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/The-History—and-Hypocrisy—of-US-Meddling-in-Venezuela–20190128-0016.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=34&fbclid=IwAR31CGWQC4rUGInQRGtmnkdeP8iiVlzXV36UMv4sMyG4qD0gpmPEdciOVGQ

www.facebook.com/166469333076/videos/374161876702498/?t=7

China Counts the Costs of Its Big Bet on Venezuela

Beijing weighs its options as it stands behind a government that still owes it $20 billion

The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

Donald Trump and the Yankee Plot to Overthrow the (Bourgeoisie Nationalist)Venezuelan Government

The White House is openly plotting to bring down the government of Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. It is being openly promoted as a campaign to steal Venezuelan oil for the benefit of U.S. corporations, and some powerful Democrats are cheering Trump on and joining the conspiracy. Elliott Abrams, one of the premiere butchers of the U.S. dirty wars in Central America in the 1980s, has been named the point man in the effort to bring regime change to Venezuela. This week on Intercepted: Investigative journalist Allan Nairn talks about the history of U.S. crimes in Central America, the time he told Abrams, on national television, he should stand trial for war crimes, and the threat of U.S. military action in Venezuela. Corporate media coverage of Venezuela has been atrocious and largely uniform with the role of successive U.S. administrations in destabilizing the country almost never highlighted. Former Hugo Chávez adviser Eva Golinger and journalist and educator Roberto Lovato discuss how Venezuela was thrust into economic crisis, who is responsible, and what Washington really wants.  theintercept.com/2019/01/30/donald-trump-and-the-yankee-plot-to-overthrow-the-venezuelan-government/?fbclid=IwAR1ne3z2WLj_YOIP_Plg4fpZwzUMc8BSnPZclyKhRR67k0hsIbhzAft0EYw

Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times’ Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America

Covert involvement of the United States, by the CIA or other intelligence services, isn’t mentioned in any of the Times’ editorials on any of the coups. Absent an open, undeniable U.S. military invasion (as in the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada), things seem to happen in Latin American countries entirely on their own, with outside forces rarely, if ever, mentioned in the Times. www.truthdig.com/articles/your-complete-guide-to-the-n-y-times-support-of-u-s-backed-coups-in-latin-america/

‘A Chinese Military That is Active Everywhere:’ DIA China Military Power Report

China is not ready to wage war far beyond the shores of Taiwan, but it is pressing hard to develop some advanced weapons and increasingly wants to project power beyond its shores with an increasingly capable military.

Those are the fundamental conclusions of the Defense Intelligence Agency in a unique report with its roots in the Cold War. Known as China Military Power, it was inspired by a similar enterprise known as the Soviet Military Power report, first published in 1981, which was translated into eight languages and distributed around the world.

The Pentagon released the report today, as well as a handy dandy video to ensure the report’s assessments get as wide a distribution as possible.

Today’s report leads with this quote:

The 2015 Chinese white paper China’s Military Strategy, issued by China’s State Council Information Office, states: “It is a Chinese Dream to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Chinese Dream is to make the country strong….Without a strong military, a country can neither be safe nor strong.”

While that might seem to set the stage for a harsh Cold War assessment of China’s rising military power, the result is markedly measured, especially to those who’ve followed these issues for some time.

For example, Dan Taylor, a senior DIA analyst, told reporters: “The PLA will acquire advanced fighter aircraft, modern naval vessels, missile systems, and space and cyberspace assets as it reorganizes and trains to address 21st century threats further from China’s shores.”

breakingdefense.com/2019/01/a-chinese-military-that-is-active-everywhere-dia-china-military-power-report/

With Trump Set To Exit The INF Treaty, We’re Headed Toward A New Nuclear Arms Race

After the failure of last-ditch talks with Russia on Thursday, President Donald Trump will soon give formal notice that the U.S. will “suspend” and in six months withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, broke the back of the Cold War nuclear arms race. A new arms competition now beckons. A new treaty to reduce nuclear arms seems unlikely. Donald Trump’s endorsement of an intended defense to protect U.S. cities will prompt more missiles to defeat its purpose.

Vladimir Putin has already threatened an arms race with Trump’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty. Putin’s threat has been called and raised by Trump’s space wall. All this suits National Security Adviser John Bolton, Trump’s Svengali, just fine. The United States can compete and compete well in an unfettered arms race. Any time your national defense budget is ten times bigger than Russia’s and five times bigger than China’s, you can afford an arms race. But arms races usually don’t end well: even if you stay ahead of the competition, your security is diminished.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWbp5hxzXTo

Why Did Soviets Invade Afghanistan? Documents Offer History Lesson for Trump

One day in October 1979, an American diplomat named Archer K. Blood arrived at Afghanistan’s government headquarters, summoned by the new president, whose ousted predecessor had just been smothered to death with a pillow.

While the Kabul government was a client of the Soviet Union, the new president, Hafizullah Amin, had something else in mind. “I think he wants an improvement in U.S.-Afghan relations,” Mr. Blood wrote in a cable back to Washington. It was possible, he added, that Mr. Amin wanted “a long-range hedge against over-dependence on the Soviet Union.”

Mr. Blood’s newly published cable sheds light on what really drove the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan only two months after his meeting with Mr. Amin. Spoiler alert: It was not because of terrorism, as claimed this month by President Trump, who said the Soviets were right to invade. Among the real motivations, the cable and other documents suggest, was a fear that Afghanistan might switch loyalties to the West.

“This was a key moment that raised the Soviet sense of threat,” said Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a research organization at George Washington University that recently obtained the cable through the Freedom of Information Act and posted it online on Tuesday. “It’s a fascinating case study of the necessity in all of these international affairs of putting yourself in the other guy’s place — what does it look like over there?”  www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/us/politics/afghanistan-trump-soviet-union.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

 

Congress to hold hearing on San Diego VA human research

Congress will hold a hearing as early as this spring into allegations by two whistleblowers of dangerous human research conducted at the San Diego VA medical center — a development that resulted from an inewsource investigation.

inewsource has also confirmed representatives from two of the VA’s investigating offices visited the La Jolla facility in January to re-interview the whistleblowers and look further into their claims that a former doctor – along with other higher-ups at the institution – put veterans’ lives at risk so they could profit from the research.

The study under scrutiny involved taking liver biopsies through a catheter in the neck from veterans suffering from alcoholism and liver disease. New documents reveal how one patient returned from the procedure “oozing with blood,” in need of an emergency transfusion and later became delirious.  inewsource.org/2019/02/01/congressional-hearing-san-diego-veterans-2019/

When Empires End

The Last Days of British India

…In practice, however, the imperial edifice was cracking under pressure from nationalists—and nowhere more consequentially than in India, the biggest, most valuable colony of all. India had contributed massively to the war effort, and in exchange, Indian political leaders hoped for substantive steps toward home rule. Instead, British administrators granted only moderate reforms, which were offset by enhanced policing of dissent. In 1919, British troops opened fire on a peaceful nationalist gathering in the city of Amritsar and killed nearly 400 unarmed protesters.  www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2018-12-11/when-empires-end?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=bnr&utm_content=20190202&utm_campaign=Books%20and%20Reviews%20020219%20The%20Last%20Days%20of%20British%20India&utm_term=FA%20Books%20%26%20Reviews%20-%20112017

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Bailed out-GM Layoffs of More Than 4,000 Salaried Workers Will Begin on Monday

General Motors will begin laying off 4,250 salaried workers on Monday as part of the restructuring plans the company announced late last year, two Detroit newspapers reported Friday.

GM offered buyouts for 18,000 workers last October, only four months after the company warned that steel tariffs imposed by President Trump would lead to fewer jobs in North America. In November, GM announced it would halt production at plants in Detroit, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, and Ontario, while cutting as many as 14,000 jobs as part of its most ambitious restructuring plan in a decade.

Starting Monday, the job cuts will begin for salaried employees as GM seeks to eliminate 8,000 jobs by the end of this month, the Detroit News and Detroit Free-Press reported. The layoffs follow a 2018 reduction of 1,500 positions in GM’s contract workforce. The automaker expects the moves to help save up to $2.5 billion in costs this year and a total of $6 billion by 2020.  fortune.com/2019/02/01/gm-start-layoff-4000-workers-monday/

The Fleecing of Millennials

Their incomes are flat. Their wealth is down. And Washington is aggravating future threats.

Whistleblower awarded $370K from Chase over firing

A local former Chase bank manager has been awarded more than $370,000 by an arbitrator in a wrongful-termination complaint lawsuit court filed against the bank.

Omar Jasim, a 36-year-old former bank branch manager for JP Morgan Chase locations in Southfield and Warren, alleged he was fired in July 2017 for cooperating with federal investigators into suspicious cash transfers from the bank branch to overseas accounts, specifically in Yemen.

Jasim’s attorney, Daniel J. McCarthy said his client had “clearly” been unfairly targeted by Chase.

“Jasim’s career in banking was ruined simply because he ‘did the right thing’ in reporting a suspicious person who used Chase to facilitate the transfer of large sums of case overseas,” McCarthy said in a release Friday.

Efforts to reach attorneys for Chase were unsuccessful.

Jasim, a Dearborn resident, was terminated from Chase in July 2017 after cooperating with FBI and IRS investigators probing the suspicious bank transfers. Jasim’s lawyers said their client repeatedly reported the suspicious transfers of large sums of money from the bank to the Middle East beginning in 2014.  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/2019/02/02/whistleblower-awarded-370-000-chase-over-firing/2745666002/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason

Fact Check: No evidence for Trump’s tales of duct-taped women, prayer rugs at border

In his battle for a border wall, President Donald Trump has repeatedly told colorful, and at times disturbing, stories to make his case. Two in particular, involving duct tape and prayer rugs, have attracted so much attention administration officials reportedly launched an urgent effort to find evidence to support the president’s claims.

But no evidence has been found — of either migrants using prayer rugs at the border or smugglers using duct tape on women to traffic them — according to an administration official who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.  abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/Politics/fact-check-trumps-tales-duct-taped-women-prayer/story?id=60723806

Part 1: Detroit dupes public with false police response times as 911 calls spike

The 911 calls came in faster than police could handle them.

Multiple shootings. A woman stabbed in the head. Burglaries. Three car crashes, one of them fatal. A missing girl, another getting beaten. A suicide threat.

It all happened in a half hour on Dec. 21. With only a few squad cars available, Detroit police took more than an hour to respond to some of the most dire calls.

In 2018, police averaged nearly 40 minutes to respond to priority one and two calls, the most urgent crimes, from burglaries and armed robberies to homicides and kidnappings, according to nearly 1 million official police dispatch records for the past two years obtained and analyzed by Motor City Muckraker and Deadline Detroit.

That makes Detroit one of the slowest police departments in the country, according to a study by Safe Smart Living and it’s getting slower. http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2019/01/22/part-1-detroit-dupes-public-with-false-police-response-times-as-911-calls-spike/?fbclid=IwAR2eQwDoHSZxhnn9ft1-37oM7aQw7GdtHXV9PTanFCD7vLfe-Lushj_OuK8

youtu.be/8A_qg2X5vcw

Ann Arbor-area school bus driver attacked while dropping off kids in Detroit

www.mlive.com/news/2019/01/ann-arbor-area-school-bus-driver-attacked-while-dropping-off-kids-in-detroit.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mlivedotcom_sf&fbclid=IwAR044Kp38EZyZOSp9vkFaiOnjeu7RrV7wvJ-5MCNhCOo1TpvOZFZW0bEJnQ

Detroit Cop Posts Racist Video Of Black Woman In Freezing Cold After He Seized Her Car

Dearborn Mayor Fires Author of Magazine Story About Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism

Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly, already under fire for killing the current issue of the city-funded Dearborn Historian because it carried a report on Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism, has now fired the magazine’s editor.

Veteran Detroit journalist Bill McGraw, who was the Historian’s part-time editor, said he was informed of his dismissal Wednesday afternoon by Jack Tate, curator of the Dearborn Historical Museum.

“I continue to be puzzled by the mayor’s actions, which are just bringing more readers to the story he wanted to ban,” McGraw said. “The Dearborn Historical Museum is caught in the middle, and I have nothing but respect for the museum and the people associated with it.”

O’Reilly has not explained why he ordered the museum staff not to mail out the magazine. He and spokeswoman Mary Laundroche have not returned reporters’ calls this week.

The Historian, a quarterly, upset city hall when it arrived from the printer last week with a 10-page cover story that marked the 100^th anniversary of Ford buying the Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper, which he used to attack Jews. The Historian story went into great detail on how Ford and his lieutenants spent millions spreading Ford’s anti-Semitic ideas, which flourish today on extremist websites and forums.

www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/21563/dearborn_mayor_fires_author_of_magazine_story_about_henry_ford_s_anti-semitism?fbclid=IwAR1IfmGxNLknof34IjfkZ_F9XsHbYFrHh3pig_ukgHmowBwgwqdpqqndQjM

100 Years Later, Dearborn Confronts the Hate of Hometown Hero Henry Ford

Chapter 1: Mass-Producing Hate

Henry Ford was peaking as a global celebrity at the conclusion of World War I, having introduced the $5 workday, assembly line and Model T — revolutionary changes that transformed the way people lived. Reporters staked out the gates of his Fair Lane mansion. Ford loved the limelight and he constantly made news, even running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan as a Democrat in 1918. He narrowly lost….

In 1931, two years before he became the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit News reporter in his Munich office, which featured a large portrait of Ford over the desk of the future führer. The reporter asked about the photo.

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.

Ford’s anti-Jewish campaign provoked protests and a boycott of Ford Motor automobiles in the 1920s. Ford offered an apology — received by the public with great skepticism — and closed the paper in 1927. It was too late, though, as copies of “The International Jew” spread widely before and after World War II, influencing generations of anti-Semites. The glowing imprimatur of Henry Ford lent credibility to the preposterous charges against Jews the books contained.

www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/21513/100_years_later_dearborn_confronts_the_hate_of_hometown_hero_henry_ford

ICE Force-Feeds Detainees Who Are on Hunger Strike

Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’

The senator was often on the wrong side of history when she served as California’s attorney general.

With the growing recognition that prosecutors hold the keys to a fairer criminal justice system, the term “progressive prosecutor” has almost become trendy. This is how Senator Kamala Harris of California, a likely presidential candidate and a former prosecutor, describes herself.

But she’s not.

Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Consider her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011. Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.    www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html

Kamala Harris Fails to Explain Why She Didn’t Prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s Bank

Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris on Wednesday vaguely acknowledged The Intercept’s report about her declining to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013, but offered no explanation.

“It’s a decision my office made,” she said, in response to questions from The Hill shortly after being sworn in as California’s newest U.S. senator.

“We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it’s a decision my office made,” Harris said. “We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us.”

Mnuchin is Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, and served as CEO of OneWest from 2009 to 2015. In an internal memo published on Tuesday by The Intercept, prosecutors at the California attorney general’s office said they had found over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank during that time, and predicted that further investigation would uncover many thousands more.

But the investigation into what the memo called “widespread misconduct” was closed after Harris’s office declined to file a civil enforcement action against the bank.  theintercept.com/2017/01/05/kamala-harris-fails-to-explain-why-she-didnt-prosecute-steven-mnuchins-bank/?fbclid=IwAR18edr7VpR2vvJPfOaTl6Lmd7BsX-dmiB586V9HLsb6kQobAN_EN6Cfgpg

Solidarity for Never

The Sellout of the LA Teachers’ Strike

From the outset, it was clear that top National Education and American Federation of Teachers it’s a merged local) officers did not want an escalation of the wildcat strike wave that took place in right-to-work states where the unions are weak and couldn’t hold the members back, last spring.

It would have been possible to adopt a broader strategy, one that NEA used in its past, when it was something of a union.

True, the United Teachers of LA had planned this strike for more than a year. But they could have aligned their strike with the second largest local in the state, San Diego, and with Oakland, pulling out well over 40,000 school workers. That could have sparked a state wide walkout.

And, UTLA could have joined the other two large locals and created a Multiple Area Bargaining Organization (MABO). Mabo’s set bargaining “minimums,” meaning for example, that all agree that a 8% across the board raise, certain class size caps, and so on must be met by each local. It one district is particularly recalcitrant, all districts threaten to strike simultaneously. It’s been done, in Michigan for example. The memory is not lost.

But the last thing that NEA president Lily Garcia ($500,000 plus in 2016–living on her expense account) and AFT boss Randi Weingarten (a millionaire) want is a mass solidarity action of class conscious workers who might realize that the two of them, and all their minions, are irrelevant, indeed, Quislings working for the other side.

Weingarten made her goals clear in a transparent statement: This is not about a strike wave. It is about LA. NEA, AFT, and the California Teachers Association could have announced a reasonably generous strike fund. CTA is a $27 million operation. NEA is worth about $1.6 billion according to Mike Antonucci of the “Education Intelligence Agency.” But, there was no plan for a strike fund, clearly meaning that the union tops wanted a short strike.

A prescient rank and file of UTLA, and CTA, might have set up School Worker Organizing Committees (SWOC), in each school to hold firm and wildcat if necessary, and spread the news of the strike to other systems, encouraging demonstrations, walkouts, social media solidarity, and, best, sympathy strikes. But the school worker movement clearly has yet to grow to that level of maturity.  www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=7053&section=Article

Spy versus Spy

Farmington Hills fake university set up by ICE to nab foreign students

The Department of Homeland Security set up a fake university in Farmington Hills to target foreign students who wanted to stay in the U.S. without proper authorization, according to federal indictments unsealed in Detroit on Wednesday.

Eight people were arrested and indicted in an immigration fraud case for conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit, said the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Matthew Schneider.

Six of them were arrested in metro Detroit, one in Florida and another in Virginia. The students enrolled at the fake university with the intent to obtain jobs under a student visa program called CPT (Curricular Practical Training) that allows students to work in the U.S., said prosecutors.

An indictment says the defendants helped at least 600 “foreign citizens to illegally remain, re-enter and work in the United States and actively recruited them to enroll in a fraudulent school as part of a ‘pay to stay’ scheme.”  www.freep.com/story/news/2019/01/30/farmington-university-immigrant-arrests/2724992002/

The Magical Mystery Tour

Victory Christian School Under Fire for Allowing Blackface During School Presentation

A mother of a student who attends Victory Christian School reached out to FOX40 expressing concern over an incident that took place last Thursday and she’s not alone.

Even the school acknowledged that a number of students and parents were offended by the use of blackface during a school presentation.

Now, the superintendent is apologizing for what he’s calling “poor judgment.”

Superintendent John Huffman says an elementary chapel speaker dressed up as a Central African native woman to portray missionary David Livingston and his work in late 19th century Africa.  fox40.com/2019/01/26/victory-christian-school-under-fire-for-allowing-blackface-during-school-presentation/

 

Texas Catholic leaders name 286 priests and others accused of child sex abuse

Catholic leaders in Texas on Thursday identified 286 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children, a number that represents one of the largest collections of names to be released since an explosive grand jury report last year in Pennsylvania.

Fourteen dioceses in Texas named those credibly accused of abuse. The only diocese not to provide names, Fort Worth, did so more than a decade ago and then provided an updated accounting in October.  There are only a few states where every diocese has released names, and most of them have only one or two Catholic districts. Arkansas, for instance, is covered by the Diocese of Little Rock, which in September provided a preliminary list of 12 former priests, deacons and others. Oklahoma has two districts: The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is scheduled to publicly identify accused priests on Feb. 28, and the Diocese of Tulsa previously named two former priests accused of predatory behavior.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/nation-world/la-na-texas-catholic-abuse-20190131-story.html

www.facebook.com/mrBatFink/videos/10156927989283728/?t=19

Sarah Sanders: God wanted Trump to become president

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s presidency is part of a higher calling.

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with Christian Broadcast Network News. “And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Mother Teresa’s Orphanage and Others to be shut down

License of 16 Child Care Institutions (CCI), including ‘Nirmal Hriday’ run by Missionaries of Charity, has been cancelled following a report submitted by Jharkhand State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) with a recommendation to take action against 31 such shelter homes in the State.

Following the incident of baby selling at ‘Nirmal Hriday’ in July last year, Chief Minister Raghubar Das had directed SCPCR to submit a status report after visiting 126 shelter homes all over the State.

“License of 16 Child Care Institutions (CCI) has been cancelled on the basis of the recommendations made by SCPCR to take action against 31 such CCIs charging them of violating various norms of Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act,” said Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) Director DK Saxena.

The list of CCIs also includes ‘Nirmal Hriday’ in Ranchi run by Missionaries of Charity, he added. The list of 16 shelter homes to be shut down includes 5 in Ranchi, 2 each in Garhwa and Dhanbad, while one each in Bokaro, Ramgarh, Khunti, East Singhbhum, Hazaribagh and Chatra.  missionariesofcharity.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/mother-teresas-orphanage-and-others-to-be-shut-down-by-indian-government/?fbclid=IwAR2uXG-FeEYLv34vliptb44lORaqZteGXtV-ewEgkCMbnVqhyE6IP_Ujx5Q

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Do you know Red Rosa? This is Rosa Luxemburg in her own words, and why

she matters today

It’s 100 years since writer, philosopher and anti-war activist Rosa Luxemburg was murdered at the age of 47 by the Freikorps – a right-wing militia that sprung up amid the social and political unrest that followed the end of World War One.

Such is her legacy that throughout January, thousands of people marched in her memory in Germany alone.

But what is it about her that still inspires younger generations?

Biographers would argue it’s her tireless drive to question those in authority – her combative work against political dogma, social inequality, sexism, and discrimination against disability have rendered her legacy vibrant and fresh.

It was that attitude that gained her enemies on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.

www.bbc.com/news/world-46973330

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So Long

Stalin’s Rat: Morton Sobell, Last Defendant in Rosenberg Spy Case, Is Dead at 101