Rouge Forum Dispatch: Why Have School?
Saturday, October 17th, 2015We Say Fight Back!
Students and Teachers! The Unasked Question: Why Have School?
Dear Students and School Workers,
Perhaps you can challenge your friends, teachers, and colleagues, or maybe torment the worst one, with a little exercise I use at the beginning of every class: Why have school? Why are we here?
I ask that question in class one, advising students that I will follow it with these:
- What are the main things going on in school?
- What are the main things going on in society?
- What might your answers have to do with each other?
Having done the interactive dialogue frequently, I can usually predict most of the student responses–but never all, and sometimes not the funniest ones.
Part of your task as a real student is to seek answers to the question: Who am I in relation to others, and what shall I therefore do? Asking our key question may help.
One good scenario: you will recapture the view that most very young children have, fairly quickly fogged over by much of schooling: I can understand and change the world.
You might practice the exercise with classmates before school begins.
Fair warning: very few teachers have asked this of themselves. They may be reluctant to do it, even angry you posed the question. But “why are we here?” must be posed and answered in every class. It’s the teacher’s, and your, responsibility to reasonably answer it–beyond “truancy laws.”
At this point, please take perhaps ten minutes to think through, and make some notes about your answers to those questions just above. blogs.ubc.ca/ross/2015/10/students-and-teachers-the-unasked-question-why-have-school/
Ankara Bombings Prompt Rally Against Turkish Government
A day after the worst terrorist attack in Turkey’s modern history left nearly 100 people dead, thousands of mourners gathered on Sunday in central Ankara, the Turkish capital, to lay carnations and rail against the government.
The gathering — mostly of Kurds, who were the main victims of the two devastating explosions that struck a peace rally Saturday — waved flags and vented their anger at the Turkish state, which they held responsible for the carnage.
“Murderer Erdogan!” was one chant, referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Murderer police” and “Murderer state” were others.
“We met today to call for peace and mourn for our friends, but we are also demanding answers,” said Ekim Ertas, a Kurdish activist who attended the peace rally on Saturday and spoke of the anger that had been building over months as several Kurdish gatherings were attacked. “There have been three similar attacks against Kurds in four months, and nobody has been held to account. We demand answers. We want to know why the government keeps allowing these attacks against the Kurds to happen.”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/world/europe/thousands-in-turkey-rally-against-government-after-ankara-bombings.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-gtG9Zx00
Former AU prof arrested for leafleting re: service worker abuse McCabe, a former AU professor, was arrested by Metropolitan Police around 1 p.m. after distributing flyers in support of AU food service worker benefits in the Terrace Dining Room.
Public Safety and Metropolitan Police officers took McCabe into custody as he was handing out flyers titled “the human rights bulletin at American University,” according to Danny Anderson, a sophomore in the School of International Service. Anderson said he was at the table next to McCabe when the arrest occurred.
McCabe’s flyers detailed benefits regular AU staff receive that are unavailable to contracted service workers, specifically mentioning that some longtime workers are unable to retire due to poor retirement plans.
“[McCabe] was advocating for the benefits and rights of AU service workers because Aramark doesn’t really give out the benefits other AU workers get,” Anderson said.
Officers came up to McCabe and tried to take the flyers and a poster McCabe was carrying, at which point Anderson said he took the materials so that they would not be confiscated. Anderson said the officers eventually left with the poster, which one officer said was “under investigation.”
The Public Safety officers were monitoring McCabe’s table from nearby as he handed out the papers, according to Olivia Shalhoup, a freshman in SIS who was there as the arrest happened.
“There was a lot of AU Police standing there watching them the whole time. It didn’t escalate until later,” Shoehope said. “I don’t know why they arrested him. [In TDR,] he was just sitting there and talking. He wasn’t yelling or anything” www.theeagleonline.com/article/2015/10/former-professor-arrested-in-tdr-while-protesting-worker-benefits
Review Excepts on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 http://
The Little Red Schoolhouse
McTeachers Night!
www.mcdonaldssocal.com/mcteachers-night
Capital’s so-often corrupt schools: Detroit this time The FBI has launched a corruption investigation involving Gov. Rick Snyder’s K-12 reform district and Detroit Public Schools, the latest blemish for districts struggling with low test scores, falling enrollment and funding shortfalls.
FBI agents are investigating multiple officials from DPS and the Snyder-created Education Achievement Authority to determine if contracts were awarded to vendors who paid kickbacks, sources told The Detroit News.
According to a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, one target of the investigation is Kenyetta “K.C.” Wilbourn, ex-principal of the authority’s Mumford High School.
The investigation indicates federal agents are mining a new vein of alleged corruption in a city that has endured multiple federal prosecutions of former Detroit city officials, including ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, pension trustees and public school officials, in recent years.
Wilbourn, 40, of Harper Woods was seen as a rising star, a 4-foot-11-inch turnaround specialist at Denby High School with a “GUCCI1” personalized license plate and a 2007 Maserati. She abruptly resigned last fall after FBI agents searched her home.
“I thought she was going to be the next person to run EAA. She was that sharp,” said former DPS and EAA contractor Andrew Rio, who consulted on athletic projects. He is not involved in the investigation.“It breaks my heart, but money makes people funny.”www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/10/14/dps-eaa-probe/73967136/
A former principal at Detroit’s Mumford High School said Thursday she cut a deal to plead guilty to federal bribery and tax evasion for her role in a wide-ranging FBI investigation of corruption and kickbacks within the Detroit Public Schools.
Kenyetta (K.C.) Wilbourn-Snapp, a petite, feisty woman known for carrying a baseball bat in one school and driving a Maserati while at a second, told the Free Press this afternoon that she is pleading guilty to accepting a $58,000 bribe and to tax evasion.
Wilbourn-Snapp said her attorney Steve Fishman met with her on Tuesday and told her, “I don’t know if I have good news, but the goal is to keep you out of jail. They want you to take a plea. Tax evasion.”http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/10/15/eaa-detroit-schools-targeted-fbi-probe/73995964/
Education vs Prison Costs by State
JUST IN: LAUSD slapped with $1 billion lawsuit to end teacher jails
Following up on a months-long threat, high-profile attorney Mark Geragos today slapped LA Unified with a class action lawsuit, calling for an end to the practice of “teacher jails” and asking for more than $1 billion in damages.
The suit was filed in state superior court on behalf of Rafe Esquith, a well-known teacher who was dismissed in April, as well as thousands of other unnamed teachers who have been placed in “jail” by the district in recent years. Calling LAUSD “a criminal cartel,” the suit charges the district with violations of due process, age discrimination, whistleblower retaliation and wrongful discharge — all in a scheme to remove older teachers whose salaries and benefits make them more expensive to retain.
Among the defendants named are Superintendent Ramon Cortines and his yet-to-be-chosen successor. Cortines intends to step down in December. laschoolreport.com/just-in-lausd-slapped-with-1-billion-lawsuit-to-end-teacher-jails/
The San Diego County Board of Education listened intently at its meeting on Wednesday night as angry teachers and a school board member from San Ysidro accused the County Superintendent of intentionally railroading their district toward bankruptcy.
Four speakers accused San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) Superintendent Dr. Randolph E. Ward and his Assistant Superintendent Lora Duzyk of manipulating budget and financial projections to push the San Ysidro School District toward bankruptcy during a two-year period the County had oversight control of that district. The speakers demanded that Dr. Ward and Ms. Duzyk resign their posts. laprensa-sandiego.org/breaking-news/county-schools-boss-comes-under-fire-2/
Evidence: Capital’s Necessarily inequitable schools
Figure E. College Completion Rates Six Years after High School Graduation, Class of 2008, Low Minority Schools
Large differences among students from low income and higher income high schools were found when looking at enrollment rates by the institution level. The range for the first fall enrollment rates at four-year colleges and universities was 25 to 32 percent for graduates from low income high schools, much lower than the 35 to 51 percent rates for graduates from higher income high schools (see Appendix C, Table 1). Enrollments at out-of-state institutions and private institutions, as a proportion of all enrollments, were also higher for students from higher income high schools (see Appendix C, Table 1). nscresearchcenter.org/hsbenchmarks2015/#ResultsDL
San Diego’s (typically) segregated schools San Diego neighborhoods are segregated by race and socioeconomic status. Thus, if students all stayed local and went to their neighborhood school, those schools would also be segregated.
We pointed to this over a year ago when parents in La Jolla – which has some of the most coveted schools – made it even tougher for kids from outside the area to opt in. This issue isn’t unique to San Diego.
The problem is both philosophical and legal. The district is also bound by a court order.
In 1977, as an outcome of Carlin v. Board of Education, the district created an integration plan. The district made progress, and in 1985 the court allowed San Diego Unified to integrate voluntarily, so long as it promised to keep up integration efforts. Magnet schools were part of this plan.
Recently, the school board held an information session about the future of magnets and where they fit into the district’s plan to keep kids in their neighborhood schools.
One question trustee Richard Barrera asked during that meeting is particularly timely.
Question: What’s the difference between a magnet school and a non-magnet school? – Richard Barrera, San Diego Unified trustee….Demographic data from this year shows many magnets have simply failed to diversify schools. www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/magnet-schools-throw-a-wrench-in-the-districts-vision/?utm_source=Voice+of+San+Diego+Master+List&utm_campaign=9ee2fe71be-Learning_Curve&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-9ee2fe71be-81862829&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-9ee2fe71be-81862829
Freeze up those 8 year olds in Mich: The Michigan House today approved a controversial bill that would require students to repeat the third-grade if they’re not proficient readers.
The bill passed on a vote of 57-48, after impassioned pleas from lawmakers on both sides. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.
The bill was one of two big education-related bills the House took action on today. In the other, the House approved — by a vote of 97 to 8 — a bill updating the state’s rules on evaluations for teachers and administrators. That bill goes back to the Senate for concurrence.
But it was the third-grade reading bill that sparked the big debate.www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/10/15/teacher-evaluation-michigan-house-third-grade-reading-retention/73928536/
Clickable interactive map showing student poverty rates 2006-2013 viz.edbuild.org/maps/2015/student-poverty-timelapse/
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Obama’s express desire to avoid one.
The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended.
So successful have they been in driving rebel gains in northwestern Syria that rebels call the missile the “Assad Tamer,” a play on the word Assad, which means lion. And in recent days they have been used with great success to slow the Russian-backed offensive aimed at recapturing ground from the rebels.
Since Wednesday, when Syrian troops launched their first offensive backed by the might of Russia’s military, dozens of videos have been posted on YouTube showing rebels firing the U.S.-made missiles at Russian-made tanks and armored vehicles belonging to the Syrian army. Appearing as twirling balls of light, they zigzag across the Syrian countryside until they find and blast their target in a ball of flame….
rebels claim they took out 24 tanks and armored vehicles on the first day, and the toll has risen daily since then.
“It was a tank massacre,” said Capt. Mustafa Moarati, whose Tajamu al-Izza group says it destroyed seven tanks and armored vehicles Wednesday.
More missiles are on the way, he said. New supplies arrived after the Russian deployments began, he said, and the rebels’ allies have promised further deliveries soon, bringing echoes of the role played by U.S.-supplied Stinger antiaircraft missiles in forcing the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The hits also plunged Washington into what amounts to a proxy war of sorts with Moscow, despite Obama’s insistence this month that “we’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/did-us-weapons-supplied-to-syrian-rebels-draw-russia-into-the-conflict/2015/10/11/268ce566-6dfc-11e5-91eb-27ad15c2b723_story.html
In Reversal, Obama Says U.S. Soldiers Will Stay in Afghanistan to 2017 (he lied)
President Obama halted the withdrawal of American military forces from Afghanistan on Thursday, announcing that the United States will keep thousands of troops in the country through the end of his term in 2017 and indefinitely prolonging the American role in a war that has already lasted 14 years.
In a brief statement from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Mr. Obama said he continued to oppose the idea of “endless war.” But the president, who once traveled to Afghanistan to declare “the light of a new day on the horizon,” said Thursday that a longer-term American presence there was vital to the security of the United States and a country that is beset by the Taliban, their allies from Al Qaeda, and militants from the Islamic State.
“While America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, (eh?)our commitment to Afghanistan and its people endures,” said Mr. Obama, flanked by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and top military leaders. “I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/world/asia/obama-troop-withdrawal-afghanistan.html
Afghanistan, dark areas=Taliban control, lighter shade=contested terrain. 14 years in Taliban winning. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/29/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-maps.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Defense Secretary Ash Carter mulls challenge to Chinese claim in South China Sea
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that U.S. ships and aircraft would fly wherever international law permits despite China’s territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.
Carter made the remarks after signing a defense cooperation statement with Australia amid growing concerns over China’s military expansion.
“Make no mistake, we will fly, sail and operate wherever international law permits,” Carter said in response to a question about China’s claims over islands it has built in the South China Sea. “We will do that in the time and place of our choosing.”
Carter’s comments come as the United States considers conducting naval patrols near the disputed Chinese-built islands.
The Pentagon says it regularly conducts “freedom of navigation operations” around the world to challenge what the U.S. considers excessive maritime claims. Last year the claims of 18 nations were challenged by such patrols, the Pentagon said.
Carter said the South China Sea would not be an exception. www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/10/13/defense-secretary-ash-carter-mulls-challenge-to-chinese-claim-in-south-china-sea/73899818/
Survey: Marines unhappy with post-war missions, pay More Marines are growing unhappy with their work and their compensation, driving “re-enlistment intent” to a three-year low and leaving the service scrambling to retain top talent.
These are among the findings of the service’s annual retention survey, which Marine Corps Times obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Among its 4,200 re-enlistment eligible respondents, 38 percent indicated they were unlikely to sign on for another term — up from 31 percent in 2013 and 33 percent in 2014.
Beyond job satisfaction and pay, more Marines said their decision to leave the military was influenced by a desire to attend college or seek civilian job opportunities.
Marine officials with Manpower and Reserve Affairs said troops base their re-enlistment decisions on many factors.
“It’s important not to oversimplify,” said Yvonne Carlock, a spokeswoman for the command. “…The Marine Corps offers pay, benefits and opportunities for advancement that are competitive in today’s economy.”…
“Marines are getting out due to lack of purpose,” he said. “They get taught in boot camp to kill, but then get to the fleet and file paperwork and work on computers — including combat support jobs, not just admin.”
First-term Marines who joined the Corps while the service was at war are instead having to do more mundane tasks like formation, uniform inspections, the staff sergeant said. Many who signed up while the Marine Corps was still deploying into combat did not consider what military life would be like once that stopped, he said.
“Now they’re in the fleet and they’re doing all these little things that they never heard about before,” he said.
But officials stress that while combat deployments have ended, tens of thousands of Marines are still deployed around the world www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/careers/marine-corps/2015/10/11/survey-marines-unhappy-with-post-war-missions-pay/73608872/
Parris Island celebrates 100 years
The Cradle of the Corps is turning 100.
Nov. 1 marks a century since Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island first started churning out Marines, and the depot in Port Royal, South Carolina, is celebrating tomorrow with a flyover of approximately 600 new graduates of “Centennial” Charlie and Oscar companies and a speech by the Corps’ new commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, at a morning colors ceremony.
Since 1915, more than a million young Americans have gone through entry-level enlistment training to become Marines at the Corps’ second oldest post and its longest continually operating recruit training installation.
“We make basic Marines who embrace our shared legacy and who are imbued with our core values of honor, courage and commitment,” Staff Sgt. Greg Thomas, Parris Island’s chief of public affairs, said. “These core values are timeless and serve as the foundation upon which we build physically fit and ethically sound warriors.”
About 19,000 recruits — male recruits east of the Mississippi and all of the nation’s female recruits — arrive each year to stand on the yellow footprints.
Over a 12-week boot camp under the attentive supervision of drill instructors, they take part in a variety of activities designed to transform them from civilians into United States Marines, including bayonet and rifle training, martial arts, a confidence-boosting obstacle course, and the infamous 54-hour final field test known as the “Crucible,” as detailed in this Marine Corps informational slideshow. www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2015/10/15/parris-island-celebrates-100-years/73934846/
new yorker cartoon: “the enemies of america willl know we means business when we sell them a fleet of these sweet babies.”
Moscow summons UK attache over claims RAF licensed to down Russian jets Russia’s defence ministry has summoned the British defence attache over reports in Sunday newspapers claiming that RAF pilots were given licence to shoot down Russian jets in Iraq if threatened.
The reports in the Daily Star on Sunday and the Sunday Times were described by the UK Foreign Office as inaccurate. The report said RAF Tornado fighters launching airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq were using missiles designed for aerial combat.
The British embassy in Moscow confirmed that the defence attache had been asked to clarify the UK’s position and had visited the Russian ministry of defence in Moscow on Sunday.
According to a British government source, Russia accepted the explanation. www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/12/raf-licence-shoot-down-russian-jets-iraq
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
A new analysis of federal data from Syracuse University finds that the Justice Department’s criminal prosecutions of corporations fell 29 percent from 2004 to 2014, even as criminal referrals to the Justice Department from other federal agencies have risen.
In fiscal year 2014, the Justice Department brought 237 cases against corporations, the lowest number since 2010, and well below the high-water mark of the decade: 398 cases in 2005. The number of convictions fell to 162, well below the Bush administration average of about 240.
The data comes from the Justice Department itself, obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) through a Freedom of Information Act request. TRAC also synthesizes data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a division of the federal courts, to arrive at its totals. theintercept.com/2015/10/13/talk-of-criminally-prosecuting-corporations-up-actual-prosecutions-down/
Half of world’s wealth now in hands of 1% of population
Global inequality is growing, with half the world’s wealth now in the hands of just 1% of the population, according to a new report.
The middle classes have been squeezed at the expense of the very rich, according to research by Credit Suisse, which also finds that for the first time, there are more individuals in the middle classes in China – 109m – than the 92m in the US.
Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, said: “Middle class wealth has grown at a slower pace than wealth at the top end. This has reversed the pre-crisis trend which saw the share of middle-class wealth remaining fairly stable over time.”
The report shows that a person needs only $3,210 (£2,100) to be in the wealthiest 50% of world citizens. About $68,800 secures a place in the top 10%, while the top 1% have more than $759,900. The report defines wealth as the value of assets including property and stock market investments, but excludes debt.
About 3.4 bn people – just over 70% of the global adult population – have wealth of less than $10,000. A further 1bn – a fifth of the world’s population – are in the $10,000-$100,000 range.
Each of the remaining 383m adults – 8% of the population – has wealth of more than $100,000. This number includes about 34m US dollar millionaires. About 123,800 individuals of these have more than $50m, and nearly 45,000 have more than $100m. The UK has the third-highest number of these “ultra-high net worth” individuals. The report said: “Wealth inequality has continued to increase since 2008, with the top percentile of wealth holders now owning 50.4% of all household wealth.”
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
NY Times almost discovers that racist police murders are the product of racism’s birthplace: capitalism In fact, the deeper you look, the more it appears that the race problem revealed by the statistics reflects a larger problem: the structure of our society, our laws and policies. www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Border Patrol Accused of Profiling and Abuse
The federal checkpoints on highways near the Mexican border, with trained dogs and expensive scanning equipment, are supposed to stop drugs and immigrants without legal status from heading north. But newly released complaints against United States Customs and Border Protection paint a disquieting portrait of the interactions between agents and many of those they stopped and searched.
Drivers repeatedly accused checkpoint border agents of improper gunplay, racial profiling, excessive roughness and verbal abuse.
Last year, in southeastern Arizona, a military veteran said his children shuddered with fear in the back seat as agents repeatedly asked him if the children were really his. A woman at a checkpoint between Phoenix and Tucson said an agent threatened to use a stun gun on her brother in 2012 after he asked why their vehicle was being searched. And at a California checkpoint in 2013, a man said an agent approached him, hand on his holstered weapon, and demanded, “How would you like to have a gun pointed at your face?” www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/us/aclu-accuses-border-patrol-of-underreporting-civil-rights-complaints.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Solidarity for Never
Planning to teach their way out of capitalism, Rethinkers believe the segregated schools of the empire are engaged in an “anti-racist battle…”
While the DSA string pullers in DSA hustle for the social nationalist Sanders–“Bernie Sanders by all objective measures “won” the debate.” inthesetimes.com/article/18511/mainstream_media_declare_hillary_clinton_winner_of_first_debate
The Origins of the Largest UAW locaL (6000) are in the Wayne State Reuther Library, here reuther.wayne.edu/files/LR001948.pdf
UAW Hacks try to ram through another rotten deal, hire pr firm to hustle lies
IS THIS PROCESS DIFFERENT?
Yes. When Fiat Chrysler reached its first agreement Sept. 15, the ratification process was spread out over almost two weeks. As individual local results became public it became clear the first contract was on its way to a resounding defeat. The new two-day voting window is designed to prevent early results from influencing later voting….
The union has unleashed an aggressive campaign on its official Facebook pages with questions and answers about various aspects of the contract. It has also posted clear explanations of the ratification and negotiation process, beneficial for members experiencing the process for the first time. UAW vice presidents also have been posting updates.
This strategy is in stark contrast to a more laid-back approach during the first ratification process that allowed members opposed to the contract to express their views with little or no counter arguments from the union.
In addition, the UAW is holding information meetings at its local units to explain the contract to members. www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2015/10/16/everything-we-know-uaw-workers-prepare-vote/74047930/
Spy versus Spy
What Do We Really
Know About Osama
bin Laden’s Death?
Last spring, Bowden got another unexpected call on his cellphone. He was on his way home to Pennsylvania from a meeting in New York with his publisher about his next book, the story of the Battle of Hue in the Vietnam War. On the other end of the line was Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter.
Hersh was calling to ask about the photographs of bin Laden’s burial at sea — carried out, the U.S. government said, in accordance with Islamic custom — that Bowden had described in detail at the end of ‘‘The Finish,’’ as well as in an adaptation from the book that appeared in Vanity Fair. ‘‘One frame shows the body wrapped in a weighted shroud,’’ Bowden had written. ‘‘The next shows it lying diagonally on a chute, feet overboard. In the next frame, the body is hitting the water. In the next it is visible just below the surface, ripples spreading outward. In the last frame there are only circular ripples on the surface. The mortal remains of Osama bin Laden were gone for good.’’
Hersh wanted to know: Had Bowden actually seen those photos?
Bowden told Hersh that he had not. He explained that they were described to him by someone who had.
Hersh said the photographs didn’t exist. Indeed, he went on, the entire narrative of how the United States hunted down and killed bin Laden was a fabrication. www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?emc=edit_tnt_20151016&nlid=2254121&tntemail0=y&_r&_r=0
C.I.A. Believed Pinochet Ordered 1976 Assassination in U.S., Memo Reveals
The Central Intelligence Agency had “convincing evidence” that the Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet ordered the 1976 assassination of a former Chilean ambassador, Orlando Letelier, and an American colleague, Ronni Moffitt, in Washington and that General Pinochet considered eliminating his chief of intelligence to cover it up, according to newly declassified State Department records.
In a secret 1987 memorandum to President Ronald Reagan, George P. Shultz, then the secretary of state, refers to a C.I.A. report that contained “what we regard as convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murders.”
The C.I.A. review also confirmed that “Pinochet decided to stonewall on the U.S. investigation to hide his involvement” and kept doing so, even considering the “elimination” of his former intelligence chief, Gen. Manuel Contreras.
General Contreras, director of the intelligence agency DINA that was responsible for the fatal car bombing, was eventually sentenced by a Chilean court in the mid-1990s for human rights violations and was imprisoned until his death in August.
The memorandum was part of a collection of over 280 declassified documents that Secretary of State John Kerry turned over to the Chilean government this week during a trip to Chile for a conference on issues related to oceans. They had been withheld from the Chile declassification project during the Clinton administration, which released more than 23,000 records in 1999-2000, because they were potential evidence for the Justice Department’s renewed effort to investigate the case. www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/world/americas/cia-believed-pinochet-ordered-1976-assassination-in-us-memo-reveals.html?smid=fb-share
The Magical Mystery Tour
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The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
October 16, 1859
National Geographic gives Fox control of media assets in $725 million deal
Ever since it was launched from the temple-like headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington in 1888, National Geographic magazine has illuminated the world’s hidden places and revealed its natural wonders.
On Wednesday, the iconic yellow-bordered magazine, beset by financial issues, entered its own uncharted territory. In an effort to stave off further decline, the magazine was effectively sold by its nonprofit parent organization to a for-profit venture whose principal shareholder is one of Rupert Murdoch’s global media companies.
In exchange for $725 million, the National Geographic Society passed the troubled magazine and its book, map and other media assets to a partnership headed by 21st Century Fox, the Murdoch-controlled company that owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Fox television network and Fox News Channel.
Under the terms announced Wednesday, Fox will control 73 percent of the operation…
Still not indicted
So Long
Rosalyn Baxandall, Feminist Historian and Activist, Dies at 76
Rosalyn Baxandall, a feminist historian who was among the first to bring scholarly attention to the historical role of women in the workplace and to expand the meaning of “women’s work,” died on Tuesday night at her home in Manhattan…
Ms. Baxandall served on the front lines of the feminist movement in New York in the late 1960s.
She helped create Liberation Nursery, the first feminist day care center in New York. As an early member of New York Radical Women and Redstockings, she picketed the 1968 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, one of the most visible of the feminist protests of the ’60s, forever associated with a symbolic burning of restrictive women’s clothes that mainstream publications referred to as a “bra burning.”
She played a prominent role in the abortion “speakout” in the West Village in 1969, a forum at which women described in public their experiences in obtaining illegal abortions.
While teaching American studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, she, Linda Gordon and Susan Reverby assembled primary documents, including letters and diaries, that offered a sweeping history of women and labor. Their book, “America’s Working Women: A Documentary History, 1600 to the Present” (1976), was acquired for Random House by Toni Morrison, then a young editor there. ….Rosalyn Fraad, known as Ros, was born on June 12, 1939, in Manhattan into a radical household. Her father, Lewis M. Fraad, was a Communist who worked for the Communist International, or Comintern, in Vienna in the 1930s and later became the chief of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Her mother, the former Irma London, was a Communist lawyer and the niece of Meyer London, who was elected to Congress on the Socialist Party ticket in 1914.
“We threw Tampax at the F.B.I. agents who parked outside of our home for two days after my father refused to speak with them,” Ms. Baxandall and her sister Harriet wrote in an essay for “Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left” (1998), edited by Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro. “We giggled dirty words into the phone when told that it was tapped.” www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/nyregion/rosalyn-baxandall-feminist-historian-and-activist-dies-at-76.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1