We Say Fight Back!

Rouge Forum 2016 Calgary

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145 Years Since the Paris Commune gave us a guide

Paris Commune (1871)

The Paris Commune, the first successful worker’s revolution, existed from March 26 to May 30, 1871.

Following the defeat of France (ruled at the time by Louis Bonaparte) in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, the Government of National Defense concluded the war with the Germans on harsh terms – namely the occupation of Paris, which had heroically withstood a six months siege by the German armies.

Paris workers reacted angrily to German occupation, and refused to cooperate with the German soldiers; being so bold as to limit the area of German occupation to only a few parks in a small corner of the city, and keeping a very watchful eye over the German soldiers to ensure that they not cross those boundaries. On March 18, the new French government, led by Thiers, having gained the permission of Germany, sent its army into Paris to capture the military arms within the city to insure that the Paris workers would not be armed and resist the Germans. The Paris workers peacefully refused to allow the French Army to capture the weapons, and as a result the French Government of “National Defense” declared War on the city of Paris. On March 26, 1871, in a wave of popular support, a municipal council composed of workers and soldiers – the Paris Commune – was elected. Throughout France support rapidly spread to the workers of Paris, a wildfire which was quickly and brutally stamped out by the government. The workers of Paris, however, would be another problem. Within Paris, the first workers government was being created:

On March 26 the Paris Commune was elected and on March 28 it was proclaimed. The Central Committee of the National Guard, which up to then had carried on the government, handed in its resignation to the National Guard, after it had first decreed the abolition of the scandalous Paris “Morality Police”. On March 30 the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army, and declared that the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, was to be the sole armed force. It remitted all payments of rent for dwelling houses from October 1870 until April, the amounts already paid to be reckoned to a future rental period, and stopped all sales of article pledged in the municipal pawnshops. On the same day the foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because “the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic”.

On April 1 it was decided that the highest salary received by any employee of the Commune, and therefore also by its members themselves, might not exceed 6,000 francs. On the following day the Commune decreed the separation of the Church from the State, and the abolition of all state payments for religious purposes as well as the transformation of all Church property into national property; as a result of which, on April 8, a decree excluding from the schools all religious symbols, pictures, dogmas, prayers – in a word, “all that belongs to the sphere of the individual’s conscience” – was ordered to be excluded from the schools, and this decree was gradually applied. www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/p/a.htm

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Puerto Rico Students Shut down University over 
Austerity Cuts

Thousands of college students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) approved a three-day, full-campus shutdown Tuesday to protest recent austerity measures, which they say endanger the higher education system.

The students held a general student assembly, after which they marched through the university and closed all entrances to the campus. The students also called for the resignation of top university officials and announced they would consider an indefinite strike if their demands are not met.	

At about 6:00 am Wednesday, the eight gates of the UPR were closed a reported 1,968 students decided to demand the immediate payment of remittances to the UPR by the Department of Finance, and the elimination of the freezing of the so-called “formula 9.6%."	

The formula 9.6% requires the state to assign the University of Puerto Rico 9.6% of its annual revenues. The basis of this law is that the state has the social obligation to invest in a public institution of higher learning, to create and maintain a state university, without which no modern society can prosper. 

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Puerto-Rico-Students-Shut-down-University-over-Austerity-Cuts--20160317-0004.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Above + below: Flint 10 year old’s portrayal of Governor Snyder and the water poisoning crisis

Social Nationalist “Nation” discovers Capitalism in Universities!…heard the latest wisecrack about Harvard? People are calling it a hedge fund with a university attached. They have a point—Harvard stands at the troubling intersection between higher education and high finance, with over 15 percent of its massive $38 billion endowment invested in hedge funds. That intersection is getting crowded. Yale’s comparatively modest $26 billion endowment, for example, made hedge fund managers $480 million in 2014, while only $170 million was spent on things like tuition assistance and fellowships for students. “I was going to donate money to Yale. But maybe it makes more sense to mail a check directly to the hedge fund of my choice,” Malcolm Gladwell tweeted last summer, causing a commotion that landed him on NPR.

What has gotten less attention is how it’s not just universities with eating clubs and legacies that are getting into the game. Many public universities are also doing so, in part because state support for education has been cut, but also to compete with richer schools by rapidly increasing their more limited wealth. Though the exact figure is hard to determine, experts I consulted estimate that over $100 billion of educational endowment money nationwide is invested in hedge funds, costing them approximately $2.5 billion in fees in 2015 alone. The problems with hedge funds managing college endowments are manifold, going well beyond the exorbitant—some would say extortionate—fees they charge for their services.

Consider the problem of conflict of interest on endowment boards of both public and private colleges. One 2011 survey showed that 56 percent of endowments allowed board members to do business with the university.  www.thenation.com/article/universities-are-becoming-billion-dollar-hedge-funds-with-schools-attached/

Racist Mich. Ed Assn boss calls for another Republican takeover of  Detroit Schools But there is still hope to solve this crisis. Senate Republicans have another plan to create a financially stable DPS, but unlike the House plan, it was created through collaboration with a variety of stakeholders. Both plans entail splitting DPS into a new community district to take over the day-to-day education of students, while retaining the old district to help pay off debt. But the Senate plan doesn’t include the litany of unrelated, anti-educator, anti-union provisions contained in the House package.

While we still have some significant concerns, the Michigan Education Association applauds the process Senate Republicans have used. Much like the evaluation bill, no one is getting everything they want, but most voices have been heard.  www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2016/03/15/detroit-schools-need-oversight/81845074/

Three years after a judge showed him mercy in a corruption case, ex-Pontiac school official Jumanne Sledge appeared before that same judge on Tuesday, begging for a second chance.

He had violated the terms of his probation and feared going to prison, so much that he was shaking in court all afternoon, his lawyer noted.

Too bad, countered the prosecutor, who shot back: “He wasn’t shaking when he took the half a million dollars from ailing schools. … I think incarceration is in order.”

In a testy hearing in federal court in Detroit, Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood heard arguments about whether she should send Sledge to prison for violating his probation — he lied on a work-related application about not having been convicted of a crime — or whether she should give him another chance to prove himself. Hood put off making a decision for a month, but expressed frustration at Sledge’s latest missteps, noting she had given him a break before, and he was “completely disappointing.”

“I’ve already gave you that (chance). Why should I do it again?” Hood asked.  www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2016/03/15/pontiac-public-schools-jummane-sledge-school-corruption/81835534/?fb_comment_id=fbc_1016142255127522_1016199401788474_1016199401788474#f25f48e055527c8

Under new guidelines, the FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies and “western corruption” as potential future terrorists, warning that “anarchist extremists” are in the same category as ISIS and young people who are poor, immigrants or travel to “suspicious” countries are more likely to commit horrific violence.

Based on the widely unpopular British “anti-terror” mass surveillance program, the FBI’s “Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools” guidelines, released in January, are almost certainly designed to single out and target Muslim-American communities. However, in its caution to avoid the appearance of discrimination, the agency identifies risk factors that are so broad and vague that virtually any young person could be deemed dangerous and worthy of surveillance, especially if she is socio-economically marginalized or politically outspoken.  www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/fbi-has-new-plan-spy-high-school-students-across-country

Capital’s Delaware State University purges more than 20 academic programs

Delaware State University has voted to deactivate 23 academic programs, according to a report published Monday by The Wilmington News Journal.

The contents of the report were confirmed independently by the university.

Most of the jettisoned programs are in education and the humanities. The move–which focuses on “low-enrollment” majors, according to university spokesman Carlos Holmes –will save DSU $900,000 by 2020. DSU says it will reinvest that money in growing fields such as Mass Communications, Sports Management, Nursing, Biology, and Neuroscience.

Delaware State’s board approved the restructuring at its January meeting. Minutes from that meeting are not yet available. School officials say the reduction in majors will not trigger layoffs.

In the teaching sphere alone, DSU voted to eliminate undergraduate majors in English Education, World Language Education, Science Education, Elementary and Secondary Special Education, Biology Education, Physics Education, and Chemistry Education. The university did target the Teaching English as a Second Language major for growth, as well as a graduate degree in Educational Leadership.  www.newsworks.org/index.php/delaware/item/91884-delaware-state-university-eliminates-23-low-enrollment-programs?l=df

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.militarytimes.com/story/military/election/2016/03/14/military-times-election-survey-donald-trump-bernie-sanders/81767560/

It’s no job for the fainthearted. As the next head of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, whom the Senate confirmed late Thursday, will assume oversight of the most vexing military problems in the world today.

The list of crises that will consume Votel’s attention is long and laden with seemingly insurmountable challenges. He’ll oversee the multifaceted war against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. He’ll supervise the seemingly endless U.S. mission in Afghanistan. He’ll also take over the rarely discussed operations backing Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen’s civil war.

Votel will have to deal with Iran, which he has described as maybe the greatest “long-term threat” facing the United States. Many experts believe that Iran could develop an operational nuclear weapon within a few months if last year’s controversial nuclear deal falls apart.

And yet the biggest challenge facing the general may be Russia and the new threat it poses to the United States’ historic dominance in the region.  www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2016/03/18/joseph-votel-centcom-islamic-state-afghanistan-iraq-syria-iran-russia/81874390/

Exclusive: U.S. sees new Chinese activity around South China Sea shoal

The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Navy chief said on Thursday.

The head of U.S. naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route.

Richardson told Reuters the United States was weighing responses to such a move. www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-scarborough-exclu-idUSKCN0WK01B

 

America’s Number 1 Video Game: World of Tanks

worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/22/march-td-week/

Just one part of the secret billion $ military budget Congress began authorizing the Defense Department to provide direct assistance to foreign militaries in the 1990s in response to heightened fears about drug use in America. The Pentagon started training and equipping western hemisphere militaries and police to take on drug cartels. This represented a significant new authority for DOD. Previously, the State Department budget accounted for nearly all U.S. military assistance.
Since 9/11, these programs have surged in both size and number. According to the RAND Corporation, the Pentagon now has at least 70 different authorities under which it provides BPC to confront myriad challenges around the world, including insurgency in the Philippines, gang violence in El Salvador, terrorism in the Niger Delta, Chinese dominance in the South China Sea, and drug trafficking in Tajikistan.
In total, the DOD has spent at least $122 billion arming and training foreign partners in the past 15 years.  www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/03/the-pentagons-foreign-aid-budget-needs-oversight-000060
Read more: www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/03/the-pentagons-foreign-aid-budget-needs-oversight-000060#ixzz43KObCJiP
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A la Vietnam: Military lies on its estimates on ISIS  Military intelligence reports on the threat posed by the Islamic State were softened after leaving the original authors’ desks at U.S. Central Command, a congressional task force has found.

“There’s an emerging pattern that as the intelligence reports move higher in the chain-of-command, they become more rose-colored with respect to the threat from radical Islamic terror, from ISIS,” a source familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner.

A congressional task force was established in December to investigate the Central Command intelligence reports after whistleblowers alleged that their analysis of the Islamic State was being manipulated to make the threat seem less severe.  www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2585147

The Dead Bodies in Hillbillaries Fascist wake  Another indigenous environmentalist has been murdered in Honduras, less than two weeks after the assassination of renowned activist Berta Cáceres. Nelson García was shot to death Tuesday after returning home from helping indigenous people who had been displaced in a mass eviction by Honduran security forces. García was a member of COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, co-founded by Berta Cáceres, who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize last year for her decade-long fight against the Agua Zarca Dam, a project planned along a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca people. She was shot to death at her home on March 3. On Thursday, thousands converged in Tegucigalpa for the start of a mobilization to demand justice for Berta Cáceres and an end to what they say is a culture of repression and impunity linked to the Honduran government’s support for corporate interests. At the same time, hundreds of people, most of them women, gathered outside the Honduran Mission to the United Nations chanting “Berta no se murió; se multiplicó – Berta didn’t die; she multiplied.”

youtu.be/TquN5u-RJME

Thank the Empire’s Strumpet, Hillbillary–More than 44,000 people are already trapped in the Greece, a number ticking upward each day, as aid groups warn of a potential humanitarian crisis by summer.

It is primeval, and surreal, this squalid, improvised border camp of 12,000 refugees, a padlocked waiting room for entering the rest of Europe. Mr. Ahmad, barely two weeks out of Syria, does not understand why his family cannot cross the Macedonian border — roughly a football field away — and continue toward Germany. Hundreds of thousands of migrants passed through last year, but now Macedonia is closed. Europe’s door is slamming shut.

“I am in a very high degree of miserable,” Mr. Ahmad told me, speaking in a singsong English he learned in Syria, as our shoes sank into the muck.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/world/europe/greece-idomeni-refugees.html

Thank Bush 2, Obamagogue, Hillbillary—When most American troops departed Afghanistan in 2014 and the Obama administration helped install a unity government, it was supposed to set the country on a path toward self-sustainability after two decades of Taliban rule and foreign military intervention.

Instead, Afghans are escaping their country in some of the greatest numbers since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

The loss of money and hundreds of thousands of jobs connected to the U.S. military presence has brought Afghanistan’s economy to a halt and laid bare the weaknesses of the Afghan state. It also has galvanized Taliban insurgents, who briefly took over the northern city of Kunduz in the fall and have made gains in the southern province of Helmand against overstretched government forces.

The combination of unending violence and lack of economic opportunity has driven many Afghans to flee.

If I get out of this country, I won’t have to knock on 1,000 doors for a piece of bread. — Mohammad Azim, 26, a university graduate   www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-afghan-refugees-20160317-story.html

US (and Clintons) Just Can’t Dump Saudi Wahhabists

Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s urbane, well-connected ambassador to Washington, arrived at the White House last March with the urgent hope of getting President Obama’s support for a new war in the Middle East.

Iran had moved into Saudi Arabia’s backyard, Mr. Jubeir told Mr. Obama’s senior advisers, and was aiding rebels in Yemen who had overrun the country’s capital and were trying to set up ballistic missile sites in range of Saudi cities. Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf neighbors were poised to begin a campaign in support of Yemen’s impotent government — an offensive Mr. Jubeir said could be relatively swift.

Two days of discussions in the West Wing followed, but there was little real debate. Among other reasons, the White House needed to placate the Saudis as the administration completed a nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s archenemy. That fact alone eclipsed concerns among many of the president’s advisers that the Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody and indecisive.

Mr. Obama soon gave his approval for the Pentagon to support the impending military campaign.

A year later, the war has been a humanitarian disaster for Yemen and a study in the perils of the Obama administration’s push to get Middle Eastern countries to take on bigger military roles in their neighborhood. Thousands of Yemeni civilians have been killed, many by Saudi jets flying too high to accurately deliver the bombs to their targets. Peace talks have been stalled for months. American spy agencies have concluded that Yemen’s branch of Al Qaeda has only grown more powerful in the chaos.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi-us.html

VA gets ‘F’ for Persian Gulf War claims approvals

The percent of disability claims approved by the Veterans Affairs Department for Persian Gulf War-related illnesses has declined steadily in the past five years, resulting in record lows, according to a new report from the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense.

In the first two quarters of fiscal 2015, VA denied nearly 82 percent of claims filed by Gulf War veterans for two main conditions presumed to be connected to their military service — chronic multi-symptom illness and undiagnosed illnesses.

In 2011, the denial rate was 76 percent, Veterans for Common Sense director Anthony Hardie said.

The low approval rates, which “approach the limited odds of winning a scratch-off lottery,” are a “complete contravention of 1998 laws passed to improve Gulf War veterans’ ability to have their claims approved,” Hardie wrote in testimony to two House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittees Tuesday.

“If we measure VA’s success by how it has approved Gulf War veterans’ claims 25 years after the war, VA has failed most ill and suffering Gulf War veterans,” said Hardie, an Army veteran who served in the 1991 war as well as in Somalia.

Nearly 700,000 U.S. service members deployed to the 1991 Gulf War, and 54,193 have filed disability claims for illnesses related to their service, according to a 2014 VA report.

Roughly a fifth of those claims were granted, and of the denied claims 42 percent were approved for another condition other than a presumptive Gull War-related condition, according to VA.  www.militarytimes.com/story/military/benefits/veterans/2016/03/15/va-gets-f-persian-gulf-war-claims-approvals/81817420/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

World-Wide  Stagnation: Overproduction in Finance and Industry  American middle class wages haven’t been rising as rapidly as they once were, and a slowdown in productivity growth is probably an important cause.

In mature economies, higher productivity typically is required for sustained increases in living standards, but the productivity numbers in the United States have been mediocre. Labor productivity has been growing at an average of only 1.3 percent annually since the start of 2005, compared with 2.8 percent annually in the preceding 10 years. Without somehow improving productivity growth, living standards will continue to lag, this widely held narrative concludes.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/upshot/silicon-valley-has-not-saved-us-from-a-productivity-slowdown.html?_r=0

Awash in empty Homes, China’s False Dream (overproduction again)  

Migrant workers are the unsung heroes of China’s economic miracle. Numbering more than 270 million, they abandon their impoverished farms and villages to move to the cities, where they run the factories and build the highways and high-rises that have made China’s growth the envy of the world.

Now, as China’s economy slows, the country’s leaders have a new mission for them: Buy homes.

China is looking for ways to get migrant workers to help buy up a huge glut of unsold homes that is dragging down the country’s economic growth. Chinese leaders have eased taxes and down payment requirements. They are taking new steps to offer mortgages. And they have eased the tough laws that traditionally have kept migrant workers from putting down roots in big cities.

The leaders want to turn people like Hong Qiwen into home buyers. Mr. Hong, 32, runs a small pastry shop in Xi’an, a city in Shaanxi Province in the country’s north. The province has said it will offer mortgages and other help as part of a $9.1 billion lending push to get people — especially migrants — to buy homes.

But Mr. Hong, a father of two young children who is from a rural area in China’s east, represents the challenge to China’s effort. He has no plans to buy one in Xi’an. “I am like a fallen leaf that will eventually return to the roots,” he said, invoking a Chinese proverb.

The housing glut is one of the biggest drags on China’s economy, and therefore one of the major drags on global growth. The empty homes have discouraged further investment in real estate, idling cranes and construction workers around the country.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/business/international/awash-in-empty-homes-china-asks-migrant-workers-to-settle-down.html?_r=0

Shudder: China’s Economic Crises  Since a spectacular plunge in the Shanghai Stock Exchange last June, China’s economy, the world’s second largest after that of the United States, has sunk into its steepest slowdown in a quarter century. “Domestically, problems and risks that have been building up over the years are becoming more evident,” Premier Li Keqiang, the nation’s top economic official, told the three thousand delegates sombrely gathered at the People’s Great Hall last Saturday. This was a departure from the regime’s usual rote assurances that the economy will continue to grow at a strong pace. Acknowledging an economic downturn may be uncomfortable for an authoritarian regime that has long prided itself on its stewardship of the socialist economic engine. But, for a generation of Chinese reared on the rhetoric of a relentless and freewheeling economic ascent, it is terrifying.

One expression of Beijing’s obsessive attempts to control the economy is the way it has alternately fuelled both a stock-market bubble and a real-estate one. Over the years, the government has actively steered investors between those markets. In the early nineties, many Chinese, habituated to saving due to the lack of a state social-security system, chose property as their preferred investment vehicle. Deng Xiaoping’s famous Southern Tour, in 1992, in which he publicly touted “aggressive economic development,” inspired a nationwide “development-zone fever”—that is, until the market became saturated, construction halted, and the return on investment dried up. By 2015, the stock market seemed the safer bet. It enjoyed the endorsement of government officials, who, among other things, saw a convenient opportunity to sell off the equity of debt-burdened state-owned enterprises.

But the unnerving burst of the stock-market bubble that year reminded Chinese leaders that their powers had limits.  www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/chinas-new-age-of-economic-anxiety?mbid=nl_160317_Daily&CNDID=39165830&spMailingID=8679945&spUserID=MTEyNjMyNjM4NjI0S0&spJobID=881931136&spReportId=ODgxOTMxMTM2S0

When we think about and discuss economic inequality in this country, we usually focus on income inequality: The CEO who makes 300 times more than his workers, or the fact that the top 20 percent of earners rake in over 50 percent of the total earnings in any given year.

But there’s another type of inequality that gets a lot less attention. It arguably contributes far more to the divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, and it’s been highlighted in a huge new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: wealth inequality.

Let’s imagine that there are just 100 people in the United States. The richest guy — and, yes, he’s probably a guy — owns more than one-third of the total wealth in this country. He’s got a third of all the property, a third of the stock market and a third of anything else that can be owned. Not bad.

The next-richest four people together own 28 percent of all the stuff. Divvied up four ways that’s still not too shabby. The next five people together own 14 percent of all the things, and the next 10 own another 12 percent.   www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/21/the-top-10-of-americans-own-76-of-the-stuff-and-its-dragging-our-economy-down/

 

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

The President of Turkey has said democracy and freedom have “absolutely no value” in the country after calling for journalists, lawyers and politicians to be prosecuted as terrorists.

Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Wednesday as almost 50 people, including activists and academics, were detained in a wave of police raids.

In a speech to local politicians in Ankara, he criticised critics raising concern over Turkey’s record on “democracy, freedom and rule of law” as discussions over a landmark deal on the refugee crisis continue.

“For us, these phrases have absolutely no value any longer,” he said in the televised address, according to a translation by DPA.

“Those who stand on our side in the fight against terrorism are our friend. Those on the opposite side, are our enemy.”

On Monday, the President had vowed to extend the legal definition of “terrorists” to include MPs, activists and journalists.

“It is not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should also be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title,” Mr Erdogan said.

Police operations claim to be targeting the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) following a bombing claimed by one of its splinter groups that killed 37 people in Ankara on Sunday  www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/president-erdogan-says-freedom-and-democracy-have-no-value-in-turkey-amid-arrests-and-military-a6938266.html

Mass Murderer Mott Continues to Dodge Justice  A Guatemalan court convened Wednesday for a fourth attempt to try former dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity during the Central American nation’s long and bloody civil war.

No sooner was the tribunal called to order than attorneys filed motions that could delay the trial again. Defense lawyers sought to block the proceeding from beginning, while attorneys for victims argued that it should be split into two separate trials.

Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos admonished lawyers on both sides for “resorting to formalities.”

Rios Montt, an 89-year-old ex-general who seized power in a coup and was de-facto president from 1982-83, is accused in the killings of nearly 2,000 indigenous Ixil Guatemalans by soldiers under his regime.

His former intelligence chief, Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, is a co-defendant.

Rios Montt was convicted at a previous trial in 2013 and given an 80-year prison sentence, but that was swiftly overturned on procedural grounds and a new trial ordered. Last year the case was postponed twice more by legal appeals.

The ex-general has been declared unfit for a regular trial due to dementia, so the special closed-door proceeding that opened Wednesday in the capital can determine his guilt or innocence but would not result in punishment for Rios Montt if he is convicted.

Victims’ lawyers want Rodriguez to be tried separately, arguing that his health situation is different from Rios Montt’s. abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/dictator-rios-montts-genocide-trial-opens-guatemala-37695822

March 16

1995 – Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865.

1968 – Vietnam War: In the My Lai Massacre, between 347 and 500 Vietnamese villagers (men, women, and children) are killed by American troops.

Solidarity for Never

Did not die for the Caudillo’s sellout

 

Barack Obama arrives in Cuba on Sunday for a 48-hour visit, making history by venturing into what was once enemy territory and sparking enthusiasm among Cubans who have seen their Communist government vilify 10 previous U.S. leaders.

The visit, the first by a U.S. president in 88 years, would have been unthinkable until Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed in December 2014 to end an estrangement that began when the Cuban revolution overthrew a pro-American government in 1959.  www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-idUSKCN0WM04H

 

Fraud Freire’s Hero, Lula, in Hot Water in Brazil 

“In Brazil, a poor man goes to jail when he steals,” a fiery left-wing congressman named Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in 1988. “When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.”

Those words are coming back to haunt him now.

On Thursday, Mr. da Silva, the former president facing investigations into his accumulation of wealth since leaving office, was sworn in as exactly that: a cabinet minister.

With prosecutors seeking his arrest, Mr. da Silva was sworn in as chief of staff to his protégé and successor, President Dilma Rousseff. The post may give him broad legal protections, but immediately set off a national firestorm.

A judge in the capital, Brasília, issued an injunction against the move, arguing that Ms. Rousseff may have violated the law in appointing Mr. da Silva. Protesters rallied outside the ceremony and on the streets of São Paulo as police officers tried to prevent clashes

And the old quote by Mr. da Silva — made long ago to denounce the legal protections enjoyed by senior officials ensnared in graft scandals — circulated widely in Brazil, illustrating the former president’s evolution from a union leader who crusaded against corruption to the target of multiple investigations.

The Dead End at Freire  (2008) Freire claimed to be a devout Catholic Marxist–a flatly impossible contradiction–yet he embodied it and was a self-proclaimed postmodernist too. He said his see-judge-act system of literacy could lead to social justice and overcome original sin, or injustice.

His literacy system was borrowed from Catholic Base Communities in Brazil, designed to defeat rising communist work among peasants. He left from there to a brief stint in Chile working for the social democrat Allende and on to—Harvard!– then to the World Council of Churches in Geneva where, for 15 years,  he complained about “exile” yet was well compensated.

Freire was usually a revolutionary wherever he was not–or after the revolution was won–and a liberal reformer wherever he was–as with his return to Brazil in a top education job for the ne-liberal Workers Party behind the corrupt rule of “Lula.”

Freire was made an icon, and protested only mildly, by American postmodernists whose views he both led and adopted. A little publishing cabal flourished with uncritical praise for Freire. Postmoderism, religion with an angry cloak (Breisach) raised every narrow identity, every neurosis, ever standpoint of what was really a tiny capital, to a central issue beyond critique, worthy of worship. Finally and predictably, it became ego over solidarity. Academic postmodernists became priests of a whine from the ivory tower, at base a whine about the vanishing of their protections and privileges.

Perhaps the real promise, the only promise the Republican and Democrats (McWarcriminal or Obamagogue or Hillbillary) will keep, the guarantee of perpetual war, will have the hidden benefit of killing postmodernism which tried to disconnect past, present, and future and deservedly giving this Versace-clothed update of the right wing of Menshevism a secret burial where it can never be found again—maybe in one of those mystical “spaces”  or “interventions,” it enjoyed so much.  www.rougeforum.org/CSSE2008/GibsonCSSE2008.htm

This:

For this?.

China’s nouveau riche, products of failed socialism, love high fashion     High heels made in China are now widely available in Beijing’s discount malls, but high fashion is still the province of a few designers who earned their cachet in the West  www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/guo-pei-chinas-homegrown-high-fashion-designer

Submarine’s enlisted leader fired for alleged drug use

Alleged drug use has cost a submarine’s enlisted leader his job — and most likely his career.

Senior Chief Sonar Technician (Submarines) (SS) Dwight Newton was removed from his post Wednesday as the top enlisted on the attack submarine Albany by Cmdr. Wade Landis, Albany’s skipper, after Newton was charged with use of a controlled substance and making a false official statement.

Newton popped positive on a routine, random urinalysis of Albany’s crew and was not part of any investigation, according to a Navy official in Norfolk. The official declined to name what the controlled substance was, saying drug testing information was protected by the privacy rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.  www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/03/18/submarines-enlisted-leader-fired-alleged-drug-use/81937098/

Air Force assistant vice chief fired over unprofessional relationship

The Air Force assistant vice-chief of staff has been removed after an Inspector General investigation found he exchanged inappropriate emails with a female lieutenant colonel.

The emails, sent between March 2010 and May 2011, showed that Lt. Gen. John Hesterman and the Air Force female corresponded in what the IG concluded was an “unprofessional relationship,” according to an Air Force statement.

Between July 2010 and June 2011, Hesterman was the deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, at a time when the U.S. was overseeing the air war in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also served as the deputy commander of the Combined Force Air Component and vice commander of the 9th Air Expeditionary Task Force, Air Combat Command, in Southwest Asia, according to his biography.

Hesterman, a major general at the time of the misconduct, relinquished his duties Thursday, and filed his paperwork for retirement.

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, who issued the reprimand, initiated the process on whether Hesterman will keep his stars, the release said.  www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/03/17/air-force-assistant-vice-chief-fired-over-unprofessional-relationship/81936772/

Spy versus Spy

When will the US government stop persecuting whistleblowers?
Chelsea E Manning  The US government is heavily invested in an internal surveillance program that is unsustainable, ineffective, morally reprehensible, inherently dangerous and ultimately counterproductive.

In the months following the US government’s initial charges against me over the release of government records in 2010, the current administration formed the National Insider Threat Task Force under the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other US government agencies.

The mission of this taskforce is breathtakingly broad. It aims at deterring threats to national security by anyone “who misuses or betrays, wittingly or unwittingly, his or her authorized access to any US Government resource”. Unfortunately, the methods it outlines amount to thousands of government personnel being effectively under total surveillance.  www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/government-persecuting-whistleblowers-insider-threat-chelsea-manning?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

A redaction oversight by the US government has finally confirmed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s targeting of secure email service Lavabit was used specifically to spy on Edward Snowden.

Ladar Levison, creator of the email service, which was founded on a basis of private communications secured by encryption and had 410,000 users, was served a sealed order in 2013 forcing him to aid the FBI in its surveillance of Snowden.

Levison was ordered to install a surveillance package on his company’s servers and later to turn over Lavabit’s encryption keys so that it would give the FBI the ability to read the most secure messages that the company offered. He was also ordered not to disclose the fact to third-parties.

After 38 days of legal fighting, a court appearance, subpoena, appeals and being found in contempt of court, Levison abruptly shuttered Lavabit citing government interference and stating that he would not become “complicit in crimes against the American people”.

We now know that reports of Snowden’s use of Lavabit for his secure communications were true and that, as most presumed, the reason the FBI drove Lavabit into closure was to surveil the leaker of the NSA files.  www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/18/redaction-fbi-target-ladar-lavabit-spy-edward-snowden?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

A German court sentenced a former intelligence worker to eight years in prison on Thursday after his conviction on charges of treason and betraying state secrets for providing the C.I.A. with more than 200 confidential documents. The 32-year-old, identified as Markus R., was arrested in 2014, and the revelation cooled relations between Germany and the United States. Markus R., a former office administrator with top-secret clearance at the headquarters of the BND foreign intelligence agency, was found guilty of passing information to the C.I.A. from 2008 until mid-2014 in return for about $100,000.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/world/europe/germany-spy-who-sold-secrets-to-cia-gets-8-years.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160318&nlid=2254121&tntemail0=y&_r=0

The Magical Mystery Tour

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

It’s the first day of spring!

So Long

Little Marco and Hillbillary’s fishhook.

• William Appleman Williams in “Empire as a Way of Life”