Rouge Forum Dispatch: War Capitalism = War Parties
January 17th, 2016 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
t-shirt at invisibleclouds.bigcartel.com/product/detroit-teachers-fight-back
64 Detroit School Shutdown in Rolling Sickouts With more than half of Detroit Public Schools closed Monday by a teacher sickout, Michigan’s top school official called for the district’s emergency manager to address health and safety issues in classroom buildings – hours after union leaders and members publicized problems at two public events.
State superintendent Brian Whiston said in a statement that DPS Emergency Manager Darnell Earley should set up a meeting with state, local and district representatives in response to a press conference and a rally where teachers complained of buildings with leaky roofs, rat infestations, broken boilers and shortages of books and other supplies. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2016/01/11/detroit-schools-sickout/78619102/
Teacher Protests: “Unethical” and Union-led–or Evidence of Professional Courage?
Forrest Claypool has threatened our jobs for months. WE DO NOT KNOW THE DATE, for certain, but we expect that the Board will announce layoffs of 1000, 2000, or 5000 CTU members very soon. However many they lay off will be too many! We must stand up to their threats! Claypool claimed that his proposed cuts would prevent layoffs. Yet even if the CTU had agreed to pay cuts for the next four years, the Board only guaranteed to hold off layoffs for next semester!
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Doug Henwood’s My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency is a compact, straightforward inoculation against media spin, which will become ever more dizzying as November approaches. Henwood quickly but systematically unravels Clinton’s long political history. He reveals someone whose greatest political consistency has been unyielding amorality, a relentless self-aggrandizement devoid of humanistic concern for social justice. Those who imagine Clinton as part of the struggle for gender, racial, or economic equality should be sorely disillusioned by Henwood’s thoroughly researched account.
Behind its portrayal of Clinton the person, My Turn repeatedly touches on the rarefied world in which Clinton operates. Henwood is careful (and correct) to state that Clinton herself is not “The Problem.” Rather, she “is a symptom of a deep sickness in the American political system, produced by the structural features designed to limit popular power.” Clinton is no more or less than a master of this system; she’s not the devil her detractors on the right might contend, but she is essentially a representative and practitioner of ruling class politics – i.e., politics aimed against the overwhelming bulk of the population.
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Mushrooms join mold in Detroit “public” school.
Video embedded: Detroit’s elementary School in ruins www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/detroit-public-schools-teachers-say-school-is-literally-making-them-sick
South Africa Update: Mary Metcalfe–
The politics and practice of making the right to education real: 10 lessons
The principles of the victories we have won must be re-politicised by a new generation of thinkers who use the plateaux secured by prior victories to wage new struggles that sharpen and deepen previous victories and through contestation hone them to cleave current challenges.
Just as in many other countries, in South Africa a new generation of activists is doing precisely this in education. We have won, through struggle, a legal framework that has been constructed to build a solid base for the achievement of the right to education. We have a political leadership who I believe are deeply committed to achieving these rights. But we are still failing. The racial and ethnic inequalities of apartheid persist in the quality of schooling, in the material realities of the working conditions of teachers, and in the inequalities of the resource base for teaching and learning. Despite our gains, the children of the working class and poor disproportionately fail and dropout of school.
I have learned a lot from these activists and will share ten of these lessons as my response to the topic of challenges and opportunities for advocacy on the right to education.
The first lesson: In any work we wish to do to advance the right to education, we must be accountable to the people in whose name we work: the students, the teachers and the parents. These are the constituencies which must drive our work. www.educationincrisis.net/blog/item/1201-the-politics-and-practice-of-making-the-right-to-education-real-10-lessons
Office doors of critical academics marked as crackdown widens
As the crackdown on Turkish academics who signed a declaration on Monday calling for an end to violence in Turkey‘s Kurdish majority Southeast continues, the office doors of several academics were marked with red crosses and threatening messages targeting them were left.
More than 1,000 academics from 89 universities across Turkey and from outside the country signed a petition criticizing the government’s policies in the Southeast and calling for peace and released it early this week.
A crackdown on the academics started right after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan targeted them during a speech on Tuesday in Ankara and said, “I call upon all our institutions: Everyone who benefits from this state but is now an enemy of the state must be punished without further delay.” A number of public prosecutors have launched investigations into academics across the country who signed the declaration, on suspicion of their supporting and spreading terrorist propaganda, while several universities have launched their own administrative enquiries into dozens of their academic staff. www.todayszaman.com/national_office-doors-of-critical-academics-marked-as-crackdown-widens_409738.html
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Gains Against ISIS Bring More Deaths Elsewhere in Iraq
When tens of thousands of civilians escaped an Islamic State onslaught on the Iraqi city of Ramadi last year, Amir Mishaan and his three children, the youngest barely a year old, were among those who settled into makeshift lives here in the capital.
Mr. Mishaan, a Sunni Muslim, got a job at a tiny grocery in a Shiite-majority neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, and waited for the day when he could return home. Closely following news reports in recent weeks indicating that Ramadi had been liberated, though largely destroyed, Mr. Mishaan, 45, told his brother he would soon go back, even if he had to live in a tent.
Instead, the Islamic State found Mr. Mishaan in the Baghdad grocery on Monday evening and shot him dead. He was one of at least 17 civilians killed in the massacre on a busy commercial street.
“We thought we escaped the terrorists to live peacefully in Baghdad,” Mr. Mishaan’s brother, Thamir, said in an interview. “But it seems that my brother was destined to get killed by terrorists.”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/world/middleeast/gains-against-isis-bring-more-deaths-elsewhere-in-iraq.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
U.S. flies B-52 bomber near North Korea after nuclear test
The U.S. military has sent a B-52 bomber on a low-level flight over South Korea as a show of force in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test.
The nuclear-capable bomber took off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and later was joined by F-16 and F-15 fighter jets in what U.S. officials said was meant to demonstrate the strength of the U.S. alliance with South Korea.
“This was a demonstration of the ironclad U.S. commitment to our allies in South Korea, in Japan and to the defense of the American homeland,” Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said in a statement Sunday announcing the B-52 flight near Osan, South Korea.www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-b52-bomber-north-korea-20160110-story.html
These Are the Wars That Will Rage in Africa in 2016
Geographically Africa’s conflicts are tightly clustered along an arc stretching from northern Mali through southern Algeria and Libya into Egypt, extending into the Sinai peninsula.
The Boko Haram conflict in northeastern Nigeria is another epicenter and situated in relative proximity to an area of conflict hot spots in the Central African Republic, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, South Sudan and Darfur.
On Africa’s eastern coast, the Somali civil war is still going strong in its third decade.
Modern conflicts in Africa are thus highly localized, and they defy simplistic explanations based on stereotypes. That being said, these are our predictions for Africa’s conflicts in 2016. warisboring.com/articles/these-are-the-wars-that-will-rage-in-africa-in-2016/
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Trickle down….
Update: Michigan has now deleted the ridiculous Flint water “bath time” poster
Lead in–
99,000 residents – 57% Black – 40% Poor – 9,000 kids with lead poisoning Flint HOSPITAL Water:
Virginia Tech researcher accuses state health officials of “hiding” data on Flint’s water
Virginia Tech researchers accuse Michigan health officials of trying to “stonewall” the investigation into lead in Flint’s drinking water.
The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, are available online.
Marc Edwards says newly obtained internal documents show Department of Health and Human Services employees tried to hide evidence that matched the increased lead levels in children found by doctors at Hurley Medical Center.
“There are emails that show they reproduced the Hurley analysis very early on, and in a document they said is not to be distributed to the public, they noted they found the same thing as Hurley but they didn’t tell anyone,” says Edwards. michiganradio.org/post/virginia-tech-researcher-accuses-state-health-officials-hiding-data-flints-water#stream/0
Panic Early! Global stocks sank sharply on Friday, as the price of oil slipped below $30 a barrel. The glut was at the heart of the tumult, as investors worried that the demand from China would drop and supplies from Iran would grow.
The world is awash in crude oil, with enough extra produced last year to fuel all of Britain or Thailand. And the price of oil will not stop falling until the glut shrinks.
The oil glut — the unsold crude that is piling up around the world — is a quandary and a source of investor anxiety that once again rattled global markets on Friday.
As prices have dropped, the amount of excess production has been cut in half over the last six months. About one million barrels of extra oil is now being dumped on the markets each day.
But that means the glut is still continuing to grow, and it could take years to work through the crude that is being warehoused, poured into petroleum depots or loaded onto supertankers for storage at sea.
The shakeout will be painful, taking an even bigger toll on companies, countries and investors.
“The glut is the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” said Steve McCoy, vice president for drilling contracts at Latshaw Drilling, an Oklahoma service company that prospered in recent years from the American shale boom. “The world simply produced too much, and now we have to use it up or many oil-producing countries and some oil companies may drown.”
Just a couple of years ago, producers and petro-states were making vast fortunes drilling and pumping relentlessly to fuel expanding middle classes in Asia, Latin America and Africa. But suddenly they are producing more than anyone needs at a time when China and other rapidly growing economies, once hungry for energy, are pulling back.
The extra oil has sent the price of crude into a tailspin, down more than 70 percent over the last 18 months.
That, in turn, has helped depress stock markets around the world, as investors worry about global growth. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is off around 8 percent in just the first two weeks of the year; European shares are down even more. Chinese stocks have dropped 20 percent from their December peak, putting the market in bear territory. www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/business/energy-environment/oil-prices-one-million-barrel-glut.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Chelsea Clinton, $10M Apartment, $3M Wedding, $600K Job: I Just Don’t Care About Money
The daughter of former President Bill Clinton and ex-secretary of state (and cuckqueen)Hillary Clinton explained in a new interview why she left lucrative professions and opted for working with her family’s philanthropic foundation. ‘I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,’ she said. nation.foxnews.com/2014/06/23/chelsea-clinton-10m-apartment-3m-wedding-600k-job-i-just-dont-care-about-money
A recession worse than 2008 is coming
The S&P 500 has begun 2016 with its worst performance ever. This has prompted Wall Street apologists to come out in full force and try to explain why the chaos in global currencies and equities will not be a repeat of 2008. Nor do they want investors to believe this environment is commensurate with the dot-com bubble bursting. They claim the current turmoil in China is not even comparable to the 1997 Asian debt crisis.
Indeed, the unscrupulous individuals that dominate financial institutions and governments seldom predict a down-tick on Wall Street, so don’t expect them to warn of the impending global recession and market mayhem.
But a recession has occurred in the U.S. about every five years, on average, since the end of WWII; and it has been seven years since the last one — we are overdue. www.cnbc.com/2016/01/15/a-recession-worse-than-2008-is-coming-commentary.html
Money begets money: For many lawmakers, salary is secondary Year after year, OpenSecrets.org data shows that Congress is a millionaire’s club. That’s true even though members make “only” $174,000 a year, largely because many of them are wealthy before they’re elected. In fact, salary isn’t the top source of income for a large group of these lawmakers: Their pay is outstripped by the interest and capital gains they collect on their bank accounts, mutual funds and other financial holdings.
In other words, they’re not earning most of their money; their money is making money.
The average American hasn’t had much experience with that. In 2014, the money made by the money of at least 160 members of the 114th Congress — more than one-third — was greater than the total income of the median American household ($53,657). At least 174 made more money from their money than the median household in their own district made overall. And 68 made more money this way than by drawing a congressional paycheck. (We excluded income from property rentals in our analysis.)
This “unearned income” is most commonly collected as capital gains — cash generated when an asset (like an investment or real estate) is sold for more than the purchase price. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who made a fortune in the car alarm business and regularly tops our list of the wealthiest members of Congress, had the highest capital gains income in 2014, accounting for most of his more than $2 million in unearned income ($2.6 million if rental income is factored in). Issa also earned interest on cash assets and received dividends from companies he owns.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) led the 40 members of the Senate whose unearned income came to more than the median U.S. household income; hers totaled at least $8.2 million, most of which was due to capital gains on her husband’s assets. www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/01/money-begets-money-for-many-lawmakers-salary-is-secondary/?utm_source=CRP+Mail+List&utm_campaign=6e801d83f4-Newsletter_1_15_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9df8578d78-6e801d83f4-210801521
Government Waste? State Police Leaving New Headquarters 5 Years After Moving In
Government waste?
Ross Jones of WXYZ reports that barely five years after Michigan State troopers moved into a new $71 million headquarters in Lansing, they’re moving to an existing building in nearby Dimondale that some suggested they should have gone to in the first place.
Jones reports that officers and lawmakers protested the move in 2007 as troopers faced layoffs and the state was close to going broke.
“I’m convinced more than ever, this is the worst case of political payback,” said then State Rep. Rick Jones in 2007.
Jones reports that Rep. Jones had opposed the new building and cited the cozy relationship between Gov. Jennifer Granholm and building developer, Joel Ferguson, who was a big supporter of Granholm.
Jones reports the troopers will begin leaving in September, and workers from the Department of Community Health will move in.
Jones reports that it’s all part of a massive relocation plan expected to save taxpayers $30 million.
Senator Jones tells WXYZ the state would have saved a lot more had it never constructed the police headquarters. www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/11327/government_waste_state_police_leaving_new_headquarters_5_years_after_moving_in#.Vps9M1Ji9-y
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families.
The book, “Dark Money,” by Jane Mayer, traces the rise of the modern conservative movement through the activism and money of a handful of rich donors: among them Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune, and Harry and Lynde Bradley, brothers who became wealthy in part from military contracts but poured millions into anti-government philanthropy.
But the book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine. www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/us/politics/father-of-koch-brothers-helped-build-nazi-oil-refinery-book-says.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region%C2%AEion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1
Young, idealistic – and dead: the Mexican mayor gunned down on her second day
Gisela Mota returned home just before midnight on New Year’s Day at the end of an exhilarating first day as the first female mayor of her home town. After giving her maiden speech at the town hall, the 33-year-old met with her new cabinet, then ate a late dinner before returning home exhausted. She went straight to bed, but her proud family stayed up late, talking about her historic achievement.
Mota was still asleep when an armed gang forced its way into the house just before 7am. The only person awake was her mother, Juana Ocampo, who saw six or seven people – some of them masked, some carrying guns – who approached the house shouting “where is she?”
Within minutes the whole family – including Mota’s young nieces and nephew who were visiting for the holidays – were hauled out of their beds and forced to lie face down in the lounge and patio with guns to their heads, as the killers tried to identify their target.
“They said ‘we’ve been sent here with an order to kill, which one is she?’” Ocampo told the Guardian. “I thought they’d come to kidnap her, so I was thinking how we’d pay the ransom.”
Mota identified herself, and was dragged face down a few metres towards the front door. She was shot at least four times, just metres away from where her newborn nephew lay in his cot. The assailants fled to their vehicles and escaped down the sleepy village high street. www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/13/mexico-mayor-gisela-mota-murdered-mafia
Detroit: Our Editorial: Fire DPS strike ringleaders
Ousted Detroit teachers union president Steve Conn should lose his teaching job. So should the other Detroit Public Schools’ teachers who have organized the recent string of sickouts, forcing the closure of dozens of schools and leaving kids with nowhere to go.
After three large high schools were closed last week due to these planned sickouts, Conn organized dozens of teachers over the weekend. This lead to more than half of DPS schools — 64 buildings — being closed on Monday.
Students should never be used as bargaining chips, and DPS Emergency Manager Darnell Earley and the state should go after Conn with everything in their power.
These sickouts are strikes, which are illegal under state law. The law says striking teachers can lose their job or face fines. And the union behind the strike can be fined at an even heftier rate. But the law also makes it difficult on districts to prosecute teachers and the unions because of all the administrative hoops they have to jump through, meaning few teachers ever face punishment for striking. www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/01/11/editorial-fire-dps-strike-ringleaders/78665926/
Timeline: U.S.-Iran Relations From 1953 Coup to 2016 Prisoner Swap
Following is a chronology of major events in relations between the Iran and the United States:
1953 – CIA helps orchestrate overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, restoring to power the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
1957 – The United States and Iran sign an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation.
1967 – The United States provides Iran with the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor along with weapons-grade 93 percent enriched uranium fuel. www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/01/16/world/middleeast/16reuters-iran-nuclear-usa-timeline.html?_r=0
Solidarity for Never
State’s key witness takes stand in Pat Santeramo trial
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The state’s key witness testified Tuesday in the trial of the former president of the Broward Teachers Union.
Pat Santeramo is accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in money, and he soon could learn his fate as the trial nears its end.
Invoice after invoice was under scrutiny in the courtroom Tuesday, all of which were signed by Santeramo.
“Was there a discussion about inflating invoices?” the prosecutor asked witness David Esposito.
“Yes, there was,” Esposito said.
Esposito is the state’s key witness and is accused of conspiring with Santeramo to pocket cash.
But the whole operation unraveled in 2011, when Santeramo resigned and was arrested.
Esposito was given immunity in exchange for his testimony.
“At some point he asked me to give him money for work that he was giving me for BTU kickbacks,” Esposito said.
Prosecutors have tied at least $300,000 that they believe Santeramo stole in kickbacks and personal charges on company credit cards. www.local10.com/news/states-key-witness-takes-stand-in-pat-santeramo-trial
The Magical Mystery Tour
Hillbillary plans to investigate Area 51, UFOs if elected In an interview with New Hampshire’s The Conway Daily Sun, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that she would investigate Area 51 and UFOs if she were elected.
Reporter Daymond Steer asked Clinton about the topic in 2007, and revived the issue when she visited the paper’s headquarters for an editorial board meeting. “Yes, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” she told Steer enthusiastically.
Steer asked Clinton about her husband Bill Clinton‘s comments in 2014 that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if we’ve already been visited by aliens.
“I think we may have been [visited already]. We don’t know for sure,” she responded.
The Democratic frontrunner also added that her campaign chairman John Podesta is a big fan of UFOlogy.
“He has made me personally pledge we are going to get the information out,” she said. “One way or another. Maybe we could have, like, a task force to go to Area 51.” www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clinton-plans-to-investigate-area-51-ufos-if-elected/ar-AAgl3H5?ocid=spartanntp
Anglican communion to restrict US Church over gay marriage Anglican leaders have barred a liberal US branch from decision-making for allowing same-sex marriage.
Anglicans have been divided on the issue since the US Episcopal Church ordained an openly gay bishop in 2003.
Leaders said the church’s stance was a “fundamental departure” from the faith of the majority in what is the world’s third largest Christian denomination.
But Episcopal leaders said the three-year bar, which aims to prevent a formal schism, “will bring real pain”.
‘Fundamental departure’
The decision – made at a four-day meeting of 39 Anglican primates in Canterbury – means the Church will be suspended from participating in the life and work of the Anglican communion, the BBC’s religious correspondent Carol Wyatt said.
A statement from the primates at the meeting says that the church should “no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity”. www.bbc.com/news/uk-35318392
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Vermont Man Uses Tractor To Flatten 8 Police Cars After Marijuana Arrest
Police have pinned the vandalism on Roger Pion, 34, of Newport.
The incident took place at the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department in Derby, around 12:40 p.m.
“We came out and sure enough there was someone who had run over our cruisers with a tractor,” Chief Dep. Philip Brooks of the Orleans County Sheriff’s Dept. said in an interview with local WCAX.
Officers claim that “the radios are ruined, the radar detectors, the cages in the cars… We’re going to have to get the jaws of life up here to pry the trunks open and see about the rifles and shotguns,” Sheriff Kirk Martin stated to the Associated Press.
How did he get away with it – at least for a little while? countercurrentnews.com/2016/01/tractor-police-cars-arrest/#
So Long
