Rouge Forum Dispatch: Beats The Nation
June 21st, 2015 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
Congratulations on the publication of
80,000 Teachers on Strike in Chile (what is your union doing?) SANTIAGO – Some 80,000 Chilean teachers on Monday participated in a strike to demand that the government pay them a bonus, union leader Jaime Gajardo said.
The union called a 48-hour national strike after talks with the government failed to get the Education Ministry to agree to pay each teacher a lump-sum bonus of 1.2 million pesos ($2,080).
The government is offering to pay $437 up front and the rest in installments, something that Gajardo said he felt is “an insufficient down payment.”
He said that the strike had been broadly adhered to by teachers around the country, adding that organizers expect 90 percent of them not to teach their classes for the next couple of days. www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=335086&CategoryId=14094
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qREgF707Erc
Teacher Strikes around the world (you don’t have to be a missionary for the empire) Educators around the world have taken to the streets to speak out against issues such as failing schools and subpar working conditions. The discontent seems to be particularly intense in certain countries and regions—throughout Latin America, for example—and sometimes these are the same areas where teachers’ status in society is notably low.
For example, Israel—a country that’s experienced a number of massive teacher strikes—ranked last out of 21 countries on the Varkey Gems Foundation’s 2013 Global Teacher Status Index, which used surveys to compare teaching to other professions and gauge how much respect teachers get from the public.
Brazil, where a teacher strike in April left more than 150 people injured after police fired tear gas and stun grenades at protesters, ranked second to last. Brazil was also one of the few countries, along with the U.S., where respondents tended to compare teachers to librarians. (In a majority of countries, teaching was most often likened to social work.) Tom Carroll, of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, told The Christian Science Monitor the librarian comparison could mean teachers are seen as people who “provide access to content” versus collaborators who support students “personal and emotional growth.” It’s worth noting that Brazil consistently gets low scores in global surveys assessing the teaching profession, ranking last out of 30 OECD nations in various lists included in a separate report on education spending.
The No. 1 spot overall in the Varkey Gems index went to China, where a third of those surveyed said teachers could be compared to doctors—and where at least half of the respondents said they would encourage their children to enter the teaching profession.
As usual, the U.S. got a middling ranking: No. 9.
above, Mexico City, June 2015, coppers prepare to meet teachers’ demonstration
Teachers were at the forefront of violent protests that broke out in Mexico earlier this year. The Independent published photos of a brutal police crackdown on one of them, including those of “greying teachers … with their faces bloodied, many requiring hospital treatment.” The cause? Pay was part of it. But mostly, it was a call for justice in response to the government’s failure to figure out what had happened to 43 student teachers who had disappeared a few months earlier. www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/teachers-protest-world/396143/
Misunderstanding the Civil Rights Movement and Diversity of Tactics It’s gotten to be a pattern on the Left. When Black protest erupts into insurrection, as it did in Ferguson and Baltimore, most liberals and white radicals express empathy for the cathartic release of anger, but urge the oppressed that this is not the way. This is “not strategic,” says the leftist concern-troll. This is “what the police want.” Most of the time they manage to stop short of asking “why are they burning down their own neighborhood?” –if only to be mindful of clichés—but some can’t even help themselves there. In the aftermath, Amy Goodman (seemingly channeling Alex Jones) will spread conspiracy theories on how the government “orchestrated” the rioting.¹ The respectability politics of nonviolence will return.
It’s hard to believe that anyone who has paid attention to Black Lives Matter takes these positions in good faith because, of course, the riots in Ferguson were objectively the best thing that happened to a movement that was already more than a year old. In August 2014, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman had been almost completely forgotten by white America except as grim punchlines, while national civil rights leaders were more concerned with Chicago’s gang killings than with the national wave of police terror. Yet by December, in the wake of recurring rioting in both Ferguson and the Bay Area, the Ferguson PD was under investigation by Amnesty International, the Justice Department and the United Nations ( and #BlackLivesMatter had been named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society ).
This month the pushback comes with Jonathan Chait’s promotion of a scholarly paper on the effects of rioting on Black liberation in the 1960s. Chait’s argument can be critiqued on just about every level: the paper has a distorted idea of what liberation is (apparently, it means electing Democrats), an undefined idea of what rioting is, and on top of that the paper isn’t even accredited scholarship, in the sense that it hasn’t been peer-reviewed by anyone (except of course by Jonathan Chait).
Ten Ways Bush III and Hillbillary are the same: 1. They both have blatantly corrupt corporate ties 2. They are both major war hawks (and add eleven–they both are personifications of capital and empire) more here www.globalresearch.ca/10-ways-hillary-clinton-and-jeb-bush-are-basically-the-same-presidential-candidate/5456953
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Foundation for Excellence in Education Offers a Free Course to prove that the education agenda is a war agenda–class and empire’s wars Education gives children the capacity to succeed in life, and their combined success ensures prosperity for our nation.
We all understand that. Now take out the word “prosperity” and substitute “security.’’
The link between K-12 education and national security is one not often discussed or even considered by those advocating for reform. But the correlation is very real and creates yet another compelling argument for the reform movement.
In 2012, a Council on Foreign Relations task force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, examined this issue.
Smarter weapons require smarter soldiers. The threat of cyber-attacks requires highly skilled cyber warriors. Security agencies and the State Department require analysts and linguists. Defense contractors require a new generation of employees proficient in math, science and engineering.
And most importantly, a capable national security apparatus requires a strong economy to sustain it. In the 21st century, economic strength depends on academic strength.
To promote knowledge and awareness about these issues, the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) is offering a free online course featuring national experts in the field, including Joel Klein. The course is part of ExcelinEd’s broader online learning initiative called EdPolicy Leaders Online.
Called “Securing Our Nation’s Future: The Urgent Need for Education Reform,’’ the course will explain the threat a failing education system has upon the strength and cohesiveness of our nation. – See more at: excelined.org/2015/03/23/the-link-between-k-12-education-and-national-security/#sthash.za4v3azA.dpuf
The Empire’s Afghan Education Project: Looting/Lying The United States has often touted the education sector as one of the major success stories of post-war rebuilding in Afghanistan, but it now appears that the numbers used to bolster that claim may have been inflated — and that some US taxpayer dollars may have gone to fund “ghost schools” that don’t actually exist.
The US has spent more than $100 billion on development in the country, and USAID, the government agency that provides economic and humanitarian assistance, has cited a substantial increase in Afghan student enrollment, claiming that attendance climbed from 900,000 in 2002 to more than 8 million in 2013.
But when the Afghan ministers of education and higher education spoke recently to the country’s Parliament, they claimed that their predecessors in the administration of Hamid Karzai had inflated enrollment statistics, Warren Ryan, a spokesperson for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), told VICE News.
SIGAR released a report today that calls into question $769 million that has been disbursed in Afghanistan’s education sector, and probes the reliability of the data that the US uses to oversee and fund education in the country. Currently, there’s no way to tell how much of the $769 million has contributed to legitimate programs and how much may have gone to “ghost schools,” Ryan said. According to Afghan media outlets, the education ministers said that the data overstated the number of active schools in the country, raising questions about where American taxpayer dollars may be flowing. The ministers also alleged that former officials embezzled money, manipulated statistics, and tampered with university entrance exams, according to the SIGAR statement. news.vice.com/article/millions-of-us-dollars-may-have-gone-to-ghost-schools-in-afghanistan
Bullshit Teachers Association has a nice letter for you to send to the legislatures to save the children (send a big check, they don’t care about most children) www.badassteacher.org/letter-to-legislators/
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Children of the Poor killing other Children of the Poor—Marine War Criminal likely to get time served for murder A military jury on Thursday recommended that a U.S. Marine twice convicted of murdering an Iraqi civilian get no additional prison time beyond the roughly seven years he has already served for the crime.
The recommendation came just a day after the same jury convicted Lawrence Hutchins III, 31, of unpremeditated murder in the 2006 killing in Hamdania, Iraq, and brought an overnight emotional swing for Hutchins and his family. www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/crime/2015/06/18/jury-deciding-sentencing-for-marine-who-killed-iraqi-man/28957539/
Hillbillary on the success in Libya that she, Susan Powers, and Susan Rice, achieved
Chaos in Libya Paves the Way for IS (Stars and Stripes) Benefiting from Libya’s political chaos, Islamic State militants are consolidating their base in the city of Sirte and grabbing new territory, pushing back fighters from Misrata.
Libya’s two dueling governments, one based in Tripoli and the other based in Beida and Tobruk in the country’s east, are running dangerously low on cash as they back armed groups against each other, allowing the Islamic State to exploit the rift to grab territory. www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/chaos-in-libya-paving-way-for-islamic-state-expansion-1.352918
To the Editor,
Re Katha Pollitt, “Ready, and Excited, for Hillary” (The Nation, June 22/29).
I’ve been an admirer of Katha Pollitt for decades; she is one of the finest journalists of her generation. Therefore, I am stunned and horrified by her strong endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
How can a feminist like Pollitt not utter one word of concern for the millions of women and children who have been killed, maimed, and driven from their homes as a result of U.S. aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya – that Clinton enthusiastically supported?
What kind of feminist erases the lives of so many that have suffered from policies that Clinton advocated and promises to continue? This is shame and madness, an insult to what should be a primary tenet of feminism: opposition to war, for justice and peace. Pollitt now shares this shame and madness.
Sincerely,
John Marciano
Professor Emeritus, SUNY Cortland
Liberals Pave the Way for Fascism: The Pollitt article in The Nation www.thenation.com/article/209017/why-im-ready-and-excited-hillary#
The Story behind China’s New Military Strategy Since 2012, Beijing has indeed become more assertive in proximate waters, and the paper underscores determination to strengthen Chinese “strategic management of the sea.” Attention has rightly focused on expressions of Chinese resolve with respect to current points of contention such as China’s land reclamation on disputed features in the South China Sea. Most recently – following Pentagon predictions – China’s Coast Guard appears to be increasing activity near Luconia Shoals, roughly 60 miles north of Borneo in Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone. But the strategic thinking just published also reflects a much larger story of profound changes in Chinese foreign policy.
The story itself is relatively simple: China’s participation in globalization has catalyzed an irreversible explosion of overseas interests. It has also afforded China greater resources and capabilities with which to advance and defend them. This combination has drawn China inexorably outward to become “more willing and able” – that is, active in international security affairs. In fact in many ways, China’s first-ever defense white paper on strategy is official policy catching up to reality….Specific emphasis is placed on the security of access to overseas energy and resources, the people and infrastructure that support that access, and the sea lanes that those raw materials traverse. …
In its most forward-leaning innovation, “China’s Military Strategy” also signals that Beijing will put steel behind its willingness to do more and court new partners. China intends to build military forces that are capable of limited power projection across domains. The headline for this modernization program is a move from “near seas defense” to “the combination of ‘near seas defense’ and ‘far seas protection’,” which suggests the need to develop a limited blue water navy.
Simultaneously, China has set other crucial goals in the air and other domains. Indeed, the PLA has already made headway across nearly all key determinants of expeditionary military power and has much room to grow if, as this strategy suggests, resources will continue to flow thediplomat.com/2015/06/the-big-story-behind-chinas-new-military-strategy/
Shocker! Ungrateful Iraqis don’t want to enlist! Someone will have to fight Islamic State militants on the ground in Iraq. But it still is unclear who that will be.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that training efforts in Iraq so far have been “slowed” by a lack of Iraqi volunteers, sparking concerns about how effective those security forces can be in pushing back the advancing enemy.
U.S. officials had hoped to train about 24,000 new Iraqi fighters by this fall but so far have seen only a third of that total in the four training sites set up across the country.
“As I’ve told Iraqi leaders, while the United States is open to supporting Iraq more than we already are, we must see a greater commitment from all parts of the Iraqi government,” Carter said. www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/06/17/ash-carter-iraq-recruiting-problems/28864589/
Deal With Spain Gives US Another Permanent Base for the Empire The U.S. government recently signed an expanded agreement with Spain that will significantly increase the number of troops and aircraft permanently based there. The deal also includes a provision to allow an extra 800 Marines to be stationed there during times of crises.
The agreement, signed Wednesday, boosts the overall permanent U.S. military presence allowed to be based there to 2,200 personnel. That total will include the 850 Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force–Crisis Response–Africa already there on what was a temporary basis subject to annual renewal. www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2015/06/19/spanish-deal-gives-marines-permanent-base-surge-capability/28981573/
US Veterans, well, Cannon Fodder, Still Screwed by VA One year after outrage about long waiting lists for health care shook the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency is facing a new crisis: The number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than it was during the height of last year’s problems, department officials say. The department is also facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall, which could affect care for many veterans.
The agency is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and other significant moves to reduce the gap. A proposal to address a shortage of funds for one drug — a new, more effective but more costly hepatitis C treatment — by possibly rationing new treatments among veterans and excluding certain patients who have advanced terminal diseases or suffer from a “persistent vegetative state or advanced dementia” is stirring bitter debate inside the department. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/wait-lists-grow-as-many-more-veterans-seek-care-and-funding-falls-far-short.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Afghan War Over? Then Close the Gitmo Concentration Camp Two Guantanamo Bay detainees are using President Barack Obama’s own words to argue that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is over — and therefore they should be set free.
The court cases from detainees captured in Afghanistan ask federal judges to consider at what point a conflict is over and whether Obama, in a written statement last December, crossed that line by saying the American “combat mission in Afghanistan is ending.”
The questions are important since the Supreme Court has said the government may hold prisoners captured during a war for only as long as the conflict in that country continues.
“The lawyers for the detainees are asking the right questions,” said Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at American University. “And what’s really interesting is that the government can’t quite seem to figure out its answer.”
The Justice Department is opposing the detainee challenges, arguing that the conflict in Afghanistan has clearly not concluded and the president didn’t say that all fighting had ended. news.yahoo.com/obamas-remarks-afghanistan-prompt-guantanamo-challenges-155738373–politics.html
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Patrick Bond: South Africa Post the Mandela Sellout The subsequent rise in unemployment, inequality, poverty, and environmental degradation soon reached some of the worst levels in the contemporary world. The consequent social unrest is now so high that President Jacob Zuma remarked in his February 2015 State of the Nation speech that the prior year’s violent protests numbered 1,907, a post-apartheid record. To put down the unrest, he promised increased “public order policing” personnel and the purchase of a new generation of technologically advanced weapons, including sonar canons, which were first deployed at the 2008 Pittsburgh G20 protests. (However, this policing was not evident three months later when xenophobic protests broke out, and by late April the army was deployed in several black townships instead.) The police were never punished for the 2012 Marikana Massacre when they killed thirty-four striking platinum mineworkers on behalf of Lonmin Plc; as of this writing, a major investigating commission report has sat on Zuma’s desk for weeks without action.2
In this conflagration, what survived of the left is now growing by leaps and bounds. Within a decade, it may become a force capable of an electoral challenge to the ANC for state power. But much will depend upon how it regroups amidst shards of splintered radical projects, with myriad questions hotly debated in the movement. Should a new political party be created? monthlyreview.org/2015/06/01/south-africa-exploding-with-rage-imploding-with-self-doubt-but-exuding-socialist-potential/
Hey Liberals! Obama Never Really Liked You Either I spent many years working for senior Democratic Senators such as Lloyd Bentsen and House Democratic leaders beginning with the legendary Speaker Tip O’Neill, and have never seen any president of either party insult so many members of his own party’s base and members of the House and Senate as Mr. Obama has in his weeks of tirades against liberals on trade.
In Mr. Obama’s speech at Nike last week, his comments to Matt Bai of Yahoo over the weekend, and White House press secretary Josh Earnest’s comments to reporters on Monday, Mr. Obama and his White House staff have repeated a string of personal insults directed against prominent liberal Democrats in Congress, liberal Democrats across the nation, organized labor, and leading public interest and environmental groups who share doubts about the TPP trade deal.
Mr. Obama’s tirades on trade have included accusations that these liberal Democrats are ignorant about trade policy, insincere when offering their opinions, motivated by politics and not the national interest, and backward looking towards the past. Obama’s repeated attacks against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in which he charged that Warren’s concern about the trade bill is motivated not by a reasoned view of what is right for America but by her personal political motivations, is one of the most dishonest and repellant examples of character assassination and contempt by any American president, against any leading member of his own party, in my lifetime.
Of course Ms. Warren, the most nationally respected liberal leader in American politics, is motivated by what she believes is right for the nation. Doubts about the trade bill are not limited to Ms. Warren. They are shared by the leader of Senate Democrats, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the leader of House Democrats, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and a majority of Democrats in the Senate and House as well as a significant number of leading liberal economists.
For the President to suggest that he knows more about trade than all of them do, and that they are all ignorant about the trade bill and trade policy, is staggeringly false and contemptuous of many who have been working on trade policy far longer than he has and know far more about trade, in truth, than he does. observer.com/2015/05/obama-hurls-insults-at-liberals-on-trade/#ixzz3dIayiuMb
Obamagogue’s Pals in Big Pharma Behind TPP Secrecy (well, there is China competition…) It is no secret that US healthcare corporations have been among, if not the biggest beneficiaries of Obamacare: by “socializing” costs and spreading the reimbursement pool over the entire population in the form of a tax, pharmaceutical companies have been able to boost medical product and service costs to unprecedented levels with the help of complicit insurance companies who have subsequently passed through these costs to the consumer, in the process sending the price of biotech and pharma stocks to levels not seen since the dot com bubble.
But when it came to the highly confidential TPP, it was unclear just which corporations were dominant in pulling the strings.
Now thanks to more documents published by Wikileaks, and analyzed by the NYT, it appears that “big pharma” is once again pulling the strings, this time of the Trans Pacific Partnership, which if passed will “empower big pharmaceutical firms to command higher reimbursement rates in the United States and abroad, at the expense of consumers” according to “public health professionals, generic-drug makers and activists opposed to the trade deal.”
In other words, just like the narrowly-passed Obamacare was a gift for big Pharma, so America’s legal drug dealers are now trying to go for another price boosting catalyst, one which however will involve not just the US but some 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Worst of all, the negotiations for the next price increase is taking place in utmost secrecy where “American negotiators are still pressing participating governments to open the process that sets reimbursement rates for drugs and medical devices.” www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-10/profits-over-public-health-big-pharma-revealed-puppetmaster-behind-tpp-secrecy
Farewell Retail–GAP to close 175 stores Gap announced Monday that it planned to close one-fourth of its stores in North America over the next few years, potentially affecting thousands of jobs, as the brand struggles to turn around a business mired in a long sales slump.
The retailer said in a statement that it would shutter 175 of its 675 Gap stores in North America, of which about 140 will close in the current fiscal year, which will end next January. The closings will leave the Gap label with about 500 specialty stores in the region, in addition to Gap’s 300 outlet stores, which are not being closed.
The bulk of the stores to be closed are in the United States. Gap will also close a limited number of European locations, the company said, though it did not give a specific store count.
Gap declined to say how many store employee positions would be lost. The company has about 141,000 full- and part-time employees worldwide, in about 1,600 company-owned and franchise stores. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/business/gap-to-close-175-stores-in-north-america.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
Coppers only beat people when they see a camera
Nazi Terrorist Murder in S.C. My grandmother used to speak of Klansmen riding through Louisiana at night, how she could see their white robes shimmering in the dark, how black people hid in bayous to escape them. Before her time, during Reconstruction, Ku Klux Klan members believed they could scare superstitious black people out of their newly won freedom. They wore terrifying costumes but were not exactly hiding — many former slaves recognized bosses and neighbors under their white sheets. They were haunting in masks, a seen yet unseen terror. In addition to killing and beating black people, they often claimed to be the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers.
You could argue, of course, that there are no ghosts of the Confederacy, because the Confederacy is not yet dead. The stars and bars live on, proudly emblazoned on T-shirts and license plates; the pre-eminent symbol of slavery, the flag itself, still flies above South Carolina’s Capitol. The killing has not stopped either, as shown by the deaths of nine black people in a church in Charleston this week. The suspected gunman, who is white and was charged with nine counts of murder on Friday, is said to have told their Bible-study group: “You rape our women, and you are taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Media outlets have been reluctant to classify the Charleston shooting as terrorism, despite how eerily it echoes our country’s history of terrorism. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/magazine/white-terrorism-is-as-old-as-america.html?fb_ref=Default&_r=0
Detroit Coppers beat Student Journalist Like any good journalism student, Makkel Richards pulled out his cell phone and began recording Detroit Police forcefully arresting a man with a bloody face at Grand Circus Park during last year’s fireworks display.
But police weren’t pleased, and according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Thursday, Sgt. Gadwell pushed the 22-year-old student to the ground and then punched him in the face. Police then attacked his friend, a 20-year-old political science major, Adam Malinowski, and destroyed his camera, according to the suit filed by one of their attorneys, Shaun Godwin.
“Everyone has a First Amendment right to record police in public,” Godwin said. “Recording the activities of the police from a short distance is not a crime and does not interfere with an officer’s ability to carry out their duties.”
The students were able to retrieve only a small fraction of the film, which can be seen here. motorcitymuckraker.com/2015/06/19/lawsuit-detroit-cops-attacked-college-students-for-taking-video-of-forceful-arrest/
Solidarity for Never
Cspan interview with Bryan Burrough, author of “Days of Rage,” discussing the never-ending lies of the Weathermen, once liberals (who destroyed sds on the eve of the largest outpouring of US student activism in history) seeking to replace a mass class conscious movement with bombs , now just grant sucking liberals with the same project
www.c-span.org/video/?326354-7/bryan-burrough-days-rage
What will the dedicated delegates be doing at the NEA RA? Disney? www.mydisneymeetings.com/nea15/
More than 2 Million Died for the Fraud that became Bolshevik “socialism”
The Pentagon plans to give Vietnam millions of dollars to buy American-made patrol boats. It’s a huge milestone, 40 years after the bloody and divisive American war in Vietnam.
On May 31, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter pledged $18 million just to help Washington’s former enemy expand its coast guard. Carter made the announcement while visiting the Southeast Asian country as part of a visit to boost security cooperation between Washington and Hanoi.
The vessels are just the latest addition to Hanoi’s growing wish list of Western weapons, which also includes more ships, warplanes and drones.
In April, Vietnam hosted a defense symposium organized by the U.S. embassy. The conference in Hanoi brought in representatives from American defense giants Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell International and more than a dozen others.
“Any defense related sales to Vietnam will follow development of U.S. government policy on Vietnam,” Boeing spokesman Jay Krishnan told Bloomberg.
“We believe Boeing has capabilities in mobility and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms that may meet Vietnam’s modernization needs.”
Nearly three weeks earlier, the U.S. and Vietnamese navies conducted a joint training mission to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations. This is the sixth such exercise in what’s become an annual event between the two navies. medium.com/war-is-boring/america-gets-ready-to-cash-in-on-vietnamese-military-splurge-bb7cf75af11c
above, former SEAL and Pol Robert Kerry who said killing Vietnamese was like, “drowning cats.” richgibson.com/drowning.html
Spy versus Spy
OPM Hack Upsets Military Anxiety is spreading among defense officials and the military community that the recent theft of federal government data linked to China may affect hundreds of thousands of service members.
Compounding those concerns is the limited information made public by the Office of Personnel Management.
Some military officials believe the recent hack targeting the civilian-run OPM seized information from tens of thousands of Standard Form 86s, which are required for all service members and civilians seeking a security clearance. That includes service members of all ranks, officers and enlisted, in a wide range of job specialties and assignments.
“They got everyone’s SF-86,” one Pentagon official familiar with the investigation told Military Times. www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/06/17/sf-86-security-clearance-breach-troops-affected-opm/28866125/
The Magical Mystery Tour
President of Vatican Bank and Supreme Leader of Superstition Decries Capitalism (its those guilty consumers) and Climate Change (pray for us sinners, now at the hour of our death–repeat a lot) The encyclical on the environment that Pope Francis released on Thursday is as much an indictment of the global economic order as it is an argument for the world to confront climate change.
It offers blistering criticism of 21st-century capitalism, expressing skepticism about market forces, criticizing consumerism and cautioning about the costs of growth.
But where Francis’ environmental and economic agendas meet, he leaves something of a paradox, and ammunition potentially for both sides in the debate over how to address climate change. While urging swift action to curb the burning of fossil fuels that have powered economies since the Industrial Revolution, he also condemns the trading of carbon-emission credits, saying it merely creates new forms of financial speculation and does not bring about “radical change.” But carbon trading is the policy most widely adopted by governments to combat climate change, and it has been endorsed by leading economists as a way to cut carbon pollution while sustaining economic growth. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/world/europe/pope-targets-carbon-credits-economists-favored-path-to-change.html?_r=0
About that Secrecy Obsession Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)
Shame on Mobile Archbishop Thomas Rodi for spending parishioners’ donations to keep secrets about an accused predator priest.
www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2015/06/mobile_archdiocese_again_tries.html
Again, church lawyers are trying to make sure that Fr. Johnny Savoie won’t have to answer questions about his alleged child sex crimes under oath.
In February 2014, Savoie disclosed to his parishioners that he had been accused of molesting a child in Fairhope, Alabama. Earlier this year, the allegation surfaced during a separate civil lawsuit brought by several families charging bullying at Savoie’s parish school. Archdiocesan officials did not publicly announce the abuse report, nor did they suspend or remove Savoie during their purported investigation. www.snapnetwork.org/al_victims_blast_catholic_officials_for_secrecy_obsession
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
So Long
I also feel the effect of day after day, year after year, intensively reading and seeing images of the human horrors; not just the horrors, but the lies and the stupidity.
www.williamblum.com