Rouge Forum Dispatch: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
April 29th, 2015 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
 So it could be today. But stiff and sleepless, in clandestine meetings and open demonstrations, working people organized. In the forefront of the fight were radicals, anarchists and communists who raised the demand for a shorter work week, “The Eight Hour Day,” and who sought to someday, “Abolish the wage system!” Many of them, first-generation European Marxists, founded the unions which live on today. The center of their activity was Chicago. There, on May 1 1886, they called for a national strike for the eight hour day. 350,000 people joined the strike across the country. Tools lay silent. No smoke rose from the mills. In Detroit, 11,000 people marched in the Eight-Hour parade. At the McCormick Harvester Plant in Chicago, the strike boiled over beyond the one day action. The owners decided to bring the strike to a halt. On May 3rd, 500 police attacked a picket line, firing randomly at the workers. Six were killed, scores wounded. A protest demonstration was scheduled for the next morning in Haymarket Square. It rained that night. Around 3,000 people turned out to hear their leaders denounce the police attack. As the crowd began to disperse, someone (quite possible a police agent) tossed a bomb into the ranks of the cops. They opened fire, killing four workers on the spot. More than one hundred were wounded.
Since then, May Day, May first, had been internationally recognized as a workers’ holiday, a time to unite for celebration and organizing. But this day, adopted by working people all over the world, has been kidnaped in the United States. In the U.S., May Day is stood on its head, replaced by Law Day. The home of May Day is the only place where it is not recognized. Yet the conditions which led to May Day, world-wide, remain substantially unchanged. While the eight-hour day is won on paper in the U.S., in reality thousands work forced overtime while others double up on part-time employment or work for the largest employer: temp agencies. Two incomes are necessary to support a family. With a little slight of hand, eight hours a day becomes sixteen. Reforms slip away. But the movement which rose up from the initial May Day incident, Haymarket, is alive. As the songwriter of the Industrial Workers of the World, Joe Hill, wrote in one of his most powerful songs in the early 1900’s: Rise in all your splendid might Take the wealth that you are making, It belongs to you by right. No one will for bread be crying We’ll have freedom, love and health, When the grand red flag is flying In the Workers’ Commonwealth We hope to demonstrate that the power necessary to win greater democracy will likely rise out of an organization that unites people in new ways–across union boundaries, across community lines, across the fences of race and sex/gender. We believe that good humor and friendships are a vital part of building this kind of organization, as important as theoretical clarity. Friendships allow us to understand that action always reveals errors–the key way we learn.
|
Freddie Gray–Black Lives Matter–Spreads to Houston, Denver, Ferguson, NYC, San Diego, Boston, and more Hundreds of demonstrators shut down traffic in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood and marched to the White House in solidarity with the Freddie Gray protests happening in Baltimore about 40 miles to the northeast, the Washington Post reported.
“All night, all day, we’re going to fight for Freddie Gray,” the crowd chanted, according to the Post. www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-freddie-gray-protests-20150429-story.html
Sellout Black Bourgeoisie Losing Grip on Superexploited Communities the mayor is black. The council is almost two-thirds black. The school superintendent is black. The police chief is black, and a majority of his officers are black.
Race riots inevitably end in contention over what social woes led to the trigger point, with one overarching element: a white power structure ruling a black populace.
Baltimore left behind that vestige of segregation long ago, yet the city nonetheless has been perched on the edge of chaos for much of this week, as African American protesters took to the streets to express grievances over police abuse and urban neglect.
“We ain’t talking about color,” said John Baptist Watkins III, 53, sitting on the steps of a boarded-up brick row house on North Avenue, as men nearby peddled drugs — one of the few ways to earn money in this part of town.
Even the city’s African American elected officials, Watkins said, “have no clue what is going on in the city.”
Five days of protests, at least one of them racked by violence and looting, have created a historic moment in which the black leaders of a large American city convened to put down an eruption of racial unrest.
As police and National Guard troops were lining up to maintain order, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings was walking among the protesters trying calm their anger. “Please go home to your families,” the Baltimore Democrat entreated them through a bullhorn. “I’m not asking you. I’m begging you.”
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a former deputy public defender who has been mayor since 2010, kept a toned-down approach during the early hours of the unrest but came out with a scathing rebuke of the demonstrators who had looted shops, set buildings afire and clashed with police. www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-black-power-20150429-story.html#page=1
TheBaltimore mayor, city council president, police chief, top prosecutor, and many other city leaders are black, as is half of Baltimore’s 3,000-person police force. The city has many prominent black churches and a line of black civic leadership extending back to Frederick Douglass.
Yet, the gaping disparities separating the haves and the have nots in Baltimore are as large as they are anywhere. And, as the boys on the street will tell you, black cops can be hell on them, too….The federal government has said that Baltimore has the highest concentration of heroin addicts in the nation. Gray’s neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester, once home to Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway, has more recently distinguished itself as the place that has sent the highest number of people to prison in the state of Maryland. ….. On the day that the nation’s first female African American attorney general took office, school kids led the charge as looters stripped and burned a defenseless CVS. Later, roving bands of people smashed store windows downtown and near the Johns Hopkins medical campus. A senior citizen’s housing project under construction in a particular desolate corner of East Baltimore was burned to the ground.
Hundreds of people — including luminaries such as Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake — packed the soaring sanctuary of New Shiloh Baptist Church for Gray’s homegoing service. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/what-you-really-need-to-know-about-baltimore-from-a-reporter-who-lived-there-for-30-years/
The city(Baltimore) has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police. data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/
above, NYTimes Map of Baltimore Citizen/Cop Clashes twitter.com/nytimes/status/593546835656048640?utm_source=fb&fb_ref=Default&utm_content=593555762338738177&utm_campaign=KDVinson&utm_medium=fb
In Baltimore, We are all Freddie Gray
AT the moment, what’s going on in Baltimore seems to be all about Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who was viciously attacked by police officers on April 12 more or less because he looked at them. They subdued him; his spine was nearly severed, his voice box was smashed and he was hauled off in a police van, even after he requested medical attention multiple times. He died a week later as result.
But it’s not only about Freddie Gray. Like him, I grew up in Baltimore, and I and everyone I know have similar stories, even if they happened to end a little differently. To us, the Baltimore Police Department is a group of terrorists, funded by our tax dollars, who beat on people in our community daily, almost never having to explain or pay for their actions. It’s gotten to the point that we don’t call cops unless we need a police report for an insurance claim.
And it’s about more than just the cops. We’ve watched as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, in conjunction with Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, spent over a week investigating what appears to be an open-and-shut case. I’d like to think that if I broke a person’s neck for no reason, I’d be charged in minutes. But the system — even when it’s run by a black mayor and a black commissioner, even when a majority of the City Council is black — protects the police, no matter how blatant and brutal they are. www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/opinion/in-baltimore-were-all-freddie-gray.html?_r=0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZmxBWAQ2Do
LA Truckers Shut Down Ports Truck drivers who haul goods from the nation’s busiest port complex in Southern California walked off the job Monday in a dispute over their wages and employee status, months after another West Coast labor conflict cost major delays in billions of dollars of trade.
The move comes after a weekend vote from the Teamsters. Drivers from four companies are striking, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the 16,000 truckers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach would walk off the job. www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/04/27/truckers-could-stay-home-from-nations-biggest-port-complex
The Little Red Schoolhouse
1/3rd of Baltimore kids in poverty—but no free school lunch In Baltimore, one out of every three school kids lives in poverty.A new law would help those kids get free school lunches. It passed the Maryland state Senate and House unanimously —such is the consensus about the depth of the issues among the poorest people in the country’s richest state.
But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan hasn’t had time to sign the bill into law. Instead, he has been dealing with a state of emergency in Baltimore as authorities seek to quell unrest that followed the funeral of Freddie Gray, whose death at the hands of city police sparked widespread unrest. Nearly 2,000 National Guardsmen and 1,000 police are on their way to Baltimore. ..
The need for a bill making school lunches more available is inextricably linked to the despair in Baltimore that erupted into unrest. The statistics bear out that a large group of Baltimore residents face a hard reality of unemployment, hunger and health issues — a hopelessness that takes little to translate into violence on the streets.
Brittany and Brandon Ross, 24-year-old twins who live in West Baltimore, said they had taken part in protests over Gray’s death in recent weeks and noticed that many young people were out on Monday. Sandtown-Winchester, the neighborhood of Baltimore in which Freddie Gray grew up, is 97% black with nearly half of all children living below the poverty line, according to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. Inner Harbor, a far wealthier part of the city, is 80% white. mashable.com/2015/04/28/baltimore-school-lunches/
Detroit School Workers Rally to Halt New Orleanization of Detroit Schools
Detroit — According to the school district, 18 schools have been closed Thursday because of a teacher shortage as hundreds of union members traveled to Lansing to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s announcement of his plans to overhaul Detroit’s school system.
“Detroit Public Schools’ sole focus and goal is the education of the more than 47,000 students whose education it has been entrusted with by their families,” said DPS emergency manager Darnell Earley. “That focus and goal should be shared by all DPS employees. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2015/04/30/detroit-school-closings/26626641/
With History Wiped Out in US Schools, and most Social Studies teachers wedded to nationalism, working in segregated schools with little compaint: Kids Don’t Know History! U.S. middle-school students’ performance on social studies didn’t improve much between 2010 and 2014, federal test scores released Wednesday show, underscoring concerns about an uninformed citizenry and workforce.
Eighth-graders’ 2014 results on U.S. history, geography and civics were largely flat since the last comparable tests given in 2010 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP. The share of students scoring at or above proficiency in U.S. history last year was 18%, up one percentage point from 2010. For civics, the proportion was 23%, also up one point, and for geography, the share was 27%, unchanged from 2010.
“The lack of knowledge on the part of America’s students is unacceptable, and the lack of growth must be addressed,” said Terry Mazany, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP and was created by Congress in 1988 to set and measure national benchmarks for student performance. “As a country, we must do better.”
Since the federal law known as No Child Left Behind required reading and math tests for every student, some educators have voiced concerns that other subjects such as social studies have received less class time and attention.www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-students-stagnate-in-social-studies-1430280062
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Corrupt Afghan Regime Cannot Hold. Back comes the USA
In justifying the continued presence of the American forces in Afghanistan, administration officials have insisted that the troops’ role is relegated to counterterrorism, defined as tracking down the remnants of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and training and advising the Afghan security forces who have assumed the bulk of the fight.
In public, officials have emphasized that the Taliban are not being targeted unless it is for “force protection” — where the insurgents were immediately threatening American forces.But interviews with American and Western officials in Kabul and Washington offer a picture of a more aggressive range of military operations against the Taliban in recent months, as the insurgents have continued to make gains against struggling government forces
Rather than ending the American war in Afghanistan, the military is using its wide latitude to instead transform it into a continuing campaign of airstrikes — mostly drone missions — and Special Operations raids that have in practice stretched or broken the parameters publicly described by the White House.
Western and military officials said that American and NATO forces conducted 52 airstrikes in March, months after the official end of the combat mission. Many of these air assaults, which totaled 128 in the first three months of this year, targeted low- to midlevel Taliban commanders in the most remote reaches of Afghanistan.www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/world/asia/more-aggressive-role-by-us-military-is-seen-in-afghanistan.html?_r=0
Iraq Puppets ready to Deploy Iranian Shiites vs ISIS
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq is poised to deploy Shi’ite paramilitaries backed by Iran to Sunni tribal areas west of Baghdad, a move supporters say is needed to defeat Islamic State militants but opponents say could inflame more sectarian violence.
Shi’ite paramilitaries have already played a central, if controversial, role alongside regular army units in recent months in the Iraqi government’s first major successful campaign against Islamic State fighters, helping to capture Saddam Hussein’s home town Tikrit on the Tigris River north of Baghdad.
So far, however, the government has avoided deploying the militia in the Euphrates River valley province of Anbar west of the capital, a vast Sunni tribal homeland that strides the main routes to Jordan and Syria. Baghdad considers Anbar the next target in its campaign to retake territory from the militants. news.yahoo.com/iraq-poised-deploy-iran-backed-shiite-militia-offensive-092313869.html
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Nearly half of all new U.S. jobs don’t pay enough to live on. And most of America’s job growth is in low-wage occupations. In a 2015 report The Alliance For A Just Society says America is becoming a low-wage nation and without action the low wage crisis will only get worse. The study defined a living wage as $15 an hour in 2013 dollars. Key findings in the report include:
* Nearly two of five existing jobs pay less than $15 an hour
48 percent of projected national job openings do not pay $15 or higher
there aren’t enough living wage jobs to go around so there are seven times more job seekers that new jobs paying $15 or more laborradio.org/2015/04/low-wage-nation-nearly-half-of-new-u-s-jobs-are-sub-living-wage/
The US is a World Leader in Child Poverty The U.S. has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. As UNICEF reports, “[Children’s] material well-being is highest in the Netherlands and in the four Nordic countries and lowest in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the United States.”
Over half of public school students are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, and almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty.
$5 a Day for Food, But Congress Thought it was Too Much.
Nearly half of all food stamp recipients are children, and they averaged about$5 a day for their meals before the 2014 farm bill cut $8.6 billion (over the next ten years) from the food stamp program.
In 2007 about 12 of every 100 kids were on food stamps. Today it’s 20 of every 100.
For Every 2 Homeless Children in 2006, There Are Now 3 www.popularresistance.org/the-numbers-are-staggering-u-s-is-world-leader-in-child-poverty/
Cuckoldette Promises Transparency in Money Laundering foundation–except for the main part With scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation’s financial practices threatening to create political problems for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, the organization on Sunday took the unusual step of acknowledging “mistakes” but insisted that it is committed to transparency regarding its donors and operations around the world.
Nevertheless, the foundation explained for the first time publicly that one of its affiliates — a Canada-based charity that bears Bill Clinton’s name — would continue to keep its donors secret because of restrictions in Canadian law. …unday’s blog post also coincided with national television appearances by conservative author Peter Schweizer, whose forthcoming book, “Clinton Cash,” charges that the State Department gave preferential treatment to foundation donors while Clinton was secretary of state and that the foundation violated its own promise to disclose all of its donors. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-foundation-acknowledges-mistakes-emphasizes-transparency/2015/04/26/8832621a-ec32-11e4-8abc-d6aa3bad79dd_story.html?hpid=z1
Actually, it is more that 1.5 million “missing” black men An analysis in The Times — “1.5 Million Missing Black Men” — showed that more than one in every six black men in the 24-to-54 age group has disappeared from civic life, mainly because they died young or are locked away in prison. This means that there are only 83 black men living outside of jail for every 100 black women — in striking contrast to the white population, where men and women are about equal in numbers.
This astounding shortfall in black men translates into lower marriage rates, more out-of-wedlock births, a greater risk of poverty for families and, by extension, less stable communities. The missing men should be a source of concern to political leaders and policy makers everywhere.
While the 1.5 million number is startling, it actually understates the severity of the crisis that has befallen African-American men since the collapse of the manufacturing and industrial centers, which was quickly followed by the “war on drugs” and mass imprisonment, which drove up the national prison population more than sevenfold beginning in the 1970s.
In addition to the “missing,” millions more are shut out of society, or are functionally missing, because of the shrinking labor market for low-skilled workers, racial discrimination or sanctions that prevent millions who have criminal convictions from getting all kinds of jobs. At the same time, the surge in imprisonment has further stigmatized blackness itself, so that black men and boys who have never been near a jail now have to fight the presumption of criminality in many aspects of day-to-day life — in encounters with police, in schools, on the streets and on the job. www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/opinion/sunday/forcing-black-men-out-of-society.html?emc=eta1&_r=3
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
After years of practice for civil disorders, heavily armed troops lock down Baltimore
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvoyRdxXSrE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyoQ3VJ2EwA
Baltimore Cops March in Formation in Freddie Gray’s neighborhood.
Cuckoldette Hillbillary Denounces InJustice System BJ Bill Created Hillary Clinton distanced herself from her husband’s criminal justice legacy on Wednesday, labeling the system that he actively supported as “profoundly wrong.”
“We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance,” Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a speech at Columbia University.
She acknowledged the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police. “From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable,” she said. “Walter Scott shot in the back in Charleston, South Carolina — unarmed, in debt, terrified of spending more time in jail for child support payments he couldn’t afford. Tamir Rice shot in the park in Cleveland, Ohio, unarmed and just 12 years old. Eric Garner, choked to death after being stopped for selling cigarettes on the streets of our city. And now Freddie Gray, his spine nearly severed while in police custody.”
But her call to “end the era of mass incarceration” comes in stark contrast to the policies that her husband Bill espoused during his presidency.
During Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House, the number of people imprisoned by the federal government nearly doubled, from 85,565 in 1993 to 156,572 in 2001.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 he signed into law played a major role in that increase. The former president acknowledged on Tuesday that the system “put too many people in prison” during his two terms in the White House. firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/29/hillary-clinton-reverses-course-criminal-justice-america/
Solidarity for Never
World Warmaker Obamagogue denounces Baltimore Protestors, ignores thug cops Freddy Gray made eye contact with a Baltimore cop. He ran like a rabbit so cops chased him like hounds and did what hounds do when they catch a rabbit. They snapped his spine. But the elemental savagery of everyday policing in Baltimore and a hundred other cities is not a fit topic for presidential commentary. The only “criminals” and “thugs” the first black president and for that matter corporate news can see are the citizens in the streets protesting police murder and impunity. www.blackagendareport.com/
Eskelsen-Garcia, after NEA demanded Arne resign, Hugged him, declared him a good man. As NEA treasurer, she signed the $686,949 check to ex-NEA boss Weaver, for 1 year’s work.
How easy it is for the NEA Boss, Eskelsen, to step in front of the reactionary nationalist Opt Out “Movement” which is fully Opted In to Imperialist war I’ve got a friend in New York who wants me to call on every parent in America to Opt Out of state mandated standardized tests which are, of course, the mother’s milk of the No Child Left Untested federal testing feeding frenzy.
The links in the chain of grievances against testing abuse are ponderously long. The excessive federal testing mandates were absurd and many states made it worse. For example:
- Educationally inappropriate, yet still mandated tests, are required of children with special needs, disabilities, and language issues regardless of the circumstances of their situation.
- Then there are the are perfectly appropriate tests that are used for absolutely inappropriate measures like deciding whether to fire a Calculus teacher based on the reading test scores of ninth and tenth graders, most of whom she will never teach at all.
- And don’t forget the 2014 100% adequate yearly progress NCLB mandate, which decreed that every child in America had to meet the cut score on the state’s reading and math standardized test scores or their school would be labeled as “failing.” Only in Lake Woebegon would that be an achievable goal.
The pressure placed on students is enormous. Children understand all too well that their test results may be used to label them or their school as a failure. lilysblackboard.org/2015/04/the-opt-out-end-game/
Sellout-hypocrit Hugfest: Weingarten, Vacillating Reactionary Ravitch, Garcia, Lewis (love the nation, god, capitalist education and empire’s wars)
Randi:-We need to get rid of high stakes tests. We need tests that are diagnostic. I took tests when I was a child, but they were about ME – not my teacher.
-We wanted three things from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) rewrite – no federalization of teacher evaluations, school closings or Common Core.
Lily:-If we have standardized testing at all – and I’m not sure we should – we should use them for general trends. Not to fire teachers, close schools, etc.
-The NEA is against annual testing in the ESEA rewrite. Instead we want informational grade span testing at the state level. That means testing reading and math once in elementary school, once in the middle school and once in the high school.
-Lawmakers say you need to test kids every year. They think we need the data. However, the NEA told them that we don’t test that much even now! We only test kids in grades 3-8 every year. We test high school students only once. So we already have grade span testing in the high school. If that’s working, why not do the same in the elementary and middle schools?
RESULT: Yuck and yuck. Are these really the same rabble rousers from Round 1? They both agree on grade span testing. Yes, it’s clearly better than annual testing but it leaves so many unanswered questions: …RESULT: They agree again. The rank and file hate Common Core. The majority of teachers are against it or uncertain, but our largest union leaders think it’s just swell. It’s so gosh darn great, but toxic testing is ruining it. Are you freaking kidding me!? Why are the leaders of our biggest unions – who are supposed to represent us – defending standards that were not developed by educators, are developmentally inappropriate and have never been proven to work!?
Standardized tests are bad, but standardized curriculum is good!? gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/clash-of-the-titans-unionism-at-the-network-for-public-education/comment-page-1/#comment-463
CTU’s Karen Lewis misses the corrupt boss, Detroit’s Byrd Bennet, who closed 50 schools–because she was a teacher “Working with Barbara, I could tell her, ‘This isn’t working, this is causing people issues.’ And she’d look into it,” said Lewis, who has headed the CTU since 2010 — or five CEOs ago. “There was a language we could communicate that I couldn’t use with Ron [Huberman], I couldn’t use with Terry” Mazany.chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-politics/7/71/558401/principals-teachers-groups-want-educator-emanuels-4th-cps-ceo
United Steel Workers: Gee! We Sold Out best we could and you still go to Mexico??? The United Steel Workers say Goodyear’s decision to build a new plant in Mexico is troubling and disappointing but not surprising. USW President Leo Gerard says the union and the rank and file workers have been willing partners at Goodyear and have worked hard to turn the company around. Gerard says the union workers’ efforts have significantly contributed to the return of prosperity at Goodyear’s North American operations. The USW started discussions with Goodyear about maximizing investment in U.S. plants when it became clear they were building the Mexican plant. U.S. demand is outpacing supply for Goddyear tires, but rather than put the new plant where the demand is Goodyear went to Mexico to supply the U.S. market. laborradio.org/2015/04/usw-disappointed-by-goodyears-new-mexican-plant-seeks-maximum-investment-in-u-s-plants/
Spy versus Spy
American Psychological Assn Bolstered CIA’s Torture Program (as usual) The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists.
The report is the first to examine the association’s role in the interrogation program. It contends, using newly disclosed emails, that the group’s actions to keep psychologists involved in the interrogation program coincided closely with efforts by senior Bush administration officials to salvage the program after the public disclosure in 2004 of graphic photos of prisoner abuse by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program,” the report’s authors conclude.
The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe.
The interrogation program has since been shut down, and last year the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a detailed report that described the program as both ineffective and abusive.
Rhea Farberman, a spokeswoman for the American Psychological Association, denied that the group had coordinated its actions with the government. There “has never been any coordination between A.P.A. and the Bush administration on how A.P.A. responded to the controversies about the role of psychologists in the interrogations program,” she said.
The Bush administration relied more heavily on psychologists than psychiatrists or other health professionals to monitor many interrogations, at least in part because the psychological association was supportive of the involvement of psychologists in interrogations, a senior Pentagon official explained publicly in 2006. www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/report-says-american-psychological-association-collaborated-on-torture-justification.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Patriot Act “Revised.” Psych! After more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records.
On Thursday, a bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the so-called metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden was overwhelmingly passed by the House Judiciary Committee and was heading to almost certain passage in that chamber this month.
An identical bill in the Senate — introduced with the support of five Republicans — is gaining support over the objection of Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who is facing the prospect of his first policy defeat since ascending this year to majority leader.www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/politics/patriot-act-faces-revisions-backed-by-both-parties.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
The Magical Mystery Tour
Priests, Nuns, Sisters, Staff, raping away–it is a tradition he Diocese of Helena posted an online list Wednesday of every employee accused of sexually abusing a minor while working there.
The list dates back to the 1930s and includes the names of 80 priests, Ursuline Sisters, lay workers and others. A settlement between the Diocese and hundreds of victims requires that the names be posted and remain pinned to the Diocese homepage for the next decade.
Dan Bartleson, spokesman for the Diocese, said this is the latest stride in the “victim oriented approach” the Diocese has taken throughout the litigation process.
“We feel like this step is one of the more difficult steps for the Diocese in that some of these names will leave questions for the faithful,” Bartleson said. “It’s difficult to think of someone you grew up with who was good to you and your family being accused of sexual abuse, but we need to make sure we err on the side of victims if in any way this could contribute to their healing or give them any kind of closure.”
Bryan G. Smith of Tamaki Law, the firm that represented 95 of the 362 victims who sued the Catholic institution, called this the most important non-economic piece of the settlement.
“It’s a recognition by the church that they have, or had, within their ranks credibly accused perpetrators of sexual abuse,” Smith said.
Allegations of sexual abuse within the Diocese of Helena, which oversees more than 60 parishes and 35 missions across western Montana, began surfacing years ago. The resulting lawsuit drove the Diocese into bankruptcy before it was settled in federal court this March. The agreement included $20 million in payments to victims and several nonmonetary factors, such as the list of names.
Smith said that among the reasons why victims stay silent for years is that they feel isolated. Seeing a list of names can empower a victim, he said, and show that individual he or she is not alone.
Smith said the release makes the settlement “complete in that it is not just an exchange of money that is for the release of the claim. It is something more than that; it is a recognition that they are atoning for what happened.”
Smith said the Diocese didn’t resist putting up the list of names.
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
The media has focused on “refugees,” the kidnapper “Babylift, where the original plane crashed killing at least 180 babies, and the returned US troops, who helped lead the anti-war movement. This is an ineluctable fact:
So Long