Rouge Forum Dispatch almost labor day
August 26th, 2012 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
Keep Up as Chicago Fights the RaTTs www.substancenews.net/index.php
Colombia Workers vs GM At the beginning of this month a group of former General Motors (GM) workers stitched their lips shut and began a hunger strike in the Colombian capital, Bogota. They had already spent over a year outside the US embassy with no success in fighting against what they said was their unfair dismissal. The protestors say GM has fired more than 200 employees after they reported on-the-job injuries, including herniated discs, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis, at the company’s Colombian plant.
In addition, they say the US car company refused to provide any compensation to the workers and erased medical records to bolster its legal case.
The US car maker, which started operating in Colombia 50 years ago and now has more than 1,800 employees in the country, denies the allegations and says it has never put the health of any employee at risk, nor discharged anyone for health reasons.
The protest is focusing attention on worker’s rights in Colombia following the implementation of a long-delayed free trade agreement with the US earlier this year. One of the US’ prerequisites for passing the agreement was to enact a Labour Action Plan aimed at curtailing abuses of workers’ rights.
But some argue that such free trade agreements often result in worse conditions for workers. And critics say little has changed in a country regarded as the most dangerous in the world to be a member of a trade union. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/08/201282244939753622.html
Arrests For Backing Bradley Manning Six veterans and activists in Oakland, and six more in Portland, were arrested yesterday night at Obama 2012 campaign offices for occupying the spaces in solidarity with accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning. Dozens of veterans and anti-war demonstrators coordinated a West Coast set of actions that also included protests in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Seattle.
Among the approximately 100 Oakland protesters was Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, who participated in the sit-in and explained, “We occupied the President’s campaign office to raise awareness about the injustices Bradley Manning has endured. Bradley has sacrificed for us, doing what was right despite potentially spending the rest of his life in jail.”
Protesters delivered a letter to campaign staff members, which they requested be sent to President Obama at the main campaign headquarters in Chicago. The letter makes its demands clear: that President Obama pardon PFC Bradley Manning, accounting for both his abusive treatment in a Quantico prison cell and the president’s own unlawfully prejudicial remarks that Bradley “broke the law.” http://couragetoresist.org/
Call for More Actions to Back Bradley Manning The Bradley Manning Support Network, Afghans For Peace and SF Bay Iraq Veterans Against the War Call for Nationwide Actions at local Obama Campaign Offices September 6th 2012 during the Democratic National Convention! Free Bradley Manning!
Since Army PFC Bradley Manning’s arrest in May 2010 for allegedly sharing the “Collateral Murder” video and other evidence of war crimes and government corruption with the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, progressives and human rights activists have been asking, “Why isn’t President Obama stepping in to help Bradley?” ymlp.com/zVQHSh
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anc_gP2_QeI
Chrysler Dundee Workers Reject Sellout Last week the 590 unionized workers at the plant voted 73% to reject a new local contract with Chrysler. Local contracts typically cover items like work schedules and other plant-specific work rules. …“They did not canvas us or ask anybody for what we wanted,” West said. “The guys from the union thought they had all the answers.”
Chrysler has said that it will not reopen local contract talks with the UAW for the Dundee agreement.
Chrysler’s position is the UAW does not have the authority to strike. But a similar agreement with General Motors includes a waiver allowing a strike over a local agreement and at least one labor analyst thinks that is the case at Chrysler too. http://www.freep.com/article/20120823/BUSINESS0103/120823051/UAW-workers-Chrysler-Dundee-plant-regroup-after-rejecting-contract?odyssey=nav%7Chead
Anon Payback Hactivist group Anonymous claims to have taken down the websites of Interpol and a British police force as part of a campaign calling for the freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Several Twitter accounts associated with the loose-knit Anonymous collective have announced that the website of International Criminal Police Organization was taken down. The site was unavailable as of 9:18 pm GMT on Sunday but resumed functioning soon after.
The hackers also claim to have taken down the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), a UK police unit responsible for operations against serious and organized crime. rt.com/news/anonymous-interpol-free-assange-607/
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Capitalist Colleges on the Hunt for Dollars (students as surplus value) U.S. colleges including New York University and Northeastern University are pushing freshmen into study-abroad programs — before the students even set foot on campus — to enroll larger classes and get more tuition dollars.
NYU and Boston-based Northeastern, which both charge more than $50,000 a year to attend, make some freshmen spend the first semester or two abroad. They then use the students and their tuitions to fill the beds of midyear dropouts and upper classmen heading overseas. While some students find the opportunity rewarding, others are disoriented at not starting off with their class or having a choice. www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-24/colleges-ship-freshmen-to-paris-to-boost-tuition-coffers.html
Racism Still thrives in the Empire’s Schools When it comes to spending on the education of our children, students of color are being shortchanged, according to the Center for American Progress’s latest education report, “Unequal Education: Federal Loophole Enables Lower Spending on Students of Color.”
Nearly 60 years after the 1954 landmark ruling in Brown v. the Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared public education is “a right which must be made available on equal terms,” racial inequities in school spending persist. Let’s look at some of the national numbers:
Across the country schools spent $334 more on every white student than on every nonwhite student
Mostly white schools (90 percent or more white) spent $733 more per student than mostly nonwhite schools (90 percent or more nonwhite)The United States spends $293 less per year on students in mostly nonwhite schools than on students in all other schools. That’s 7 percent of the median per-pupil spending
Since fully 35 percent of the nation’s students of color attend school in either California or Texas, examining the relationship between the percent of students of color and dollars spent per student can bring the problem into sharper focus.
In California schools serving 90 percent or more nonwhite students, per-pupil spending is $191 less than at all other schools, and $4,380 less than at schools serving 90 percent or more white students
In Texas schools serving 90 percent or more nonwhite students, per-pupil spending is $514 less than at all other schools, and $911 less than at schools serving 90 percent or more white students http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2012/08/22/32862/students-of-color-still-receiving-unequal-education/
Gropenfuhrer Gets a School The University of Southern California has announced the creation of the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, named for the former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/education/education-briefs.html?ref=internationaleducation
The Fraudsters at UNC (for how long?) For the past two years, North Carolina officials have liked to talk about getting past the scandal that landed it in N.C.A.A. hot water, embarrassing a university that likes to believe it is one of the few doing things “the right way.” The embers of the era of Butch Davis as the football coach showed that things had gone seriously off the rails, and now they have gotten only worse with the apparent leaking of Julius Peppers’s eye-opening transcript, which indicates the academic fraud stretches back a lot longer than the Davis era.
The university’s chancellor, Holden Thorp, on Thursday announced that an independent review, headed by former Gov. James G. Martin, would look into the situation and determine whether academic fraud stretched back further than 2007, which was the starting point for the violations that landed North Carolina on its current N.C.A.A. probation. thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/widening-u-n-c-scandal-prompts-independent-review/?ref=education
U. Georgia Drives out Student Editors The walkout came after Ms. Marinova obtained a draft memo written by a board member that contained proposed guidelines for the newspaper. The memo listed, among “bad” news that was to be played down, “content that catches people or organizations doing bad things.”
The author, who was not identified, added, “I guess this is ‘journalism’ ” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/us/georgia-student-newspaper-editors-quit-over-interference.html?ref=education
Corruption is always Part of Capitalist Schooling The principal of Stuyvesant High School abruptly announced his retirement on Friday afternoon, even as New York City continued its investigation into a cheating scandal that recently rocked the elite institution. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/04/education/stuyvesant-principal-announces-retirement-amid-inquiry-into-cheating.html?ref=educationThe Race for Empire, in the Schools This week, the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation released a report entitled “The Race That Really Matters: Comparing U.S., Chinese and Indian Investments in the Next Generation Workforce.” The findings were breathtaking:
• Half of U.S. children get no early childhood education, and we have no national strategy to increase enrollment.
• More than a quarter of U.S. children have a chronic health condition, such as obesity or asthma, threatening their capacity to learn.
• More than 22 percent of U.S. children lived in poverty in 2010, up from about 17 percent in 2007.
• More than half of U.S. postsecondary students drop out without receiving a degree. www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/blow-starving-the-future.html?_r=1&hp
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
US Foreign Arms Sailes Triple in one Year, $66.3 Billion Weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high, driven by major arms sales to Persian Gulf allies concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions, according to a new study for Congress. Overseas weapons sales by the United States totaled $66.3 billion last year, or nearly 78 percent of the global arms market valued at $85.3 billion in 2011. Russia was a distant second, with $4.8 billion in deals.
The American weapons sales total was an “extraordinary increase” over the $21.4 billion in deals for 2010, the study found, and was the largest single-year sales total in the history of United States arms exports. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/us-foreign-arms-sales-reach-66-3-billion-in-2011.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Surge Schmerge (guerrillas winning) When President Obama surged 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan in 2010, the new forces were concentrated overwhelmingly on two volatile areas of southern Afghanistan: Helmand and Kandahar Provinces. Now, as the troop surge is practically over, those provinces still rank as the most violent in the entire country.
According to Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of the war, ten districts around Afghanistan account for fully half of the insurgent violence in the country. (Afghanistan has 405 districts.) According to a breakdown provided to Danger Room by the Pentagon, six of those districts — Sangin, Now Zad, Nad Ali, Kajaki, Musa Qalah, and Nahr-e Saraj — are in Helmand Province, where the Marines started fighting a costly and grueling battle with the Taliban in 2009. Three more of them — Maiwand, Panjwei and Zharay — are in Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace and the scene of similarly arduous Army fighting from 2010 to the present. (The final district, Pul-e Alam, is in the eastern Logar Province.) www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/afghanistan-violence-helmand/
Near “7 Days in May” Scenario? War with Iran Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn’t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. She had worked in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, where neoconservative hawks first began planning to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
But she was not prepared a few years later in Bahrain when she encountered plans by high-ranking admirals to confront Iran, any one of which, she reckoned, could set the region on fire. It was 2007, and Todd, then 42, was a top political adviser to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/sunk/2012/08/21/96209788-cebd-11e1-aa14-708bac2c7ee9_story.html
US Ups Backing of Fascist Coup in Hondurous, and the Drug trade–you bet on it Honduras is under siege. Its judicial system is almost completely dysfunctional, and more than 10,000 complaints of human rights abuses by state security forces have been filed in the last three years, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras. At least 23 journalists have been killed since 2009. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all raised grave concerns about the country’s dire situation. www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-frank-honduras-human-rights-20120824,0,5575021.story
Syria Spillover A respite from almost a fortnight of clashes in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli, raised hopes yesterday that the release of some kidnapping victims would ease a growing threat of unchecked violence spilling over from the Syrian civil war.
But the lull failed to douse an enduring fear elsewhere in Lebanon that the enmity in the north will inevitably spread to other parts of the country. Another day of soaring violence in neighbouring Syria instead fuelled concerns that the raging civil war would further spill beyond the borders of its unstable neighbour.
Turkey yesterday announced that one of 11 Lebanese Shia men kidnapped north of Aleppo in Syria in May had been released in what was hailed by his captors as an “act of good will”. Hussein Ali Omar’s release came after a request by the head of the Committee of Muslim Scholars in Lebanon, Sheikh Hasan Qaterji. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/26/lebanon-fears-firestorm
Isolated Iran to Host Meeting of 120 Nations Leaders of 120 countries have gathered in Tehran to attend 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. Summit host Iran is expected to draw up a new peace resolution to solve the crisis in Syria. Nuclear disarmament issues are also on the table.
The Non-Aligned Movement represents practically two-thirds of UN member states. The movement was founded in 1961 and has become a significant discussion platform for developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Among many global topics to be discussed at this summit are human rights and nuclear disarmament issues that have been specified in advance.
At the Tehran summit Iran will take over the leadership role in the Non-Aligned Movement from Egypt for the next three years, meaning Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is definitely heading to Tehran this week. http://rt.com/news/non-aligned-movement-summit-tehran-583/
Tomgram on the Afghan War the US Lost One thing seems ever more likely. If your plan is to stay and train a security force growing numbers of whom are focused on killing you, then you are, by definition, in an impossible situation and you should know that your days are numbered, that it’s not likely you’ll be there in 2020 or even maybe 2015. When training your allies to stand up means training them to do you in, it’s long past time to go, whatever your plans may have been. After all, the British had “plans” for Afghanistan, as did the Russians. Little good it did them. Imagine for a moment that you were in Kabul or Washington at the end of December 2001, after the Taliban had been crushed, after Osama bin Laden fled to Pakistan, and as the U.S. was moving into “liberated” Afghanistan for the long haul. Imagine as well that someone claiming to be a seer made this prediction: almost 11 years from then, despite endless tens of billions of dollars spent on Afghan “reconstruction,” despite nearly $50 billion spent on “standing up” an Afghan security force that could defend the country, and with more than 700 bases built for U.S. troops and Afghan allies, local soldiers and police would be deserting in droves, the Taliban would be back in force, those being trained would be blowing their trainers away in record numbers, and by order of the Pentagon, an American soldier could not go to the bathroom unarmed on an American base for fear of being shot down by an Afghan “friend.”
You would, of course, have been considered a first-class idiot, if not a madman, and yet this is exactly the U.S. “hearts and minds” record in Afghanistan to date. Welcomed in 2001, we are being shown the door in the worst possible way in 2012. Washington is losing it. It’s too late to exit gracefully, but exit in time we must. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175587/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_losing_it_in_washington/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=131c76b9b3-TD_Engelhardt8_26_2012&utm_medium=email#more
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Unemployment Rises in 44 States The state unemployment picture worsened last month, with jobless rates creeping higher in 44 states, according to a government report released Friday.
Only two states and the District of Columbia saw unemployment rates edge lower in July, while four states saw no change in rates, according to the Labor Department’s monthly report on state unemployment.
That’s worse than the previous month, when far fewer states recorded increases in unemployment rates. In June, jobless rates rose in 27 states, while 11 states and the District of Columbia reported rate declines and 12 states had no change. http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/17/news/economy/state-unemployment/index.html
Looming Food Crisis? Back in 2008, not long before the world’s financial system seized up, global food prices hit record highs. Consumers in the United States barely felt it, but for many poorer nations around the world, it was a full-blown crisis. Riots broke out in dozens of countries from Cameroon to Egypt to Bangladesh. In Haiti, more than five people were killed and the government was toppled as the price of rice, beans, and fruit rose more than 50 percent.
Could we see a repeat of that chaos this year? The newest report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests that food prices still aren’t anywhere near 2008 levels yet, even after the massive U.S. drought has hurt corn and grain production. But there’s also reason for concern—in July, the FAO food index jumped the most in a single month since 2009: ,,,According to FAO, drought and severe heat in the United States have pushed corn prices up 23 percent in the past month, while unexpected dry weather in Russia has sent wheat prices up 19 percent. Soybean prices are also now at record level (a development that has roiled Indonesia’s tofu industry). http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/09/could-the-u-s-drought-trigger-another-global-food-crisis/
Ninety One years Since the Battle of Blair Mountain In 1921, some 10,000 West Virginia coal workers, outraged over years of brutality and lawless exploitation, picked up their rifles and marched against their tormentors, the powerful mine owners who ruled their corrupt state. For ten days the miners fought a pitched battle against an opposing legion of deputies, state police, and makeshift militia.
Only the declaration of martial law and the intervention of a federal expeditionary force, spearheaded by a bomber squadron commanded by General Billy Mitchell, ended this undeclared civil war and forced the miners to throw down their arms. http://www.glendale.edu/chaparral/apr05/blair.htm
Who Lost the Mississippi? Low water levels that are restricting shipping traffic, forcing harbor closures and causing barges to run aground on the economically vital Mississippi River are expected to continue into October, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, more than 100 tow boats and barges remain backed up near Greenville, Miss. due to the low river. The U.S. Coast Coast Guard opened an 11-mile stretch of river that had been closed near Greenville, replacing it with a 5-mile zone where only lighter vessels can pass. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/army-corps-of-engineers-says-low-mississippi-river-levels-to-continue-into-october/2012/08/21/259be66e-ebcf-11e1-866f-60a00f604425_story.html
China–the Boom busting? China Vanke Co. (000002) and Poly Real Estate Group Co., the nation’s biggest property developers, slid at least 2.8 percent. The Financial News, run by the People’s Bank of China, said in a commentary the central bank has no plan to cut lenders’ reserve- requirement ratios in the short term. Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co. (600111) fell to the lowest in two weeks after profit declined and the China Securities Journal reported the government is studying a resource tax on rare earths. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-20/china-s-stock-futures-drop-on-property-curb-concerns-earnings.html
Fascism Emerging as a Popular Mass Movement
Indefinite Detention Is Not a New Policy The government’s claim that it can indefinitely detain American citizens living on American soil based upon a vague “suspicion” that they might be supporting or affiliated with bad guys is disturbing. But this is nothing new …
J. Edgar Hoover, then-actor Ronald Reagan, Earl Warren, and UC Berkeley officials all agreed acted to blacklist professors – McCarthy-style – who they suspected of being radical.
Indeed, as award-winning investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld explains today, the FBI devised plans to arrest without warrant and then indefinitely detain Berkeley professors and students who were champions of free speech in the event of any national emergency: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/08/u-s-government-planned-indefinite-detention-of-citizens-long-before-911.html
NPR Reporter Quits. “It’s ALL LIES.” After 14 years at National Public Radio, Andrea Seabrook left in July and, to hear her talk about her experience covering Capitol Hill, it’s clear that she had one takeaway: It’s damn frustrating.
“I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say,” Seabrook told POLITICO. “And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79998.html
US War Criminal Honored A Marine who was convicted in the 2005 killings of unarmed Iraqis returned home this weekend to Connecticut for a golf tournament organized by local veterans for his benefit. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/conn-town-honors-marine-convicted-iraq-deaths-17038093#.UDqEtH9PFI7
The Gang that Can’t Shoot Straight (and may shoot you) The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, confirmed on Saturday that all nine were wounded by police bullets, bullet fragments or shrapnel from ricochets. Mr. Kelly also confirmed that the shooter, Mr. Johnson, never fired another shot after killing a former co-worker, Steven Ercolino, moments earlier.
“We had a witness that said that Johnson fired at the police,” Mr. Kelly said Saturday. “But the final count of the shells, it appears that that is not the case.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/nyregion/bystanders-shooting-wounds-caused-by-the-police.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Split Zetas??? Mexico’s largest crime group, Los Zetas, appears to be splintering into two rival factions locked in occasional open warfare with each other, experts say.
The factions are tussling for control of the central states of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi and are battling each other in parts of the Yucatan Peninsula.
What sparked the rift is unclear, but signs of the apparent split have come in public banners left at crime scenes, replete with accusations of betrayal and treason between factions led by the two top leaders, Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Angel Trevino.
“We’re looking at a turning point for them,” said Samuel Logan, a security analyst who’s the co-author of a book on the Zetas that was released earlier this year. “We’re at the beginning of the public stage of the split, but it’s been developing for a while.”
A fracturing of Los Zetas could force a violent realignment of Mexico’s drug-trafficking gangs and probably would create challenges for President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, who promised to bring down soaring homicides after his inauguration Dec. 1. www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/21/163000/rumors-of-war-within-mexicos-los.html
Solidarity for Never
In the Last Decade, the California Teachers Association spent $211 Million on Lobbying while Thousands of Teachers were Laid off, the curriculum was regimented, high-stakes tests came to be The Goal, and everything about school was militarized www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cta-20120819,0,5800370,full.story
San Diego School Bosses Get What SDEA sold out thebreakfastclubsandiego.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/new-administrators-ratify-agreement-get-furloughs-reinstated/#comments
Spy versus Spy
George Schmidt’s Classic: The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA –available from Substance News in PDF at csubstance@aol.com
above, CIA errand Boy, the AFT’s Al Shanker
Student Subversives, Reagan, and the FBI “Starting in Hollywood in the 1940s, Ronald Reagan developed a special relationship with the FBI. He became an FBI informer, reporting other actors whom he suspected of subversive activities, and later, when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, the FBI had wide access to the guild’s information on various actors. At one point, the guild turned over information on 54 actors it was investigating as possible subversives — so the FBI viewed Reagan as an extremely cooperative source in Hollywood. He was far more active than we know from previously released FBI records. As a result of this, Hoover repaid him with personal and political favors later.” http://www.npr.org/2012/08/21/159373688/student-subversives-and-the-fbis-dirty-tricks
The Magical Mystery Tour
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLWzOBTjjL0
German Catholofascists To Jail Pussy Riot Defenders Three years in prison have become a closer prospect for some German followers of Russian punk band Pussy Riot. The Catholic Church has pressed charges against Cologne Cathedral intruders, who now face longer prison terms than their heroes.
The three protesters have been charged with disturbing a religious service which, according to German law, could mean up to three years in jail.
“The right to demonstration cannot be set above the right to religious freedom and the religious feelings of the congregation,” Cologne Cathedral’s dean told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.
Three women from Pussy Riot received a two-year prison sentence for hooliganism over their controversial performance in Russia’s central Cathedral of Jesus Christ the Savior.
“The peace of Cologne Cathedral was disturbed – we can’t and won’t accept this,” said Dean Robert Kleine to the newspaper. http://rt.com/news/pussy-riot-cologne-cathedral-463/
convicted Priest Lyons
Molester Priest to the Hoosegow A retired Roman Catholic priest in Orange County was sentenced to a year in jail, probation and community service and will be required to register as a sex offender for molesting a grade-school student in the parish rectory and the church more than a decade ago, Orange County prosecutors said.
Denis Lyons, 78, pleaded guilty in March to four felony counts of lewd acts with a child under 14 on four occasions in which, prosecutors said, he sexually assaulted the student at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Costa Mesa. The boy was in second and third grade when the assaults occurred. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-priest-sentenced-20120826,0,7167658.story
Mystics Busy Smashing Reason in Mexico – Authorities are negotiating with a religious cult in southwestern Mexico, trying to persuade leaders to allow public schools to operate in the isolated community, state media reported.
“It is a problem of fundamentalism,” Michoacan state government secretary Jesus Reyna Garcia told Mexico’s state-run Notimex news agency on Wedesday.
The talks came after residents of New Jerusalem blocked roads into the community and attacked children, parents and teachers trying to enter a house that had been converted into a school. Three people were injured in the clashes Monday, state officials said.
In July, members of the cult destroyed the only school building in the town, saying the Virgin of the Rosary, who they worship, told them school buildings were built by the devil and were to be demolished. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/23/world/americas/mexico-cult-school/index.html?eref=edition
So Long
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Torture Complaints Silenced by Grand Inquisitors at Gitmo CIA agents have written books about it. Former President George W. Bush has explained why he thought it was necessary and legal. Yet the al Qaeda suspects who were subjected to so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and the lawyers charged with defending them at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, are not allowed to talk about the treatment they consider torture.
Defense attorneys say that and other Kafkaesque legal restrictions on what they can discuss with their clients and raise in the courtroom undermine their ability to mount a proper defense on charges that could lead to the death penalty.
Those restrictions will be the focus of a pretrial hearing that convenes this week. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/20/insight-at-guantanamo-tri_n_1808639.html?utm_hp_ref=world
Museum of Man–Torture Exhibition www.museumofman.org/torture
