Rouge Forum Dispatch: Free Them Both.
April 13th, 2019 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
Polish teachers strike over pay after talks with government fail
WARSAW (Reuters) – Teachers across Poland held a strike on Monday after the government and unions failed to agree on proposed wage increases, the leader of the biggest teachers’ union ZNP said.
Talks between three teachers trade unions and the government ended on Sunday evening with the ZNP and another union sticking by their demand of monthly salary increase of 1,000 zlotys (200 pounds). Only one smaller union agreed to the government’s offer of a 15 percent monthly increase starting from September.
Public sector workers in Poland stepped up calls for pay increases after the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) promised in February a hefty increase social spending as part of its election campaign.
“Today, at 0800, starts the biggest strike in education since 1993,” ZNP leader Slawomir Broniarz told private broadcaster TVN24.
Many teachers are also unhappy with what they say has been a chaotic education reform.
“We are ready to convince the government that this strike is not only economically motivated, but that this strike is also to defend the quality of education, which has been damaged in recent years,” Broniarz said.
According to the ZNP, almost 80 percent of Polish schools and kindergartens have declared they would take part in the strike, but the union has not said how long it would last.
In March thousands of workers at Polish courts and prosecutors’ offices took to the streets of Warsaw to demand better pay and working conditions.
Teachers’ salaries in Poland range between 3,045 zlotys and 5,603 zlotys per month. Official data in February showed the average corporate salary in Poland stood at around 4,949 zlotys. www.euronews.com/2019/04/08/polish-teachers-strike-over-pay-after-talks-with-government-fail
University of Arizona charges 3rd student in Border Patrol protest
The University of Arizona has charged a third student related to a protest of Border Patrol agents on campus in March, the university said Friday.
Marianna Ariel Coles-Curtis, a 27-year-old graduate student at the university, was charged with a class 1 misdemeanor for interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution.
The third student’s charges come after videos of a protest of Border Patrol’s presence on campus went viral, spread mostly by social media accounts and blogs that did not agree with the protest’s purpose.
Two other students were charged with the same misdemeanor on Monday.
Denisse Moreno Melchor, a 20-year-old UA student, and Mariel Alexandra Bustamante, a 22-year-old student, were charged with class 1 misdemeanors for interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution. Moreno Melchor also faces a second charge for threats and intimidation, UA previously said.
Moreno Melchor and Bustamante are scheduled to appear in Pima County Justice Court on April 22. Coles-Curtis is scheduled to appear in Pima County Justice Court on April 25, UA said. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2019/04/05/university-arizona-protest-border-patrol-3rd-student-charged/3379687002/
The Little Red Schoolhouse
In preposterous expensive farce, identity politics appointee De la Torre inaugurated, talks of ‘lofty visions’ for SDSU
In one of academia’s oldest rituals, colorfully robed professors led Adela de la Torre onto a public stage Thursday at San Diego State University, where she was inaugurated president of a school that has grand dreams of building a large satellite campus a short distance away.
De la Torre became SDSU’s first permanently appointed woman president 10 months ago, after years of service as an executive at UC Davis.
But she also embraced the opportunity to undergo a formal inauguration, a ceremony that many colleges and universities use to publicly mark and celebrate a change of leadership.
The $160,000 event was held before a modest but joyous crowd at SDSU’s Viejas Arena, which can hold about 12,000 spectators. Between 2,500 and 3,000 people turned out on Thursday. Students were given permission to skip class for the event. But comparatively few did so….As she has done since first taking office, de la Torre spoke Thursday about the university’s hope of buying the old SDCCU Stadium complex in Mission Valley and transforming it into a satellite campus that would feature a multiple-use stadium, a technology and research park, classrooms, housing, retail space and a river park www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2019-04-11/de-la-torre-inaugurated-talks-of-lofty-visions-for-sdsu
Katehi scandal at UC Davis called ‘worse than pepper spray’
…Emily Prieto, who would later become Katehi’s daughter-in-law, arrived at UC Davis in 2013 as an executive analyst with a $77,000 salary, according to the UC Office of the President. In 2014, she was promoted to chief of staff to Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Adela de la Torre and was paid $90,419, according to a UC pay database. In 2015, she added assistant vice chancellor to her title. She currently is paid $132,457 annually.
Emails obtained by The Bee through a public records request show that Prieto was being considered for yet another promotion and possible raise earlier this year. The promotion to associate vice chancellor was requested by de la Torre because of expanded duties due to a reorganization of the Student Affairs Department, according to university documents.
Engelbach, Katehi’s chief of staff, called the request “entirely appropriate” in an email to de la Torre. He indicated that he would consider the request instead of the chancellor.
The promotion was discussed in emails between de la Torre, Englebach and others between January and June of this year, but as of Monday, Prieto had not been promoted, said university spokeswoman Dana Topousis. Read more here: www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article90418047.html#storylink=cpy
West Bloomfield High School cracks down on students having food delivered during school day
School districts frustrated by students using Uber Eats
School administrators in West Bloomfield are pumping the brakes on students using Uber Eats to have food delivered to them during the school day.
Students aren’t always the ones ordering food. Parents are also ordering pizzas and more to send to students.
Now, school districts are sending a message that this practice is over.
West Bloomfield High School freshman Nathan Kallabat jumped on the bandwagon this school year.
“I was hearing people say, ‘I just got some bomb pizza from Uber Eats,’ so I was like, ‘Why not?'” Kallabat said.
His receipt shows he ordered two any-style eggs, French toast and pancakes from Leo’s Coney Island at 10:08 a.m. Jan. 29, three hours after the school day started.
“It was amazing,” Kallabat said. “I was, like, the cool kid of the school for four days straight. Not telling you a lie.”
West Bloomfield Principal Pat Watson tweeted that enough is enough last week, ending the trend at the school.
“Some days, eight, 10, 15 deliveries coming,” Watson said. “It was nonstop www.clickondetroit.com/news/west-bloomfield-high-school-cracks-down-on-students-having-food-delivered-during-school-day
Sacramento Teachers Picket Outside Schools In One-Day Strike Amid Budget Crisis
Sacramento teachers and school employees went on strike Thursday in order to pressure the city school district to fully implement a deal they made back in 2017, labor leaders say.
The Sacramento City Teachers Association, the union representing 2,500 teachers and employees, organized the strike. It says the picket was not over salaries, but instead because school administrators aren’t following through on a promise to fund better classroom staffing.
History teacher Tim Douglas was one of the first to join the picket line at McClatchy High School on Thursday morning. He wants the district to stick to a contract and decrease class sizes.
“We don’t want to be out here, but we’re doing it for your children,” he said.
David Fisher, president of SCTA, says the union agreed during contract negotiations in the fall of 2017 to switch employee health coverage to save the district money, but only if it spent the freed-up money on reducing class sizes and other student services.
“We’ve been trying to get these services for students for over a decade,” said Fisher. “Our ratios of school nurses, school psychologists, counselors and even class sizes are the largest and the most atrocious in the area.”
The Sacramento City Unified School District denies that class sizes are a problem. Spokesperson Alex Barrios says the school district has a massive $35 million budget hole, and it needs any savings garnered through an employee health plan change to help close the spending gap.
Barrios says almost half of the budget deficit could be remedied by switching employee health benefits. www.capradio.org/articles/2019/04/11/sacramento-teachers-go-on-strike-amid-school-district-budget-crisis/
The Death of an Adjunct
Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.
A bald eagle in flight is elegance to behold. The sudden, violent flaps of its wings are broken by sublime extension as it locks onto a breeze and glides. Occasionally, 10 blocks north of the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan, you can spot a bald eagle overhead in Fort Tryon Park. There, Thea Hunter could often be counted among the bird’s admirers—typically while walking her dog, Cooper, a black Labrador retriever.
Thea loved the park, a bastion of calm amid the city’s constant hum, and she reveled in the chance encounters she had with eagles there. Often, even in the middle of winter, she would wrestle out her phone to call a friend. Some birds flap, flap, dive, she would explain, while others catch a current and soar. It was remarkable, really, that bald eagles were there at all, as they had once been so close to extinction.
When her friends try to find a way to talk about why she’s not here anymore, they pause, and then they pause again. She, perhaps, would have explained it gracefully. We don’t know how to talk about death, she would have said. It’s a fact of life that we’re tense about. It’s a natural part of the cycle, one that can be hastened by circumstance. And those circumstances, her friends seethe, were the hardships Thea faced as an adjunct professor, as a member of academia’s underclass.
To be a perennial adjunct professor is to hear the constant tone of higher education’s death knell. The story is well known—the long hours, the heavy workload, the insufficient pay—as academia relies on adjunct professors, non-tenured faculty members, who are often paid pennies on the dollar to do the same work required of their tenured colleagues. www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/adjunct-professors-higher-education-thea-hunter/586168/?fbclid=IwAR1Ok97e08lTtDhWsiBN9SoTJpXxrMyABfSiHO-ShnUTPjWE0ajDLGJQ3mU&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
CUNY’s teachers get stiffed: An adjunct explains just how hard it is to make ends meet on what the city’s public university pays
City University of New York management and faculty are deep into contract negotiations that will determine the fate of CUNY adjuncts like me. The overwhelming majority of CUNY faculty are adjuncts. They teach the most classes, and yet they are among the lowest paid workers in the city, especially when you consider that the job requires an advance degree.
I have been an adjunct at CUNY since fall 2010 and have taught at least two classes there per semester, every semester since. I have an MFA in creative writing, which is a terminal degree, that is, the highest degree in my field. When I taught at Queensborough Community College, my students won English department and college-wide awards. I led pedagogical initiatives and served on college wide committees. I have been invited to present papers on my research and teaching at regional, national and international conferences.
On March 25, the faculty caucus at York College in Queens, where I now teach, elected me to the university-wide Faculty Senate as a part-time alternative representative.
For my contribution to CUNY, I earned $21,000 last year. Full-time faculty assigned exactly the same teaching load, who in many cases did less research and fewer presentations than I did, earned anywhere from $45,000 to $128,000 depending on their rank. www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-cunys-teachers-get-stiffed-20190408-rvxovg6yhrhc7e3tjit4fvtfbq-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1YBYjlRowkcKuz27MXArYiJ9LasZ8XTIaW0059g1Ka8_CHiS8KdkxHOWw
How College Professors Turned Into Uber Drivers
Our system of higher education has also been, in a sense, gigafied, and it has yielded similar results. College teaching, once a middle-class profession, increasingly leaves its practitioners in poverty. Hidden behind glossy brochures with photos of Frisbee games on the college lawn and students at work in the library are the underpaid and overworked adjunct faculty who teach most of America’s undergraduates.
In his new book, The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress describes why colleges and universities turned to a contingent workforce, and the consequences this shift has had. A former adjunct himself, Childress explains how this system has left adjuncts impoverished and heartbroken. He relates, for example, the experience of Ellen Tara James-Penney, an adjunct at San Jose State University, to illustrate the difficult circumstances of the poorly paid PhD. James-Penney “often drives to a parking lot to grade papers. When it’s dark, she’ll use a headlamp from Home Depot so she can continue her work. At night, she’ll repark in a residential neighborhood and sleep in her 2004 Volvo. She keeps the car neat to avoid suspicion.”
Morning Report: Explosive Docs Show Officials Failed to Act Over Problem Teacher for Years
If it wasn’t for an obscure state agency that handles teacher credentialing, we still might not know about the extent to which students had complained a La Jolla High School teacher groped and harassed them — and how little the San Diego Unified School District did in response.
We asked for records detailing complaints against LJHS teacher Martin Teachworth in 2015. We asked again in 2017. Over and over, the district told us it had no records.
Now, it says it discovered them in an abandoned room. And what they show is shocking. School police determined one interaction Teachworth had with a student in 2003 rose to the level of criminal behavior. Yet he was never disciplined.
In the 2012-2013 school year, a stream of students and parents came forward to report similar accusations: that Teachworth had touched, grabbed, tickled or groped students. Though district officials brought in police and lawyers, again, they did not discipline Teachworth.
Only when two former students who say the school ignored their complaints went directly to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing did something start to happen. That agency, it turns out, has subpoena power.
When it served San Diego Unified with a legal request for its records on Teachworth, the district had a different response than it did the many times VOSD asked. This time, it had them.
Teachworth retired in 2017, but the credentialing commission is nonetheless weighing whether to revoke his credential. www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/morning-report-explosive-docs-show-officials-failed-to-act-over-problem-teacher-for-years/?utm_source=Voice+of+San+Diego+Master+List&utm_campaign=5d6823103d-Morning_Report&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-5d6823103d-81862829&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-5d6823103d-81862829
Woman says Michigan State used ‘scare tactic’ to silence rape allegations against basketball players
A Michigan State senior went public Thursday with her allegations that the university tried to scare her from pursuing an alleged rape case against three basketball players.
Bailey Kowalski went in front of cameras and answered questions in East Lansing a day after speaking to The New York Times, attaching her name to a lawsuit filed against MSU last year.
She said she wanted to speak publicly on the four-year anniversary of the rape because she’s graduating in May and no longer feels afraid.
“I know that there are others who exist, and they, too, have been afraid,” Kowalski said. “I want to be an example for them.” www.clickondetroit.com/news/woman-says-michigan-state-used-scare-tactic-to-silence-rape-allegations-against-basketball-players
Wayne State doctors: School skimmed $60M in Medicaid aid
Groups representing Wayne State University pediatricians, heart and vascular doctors, anesthesiologists and other specialists are accusing the university of improperly taking of tens of millions in Medicaid funds that they say they are owed but never received.
One group alone — University Pediatricians, representing 220 pediatricians at DMC Children’s Hospital of Michigan — argues Wayne State’s School of Medicine has shortchanged it by as much as over $60 million over the past seven years.
It has asked a Detroit federal bankruptcy judge to review how the Medicaid funds were distributed as part of an insolvency case for another university-affiliated physicians group through which the federal money is funneled to other doctors’ groups.
Other groups, including Northstar Anesthesia of Michigan, Heart & Vascular Consultants, ARK Cardiovascular & Arrhythmia Center and others, have also registered concerns, according to court filings. The Medical Center Emergency Services physician group submitted a claim to the bankruptcy court that it is owed more than $20.7 million. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/04/09/wayne-state-doctors-school-skimmed-60-m-medicaid-aid/3380184002/
Is the U.S. a Democracy? A Social Studies Battle Turns on the Nation’s Values (no smart people involved)
Michigan spent five years debating how to teach American history. One of the biggest questions was how to describe the nation’s government.
Bruising political fights are usual business in Becky Debowski’s eighth-grade social studies classroom. From a model Constitutional Convention to a bare-knuckle debate in Congress over slavery, she regularly has students assume roles of partisans throughout American history, like Abraham Lincoln and John C. Calhoun.
After the exercises, the class comes back together to debate whether the nation lived up to what the state of Michigan calls “core democratic values,” such as equality, liberty and diversity.
For decades, the values have been the heart of the state learning standards in social studies, a doorstop of a document that guides what teachers of history, civics, economics and geography cover in their lesson plans.
“I’m really proud of my students,” Ms. Debowski said. “They can handle the complexity.” So she was angry last year when she learned of a proposed revision of the state standards, in which the word “democratic” was dropped from “core democratic values,” and the use of the word “democracy” was reduced. www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/us/usa-democracy.html?action=click&module=Top+Stories&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR3PVsrVVe8r7c8QG8YMj_d7-tFGcNdt_YPR6YsF3tC0eGiSzttGmJAZ8RQ
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
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US Army terminal missile defense system is headed to Eastern Europe
So far only the Pacific region and, more recently, the Middle East have seen operational deployments of the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, but now it’s headed to Romania this summer, according to an April 11 U.S. European Command statement.
Questions have swirled for years on when, where and if THAAD would deploy to Europe, particularly as the situation on the eastern flank has heated up since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
The THAAD system, according to the USEUCOM statement, will deploy this summer “in support of NATO Ballistic Missile Defense” — in other words, it’s filling in for the operational Aegis Ashore missile defense system while it undergoes a “limited period of scheduled maintenance and updates.”
The Aegis Ashore in Deveselu, Romania, has been operational since 2016. It is part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, or EPAA, designed to defend U.S. troops and its allies in Europe against possible ballistic missile attacks.
The EPAA consists of an AN/TPY-2 radar in Turkey and two Aegis Ashore systems — one in Romania and one in Poland. The Polish system has been hit with delays due to construction issues at Redzikowo military base that are unrelated to the system’s performance. It won’t be operational until 2020. www.defensenews.com/land/2019/04/11/us-army-terminal-missile-defense-system-is-headed-to-eastern-europe/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ebb%2004.13.19&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief
UN Lifting Sanctions on Key Taliban Leaders to Support Negotiations
According to sources within the Taliban movement, the UN has been steadily removing the names of their political leadership from the terror blacklist for the past nine months. This is meant to facilitate ongoing US-Taliban peace talks.
The removal from the blacklist is officially “temporary,” and it’s not exactly clear who all has been removed. Everyone at the Taliban’s office in Qatar is removed from the list, and indications are everyone else involved in US talks has been as well.
The UN has not confirmed this move at all, and neither has the Afghan government, but the reports present it as both a confidence-building measure as well as a practical necessity for organizing and holding talks.
Talks between the US and Taliban have been making progress, and a deal is starting to come together, based around the US withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Taliban promising to keep ISIS and al-Qaeda out of the country in the future. news.antiwar.com/2019/04/12/un-lifting-sanctions-on-key-taliban-leaders-to-support-negotiations/
Navy drops all criminal charges against commander, junior officer in Fitzgerald collision cases
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Cmdr. Bryce Benson was in charge of the Fitzgerald when it collided with a merchant vessel in 2017, killing seven sailors. (Navy)
The Navy is expected Thursday to drop criminal charges against the commanding officer of the warship Fitzgerald and another officer who were facing court-martial trials tied to the fatal 2017 collision with a merchant vessel, according to Navy officials and the family of one of the fallen sailors.
Navy Times obtained a letter to the family of one of the sailors drowned in the disaster and it indicated that Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson was dropping charges against the Fitz’s skipper at the time of the collision, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, and the tactical action officer, Lt. Natalie Combs.
“The cases are being dismissed for legal reasons that impede the continued prosecution of either officer,” the message states.
Instead, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer will issue letters of censure to both officers, the message stated.
Defense attorneys for Benson and Combs said they had not been officially notified about their clients’ legal fates but the messages were confirmed to Navy Times by officials at the highest levels of the sea service. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/04/11/navy-expected-to-drop-criminal-charges-against-fitzgerald-skipper/
More legal bombshells explode in war crimes case
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Following a Pentagon directive, in 2009 the Secretary of the Navy ordered his sea service to create a repository of war crimes allegations.
Nearly nine years later, the Navy admitted that they never put anything in it.
It’s empty.
That’s one of the legal bombshells set to detonate Thursday morning in the ongoing war crimes prosecution of Navy Lt. Jacob X. “Jake” Portier, who stands accused of covering up a string of war crimes involving fellow SEAL Team 7 Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward “Eddie” Gallagher.
Email messages exchanged this week involving multiple attorneys at the Office of the Judge Advocate General at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., and Navy prosecutors in San Diego revealed that the war crimes repository is a shell.
“In accordance with SECNAVINST 3300.1C the Office of the Judge Advocate General (OJAG) established a central repository in 2009 for alleged law of war violations by or against Navy personnel,” wrote Lt. Cmdr. Aaron Waldo in one Tuesday message. “The repository does not currently contain any records.”
Instead, combatant commanders worldwide and the U.S. Army retain these reports, plus the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Waldo wrote. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/04/11/more-legal-bombshells-explode-in-war-crimes-case/
2 Charges Dropped but Navy SEAL Still Faces Murder Count
A judge in San Diego has dropped two charges against a Navy SEAL accused of stabbing a teenage Islamic State prisoner in Iraq and posing with the corpse.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports Monday that the judge in the court martial of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher dropped a count related to the officer’s battlefield re-enlistment ceremony next to the body. Also dropped was a charge related to Gallagher allegedly operating a drone over the corpse.
Gallagher attorney Colby Vokey calls those charges “character-smearing.”
A Navy spokesman, Brian O’Rourke, says that won’t affect the rest of the case.
Gallagher is still accused of stabbing the wounded fighter, firing on civilian crowds and shooting a girl and an elderly man during his 2017 deployment. He’s pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder. www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2019-02-04/2-charges-dropped-but-navy-seal-still-faces-murder-count
Japan: (another) Sailor kills woman, self in Okinawa
A U.S. serviceman fatally stabbed a Japanese woman and then killed himself in Okinawa on Saturday, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said, amid growing resentment about the presence of American troops in the southwestern Japanese region.
U.S. Forces Japan said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was working with local police to look into the deaths of a U.S. Navy sailor assigned to a Marine unit and an Okinawa resident.
“This is an absolute tragedy and we are fully committed to supporting the investigation,” it said in a statement, adding that more information would be released later.
Japan’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeo Akiba telephoned U.S. Ambassador William Hagerty, asking for cooperation with the investigation and efforts to prevent a recurrence, and expressed “extreme regrets,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Although Okinawa makes up less than 1 percent of Japan’s land space, it hosts about half of the 54,000 American troops stationed in Japan, and is home to 64 percent of the land used by the U.S. bases in the country under a bilateral security treaty. People there have long complained about crime, noise and the destruction of the environment. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/04/13/japan-sailor-kills-woman-self-in-okinawa/
Three Veterans Die by Suicide in Five Days at Veterans Affairs Facilities
Three veterans died by suicide in a five-day span at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, prompting a response from Capitol Hill. Two veterans died by suicide in Georgia, and another shot himself in the waiting room at a VA clinic in Austin, Texas. “Those deaths did not go by me without noticing them, nor has it gone by me that we have a job to do,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, (R-GA). The Trump administration’s VA has failed to spend millions of dollars that were allocated for suicide prevention, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. VA officials have left millions of dollars available for outreach campaigns in 2018 untouched and severely cut back on their advertising efforts. According to a report by The Washington Post, 19 suicides occurred on VA property between October 2017 and November 2018. “Every one of these is a gut-wrenching experience for our 24,000 mental health providers and all of us that work for VA,” said Richard Stone, executive in charge of the Veterans Health Administration. www.thedailybeast.com/three-veterans-die-by-suicide-in-five-days-at-veterans-affairs-facilities
Hundreds witness veteran shoot and kill himself in VA waiting room
A horrific scene unfolded Tuesday in the waiting room of an Austin, Texas, Veterans Affairs clinic when a veteran reportedly shot himself to death in front of hundreds of witnesses.
Despite the commotion, many in the building remained unaware of what had occurred for some time after the shooting, KWTX News 10 reported.
One group therapy class even continued on for almost an hour after the shot was fired.
“All of a sudden, over the intercom, they have this statement about everyone must clear the building including staff, so it was a little surprising,” veteran Ken Walker told News 10.
Once vacant, the hospital was locked down for an investigation.
Reddit user Diane_Kirkendall shared a photo reportedly taken in the waiting room in the wake of the suicide. www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/04/11/hundreds-witness-veteran-shoot-and-kill-himself-in-va-waiting-room/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+MAR&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR3KYyMwKYiNEy471phhtkiwWf1U3V06QrJo2670rKJE6gNNt9Qs0XMFrG8
Marine shot and killed fellow Marine at South Carolina air station
A Marine was shot and killed by a fellow service member on Friday night at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, Corps officials announced on Saturday.
- A Corps spokesman told The State that the shooting occurred around 9:30pm on Friday night, but did not specify where on base the shooting took place.
- The suspected shooter is currently in custody pending an investigation.
- The victim was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 31. taskandpurpose.com/marine-shot-and-killed-fellow-marine-at-beaufort-air-station?utm_campaign=RebelAlerts&utm_medium=email&utm_source=RebelAlerts-taskandpurpose&utm_source=Task+%26+Purpose+Daily&utm_campaign=0abf46771d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_13_07_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_67edd998fe-0abf46771d-76834115&mc_cid=0abf46771d&mc_eid=7e099a64db
A VETERAN’S WAR MOVIE SHEDS DAMNING LIGHT ON HOW THE MARINES FIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN
…In “Combat Obscura,” a new documentary set in Afghanistan, Marines don’t do what they normally do in American-made documentaries about war – they don’t echo narratives of God and country, kill bad guys, and win hearts and minds. In “Combat Obscura,” Marines shoot guns and patrol, but they also insult women, shake their weapons at children, die needlessly and with little dignity, murder innocent people and cover it up. At one point in the film, a Marine points his gun at children passing by on donkeys. “Where’s the fucking Taliban? Where’s the fucking Taliban?” he screams in their faces. They look back in fear and incomprehension. The Marine hands one of the boys a chocolate bar, but it does not feel like a kindness. theintercept.com/2019/04/07/combat-obscura-afghanistan-war-documentary/
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Ray Dalio says wealth inequality is a national emergency –The founder of the most successful hedge fund in the world says capitalism needs to be reformed and that the American dream is lost– video
One of the most successful investors of all time is somebody you probably have never heard of, despite his net worth of $18 billion. Ray Dalio avoids extensive interviews and has not allowed news cameras full access to his firm, Bridgewater Associates, until now. He predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Now he sees a prolonged period of sluggish economic growth and the threat of a confrontation between the U.S. and China. But there’s a greater danger Dalio wanted to warn us about. So we figured it would be a good investment of our time to do a deep dive on the principles of Ray Dalio. www.cbsnews.com/news/ray-dalio-capitalism-needs-reform-wealth-inequality-is-a-national-emergency-60-minutes/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab5j&linkId=65831143&fbclid=IwAR3H5ogSaQuXz5nF1YIRS5yk2CK3DQRMNFe_9hWQ8LmMjFvR4ddkSOkuQOI
College Grads Sell Stakes in Themselves to Wall Street
To pay for college, Amy Wroblewski sold a piece of her future. Every month, for eight-and-a-half years, she must turn over a set percentage of her salary to investors. Today, about a year after graduation, Wroblewski makes $50,000 a year as a higher education recruiter in Winchester, Va. So the cut comes to $279 a month, less than her car payment.
If the 23-year-old becomes a star in her field, she could pay twice as much. If she loses her job, she won’t have to pay anything, and investors will be out of luck until she finds work.
Wroblewski struck this unusual deal as an undergraduate at public Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. To fund part of the cost of her degree in strategy and organizational management, she sidestepped the common source of money, a student loan. Instead, she agreed to hand over part of her future earnings through a new kind of financial instrument called an income-sharing agreement, or ISA. In a sense, financiers are transforming student debtors into stock investments, with much of the same risk and, ideally, return.
In Wall Street terms, Wroblewski, a first-generation college student, is more small-company stock than Microsoft. Her mother works as a waitress; her father, as a quality control inspector in a car dealership www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-09/college-grads-sell-stakes-in-themselves-to-wall-street?cmpid=BBD040919_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=190409&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily
60 of America’s biggest companies paid no federal income tax in 2018
The Global Economy: A Delicate Moment
A year ago, economic activity was accelerating in almost all regions of the world. One year later, much has changed. The escalation of US–China trade tensions, needed credit tightening in China, macroeconomic stress in Argentina and Turkey, disruptions to the auto sector in Germany, and financial tightening alongside the normalization of monetary policy in the larger advanced economies have all contributed to a significantly weakened global expansion, especially in the second half of 2018.
With this weakness expected to persist into the first half of 2019, our new World Economic Outlook (WEO) projects a slowdown in growth in 2019 for 70 percent of the world economy. Global growth softened to 3.6 percent in 2018 and is projected to decline further to 3.3 percent in 2019. The downward revision in growth of 0.2 percentage points for 2019 from the January projection is also broad based. It reflects negative revisions for several major economies including the euro area, Latin America, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
After the weak start, growth is projected to pick up in the second half of 2019. This pickup is supported by significant monetary policy accommodation by major economies, made possible by the absence of inflationary pressures despite growing at near potential. The US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England have all shifted to a more accommodative stance. China has ramped up its fiscal and monetary stimulus to counter the negative effect of trade tariffs. Furthermore, the outlook for US–China trade tensions has improved as the prospects of a trade agreement take shape….
Risks to global growth
While the global economy continues to grow at a reasonable rate and a global recession is not in the baseline projections, there are many downside risks. Tensions in trade policy could flare up again and play out in other areas (such as the auto industry), with large disruptions to global supply chains. Growth in systemic economies such as the euro area and China may surprise on the downside, and the risks surrounding Brexit remain heightened. A deterioration in market sentiment could rapidly tighten financing conditions in an environment of large private and public sector debt in many countries, including sovereign-bank doom loop risks. blogs.imf.org/2019/04/09/the-global-economy-a-delicate-moment/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
Health care CEO pay tops $1 billion in 2018 so far
Our latest tally shows 62 health care CEOs made a combined $1.1 billion in 2018 when calculating the actual value of cashed-out stock.
Between the lines: $1.1 billion is basically a rounding error within the $3.7 trillion U.S. health care system. But it’s also $157 million more than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent in 2018 on chronic disease prevention.
A few things jumped out in our latest scan:
- Wayne Smith, CEO of Community Health Systems, earned a $3.3 million bonus last year — 4 times his cash bonus from 2017 — even though his hospital chain lost $788 million and continued to sell off hospitals from a failed 2014 merger that he orchestrated (and now regrets). Smith’s bonus was heavily weighted by an adjusted metric that made CHS look profitable, and none of his bonus was tied to hospital quality.
- Philadelphia’s public employee pension plan is asking CVS Health shareholders to support a resolution that would require CVS not to exclude opioid litigation costs when considering executive bonuses. CVS isn’t a fan of that.
- Joe Hogan leads Align Technology, the maker of Invisalign clear braces and various dental scanners, and he made $70 million in 2018 — 4th highest among health care companies that have reported so far. www.axios.com/health-care-ceo-salaries-2018-3aff66cd-8723-4ec8-abe8-dd19edd24390.html?fbclid=IwAR2wfPbw4P7Qhz_PKABiBbT72sL2fO1kKlANVvPJnMn6kI6j5nqWfIU-p_Q
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2137117183024115&t=5
Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder arrested in London
Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.
At Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday he was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court.
He now faces US federal conspiracy charges related to one of the largest ever leaks of government secrets.
The UK will decide whether to extradite Assange, in response to allegations by the Department for Justice that he conspired with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to download classified databases.
He faces up to five years in US prison if convicted on the charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. www.bbc.com/news/uk-47891737
War Criminal Hillbillary Clinton Gloats Over Assange’s Arrest in London, Twitter Hits Back
The former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate has a bone to pick with the WikiLeaks founder, who was arrested yesterday on a US extradition warrant. Back in 2016, the whistleblowers leaked damaging internal communications from her presidential campaign that ultimately ended in defeat.
Hillary Clinton has lashed out at Julian Assange who was arrested and dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he had resided for years to avoid persecution in the US. She welcomed this new dramatic twist in Assange’s story while speaking on the stage of New York City’s Beacon Theater amid her speaking tour.
The former secretary of state, who ran for president in 2016, said that the WikiLeaks founder “has to answer for what he has done, at least as it’s been charged”.
“I think it is clear from the indictment that came out it’s not about punishing journalism, it is about assisting the hacking of a military computer to steal information from the United States government, and look, I’ll wait and see what happens with the charges and how it proceeds, but he skipped bail in the UK”, said Clinton, whose campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee was exposed by WikiLeaks back in 2016 with their stolen emails.
Clinton also seized an opportunity to take aim at Donald Trump’s administration, commenting on the Australian whistleblower’s arrest. sputniknews.com/us/201904121074060697-assange-arrest-hillary-clinton-gloating/?fbclid=IwAR3OnBT2isgl6dPDzmNCINzFZe4J6hu6XIyEJBwZlOgtNc9k3_7Owln08e8&utm_source=https://www.facebook.com/&utm_medium=short_url&utm_content=mjtm&utm_campaign=URL_shortening
Assange’s arrest was designed to make sure he didn’t press a mysterious panic button he said would bring dire consequences for Ecuador
- WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, was dramatically arrested and carried out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday.
- British and Ecuadorian authorities engineered the timing and nature of the raid to stop Assange from accessing a panic button he mentioned in the past, Ecuador’s foreign minister said.
- Specifics on the button — or what it might do — are sparse, but the foreign minister said Assange had said it could bring dire consequences for Ecuador.
- Ecuadorian officials have accused Assange of accessing the government’s security files, playing music loudly, and having no regard for personal hygiene during his stay at the embassy. www.businessinsider.com/assange-arrest-ecuador-prevent-alleged-panic-button-2019-4
The Assange Arrest is a Warning From History
The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.
That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.
But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice.
Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/12/the-assange-arrest-is-a-warning-from-history/
Why the Nazis studied American race laws for inspiration
On 5 June 1934, about a year and half after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich, the leading lawyers of Nazi Germany gathered at a meeting to plan what would become the Nuremberg Laws, the centrepiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi race regime.
The meeting was an important one, and a stenographer was present to take down a verbatim transcript, to be preserved by the ever-diligent Nazi bureaucracy as a record of a crucial moment in the creation of the new race regime.
That transcript reveals a startling fact: the meeting involved lengthy discussions of the law of the United States of America. At its very opening, the Minister of Justice presented a memorandum on US race law and, as the meeting progressed, the participants turned to the US example repeatedly.
They debated whether they should bring Jim Crow segregation to the Third Reich. They engaged in detailed discussion of the statutes from the 30 US states that criminalised racially mixed marriages. They reviewed how the various US states determined who counted as a ‘Negro’ or a ‘Mongol’, and weighed whether they should adopt US techniques in their own approach to determining who counted as a Jew. Throughout the meeting the most ardent supporters of the US model were the most radical Nazis in the room.
The record of that meeting is only one piece of evidence in an unexamined history that is sure to make Americans cringe. www.businessinsider.com/why-the-nazis-studied-american-race-laws-for-inspiration-2017-2?fbclid=IwAR0v4DEigL8fG0fS1OUEWWXJcBBYetoQGqlvdivOAoYXVXKCE0ZmyNJ9LUs
Solidarity for Never
Norwood Jewell, the UAW and the Flint water crisis
One facet of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan that has gotten little or no attention is the close connections between the United Auto Workers union and local Democratic politicians whose decisions resulted in the lead poisoning of the city of 96,000 residents.
The issue has risen to the surface due to last week’s conviction on conspiracy charges of former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, who pled guilty to taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from Fiat Chrysler. Jewell is the highest-ranking UAW official convicted so far in the illegal scheme involving auto executives paying off union officials to sign and enforce pro-company contracts.
Before coming over to the UAW-Chrysler Department, where he negotiated the 2015 sellout of 37,000 Fiat Chrysler workers, Jewell was director of UAW Region 1-C in Flint. That was between 2010 and 2014, after which he briefly headed the UAW’s General Motors department.
Jewell worked his way up the ladder of the UAW bureaucracy, after first being hired into a management position at GM in the early 1980s and later being appointed UAW plant chairman at GM’s Flint Metal Center in the mid-1990s.
As regional director, Jewell was a key political backer of Mayor Dayne Walling, who pushed the button on April 24, 2014 that shut off the city’s connection to the Detroit water system and switched to the polluted Flint River. With cameras rolling, Walling lifted a glass of river water, toasting, “Here’s to Flint!”
The water supply shift led to a devastating public health crisis, with an unknown number of children and other residents suffering lifelong physical and mental damage, and outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in Genesee County that resulted in at least a dozen deaths.
Walling was the first president of the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), the money-making venture to build a new $285 million raw water pipeline to transfer water from Lake Huron to homes and businesses in Flint. The new pipeline was to run parallel to an existing treated-water pipeline owned by the Detroit Water and Sewerage System, which had supplied Flint for more than half a century. Getting Flint, the largest city in Genesee County, to buy into the KWA was key to the whole criminal operation, which promised large profits to bondholders, developers and other corporate and financial interests.
A little more than a year before the ill-fated switch, on March 25, 2013, Jewell stood before the Flint City Council to make the pitch for the KWA project, with Mayor Walling sitting behind him. In comments that can be seen in this YouTube video Jewell said, “I believe in facts, and the facts support the Karegnondi line for Flint. www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/04/10/jewe-a10.html
AFSCME takes over Michigan state employee union, amid strife
Michigan’s oldest state employee union — the Michigan State Employees Association — was placed in trusteeship Monday after years of controversy and internal feuding.
Representatives of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) International, the union’s parent organization, arrived at the union’s Lansing offices Monday morning, locked officials out of their computers, and sent its elected officers home, three union sources told the Free Press. They later changed the locks on the office doors, sources said.
The union, founded in 1950, is now under the control of a trustee.
Union officials said they were working on a statement but had no immediate comment.
AFSCME officials weren’t immediately saying what prompted the unusual action, but the Free Press has reported on internal MSEA strife since 2016, when the National Labor Relations Board accused President Ken Moore and other leaders of attempting to break an internal union formed by union office staff. www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/04/08/afscme-michigan-state-employee-union-trusteeship/3406763002/
Reconstruction | Part 1, Hour 1
www.pbs.org/video/reconstruction-part-1-hour-1-n0g1em/
Spy versus Spy
Netflix
Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police
The tech giant records people’s locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, running the risk of snaring the innocent.
When detectives in a Phoenix suburb arrested a warehouse worker in a murder investigation last December, they credited a new technique with breaking open the case after other leads went cold.
The police told the suspect, Jorge Molina, they had data tracking his phone to the site where a man was shot nine months earlier. They had made the discovery after obtaining a search warrant that required Google to provide information on all devices it recorded near the killing, potentially capturing the whereabouts of anyone in the area.
Investigators also had other circumstantial evidence, including security video of someone firing a gun from a white Honda Civic, the same model that Mr. Molina owned, though they could not see the license plate or attacker.
But after he spent nearly a week in jail, the case against Mr. Molina fell apart as investigators learned new information and released him. Last month, the police arrested another man: his mother’s ex-boyfriend, who had sometimes used Mr. Molina’s car. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-location-tracking-police.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The Magical Mystery Tour
Ex-Pope Benedict XVI Blames Church Sex Abuse Scandal on Sexual Revolution, Lax Church Laws
Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published an essay blaming the Catholic Church’s ongoing abuse scandal on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and lax church laws, directly contradicting the current pope in a manner that one church historian called “catastrophically irresponsible.” NBC News reports Thursday that the former pope’s essay, published in the German monthly Klerusblatt, blames the sexual revolution (he specifically names the inclusion of sex in films in his native Bavaria) and church laws that gave priests too much protection. The current pope, Pope Francis, instead blames a culture that elevated priests over their alleged victims. Theological scholars have spoken out against Benedict’s analysis, NBC News notes, arguing that there were examples of sexual abuse that took place prior to the sexual revolution. www.thedailybeast.com/benedict-xvi-blames-church-sex-abuse-scandal-on-sexual-revolution-lax-church-laws?source=TDB&via=FB_Page&fbclid=IwAR2tdeUzuC9aKxgNtSmzrbCQR9axYAxqQqVqNPsYqATbLksn5Yw2Wfv8fxY
www.facebook.com/wideneckmen/videos/2311458392430931/?t=35
Federal Reserve Nominee Herman Cain Says God Will Tell US When to Quit Fossil Fuels, Insults Senate Banking Committee
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who President Donald Trump recently recommended for a seat on the U.S. Federal Reserve board, said God will figure out when America should stop relying on fossil fuel energy.
Trump’s recommendation of Cain — an unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate and close associate of billionaire political influencers David and Charles Koch — comes just two weeks after the president controversially suggested Republican economist Stephen Moore for a separate Fed opening.
Both Cain and Moore have ties to the Americans for Prosperity group funded by the Kochs, who are majority owners of the U.S. fossil fuel energy conglomerate, Koch Industries. Giving a lecture at the University of Kansas Wednesday night, Cain, 73, expressed his fears with regard to socialism and renewable energy, The Kansas City Star first reported.
“When God is ready for us to not have fossil fuels he’ll find a way and we’ll figure out how not to depend upon fossil fuels,” Cain, a frequent guest on evangelical Christian radio, told attendees of the 50th Annual Vickers Lecture Series at the University of Kansas’ School of Business.
Cain’s potential central bank nomination will likely face intense Senate confirmation pushback, which he may have exacerbated Wednesday on KU’s campus after labeling the Senate Banking Committee — the same body responsible for vetting his nomination — a “bunch of yahoos.” www.newsweek.com/herman-cain-federal-reserve-fossil-fuels-god-koch-brothers-trump-nomination-1393455?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=NewsweekFacebookSF&utm_medium=Social&fbclid=IwAR1TRw7uHDz2ZGtO25vATXaMx1a10Vw6z1ATpB24ksf_RRc0eMqbSkrcL9o
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiIU3u3e6I
Former Air Force chaplain, a retired colonel, found guilty of sex abuse in New Mexico
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Father Arthur Perrault, seen in this 1989 photo from the Albuquerque Journal, has been convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy in New Mexico. The retired Air Force colonel committed the sexual abuse at Kirtland Air Force Base and other locations, (Courtesy of the Albuquerque Journal).
SANTA FE, N.M. — A jury has found a former Roman Catholic priest and retired Air Force chaplain, who was extradited from Morocco last September, guilty of sexually abusing an altar boy at an Air Force base and a veterans’ cemetery in New Mexico in the early 1990s.
The jury reached the verdict Wednesday against 81-year-old Arthur Perrault, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel, following a trial in Santa Fe in which several men testified that they had been abused by him as children in his car, a church rectory and other locations.
The victim at the center of the case said Perrault took him to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, an amusement park and other locations and had touched him inappropriately as many as 100 times starting when he was 10.
The abuse ended in 1992, the same year Perrault vanished from the state as an attorney prepared to file two lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe alleging Perrault had sexually assaulted seven children.
“He fled to esca pe justice because he knew he was guilty,” federal prosecutor Sean Sullivan said. www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/04/12/former-air-force-chaplain-a-retired-colonel-found-guilty-of-sex-abuse-in-new-mexico/
Why Are There Religious Exemptions for Vaccines?
This week the City of New York declared a public health emergency because of a measles outbreak that had been escalating since the fall in ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and finally reached the point of crisis. In December the Health Department had made an effort to contain the disease, ordering yeshivas and child care centers in affected neighborhoods to keep all unvaccinated children from going to school or day care. Then, in January, at least one yeshiva in Williamsburg ignored the mandate. This failure of compliance led to an eruption of dozens of new cases.
Like well-off bohemians who might send their children to Waldorf schools, where an anti-vaccination culture is baked in the warm ovens of so many sprouted-wheat snacks, many among the ultra-Orthodox resist the incursions of modernity. A distrust of immunization had long ago taken hold in some sectors of the Hasidic community, but this year various religious neighborhoods in Brooklyn were hit with a propaganda campaign meant to breed even more skepticism and fear.
As it happens, 2019 is turning out to be a record year for measles outbreaks, with 465 cases reported in 19 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/nyregion/measles-vaccines-religious-exemptions.html
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
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ISIS Adds Few Violent White Supremacists In Bid To Get U.S. To Rescind Terrorist Designation
Explaining that they hoped the personnel changes would enable the organization to avoid the State Department’s scrutiny, ISIS leaders announced Monday that they had added a few violent white supremacists to the group in a bid to get the U.S. to rescind its designation of ISIS as terrorists. “Being branded a terrorist organization has really made it difficult for ISIS to operate, so we’re pleased to introduce several members of racist white militia groups considered to be safe, respectable, and law-abiding in the eyes of the U.S. government,” said ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir in a video released by the organization, adding that he would go so far as to label the white supremacists “the new face of ISIS.”
“We know we have a checkered past as far as America is concerned, but we hope bringing in members of white hate groups with documented histories of death threats and violence will prompt the State Department to view us in a new light. We expect this to be a fruitful collaboration, as we actually have a lot in common, and it turns out they have many more guns than we do. We anticipate the U.S. will extend to us the same understanding and support they offer to their own sectarian racial supremacists.” At press time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that ISIS was no longer officially considered a terrorist organization based on their members’ newfound strong support for President Trump. www.theonion.com/isis-adds-few-violent-white-supremacists-in-bid-to-get-1833890999
So Long
Kitty Tucker, 75, Who Raised Awareness of the Silkwood Case, Dies
Kitty Tucker, a public interest lawyer and antinuclear activist who helped raise national awareness of the case of Karen Silkwood, the nuclear power whistle-blower, died on March 30 in Silver Spring, Md. She was 75.
Her husband, Robert Alvarez, said the cause was complications of a urinary tract infection.
Ms. Tucker was a first-year law student in 1974 when she read that Ms. Silkwood, a technician at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Oklahoma and a union activist, had died in a mysterious car crash on her way to meet with a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Silkwood had radioactive plutonium in her lungs; Kerr-McGee said she had deliberately contaminated herself to make the company look bad.
Ms. Silkwood had intended to show the reporter, David Burnham, evidence that the plant had numerous safety violations and was endangering the lives of its employees, though no such evidence was found in her car. Union investigators said that the car might have been forced off the road, but that was never proved.
The plant closed the year after Ms. Silkwood’s death, which became a rallying cry for antinuclear activists and helped sow doubts about the nuclear energy industry. In 1983, her story was made into a popular movie, “Silkwood,” starring Meryl Streep in the title role and Cher as a co-worker, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. All were nominated for Academy Awards. www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/obituaries/kitty-tucker-dead.html