We Say Fight Back!

The New Social Network That Isn’t New at All

My favorite new social network doesn’t incessantly spam me with notifications. When I post, I’m not bombarded with @mentions from bots and trolls. And after I use it, I don’t worry about ads following me around the web.

That’s because my new social network is an email newsletter. Every week or so, I blast it out to a few thousand people who have signed up to read my musings. Some of them email back, occasionally leading to a thoughtful conversation. It’s still early in the experiment, but I think I love it.

The newsletter is not a new phenomenon. But there is a growing interest among those who are disenchanted with social media in what the writer Craig Mod has called “the world’s oldest networked publishing platform.” For us, the inbox is becoming a more attractive medium than the news feed.

The shift toward newsletters is part of a broader change. For years, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, asked us to live in a more “open and connected” version of the world. And billions of us did, posting status updates, photos and videos on the social network and flocking to other services like Twitter, where I post regular messages about my mood, personified in photos of my dog.  www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/new-social-network-email-newsletter.html

Why Wayne Lewis may not have enough proof to catch teachers who lied in sickouts

One morning in early 1982, an Eastern Kentucky teacher named Jim McCollum asked his wife to let his supervisor know he couldn’t work that day because he was sick.

But he wasn’t.

Instead, McCollum took the day to haul 25 tons of coal up to an Air Force base in Columbus, Ohio.

McCollum — eventually busted for the lie — was fired by the Laurel County school district for conduct unbecoming of a teacher. He challenged that termination, setting off a lengthy legal tussle that reached the Kentucky Supreme Court in 1986.

More than three decades later, falsely calling in sick has become a form of protest for Kentucky’s public school teachers.

Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis, who wants the names of teachers who may have taken part in several recent “sickouts,” said this week that he wouldn’t punish individual educators if schools stop shutting down.

But with the state legislature set to reconvene next week for the final day of its 2019 session, it’s possible teachers may orchestrate another work stoppage.   www.courier-journal.com/story/news/education/2019/03/21/wayne-lewis-proof-punish-kentucky-sickout-teachers/3222053002/

Elite Restaurant Torched, Luxury Shops Smashed in Paris Riots: Real Resistance?

French yellow vest protesters set life-threatening fires, smashed up luxury stores and clashed with police Saturday in the 18th straight weekend of demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron. Large plumes of smoke rose above the rioting on Paris’ landmark Champs-Elysees avenue, and a mother and her child were just barely saved from a building blaze.

The resurgent violence came as protesters are seeking to breathe new life into a movement that seemed to be fizzling, and get attention from French leaders and media whom they see as underplaying their economic justice cause and favoring the elite.

Paris police appeared to be caught off guard by the speed and severity of the unrest. French police tried to contain the demonstrators with repeated volleys of tear gas and water cannon, with limited success.

Cobblestones flew in the air and smoke from fires set by protesters mingled with clouds of tear gas sprayed by police, as tensions continued for hours along the Champs-Elysees.  www.truthdig.com/articles/elite-restaurant-torched-luxury-shops-smashed-in-paris-riots/

Nearly 40,000 UC medical center workers stage one-day, statewide strike

– A one-day strike by nearly 40,000 University of California hospital workers has the potential to disrupt normal operations at several UC campuses across the state Wednesday.

Members of the University Professional and Technical Employees CWA 9119 authorized the strike last October and have been working without a contract since September 2017, according to UPTE Vice President Dan Russell, a UC Berkeley information technology worker.  www.ktvu.com/news/research-technical-workers-to-strike-on-university-of-california-campuses

A forgotten hero stopped the My Lai massacre 50 years ago

The Paris Commune: March 1871

www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/rcp-paris-commune.htm

Short Book Review–Terrible book: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks

Simon and Schuster 2018

By Rich Gibson

March 2019

The dangers of patriotic liberalism: For Rosa Brooks there is no class war, no imperialism, no profitable racism, and certainly no fascism, although she describes the current corporate/military/government state in dramatic detail–a strength that makes this book must reading for every serious liberal who should see the terrible trajectory of their own logic, and for every radical who wants to witness the dominance of that corporate state in great detail.

In her horrific conclusion, where she urges we find comfort in the military’s rule, not as “the military” but as “national security.” She suggests that it is in warfare that collective human talent reaches its zenith, and hence we should accept her own pernicious projection of perpetual war, and grow within it via universal service.

That would be, to her, patriotism.

To Mrs. Brooks, now married to a military officer, the US is a “do-gooder nation” arriving with good intentions.

But we cannot call her naive. Her liberal veneer, a courageous past working for Human Rights groups, masks what is in fact a bloodthirsty mission.

We should adapt to the reality of endless militant, armed, death-cult, superstitious criminal cults–rather than to counter them with “people make gods, gods don’t make people, you have evil fairies dancing in your head.”

We should grow accustomed to a military tyranny that has no grand strategy (but endless war) and thus no strategy, but only tactics–leaving each initiative to every imaginable enemy.

Brooks, the daughter of liberal Barbara Ehrenreich, demeans even the Second International, but does demonstrate precisely where her mother was headed.

“War, for all its horrors, has long been one of the best and only means  of harnessing collective human talent to serve the group as a whole, and the military has long been the institution we use to bring talent together. If the military is becoming everything, why not use this as an opportunity to engage EVERYONE –to include millions more Americans in the project of making the nation stronger…(p360).

This, she suggests, will make the world less cruel.

She’s a lawyer who believes in “human rights.” Beware the law-worshiping liberals who cannot think.

Even Eisenhower would be appalled.

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Only 7 Black Students Got Into Stuyvesant, N.Y.’s Most Selective High School, Out of 895 Spots

Only a tiny number of black students were offered admission to the highly selective public high schools in New York City on Monday, raising the pressure on officials to confront the decades-old challenge of integrating New York’s elite public schools.

At Stuyvesant High School, out of 895 slots in the freshman class, only seven were offered to black students. And the number of black students is shrinking: There were 10 black students admitted into Stuyvesant last year, and 13 the year before.

Another highly selective specialized school, the Bronx High School of Science, made 12 offers to black students this year, down from 25 last year.

These numbers come despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to diversify the specialized high schools, which have long been seen as a ticket for low-income and immigrant students to enter the nation’s best colleges and embark on successful careers.

But Mr. de Blasio’s proposal to scrap the entrance exam for the schools and overhaul the admissions process has proved so divisive that the state’s most prominent politicians, from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have mostly avoided taking a definitive position — even as black and Hispanic students are grappling with increasingly steep odds of admission into the city’s eight most selective public schools.  www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/nyregion/black-students-nyc-high-schools.html

‘It hurt so bad’: Indiana teachers shot with plastic pellets during active shooter training (NEA hasn’t gotten them a lawyer)

An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school in January left teachers with welts, bruises and abrasions after they were shot with plastic pellets by the local sheriff’s office conducting the session.

The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.

“They told us, ‘This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing,’” said one of the two teachers, both of whom asked IndyStar not to be identified out of concern for their jobs. “They shot all of us across our backs. I was hit four times.

“It hurt so bad.”

Now, these teachers and the state’s largest teachers union want to stop this from happening in other Hoosier schools. The Indiana State Teachers Association is lobbying lawmakers to add language prohibiting teachers from being shot with any sort of ammunition to a school safety bill working its way through the Statehouse.  www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/21/active-shooter-training-for-schools-teachers-shot-with-plastic-pellets/3231103002/?fbclid=IwAR1zVGLA_kwqlk36R9nk-tNPBk7O181I766ZW9m5oYuo8Q0kmiauozXt-jA

DEVOS STRIKES OUT IN KEY COURT CASES: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ efforts to swiftly roll back major Obama-era policies at her agency over the past two years are increasingly running into an obstacle: federal courts.

— Judges in recent months have rebuffed DeVos’ attempts to pause or change policies governing a range of issues, including student loan forgiveness, mandatory arbitration agreements and racial disparities in special education programs.

— As a result, the Education Department is being forced to carry out Obama-era policies that the Trump administration has fought to stop — even as it continues to charge ahead with its deregulatory agenda.

— The legal challenges largely have focused on procedural issues in the Trump administration’s approach to delaying Obama-era rules. “It speaks to the Department of Education’s unwillingness or inability to follow the basic law around how federal agencies conduct themselves,” said Toby Merrill, who directs the Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has brought some of the lawsuits against DeVos.

— “The administration is committed to correcting the regulatory over-reach of the prior administration and will continue to make the case for fair and appropriate regulatory reform in the courts,” Education Department spokesperson Liz Hill said.

Congratulations on the publication of:

“Whether you are a teacher, student or parent, Daniel Golden’s closely researched account of the assault on our academic freedoms by home-grown intelligence services is timely and shocking.”―John le Carré

“Golden …turns his considerable fact-finding skills to an eye-opening chronicle of how higher education has evolved into a key source for obtaining military and technological intelligence. A provocative look at the transformation of academia to a broad chessboard of international espionage.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“This forensic analysis of espionage in academia offers a chilling, highly readable insight into the unscrupulous exploitation by ruthless intelligence agencies operating across the globe.”―Nigel West, intelligence historian and author of Spycraft Secrets

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

I took this photo of an interior wall of a gate guard tower at “Victory Base” in Baghdad in 2004. The graffiti is a classic example of the grim and cynical sense of humor soldiers cultivate in order to maintain their sanity in war. —Stephen Richey, U.S. Army, 1977-2010

Investing in the sector means more jobs at home and improved security abroad.

On Wednesday, President Trump will visit Lima, Ohio, to tour the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center, one of America’s premier defense facilities and the last tank factory in the Western Hemisphere. The story of the day may be about how the Trump administration saved the Lima plant from a near-death experience under President Barack Obama. The story for the history books, however, is about how the factory perfectly encapsulates President Trump’s maxim “economic security is national security.”

The Lima factory, operated by General Dynamics, builds the M-1 Abrams, the Army’s main battle tank. This heavily armored war horse played a key role in both the liberation of Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in the early 1990s and the Iraq war beginning in 2003. It remains a stalwart of Army operations today.

In 2012, the Obama administration sought to close the Lima plant as part of the mandated budget sequestration process. Fortunately, the Republican-led Congress rejected that move and appropriated enough funds to keep the factory in business  www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/opinion/trump-defense-industry.html

www.facebook.com/watch/?v=646170329170411

Why Did Bush Go to War in Iraq? The Answer Is More Sinister Than You Think

Since 1998, the United States of America has tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela. What threatened the government of the United States since then was the Bolivarian dynamic set in motion by the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela that year. Chávez won the elections with a mandate from Venezuela’s workers and poor to overhaul the country to tend to their long-neglected needs.

Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, had enriched the U.S.-based oil companies and its own oligarchy. Venezuela’s key oil minister in the early 1960s (and architect of OPEC—the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso rightly called oil the “devil’s excrement.” It promised so much and delivered so little. Chávez arrived as the embodiment of popular hope. He threatened the oil companies and the oligarchy, which is why the United States tried to overthrow him.

The first attempt at a coup came in 2002, when the United States egged on the military and the oligarchy to overthrow Chávez. They failed. He was supremely popular, the Chavista base eager for change that would improve their lives. They had no faith in the United States or the oligarchy, both of whom had suffocated them for the past century.

Never has the Monroe Doctrine—which the United States invoked to control the American hemisphere—done much good for the millions of people from the southern tip of Argentina to the northern reaches of Canada. It has helped along the big corporations and the oligarchs, but not the ordinary people—the base of the Chavistas.

The residue of that base lined up this Sunday to sign a pledge in public against a new U.S. diplomatic and military intervention, against economic war.

What drives the United States to persist in its interventions—diplomatic, economic and military—against the Venezuelan government?  www.commondreams.org/views/2019/02/12/why-does-united-states-america-want-overthrow-government-venezuela?fbclid=IwAR2ta22Ga8tTxVsHWWv1ZrTrh2vyiZS8xVOvVgNaTcMSpxX-GSzXHPMiYrA

Pentagon discloses military projects in California that it could tap for Trump’s wall

www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/03/21/marines-seize-an-airfield-and-small-island-alongside-special-operations-airmen-and-soldiers-while-testing-tactics-for-fight-against-china/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor                 

Many S&P 500 CEOs Got a Raise in 2018 That Lifted Their Pay to $1 Million a Month

 The strong U.S. economy has created millions of jobs and pushed up wages for many Americans. It also helped many big-company CEOs secure another raise and total compensation worth $1 million a month.

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.  www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html?fbclid=IwAR3CGNfccdMyvd60UKitgZ_TozFrSuwiddu6Ow9mj4m6qnyo0q–XEILbz0

A Mar-a-Lago Weekend and an Act of God: Trump’s History With Deutsche Bank

…Mr. Trump told Deutsche Bank his net worth was about $3 billion, but when bank employees reviewed his finances, they concluded he was worth about $788 million, according to documents produced during a lawsuit Mr. Trump brought against the former New York Times journalist Timothy O’Brien. And a senior investment-banking executive said in an interview that he and others cautioned that Mr. Trump should be avoided because he had worked with people in the construction industry connected to organized crime.

Nonetheless, Deutsche Bank agreed in 2005 to lend Mr. Trump more than $500 million for the project. He personally guaranteed $40 million of it, meaning the bank could come after his personal assets if he defaulted.

By 2008, the riverside skyscraper, one of the tallest in America, was mostly built. But with the economy sagging, Mr. Trump struggled to sell hundreds of condominium units. The bulk of the loan was due that November.

Then the financial crisis hit, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers sensed an opportunity.

A provision in the loan let Mr. Trump partially off the hook in the event of a “force majeure,” essentially an act of God, like a natural disaster. The former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan had called the financial crisis a tsunami. And what was a tsunami if not a natural disaster?

One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Steven Schlesinger, told him the provision could be used against Deutsche Bank.

“It’s brilliant!” Mr. Schlesinger recalled Mr. Trump responding.  www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/business/trump-deutsche-bank.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Stock Indexes Drop As Bond Market Flashes Recession Warning

The stock market tumbled Friday as investors digested an ominous warning sign: Interest rates on long-term government debt fell below the rate on short-term bills. That’s often a signal that a recession is on the horizon.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 460 points Friday, or about 1.8 percent. The broader S&P 500 index fell 1.9 percent.

Ordinarily, the yield on long-term debt is higher, just as 10-year certificates of deposit tend to pay higher interest rates than three-month CDs.

Bond watchers get nervous when that typical pattern is turned on its head.

“We don’t see that occur that often, but when it does, it’s almost always bad news,” said Campbell Harvey, a professor of finance at Duke University.

That’s why warning lights started flashing Friday morning when the yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped below that of the three-month bill. The last time that happened was just before the Great Recession.

Harvey has been keeping a close eye on these rare, “inverted” yield curves for more than 30 years and treats them as a kind of early warning signal.

“My indicator has successfully predicted four of the last four recessions,” he said, “including a pretty important call before the global financial crisis.”   www.npr.org/2019/03/22/706073410/stocks-indexes-drop-as-bond-market-flashes-recession-warning

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason

White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots

“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he posted on the social-media network Gab shortly before allegedly entering the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 and gunning down 11 worshippers. He “wanted all Jews to die,” he declared while he was being treated for his wounds. Invoking the specter of white Americans facing “genocide,” he singled out HIAS, a Jewish American refugee-support group, and accused it of bringing “invaders in that kill our people.” Then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announcing that Bowers would face federal charges, was unequivocal in his condemnation: “These alleged crimes are incomprehensibly evil and utterly repugnant to the values of this nation.”

The pogrom in Pittsburgh, occurring just days before the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, seemed fundamentally un-American to many. Sessions’s denunciation spoke to the reality that most Jews have found a welcome home in the United States. His message also echoed what has become an insistent refrain in the Donald Trump era. Americans want to believe that the surge in white-supremacist violence and recruitment—the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us”; the hate crimes whose perpetrators invoke the president’s name as a battle cry—has no roots in U.S. soil, that it is racist zealotry with a foreign pedigree and marginal allure.  portside.org/2019-03-17/white-nationalisms-deep-american-roots

Poland insists far-right marchers calling for ‘Islamic holocaust’ just sideshow to ‘great celebration of Poles’

Video inside

A 60,000-strong nationalist march in Warsaw which saw demonstrators tout white supremacist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic messages was largely an expression of patriotic feeling, Poland‘s Foreign Ministry has said.

Marchers hung a banner which said, “pray for Islamic holocaust” and carried signs with slogans like “white Europe of brotherly nations”. Others chanted “pure Poland, white Poland” and “refugees get out!”

Although the country’s government condemned racist and xenophobic ideas, it called the event “a great celebration of Poles, differing in their views, but united around the common values of freedom and loyalty to an independent homeland”.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, said there were “unfortunate incidents” during the march, but he called them a “marginal problem.”

Mr Kaczynski added that he believed there could have been a “provocation”.  www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poland-far-right-demonstrations-great-celebration-warsaw-neo-nazis-white-supremacists-a8053516.html?fbclid=IwAR0dbR9mebFGDLc8HnijzPrZxEn9LGLHKLvZh3zynkuOcHfnpFW7Qomxkug

Bannon rallies hundreds in Detroit for Trump’s border wall

Former President Donald Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon was serving up plenty of red meat to Republicans on immigration in Detroit Thursday night.

Bannon, a popular figure on the so-called alt-right, spoke to a crowd of 500 for the “We Build the Wall” town hall at Cobo Center. He referred to the U.S. Senate vote Thursday afternoon in which the GOP-led body rejected Trump’s emergency declaration to gain funding for his wall with Mexico.

“You have to keep in mind what happened today in Washington — 12 Republicans humiliated President Trump,” Bannon said. “They gave Trump the finger today. But that’s not going to stop us. We’re going to start building that wall next month.”

Bannon had his own very public split with Trump, who fired him from his White House gig. Nonetheless, Bannon continued to defend the president when he spoke at the Macomb County GOP dinner in 2017. He also propped up then-Alabama GOP U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, even after allegations surfaced about Moore sexually abusing teenage girls, which caused Trump to cut bait.   www.michiganadvance.com/2019/03/15/bannon-rallies-hundreds-in-detroit-for-trumps-border-wall/?fbclid=IwAR08Y9xUXhIK8UYm6C7PWU995L_6-O6p8R1KDQL__e5C-KtjKu9M8kAZfPc

Solidarity for Never

Former UAW official Jewell charged in labor conspiracy

Federal prosecutors charged former United Auto Workers Vice President Norwood Jewell on Monday with conspiracy to violate federal labor laws, the latest criminal charge filed in a years-long corruption investigation of the U.S. auto industry.

Jewell, 61, who headed the union’s Fiat Chrysler department, was charged in a criminal information, which indicates a guilty plea is expected. The Swartz Creek resident is the highest-ranking former UAW official charged with a crime during a four-year investigation that has led to seven convictions and raised questions about the sanctity of labor negotiations.

The criminal case focuses heavily on how Fiat Chrysler executives bankrolled a life of luxury for Jewell and other UAW officials in Detroit and Palm Springs, California, with money that was supposed to train blue-collar workers. In all, prosecutors say Jewell and other UAW officials went on a $100,000 spending spree paid for by Fiat Chrysler.

The criminal charge comes eight months after prosecutors alleged former UAW President Dennis Williams directed subordinates to use funds from Detroit’s automakers, funneled through training centers, to pay for union travel, meals and entertainment. Williams has not been charged with any crimes during the ongoing investigation.   www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2019/03/18/ex-uaw-official-jewell-charged-labor-conspiracy-fiat-chrysler/3200964002/

Feds investigate UAW ‘flower funds’ in corruption probe

Federal agents are investigating whether senior United Auto Workers staff were forced to contribute money to funds originally established to buy flowers for auto workers’ funerals, and whether union executives pocketed the cash, The Detroit News has learned.

Investigators are questioning whether UAW leaders threatened to send high-level staffers back to the assembly line if they failed to contribute to so-called flower funds controlled by union presidents, vice presidents and regional directors, three sources familiar with the investigation said.

“This could be explosive and really damaging within the UAW,” said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor. “This positions the union not as the workers’ friend but as a big powerful thing that would extort money from its own members.”

Flower fund contributions were voluntary, UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said late Thursday.

“No UAW employee was or is forced or compelled to contribute to any ‘flower fund,'” Rothenberg wrote in a statement. “Participation has always been voluntary and at the discretion of the individual.”  www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2019/03/21/feds-investigate-uaw-flower-funds-corruption-probe/3222754002/

Paying the piper in Denver and Oakland: Sellout on Sellout

Teacher strikes in Denver and Oakland were hailed as great victories by their respective teachers unions, but they had repercussions that cost real people their jobs.

The Denver school district cut 150 positions. Superintendent Susana Cordova told Chalkbeat Colorado these involve “real reductions, real elimination of services.”

The Oakland school board approved the layoffs of hundreds of school support employees to offset the costs associated with the teacher contract ratified by the Oakland Education Association after a seven-day strike. Most of those support employees are represented by a local affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.  www.the74million.org/article/union-report-job-cuts-a-strike-threat-and-a-sexual-misconduct-lawsuit-union-updates-from-california-colorado-kentucky-oregon-and-d-c/

Identity politics traps new 2nd International: Bernie Sanders’s reparations comments cause rift over DSA endorsement

The Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed Bernie Sanders’s campaign for president, despite some consternation within the organization regarding his comments on reparations.

The DSA announced its Sanders endorsement on Thursday evening after a meeting of its national political committee. The decision was widely anticipated, but there was a wrinkle: the group’s AfroSocialist and Socialists of Color Caucus, a section within the organization focused on race and people of color, had asked the 16-member committee to withhold its endorsement of Sanders over his stance on reparations. The independent Vermont senator has declined to back reparations for the descendants of slaves in the United States, arguing that broader anti-poverty programs will help address inequality and that it’s not clear what the term means.

DSA’s members had previously voted 76 percent to 24 percent to endorse Sanders in a poll conducted by the organization’s leadership earlier this month.  www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/21/18276037/bernie-sanders-dsa-endorsement-reparations

Trump blasts UAW leaders before members, says dues are too high

Speaking before workers at a tank plant in western Ohio, President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized UAW leaders as being against him for political reasons and called for members’ dues to be lowered.

The union responded by saying it has already put in place a plan for members’ dues to be lowered to their pre-2011 level as soon as the strike fund reaches $850 million.

“We’ve already done it,” said UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg.

Trump’s comments at the facility in Lima, Ohio, came just days after the president fired off several remarks on Twitter in which he criticized General Motors and the UAW for the idling of a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which GM announced late last year.  www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/03/20/donald-trump-says-uaw-dues-too-high-amid-lordstown-fight/3221647002/

Spy versus Spy

This is a golden age for spy biographies. Almost every month there is another fascinating portrait of an agent who fought or supported one of the great totalitarian philosophies of the 20th century. I think it is fair to say, though, that no matter how many of those stories get told, none will be as absolutely belief-beggaring as that of Richard Sorge.

Born in Baku, of Russian-German parentage, he grew up in Wilhelmine Germany, and served in the first world war. Injured on the eastern front, he grew progressively radicalised by the misery all around him, and became a communist. His is a story with uncanny parallels to Kim Philby, except he took the struggle to the streets for a while, even working as a miner in the Ruhr in an attempt to take the party’s message to the workers, before discovering his natural vocation as a spy.

Owen Matthews has tremendous fun with Sorge’s life, which is so packed with incident as to be barely credible. He was “an idealistic communist and a cynical liar”, Matthews writes. “A pedant, a drunk, and a womaniser. He was addicted to risk, a braggart, often wildly indisciplined … He was a raging intellectual snob whose natural milieu was the casinos, whorehouses and dancehalls of pre-war Shanghai and Tokyo.”  www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/18/an-impeccable-spy-owen-matthews-richard-sorge-review-rip-roaring-account

Quotation of the Day: In New Age of Digital Warfare, Merc Spies for Any Nation’s Budget

“Even the smallest country, on a very low budget, can have an offensive capability.”

ROBERT JOHNSTON, founder of the cybersecurity firm Adlumin and a key investigator on Russia’s 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee, on the proliferation of privatized spies for digital warfare.  www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/todayspaper/quotation-of-the-day-in-new-age-of-digital-warfare-spies-for-any-nations-budget.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Altar Welfare: Churches Steal $71 Billion A Year From Taxpayers, Spend Little On Charity

There is a lot of hypocrisy going on in Washington, but none worse than what’s perpetrated on the American public by Republicans in the name of religion and vague appeals to “fiscal responsibility”. The Republican Party has the mendacity to stand in the way of legislation that would close hidden corporate and personal tax loopholes that are estimated to cost American taxpayers $38 billion a year. However, what always slips right through the cracks are the tax benefits to religious organizations, which overwhelmingly support Republicans, and are estimated to cost taxpayers nearly double those of hidden off-shore havens. The Secular Policy Institute estimates: “If religious organizations (ie. churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) were taxed like for-profit agencies, it was found that this could generate upwards of $71 billion per year in tax revenue…even if churches were merely held to the standards of other non-profit agencies, this could generate $16.75 billion in tax revenue per year.”

According to Pew, folks affiliated with ties to religious organizations also overwhelmingly support the Republican Party:  churchandstate.org.uk/2015/10/altar-welfare-churches-steal-71-billion-a-year-from-taxpayers/?fbclid=IwAR3cffMxrW6HE70V6Pdutqk4j3QXS11mgOWMYSBHBNlWgN8mxzfQxRHQgyc

The Great Scandal: Christianity’s Role in the Rise of the Nazis

“You know what happens when atheists take over—remember Nazi Germany?” Many Christians point to Nazism, alongside Stalinism, to illustrate the perils of atheism in power.[1] At the other extreme, some authors paint the Vatican as Hitler’s eager ally. Meanwhile, the Nazis are generally portrayed as using terror to bend a modern civilization to their agenda; yet we recognize that Hitler was initially popular. Amid these contradictions, where is the truth?

A growing body of scholarly research, some based on careful analysis of Nazi records, is clarifying this complex history.[2] It reveals a convoluted pattern of religious and moral failure in which atheism and the nonreligious played little role, except as victims of the Nazis and their allies. In contrast, Christianity had the capacity to stop Nazism before it came to power, and to reduce or moderate its practices afterwards, but repeatedly failed to do so because the principal churches were complicit with—indeed, in the pay of—the Nazis.

Most German Christians supported the Reich; many continued to do so in the face of mounting evidence that the dictatorship was depraved and murderously cruel. Elsewhere in Europe the story was often the same. Only with Christianity’s forbearance and frequent cooperation could fascistic movements gain majority support in Christian nations. European fascism was the fruit of a Christian culture. Millions of Christians actively supported these notorious regimes. Thousands participated in their atrocities.

What, in God’s name, were they thinking?

Before we can consider the Nazis, we need to examine the historical and cultural religious context that would give rise to them.

Christian Foundations

Early Christian sects promoted loyalty to authoritarian rulers so long they were not intolerably anti-Christian or, worse, atheistic. Christian anti-Semitism sprang from one of the church’s first efforts to forge an accommodation with power.  churchandstate.org.uk/2016/04/the-great-scandal-christianitys-role-in-the-rise-of-the-nazis/?fbclid=IwAR0xcsxV4MJVqGVTS4c5ly74ttb7id-U3_RlKA7D7Hs0sH6S0_-us9ORZj8

Double Oxymoron: Harvard and Divinity and social change:

Pope Rejects Resignation of French Cardinal Convicted of Abuse Cover-Up

Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of a French cardinal, the Vatican announced on Tuesday, despite the cardinal’s conviction this month for covering up decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in his diocese.

A French court found Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, guilty on March 7 of failing to report abuse to the authorities, and imposed a six-month suspended sentence.

Cardinal Barbarin, 68, promptly offered to resign, though he is appealing the verdict. He met with Pope Francis on Monday to personally hand in his resignation, but both the cardinal and a Vatican spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said on Tuesday that the pope had not accepted it.

Instead, they said, the cardinal, one of the highest-ranking and best-known Roman Catholic officials in France, will step aside for an unspecified length of time.  www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/world/europe/pope-cardinal-barbarin-resignation.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

www.facebook.com/NatGeoAdventure/videos/10157119230084826/?t=8

Crowds force California city to close super bloom viewing

Like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz,” the Southern California city of Lake Elsinore is being overwhelmed by the power of the poppies.

About 150,000 people flocked over the weekend to see this year’s rain-fed flaming orange patches of poppies lighting up the hillsides near the city of about 60,000 residents, about a 90-minute drive from either San Diego or Los Angeles.

Interstate 15 was a parking lot. People fainted in the heat; a dog romping through the fields was bitten by a rattlesnake.

The city had tried to prepare for the crush of people drawn by the super bloom, a rare occurrence that usually happens about once a decade because it requires a wet winter and warm temperatures that stay above freezing.

It offered a free shuttle service to the top viewing spots, but it wasn’t enough.

It became so bad Sunday that Lake Elsinore officials requested law enforcement assistance from neighboring jurisdictions. At one point, the city pulled down the curtain and closed access to poppy-blanketed Walker Canyon.

“It was insane, absolutely insane,” said Mayor Steve Manos, who described it as a “poppy apocalypse.”

By Monday the #poppyshutdown announced by the city on Twitter was over and the road to the canyon was re-opened.

And people were streaming in again Monday.

The lure of poppies was used in the “Wizard of Oz” when the wicked witch infuses them with poison knowing Dorothy cannot resist them  www.kusi.com/crowds-force-california-city-to-close-super-bloom-viewing/

www.facebook.com/Meetville/videos/910243359038300/?t=248

Stolen border fence barbed wire now protects homes on Mexican side

Some new barbed wire placed atop the border wall between Tijuana, Baja California, and San Diego, California, didn’t stay there long: it is now serving to improve security at several area homes on the southern side of the border.

The wire was installed to reinforce the Mexico-U.S. border recently in response to the arrival of thousands of migrants in caravans from Central America.

But the barbed wire is there no more, leading to the belief that thieves on the Mexico side removed it and sold it in nearby neighborhoods, giving residents extra protection against delinquency, presumably by other thieves.  mexiconewsdaily.com/news/stolen-border-fence-barbed-wire/

 

 

 

So Long