We Say Fight Back!

Pyrrhic Victory: Denver Teachers Reach Tentative Deal To End Strike (nothing on class size, bonuses remain, etc. etc.)

After a long night of bargaining, teachers in Denver who were on strike over wages and bonuses have reached a tentative agreement with school district officials to end their walkout. The strike began Monday, after 15 months of negotiations ended without a deal.

The teachers are expected to be back in most classes today.

The agreement came after more than half of the district’s approximately 4,700 teachers failed to report to classrooms on Wednesday. Administrators and substitute teachers kept most schools open, but some 5,000 preschoolers saw classes cancelled…

To take effect, the tentative agreement must be ratified by a majority of members of the teachers association. (but the teachers were ordered back to work before ratification)

www.facebook.com/fox31denver/videos/2186701191391350/?t=8

The week’s strike is the first for Denver teachers in 25 years. It follows a slew of walkouts in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina last spring and a January strike in Los Angeles.

With 91,000 students, Denver is home to Colorado’s largest school district.   www.npr.org/2019/02/14/694662525/denver-teachers-reach-tentative-deal-to-end-walkout

Below, Rouger Wayne Ross in Colombia leading the Dance of the Dialectic.

 Lessons learned from the Wright State strike: professors will fight against an imposed contract, for their right to bargain over health care — and for basic respect.

Standing Up for What’s Right’

Professors were back to work Monday, trying to put things back in order.

Was sacrificing three weeks’ pay, braving picket lines in the polar vortex and now dealing with classroom chaos worth it?

Yes, striking professors and their supporters say. To many, it comes down to a few key issues — namely retaining the right to bargain over health care in the future, even if this deal moves professors onto a single, universitywide employee benefits plan that they initially resisted. At first, the university wanted to remove the right to future bargaining.

Other key wins: keeping workload agreements, reasonable timelines for continuing contracts for professors off the tenure track, clear merit raise standards and summer teaching rights — all of which the university sought to scrap. There are additional limits on retrenchment and furloughs in the deal.

The set of two, two-year agreements also includes 2.5 percent raises for the last two years.

Summer course pay was cut 15 to 20 percent, however. The battle over faculty contracts at Wright State, after all, took place at an institution that all sides agreed had not been adequately funded by the state.

Perhaps more than anything, the strike was about respect, including in future negotiations.  www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/02/13/what-lessons-can-be-learned-wright-state-faculty-strike?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=10bf830632-

Reminder of a real strike:

Sacramento City teachers union to hold vote by members to authorize potential strike

Oakland teachers will strike Thursday in a call for higher wages and more investment in city schools, union officials announced Saturday.

Teachers have been working without a contract for two years and can’t afford to live in the city, said Keith Brown, president of the Oakland Education Association, which represents 3,000 educators. High housing costs have led to more than 18 percent of teachers leaving each year, according to a fact-finding report released Friday.

“Our students do not have adequate support,” Brown said at a news conference Saturday….

The school district is offering a 5 percent wage increase between 2017 and 2020. The teachers union wants a 12 percent raise over the same time period.

The fact-finding report recommends 3 percent in retroactive raises for both the last school year and the current school year, and new wage negotiations for the 2019-20 school year.  www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-teachers-will-walk-out-on-strike-Thursday-13622490.php

NEA and AFT Could Have Easily Coordinated Strikes in Oakland, LA, Sacramento, and even San Diego. Why didn’t the union bosses fashion that powerful solidarity action?

Counterfeit Unionism in the Empire

With respect to nearly anyone who is trying to fight back in our current context, I differ from what most people think about the current state of US unionism.

Of course, none of that can be split away from an analysis of our current circumstances which I believe is an international hot war, and economic war, of the rich on the poor and the rapid emergence of fascism as a popular movement.

It does not have to be that way.

Let us hope that another scenario is possible if we take on the hard tasks of the immediate future and connect them to a vision of what can be. One of those tasks is to determine the role of the unions and the relationship of radicals to them.

Labor bosses at all levels are the nearest and most vulnerable of workers’ enemies. Rather than “move unions to the left,” better, “demolish the labor quislings, take their treasuries, seize their buildings, as we build a mass class conscious movement to transcend the system of capital.”

Why does that make better sense?

Since the Industrial Workers of the World (a grand vision but fatally flawed practice) were nearly demolished in the Palmer Raids of 1919, American unionism has been a false flag operation: not what most people think of as unionism.

*Every major labor leader in the US adopts the corporate-state view of unity of Labor Bosses, Government, and Corporations in the national interest. These are hardly “labor” unions in the strict sense of the word. They are the empire’s unions…  www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/23/counterfeit-unionism-in-the-empire/

GRENADA: BIG SISTAS OF THE REVOLUTION

 

40th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GRENADA REVOLUTION IN MARCH 1979
COME AND CELEBRATE WITH US THE STRUGGLES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE REVOLUTION’S NATIONAL WOMEN’S ORGANISATION &
TRIBUTE TO SISTER PHYLLIS COARD

Friday 1 March 2019 6 pm to 8:30 pm
Discuss Centre, Unite the Union,
Unite House, 128 Theobalds Road, Holborn, London WC1X 8TN.

Admission is free, but please register here…

The Grenada NWO was led by Phyllis Coard who was tasked by Maurice Bishop, the leader of the Grenada Revolution, to build the organisation from scratch. Led by a team of outstanding women, over one-third of all Grenadian women joined more than one hundred NWO groups throughout the country.

In the short 4½ years of the Revo’ the NWO achieved huge gains for women including equal pay, maternity leave, free milk, day care facilities, free school meals, books and uniforms, abolition of school fees, expansion of free secondary school and university places, housing for poorer families and the expansion of employment. Advances made during the Revo’ are still in place today.

Phyllis was the only woman among the “Grenada 17” (mostly members of the Revolutionary Government) who were captured by the invading US troops in October 1983 when the Revo’ tragically collapsed. The CIA mounted a COINTELPRO campaign most heavily targeted against her. Following a US organised show trial – condemned by Amnesty International – at the end of which 14 of the 17 were sentenced to death, she was kept in total isolation for over seven years, during which she was beaten, tortured and globally vilified. She was in prison for a total of 17 years in terrible conditions. The G17 were all finally released after a massive international campaign. Phyllis returned to her native Jamaica.   grenada-forwardever.net/?p=81

Susan Ohanian on Linda Darling-Hammond–the new boss

With great fanfare, Linda Darling-Hammond  has been named as president of the California State Board of education. Given the history of the California State Board of Education, I feel she will be comfortable there. Darling-Hammond is a good example of  the fact that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

Kill the Messenger, written by a conservative who passionately defends the implementation of  external, high-stakes standardized testing, lists Radical Opponents of testing: Gerald Bracey, Howard Gardner, Walt Haney, Alfie Kohn, Jonathan Kozol, George Madaus, Deborah Meier, Monty Neill, Susan Ohanian, Peter Sacks, Lorrie Shepherd.

As Mainstream Opponents he lists Richard Atkinson, Eva Baker, Bob Chase,  Linda Darling-Hammond,  Robert Hauser, Jay Heubert, Paul Houston, Steven Klein, Daniel Koretz, Nicholas Lehmann, Robert Linn, Peter Schrag, Brian Stecher

The group separations are interesting. Note where you find most of the institutional types who I wouldn’t even call opponents of testing.

When Education Week asked people to comment on NCLB,  Darling-Hammond’s answer and mine offered telling contrasts. Typical of her lifetime work, her answer is to pour money into more thoughtful teacher development and high-quality assessments. Typical of me, my answers  asks the reader to be outraged and to weep over the student pain.

www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/01/05/15nclb_perspectives.h31.html

For eons, Linda Darling-Hammond has held leadership positions in framing education deform as a money problem–not more money for the poor but more money for school and teacher redesign, more money for “good” testing. And she happens to have headed countless operations involved in this redesign.

Union leaders praise her books. Here are their blurbs for Getting Teacher Evaluation Right:

“Darling-Hammond has given us a practical roadmap to success based on research and best practice.”
_Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers

“Finally, a book that captures what educators have been saying. Linda Darling-Hammond skillfully portrays the complexity of reforming an education system. This book is a must-read for those interested in building a world-class education system!”
_Dennis Van Roekel, President, National Education Association (NEA)   www.richgibson.com/darlinghammond.htm

The Little Red Schoolhouse

The Exploitation of Part-Time Teachers in Higher Education

 

Investigations KPBS will not launch (like the farcical “Aztec Warrior”)

SDSU’s money-raising newsies

As the editorial clout of the Union-Tribune continues to fade under the reign of Los Angeles-based owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, other San Diego media outlets are jostling for a greater role in the city’s brave new news world. Latest to join the would-be investigative fray is KPBS, the San Diego State-owned-and-operated non-profit broadcasting behemoth, currently advertising for a News and Investigation Desk editor. “The editor leads the team in covering accountability stories with impact in the community, from good governance to consumer exploitation,” says a help-wanted advertisement posted on the SDSU Research Foundation website.

“Stories will reveal something new or offer valuable ‘explainers’ to help us get at our news mission to tell our audience not only WHAT is happening in our community, but WHY. The position specializes in synthesizing complex information/data/source leads and digging down to the news contained within. Stories will be distributed on all KPBS platforms, including radio, TV, web, social media, and may also be distributed by KPBS partners. The Editor will uphold the highest journalistic standards.”

But some highly-placed media skeptics wonder whether it’s realistic to expect any newly recruited newshound to dig into the network of influence linking SDSU to San Diego city hall and its pay-to-play culture, as epitomized by Jack McGrory. The ex-city manager, made wealthy by his post-retirement ties to former Padres owner John Moores, is now a trustee of the California State University system and a key backer of SDSU’s bid for a sweetheart deal to take over the city-owned Mission Valley real estate formerly known as Qualcomm Stadium.

In the past, KPBS has avoided covering negative CSU audits regarding university operations, detailing a host of shortcomings and administrative difficulties at tax-funded SDSU, including deficient lab safety, deferred maintenance, and stealth used by school officials to build an auxiliary campus in Tbilisi, Georgia. University finances and money-raising practices have also been off limits. In addition to investigative duties, the new hire will be expected to “participate in station on-air fundraising activities, and make appearances for KPBS outreach events,” says the job notice.  www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/13/radar-investigations-kpbs-will-not-launch/

APNewsBreak: Teach for America Slammed Over Oakland Strike

Hundreds of Teach for America alumni are slamming the educator placement program for suggesting members should cross the picket line during a potential teacher strike in Oakland, California, or risk losing thousands of dollars at the end of their service.

More than 300 alumni signed the letter delivered Monday to Teach for America’s leadership, asking it to stop “pressuring” young teachers to break a strike that could come next week.

The Associated Press obtained the letter sent to a nonprofit known for placing high-achieving college graduates without formal teaching training into two-year educator jobs in low-income communities.

Payton Carter, a 1999 Teach for America alumnus and current Oakland teacher, said he was outraged that members may lose an award worth $2,000 to $10,000 — a financial incentive the nonprofit uses as a recruiting tool.

“We feel it’s really unethical and an unfair use of the funding, as basically financial leverage to coerce them into crossing the picket line,” Carter said. “No TFA corps member would willingly do that because of the professional damage to relationships.”  www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/02/12/us/ap-us-oakland-teachers-strike-teach-for-america.html?fbclid=IwAR3iyWOQq67MMH0FYHO8hShF3Ts8LXhdovJKA-eUpGt2rOGMNVkVHJqYKC8

Identity politics run wild! Southwestern College Sun staff kicked out of ‘white dialogue’ meeting

When administrators refuse access to The Sun, they are contributing to a toxic culture that puts the lives of journalists at risk.

Barring student journalists from public meetings at SWC reignites memories of the corruption that plagued past administrations. Death threats, harassment and intimidation were aimed at journalists at The Sun for doing their job. When members of the administration work to prevent The Sun from covering important events and issues on campus, it is a giant red flag to the community that something is seriously wrong.

Recently, reporters were barred from public meetings explicitly for their connection to The Sun.

Following the release of USC’s Racial Climate Report, an invitation was sent out to many people on President Kindred Murillo’s email list. Administrators, faculty, current and former governing board members and student employees were among those invited.

Professional Development Program Coordinator Patricia Hinck barred Katy Stegall, The Sun’s editor-in-chief, from attending the “Improving our Racial Climate: The White Dialogue” meeting regarding the Racial Climate Report.

In an interview with the The Sun’s editorial board the next day, Murillo said the student was barred from the meeting because she was a journalist.

More meetings were held on campus for non-white groups. Six Sun reporters were not allowed to attend any of these meetings.

The initial email invitation sent to Murillo’s current and former employees made no distinctions on who would be allowed to attend.  www.theswcsun.com/sun-staff-kicked-out-of-white-dialogue-meeting/

Federal Watchdog Issues Scathing Report On Ed Department’s Handling Of Student Loans

A critical new report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General finds the department’s student loan unit failed to adequately supervise the companies it pays to manage the nation’s trillion-dollar portfolio of federal student loans. The report also rebukes the department’s office of Federal Student Aid for rarely penalizing companies that failed to follow the rules.

Instead of safeguarding borrowers’ interests, the report says, FSA’s inconsistent oversight allowed these companies, known as loan servicers, to potentially hurt borrowers and pocket government dollars that should have been refunded because servicers weren’t meeting federal requirements.

“By not holding servicers accountable,” the report says, “FSA could give its servicers the impression that it is not concerned with servicer noncompliance with Federal loan servicing requirements, including protecting borrowers’ rights.”

“It’s hard to look at this as anything other than completely damning,” says Seth Frotman, a consumer advocate and former government, student loan watchdog who is now executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. “This is the most damaging in a long line of investigations, audits, and reports that show the Department of Education is asleep at the switch when it is responsible for over a trillion dollars of student loan debt.”   www.npr.org/2019/02/14/694477547/federal-watchdog-issues-scathing-report-on-ed-departments-handling-of-student-lo?fbclid=IwAR10PyYSKb6-iGRU1guOV2rDFxyqncitOIMP5SWqUVPQr3xynUJwZvuIuTE

Ruling affirming the rights of students accused of sexual misconduct roils California colleges

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire

Here’s the bullet-point version:

+ It’s imperialism.

+ It’s American imperialism, a bipartisan national project.

+ American imperialism is the global management of capitalist class power.

+ It’s a binary situation in which one side or the other will win via the use and threat of armed force.

+ It’s trouble for Venezuela and for imperialism.

+ There’s no such thing as Progressive Except Imperialism.

Here’s the long rant:  www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/15/the-siege-of-venezuela-and-the-travails-of-empire/

Navy Fails: Years of Warnings–then death

When Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin was elevated to lead the vaunted 7th Fleet in 2015, he expected it to be the pinnacle of his nearly four-decade Navy career. The fleet was the largest and most powerful in the world, and its role as one of America’s great protectors had new urgency. China was expanding into disputed waters. And Kim Jong-un was testing ballistic missiles in North Korea.

Aucoin was bred on such challenges. As a Navy aviator, he’d led the “Black Aces,” a squadron of F-14 Tomcats that in the late 1990s bombed targets in Kosovo.

But what he found with the 7th Fleet alarmed and angered him.

The fleet was short of sailors, and those it had were often poorly trained and worked to exhaustion. Its warships were falling apart, and a bruising, ceaseless pace of operations meant there was little chance to get necessary repairs done. The very top of the Navy was consumed with buying new, more sophisticated ships, even as its sailors struggled to master and hold together those they had. The Pentagon, half a world away, was signing off on requests for ships to carry out more and more missions.

The risks were obvious, and Aucoin repeatedly warned his superiors about them. During video conferences, he detailed his fleet’s pressing needs and the hazards of not addressing them. He compiled data showing that the unrelenting demands on his ships and sailors were unsustainable. He pleaded with his bosses to acknowledge the vulnerability of the 7th Fleet.

Aucoin recalled the response: “Crickets.” If he wasn’t ignored, he was put off — told to calm down and get the job done.

On June 17, 2017, shortly after 1:30 a.m., the USS Fitzgerald, a $1.8 billion destroyer belonging to the 7th Fleet, collided with a giant cargo ship off the coast of Japan. Seven sailors drowned in their sleeping quarters. It was the deadliest naval disaster in four decades.

Barely two months later, it happened again. The USS John S. McCain, its poorly trained crew fumbling with its controls, turned directly in front of a 30,000-ton oil tanker. Ten more sailors died.  features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crashes-japan-cause-mccain/?utm_source=Voice+of+San+Diego+Master+List&utm_campaign=f0113df991-What_We_Learned_This_Week&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-f0113df991-81862829&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-f0113df991-81862829

Admiral to Congress: Think about the 280-plus ships that didn’t have collisions

U.S. Revives Secret Program to Sabotage Iranian Missiles and Rockets

The Trump White House has accelerated a secret American program to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets, according to current and former administration officials, who described it as part of an expanding campaign by the United States to undercut Tehran’s military and isolate its economy.

Officials said it was impossible to measure precisely the success of the classified program, which has never been publicly acknowledged. But in the past month alone, two Iranian attempts to launch satellites have failed within minutes.

Those two rocket failures — one that Iran announced on Jan. 15 and the other, an unacknowledged attempt, on Feb. 5 — were part of a pattern over the past 11 years. In that time, 67 percent of Iranian orbital launches have failed, an astonishingly high number compared to a 5 percent failure rate worldwide for similar space launches.

The setbacks have not deterred Iran. This week, President Hassan Rouhani singled out Tehran’s missile fleets as he vowed to “continue our path and our military power.”  www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/us/politics/iran-missile-launch-failures.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

First female Viper demo team pilot relieved of command after two weeks

A young friend is seriously considering joining her state’s National Guard. She’s a world-class athlete, but also a working-class woman from a rural background competing in a rich person’s sport. Between seasons, she works for a local farm and auctioneer to put together the money for equipment and travel.

Each season, raising the necessary money to compete is a touch-and-go proposition, so she’s now talking to the National Guard. If, after basic training, she joins the Army’s World Class Athletes Program as a reservist, her service will essentially consist of competing in her sport. She’ll get an annual salary, health care, college tuition – all to do what she loves and wants to do anyway. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, she could end up fighting in one of this country’s forever wars.

That’s what happened to thousands of National Guard troops and reservists when Washington discovered its all-volunteer forces were woefully inadequate for the project of occupying Iraq after the 2003 invasion. As then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously explained, Washington went to war with the Army it had, “not the Army you might wish you have.” So the National Guard filled in the gaps, supplying up to 41% of the troops deployed there by 2005. By 2011, more than 300,000 Guards had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as well.  www.nationofchange.org/2019/02/11/the-uses-of-a-well-regulated-militia-by-an-unregulated-president/

Engels’ Military Writings

The Peasants’ War in Germany, 1850
Prospects of a War of the Holy Alliance Against France, 1851
Revolutionary Spain: Guerilla Warfare Marx 1854
The Armies of Europe, 1855
On Afghanistan, 1857
Mountain Warfare in the Past and Present, 1857
Po and Rhine, 1859
Lessons of the U.S. Civil War , 1861
The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers’ Party, 1865
Notes on the Franco-Prussian War, July 1870-February 1871
The Role of Force in History, 1887

Letters on War and Military Science, 1851 – 1863    www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/war/index.htm

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor         

Google reportedly scored tax breaks using secret shell companies

 Google used shell companies and subsidiaries to hide its involvement in expansion plans that yielded millions of dollars in tax breaks, according to a report by The Washington Post on Friday, casting light on how tech companies cut deals with local governments.

When the search giant planned to build a data center in Midlothian, Texas, Google used a subsidiary called Sharka LLC, The Post reported. Other subsidiaries Google set up for development projects include Jet Stream LLC and Questa LLC.

Google also extensively uses non-disclosure agreements with officials, The Post said. In the case of the Texas data center, Google was seeking a decade of tax breaks, but Midlothian’s head of economic development was barred from disclosing Google’s involvement in the project, the report said.

The size of deals between local governments and tech companies was thrust into the spotlight Thursday after Amazon dropped a bombshell announcement: It was no longer going forward with plans to build a massive second headquarters in New York City. The withdrawal followed intense opposition from local politicians and union groups, fueled in part by the tax breaks the city gave the e-commerce giant.

Deal-making is crucial for Google as it revs up expansion. Earlier this week, CEO Sundar Pichai said the search giant is investing $13 billion in data centers and offices around the country, mostly in the Midwest, East Coast and South. That includes new and expanded data centers in Ohio, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. New and expanded office locations include sites in Virginia, Georgia and Chicago.

In California, Google is building a giant campus in San Jose, about 15 miles from the company’s headquarters in Mountain View.   www.cnet.com/news/google-reportedly-scored-tax-breaks-using-secret-shell-companies/

Europe’s Middle Class Is Shrinking. Spain Bears Much of the Pain.

Since the recession of the late 2000s, the middle class has shrunk in over two-thirds of the European Union, echoing a similar decline in the United States and reversing two decades of expansion. While middle-class households are more prevalent in Europe than in the United States — around 60 percent, compared with just over 50 percent in America — they face unprecedented levels of vulnerability.

(NYTimes 2/15/19)

Last of six defendants in $4M mortgage fraud scheme gets prison

The last of six defendants who admitted roles in a $4 million mortgage fraud scheme was sentenced Wednesday to more than seven years in prison, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.

The scheme preyed on people trying to save their homes from foreclosure, and included filing fraudulent documents, such as false bankruptcies and false court filings, the office said in a news release.

It involved homes in San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Each of the defendants, including one from Fallbrook, received prison sentences ranging between four to nearly eight years. The case was filed in San Diego Superior Court after a grand jury handed up a 135-count indictment in 2016.

According to state prosecutors, the defendants convinced homeowners they could provide legal help to save their homes. The homeowners laid out $3,500 to start the process, then paid $1,000 a month and also paid fees for filing legal documents.

Officials said the defendants then filed fraudulent documents, including false bankruptcies and false court filings.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/sd-me-mortgage-fraud-sentencing-20190213-story.html

Payless ShoeSource will close all of its remaining U.S. stores

      

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

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump Feb 14

Jeff Sessions portrayed as incompetent racist in Andrew McCabe’s new book “The Threat”: reports

“Back in the old days, he said, you all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks but they could be trusted”

Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is apparently no fan of his former boss, Jeff Sessions.

Sessions, who served as attorney general for the end of McCabe’s tenure at the FBI, is painted as an incompetent racist in McCabe’s new book “The Threat,” according to two new reviews of the book.

Mr. McCabe also critically described several interactions with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions—writing that Mr. Sessions appeared interested only in immigration issues. On counterterrorism cases, Mr. Sessions—a critic of illegal immigration—would ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from.

Mr. Sessions also complained about the FBI’s workforce to Mr. McCabe, he recalls in the book. “Back in the old days, he said, you all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos,” Mr. McCabe wrote that the former attorney general told him.    www.salon.com/2019/02/15/jeff-sessions-portrayed-as-incompetent-racist-in-andrew-mccabes-new-book-the-threat_partner/?fbclid=IwAR2HyUHp8UVzXWGkXiPUr0Eo6_c3SD9kQC0VBpbNbL-naOFyPsRxYwu1slE

In the Crosshairs of the Washington Mafia: Venezuela and Julian Assange

The US Mafia State [USMS] is still trying to bump off another sovereign state—Venezuela. Meanwhile Wikileaks retweeted the USMS regime change handbook, more formally known as Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare Field Manual 3-05.130, whose authors reveal that major global financial institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Organization for Economic Cooperation are all part of the mob, whose specific assignments include extortion, infiltration, fraud, racketeering, loan sharking, and corruption of public officials.

The handbook was last revised in September 2008 and published by Wikileaks in December 2008. It’s available on the Wikileaks website , but also in response to a simple Web search for its name. It’s even been available as a $13 paperback on Amazon since October 11, 2013, five years after Wikileaks published it. The mob’s that proud of it.

Despite it’s availability, the handbook begins with the ominous warning from mob underbosses:  blackagendareport.com/crosshairs-washington-mafia-venezuela-and-julian-assange

Woman guilty of terror charges for Canadian Tire attack sentenced to 7 years in prison

A woman convicted of terror charges for attacking workers at a Canadian Tire store in Toronto was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday after a judge found her mental illness played a key role in her crimes.

Rehab Dughmosh, 34, was found guilty of four terrorism charges for attacking store workers with a golf club and a butcher’s knife while draped in an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) banner in June 2017 and for trying to travel to Syria join the terrorist organization the year before.  www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rehab-dughmosh-canadian-tire-sentencing-1.5018987?fbclid=IwAR1W5WceG1JWxyiP0ImaZbKZO4IMOvglSWtpwtY37RT7NE-67g7-aiOi2ZE

Solidarity for Never

NEA’s 2018 Ballot Measure and Legislative Crises Grants (farewell, millions diverted from strike pay)

Spy versus Spy

Spy Betrayed U.S. to Work for Iran, Charges Say

Inside the government, some officials called her “Wayward Storm.”

Her real name was Monica Elfriede Witt, an exemplary Air Force counterintelligence agent who had studied Persian and carried out covert missions in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But by mid-2013, Ms. Witt had become disillusioned with the government — why, exactly, remains a mystery — and had left the military. Thoughts of betrayal consumed her, federal prosecutors now say, until she finally acted on them at the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, where they say she “told all.”

“They are going to get back to me on if they can help me very soon before I leave,” Ms. Witt wrote on June 30, 2013, to an Iranian-American reporter working on behalf of the Iranian intelligence services, according to a criminal indictment.

That indictment was made public on Wednesday as the Justice Department accused Ms. Witt, 39, of defecting to Iran in August 2013 to work with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in betrayal of the United States.  www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/world/middleeast/air-force-monica-elfriede-witt-iran.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

What the CIA Tells Congress (Or Doesn’t) about Covert Operations: The Barr/Cheney/Bush Turning Point for CIA Notifications to the Senate

Attorney-General nominee William P. Barr figured prominently in arguments to limit CIA responsibility to provide notification to Congress about covert actions during the 1980s, according to a review of declassified materials published today by the National Security Archive at the George Washington University. As the Iran-Contra scandal played out, Barr, who held senior posts at the Justice Department, provisionally supported the idea of the president’s “virtually unfettered discretion” in foreign policy and downplayed Congress’s power of the purse, asserting it was “by no means limitless.”

The issue of notification of Congress about imminent clandestine activities was at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal when President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William Casey specifically ordered that lawmakers be kept in the dark about the infamous, covert arms-for-hostages deals with Iran.

Barr was by no means alone in pushing these views, the documents show. Other notable proponents during the Iran-Contra aftermath included then-Congressman Dick Cheney and John R. Bolton, who was also at the Justice Department.  After Cheney became defense secretary he continued to press for extraordinarily broad Executive Branch authority, advising then-President George H. W. Bush to veto the Senate’s intelligence appropriations bill on the grounds it “attacked” presidential prerogatives – resulting in the only known such veto since the CIA’s creation.  nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2019-02-07/what-cia-tells-congress-or-doesnt-about-covert-operations-barrcheneybush-turning-point-cia

David Forden, C.I.A. Handler in Cold War Intrigue, Dies at 88

I’ve always admired people who can successfully navigate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Castle,” a term of dread for the many government and corporate agencies that have an inordinate amount of power over our permanent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chillingly absurd as the labyrinth the character K navigates in Kafka’s last allegorical novel. Even if you haven’t read The Castle, if you work for such an entity—or like all of us have regular dealings with the IRS, the healthcare and banking system, etc.—you’re well aware of the devilish incompetence that masquerades as due diligence and ties us all in knots. Why do multi-million and billion dollar agencies seem unable, or unwilling, to accomplish the simplest of tasks? Why do so many of us spend our lives in the real-life bureaucratic nightmares satirized in the The Office and Office Space?

One answer comes via Laurence J. Peter’s 1969 satire The Peter Principle—which offers the theory that managers and executives get promoted to the level of their incompetence—then, David Brent-like, go on to ruin their respective departments. The Harvard Business Review summed up disturbing recent research confirming and supplementing Peter’s insights into the narcissism, overconfidence, or actual sociopathy of many a government and business leader. But in addition to human failings, there’s another possible reason for bureaucratic disorder; the conspiracy-minded among us may be forgiven for assuming that in many cases, institutional incompetence is the result of deliberate sabotage from both above and below.  www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html?fbclid=IwAR2Rg1i6MUsou4xM8uXd10qO1dpJD-hMcVlNNzS6Ln-g0cxme-jpQy9lluw

The Magical Mystery Tour

The list of Catholic priests accused of abuse in NJ is out. What’s next? Is there a Pattern?

The names of 188 priests and deacons who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children over several decades were released by New Jersey Roman Catholic dioceses on Wednesday.

The public release of the names was the result of an internal review spurred by law enforcement officials launching their own investigation and “an effort to do what is right and just,” according to Cardinal Joseph Tobin, head of the Newark Archdiocese.

The Newark Archdiocese alone released 63 names, 33 of whom are now dead. Of all the accused priests, 109 are dead and 79 living.

Will the priests go to jail?

In most cases these charges are from decades ago, and the statute of limitations has expired, so it’s unlikely. While there is no longer a statute of limitations on reporting sexual abuse of a minor, in years past there were limits on how much time could elapse between when a crime was committed and when charges could be filed.

But are they being monitored?

Four of the credibly accused priests listed in the Newark diocese are in their 80s and living in a retirement home where their activities are being monitored, according to Tobin. More than 50 percent of those on the list are dead.  www.northjersey.com/story/news/2019/02/14/common-questions-church-sex-abuse-scandal/2863693002/

More Than 100 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse Are Named by Brooklyn Catholic Diocese

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn on Friday named more than 100 priests who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing a child. It was one of the largest disclosures yet in a torrent of lists recently published by the church as its handling of the problem has drawn the scrutiny of law enforcement officials.

The diocese is also one of the largest in the nation, its domain encompassing Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, an area with 1.5 million people who the church says identify as Catholic.

The disclosure covers decades of allegations involving priests who had served in the diocese’s many neighborhood parishes, as well as its schools, including Cathedral Preparatory, Christ the King, St. Francis Preparatory and Archbishop Molloy high schools. Advocates who track abuse cases said it also roughly doubled the number of suspected abusers they had been aware of in the diocese.

The list contributes to a growing sense of the vastness of a sex abuse epidemic that has plunged the Catholic Church into scandal and inflamed a crisis in confidence among its followers  www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/nyregion/brooklyn-priests-sex-abuse.html

Luigi Ventura, 74, allegedly molested a junior official at a mayoral address to diplomats at Paris town hall on 17 January.

The city mayor’s office filed a complaint on 24 January and a judicial investigation opened the next day.

Archbishop Ventura has served as ambassador for 10 years. The allegations come amid a wave of sexual abuse accusations in the clergy. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47255439

Vatican defrocks former U.S. Cardinal McCarrick over sex abuse

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

New Yorkers Fearful take on Eugene V. Debs and the Endurance of Socialism

…Every man who worked on the American railroad in the last decades of the nineteenth century became, of necessity, a scholar of the relations between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the masters and the slaves, the riders and the ridden upon. No student of this subject is more important to American history than Debs, half man, half myth, who founded the American Railway Union, turned that into the Social Democratic Party, and ran for President of the United States five times, including once from prison.

Debs, who wrote a lot about manliness, always said that the best kind of man was a sand man. “ ‘Sand’ means grit,” he wrote in 1882, in Firemen’s Magazine. “It means the power to hold on.” When a train stalled from the steepness of the incline or the weight of the freight, railroad men poured sand on the tracks, to improve the grip of the wheels. Men need sand, too, Debs said: “Men who have plenty of ‘sand’ in their boxes never slip on the path of duty.” Debs had plenty of sand in his box.  www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/eugene-v-debs-and-the-endurance-of-socialism

www.facebook.com/BlackJunctionSocial/videos/325345788100913/?t=34

 

 

above by Huck

So Long

Opportunity

Roderick MacFarquhar, Eminent China Scholar, Dies at 88

Psycho Rat Lyndon LaRouche Who Tried to have RG Killed dead at 96

Perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche dead at 96

*How the world loves a cage: From Harold and Maude