Rouge Forum Dispatch: HIS MAMA!
January 6th, 2019 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
One-half Million Children will join the UTLA Strike if it happens on January 10th.
Today, less than 24 hours after it was filed, a federal court denied LAUSD’s request to stop special education teachers from joining their colleagues on strike
“The court’s swift and decisive action shows just how desperate a move this was,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “Austin Beutner knew he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on but he went ahead anyway, spreading fear and confusion among the public, our members, special education students and families. The scare tactics must end now.”
On Thursday, LAUSD filed a claim in federal court to prevent UTLA special education teachers from striking. The threatened teachers immediately took to social media to vent their anger at LAUSD’s attempt to prevent them from exercising their right. This sneaky maneuver —especially coming from a district that has repeatedly ignored UTLA’s contract demands for special education class-size caps to relieve the burden of overcrowded special education classrooms – is beyond cynical and counterproductive. (Read the conversations on numerous posts on our Facebook page here. <www.facebook.com/UTLAnow/>)
In two days, Beutner has used his high-priced lawyers to initiate two frivolous legal actions against UTLA and is now threatening a third. These tactics smack of disdain for the very school district he is meant to serve and protect. www.utla.net/news/federal-court-throws-out-lausds-request-strike-injunction-against-special-education-teachers?fbclid=IwAR1LalFPTrDp8_Dx4IIyYE7Rf0WmibXH4eXjPzMs8FsMFYA9NZ5T52umfLk
Hundreds of TSA screeners, working without pay, calling out sick at major airports
Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers, who are required to work without paychecks through the partial government shutdown, have called out from work this week from at least four major airports, according to two senior agency officials and three TSA employee union officials.
Denmark Vesey monument unveiled before hundreds
In 1799, Denmark Vesey won $1,500 in the East Bay Lottery. He spent part of the money, $600, to purchase his freedom.
Vesey would go on to help start Hampstead AME Church downtown and agitate for others’ education and freedom. The violence perpetrated by whites against blacks – attacks both legal and physical, including assaults on the church – convinced him that rebellion was justified.
Vesey and his co-conspirators plotted insurrection but were exposed by informants. The repercussions were fierce: Vesey and 34 others were publicly hanged, 37 more were banished, four whites were fined and the church building was destroyed. www.postandcourier.com/features/arts_and_travel/denmark-vesey-monument-unveiled-before-hundreds/article_35622532-8a45-5060-a819-0e33a47c8a20.html?fbclid=IwAR2MJ63Rn4L0Sx7jksCDPsU5zdyafab99D-exMrbE-I_QmGQZNyrHchrb00
American Navy nurse Susan Schnall was dismissed from service and sentenced to six months of hard labour for protesting against the American war in Việt Nam in 1969. In March she visited Việt Nam for a fifth time with other 22 American veterans. They took part in a commemoration of the Mỹ Lai Massacre and the opening of an exhibition called Waging Peace at the War Remnants Museum in HCM City to display for the first time the newspapers, photographs, posters and films circulated underground by the GI peace movement. Việt Nam News spoke with Schnal.
How were you involved with the American war in Việt Nam?
From 1967 to 1969 I was a Navy nurse at Oak Knoll Hospital, which was built during World War II in Oakland, California, to care for Marines wounded in the Pacific. I had joined the service to alleviate suffering by caring for wounded troops from the war in Việt Nam.
It was at night that the screams of pain and fear would start at Oak Knoll. Each unit was a long wooden shack holding 40 old-fashioned steel-framed hospital beds filled with young men. At night they would dream their nightmares of war, of dead and dying buddies, rotting in the dense jungles of Việt Nam. They would scream in agony: “My leg, my leg, it’s been blown away”, “I’m in pain, Nurse, Nurse, please give me something for the pain.”
On my evening shift I would make rounds through the five buildings for which I was responsible: I would open the narcotics cabinet and dispense pain medication, talking with patients, trying to soothe their fears and quieten their moans.
Why and when did you start to protest the war?
1968 was the height of the war. I watched the battles on TV and lived the war at work. For me it was very personal. My father, a Marine, was killed on the beachhead of Guam on July 22, 1944. He felt he had to do his share and help give something to this world. I never knew my father except through pictures, letters and others’ memories. World War II was a war I’ve lived my whole life. It destroyed my mother and her hopes and dreams and future.
As I cared for the wounded of yet another war, I wondered when this destruction would end. I trained the corpsmen that would be sent overseas with the troops and put in harm’s way. I helped heal the wounded so they could be returned to the frontline. I opposed this terrible destruction and waste and yet I had become a part of it. I knew I could no longer be silent.vietnamnews.vn/sunday/424735/us-navy-nurse-jailed-for-protest-revisits-vn.html#0z34UmxfgC4TTwze.97
Do You Know the Seven Factors That Comprise “Just Cause”?
- The employee knew of the company’s policy
- The company’s policy was reasonable
- The company investigated to determine that the employee violated the policy
- The investigation was fair and objective
- Substantial evidence existed of the employee’s violation of the policy
- The company’s policy was consistently applied
- The discipline was reasonable and proportional (the punishment fit the crime). www.laboremploymentperspectives.com/2013/05/20/do-you-know-the-seven-factors-that-comprise-just-cause/
Protesting ‘Slave Law,’ Thousands Take to Streets in Hungary
Gyula Radics is not easily angered. When Prime Minister Viktor Orban rewrote the Constitution to give his party greater power, he stayed on the sidelines. When the party took over state media, he was silent. And when the government forced the internationally renowned Central European University out of Hungary, he did not join the protests.
But after Mr. Orban pushed through legislation compelling employees to work hundreds of hours of overtime without full or immediate compensation, he had enough.
“Orban destroys lives and families,” Mr. Radics said as he prepared to march with thousands of protesters Saturday afternoon. A 39-year-old steelworker with five children, he traveled from Veszprem, an hour outside of Budapest.
“This is all we have left,” he said.
By this, he meant the streets.
Over the past eight years, Mr. Orban has steadily used the instruments of a democratic state to undermine nearly all checks on his power. www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/world/europe/hungary-protests-slave-law.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
www.facebook.com/SputnikNews/videos/1994995827257374/?notif_id=1546677702286272¬if_t=live_video
The Little Red Schoolhouse
BACK TO Class Reminder: Why Have School? Blood and Money Versus Reason
Innocently enough, schools now begin to open.
It is not, however, an innocent time.
To address the current electoral spectacle alone: the consolidation of fascism via the inseparable bonds of imperialism and opportunism–sums it up for me.
Such is the context of the routine: buying school clothes, fun lunch-boxes, the anticipation of new friends, the anxiety of new teachers–and old–administrators counting bodies to match facilities, and much more.
Even so, as schools open throughout the US, one typically ignored question needs to be asked in every classroom: Why have school? Why are we here?
Let’s step back a moment in order to put school in its proper, social, perspective.
Schools are the centripetal organizing point of de-industrialized North American life, and much of life elsewhere.
Evidence: School workers, not industrial workers, are by far the most unionized people in the USA, nearly four million union members.
School unions are slowly losing members, a snail’s pace, while industrial unions collapse, evaporate, because, in part, industry evaporates, and because industrial union leaders abandoned the heart of unionism–the contradictory interests of workers and employers. The American Federation of Teachers and National Education Associations’ top officials did the same.
Nearly all of the 15 million youth in grades nine to twelve today will be draft-eligible in the next five years. And almost every one of them is registered.
What is going on in schools? www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/16/why-have-school-blood-and-money-versus-reason/
www.facebook.com/cbcnews/videos/300239870626683/?t=45
Teachers quitting at highest rate ever, some leaving education completely
New government data shows teachers and other public education employees are quitting their jobs at the highest rate ever.
Bryan Steinberg is one of those people. Formerly a high school history teacher, Steinberg now works two jobs, as a bartender and real estate agent.
“The feeling got better and better as I got into teaching, up [until] a certain point,” he says.
Steinberg is one of the many teachers and other public education workers who have quit their profession and moved on completely.
One of the main reasons for him was pay.
“I guess the first thing was money, among other things,” he explains. “We had a contract that was canceled, and I wasn’t given my promised pay raise for five years.”
Steinberg earned his master’s degree and worked as an educator for eight years. But he says, like many, he felt overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. www.wxyz.com/education/teachers-quitting-at-highest-rate-ever-some-leaving-education-completely
The Invisible Faculty
By not standing up for adjuncts, tenure-track professors have undermined their own power
Walking to my bike recently after four hours of teaching, I had to pass through one of those fancy catered events in our new, spangled Integrated Sciences Complex. It was an administration event held to celebrate newly tenured faculty — I could see the PowerPoint slides with all the names up on the giant projector screen, complete with what looked to be an open bar, and trays of hot appetizers circulated on the shoulders of workers in black tie. A dark curtain I’d never noticed before was pulled across the cafe, dividing the food-preparation area from the party. Workers in the back scrambled, as folks in front lifted glasses of well-earned wine, toasting the proud Professors of UMass-Boston.
Here was a room full of my colleagues, an event celebrating academic achievement: teaching and research and service — all things that I hold in high esteem. No doubt I would be among the first to celebrate the work these folks had done. And yet, my gut was seized with ambivalence. Despite my six years of full-time service to UMB, I felt radically excluded. Like I was walking through a country club of which I was not a member.
A memory flashed up from UMB’s convocation in September, where our Save UMB Coalition interrupted the proceedings in protest of plans to jack up parking fees so high that working-class commuter students might be pushed out. At UMB, we take community inclusion seriously. www.chronicle.com/article/The-Invisible-Faculty/245399?key=1brOtA2hhki0d3uawry_7mVTUImtkzrfMQzdn8QTEhMQaTBMJPBnfmq_ZEkyPCJiTjN3ZXhkeFZVVDYxN0hGTjlkeEdoU0pHZjZEZVJZRFdyMWxXM2dHdDFrcw
University of Sydney Professor Tim Anderson Suspended for “Criticism of War Propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine”
Global Research is in solidarity with Professor Tim Anderson who was suspended from his position as Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, Australia.
This decision by the University’s Provost was largely motivated by Professor Anderson’s research and public statements on Syria, Iraq and Palestine including Anderson’s carefully documented book entitled The Dirty War on Syria, …
Below is Tim Anderson’s text on his Facebook page followed by an article published by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Yesterday University of Sydney Provost Stephen Garton suspended me from my position as a senior lecturer and banned me from entering the university. I have worked as an academic at this University for more than 20 years and am appealing the decision to a Review Committee.
This move is the culmination of a series of failed attempts by management to restrict my public comments. I have always rejected such censorship. The latest complaint concerns my advisory analysis of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Examine the graphic below and decide for yourself whether or how this infographic might be ‘offensive’.
These complaints, over the last 18 months, have been petty and absurd. In my view they represent an unusually aggressive regime of political censorship, in which no decent university should be involved.
Most of the management complaints have to do with my criticisms of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine. I don’t accept such censorship. www.globalresearch.ca/university-of-sydney-professor-tim-anderson-suspended-for-criticism-of-war-propaganda-against-syria-iraq-and-palestine/5662229?fbclid=IwAR0DeglJZgdAefzRsChrnE43JSXR3_KSIZnX5EtbFOdl1Ju9K4vKLYKKl7k
There’s reason to look hard at the new candidate to lead D.C. schools
If the D.C. Council makes a New Year’s resolution , let’s hope it will resolve to perform more aggressive oversight of the D.C. Public Schools and to hold school leaders to account.
The council is off to a good start by delaying swift action on Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) nomination of Lewis D. Ferebee, the superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), to be the next chancellor of D.C. schools.
The council must weigh the performance of the Indianapolis schools — one of the largest systems in Indiana — under five years of Ferebee’s stewardship. According to the Indianapolis Star, only 1 in 5 students in the system passed both the English and math portions of the spring 2018 Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress exam, “making it one of the lowest-performing school districts in the state.”
Ferebee’s closing of nearly half of the district’s high schools and creation of innovation schools managed by charter or nonprofit operators fueled a backlash leading to the defeat of some school board members in November’s elections.
And then there’s the sexual abuse scandal.
A series of articles by the Indianapolis Star, and one by Post reporters Emma Brown and Perry Stein, have delved into a 2016 scandal that involved a sexual relationship between a 37-year-old guidance counselor and a student who was 16 years old when it began and 17 when it ended. As a result of a police investigation, the guidance counselor was arrested and charged with nine felony counts of child seduction, one felony count of dissemination of matter harmful to minors and one misdemeanor of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The counselor, also accused of having sex with the teen and another student, pleaded guilty to three felony counts and was sentenced to six years of home detention.
Several school officials were disciplined. Little wonder.
Ferebee, meanwhile, is a defendant in three civil lawsuits that raise questions about whether he met his legal obligation to ensure that allegations of an improper relationship were reported to the state’s child protective services agency www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-reason-to-look-hard-at-the-new-candidate-to-lead-dc-schools/2018/12/28/278723de-09f6-11e9-88e3-989a3e456820_story.html?utm_term=.c9ddec8882fd
Former Imperial Beach PTA president arrested on suspicion of embezzlement
Tensions were so high among members of a South Bay parent-teacher association in March that a sheriff’s sergeant attended a PTA meeting that month to ensure the safety of the president, who was being accused by other members of stealing from the organization, the sergeant said Wednesday.
Nearly nine months later, the former PTA president, 30-year-old Kaitlyn Faith Birchman, was arrested on suspicion of embezzling at least $14,800 from the Imperial Beach Charter School PTA, Sgt. Karl Miller said. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-imperial-beach-pta-arrest-20190102-story.html
State Investigators Say There’s Evidence of a Financial ‘Cover-Up’ in Sweetwater
Sweetwater Union High School District officials have denied repeatedly they knew anything about the district’s overspending until it suddenly came to light last September. But a new state report suggests some district employees may have committed criminal fraud.
During a strange and dramatic board meeting Monday night – with reshuffled agenda items and a damning government report – state officials accused Sweetwater Union High School District employees of knowingly covering up the district’s ongoing financial crisis, triggered by massive overspending.
District officials have denied repeatedly they knew anything about the district’s overspending until it suddenly came to light last September. They have described it as an accident that could be attributed to innocent accounting errors and inefficient budget software. But the new report, from the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, challenges that narrative. It suggests some district employees may have committed criminal fraud.
FCMAT’s chief executive officer Michael Fine told board members that 302 entries in the district’s accounting system were doctored to create the impression the district had more money than it really did. “That my friends and colleagues, is a cover-up,” he said, eliciting an audible gasp from board members and others in the room.
Sweetwater’s superintendent Karen Janney refused to comment when I asked her about the suggestion of fraud. “We have a lot of work to do,” she said. When pressed again, she said, “I’m not gonna comment on that right now,” and walked out of the board’s public meeting room.
Fine did not speculate on who might have been behind the alleged cover-up. Several of Sweetwater’s top financial workers, including chief financial officer Karen Michel, retired over the summer. A Sweetwater spokesman told me previously those retirements were pre-planned. www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/state-investigators-say-theres-evidence-of-a-financial-cover-up-in-sweetwater/?utm_source=Voice+of+San+Diego+Master+List&utm_campaign=6670a15283-VOSD_Podcast&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-6670a15283-81862829&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-6670a15283-81862829
Claiming ‘hardship’ and getting paid for missed meetings is now harder for Sweetwater trustees
inewsource reported last week that trustee Nicholas Segura asked to be compensated for a meeting he missed in August while in Sacramento lobbying for his labor union and having dinner with Democratic governor candidate Gavin Newsom.
When board members decided at their Aug. 27 meeting to delay approving the payment to Segura so they could clarify the district’s “hardship” rules, he defended the request to be paid.
“I really put a lot of time in on behalf of the district. … I was planning on coming here that day until I was asked to have dinner with probably the next governor of California,” Segura told the board.
He changed his story at Monday’s school board meeting when the trustees voted 5-0 to require board members to begin filling out a form when they request to be paid for missed meetings. If they cite hardship, they now have to explain what it was.
Segura said he never asked to be compensated for the meeting he missed while dining with Newsom — something he never said at the Aug. 27 meeting. inewsource.org/2018/09/11/sweetwater-school-district-hardship-trustees/?fbclid=IwAR2JTSDG4I959JhGpXrnbLoaep0jM11sCUiBBP5RK2jU53hrbQSyh0nqNzM
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
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‘We’ll see how frightened America is’ — Chinese admiral says sinking US carriers key to dominating South China Sea
Another Beijing official has sounded off about the communist nation’s perceived dominance of the South China Sea region, this time coming as an alarming threat of inflicting mass casualties on the U.S. Navy.
During a Dec. 20 speech to the 2018 Military Industry List summit, China’s Rear Adm. Lou Yuan, the deputy head of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, added fuel to the South China Sea fire when he stated the key for Chinese domination in those hotly contested waters could lie in the sinking of two U.S. aircraft carriers, according to a report by Australia’s news.com.
“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” the admiral said, before adding that such an attack on two of the U.S. Navy’s steel behemoths would claim upwards of 10,000 lives.
Lou went on to call America’s military, money, talent, voting system and fear of adversaries the five U.S. weaknesses that can be easily exploited, according to the report.
“We’ll see how frightened America is,” he said. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/04/well-see-how-frightened-america-is-chinese-admiral-says-sinking-us-carriers-key-to-dominating-south-china-sea/
C.I.A.’s Afghan Forces Leave a Trail of Abuse and Anger
The fighters hold the line in the war’s toughest spots, but officials say their brutal tactics are terrorizing the public and undermining the U.S. mission.
NADER SHAH KOT, Afghanistan — Razo Khan woke up suddenly to the sight of assault rifles pointed at his face, and demands that he get out of bed and onto the floor.
Within minutes, the armed raiders had separated the men from the women and children. Then the shooting started.
As Mr. Khan was driven away for questioning, he watched his home go up in flames. Within were the bodies of two of his brothers and of his sister-in-law Khanzari, who was shot three times in the head. Villagers who rushed to the home found the burned body of her 3-year-old daughter, Marina, in a corner of a torched bedroom.
The men who raided the family’s home that March night, in the district of Nader Shah Kot, were members of an Afghan strike force trained and overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency in a parallel mission to the United States military’s, but with looser rules of engagement.
Ostensibly, the force was searching for militants. But Mr. Khan and his family had done nothing to put themselves in the cross hairs of the C.I.A.-sponsored strike force, according to investigators.
It was clear that the raiding force had “committed an atrocity,” said Jan-mir Zazai, a member of the Khost provincial council who was part of the government investigating team. “Everyone we spoke to said they would swear on the innocence of the victims.” www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/world/asia/cia-afghanistan-strike-force.html
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This Map Shows Where in the World the U.S. Military Is “Combatting Terrorism”
The infographic reveals for the first time that the U.S. is now operating in 40 percent of the world’s nations
Less than a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, U.S. troops—with support from British, Canadian, French, German and Australian forces—invaded Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. More than 17 years later, the Global War on Terrorism initiated by President George W. Bush is truly global, with Americans actively engaged in countering terrorism in 80 nations on six continents.
This map is the most comprehensive depiction in civilian circles of U.S. military and government antiterrorist actions overseas in the past two years. To develop it, my colleagues and I at Brown University’s Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, along with Smithsonian magazine, combed through U.S. and foreign government sources, published and unpublished reports, military websites and geographical databases; we contacted foreign embassies in the U.S. and the military’s United States Africa Command; and we conducted interviews with journalists, academics and others. We found that, contrary to what most Americans believe, the war on terror is not winding down—it has spread to more than 40 percent of the world’s countries. The war isn’t being waged by the military alone, which has spent $1.9 trillion fighting terrorism since 2001. The State Department has spent $127 billion in the last 17 years to train police, military and border patrol agents in many countries and to develop antiterrorism education programs, among other activities. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/map-shows-places-world-where-us-military-operates-180970997/#66RJOwSuQBqX5xS5.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! bit.ly/1cGUiGv
NBC Reporter Quits Over Network’s ‘Mechanical’ Support for ‘Perpetual War’
William Arkin, a political commentator at NBC, threw in the towel Wednesday in an email excoriating the network’s increasingly tepid criticism of the US state and its reflexive opposition to US President Donald Trump, noting it put the outlet in the uncomfortable position of supporting what he called “perpetual war.”
In his Tuesday resignation letter, Arkin traces his troubled history with news media, including NBC, which he’s come and gone from several times over the years. Building up to the network’s shift in focus with the advent of Trump and the “social media wave,” he notes that things started to slide downhill after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the country’s dramatic shift toward “our new kind of wars when there were no real fronts and no actual measures of success.”
Arkin lam ents that since 2001, US media has become less critical of Washington’s policies, and instead of asking the tough questions and reporting on the tough stories, “NBC (and others) meanwhile report the story of war as one of Rumsfeld vs. the Generals, as Wolfowitz vs. Shinseki, as the CIA vs. Cheney, as the bad torturers vs. the more refined, about numbers of troops and number of deaths, and even then Obama vs. the Congress, poor Obama who couldn’t close Guantanamo or reduce nuclear weapons or stand up to Putin because it was just so difficult.” sputniknews.com/society/201901041071204076-NBC-Reporter-Quits-Network-Perpetual-War/
Arkin’s Full Resignation Letter is here: pastebin.com/HGfyzzJ9
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Trump vs Mattis: Watch out when men of war come to the rescue (Fisk)
When a general popularly known as James “Mad Dog” Mattis abandons a really mad American president, you know something has fallen off the edge in Washington. Since the Roman empire, formerly loyal military commanders have fled crackpot leaders, and Mattis’s retreat from the White House might have the smell of de Gaulle and Petain about it.
De Gaulle was confronted by an immensely powerful hero of the people – the Lion of Verdun – who was, in his dotage, about to shrug off the sacred alliance with Britain for Nazi collaboration (for which, I suppose, read Putin’s Russia). The decision was made to have nothing to do with Petain, or what Mattis now refers to as “malign actors”. De Gaulle would lead Free France instead.
Mattis has no such ambitions – not yet, at any rate – although there are plenty of Lavals and Weygands waiting to see if Trump chooses one of them for his next secretary of defence. Besides, history should not grant Trump and Mattis such an epic panorama.
After all, no Trump tweet could compare with Petain’s 1916 “We’ll get them!” (“on les aura”) slogan, and the dignified, cold and fastidious de Gaulle would never have lent himself to the rant Mattis embarked upon in San Diego in 2005: “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot soe people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.”
And Mattis was happy to “brawl” with the Iranians politically, though equally content to let the Saudis do the fighting for him – in Yemen, at least. In 2017, he chose Saudi Arabia to announce that “everywhere you look if there is trouble in the region, you find Iran.” He even thought that “Iran is not an enemy of Isis”, a statement that demonstrated either ignorance or falsehood. No wonder he later became enamoured of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
But now he has entered a new pantheon. Suddenly the man of war, the US marine general who found it “a hell of a lot of fun” to shoot Afghan misogynists and liked “brawling”, has become a peacemaker. He was the restraining hand tugging at the sleeve of the insane Trump, the one man who could stop Nero burning Rome. He was “the sanest of Trump’s national security team”, according to Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. He was “an island of security”, announced Amos Harel in Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
All this is part of the querulous school of journalism that believed – after Trump’s insanity was made manifest – that the military could control the man in the lunatic asylum. www.independent.co.uk/voices/jim-mattis-donald-trump-mad-syria-israel-egypt-arafat-sharon-a8700276.html
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Air Force Global Strike’s command chief fired
Chief Master Sgt. Thomas Mazzone, the command chief of Air Force Global Strike Command, was fired Friday for having an “unprofessional relationship” during his previous assignment as command chief for both the Air Force District of Washington and the 320th Air Expeditionary Wing at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
The 28-year veteran, who was also the command chief for Air Forces Strategic–Air, was removed from his positions by Gen. Timothy Ray, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, which is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, just east of Shreveport, Louisiana, according to a news release from the command.
The firing became public when an email from Ray to all members of the command was leaked to the unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page, which posted it online. The command put out the news release Friday afternoon.
“Unprofessional relationships directly undermine good order and discipline as they detract from the superior member’s authority and reasonably create the appearance of favoritism, misuse of position or the abandonment of organizational goals for personal interests,” stated the news release from the command.
In his email, Ray said he had “recently received the results of a commander directed investigation that substantiated allegations against Chief Mazzone for behavior unbecoming of a senior leader” while at a previous duty assignment. www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/01/04/air-force-global-strikes-command-chief-fired/
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The Corps is considering planks as an alternative to crunches on the PFT
Marines have complained for ages that the crunches portion on the Physical Fitness Test, or PFT, is too easy, administratively hard to judge and easy to cheat on.
Now the Corps is looking at planks as an alternative.
In a December briefing for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, the Corps said its Force Fitness Division, led by former Marine athlete of the year Col. Stephen Armes, was conducting a study on the use of planks as an alternative to crunches.
“The Marine Corps Force Fitness Division is currently testing and analyzing the use of planking as a possible measure of abdominal strength for the annual Physical Fitness Testing,” Marine Corps Training and Education Command said in a statement. “Their testing remains ongoing.”
A plank is performed by holding the body in a tight formation, generally in a pushup-like position, and maintaining that form for a period of time. It is considered an isometric core exercise, as unlike crunches a plank does not involve contraction of the muscles during the workout.
Because the plank does not involve movement, there’s the possibility it could lead to fewer exercise related injuries during the PFT. www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/01/05/the-corps-is-considering-planks-as-an-alternative-to-crunches-on-the-pft/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+MAR&fbclid=IwAR0RU5VCdKw8tyarqI0s1LhQWtSLIg7sEenaPiwynHdNbDeqS0JnGt2aL4Q
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
In this booming job market, workers are quitting by ‘ghosting’
Economists report that workers are starting to act like millennials on Tinder: They’re ditching jobs with nary a text.
“A number of contacts said that they had been ‘ghosted,’ a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in December’s Beige Book report, which tracks employment trends.
National data on economic “ghosting” is lacking. The term, which normally applies to dating, first surfaced on Dictionary.com in 2016. But companies across the country say silent exits are on the rise.
Analysts blame America’s increasingly tight labor market. Job openings have surpassed the number of seekers for eight straight months, and the unemployment rate has clung to a 49-year low of 3.7% since September.
Janitors, baristas, welders, accountants, engineers — they’re all in demand, said Michael Hicks, a labor economist at Ball State University in Indiana. More people may opt to skip tough conversations and slide right into the next thing. www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-workers-quitting-notice-20181212-story.html
The Moral Horror of America’s Prisons
Now that President Donald Trump has signed a bipartisan criminal justice bill into law, it is worth looking at this issue in more fundamental terms. I would like to suggest a radical — but to me commonsensical — conclusion: Much of the American penal system is an unconstitutional moral horror.
The law, called the First Step Act, will expand early-release programs and change sentencing laws, for instance by weakening mandatory minimum sentences for some classes of nonviolent offenders. I’m all for those changes, but most of the bad features of the current system will remain intact.
For instance, it is widely accepted that rape is commonplace in American prisons. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but estimates are that between 2 percent and 21 percent of prisoners have been victims. Note that in prison even apparently voluntary interactions can have a strongly coercive element, such as when a prisoner trades sexual favors for protection or privileges. So it is not just the number of rapes. It is the broader system under which the very notion of voluntary interaction is often meaningless.
Even if a prisoner is never raped, that threat can be hanging over their heads for their entire stay. In the #MeToo era, this should be clear by now.
The upshot is that many incarcerated people suffer cruel and unusual punishment far beyond any issues they might raise about the unfairness of their sentence. Furthermore, once they are in prison, they often have little recourse to the rule of law if they are beaten, harassed, raped or intimidated — including, of course, by prison guards. In essence, they are being sentenced to live outside the protection of a system of laws, and that is clearly not the intent expressed in the Constitution. It is not unusual for a prison to be found guilty of violating common standards of decency, never mind constitutionality. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/04/well-see-how-frightened-america-is-chinese-admiral-says-sinking-us-carriers-key-to-dominating-south-china-sea/
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
“Vice” vs. the Real Dick Cheney
The episode that best foreshadowed the Cheney we came to know in the years after the 9/11 attacks occurred at the end of his service as Secretary of Defense, under George H. W. Bush—another job that “Vice” understands in terms of power, not ideas. As the Soviet Union was collapsing, Cheney, with the help of aides such as Lewis (Scooter) Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, who later joined him in the George W. Bush Administration, commissioned a study with the bland title “Defense Planning Guidance.” It envisioned a post-Cold War world in which there would only ever be one superpower, the United States: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,” the document said. It was skeptical of power exercised by the United Nations and other multinational alliances, as opposed to that exercised by the United States unilaterally.
Cheney’s circle did not support the first President Bush’s decision to conclude the Gulf War without toppling Saddam Hussein and installing a new government in Iraq. The 9/11 attacks provided Cheney and his allies with an unexpected opportunity to enact their long-standing views. www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/vice-vs-the-real-dick-cheney?mbid=social_facebook&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_brand=tny&fbclid=IwAR0XHZcnVMxHjufPjQ_2xBFJg4fESB2KlOXxMQ8Pz5I4S1MPkQjoqNjSsYE&fbclid=IwAR0pgufTDaRexLiV5CAQJDv1nreAXq12EIp6ZujzvcbM5MKKAJyplLcIctw
BFJg4fESB2KlOXxMQ8Pz5I4S1MPkQjoqNjSsYE&fbclid=IwAR0pgufTDaRexLiV5CAQJDv1nreAXq12EIp6ZujzvcbM5MKKAJyplLcIctw
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SEAL to stand trial for murder, other alleged war crimes
Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher will be arraigned Friday at Naval Base San Diego on a long list of criminal charges, including the premeditated murder of a wounded Islamic State prisoner of war.
Navy Region Southwest spokesman Brian O’Rourke said that the initial court-martial proceeding is slated for Friday.
His court-martial trial was greenlighted by Rear Adm. Yancy B.”Lurch” Lindsey, the region’s commander, following a legal review of the SEAL’s two-day Article 32 hearing in November.
Prosecutors contend that Gallagher, 39, is a callous murderer who stabbed to death the teenage detainee on May 3, 2017 near the Iraqi city of Mosul and also gunned down unwitting civilians with his sniper rifle, bragged about racking up kills and threatened to intimidate and publicly out SEAL buddies who complained to superiors and investigators about him.
Confined at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in San Diego since his arrest on Sept. 11 at Camp Pendleton, where he was receiving treatment as a wounded warrior for traumatic brain injury, Gallagher, a married father and 19-year Navy veteran, has declared his innocence and vows to clear his name. (Military Times)
Tonight we are chronicling every police, medic and fire call to show how incredibly understaffed Detroit’s neighborhoods are. Mayor Duggan wants to cut the Fire Department and Police Department by 5%. In just the past 20 minutes, police have been called to a kidnapping, an attempted kidnapping, two home invasions in progress, three domestic violence cases, two men shooting guns near a gas station and an unruly crowd at Northland Skating Rink on W. 8 Mile. This is the reality every night in Detroit. After 9 p.m., police often can only respond to the most violent crimes – and even then, the understaffed department is often delayed. We will provide updates throughout the night. Stay safe
www.facebook.com/frontline/videos/380370352508411/?t=25
www.facebook.com/SputnikNews/videos/376364716269885/?t=37
Solidarity for Never
The Ford Rouge Plant once had 120,000 plus workers. The Rouge UAW Local was the most militant of all UAW locals. Now, there are 4,000 people working in the Rouge. The UAW does nothing but sell cheap labor and collect dues.
UAW Fake-sues GM over temporary workers, escalating fight over job cuts–Pt’s vs Ft’s, again.
– The United Auto Workers said on Thursday it was suing General Motors Co over labor contract violations stemming from its alleged use of temporary workers at an Indiana assembly plant, escalating the union’s fight against GM’s plans to possibly close U.S. factories.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Ohio, was the union’s first counter-move to GM’s decision in late November to put five North American factories on notice for closure. The decision, which affects four U.S. plants including one in Warren, Ohio, drew the condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump and members of Congress.
The UAW, which will negotiate a new national labor deal with GM this year, has vowed to fight the cuts. The current labor contract was reached in 2015 and expires in September.
The union said there are about 1,000 laid-off hourly employees that have the right to transfer to plants with openings, including almost 700 at the Lordstown plant in Ohio. GM is employing temporary workers at its Fort Wayne Assembly plant rather than transferring workers, the UAW said.
“UAW members negotiated a binding agreement and we expect General Motors to follow the contract they agreed to and GM members ratified,” UAW Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement. www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-uaw-lawsuit/uaw-sues-gm-over-temporary-workers-escalating-fight-over-job-cuts-idUSKCN1OX1F2
Lizzie is Hillbillary
Spy versus Spy
American detained by Russia tried to steal thousands of dollars from U.S. while deployed to Iraq as a Marine
The Marine Corps found Paul Whelan, the American citizen detained by Russia on espionage charges, guilty of attempting to steal more than $10,000 worth of currency from the U.S. government while deployed to Iraq in 2006 and bouncing nearly $6,000 worth of checks around the same time, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
The details of the charges against Whelan from a special court-martial two years later, which resulted in his discharge for bad conduct, add to an increasingly complex picture of the 48-year-old former Marine, whom Russian officials have accused of spying. His case grew more perplexing on Friday after Ireland became the fourth nation to acknowledge him as a citizen and seek consular access. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/nation-world/ct-paul-whelan-russia-espionage-20190104-story.html
The Magical Mystery Tour
Satan Refuses To Accept Any More Catholic Priests In Hell
NINTH CIRCLE, HELL—Stressing that the situation in the underworld was quickly spiraling out of control, Satan, the Great Tempter and Father of Lies, announced Wednesday that he would not allow any more Catholic priests to enter hell. “This place is completely overrun with those monsters, and frankly, they kind of creep me out,” said the Prince of Darkness, adding that every time he looked up, he saw another recently deceased member of the Roman Catholic clergy being cast down into the fires of hell, where each is expected to be tortured until the end of time by Satan and his minions. “We’re used to having every manner of unrepentant sinner down here, but those guys are beyond messed up. I swear, if I see one more of those sick bastards, I’m going to throw myself into the eternal flames.” In response, God has reportedly instituted a secret policy whereby the priests would no longer face damnation but would instead attend mandatory counseling sessions and then be quietly transferred into heaven.
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
www.facebook.com/skyvillelive/videos/2234627270085171/?t=26
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So Long
Ray
Dean
Honey