Rouge Forum Dispatch: New Decade! New Revos!
December 7th, 2019 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.” MLK
French Unions and Yellow Vests Converge, Launch General Strike
On the eve of an “unlimited” (open-ended) General Strike called for Dec. 5, more and more unions and protest groups are pledging join it.
Two things are unusual about this strike. The first is that it is open-ended, rather than the usual one-day of ritualistic protest marches, and may be prolonged from day to day by workers’ assemblies. The second is that the Yellow Vests, the self-organized, horizontal, social movement that sprung up spontaneously just over a year ago and is still popular despite severe repression, have decided to converge with the strike, and that the CGT’s Martinez, who had originally spurned the Yellow Vests, immediately welcomed them, making for a heady mix. For the union leaders, who try to control their followers tightly, the Yellow Vests are like a loose canon on the deck of a ship. Who knows what may result?
The nation-wide strike was originally proposed by Philippe Martinez, Secretary General of CGT, France’s largest union federation, in response to the Macron Governments’ proposed neoliberal “reform” of the France retirement system. Macron’s reform would essentially gut France’s solidarity-based retirement system. www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/04/french-unions-and-yellow-vests-converge-launch-general-strike/?fbclid=IwAR2-mDd5FVAHRqgZPsaYxPnIoSlGnRaya4tJd0kZzxeMPVwaq4wgHCOknSI
The Audacity of Hypocrisy
…As this election year approaches, we must remember that power, military might and economic control, resides in the capitalist ruling class, no matter which party is in the White House or Congress. There are differences amongst capitalists over to what extent they wish to exert control over the entire world and what tactics to use to control workers, such as racism versus reformism. Right wing isolationists like the Koch brothers and Trumpers promote overt white supremacy and banning immigration as ways to divide and weaken workers.
The liberals talk about justice and equality, while pursuing imperialism abroad, and claim to oppose racism and inequality at home, while actually allowing it to grow. One good current example is Lori Lightfoot, the new black Mayor of Chicago, who talked about many education reforms and then fought the teacher’s union as it struck to demand their implementation. If one wishes to actually remove the profit motive as the driver of production, war and foreign or domestic policy, it is necessary to actually remove the capitalist class from power. They will not go quietly. And between escalating war and climate disaster, the survival of the planet and billions of workers is at stake. But revolution will never be on the ballot. www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/the-audacity-of-hypocrisy-2/
www.facebook.com/Redfishstream/videos/782282212198270/?t=6
Harvard Departments Check Grad Student Strike Status, Prompting Union Backlash
Several academic departments across the University emailed graduate student teaching staff asking whether they are participating in the graduate student union’s strike this week, prompting anger among union members.
Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile went on strike Tuesday after more than a year of contract negotiations with the University. Despite the 12 tentative agreements the two parties have reached, differences remain on key contract provisions including compensation, health benefits, and grievance procedure for sexual harassment and discrimiantion complaints.
The memo — originally sent out to Government department affiliates by Chair Jeffry A. Frieden — was posted in part on Twitter by union members. Frieden informed graduate students that they are responsible for reporting whether they are working and that those who strike should not expect to be paid. Frieden also reminded faculty that they are “management” and are still responsible for their “instructional responsibilities.” www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/12/6/strike-dept-emails/
Vt. Woman Welcomes Announcement of Impeachment Articles
Susan Ohanian of Charlotte introduced a motion at her community’s 2017 Town Meeting Day that asked her neighbors to urge Congress to impeach the president (video inside)
A Vermont woman welcomed Thursday’s news that the U.S. House will move forward with articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, because she has a unique connection to the topic.
In March of 2017, when the president had only been in office a few months, Susan Ohanian formally urged her neighbors at Charlotte’s annual town meeting to ask Congress to look into removing Trump.
Ohanian’s argument at the time was that the president’s business dealings in the U.S. and overseas meant he could profit off the office. www.necn.com/news/local/vt-woman-welcomes-announcement-of-impeachment-articles/2203047/
CSpan–Eric Lichtblau–Return to the Reich—
www.c-span.org/video/?465522-1/return-reich
Beacon High School Is Half White. That’s Why Students Walked Out.
More than 300 students at the selective public high school, one of New York City’s most prestigious, protested its admissions policies.
Naia Timmons, a junior from Harlem, stood surrounded by classmates in the middle of the street outside Beacon High School as hail began to fall.
She shouted into a bullhorn: “I continue to recognize the privilege I had of escaping the system that many of my friends could not.” Naia identifies as black and white.
Her classmates chanted “End Jim Crow” and “Education is a right, not just for the rich and white.”
Roughly 300 students walked out of Beacon on Monday to protest its high-stakes admissions process, which they said has exacerbated segregation in the nation’s largest school system.
The protest at Beacon, one of New York City’s most selective public schools, illustrates the widening scope of the push for school integration. It has shifted away from the narrow issue of how few black and Hispanic students are admitted to the city’s eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant NYTimes 12/2/19
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Seattle schools propose race-centric “ethnomathematics” curriculum: NEA’s posterboy Hagopian builds More reaction
Underlying “social justice” and race-based initiatives is the explicit acceptance of the capitalist profit system, a failing system that is systematically destroying public education while condemning increasing millions to poverty. The claim of “social justice” proponents that academic problems stem from racial or cultural insensitivity deliberately refuses to challenge the mantra from Democrats and Republicans that “there is no money” for education. In fact, it serves the ruling class agenda of blaming educators, and often their skin color, for the problems of their students, rather than lack of funding. www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/06/ethn-d06.html
After 10 Years of Hopes and Setbacks, What Happened to the Common Core?
It was one of the most ambitious education efforts in United States history. Did it fail? Or does it just need more time to succeed?
The plan was hatched with high hopes and missionary zeal: For the first time in its history, the United States would come together to create consistent, rigorous education standards and stop letting so many school children fall behind academically.
More than 40 states signed on to the plan, known as the Common Core State Standards Initiative, after it was rolled out in 2010 by a bipartisan group of governors, education experts and philanthropists. The education secretary at the time, Arne Duncan, declared himself “ecstatic.”
American children would read more nonfiction, write better essays and understand key mathematical concepts, instead of just mechanically solving equations. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/us/common-core.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
College students don’t have enough money to eat. Their classmates are feeding them
The window of the food pantry is in an inconspicuous location on the second floor of the student services building at East Los Angeles College, and that’s for the best. Some of the students who come here don’t want the whole campus to know they’re hungry.
“It’s really a sensitive topic for some people,” said Anthony Dominguez, a biochemistry major who sometimes works at the pantry and hands out packaged noodles, granola bars, energy drinks and other items.
After I spoke to Dominguez, I watched a student sidle up to the window and show his ID. He was handed a pouch of apple sauce and a granola bar, then walked away.
But he lingered nearby, watched me interview another pantry customer, then approached.
“It was awkward the first couple of times I came,” he said, asking me to identify him by his initials, J.C.
J.C. told me he lives in a South Los Angeles neighborhood that sees a lot of violence. He said he has lost friends and cousins to murder, and he wants to become a homicide detective to bring killers to justice.
His dad is a janitor and his sister takes care of their ailing mother, a dialysis patient. If there’s food at home he’ll eat there, but there’s not always enough to go around. A counselor told him about the pantry.
“I just broke down,” he said of his conversation with the counselor. “I told her I was struggling.” www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-07/column-hungry-minds-and-empty-stomachs-at-east-l-a-college
Baltimore County Teacher Quits, Says School is ‘Chaos’
Stephanie Robusto came forward to Project Baltimore after receiving a letter from a nine-year-old student at Pleasant Plains Elementary in Towson. The letter read:
“Dear. Ms. Robusto, I’m so, so upset that every single day you have to deal with this. Every day I think ‘I know today Ms. Robusto will be mistreated again.’ I bearly (sic) see smiles in this room. It’s just problems. Whenever this happens my lid pops out. I feel like an animal in a cage filled with disrespect. I just want you to be happy with what you are doing.”
For 10 years, Stephanie Robusto dedicated herself to teaching, but she walked away from her job a few weeks ago.
“I don’t want to go back,” she told Project Baltimore. “It’s like losing a part of yourself. But at the same time, it’s a huge weight lifted.”
Robusto started working at Pleasant Plains Elementary in September. It was closer to home and to where her daughter goes to school. But her excitement quickly faded.
“The behavior problems at the school were intense. The kids kind of ran the school,” she said. “Fire alarms just being pulled at least twice a week. I was physically assaulted. I was called names. This is stuff that happened on a daily basis.” foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-county-teacher-quits-says-school-is-chaos?fbclid=IwAR3ssxr24kYsdLwq67qDjoGuNanKGAyCdqrSK1pvysA7RTsBVk9DBOYu3TQ
Dramatic Fake changes proposed to Detroit’s public K-12 schools
Dramatic changes have been proposed for Detroit’s public schools in an effort to move students to buildings in good physical condition, increase the rigor at some high schools and boost enrollment in the state’s largest district.
Nikolai Vitti, superintendent at Detroit Public Schools Community District, is proposing changes that would require students at King and Communications and Media Arts high schools to take an exam to be admitted, move the district’s headquarters out of the Fisher building and shift schools, programs and boundary lines to spread resources.
“The changes that we have been talking about are not to address our district-wide facility issues,” Vitti said. “They are a set of recommendations that can move more students to better facilities and can continue to help us increase enrollment district-wide by providing more competitive programming.”
Vitti and his staff have been taking their ideas and solutions to the community in a series of public talks that run through Wednesday. District officials are collecting feedback from parents, taxpayers and others from the discussions to take to the school board in the spring. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2019/12/03/dramatic-changes-proposed-detroits-public-k-12-schools/2533144001/
The Class of 2000 ‘Could Have Been Anything’
The Minford High School Class of 2000, in rural Minford, Ohio, began its freshman year as a typical class. It had its jocks and its cheerleaders, its slackers and its overachievers.
But by the time the group entered its final year, its members said, painkillers were nearly ubiquitous, found in classrooms, school bathrooms and at weekend parties.
Over the next decade, Scioto County, which includes Minford, would become ground zero in the state’s fight against opioids. It would lead Ohio with its rates of fatal drug overdoses, drug-related incarcerations and babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
To understand both the scope and the devastating consequences of what is now a public health crisis, we talked to dozens of members of the Class of 2000. Many opened up to us about struggles with addiction, whether their own or their relatives’. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/us/opioid-crisis-high-school-teenagers.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Army Recruitment Today Is Less ‘Be All You Can Be’ And A Lot More ‘Call Of Duty’
The best source of light in this dim, warehouse-sized room in suburban Denver comes from rows of screens. Each panel shows a discrete military action, a fast-paced firefight as camouflaged soldiers swarm a map or special operators securing a target.
One of the figures hunched over a computer in the darkness finally huffs in disappointment.
“I’ve died like four times in three missions, so [I’m] not going to say [I’m doing] the greatest,” said 17-year-old Gavin Gains.
Even though he wasn’t dominating the brand new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” Gains is exactly what the regional Go Army recruitment office is looking for. For the past three years they’ve only hit about 80 percent of their recruiting goals. Nationally, the Army only attracted 68,000 recruits in 2018. For the fiscal 2020 year the manpower goal is half a million.
The old ways to attract potential recruits aren’t working the way they used to. More modern tactics are called for, like hosting an event at the Localhost Arena in Lakewood or starting a professional esports team. www.cpr.org/2019/11/08/army-recruitment-today-is-less-be-all-you-can-be-and-a-lot-more-call-of-duty/
Iran Is Secretly Moving Missiles Into Iraq, U.S. Officials Say
The buildup of a hidden arsenal of short-range missiles is the latest sign that American efforts to deter Iran have largely failed.
Iran has used the continuing chaos in Iraq to build up a hidden arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq, part of a widening effort to try to intimidate the Middle East and assert its power, according to American intelligence and military officials.
The buildup comes as the United States has rebuilt its military presence in the Middle East to counter emerging threats to American interests, including attacks on oil tankers and facilities that intelligence officials have blamed on Iran. Since May, the Trump administration has sent roughly 14,000 additional troops to the region, primarily to staff Navy ships and missile defense systems.
But new intelligence about Iran’s stockpiling of missiles in Iraq is the latest sign that the Trump administration’s efforts to deter Tehran by increasing the American military presence in the Middle East has largely failed.
The missiles pose a threat to American allies and partners in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and could endanger American troops, the intelligence officials said. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/iran-missiles-iraq.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
“Light at end of tunnel?” ISIS Is Losing Afghan Territory. That Means Little for Its Victims.
Offensives against the Islamic State’s Afghan branch have brought it down to several hundred fighters, officials say. But they warn that the group’s cruelty is still a threat.
The Islamic State’s main stronghold in eastern Afghanistan collapsed in recent weeks, according to American and Afghan officials, following years of concerted military offensives from American and Afghan forces and, more recently, the Taliban.
President Ashraf Ghani recently claimed that the Islamic State, often known as ISIS, had been “obliterated” in Nangarhar Province, the group’s haven in the east. And in an interview in Kabul on Sunday, Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of all American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said the group’s loss of the terrain it stubbornly held for few years would severely restrict their recruitment and planning.
But General Miller also warned that ISIS could remain a threat in Afghanistan even if it does not hold territory, with attention required to track militants on the move and the group’s remaining urban cells.
“It was instructive in Iraq and Syria — when you take away big terrain from them, they move into smaller cells and they pop up in strange places,” General Miller said. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/world/asia/ISIS-afghanistan-baghdadi.html
‘betrayal’ of Kurds in Syria
A sustained Turkish military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria — which President Donald Trump appears to have permitted — would vastly increase the threat to Americans from the Islamic State militant group, which remains intent on attacking the West, current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News.
The immediate concern, officials say, is what will happen with the 12,000 ISIS fighters currently being guarded by the American-backed Kurds. The ISIS prisoners are the world’s largest concentration of terrorists. If those fighters are set free, officials fear a replay of what happened in Iraq between 2010 and 2013, when the core group who founded ISIS were released or escaped from detention after U.S. forces left the country.
Some of the very people who broke out of Iraqi prisons helped turn ISIS into a movement that not only seized territory in Iraq and Syria, but also orchestrated and encouraged terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/intel-officials-say-isis-could-regroup-after-u-s-betrayal-n1064306
Charges dropped in alleged Marine Corps human smuggling and drug rings after arrests ruled unlawful
Military prosecutors dropped human trafficking and drug charges against most of the two dozen Marines recently arrested in front of their Camp Pendleton battalion, days after a court ruled those arrests were an unlawful violation of their rights, Marine Corps officials confirmed Tuesday.
The Marines’ cases will be dealt with administratively, outside the military court system, according to a 1st Marine Division statement. Many of them will be discharged from the Marines.
“Thirteen Marines submitted and have approved pre-trial agreements requesting separation in lieu of courts-martial or waiving administrative separation boards,” the Marines statement said.
Also six Marines have pleaded guilty at courts-martial, and four still face criminal charges, the statement said. Task and Purpose, 12’06’19
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Hundreds of Thousands Are Losing Access to Food Stamps: Food Slavery
The Agriculture Department gave its final approval to the first of three rules that are ultimately expected to cut more than three million from the food stamp rolls.
The Trump administration, brushing aside tens of thousands of protest letters, gave final approval on Wednesday to a rule that will remove nearly 700,000 people from the federal food-stamp program by strictly enforcing federal work requirements.
The rule, which was proposed by the Agriculture Department in February, would press states to carry out work requirements for able-bodied adults without children that governors have routinely been allowed to waive, especially for areas in economic distress. The economy has improved under the Trump administration, the department argued, and assistance to unemployed, able-bodied adults was no longer necessary in a strong job market.
The change is expected to shave nearly $5.5 billion from food stamp spending over five years.
“Government can be a powerful force for good, but government dependency has never been the American dream,” said Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary. “We need to encourage people by giving them a helping hand but not allowing it to become an indefinitely giving hand.” www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/food-stamps.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
‘Eye-Popping’: Analysis Shows Top 1% Gained $21 Trillion in Wealth Since 1989 While Bottom Half Lost $900 Billion
“The top one percent owns nearly $30 trillion of assets while the bottom half owns less than nothing.”
Adding to the mountain of statistical evidence showing the severity of U.S. inequality, an analysis published Friday found that the top one percent of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989 while the bottom 50 percent lost $900 billion.
Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing think tank People’s Policy Project, broke down the Federal Reserve’s newly released “Distributive Financial Accounts” data series and found that, overall, “the top one percent owns nearly $30 trillion of assets while the bottom half owns less than nothing, meaning they have more debts than they have assets.”
The growth of wealth inequality over the past 30 years, Bruenig found, is “eye-popping.”
“Between 1989 and 2018, the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion,” Bruenig wrote. “The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.” www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/14/eye-popping-analysis-shows-top-1-gained-21-trillion-wealth-1989-while-bottom-half?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2UokDITKHoXPYpi7bYQNBjM8g-8D-Jv6FRBkaLjl7fytwk2qcvkX4Srk4
Ford workers break their silence on faulty transmissions: ‘Everybody knew’
“Good people tried to make it work. But you can’t violate the laws of physics,” engineer says of defective transmission.
They knew the truth and kept quiet.
Their secret wasn’t a secret at all in engineering, product development, research, design or manufacturing within Ford Motor Co., say seven current and former employees who worked to develop and launch the Fiesta and Focus cars that would become known for defective automatic transmissions.
“My hands are dirty. I feel horrible,” said an engineer who played a key role in developing the popular compact cars.
“You think of the gentleman who stood up for the space shuttle Challenger, saying if they launched that with the ice on it that it’s going to blow up. Well, these kinds of really horrific technical errors seemed to pass right through at Ford on this project,” the engineer said. www.freep.com/in-depth/money/cars/ford/2019/12/05/ford-focus-fiesta-dps-6-transmission-problems/4243091002/
Goldman Sachs says that every one of its private equity clients is preparing for recession
- Goldman Sachs’ private equity clients are not feeling good about the global economy.
- According to the bank’s chairman of investment banking, “Every one of our clients is focused on being prepared for a recession.”
- Alison Mass, speaking to Bloomberg TV, said that the bank’s clients are creating checklists so that they could cope if a recession strikes.
- Goldman’s own economists are more bullish on the economy in 2020, seeing a 20% chance of recession.
- View Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/goldman-sachs-says-private-equity-clients-are-preparing-for-recession-2019-12-1028740448
Kushner’s Felon Father Back at Helm of New York Empire With Two Fellow Inmates
It’s hard to find work right out of prison. But Avram Lebor and Richard Goettlich walked from their Alabama penitentiary into top jobs at the real estate company then run by Jared Kushner, now President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. The two men, convicted in separate sprawling fraud schemes, were hired several years ago by his father, Charles Kushner, who had been locked up in the same federal prison with them.
As 36-year-old Jared Kushner settles into a White House role that includes personnel decisions and Middle East peace, the most extensive organizational experience he has to draw from is his lifetime at the closely held family real estate company, where his father is once again deeply involved. It’s a business where, like Trump’s, family and loyalty loom large. Management at Kushner Cos. has been mercurial, its feuds bruising and its political influence considerable. Recent joint ventures and investments expanded by Jared could lead to opportunities for unseen influence. Given the company’s history, ethics lawyers say, such opportunities merit close watching. www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-27/jared-kushner-s-felon-father-brought-two-fellow-inmates-into-company?fbclid=IwAR0bjnXNsmX8MGypJiWBXWTIcc_iBT_DCL0Orp_dIxERGB_kuOQNJs5id7w
The Obamagogues reportedly just bought a $12 million house on Martha’s Vineyard. Take a look inside the 7-bedroom waterfront mansion.
- Barack and Michelle Obama just dropped $11.75 million on a house on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, Julia Wells reported for the Vineyard Gazette.
- The seven-bedroom home is almost 7,000 square feet and sits on 29 waterfront acres, according to the listing.
- It comes with an outdoor swimming pool, sun decks and balconies, a boathouse, and private beachfront.
- The home’s asking price was originally $14.85 million.
- The former first family has spent summer vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, which is a popular summer destination for the wealthy.
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
How America Tortures (The Seton Hall Study)
Americans may find it difficult to acknowledge that top officials in the West Wing of the White House and the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice orchestrated and poorly oversaw a horrific torture program that was responsible for the detention and interrogation of countless detainees. Seventeen years ago, the White House and the Department of Justice created a torture program and, through a series of legal memoranda, attempted to immunize Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents from criminal liability. The language was formal, legalistic, antiseptic, and euphemistic. That, combined with vague definitions of the techniques, disguised the extent of abuse the memos were approving and/or permitting. For many years, virtually no attention has been paid to the specific details of the techniques that were used in America’s name and too little investigation has gone into the specific uses that the CIA made of these techniques.
This report presents the specific details of what the torture memos permitted and most importantly, how the techniques were implemented and applied. This report is based on information from many of those who were tortured under the program, including Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Abu Zubaydah), as well as many CIA cables, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, and numerous other government documents.
The torture memos described the ten techniques that were designed and approved to torture one person, Abu Zubaydah. All ten techniques were used upon him and, while he has not been allowed to speak, some of his descriptions of those experiences were declassified. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3494533
What the C.I.A.’s Torture Program Looked Like to the Tortured
Drawings done in captivity by the first prisoner known to undergo “enhanced interrogation” portray his account of what happened to him in vivid and disturbing ways.
One shows the prisoner nude and strapped to a crude gurney, his entire body clenched as he is waterboarded by an unseen interrogator. Another shows him with his wrists cuffed to bars so high above his head he is forced on to his tiptoes, with a long wound stitched on his left leg and a howl emerging from his open mouth. Yet another depicts a captor smacking his head against a wall.
They are sketches drawn in captivity by the Guantánamo Bay prisoner known as Abu Zubaydah, self-portraits of the torture he was subjected to during the four years he was held in secret prisons by the C.I.A.
Published here for the first time, they are gritty and highly personal depictions that put flesh, bones and emotion on what until now had sometimes been portrayed in popular culture in sanitized or inaccurate ways: the so-called enhanced interrogations techniques used by the United States in secret overseas prisons during a feverish pursuit of Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Trump Orders Navy to Strip Medals From Prosecutors in War Crimes Trial
President Trump intervened Tuesday once again on behalf of a Navy SEAL who was charged but acquitted of war crimes in the death of a captured Islamic State fighter in Iraq, ordering the military to punish the prosecutors who tried the case in the first place.
Mr. Trump angrily lashed out at the Navy for awarding commendations to prosecutors in the murder trial of Edward Gallagher, a former special operations chief, and he publicly instructed Pentagon officials to strip them of the medals. His announcement was a remarkable rebuke by a president of his own Navy leadership.
“The Prosecutors who lost the case against SEAL Eddie Gallagher (who I released from solitary confinement so he could fight his case properly), were ridiculously given a Navy Achievement Medal,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Not only did they lose the case, they had difficulty with respect to information that may have been obtained from opposing lawyers and for giving immunity in a totally incompetent fashion.” www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/us/politics/trump-navy-seal-war-crimes.html
West Virginia corrections employees suspended after Nazi salute photo
Officials are investigating a group of West Virginia corrections trainees who were photographed seemingly making a Nazi salute in their uniforms.
A blurred copy of the photo was provided to NBC News by the state’s Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety on Thursday. The group, Basic Training Class 18, appeared to be graduating based on dates in the picture’s caption.
They’re seen making the salute under a sign that reads “Hail Byrd.” News of the photo was first reported by NBC affiliate WSAZ.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said in a statement that he ordered the termination of any state employees to be found involved in the photo. www.nbcnews.com/news/military/west-virginia-corrections-employees-suspended-after-nazi-salute-photo-n1096856?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR1Z6pklan108zcPx0N9nqbNyvXt0oxeh6n9ZtBjyOEgm1OiyniUQ5YvSyc
Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi’s India
The Prime Minister’s Hindu-nationalist government has cast two hundred million Muslims as internal enemies.
…During the dispute over Babri Masjid, Ashis Nandy, a prominent Indian intellectual, began a series of interviews with R.S.S. members. A trained psychologist, he wanted to study the mentality of the rising Hindu nationalists. One of those he met was Narendra Modi, who was then a little-known B.J.P. functionary. Nandy interviewed Modi for several hours, and came away shaken.
His subject, Nandy told me, exhibited all the traits of an authoritarian personality: puritanical rigidity, a constricted emotional life, fear of his own passions, and an enormous ego that protected a gnawing insecurity. During the interview, Modi elaborated a fantastical theory of how India was the target of a global conspiracy, in which every Muslim in the country was likely complicit. “Modi was a fascist in every sense,” Nandy said. “I don’t mean this as a term of abuse. It’s a diagnostic category.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india
U.S. official: Saudi who attacked naval base hosted mass shooting watch party
The Saudi student who fatally shot three people at a U.S. naval base in Florida hosted a dinner party earlier in the week where he and three others watched videos of mass shootings, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on Saturday.
One of the three students who attended the dinner party videotaped outside the building while the shooting was taking place at Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity after being briefed by federal authorities. Two other Saudi students watched from a car, the official said.
The official said 10 Saudi students were being held on the base Saturday while several others were unaccounted for. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/06/pensacola-florida-naval-air-station-shooting/40771745/
The Condemned
Forty-three years after the Supreme Court reversed course and reinstated the death penalty, reliable data on the individuals sent to death row is maddeningly difficult to obtain. The Intercept set out to compile a comprehensive dataset on everyone sentenced to die in active death penalty jurisdictions since 1976. Our findings show that capital punishment remains as “arbitrary and capricious” as ever. theintercept.com/series/the-condemned/?utm_source=The+Intercept+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5bafedf00c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_12_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e00a5122d3-5bafedf00c-128828597
Watch 4 Decades of Inequality Drive American Cities Apart
The biggest metropolitan areas are now the most unequal.
In 1980, highly paid workers in Binghamton, N.Y., earned about four and a half times what low-wage workers there did. The gap between them, in a region full of I.B.M. executives and manufacturing jobs, was about the same as the gap between the workers near the top and the bottom in metro New York.
Since then, the two regions have diverged. I.B.M. shed jobs in Binghamton. Other manufacturing disappeared, too. High-paying work in the new knowledge economy concentrated in New York, and so did well-educated workers. As a result, by one measure, wage inequality today is much higher in New York than it is in Binghamton. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/upshot/wealth-poverty-divide-american-cities.html
Solidarity for Never
Ex-UAW VP Ashton pleads guilty to wire fraud, money laundering
Retired United Auto Workers Vice President Joe Ashton pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to crimes connected with a years-long bribery and kickback scandal within the country’s largest union.
Ashton entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The government’s recommended sentence is 30-37 months. The crimes carry a maximum penalty of up to 20 years and 10 years, respectively. Both have maximum fines up to $250,000.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 3….
Ashton is the 11th person convicted of a crime connected to an ongoing federal investigation into the union, and the highest-ranking UAW officer convicted in the corruption scandal. The investigation has charged 12 other people and implicated the past two presidents in financial corruption schemes and raised the possibility that the union would submit to federal monitoring.
Ashton, who retired from the UAW in 2014, was appointed as the union’s representative on the board of General Motors Co.
He was charged three months after The Detroit News identified him as the unnamed union official accused in a federal criminal complaint of demanding $550,000 in kickbacks and bribes from vendors.
In return, a list of vendors that included Ashton’s personal chiropractor received contracts to produce more than $15.8 million worth of union-branded trinkets, including backpacks, jackets and commemorative watches.
The criminal case ends a period of prolonged uncertainty for Ashton, and leaves former UAW presidents Gary Jones and Dennis Williams as two big targets of the federal investigation. They are accused in court documents of participating in a conspiracy that embezzled more than $1.5 million from the union. Neither has been charged. www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/12/04/uaw-scandal-joe-ashton-convicted/2608221001/
Above, mysterious fire at UAW destroyed lots of records….www.autonews.com/manufacturing/uaw-headquarters-staff-relocated-after-fire
Federal oversight of UAW an option, top prosecutor says (RG says, Destroy the UAW–seize Solidarity House)
Detroit — Federal oversight of the United Auto Workers is an option once government investigators determine the depths of corruption within one of the nation’s largest and most powerful unions, U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider told The Detroit News.
In a rare interview about the years-long UAW scandal, Schneider said government oversight of the UAW is a possible solution to reforming a union plagued by what his team of prosecutors has called a culture of corruption among senior leadership. Prosecutors could seize control by filing a civil racketeering lawsuit, a move that could cost the union tens of millions of dollars, impose prolonged federal oversight and involve replacing labor leaders.
Schneider also revealed his displeasure with the UAW’s lack of cooperation, disclosed that a four-year investigation is perhaps only halfway completed, and said he was unimpressed with reform efforts announced in mid-November by acting UAW President Rory Gamble. His comments marked the first time Schneider has addressed the possibility of imposing federal oversight of the UAW, a move the government made 30 years ago in settling a racketeering lawsuit against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. “That shouldn’t be taken off the table,” Schneider told The News www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/12/02/racketeering-lawsuit-an-option-to-take-control-of-uaw-prosecutor-says/4308210002/
Spy versus Spy
A Sleeper Agent Wanted to Cooperate. He Just Got 40 Years in Prison.
A man from Lebanon believed he would get leniency for providing information to the F.B.I. Instead, he was arrested on terrorism charges.
He was a Lebanese immigrant named Ali Kourani, and he told the F.B.I. that he was a sleeper agent for a terrorist organization. He said he was scouting targets in New York City for possible attacks, including airports and government offices, while leading a second life as a telephone salesman and family man.
The plan, he told agents, was for him to become a suicide bomber.
Over a series of five meetings, Mr. Kourani believed he was offering this and other information to the F.B.I. in exchange for leniency from the United States government and protection for his family.
But instead, the F.B.I. arrested him in June 2017 and charged him with eight counts related to terrorism. In May, a Manhattan jury convicted Mr. Kourani on all charges — largely as a result of what he had told the agents.
On Tuesday, in federal court in Manhattan, Mr. Kourani was sentenced to 40 years in prison, less than the life sentence prosecutors had sought but more than his lawyer said he deserved. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/nyregion/new-york-terrorist-hezbollah.html
Suspicious: A Biography of Master Spy Richard Sorge
The Magical Mystery Tour
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifd0yVPW9Rs
Portrait of London Bridge Killer, in His Own Words
The extremist behind last week’s London Bridge attack wrote letters to the authorities from jail, claiming that he was on a “new path” and was “learning to become a good Muslim.”
“I have learnt that many of my past beliefs came from my misinterpretations of Islam,” the young man wrote to his probation officers. “There were many gaps in my knowledge but now I am on new path and am learning to become a good Muslim. I would like a chance to prove to you that I will not cause harm to nobody in our society.”
Last Friday, the man who wrote those words, 28-year-old Usman Khan, traveled unsupervised from his probation hostel in England’s West Midlands to London, where he carried out a deadly terrorist attack after having participated in a conference on prison rehabilitation.
A week after the attack, questions remain about why he was allowed to travel by himself to the conference and, more broadly, about Britain’s rehabilitation system and the process of releasing convicted terrorists back into society.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that 74 people who had been jailed for terrorism offenses and released early would have their license conditions reviewed, and he vowed that serious offenders would no longer obtain early release www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/europe/london-bridge-attack-extremist.html
Ex-Alabama youth evangelist pleads guilty to 28 sex crimes
A prominent former Alabama youth evangelist pleaded guilty on Monday to sexually abusing six boys between the ages of 12 and 16, according to reports.
Acton Bowen, the 39-year-old founder of Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries, pleaded guilty to a total of 28 criminal counts in both Jefferson and Etowah counties after the young victims told investigators they were sexually abused in myriad ways by the Alabama native, AL.com reports. nypost.com/2019/12/02/ex-alabama-youth-evangelist-pleads-guilty-to-28-sex-crimes/
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Depraved Ruling Elites File: ‘I Don’t Know Prince Andrew,’ Trump Says. Photos Say Otherwise.
Speaking to reporters in London, President Trump denied knowing Prince Andrew, despite having been photographed with him on several occasions.
President Trump denied on Tuesday that he knew Prince Andrew, the son of Queen Elizabeth II who has become entangled in sexual abuse accusations against the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“I don’t know him, no,” the president told reporters gathered in London for the NATO summit.
But photographs show they have met several times over the past 20 years, and as recently as June when the prince, known formally as the Duke of York, hosted a breakfast meeting for Mr. Trump during his state visit to Britain. Those photos were posted on the prince’s Twitter account.
Mr. Trump also toured Westminster Abbey in London with the prince, and they were photographed laughing together.
Earlier photos also show Mr. Trump together with the prince, the queen’s third child.
Mr. Trump and his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss — now the first lady — were seen with the prince at least twice in 2000: once at the opening of Hudson Hotel in New York and, more intimately, at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/world/europe/donald-trump-prince-andrew.html
The hopeless hunt for Ghislaine Maxwell
The whereabouts of 57-year-old socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – the woman at the heart of the sex allegations against Prince Andrew – remains a complete mystery.
It has been another uncomfortable week for Prince Andrew with further revelations of his socialising with the disgraced and deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein, more calls for the Prince to go to the US and testify in sex trafficking cases being heard against Epstein, and a BBC Panorama interview with Virginia Giuffre, who’s alleged she was procured, persuaded by Ms Maxwell to have sex with Prince Andrew.
Ms Maxwell was constantly at Jeffrey Epstein’s side and had allegedly found young women for Epstein.
Among this past week’s claims is that in 2015 Prince Andrew emailed her seeking information on Virginia Giuffre, Virginia Roberts, as she was then.
The world’s media sleuths are trying to find Ms Maxwell, so far without success.
One of them is Mark Edmonds, a regular writer for publications like Tatler, the Sunday Times and the Financial Times.www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018725922/the-hopeless-hunt-for-ghislaine-maxwell
Prince Andrew’s Accuser Takes Her Case to the BBC
For the first time, Virginia Roberts Giuffre told a British television audience about a trip she took to London in 2001, during which, she says, she was ordered to have sex with Prince Andrew.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre recalled a whirlwind trip to London with her employer, the financier Jeffrey Epstein, when she was 17. It began at a townhouse where Prince Andrew was talking about his ex-wife, the Duchess of York. It moved on to a club, where she said she and the prince danced, and he sweated profusely. And it ended when, she said, she was ordered to have sex with him.
“It was disgusting,” Ms. Giuffre said in an interview broadcast Monday by the BBC. “I sat there in bed and felt horrified and ashamed.”
“I had just been abused by a member of the royal family,” she continued. “These powerful people were my chains.” www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/world/europe/prince-andrews-Virginia-Roberts-Giuffre-bbc.html
Spotify: Best of the Stones
LeDuff In Detroit: Dan Gilbert’s Hudson’s Hole, Forgery-Gate, Murder of 3-year-old Detroit boy
Jurors remain out in a Detroit murder trial in the death of a 3-year-old who was on his way to see Elmo.
Little Christian Miller was struck dead by a bullet last January on the Southfield Freeway while in his carseat on the way to “Sesame Street Live” at the Fox Theater.
It is alleged that Derrick Durham Jr., annoyed by the driving of the boy’s aunt, shot into the car, killing the toddler.
The case made national headlines, but no media member has attended the trial. So much for “Working for You.”
Waiting in the Wayne County Court hallway, Joanna Hunter, a cousin of the victim, struck up small talk.
“What do you think of the Kid Rock video,” asked Hunter, a 39-year-old black woman. “I watched it twice. It didn’t really sound racist to me. I think it was a way for Ilitch to kick his restaurant out of Little Caesar’s Arena. I heard the food here was terrible,” she said.
“You want to know what is racist,” she added. “Ilitch being able to pull money out of the city’s schools to build that arena and make himself richer.” www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/23867/leduff_dan_gilbert_s_hudson_s_hole_forgery-gate_murder_of_3-year-old_detroit_boy?fbclid=IwAR2kujhrCfaO7UicTYp1ujH3jUSrryd4MOgvlX0fWaJgzU31rTCmFLyZ6dU
So Long
RIP Fred Hampton: a Black Visionary Assassinated by the FBI
Fifty years ago this week, a squad of Chicago police officers killed Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a pre-dawn raid on the apartment where they were sleeping. In the decades since, a revealing body of evidence has emerged showing that Hampton was the victim of a political assassination, sanctioned at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
The story matters today, but not because the FBI still engages in assassination. The Bureau targets so-called “Black Identity Extremists” on flimsy grounds, but there’s no evidence that it has killed any of them. Indeed, FBI director Christopher Wray says new agents are required to study COINTELPRO precisely to learn what not to do.
What Wray prefers not to tell his employees or the public is that one of his predecessors, J. Edgar Hoover, instigated the murder of a promising African-American political leader, and got away with it. Hampton’s murder was a textbook example of how U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies robbed the country of hope and peaceful change and were never held accountable. www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/04/rip-fred-hampton-a-black-visionary-assassinated-by-the-fbi/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBU4j-HU4wQ
The Warning in Gary Webb’s Death
From the Archive: Modern U.S. history is more complete because journalist Gary Webb had the courage to revive the dark story of the Reagan administration’s protection of Nicaraguan Contra cocaine traffickers in the 1980s. But Webb ultimately paid a terrible price, as Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry (Originally published Dec. 9, 2011)
Every year since investigative journalist Gary Webb took his own life in 2004, I have marked the anniversary of that sad event by recalling the debt that American history owes to Webb for his brave reporting, which revived the Contra-cocaine scandal in 1996 and forced important admissions out of the Central Intelligence Agency two years later.
But Webb’s suicide on the evening of Dec. 9, 2004, was also a tragic end for one man whose livelihood and reputation were destroyed by a phalanx of major newspapers the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times serving as protectors of a corrupt power structure rather than as sources of honest information.
In reviewing the story again this year, I was struck by how Webb’s Contra-cocaine experience was, in many ways, a precursor to the subsequent tragedy of the Iraq War.
In the 1980s, the CIA’s analytical division was already showing signs of politicization, especially regarding President Ronald Reagan’s beloved Contras and their war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and the U.S. press corps was already bending to the propaganda pressures of a right-wing Republican administration.
Looking back at CIA cables from the early-to-mid-1980s, you can already see the bias dripping from the analytical reports. Any drug accusation against the leftist Sandinistas was accepted without skepticism and usually with strong exaggeration, while the opposite occurred with evidence of Contra cocaine smuggling; then there was endless quibbling and smearing of sources. consortiumnews.com/2012/12/09/the-warning-in-gary-webbs-death-2/?fbclid=IwAR2cashiAIpiblpFa5Qbw81023XTTJydqjSaa51KorUwWCfAopHjWZbU1ZA