We Say Fight Back!

Rise of the Armed Left

Threats from the right inspire a new left-wing gun culture.

Your Commander-in-Chief Is Lying to You: Veterans Issue Open Letter to Active Duty US Soldiers

All Active Duty Soldiers:

Your Commander-in-chief is lying to you. You should refuse his orders to deploy to the southern U.S. border should you be called to do so. Despite what Trump and his administration are saying, the migrants moving North towards the U.S. are not a threat. These small numbers of people are escaping intense violence. In fact, much of the reason these men and women—with families just like yours and ours—are fleeing their homes is because of the US meddling in their country’s elections. Look no further than Honduras, where the Obama administration supported the overthrow of a democratically elected president who was then replaced by a repressive dictator.

These extremely poor and vulnerable people are desperate for peace.  Who among us would walk a thousand miles with only the clothes on our back without great cause? The odds are good that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. lived similar experiences to these migrants. Your family members came to the U.S. to seek a better life—some fled violence. Consider this as you are asked to confront these unarmed men, women and children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. To do so would be the ultimate hypocrisy.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, in part because it has exploited countries in Latin America for decades…

By every moral or ethical standard it is your duty to refuse orders to “defend” the U.S. from these migrants. History will look kindly upon you if you do. There are tens of thousands of us who will support your decision to lay your weapons down. You are better than your Commander-in-chief. Our only advice is to resist in groups. Organize with your fellow soldiers. Do not go this alone. It is much harder to punish the many than the few.

In solidarity,

Rory Fanning
Former U.S. Army Ranger, War-Resister
Spenser Rapone
Former U.S. Army Ranger and Infantry Officer, War-Resister  www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/01/your-commander-chief-lying-you-veterans-issue-open-letter-active-duty-us-soldiers?fbclid=IwAR3MZuwtxtfGiUXktnlzngqP9yxIinjLZ_fuqmgpkeDjrjLVW6u-VlqDVts

www.facebook.com/NBCBayArea/videos/779091792429850/?t=7

Erasing Economics and Economic Policy from Politics: The Race and Xenophobia Sideshow

Adolph Reed, who researches race and politics, warns that “identitarian” politics can conceal the structural inequities of capitalism.

Lynn Parramore: As the elections approach, media pundits seem focused on the idea that the country is facing a racist and xenophobic breakdown promoted by Trump and the GOP. The Democrats posit themselves as the answer to this threat. What do you make of this framing?

Adolph Reed: Immediately after Trump’s victory, I was particularly struck by the debate over how to interpret the victory. In my mind, this was always a debate over how to respond strategically and point towards the midterms and 2020.

The debate got condensed around the notion that Trump’s victory shows or has spurred a complete breakdown in the country around race and gender and homophobia and nativism. A lot of scholars have done intellectual work purporting to show that the white vote for Trump in 2016 was a reflection of status anxiety rather than economic anxiety. It boggles my mind that people think that it’s possible to separate the two in a neat way. But the big problem all along for those who wanted to push the white supremacist line is those 7-9 million people who voted for Obama and later for Sanders, then voted for Trump. How does racism explain that?

I had a very sharp and studious black undergraduate student wholly inside a race-first understanding of politics. When I mentioned the white people who had voted for Obama once if not twice who also voted for Trump, his response was, well, of course you can’t say that voting for Obama means that you’re not a racist. I said, yes, that’s true, but by the same token you can’t say that voting for Trump means you are a racist, right? Which they don’t want to accept.

LP: Thomas Ferguson, Ben Page, and their colleagues have just published a study for the Institute for New Economic Thinking revealing the intertwining social and economic factors that drove Trump voters in the Rust Belt, including those who switched from Obama to Trump. They find that long-term anguish over trends like globalization, imports, and slow growth were strong motivating factors that Trump was able to exploit by drumming up, for example, fear of immigrants. Yet many seem unwilling to confront this complexity. Why is that?

AR: My concern, and I’ve gotten more emphatic about it over time, is that if this argument is fundamentally an argument about the strategic direction that progressives and/or the Democratic Party should follow, then it’s really a debate about whether we try to mobilize around a politics that challenges the economic inequalities that are reproduced and intensified under capitalism, and especially neoliberal capitalism, or we pursue a response that accepts the logic of those inequalities and seeks to mobilize around a notion of fairness within that regime of fundamental inequality.

From that perspective, the notion that the fault line in left-of-center politics now is between people who take a class perspective and those who take an identity-based perspective miscasts the actual tension. The identity position is itself a class position. It’s just a position of a different class from the working class.

LP: An essay you wrote in the ‘90s criticized black public intellectuals who had become skilled, as you put it, at soothing white liberals in retreat from challenging economic unfairness by making them feel better about being on the side of “the black community” on matters of race. Are black pundits still doing this kind of soothing? I’m thinking of those who have tended to embrace neoliberal politics represented by figures like Hillary Clinton, who was offered as a presidential candidate in 2016.

AR: Yes, and what a sour offering that was. I think one difference between now and the time I wrote the essay is that the internet has democratized—and not in a good way—access to the racial voice or race spokesman profession.  www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/11/erasing-economics-economic-policy-politics-race-xenophobia-sideshow.html

How Thirsty and Stupid Do Stacey Abrams, Lucy McBath, and Most Progressive Democrat Congressional Candidates Think We Are?

The midterm elections are a week away and I can’t find anybody worth voting for. I live in Georgia, the 6th congressional district, where Stacey Abrams is the Democrat running for governor, and Lucy McBath is the Democrat congressional candidate. McBath is running four points behind Republican incumbent Karen Handel. Stacey Abrams has been polling only two points behind Brian Kemp well within the polling margin of error for months now.

For those outside Georgia, if Donald Trump is some kind of horrible bad grandpa Brian Kemp is an especially mean uncle out of Athens GA, normally a pretty liberal college town. Kemp ran commercials in which he blew up stuff, fired up his big chainsaw to cut regulations, waved his guns that nobody better try to take, and slammed the door of that big truck he’s got in case he has “…to round up some criminal illegals and take ‘em home myself.”

Republican Kemp has been GA Secretary of State, in charge of Georgia’s elections for eight years now, during which time he’s struck about a million or so mostly minority voters off the rolls, interfered with voter registration drives, and caused several tens of thousands of other new voter registrations to simply disappear. This is standard Republican practice across the country because the numbers of their dependable vote are shrinking. So Republicans try to hold down the vote in Democratic areas, and Democrats try to maximize registration and turnout.

6th district congresswoman Karen Handel was Brian Kemp’s predecessor in the office of Georgia Secretary of State for eight years. In that capacity she disappeared her own share of minority votes and voters. She also had a hand in cooperation with the crooked Democrat who held that office before her, in bringing Diebold’s faith based voting machines into Georgia.

The Democrat running against Handel is Lucy McBath. Her son was murdered in Jacksonville FL back in 2012 for the crime of playing his music too loud, and since then McBath has become a professional gun control advocate. The big problem though, with the professional gun control advocates are completely unable to point the way to a less violent society without telling the truth about America’s present and past. The narrative the professional gun control advocates spin around gun control generally ignores the official violence of police and the military. In the real world, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution was written to guarantee that every able bodied white man was armed and ready to take part in slave patrols or Indian killing and land stealing militias. When chattel slavery mostly ended and the theft of the continent was complete, the gun industry had to find other markets and other reasons for existing, and some of what they came up with included the myths about civilians with pistols being able to hold the government accountable and more.

An even bigger problem with Lucy McBath is that like many 2018 so-called progressive Democrat congressional candidates this year, McBath is running for US Congress without a single word to say about foreign policy, except a vow of support for the apartheid state of Israel. She’s a candidate for US Congress without a word to say about the four or five countries we’re bombing  www.blackagendareport.com/how-stupid-do-stacey-abrams-lucy-mcbath-and-most-progressive-democrat-congressional-candidates

Teachers at four more Chicago charter schools join strike threat

Teachers at four Chicago International Charter School locations voted on Friday to authorize a possible strike, joining the Acero charter school teachers who voted in favor of a strike threat on Tuesday.

Of those who voted, 96 percent cast ballots to authorize a strike, according to the Chicago Teachers Union. The teachers voting work at CICS’ ChicagoQuest, Northtown, Wrightwood and Ralph Ellison campuses.

The CICS teachers have not announced a strike date, nor have the Acero teachers who are threatening to hit the picket line at 15 schools. If the strikes happen at all 19 schools, more than 700 teachers would walk off the job, affecting more than 8,000 students.

Like the Acero teachers, CICS teachers say they’re fighting for pay raises, smaller class sizes, improved special education resources and better wages for paraprofessionals. The union has slammed the charter operator for “bloated, wasteful management fees and salaries” that they say takes up one in every three dollars in funding received by CICS.

The starting salary for a CICS teacher is about $44,000, about $8,000 less than starting Chicago Public Schools teachers make. Civitas Education Partners, the management firm in charge of hiring and contract negotiations for CICS, says it agrees “our teachers should make more money” and that they’ve proposed a 4.4 percent salary increase.  chicago.suntimes.com/news/charter-school-teachers-chicago-international-acero-authorization-vote/

Reports: Strike cancellations hit Detroit’s Westin Book Cadillac hard

Union officials claim that the strike at downtown Detroit’s Marriott-operated Westin Book Cadillac — now in its fourth week — has had a devastating impact on business in the upscale hotel with many guests and some sports teams  canceling reservations to avoid crossing their picket line.

The Book Cadillac’s nightly occupancy rate, normally about 90 percent, has collapsed to between 30 and 40 percent, union members said.

“Everybody’s been cancelling,” said Zinnia Patcas, an organizer with Unite Here AFL-CIO Local 24, the union representing the hotel workers. “It’s dead in there.”

Late Friday, sources told the Free Press there could soon be a resolution to the labor disagreement that would end the strike that began Oct. 7.

The workers have been seeking better wages and benefits from Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel company.  www.freep.com/story/money/2018/11/02/westin-book-cadillac-detroit-strike-cancellations/1849867002/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

(Vacillating Reactionary) Diane Ravitch’s Rant Is the Best Endorsement I Could Ask For

University classes are set to be given a futuristic spin by letting lecturers appear as hologram-like apparitions beamed in from afar.

Imperial College London will show off the technology at a special event later on Thursday before deploying it more widely.

It believes it will be the first academic body to do so regularly.

A similar effect has been used to animate images of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and other celebrities.

Imperial will initially limit its use to its Business School’s activities but expects the technology could eventually become common.  “The alternative is to use video-conferencing software but we believe these holograms have a much greater sense of presence,” Dr David Lefevre, director of Imperial’s Edtech Lab, told the BBC.

“The lecturers have a high-definition monitor in front of them which is calibrated so they can point at people and look them in the eye. They can really interact.”

More than one person can also appear at a time.

Indeed, at the Women in Tech event on Thursday, a panel will feature two guests whose images will be transmitted from the US alongside a further two actually on stage. All four are expected to be able to intercommunicate.  www.bbc.com/news/technology-46060381?fbclid=IwAR3GaeSK-DIDnx12kvPCJG9wtu9GjX7Dd7F7rIJjxCMDtmrNV3SPRQaBq94

 

LAUSD to pay $5 million after girl was

sexually abused in middle school

New Mexico

Charter school founder sentenced to 5 years for fraud

LBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – After more than five hours in court Friday morning, a judge has sentenced the founder of Southwest Learning Centers to five years in prison.

Members of the Southwest Learning Center were happy to hear the judge’s sentence Friday.

The president of one of the schools tells News 13 he still does not believe five years is enough for all the damage Scott Glasrud has done.

“After 14 years of doing this, I don’t know if he knows another way of life. Personally, I don’t feel that he’s learned a lesson at all,” says Larry Kennedy, President of SAMS Academy.

Glasrud pled guilty to stealing millions of dollars from the school and state to feed his lavish lifestyle.

He used the money to buy expensive cars like a Maserati, boats and a $10,000 square-foot home.

Last year, he took a plea deal on charges of theft, fraud and lying to investigators that would put him behind bars for four to five years.

During his sentencing Friday morning, no cameras were allowed inside the courtroom, but Glasrud gave a tearful testimony saying he was sorry for what he has done and has no excuse for his behavior, except that he was greedy.

Larry Kennedy, the president of SAMS Academy, says he did not buy Glasrud’s act.

“I felt he was putting on a show. He put on a show for the schools for 14 years. He’s very good at it. I really feel that’s what he did,” says Kennedy.  www.krqe.com/news/new-mexico/charter-school-founder-who-embezzling-millions-sentenced-to-60-months/1520248302?fbclid=IwAR2SVkzN4-7cVkCx745xfucGRBsMRQ_HCkoOxKVKEu86QsisOiVHFcy0rXY

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

China’s commander-in-chief has ordered the military command overseeing the South China Sea to prepare for war

• Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the Southern Theater Command to prepare for war during an inspection last Thursday.
• The command oversees the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise.
• A Chinese destroyer confronted a US Navy warship conducting a freedom-of-navigation operation near the Spratly Islands at the end of September, nearly causing a collision.   www.businessinsider.com/chinas-president-orders-military-to-prepare-for-south-china-sea-war-2018-10

NATO war games: Technology changing strategies

Norway is hosting the largest NATO war games since the Cold War.

The Norwegians are also playing a leading role in developing new technologies to keep soldiers alive on the battleground – including robotics.  www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/nato-war-games-technology-changing-strategies-181030111806562.html

U.S. Navy’s Costliest Carrier Was Delivered Without Elevators to Lift Bombs

The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets.

Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems — the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.

ISIS gunmen kill 40 US-backed fighters in eastern Syria

One American Killed, Another Wounded, in Afghanistan After Fifth Insider Attack in Four Months

One U.S. service member was killed Saturday and another was wounded apparently by a member of the Afghan military. The insider attack — the fifth in the past four months — occurred in the in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where U.S.-led military coalition is headquartered.

The attacker was a reportedly a member of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and quickly killed by other Afghan forces, according to a statement released by the coalition. The two service members were evacuated to nearby Bagram Airfield, where the wounded soldier is now in stable condition.

Neither service member has been identified, and details of the attack have yet to be released. So it’s not immediately clear if the insider attack involved a Taliban sympathizer, a personal dispute or some other misunderstanding.

The apparent shooting comes as Afghan forces, backed by NATO advisers and air power, struggle to contain the Taliban and other armed insurgents despite 17 years of continuous war. Part of the onslaught has been a disturbing trend of insider attacks that, in the past, bred intense mistrust between Afghan and NATO forces, including U.S. troops. time.com/5444058/american-killed-insider-attack-afghanistan/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPJgeg6hpA

Fair Warning, More lies about Vietnam:

In Country: The War in Vietnam – 1968

 

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Billionaire Bonanza 2018: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century U.S.

Wealth in the United States is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands, a trend we tracked in two previous Billionaire Bonanza reports in 2015 and 2017. This year’s edition, Billionaire Bonanza 2018: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century U.S.,  focuses primarily on “dynastic” wealth that has passed from one generation to another within families. Our analysis is based on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 wealthiest individuals in the United States and the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances.

Our findings show a deeply unbalanced economy:

• Three dynastic wealth families—the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars—have seen their wealth increase nearly 6,000 percent since 1982. Meanwhile, median household wealth over the same period went down by 3 percent.
• These three wealth dynasties own a combined fortune of $348.7 billion. That’s more than four million times the median wealth of U.S. families.
• The dynastic wealth of the Walton family grew from $690 million in 1982 (or $1.81 billion in 2018 dollars) to $169.7 billion in 2018, a mind-numbing increase of 9,257 percent.
• Three individuals—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—still own more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined.
• A third of the members of the Forbes 400 own fortunes derived from companies that were founded by earlier generations.
• The 15 wealthiest multi-generational dynastic families on the Forbes 400 own a combined $618 billion. Their parents or other ancestors founded all of the companies from which their wealth is derived.
• The Forbes 400 combined own $2.89 trillion dollars, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 64 percent of the United States. It’s also more than the GDP of Britain, the 5^th-largest economy in the world. Just 45 individuals own half of this wealth.
• The median family in the United States owns just over $80,000 in household wealth. The richest person in the United States (and the world), Jeff Bezos, has accumulated a fortune nearly 2 million times that amount.
• The Bezos fortune expanded by $78.5 billion just in the last year to $160 billion. Even at the recently increased wage of $15/hour, a full-time Amazon worker would need to toil for 2.5 million years to generate this much money.   inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-bonanza-2018-inherited-wealth-dynasties-in-the-21st-century-u-s/

Goldman Sachs Ensnarled in Vast 1MDB Fraud Scandal

The bank has spent years trying to rehabilitate a reputation that was severely damaged by allegations of misconduct and putting profits ahead of clients during the financial crisis. Goldman executives today take pains to emphasize the good that their bank does in societies around the world — efforts that could be eroded by the bank’s role in the sprawling Malaysian scandal.

The lengthy court filings by prosecutors in Brooklyn paint an ugly picture for Goldman, which was instrumental in raising money for the fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB. According to court documents, the former bankers paid bribes and kickbacks to foreign leaders to secure $6 billion in bond underwriting deals for Goldman that generated $600 million in fees.   www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/business/goldman-sachs-malaysia-investment-fund.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

GM Offers Buyouts to 18,000 Workers, Months After Warning About Layoffs Over Trump’s Tariffs

In an effort to save money, General Motors is reportedly offering buyouts to salaried employees in North America who have 12 or more years of experience.

The voluntary severance program was announced shortly after the company’s third-quarter earnings report where it reported an operating profit of $2.5 billion and 10.2% profit margins in North America, The Detroit News reports.

18,000 employees are reportedly eligible for the offer. They have until Nov. 19 to choose to opt in.

The company has a cost-saving target for the move but has not disclosed that target nor what it is offering employees who decide to opt for the buyout package. After the Nov. 19 deadline, it will evaluate whether layoffs are needed.

In June, GM warned the Trump Administration that its steel tariff might potentially lead to fewer jobs and lower wages for Americans working for car companies in the states. Trump had also suggested imposing a 25% tariff on imported cars, a move analysts thought was intended to pressure Mexico into renegotiating the NAFTA trade pact. At the time, GM said such a move would likely lead it to raise prices or move its manufacturing facilities elsewhere. An aide to President Trump dismissed GM’s concerns as “smoke and mirrors.”

It’s possible the buyouts are a way for GM to prepare itself for potential future business-damaging orders from Trump. In a statement, GM said that the company and economy are strong, and it’s making the move to get “ahead of the curve.”http://fortune.com/2018/10/31/gm-offers-buyouts-after-trump-tariffs/?fbclid=IwAR2ZZ_t6I1bqx1WSwEq7bDix3lU8Ua8q3G6Sm7BlcfDUvcfTE9w9Uy9L7cU

U.S. government posts widest deficit since 2012

The U.S. government closed the 2018 fiscal year $779 billion in the red, its highest deficit in six years, as Republican-led tax cuts pinched revenues and expenses rose on a growing national debt, according to data released on Monday by the Treasury Department.

he U.S. government closed the 2018 fiscal year $779 billion in the red, its highest deficit in six years, as Republican-led tax cuts pinched revenues and expenses rose on a growing national debt, according to data released on Monday by the Treasury Department.      New government spending also expanded the federal deficit for the 12 months through September, the first full annual budget on the watch of U.S. President Donald Trump. It was the largest deficit since 2012.

The data also showed a $119 billion budget surplus in September, which was larger than expected and a record for the month. A senior Treasury official said the monthly surplus was smaller when adjusted for calendar shifts.

Economists generally view the corporate and individual tax cuts passed by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress late last year and an increase in government spending agreed in early February as likely to balloon the nation’s deficit.  www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-budget/u-s-federal-government-posts-widest-deficit-since-2012-idUSKCN1MP28I?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

Amid the frequent reports of how Detroit is experiencing a revitalization, there is less attention given to how the city is grappling with being under-populated, making it difficult to deliver municipal services to sparsely inhabited areas. One city official has put forth what he sees as a solution: turn off water in certain neighborhoods to force residents to relocate.

Detroit has a population of about 670,000 people, down from 2 million in the 1950s. The majority-Black city is 139-square miles, of which 24 square-miles are vacant land. Now, the cash-strapped city must contend with how—or if—to provide services to the entire municipality.

“Areas that are so sparsely populated, perhaps the neighborhood should be shut down and just move people out? We think so,” Gary Brown, director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, told Bridge Michigan, a Detroit journalism cooperative.

Brown said this in response to a report that Detroit has commissioned a five-year study to help prioritize repairs to the water system—a study that officials have acknowledged may help determine whether the city will offer to pay to move residents out of some neighborhoods and shut water lines.

Mayor Mike Duggan’s chief of staff issued a statement saying that he does not agree with the relocation plan, although Brown said Duggan was “interested” in it.   www.colorlines.com/articles/detroit-city-official-wants-force-relocation-shutting-peoples-water?fbclid=IwAR1MNhwAEUToYsNIsKJ9gsWN9ywVuEw9AWZszL8gDrtE_NFkIeLuTRKddL8

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

Fascists Will Fester Until We Get Rid of Capitalism

Ana Curcio interviews Alvaro Reyes about Charlottesville, white supremacy, and contemporary challenges for politics in the US. Curcio is a militant scholar and coordinator of Commonware.org . Reyes is an author and activist with El Kilombo, in Durham, North Carolina.

Ana Cucio: Could you briefly explain the events that took place in Charlottesville and help put them in context?

Alvaro Reyes: As some of your readers may know by now, on August 11 and 12, an alliance of some 500 white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in what they called a “Unite the Right” rally. They gathered to protest the planned removal of a monument of Robert E. Lee, the general that led the slave-holding confederate states’ army during the U.S. civil war. “Unite the Right” organizers have since hailed this rally as the largest gathering of white supremacists in decades.

In response, many hundreds of antifascist counter-protesters also converged on the city to repudiate what they rightly denounced as “racist terror.” On the afternoon of the 12th, James A. Fields, a neo-Nazi associated with the white supremacist group “Vanguard America,” attacked the antifascists by plowing his car into the crowd (a tactic that we now know right-wing organizations had been promoting online for the last few months), injuring 35 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Fueled by anger over Heyer’s death, people across the country have since demanded that confederate monuments be removed from their cities. On Monday, August 14, here in Durham, North Carolina, protestors took the streets and pulled a statue of a confederate soldier off its pedestal, bringing it crashing to the ground  www.blackagendareport.com/fascists-will-fester-until-we-get-rid-capitalism

U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the
Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It.

For two decades, domestic counterterrorism strategy has ignored the rising danger of far-right
extremism. In the atmosphere of willful indifference, a virulent movement has grown and metastasized.

The first indication to Lt. Dan Stout that law enforcement’s handling of white supremacy was broken came in September 2017, as he was sitting in an emergency-operations center in Gainesville, Fla., preparing for the onslaught of Hurricane Irma and watching what felt like his thousandth YouTube video of the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va. Jesus Christ, he thought, studying the footage in which crowds of angry men, who had gathered to attend or protest the Unite the Right rally, set upon one another with sticks and flagpole spears and flame throwers and God knows what else. A black man held an aerosol can, igniting the spray, and in retaliation, a white man picked up his gun, pointed it toward the black man and fired it at the ground. The Virginia state troopers, inexplicably, stood by and watched. Stout fixated on this image, wondering what kind of organizational failure had led to the debacle. He had one month to ensure that the same thing didn’t happen in Gainesville.

Before that August, Stout, a 24-year veteran of the Gainesville police force, had never heard of Richard Spencer and knew next to nothing about his self-declared alt-right movement, or of their “anti-fascist” archnemesis known as Antifa. Then, on the Monday after deadly violence in Charlottesville, in which a protester was killed when a driver plowed his car into the crowd, Stout learned to his horror that Spencer was planning a speech at the University of Florida. He spent weeks frantically trying to get up to speed, scouring far-right and anti-fascist websites and videos, each click driving him further into despair. Aside from the few white nationalists who had been identified by the media or on Twitter, Stout had no clue who most of these people were, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else in law enforcement.

There were no current intelligence reports he could find on the alt-right, the sometimes-violent fringe movement that embraces white nationalism and a range of racist positions. The state police couldn’t offer much insight. Things were equally bleak at the federal level. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/magazine/FBI-charlottesville-white-nationalism-far-right.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

The Marine Corps Wants To Put Freakin’ Lasers On Vehicles For Crowd Control

The Marine Corps is on the hunt for a vehicle-mounted laser system that can produce “sustainable and controllable plasma at range” for the purposes of crowd control, according to A U.S. government solicitation.

This may sound tame, but it’s not. The new solicitation builds on previous efforts the Marine Corps were able to achieve a variety of deeply uncomfortable, if non-lethal, effects, including “a sufficient level of thermal discomfort on human skin” at a range of up to 30 meters and a sonic component that delivers an acoustic at a sound level of a passing Formula 1 race car at full throttle.  taskandpurpose.com/marine-corps-lasers-crowd-control/?bsft_eid=84147d9c-0e0c-4afc-a55d-6073a249a29f&bsft_pid=1774b261-ed32-4186-a96a-3522e766afe4&utm_campaign=tp_daily_tuesday_pm&utm_source=blueshift&utm_medium=email&utm_content=tp_daily_pm_ricks&bsft_clkid=b5cc7961-746a-47bb-b136-ee6c4d591f24&bsft_uid=7c674a6c-ae11-4ec4-84f1-aef0c34e44e5&bsft_mid=264204b7-47d0-46a4-99e2-8763dfe18f37&bsft_pp=2

Jair Bolsonaro Is Elected President of Brazil. Read His Extremist, Far-Right Positions in His Own Words.

…every major political institution has been increasingly discredited as Brazil has spiraled deeper and deeper into a dark void. And from the abyss emerged a former army captain and six-term congressman from Rio de Janeiro, Jair Bolsonaro, with the slogan “Brazil above everything, God above everyone,” and promises to fix everything with hard-line tactics.

Seven years ago, Bolsonaro was a punchline for the political humor program CQC, where he’d make outrageous statements. A former presenter, Monica Iozzi, said they interviewed him multiple times “so people could see the very low level of the representatives we were electing.” Now, it’s Bolsonaro who is laughing, and Iozzi says she regrets giving him airtime. Riding the wave of public discontent, Bolsonaro campaigned against the Workers’ Party, corruption, politicians, crime, “cultural Marxism,” communists, leftists, secularism, and “privileges” for historically marginalized groups. Instead, he favored “traditional family values,” “patriotism,” nationalism, the military, a Christian nation, guns, increased police violence, and neoliberal economics that he promises will revitalize the economy. Despite his actual political platform being short on specific proposals, the energy around his candidacy was enough to win the presidency and turn his previously insignificant Social Liberal Party into the second-largest bloc in Congress.  theintercept.com/2018/10/28/jair-bolsonaro-elected-president-brazil/

Equating rocks with rifles, Trump proposes radical new rules of engagement for troops along border

A Customs and Border Protection helicopter circled the skies near the bridge that connects the United States with Mexico in Progreso, Tex., on Thursday.CreditCreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/border-army-troops-migrant-caravan.html

Fascism is Real, But the “Resistance” is Mostly Fake

Fascism is always a danger under capitalism, with its frequent crises and endemic white supremacy, but the phony “resistance” is only concerned about electing Democrats.

“The history of capitalism begins in the holds of slave ships.”

With last weekend’s election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, white men’s parties now lead governments that preside over the two largest concentrations of Black people outside Africa. Both Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are widely described as fascists — which is correct. But it does not follow that everyone who calls such men “fascists” is a friend of Black and other oppressed people and, therefore, worthy allies in a “united front” of “resistance.”

Who are the fascists, and where do they come from? More precisely, what are they defending?

It is generally understood among the Left that fascists are the political products of capitalism in crisis, reactionaries that promise to restore order by purging the society of unwanted peoples and ideologies. Their targets depend on the particularities of the society in crisis: in Germany, it was the Jews and the Bolsheviks, enemies that Hitler conflated as one and the same. In the post-Reconstruction southern region of the United States, whites imposed the world’s first totally racially regimented society, one that would serve as a model and inspiration for emerging fascists for generations to come. The Jim Crow order was heralded as a new day for the white working man, who would no longer have to compete with Black labor — enslaved or free — but instead join in the profits (and priceless white social and political privilege) from Black people’s super-exploitation.

“U.S. Jim Crow would serve as a model and inspiration for emerging fascists for generations to come.”

In Latin America, a native-born white elite lorded it over the surviving descendants of the original inhabitants and the millions of slaves imported to the “New World” by European colonialists — especially to the colossus, Brazil. Although the post-slavery racial order was never as regimented as in the U.S. — indeed, racial ambiguity was encouraged among the dark lower classes, to keep them divided — the people at the top always knew they were “white” (Portuguese), and defended the racial hierarchy with horrific force, when necessary.

The New World and the old were united by globalizing capital as most of the planet was divided between the western European powers, with the fiercely racist U.S. unilaterally declaring a kind of sovereignty (Monroe Doctrine) over the south of the hemisphere, a region where the racial pedigrees of even the elites were suspect to North American eyes — “mongrels,” the white southern politicians called them.

At the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 the industrial capitalist powers divided the world among themselves, with their respective colonial empires reserved for the “home” country’s super-exploitation — globalization made formal. The newly unified German state stepped forward to claim its rightful portion of the spoils — its White Right. In 1898, the United States, which had been represented in Berlin, seized Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to become a full-fledged imperial power. Not long afterward, President Teddy Roosevelt sailed his “Great White Fleet ” around the world to show that the U.S. was not only a great power, but a major defender of white “civilization.”

“The United States seized Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to became a full-fledged imperial power.”  www.blackagendareport.com/fascism-real-resistance-mostly-fake

Republican mailer depicts a Jewish candidate gripping cash and grinning. The GOP is no longer defending it.

A campaign mailer sent out by a Republican candidate for a state Senate seat in Connecticut is being widely denounced for using anti-Semitic tropes in an illustration of his Democratic challenger, who is Jewish.

The advertisement, which was sent out by Republican Ed Charamut’s campaign, depicts his challenger, Democratic state Rep. Matthew Lesser, holding a wad of cash in front of him, with a crazed look in his eyes.

The mailer drew wide outrage after its existence was reported on Tuesday, as concern about rising anti-Semitism runs high in the wake of the massacre of 11 Jewish congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The embrace of racially charged policies and rhetoric by Republicans, from President Trump to candidates across the country, has emboldened white-supremacist groups, and, critics say, raised questions about the party’s intent.  www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/31/republican-mailer-depicts-jewish-candidate-gripping-cash-grinning-gop-is-defending-it/?utm_term=.b11a65430b80

Nigerian Army Uses Trump’s Words to Justify Fatal Shooting of Rock-Throwing Protesters

The Nigerian Army, part of a military criticized for rampant human rights abuses, on Friday used the words of President Trump to justify its fatal shootings of rock-throwing protesters.

Soldiers fired this Monday on a march of about 1,000 Islamic Shiite activists who had blocked traffic on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja. Videos that circulated on social media showed several protesters hurling rocks at heavily armed soldiers who then shot fleeing demonstrators in the back.

The Nigerian military said three protesters were killed, but the toll appears to have been much higher.

Amnesty International and leaders of the protest said more than 40 people were killed at the march and two smaller marches, with more than 100 wounded by bullets. A Reuters reporter counted 20 bodies at the main march.  www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/world/africa/nigeria-trump-rocks.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

 

Solidarity for Never

UAW spurns union labor to build home for ex-president

The United Auto Workers is using nonunion labor to build a lakefront home for retired President Dennis Williams, a money-saving move prompted by bids showing the project would have cost more than $1.3 million.

Interviews with contractors and bid documents help pinpoint the original cost of a construction project being built amid an FBI investigation into whether union leaders’ have spent membership dues and money from Detroit’s automakers on personal luxuries.

Instead of using more expensive union laborers, the UAW has hired a nonunion electrician, a nonunion excavation company and is in talks to hire a nonunion plumber to work on the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath, 1,885-square-foot stone home at the UAW Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway. The 1,000-acre retreat in northern Michigan is financed with interest from the union’s $721 million strike fund, which is bankrolled by worker dues.

“This changes it from a story of suspected misuse of union funds, which some union members have a surprising tolerance of, to a story of hypocrisy,” Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor, said.  “A union that is in favor of union labor until it costs more is the same as any company that fights against union labor.”

UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said the union is using members of the United Steelworkers, who work full time at the education center, as general contractor on the Williams home.

“The UAW always hires union members and contracts with union contractors when available,” Rothenberg wrote in an email to The News.

The decision to hire nonunion workers was made after the UAW education center solicited bids last year to build the home on the edge of Black Lake, a half-hour drive south of Cheboygan.  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/11/01/uaw-uses-non-union-labor-construction-home-resort-spot/1811055002/

Labor Department Will Enforce Stricter Financial Disclosure Regulations on Public-Sector Unions

Bloomberg Law reports that the U.S. Department of Labor will issue new regulations this year that will, among other things, require all National Education Association and American Federation of Teacher state affiliates to file detailed financial disclosure reports.

We reported on this back in August, and it’s no surprise that NEA will challenge the new regulations in court, as it has done in the past.

“This is the third time in the past year the U.S. Department of Labor has posted a notice that it intends to try to resurrect the Bush-era proposal on intermediate labor organizations,” said Alice O’Brien, NEA’s general counsel. “On behalf of its affiliates, the National Education Association challenged the Bush-era proposal, which was subsequently rescinded, and NEA stands ready to do so again.”

What O’Brien fails to mention is that after five years of litigation the DC District Court ruled in favor of the Labor Department in 2009. The rules were rescinded because Barack Obama was elected President.

NEA will have to hope a similar strategy will work this time, drawing out court proceedings until a new, more labor-friendly President is elected.  www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2018/10/29/labor-department-will-enforce-stricter-financial-disclosure-regulations-on-public-sector-unions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Intercepts+%28Intercepts%29

This Road Just Got a Lot Harder’: Teachers’ Unions Hit With New Round of Lawsuits

Months after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a hefty blow to teachers’ unions, a rash of new lawsuits has emerged that could further damage these labor groups.

Across the country, teachers’ unions are facing more than a dozen legal challenges from two major right-leaning sources in the wake of the Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 decision, which ended public-sector unions’ ability to collect agency, or fair share, fees. Those fees were charged to workers in some states who chose not to become full members of their unions. They were meant to cover the cost of collective bargaining.

The decision, issued in June, is expected to significantly dent teachers’ unions’ treasuries and membership numbers. (The extent of the fallout is still to be determined.) But as it turns out, that lawsuit was only the beginning of the unions’ struggles.

There are two main strands to this new wave of anti-union lawsuits: 1) challenges to time-limited windows during which teachers can opt out of membership payroll deductions, and 2) pushes for teachers to be reimbursed for the agency fees they paid before the Janus decision.

“Everybody knows where the end of this litigation road is, which is the Supreme Court,”  www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/10/15/this-road-just-got-a-lot-harder.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58641493&U=1666178&UUID=1077d6867cfb1e9eaaaa4a81b0c3ab4b

Spy versus Spy

Torturer and CIA director listens to audio of journalist’s alleged murder

CIA Director Gina Haspel listened to audio purportedly capturing the interrogation and killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, giving a key member of President Trump’s Cabinet access to the evidence used by Turkey to accuse Saudi Arabia of premeditated murder.

Haspel, who departed for a secret trip to Turkey on Monday, heard the audio during her visit, according to people familiar with her meetings.

President Trump, who has made Saudi Arabia a central pillar of his Middle East strategy, has grown increasingly skeptical of the kingdom’s claim that Khashoggi’s death was a “rogue operation” that occurred after a fistfight broke out in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.  www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-director-listens-to-audio-of-journalists-alleged-murder/2018/10/24/b07af451-7422-4fea-b0cd-ae9ad70df3e2_story.html?utm_term=.aced73fd3465

youtu.be/y4D96fPl_hI

The Magical Mystery Tour

New York Bishop Is Accused of Sexual Abuse

www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/roman-catholic-church-sex-abuse-cases

50 Years Later, a Victim of Ireland’s ‘Laundries’ Fights for Answers

For 30 years, she struggled with secret memories of beatings and other abuses, as well as most of the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: chronic anxiety, social isolation, compulsive behavior, depression, flashbacks, nightmares and suicidal thoughts.

Finally, 20 years ago, convinced the pain would never subside unless she acted, Elizabeth Coppin, now 69, walked into a police station in her native County Kerry, Ireland. She filed a complaint relating to the 12 years she had spent in an Irish “industrial school,” one of a now-defunct network of state-funded orphanages and reformatories run by religious orders on behalf of the state.

Her statement, which the on-duty police officer typed up and signed, was accompanied by two letters that Mrs. Coppin had written in support of her case.

“I need answers,” one of them pleads, adding: “The emotional scars I carry with me today are still very real. Please check out everything, please don’t be put off by the nuns. Check everything, dig deep, especially records.”  www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/world/europe/elizabeth-coppin-magdalene-laundries-abuse-ireland.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FRoman%20Catholic%20Church%20Sex%20Abuse%20Cases&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection

Huge protests in Pakistan over Christian woman released after eight years on death row for blasphemy

Protesters have taken to the streets after a Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan on blasphemy charges was acquitted.

The country’s top court ordered Asia Bibi should be released after the evidence against her was deemed insufficient.

In response to the verdict, supporters of Islamist political party Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) condemned the ruling and blocked roads in major cities, pelting police with stones in the eastern city of Lahore.

Ms Bibi, a farm labourer and 47-year-old mother-of-four, angered fellow workers, who were Muslim, by taking a sip of water from a cup she had got for them.

They refused to use a cup from which a Christian had drunk, and demanded she convert to Islam.

When she refused, it prompted a mob to later allege that she had insulted the prophet Mohammed. She was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death in 2010.

Ms Bibi and her family have always maintained her innocence and denied that she made any derogatory remarks about Islam.

The case has been a source of division within Pakistan, where two politicians who sought to help Bibi were assassinated.

Following the verdict street protests and blockades of major roads spread, paralysing parts of Islamabad, Lahore and other cities.  One of the TLP’s top leaders called for the death of the judges involved in making the decision to overturn Ms Bibi’s conviction.

“They all three deserve to be killed. Either their security should kill them, their driver kill them, or their cook kill them,” TLP co-founder Muhammad Afzal Qadri told a protest in Lahore.

“Whoever, who has got any access to them, kill them before the evening.”

The TLP was founded out of a movement supporting a bodyguard who assassinated Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer for advocating for Ms Bibi in 2011.

Federal minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, was also killed after calling for her release.  www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/asia-bibi-case-protests-pakistan-blasphemy-christian-woman-released-supreme-court-a8610786.html

Blasphemy is well-attested in the Old Testament in passages like Leviticus 24:10-16, which were rooted in the fundamental command of Exodus 22:28 that states, “You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.” 

Such blasphemy was subject to punishment by death. For, to revile God (or those whom he appointed) was to call into question the integrity and holiness of God himself. Such a disposition could not be tolerated in the community. Disobedience in the community threatened the very fabric of the covenant people. Like the sin of Achan (recorded in Joshua 7), sin does not occur in isolation from others in the community. When one member of the community sins, the whole corporate body suffers. The same was true of blasphemy. If one member of the community was allowed to revile God or his appointed leaders, the whole community would be put at risk. God would not allow such behavior because it threatened the purpose of the people of Israel among the nations. https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/blasphemy-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-so-deadly.html

Catholic Social Services Wants a License to Discriminate Against LGBTQ Foster Families

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court will hear oral argument in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case of great concern to advocates for children in foster care, the LGBTQ community, faith leaders, and states that are committed to ensuring non-discrimination in government programs. The ACLU is arguing in court for the Support Center for Child Advocates and Philadelphia Family Pride, who have intervened in this case to advocate on behalf of children in the foster care system in Philadelphia and families headed by same-sex couples who seek to care for them.

In this case, a foster care agency — Catholic Social Services (CSS) — is asking the court to force the city of Philadelphia to enter into a taxpayer-funded contract with the agency to provide public child welfare services, despite CSS’s unwillingness to comply with the city’s non-discrimination requirement that applies to all agencies.

Philadelphia, like many states and cities across the country, insists that the agencies it hires to find families for children in foster care accept all qualified families. The city prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and other characteristics unrelated to the ability to care for a child.  www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/lgbt-parenting/catholic-social-services-wants-license-discriminate-against-lgbtq?fbclid=IwAR1SVq0h6ATrbXH9C9Xl38DIpHoL_fD7yYpRxuY89PNzYIX8ZCzuMAJgAbg

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

See Jimi Hendrix in the background!

www.facebook.com/happymagtv/videos/1934823166532494/?t=66

San Diego sunset

 

www.facebook.com/thedodosite/videos/1045700908897917/?t=24

So Long

Victor Marchetti, 88, Dies; Book Was First to Be Censored by C.I.A.