We Say Fight Back!

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After months of strikes, France’s Macron looks to break rail unions

PARIS (Reuters) – In early April, thousands of French rail workers filled a square outside one of Paris’s largest stations at the start of a strike against President Emmanuel Macron’s reforms.

Letting off smoke flares and blowing whistles, they chanted slogans against the president’s plans to shake up the heavily subsidized and indebted state-run SNCF rail company.

More than two months later, on day 27 of a rolling strike meant to cripple rail traffic on 36 days over three months, not a single striker could be seen when Reuters went to the same square in front of the Gare de l’Est.

The strike is still going on: about half of all national and regional rail services were again halted for two days last week. Gare de l’Est was so empty that birdsong could be heard in the main concourse.

But Macron, who said from the beginning that he would not back down, has all but won the war over the SNCF, delivering a powerful blow in his campaign to modernize France’s labor force and end a long economic malaise.

Public support for the strike has fallen, according to opinion polls, and nearly two-thirds of the public back Macron’s proposals to remove some of the SNCF employees’ benefits and cut the company’s debt, a poll by research group Elabe showed.

Commuters have found ways around the strike, using car-sharing apps, working from home or cycling to work when stoppages hit for two days every five. Fewer train drivers, signal workers and conductors are now taking part in the strike.  www.reuters.com/article/us-france-unions-macron/after-months-of-strikes-frances-macron-looks-to-break-rail-unions-idUSKBN1J717F

12,000 United Teachers of LA rallied. They have been without a contract for a year.

America, the UnBeautiful: Otay Mesa Protest, Border Patrol Harassment, & Children in Cages

In what is likely the first in a series of immigration-related protests, several hundred people came to a rally outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center on Sunday demanding the release of asylum seekers fleeing gang violence and state repression.

They were taking up the cause of asylum seekers who –for the most part–have voluntarily turned themselves at the border. Little did the protesters know their own participation in the event would lead to harassment by border authorities.

Protests are spreading nationwide in the wake of horrific reports of abuse and mistreatment by immigration agencies. People are speaking out against a President who refers to immigrants as ‘animals’ and implements policies inflicting punishment on people whose rights to due process are rapidly vanishing.

Conditions in the Otay Mesa private prison were addressed on Sunday as letters were read from the four dozen or so people held in the prison since arriving in Tijuana six weeks ago as part of a caravan from Central America.

From the Union-Tribune coverage:

“They force us to work for six hours (a day) for a payment of a $1.60,” said David Obud, with immigrants’ rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, translating one of the letters. “They threaten to report us to judges when we don’t want to work. They threaten … to damage our cases.

“When we ask for medical attention, they do not treat us, and many of us have pains and wounds,” he added.  sandiegofreepress.org/2018/06/america-the-unbeautiful-otay-mesa-protest-border-patrol-harassment-children-in-cages/

Defiant French rail union to continue strike action into summer

Laurent Brun, the head of CGT rail workers said: “We will continue through the month of July. For how long? We will see. It’s not a question of just stopping at a certain date, so long as the government is trying to force its way through,” he said.

Those reforms were adopted by parliament this week.

The rolling rail strikes which have been held by the CGT and three other unions since early April were due to end on June 28th.

It is unclear as of yet whether the other trade unions will also decide to continue their industrial action. Brun added that his union would try to find a way of alleviating the cost of lost pay for strikers, after 30 separate days of disruption.

While the two days strikes, held every five days, have been gradually weakening over the weeks, they have still been causing disruption to rail services, especially regional TER and Intercité trains.  www.thelocal.fr/20180615/breaking-french-rail-union-to-continue-strike-action-into-july

The Records of the State Workers Organizing Committee, the fighting group of workers who founded principled unionism in state government now on file here

reuther.wayne.edu/files/LR001948.pdf

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www.facebook.com/laterceracom/videos/10155746399008583/?t=26

American Rage

by William Hawes

There is a certain sense of smallness, as well as meanness at the heart of American life. It typically gets projected onto the villain of the day, and for the last two years, it has happened to be Donald Trump. The president’s vile beliefs and behavior are not in question, but what is more interesting to me is just how much Trump has become a convenient scapegoat. There are millions of Trumps in this country, as seen by his approval ratings hovering around 40% through his entire presidency.

The undercurrents of seething rage, anger, racism and sexism are not exclusively a Republican or conservative trait. Millions turned out for Clinton either in spite of, or ignorance of, her bellicosity towards Iran, Russia, and Syria. Clinton’s resentment of the “basket of deplorables” is nothing new, either. Obama admitted as much when referring to voters clinging to their guns and religion. Thus, the polarization of US politics and culture continues, framed as a binary between coastal liberals and heartland conservatives.

This narrative, set by mainstream media, is very convenient for capital. Wealth has skyrocketed for elites yet most people’s economic status has become increasingly precarious. The restructuring of the economy towards the service sector, the internet, and finance, insurance, and real estate corporations has hollowed out the middle classes. Urban cores have gentrified and the rich see or hear little of ordinary people’s problems. As real estate prices rise the working class must commute longer and longer from the suburbs to downtown, increasing traffic, stress, and reliance on cars.

Therefore the petit-bourgeois and white working class have seen either a stagnation or loss in their salaries and wages. Relatively speaking many are well-off (the average Trump voter was above the median income) but many deluded citizens see their conditions as deteriorating and react hysterically.  www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/12/american-rage/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

School is out!

 

Proposed Michigan social studies standards erase references to gay rights, Roe v. Wade, and KKK

San Diego Unified wasn’t the only San Diego County school district this year to lose out on thousands of dollars in funding to help homeless students because of a flawed grant application.

Records inewsource obtained from the California Department of Education show two elementary school districts — South Bay Union and La Mesa-Spring Valley — also submitted incomplete applications. In all, 15 districts and county education offices in the state had their applications disqualified because of missing signatures, copies or documents.

South Bay Union failed to submit a complete fact sheet, which would have detailed information such as the number of schools in the district, its homeless student population and the amount of funding requested. La Mesa-Spring Valley, in a consortium with the Santee School District, did not provide two copies of the original application as required by the state.

inewsource reported last month that the Education Department disqualified San Diego Unified’s request for up to $750,000 over three years because the application was missing a signature from a finance official.  inewsource.org/2018/06/15/san-diego-county-school-districts-homeless-funding/

A valedictorian went off-script to talk about sexual assault. Then her school cut her mic. (video within)

A California high school cut its valedictorian’s microphone when her speech deviated from the expected script during a graduation ceremony last Saturday.

When the student later posted an “uncensored” version of the speech, it contained a line alleging members of the school community mishandled cases of sexual misconduct.

Petaluma High School senior Lulabel Seitz was the first member of her family to graduate high school and did so as her class’ valedictorian, The (Santa Rosa, Calif.) Press Democratreported.

Perseverance was a theme in her graduation speech.

But video from the event shows that about four minutes into her speech, her mic was cut.

“Because the class of 2018 has demonstrated time and time again that we … are not too young to speak up, to dream and to create change. Which is why, even when some people on this campus, those same pe —”  www.freep.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/09/petaluma-high-school-cuts-valedictorians-mic-over-sexual-assault-graduation-speech/687648002/

 

Syracuse Fraternity Suspended for ‘Extremely Racist’ Video (abolish the Greek System)

Syracuse University suspended an engineering fraternity on Wednesday after footage surfaced of members speaking and acting in ways “that are extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist and hostile to people with disabilities,” the university’s chancellor said.

The video — which The Daily Orange, Syracuse’s independent student newspaper, obtained and published after the university declined to release it, citing its continuing investigation — includes a pledge “to always have hatred in my heart” for African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews, all of whom are referred to with slurs. One member of the fraternity, Theta Tau, tells Jews to get in the shower, an allusion to the Nazis’ gas chambers. The video, about six minutes long, also shows members of the fraternity laughing while pretending to masturbate each other and perform oral sex.

…Theta Tau is not the first fraternity, nor Syracuse the first university, to be involved in a scandal involving racism or sexism. In 2015, Sigma Alpha Epsilon closed its University of Oklahoma chapter — and two students were expelled — after members were filmed chanting that African-Americans would never be allowed to join. Last year, Cornell University’s Psi Upsilon chapter was shuttered after people believed to be involved in it attacked a black student. And just last week, California Polytechnic State University suspended Lambda Chi Alpha after a member was pictured in blackface.  www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/nyregion/syracuse-fraternity-suspended.html

DEVOS OPENS INQUIRY INTO USC OVER FORMER GYNECOLOGIST ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ABUSE: The Education Department announced on Monday a “directed, systemic investigation” in connection with the University of Southern California’s handling of reports of sexual misconduct by a former gynecologist. The department’s Title IX investigation will “assess USC’s response to reports and complaints of sexual harassment during pelvic exams as early as 1990 that were not fully investigated by the University until spring 2016,” the announcement said.

— The gynecologist, Dr. George Tyndall, resigned in 2017 based on a finding by the university that his behavior “during pelvic exams was outside the scope of current medical standards and that he violated the university’s policy on harassment by making repeated sexually inappropriate remarks during patient encounters,” the department press release said, citing information provided by USC.

— More than 300 people, mostly former female patients of Tyndall’s, have come forward to USC, many with allegations of mistreatment and sexual abuse that go back decades, according to the LA Times. USC President C.L. Max Nikias resigned last month following criticism of how the university handled the case. Tyndall has denied any wrongdoing. Politico 6/12

In Name of Free Speech, States Crack Down on Campus Protests

Teachers came from as far as Los Angeles for free instructions Sunday in the Morena District. However their lesson was not in the classroom, but instead on the gun range.

Their interest in learning how to shoot was sparked by the latest school shootings in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas, which have prompted calls to allow teachers to carry firearms in the classroom.

San Diego County Gun Owners, a pro-Second Amendment political action committee, hosted the free “Train a Teacher Day” for any employee affiliated with a public or private school.

Workshops were held throughout the day on buying guns, assault rifles versus sporting rifles, handguns, shotguns and gun-free zones.

The event took place at Discount Gun Mart located at 1510 Morena Blvd.  www.kusi.com/teachers-get-free-firearms-training-from-san-diego-county-gun-owners/

Bronx school paints over famous New Deal-era mural

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.facebook.com/armytimes/videos/10156683784954497/?t=13

Read the full text of the Trump-Kim agreement here

To the Editor:

Re “American Strikes Killed Nearly 500 Civilians in ’17” (news article, June 2):

The Pentagon’s account of civilians killed by American military action is unreliable. One reason, alluded to in the article, is the blackout on civilian casualty figures for countries in which the United States conducts strikes in secret. And there are many.

While the Trump administration lists seven countries in which the United States has used or is using military force, Special Operations Command has admitted that halfway through 2017, its forces had already been deployed to 137 countries.

Another reason, rarely mentioned, is in the definition of the word “civilian.” The Pentagon seems to use the term to mean “whomever we didn’t intend to kill” rather than “what the law requires.”

This excludes people it wrongly intended to kill because of bad intelligence, false presumptions of combatant status and, most egregiously, because the United States wrongly applies law-of-war rules for killing in places where the United States is not at war.

From left: Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman al-Saud, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony of the 2018 FIFA World Cup at Luzhniki Stadium.Alexei Druzhinin/TASS via Getty Images

Millions of eyes were on Saudi Arabia Thursday morning as its team played the opening match against Russia in the World Cup.

Twitter was full of fans tweeting support for the two sides, commenting about the game, and sharing snarky memes based on an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin teasing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman after Russia scored the first goal in the match.

But while the crown prince laughed and joked with Putin in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, 2,800 miles away, Saudi-led forces were launching one of the largest attacks on Yemen since the war began in 2015.

And international monitors are warning that the assault could result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and create a humanitarian catastrophe that dwarfs anything we’ve seen so far.

Here’s why: The Saudi assault, which began Wednesday, is targeting the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, currently held by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. As much as 80 percent of the food, medicine, fuel, and other aid that enters the country comes in through the Hodeidah port.

Which means that not only are the estimated 250,000 people who live near the port at risk of losing their lives, but millions of others who depend on the aid funneled through the port will be also be endangered.

“It is the lifeline of the country,” Lise Grande, the top United Nations humanitarian official in Yemen, told the Washington Post. “If you cut that port off, we have a catastrophe on our hands.” www.vox.com/2018/6/14/17464238/saudi-arabia-world-cup-2018-yemen-war

 

Donald Trump’s New World Order

How the President, Israel, and the Gulf states plan to fight Iran—and leave the Palestinians and the Obama years behind.

..A few weeks after Trump’s Inauguration, Dermer and other Israeli officials visited the White House to share a summary of Israel’s intelligence documenting the alleged role of Obama Administration officials in the settlements resolution. The Israelis also provided the Americans, through “intelligence channels,” with some of their underlying intelligence reports on the U.S. role. (Israeli officials said that their intelligence on the Obama Administration’s alleged activities was not based on direct spying on the Americans. The United States spies on Israel, but Israel claims that it doesn’t spy on the United States. U.S. officials dispute that claim and consider Israel to be one of the United States’ biggest counterintelligence threats.)

Trump had run for office as a noninterventionist, with the slogan “America First.” “He quite honestly had very little interest in meddling in the Middle East in general and very little interest from a philosophical point of view,” a Trump confidant told me. As far as Trump was concerned, “all of this was an annoyance.” He went on, “ ‘The Sunnis, the Shias, the Jews, the Palestinians have been doing this for thousands of years, and I, Donald Trump, am not going to continue to add to the already outrageous investment of trillions of dollars in a region that breeds and funds terrorists against America while we starve our infrastructure investments at home!’ ”

With Obama finally out of the way, Netanyahu could concentrate on getting the Trump team to embrace his grand strategy for transforming the direction of Middle Eastern politics. His overarching ambition was to diminish the Palestinian cause as a focus of world attention and to form a coalition with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to combat Iran, which had long supported Hezbollah  www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/donald-trumps-new-world-order?mbid=social_facebook

www.facebook.com/filmsforaction/videos/2013334448994421/?t=54

After reading the dozens of reply comments to my original post, including those comments that personally attacked me and called me names, I can only conclude that the vast majority of those comments came from folks who are reading impaired. My original post was neither critical of the Marines nor critical of the normal noise level from military aviation activity at Miramar. I was simply observing that the noise level that night was LOUDER and LATER than usual, and that no explanation was forthcoming.

That’s all I said! So what’s up with all this knee-jerk attack dog reaction? I am a USAF veteran and a licensed private pilot. I have had a life-long interest in aviation. It follows that I have an interest in what’s going on at MCAS Miramar. That interest is further inspired by the fact that the Marines have the highest aviation accident rate of any of the military services. Several years ago a Marine F-18 fell on a San Diego house and killed two people. The official investigation found significant operational deficiencies and senior officers were reprimanded/retired.

Not that long ago a Marine F-18 pilot got confused and almost landed at Montgomery Field. Over the past several years F-18s with obvious mechanical problems have flown over my house, loud, low and slow, as they limped back to Miramar. I’ve been here 31 years. Stuff like this never happened when the Navy was running Miramar. Clearly, the Marines are aviation challenged. For those of you who won’t (or can’t) read, the Marines are moving an F-35 squadron into MCAS Miramar. That’s a brand new fighter aircraft that Aviation Week magazine has shown to be way over budget; operationally delayed and problem-plagued. Combining unproven F-35s with substandard Marine aviation operations means that the chances a Marine jet will fall on your house have now increased. So, to all you knee-jerk attack dogs and flag wavers, I hope the above facts penetrate your ideological fog just a bit. Life is a reality check. . .even The Donald will find that out. . .eventually.     nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=84690183

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Another cash-strapped NYC cabbie commits suicide

Another cash-strapped city cabby has committed suicide, this time by hanging himself in his Brooklyn apartment, The Post has learned.

Abdul Saleh, 59, is now at least the sixth for-hire driver to kill himself since November, sources say.

A roommate found him hanging by an electrical cord in his apartment in Flatlands Friday morning, said his driving partner, Qamar Chaudhary.

Saleh drove a yellow cab for 30 years, Chaudhary, 36, said.

Chaudhary said that they leased a taxi and medallion together, splitting the night and day shifts, but that within the past several months, Saleh couldn’t make the weekly lease payment.

Saleh — whom Chaudhary described as single but with family in his native Yemen — sometimes would be short by as little as $60, but for the last payment, he was $300 short.  nypost.com/2018/06/15/another-cash-strapped-nyc-cabbie-commits-suicide/

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Indicted on Fraud Charges (Looting is all there is left for them)

As of May 2016, the Theranos board of directors were:^[80]

• Elizabeth Holmes, Founder and CEO
• Riley Bechtel, former Bechtel Group CEO
• David Boies, a founder and the chairman of Boies Schiller & Flexner
• William Foege, former director U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Richard Kovacevich, former Wells Fargo CEO and chairman
• James Mattis, retired USMC General and current US Secretary of Defense
• Fabrizio Bonanni, former executive vice president of Amgen  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos

How Amazon Helped Kill a Seattle Tax on Business

• First, Judge Leon says Netflix and Hulu and Google and Facebook are major competitors to AT&T and Time Warner, but both the government and the judge fail to note that all of them depend heavily on open access to AT&T’s network to reach consumers.
• Then the government’s own expert witness bafflingly cuts down his side’s arguments repeatedly, claiming the merger will save AT&T customers hundreds of millions of dollars.
• The government does not argue that AT&T preloading its own services and content onto phones and prioritizing their traffic outside of data caps will create an unfair advantage over Netflix. In fact, Netflix is never substantively mentioned again after the introductory section.
• The judge does not understand that HBO Now and Netflix are both accessed by consumers in the exact same ways.
• Judge Leon quotes Randall Stephenson calling this a “vision deal.” Twice.
• AT&T points out — correctly! — that it wants to see more people use more data generally, so it’s fine with other video services.
• But the government never makes the argument that AT&T will use its network to prioritize Time Warner content and services over competitors.
• The judge doesn’t figure this out.
• So the government loses.  www.theverge.com/2018/6/15/17468612/att-time-warner-acquisition-court-decision   (image, Bruegel the elder, big fish eat little fish)

Power Companies’ Mistakes Can Cost Billions. Who Should Pay?

Utilities say they must be shielded from liability or the electric grid will suffer. Critics say that puts the burden on ratepayers, not investors.

After flames rolled over the hills north of San Diego and engulfed vineyards, avocado groves and neighborhoods, hundreds in this area were left with only the charred remains of homes and businesses. For many, that moment in 2007 was the beginning of a long struggle to rebuild — if they did at all — and recover their financial losses.

And they had a villain in mind: San Diego Gas and Electric, whose fallen power poles had been found partly responsible. “It wasn’t campers; it wasn’t somebody throwing a match,” said Al Ransom, a 79-year-old retired Marine who sued the utility over losses that reached into the millions. “It was the utility. That was established.”

Now the question is whether an investor-owned utility’s customers — not its shareholders — should pay for the harm in such cases. A bill before the California Legislature would give utilities the ability to pass on the costs from legal settlements to ratepayers, even if the utilities were responsible for the fire.

…Last year alone, wildfires in the state killed dozens of people, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and damaged tens of thousands of other properties — losses estimated at $12 billion in all. Neglected maintenance around power lines belonging to the state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, has been blamed for some of the fires.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday, a move that was widely expected but still marked a milestone in the U.S. central bank’s shift from policies used to battle the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession.

In raising its benchmark overnight lending rate a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 1.75 percent to 2 percent, the Fed dropped its pledge to keep rates low enough to stimulate the economy “for some time” and signaled it would tolerate inflation above its 2 percent target at least through 2020.

“The economy is doing very well,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a press conference after the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee released its unanimous policy statement after the end of a two-day meeting.

“Most people who want to find jobs are finding them. Unemployment and inflation are low … The overall outlook for growth remains favorable.”

He added that continued steady rate increases would nurture the expansion, as the Fed approaches a sort of sweet spot with its employment and inflation goals largely met, the economy withstanding higher borrowing costs and no sign of a spike in inflation.  www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-taliban/afghan-peace-council-to-hold-news-conference-amid-eid-ceasefire-idUSKBN1JD02Z

Have The Trump Tax Cuts Supercharged The Economy? The Data Don’t Show It

President Trump often says the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has provided “rocket fuel” that will supercharge the U.S. economy. He may, eventually, be right. But economic data for the first months after Congress passed the law shows no evidence of a growth surge.

Here are four figures that tell the story. In each, the dotted line represents Dec. 22, 2017, the day the TCJA became law.

The first shows the growth in real Gross Domestic Product going back to the final year of the Obama Administration. On Friday, the government reported first quarter real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent, down from 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. That’s not far from the average growth rate since the economy climbed out of the Great Recession in 2010 but well short of the 3 percent (or even 4 or 5 percent) annual rate that the president promised.

In fairness, first quarter GDP growth has consistently lagged other quarters in recent years, leading some analysts to wonder if the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the data, has struggled with seasonal adjustments. It is also important to note that this was BEA’s initial estimate of first quarter growth, a number that is likely to change as it publishes revisions in the coming months.

Beyond the top-line number, take a look at the components of GDP. Consumer spending grew in the first quarter, but at an annual rate of only 1.1 percent. That’s far more slowly than in the fourth quarter of 2017, when it rose by an annual rate of 4%–the strongest showing in three years.  www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2018/05/02/has-the-tcja-supercharged-the-economy-the-data-dont-show-it/#299846862549

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Had a Busy Year in Investing, Filing Shows

..The couple’s real estate holdings and other investments were worth as much as $811 million, up from $761 million in 2016. Their total income from the various investments was between $82 million and $222 million, compared with a range of $89 to $201 million in 2016. www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-investing.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Let Them Eat on Fancy Plates: Emmanuel Macron’s New China

The French president’s fondness for the gilt-edged aspects of his job — the fancy backdrops in chateaus, his big makeup bills, the proximity to the wealthy — is no longer a secret to his countrymen.

Emmanuel Macron dislikes being called “president of the rich,” but of all the labels affixed to him, it is the one he can’t shake.

A dust-up over the cost of the new presidential dinner service is unlikely to help.

Like presidents before him, Mr. Macron is ordering his 1,200 plates from a porcelain factory in Sèvres that is heavily subsidized by the state and has supplied France’s rulers since the 18th century.

At a moment when Mr. Macron was seen complaining in a government video that French welfare spending costs “a truckload of cash,” those fancy new plates from the Manufacture de Sèvres have caused a small ruckus.

This will not be the plain white china to be found at Ikea. Each plate requires “at least five hours of work — it’s all made by hand” by state-paid artisans, Romane Sarfati, the factory’s director-general, said in an interview Thursday. The design is based on drawings of the Élysée Palace, the seat of the French presidency, and every Élysée dinner guest will sit down to an individualized plate.

The ministry of culture is paying $58,000 to the winning artists. But that doesn’t cover the cost of the plates themselves.

“There’s no number because you can’t calculate it as though it were a business,” Ms. Sarfati said.

That hasn’t stopped some of the French press from gleefully speculating, led by Le Canard Enchaîné, the ever-impertinent satirical weekly. It came up with a total of nearly $600,000.  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-france-sevres-plates.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=20&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F06%2F14%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Femmanuel-macron-france-sevres-plates.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

Qualcomm secretly contacted U.S. overnment

Thwarting takeover, according to suit

According to a suit filed June 8 in federal court, San Diego’s Qualcomm secretly contacted the federal government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States as a ploy to thwart the hostile takeover attempt by Broadcom Ltd.

The filing is a putative class action suit allegedly representing investors who purchased Qualcomm stock between Januardy 31 and March 31 of this year. Qualcomm’s stock dropped after the committee said it opposed the takeover, according to the plaintiff, Carey Camp.

Qualcomm hurt those who bought stock in the period by not disclosing in filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had contacted the government surreptitiously, according to the suit. Ultimately, Broadcom was unable to take over Qualcomm.

Qualcomm cuts more jobs as it revamps data center efforts

Qualcomm Inc. continues to trim its workforce in San Diego and elsewhere as part of its pledge to shave $1 billion in annual costs.

The company is letting go another 61 employees in San Diego and 241 in North Carolina, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) filings with state and local employment agencies.

This new round of layoffs comes on top of job cuts in April, when Qualcomm slashed 1,231 employees in San Diego and 269 workers in Santa Clara.

The cellular technology giant promised to cut costs in January as part of its efforts to fend off a hostile takeover from rival chip maker Broadcom.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/technology/sd-fi-qualcomm-layoffsnew-20180615-story.html

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

The Sensational Idiocy of Donald Trump’s Propaganda Video for Kim Jong Un

The clip, a four-minute overture from Trump to Kim, is styled as a movie preview. A golden production logo announces this as a presentation of “Destiny Pictures,” and frequent stock footage finds the sun shining like a dime beyond the curve of a turning world. Is Trump inviting Kim to take command of Universal Pictures? Or join him in playing God? Does either of them know the difference?  www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-sensational-idiocy-of-donald-trumps-propaganda-video-for-kim-jong-un

 

KKKwame Kilpatrick (the racists’ fave mayor) asks Donald Trump for pardon, clemency

The 47-year-old disgraced mayor is serving a 28-year prison sentence for two-dozen felonies, including racketeering, extortion and wire fraud. He was recently transferred to a low-security prison in New Jersey.

Although Kilpatrick has lost all appeals on his felony convictions, he is still fighting in the courts to avoid paying $1.5 million in restitution to the Detroit water department and $7.4 million to a contractor involved in the water bid-rigging case.

If President Trump declines to grant Kilpatrick’s commutation, the former mayor will remain in prison until at least 2037.  www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/06/12/kwame-kilpatrick-doj-commutation-pardon-trump/696748002/

Surge in children separated at border floods facility for undocumented immigrants

Mexico’s government has enough evidence to charge officials connected to one of the biggest corruption scandals in Latin American history. But it is refusing to bring charges because they might hurt the governing party ahead of presidential elections, according to three people with direct knowledge of the case.

The scandal involves the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, which has admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes up and down Latin America to secure government contracts in a dozen countries. Fallout from the investigations has touched nearly every nation in the Americas where the company operated, with presidents impeached, officials arrested and national politics upended from Peru to Panama.

But there have been two notable exceptions: Venezuela, an international pariah with an authoritarian government, and Mexico, where two separate federal investigations have stagnated.

The criminal cases sit trapped in a legal limbo common to politically sensitive investigations in Mexico, where corruption remains one of the greatest impediments to the country’s fledgling rule of law.  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/world/americas/mexico-odebrecht-investigation.html

 

 

Solidarity for Never

Feds label Fiat Chrysler, UAW as co-conspirators

Heads up! This is the logical result of Partners in Production. I am one of perhaps five people who founded what is now the largest UAW local, Local 6000–state workers, not auto workers. We seized buildings, demonstrated, went to jail, trying to build an honest union. But Local 6000 now adopts the same corrupt collaborationist outlook of every US union. And it cannot be reformed. 

Filing alleges years of violations of Labor Management Relations

Federal prosecutors labeled the United Auto Workers and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV as co-conspirators in a widening corruption scandal, an allegation at odds with claims the labor union and automaker were victimized by rogue employees.

The allegation, contained in a federal court plea agreement obtained by The Detroit News on Tuesday, potentially exposes the automaker and the UAW — a cornerstone of the modern American automotive industry — to criminal charges, fines and governmental oversight, according to a former federal prosecutor.

“This does not bode well for Fiat Chrysler and the UAW,”  said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor. “All along, the union and Fiat Chrysler have portrayed themselves as victims, but this indicates the government has a different view.”

Federal prosecutors say the union and Fiat Chrysler conspired from before 2009 through 2015 to violate the Labor Management Relations Act and the automaker enabled nepotism to flourish at a blue-collar training center. The law prohibits employers or those working for them from paying, lending or delivering money or other valuables to officers or employees of labor organizations — and from labor leaders from accepting such items.

“From in or before 2009 through 2015, FCA executives conspired with one another, with FCA, with officials at the UAW, and with the UAW, to violate the Labor Management Relations Act,” prosecutors wrote in the court filing.

It’s the first time FCA and the union have been identified separately from individuals in the case. The government has not brought charges against either the company or the union.

The federal claim of a high-level conspiracy between Detroit’s No. 3 automaker and its most important union comes as 3,000 delegates and union members are gathered this week for the UAW’s quadrennial constitutional convention – and to elect a new slate of officers that has been shaped by the abrupt retirements of two would-be officers amid the ongoing federal probe.  www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2018/06/12/feds-label-fiat-chrysler-uaw-co-conspirators/695076002/

37TH UAW CONSTITUTIONAL Counterfeit CONVENTION

 

The UAW in convention voted to give its executives a massive wage increase. The salary for the UAW president will rise from $153,000 to $199,000, a $46,000 (30 percent) increase. The pay for the UAW secretary-treasurer will rise from $153,000 to $185,000, a $32,000 (21 percent) increase. UAW vice presidents will see their pay rise from $137,000 to $165,000, a $28,000 (20 percent) increase. In addition, the small army of “international servicing reps,” which include many family relatives of top UAW executives, will get a $6,000 pay raise, from $105,000 to $111,000.  uaw.org/Convention/

 

On England’s labor aristocrats, Engels wrote in 1889:

‘The most repulsive thing here is the bourgeois “respectability” which has grown deep into the bones of the workers. The division of society into innumerable strata, each with its own pride but also its inborn respect for its ‘betters’ … even Tom Mann , whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor …’

Counterfeit Unionism in the Empire

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

Why does that make better sense?

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

*Every major labor leader in the US adopts the corporate-state view of unity of Labor Bosses, Government, and Corporations in the national interest. These are hardly “labor” unions in the strict sense of the word. They are the empire’s unions. I assume the connections of labor and US intelligence are fairly well known and do not need to be explained. They are the unions of what now is, surely, the US corporate state.

*It follows that the Labor Bosses deceive people from the moment they join a union, the key lie being that none of labor’s elites believe that workers and employers have contradictory interests–the very reason most people agree to send them money.

*The remarkable salaries of US Labor Bosses (past National Education Association president Reg Weaver made $696,949 in his last year in office) come directly from the fruits of US imperialism and war. They know that. They have been war hawks for decades, using the unions to promote the Empire’s desires. They sit on the boards of the Social Democrats USA, the National Endowment for Democracy, The Albert Shanker Institute, The George Meany Center, and other fronts for the Central Intelligence Agency.  www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/23/counterfeit-unionism-in-the-empire/

 

Walter Reuther and the Decline of the American Labor Movement by Rouger Marty Glaberman

THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION’S staff union is expected to hit the picket lines this morning after breaking with NEA management over salary increases. The National Education Association Staff Organization said in a statement Monday that contract negotiations with NEA management have fallen apart in recent days.

—The staff union’s contract expired on May 31, and both parties have been negotiating since April. The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, has nearly 3 million members. About 450 people work at NEA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the National Education Association Staff Organization represents about 280 of those employees, according to an NEA spokeswoman.

— The call for a salary boost comes amid belt-tightening at NEA, which is bracing for a decision in Janus v. AFSCME , a Supreme Court case that challenges the money public unions collect from non-members to cover their share of collective bargaining costs. The staff union in a statement Monday said, “Just like NEA’s members, NEA staff has experienced a lost decade of real wage growth. Since the Great Recession, housing prices in the D.C. metro region have increased 47 percent, and the cost of living — in the most expensive city in the country — continues to rise while salaries have remained stagnant. As we have in the past, NEASO stands ready to negotiate a fair contract that is fiscally responsible but also allows our members to keep up with the rising cost of living and retire with dignity.”

— Chaka Donaldson, NEA’s interim director of human resources, said in an interview, “We’re actually at the bargaining table right now. We’re absolutely committed to the bargaining process and the rights of our staff.” Donaldson said the union must consider long-term sustainability.

NEA’s staff union members, preparing for a strike, clearly recognize the antagonism between workers and bosses, while they are, simultaneously, paid to preach”Labor Peace for Partners in Production” to school workers.

The Supreme Court could issue a verdict any day in the Janus case. As a result, NEA is preparing for a $50 million cut in expenditures over two years and estimates that its roster could be reduced by more than 300,000 if the Supreme Court’s ruling is unfavorable to unions. “This is about preparing for Janus,” she said. “This is also about preparing for the future. … It’s all about long-term strength and sustainability.”  Politico 6/12/18

The AFL-CIO, a counterfeit union of fake unions in the empire promotes witless nationalism

www.facebook.com/aflcio/videos/10156291318326153/?t=9

Opposition to Seattle’s ‘Amazon tax’ unites labor and big tech: Solidarity with Bosses

Staring down the housing crisis facing America’s prosperous cities, some Seattle leaders hoped to charge large employers for every employee working in the city. The “head tax” prompted Amazon, the city’s largest private employer and driving force behind Seattle’s booming real estate market, to stop construction at one office tower and move to shift 7,000 jobs to other locations.

Union construction workers, fearing a slump in building if Amazon gives up on the city, turned out in force against the measure…

“Pending the outcome of the head tax vote by City Council, Amazon has paused all construction planning on our Block 18 project in downtown Seattle and is evaluating options to sub-lease all space in our recently leased Rainier Square building,” Amazon vice-president Drew Herdener said by email.

Monty Anderson, executive secretary of the Seattle Building & Construction Trades Council, said he was concerned that the tax would stifle the city’s Amazon-driven building boom, which has made Seattle the nation’s construction crane capital since July 2016.

“The ability of us to work is based on companies wanting to come here and build. That’s just a fact for us,” said Anderson, who leads a collection of trade unions representing 10,500 workers.  www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/13/opposition-to-seattle-tax-proposal-unites-labor-and-amazon

Federal prison workers protest in Victorville, saying the transfer of detainees creates a dangerous situation (paying the working class to jail (and unionize) the others of the working class

Spy versus Spy

genuine briefing photo

De-Briefing Academics: Unpaid Intelligence Informants

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US empire builders whether engaged in political or military activities depend on information especially regarding who to back and who to subvert; who should receive diplomatic support and who to receive financial and military resources.

De-briefed academics identify ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ adversaries, as well as personal and political vulnerabilities. Officials frequently exploit health problems or family needs to ‘turn’ leftists into imperial stool pigeons.  www.greanvillepost.com/2018/06/09/de-briefing-academics-unpaid-intelligence-informants/

The Magical Mystery Tour

www.facebook.com/actdottv/videos/819742851549616/?t=22

Rape Machine Pope: Abortion ‘white glove’ equivalent to Nazi crimes

Pope Francis denounced abortion on Saturday as the “white glove” equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics program and urged families to accept the children that God gives them.

Francis spoke off-the-cuff to a meeting of an Italian family association. The Vatican didn’t immediately provide a transcript of his remarks, but the ANSA news agency and the SIR agency of the Italian bishops’ conference quoted him as denouncing the pre-natal tests that can result in parents choosing to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is malformed or suffering other problems.

“Last century, the whole world was scandalized by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves,” the agencies quoted Francis as saying.

The pope urged families to accept children “as God gives them to us.”

Francis has repeated the strict anti-abortion stance of his predecessors and integrated it into his broader condemnation of what he calls today’s “throw-away culture.” He has frequently lamented how the sick, the poor, the elderly and the unborn are considered unworthy of protection and dignity by a society that prizes instead individual prowess.  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/religion/2018/06/16/pope-abortion-modern-day-eugenics/36092721/

Chinese authorities blow up Christian megachurch with dynamite (vide)

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-christianity-religion-crackdown-megachurch-chinaaid-golden-lampstand-church-linfen-communist-a8156031.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

www.facebook.com/agt/videos/10156021860959760/

In the dying empire, Sex and Drugs Decline Among Teens, but Depression and Suicidal Thoughts Grow

In 2017, 31 percent of students surveyed said they had such feelings, while 28 percent said so in 2007. In 2017, nearly 14 percent of students had actually made a suicide plan, up from 11 percent in 2007. (New York Times)

www.facebook.com/baseballfamonline/videos/1864994250468298/?t=102

The old handshake trick:

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www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/2133161030110273/?t=66

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www.facebook.com/vietfunnyvideo/videos/1388208277989967/?t=130

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On the pig.

So Long

Danny

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Dorothy Cotton, Rights Champion and Close Aide to King, Dies at 88

“I realize that people, en masse, saw the civil rights movement as just a bunch of marches,” Ms. Cotton told PBS in an interview in 2013. “I know firsthand that that’s not true. We had a major training program” designed to overcome “American-style apartheid,” she said.  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/obituaries/dorothy-cotton-rights-champion-and-close-aide-to-king-dies-at-88.html

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Ed Sadlowski, Fiery Steelworkers Insurgent, Dies at 79