We Say Fight Back!

www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10158204075851509/

Teacher Strikes Are Spreading Across America With No End in Sight

One month after a teachers’ “wildcat” strike ended with a deal to hike pay for all West Virgina state employees, teacher strikes are spreading fast across the country, with no clear endgame in sight.

In Oklahoma, teachers on Monday made good on their threat to shut down hundreds of schools throughout the state, preventing students from taking tests that are required by the end of the school year to ensure federal funding. In Kentucky, schools are closed as well—many because of spring break, others because teachers have swarmed the state capitol building in Frankfort. And in Arizona, teachers last week gathered at the statehouse in Phoenix with buttons reading “I don’t want to strike, but I will   www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/teacher-strikes-are-spreading-across-america

Oklahoma teachers WILDCAT strike expected to continue next week

Despite a pay raise and Senate proposals to increase state revenue, a state union leader anticipates teachers will continue their walkout on Monday.

A teachers strike in Oklahoma stretched into its fifth day on Friday, and a state union leader said he doesn’t think pending proposals to increase revenue are enough to stop the walkout from extending into next week.

The Senate was expected to consider separate proposals Friday to expand tribal gambling and tax certain internet sales that are expected to generate roughly $40 million annually.

But Oklahoma Education Association Executive Director David Duvall says he doesn’t think those are enough to keep teachers from walking out again next week.  www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-teachers-strike-expected-continue-next-week-n863331

www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/videos/1890848987671883/

.

The Deafening Silence of Florida Teachers Unions as a Red Tide of Teacher Rebellion Sweeps the Nation.

Any idea why the unions in these other states seem to be supporter radical teacher action but Florida in particular is not? Is the FEA more entrenched with the AFT/NEA than the AEA or OEA?

I was happy to find your site.

I don’t think W. Virginia, Az, OK, etc are led by more radical people in AFT or NEA.

What happened in W. Va,, where I know more people, was that the rank and file teachers simply acted on their own and AFT and NEA hacks sought to step in front of the direct action movement of the school workers.

There were really heartening self-organized actions, locally and at the capital. The ranks rejected an initial sellout deal, but eventually got sold out on the main issues of the strike, especially health insurance.

I believe that will be a pattern elsewhere as educators are stuck: they cannot take much more. They know they must fight, but they don’t know why they must fight, and they still have some faith in the unions, so their actions won’t go far enough this time around. Still, they might. Things can get out of hand.

It is a wonderful sight to see teachers acting, at last.

The union bosses want no part of job actions like strikes.

Why? Because those actions prove the union bosses (whose mission is to sell labor peace to Big Bosses in exchange for dues income–that is exactly the deal–which allows the union bosses to live very, very well) unnecessary, irrelevant. (more here   kafkateach.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/the-deafening-silence-of-florida-teacher-unions-as-a-red-tide-of-teacher-rebellion-sweeps-the-nation/?replytocom=13762#respond

below, “Strike” by Huck

UM lecturers vote to strike next week

University of Michigan lecturers have voted to strike next week unless negotiations lead to a new contract, union leaders announced Wednesday night.

Members of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization, AFT-MI Local 6244, AFL-CIO union, which represents 1,700 non-tenure track faculty at UM campuses in Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint, unanimously approved the move this week, the group said in a statement.

Talks with the university are slated to continue through Sunday, but union members plan to stop working the next two days “unless there is substantial progress on LEO pay demands and other bargaining issues, including a working title change that will make it easier for departments to recruit and retain high-caliber talent into Lecturer roles,” the release read.

Their current contract expires April 20.

“We’ve been working for months to address the crisis of underpayment among the University of Michigan’s core teaching staff,” said Ian Robinson, a lecturer in the Sociology Department at UM Ann Arbor and the president of LEO. “We’ve got lecturers with children on public assistance, lecturers working two or three jobs, lecturers who are leaving the university because they can’t afford to live on their miserable salaries.”  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2018/04/05/um-lecturers-strike/33564193/

 

above poster from May, 1968. Mayday is coming! More here www.google.com/search?q=france+may+68+posters&client=firefox-b-1-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWiOjNrpbaAhVQ7mMKHa2SAJkQ_AUICigB&biw=768&bih=485#imgrc=4NDP53ZhX7QH4M:

Howard University students end occupation of administration building

Howard University students and officials announced an end Friday to a lengthy occupation of the administration building at the historically black college, a student protest that put a spotlight on long-simmering grievances.

The deal between university trustees and students promises that students will be involved in reviewing the adequacy of on-campus housing at the Northwest Washington school. It also makes pledges about improving the reporting of sexual violence and holding the line on tuition.

The students had called for the resignation of Howard’s embattled president, Wayne A.I. Frederick, but he attended the press conference announcing the pact, and there is no mention of him in the resolution issued by the school’s Board of Trustees.  (WAPO April 6)

Class War In France, 50 years after the “May Days.”

Travellers to, from, within and over France face another round of problems this weekend as some air-traffic controllers join railway workers and Air France staff in industrial action.

Controllers based at the Marseille area control centre will strike all weekend against proposals for more flexible rostering.

The strike will affect aircraft flying over south-east France at 15,000 feet or above. It could hit a significant number of flights to and from the UK, where Easter holiday traffic is augmented by late-season ski flights to the French, Swiss and Italian Alps.

The airline said: “Our flight schedule for this day will be disrupted. The adaptation of this flight schedule is under study.”

Previous industrial action has grounded about a quarter of Air France flights, including some services connecting Heathrow, Manchester and Edinburgh with Paris Charles de Gaulle and about 30 per cent of long-haul departures.

The unions are demanding a pay increase of 6 per cent; the airline is offering 1 per cent. They have announced additional strikes on 10, 11, 17, 18, 23 and 24 April 2018. Passengers booked on strike days can switch to alternative dates without penalty.

On Sunday and Monday, millions of rail passengers in France face another round of disruption with the second of a series of 18 two-day strikes. The dispute centres on moves to tackle the losses at SNCF, the national rail operator, and prepare for competition from 2020.

The series of rolling two-day strikes began on 3 and 4 April, when only 14 per cent of long-distance trains operated. www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/france-strikes-latest-updates-air-traffic-control-railways-sncf-eurostar-passengers-a8291311.html

www.facebook.com/thedailyshow/videos/10155225222571800/

we invite panel, interactive workshop, and individual paper submissions on a wide range of topics that may include, but are not limited to, the annual meeting theme.

Submission Process and Timeline:

• Submit electronically via AESA website (www.educationalstudies.org) to All Academic Inc.
• Submission will be open from March 1, 2018 to May 1, 2018 (11:59 pm PDT)
• Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent by August 1, 2018

For more information about AESA and the conference, please email AESA2018conference@gmail.com.

Victory Over Military Cop Convention

On March 27, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Stop Urban Shield Coalition claimed victory in its four-year battle to stop Urban Shield, a war games and weapons convention for cops held in Alameda County every year since 2007. Critical Resistance , one of the most active members of the coalition, wrote on its website:

Urban Shield represents everything our movements are fighting against — from collaborating and training with ICE, hosting the white supremacist militia the Oath Keepers, training with and sending officers to apartheid Israel, glorifying policing and militarization, exploiting tragedies and natural disasters and public health needs, and continuing to align with Alameda County Sheriff Ahern’s support of the Trump Administration — Urban Shield has no place in the Bay Area or anywhere.



I spoke to Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director of Media Alliance and co-facilitator of Oa kland Privacy , a citizen’s coalition that works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. She has worked with the Stop Urban Shield Coalition since 2014.

Ann Garrison: Tracy, Americans from Ferguson, Missouri to North Pole, Alaska, and equally remote corners of the US, have all seen their police armed and trained with military-grade weapons, but they might not have heard of the annual Urban Shield military cops convention held in the Bay Area since 2007. Could you describe Urban Shield and its history?

Tracy Rosenberg: Urban Shield grew out of the gradual merger of first responder training and counterterrorism training.  blackagendareport.com/victory-over-military-cop-convention

 

 

In response to racist violence, more African Americans look to bear arms

(Video inside) The National African American Gun Association, known as NAAG, has tripled its chapters from 14 to 42 since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as more people of color join gun clubs and refute the NRA. Some say they are defending themselves against racism and supporting a call to arms amid a civil rights struggle. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Simon Ostrovsky reports.  www.pbs.org/newshour/show/in-response-to-racist-violence-more-african-americans-look-to-bear-arms

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvVL6wo71SQ

Supplicants! Opportunists! Dilettantes!! Toadies! Party on! You have nothing to lose but integrity. Try the Dom Perignon.

 

Freire was a devout Catholic. Ridiculous.

He was always complaining about being in exile. Put me in exile in Switzerland with a plum job with the World Council of Churches and you won’t hear a peep.

He was a revolutionary wherever he wasn’t and liberal wherever he was. When he returned to Brazil, he went to work for the hack Lula and complained about the school buildings, not the core of instruction.

He was a plagiarist. See the “Texts of Paulo Freire.” He stole a lot of his material from Dom Halder Camera, a Brazilian trying to defeat communists with liberation theology.

He built an opportunist little publishing cult around himself, then insisted, too much, on his own humility.

He sought to mix Che, Lenin, Mao, and others–add postmodernism– uncritically. Stupid.

His last wife is/was a gutter racist.

Nobody can fully explain how he goes from Brazil to Chile to Harvard.

Critical consciousness is not class consciousness. That is a dodge–part of the Freire hustle.

He claimed to “invent” a teaching method that probably predated Socrates.

He is a dead end. richgibson.com/rouge_forum/CSSE2008/GibsonCSSE2008.htm

Freire’s Social-Nationalist Pal, Lula, off to prison for stealing from the people

The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was found guilty of corruption and money laundering on Wednesday and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison, a stunning setback for a politician who has wielded enormous influence across Latin America for decades.

The case against Mr. da Silva, who raised Brazil’s profile on the world stage as president from 2003 to 2010, stemmed from charges that he and his wife illegally received about $1.1 million in improvements and expenses from a construction company for a beachfront apartment.

In exchange, prosecutors said, the company was able to obtain lucrative contracts from Petrobras, the state-controlled oil giant.  www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/world/americas/brazil-lula-prison.html

Google employees protest its involvement with the Pentagon

Thousands of Google employees signed a letter protesting the Silicon Valley giant’s involvement with the Pentagon through a program designed to use artificial intelligence for video detection and analysis in drones, fearing it may be lead to more accurate drone strikes, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The letter asks Google CEO Sundar Pichai to either cancel the company’s collaboration with the Pentagon project, codenamed Maven, or adopt a policy that Google or its contractors will never build warfare technology. The letter received more than 3,000 signatures, according to the New York Times.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” reads the letter.  www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/04/05/google-employees-protest-its-involvement-with-the-pentagon/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACmfRDAoMTk

 

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Teachers Make Less on Average Today Than They Did in 1989

No wonder they’re striking.

Nationally, teacher salary has been stagnant for decades and has been falling behind that of other professionals. The average American public school teacher earned $58,950 in the 2016–17 school year, according to federal statistics. Adjusting for inflation, that’s about $1,000 less than in 1989 and $3,000 less than in 2009. Another way to examine teacher pay is to compare educators to similarly educated professionals. (It’s not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, since people with similar levels of education may have varying skills.)

The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive, union-backed think tank, recently undertook such an analysis. In 1994, teachers’ weekly compensation, including benefits, was about equal to that of similarly educated professionals. But that’s no longer the case. By 2015, teachers nationally earned 11 percent less. That may not be true for all teachers: High school teachers earned less than other similar workers, but elementary and middle school teachers made more, one study found. Conservative critics also argue that these sorts of comparisons are flawed because they don’t fully account for teachers’ retirement benefits or tenure protections. They point out that teachers who leave for new jobs often take a pay cut.

Still, there’s no question that teacher salary hasn’t been going up. Why? More recently, in the wake of the recession, states made steep budget cuts, and most haven’t fully recovered. Funding advocates argue that some states, including some of those facing teacher protests, just aren’t dedicating enough money to public schools. Others say the issue is one of priorities, pointing to big increases in nonteaching school staff, like aides, custodians, and counselors, and greater teacher retirement costs.

There’s a lot of variation in how much teachers are paid, with particularly low pay in Arizona, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Teacher pay ranges from an average of about $42,000 a year in South Dakota to nearly $80,000 in New York. Another report, from the Education Law Center, which supports more school funding, compares early career teachers’ pay (not including benefits) to pay for similarly educated young professionals in each state. In almost all cases, teachers are paid less  slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/teachers-make-usd1-000-less-per-year-on-average-today-than-they-did-in-1989.html

Above, Rouger Bill Boyer in ruined Detroit school.

Detroit schools’ outdated curriculum sets students up to fail, audit finds

The auditors’ findings were unsettling.

Middle schoolers in Detroit’s main school district have been taking pre-algebra classes that have “virtually no relationship” to the state’s mathematics standards.

Students in kindergarten through third grade have been taught with an English curriculum so packed with unnecessary lessons that they don’t have time to get a firm grasp of foundational reading skills.www.bridgemi.com/detroit-journalism-cooperative/detroit-schools-outdated-curriculum-sets-students-fail-audit-finds

It has been years since Detroit teachers have been given high-quality instructional materials.

California Community Colleges: Remedial Math And English Pass Rates

This searchable database shows the number and percent of students, by race and college, who pass remedial level English and math classes at California community colleges after two years. The pass rates include remedial coursework as far as four levels below transferable credit – or what is required before earning a credit-bearing college class.

That “sets students up for a school career of frustration with anything that requires reading,” auditors found.

And an entire district of more than 50,000 students has been using textbooks that are so old and out of date that it’s likely that most students, for years, have been taking the state’s annual high-stakes exam without having seen much of the material they’re being tested on.

The test results can nonetheless be used to make potentially devastating decisions, like whether schools should be forced to close.

In short, the auditors who came to Detroit last fall to review the district’s curriculum found that students here have been set up to fail.  www.bridgemi.com/detroit-journalism-cooperative/detroit-schools-outdated-curriculum-sets-students-fail-audit-finds

Minneapolis Schools Face $33M Deficit After City Paid $500M for NFL Stadium

Teachers and staff of Minneapolis schools are expecting hundreds of layoffs due to a $33 million deficit only a few years after the city completed a taxpayer-funded $1.1 billion football stadium.

Minneapolis Public Schools — the state’s third largest district currently tasked with educating 36,000 young people — is expected to lay off 350-400 full time employees after last fall’s announcement that the education budget’s deficit had doubled for the following school year.

Teachers of many subjects are on the chopping block, including English and Math. Social workers in charge of shepherding troubled students and security guards meant to provide protection during an event such as a mass shooting are also expected to be cut.

“Don’t put it on the backs of the classrooms … that’s unacceptable,” Washburn High School mother Jeanne Massey told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “This is the biggest blow to the schools in anybody’s memory… It’s completely gutting the school. In an era when kids are at risk for gun safety, there’s no protection in the school.”  gritpost.com/minneapolis-schools-deficit/

Read banned Books!

 

Celebrate our greatest
national resource: our libraries.
National Library Week
is April 8–14.

The Reader’s Catalog

It Oversaw For-Profit Colleges That Imploded. Now It Seeks a Comeback.

The organization at the center of one of the largest fraud scandals in the history of for-profit colleges is planning a comeback.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools was stripped of its powers in December 2016 amid the collapse of two for-profit university chains, where tens of thousands of students were encouraged to take on hundreds of millions in debt based on false promises, including jobs after graduation.

The ordeal left thousands of students stranded, and many have since flooded the Education Department with applications for relief from student loan debt. The Obama administration approved about 32,000 claims totaling $449 million.

Now, that same accrediting council is asking to be reinstated by the Trump administration as a federal gatekeeper for hundreds of degree-granting programs and billions of dollars in federal funds.

Bridgepoint slammed over veterans

In 2011, now-retired United States Senator Tom Harkin called San Diego’s controversial for-profit Bridgepoint Education “an absolute scam.” This month, two senators have whacked the company’s major operation, Ashford University, with similar — but more polite — biting criticism, to wit: Ashford is guilty of “predatory practices,” the senators said in a March 15 letter to the company’s chief executive, Andrew Clark.

Bridgeport “made the decision that its profits are more important than student veterans — whose educations and lives you threaten to disrupt by enrolling them without certainty of continuing eligibility,” wrote the senators.

“We have long been concerned with Ashford’s mistreatment of its students, including veterans, as documented by numerous state and federal investigations, lawsuits, and settlements. The company’s latest stunt is just another example of putting profits ahead of students,” said the solons.

The issue involves Ashford’s long-running dispute with the Veterans Administration over the use of GI Bill benefits for veterans, who constitute 25.8 percent of Bridgepoint’s student body. Andrew Clark, chief executive of Bridgepoint, answered the senators on March 23.

In the letter, Clark explained how Iowa in 2016 removed Ashford’s ability to take veterans under the G.I. Bill. Bridgeport then made an end run and got the OK of Arizona to use the GI Bill.  www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2018/mar/30/ticker-bridgepoint-slammed-over-veterans/#

Child poverty: Pale and hungry pupils ‘fill pockets with school food’

Malnourished pupils with grey skin are “filling their pockets” with food from school canteens in poor areas due to poverty, head teachers say.

The heads, from various parts of England and Wales, described differences in the appearance of some pupils.

One head said: “My children have grey skin, poor teeth, poor hair; they are thinner.”

The government said measures were in place to tackle poverty.

Lynn, a head teacher from a former industrial town in Cumbria, who did not want to give her full name, was one of a number of head teachers speaking to reporters at the National Education Union conference in Brighton.

They were highlighting the issues faced by an increasing number of children growing up in poverty, and how their experiences affect their education.  www.bbc.com/news/amp/education-43611527?__twitter_impression=true

‘Grubby clothes’

Lynn said that hunger was particularly apparent after the weekend.

She said: “Children are filling their pockets with food. In some establishments that would be called stealing. We call it survival.”

Another head teacher from Nottinghamshire, Louise Regan, said: “When you take children out to an event, maybe a sporting event, you see children of the same age from schools in an affluent area.

San Diego State settles lawsuit with former coach Beth Burns for $4 million

an Diego State fired women’s basketball coach Beth Burns in April 2013 with four years and $880,000 remaining on her contract, claiming it had cause and owed her nothing.

This week, the university reached a legal settlement that will pay Burns and her attorneys $4 million.

In addition, there is an estimated $1 million in fees to an outside law firm to litigate the case over the past five years, plus a $250,000 settlement the university paid to assistant coach Adam Barrett, who allegedly was elbowed by Burns on the bench during a game.

The total bill to the California State University system — and, by extension, taxpayers — likely will be between $5.5 million and $6 million.

An exchange of settlement offers in the months after Burns was terminated, obtained by the Union-Tribune last year, show the former coach wanted the $880,000 left on her contract plus $25,000 in attorney’s fees. SDSU countered with $165,000 plus $15,000 in attorney’s fees.

…Burns’ settlement is at least the fourth CSU has paid involving coaches or other athletic department employees, totaling nearly $10 million.

Larry Nassar was able to brazenly abuse women for decades because Michigan State University failed to properly pursue complaints, destroyed vital documents and allowed the disgraced doctor to exploit loopholes in university policies to avoid scrutiny, Michigan House lawmakers said Thursday.

A months-long inquiry by the House into how MSU handled accusations of sexual assault by the former gymnastics doctor produced “alarming” findings that were forwarded to the attorney general’s office for further investigation.

While some of those findings remain under wraps because of an ongoing criminal investigation, bipartisan committee leaders disclosed several significant findings in a letter to House Speaker Tom Leonard, highlighting failures by MSU.

“Nassar seems to have spent decades developing his ability to abuse patients without detection by identifying and exploiting loopholes in the policies that governed his professional conduct and patient relationships,” wrote lawmakers, describing their review of MSU documents and question responses.

Medical records were never kept for many of Nassar’s “treatments,” they found. MSU did not have an adequate informed consent policy in place for much of the time he worked there, which Nassar “methodically exploited,” lawmakers said, and university policies did not require a chaperone to be in the room “during sensitive examinations of minors.”

In some cases, MSU “had destroyed” patients’ medical records by the time they reported Nassar to university police, lawmakers said. While the destruction did not violate state law or university policy, “such records may have proven useful to at least one of the survivors seeking justice against Nassar.” www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/05/michigan-house-inquiry-larry-nassar-michigan-state-university/33580221/

Meet the Only K-12 Education Program to Get Cut in the Spending Bill Trump Signed

The new federal spending levels recently approved by President Donald Trump include a $2.6 billion boost for the U.S. Department of Education. But what’s the story behind that number?

Big programs intended for disadvantaged students, special education, and career and technical education are getting significant boosts. Title IV, a big block grant that can be spent on various initiatives, got a nearly three-fold increase. However, it’s not just that the major line items got increases. Several smaller programs that deal with magnet schools, arts in education, and the Special Olympics got more money too.

In fact, we could only find one K-12 program in the Education Department’s new budget that is getting less money in fiscal 2018 than it did in fiscal 2017.

That distinction (so to speak) goes to the School Leader Recruitment and Support program. Housed at the department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, School Leader Recruitment and Support’s objectives are pretty much what its name suggests. It aims to help with the recruitment, training, and retention of principals and assistant principals in high-needs school districts.

These grants have paid for stipends for principals serving as mentors, financial incentives for aspiring principals, and professional development and leadership training.  blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2018/04/trump_spending_bill_signed_federal_education_program_just_one_cut.html?cmp=RSS-FEED

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Weeks after the militants seized the city, as fighters roamed the streets and religious extremists rewrote the laws, an order rang out from the loudspeakers of local mosques.

Public servants, the speakers blared, were to report to their former offices.

To make sure every government worker got the message, the militants followed up with phone calls to supervisors. When one tried to beg off, citing a back injury, he was told: “If you don’t show up, we’ll come and break your back ourselves.”

…The commander who strode in sat facing the room, his leg splayed out so that everyone could see the pistol holstered to his thigh. For a moment, the only sounds were the hurried prayers of the civil servants mumbling under their breath.

Their fears proved unfounded. Though he spoke in a menacing tone, the commander had a surprisingly tame request: Resume your jobs immediately, he told them. A sign-in sheet would be placed at the entrance to each department. Those who failed to show up would be punished.

…for nearly three years, the Islamic State controlled a stretch of land that at one point was the size of Britain, with a population estimated at 12 million people. At its peak, it included a 100-mile coastline in Libya, a section of Nigeria’s lawless forests and a city in the Philippines, as well as colonies in at least 13 other countries. By far the largest city under their rule was Mosul.

…ISIS built a state of administrative efficiency that collected taxes and picked up the garbage. It ran a marriage office that oversaw medical examinations to ensure that couples could have children. It issued birth certificates — printed on Islamic State stationery — to babies born under the caliphate’s black flag. It even ran its own D.M.V.

The documents and interviews with dozens of people who lived under their rule show that the group at times offered better services and proved itself more capable than the government it had replaced.

They also suggest that the militants learned from mistakes the United States made in 2003 after it invaded Iraq, including the decision to purge members of Saddam Hussein’s ruling party from their positions and bar them from future employment. That decree succeeded in erasing the Baathist state, but also gutted the country’s civil institutions, creating the power vacuum that groups like ISIS rushed to fill.  www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TMq3m_Oli4

This Marine-Made War Documentary Is So Raw The Corps Doesn’t Want You To See It

“Okay buddy, how ya doing today?” a Marine asks as he stands over the body of a dead Afghan man. “You look like you just got fucked.”

A cameraman with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment stands nearby, rolling tape. He zooms in to show the man’s mangled right hand, where a round impacted before entering his torso.

It’s sometime in 2011 in Kajaki, Afghanistan. A scout sniper team has been cleared to take the shot, suspecting the target of being a spotter for Taliban fighters in the area. When the patrol arrives to inspect the body, they find that the now-dead man was a local shopkeeper, and he was unarmed. It’s unclear whether the man, whose killing was cleared under the rules of engagement, was an observer for the Taliban, or an innocent bystander.

“Yup, he lived for a little while, then it went in and fucking hit where his liver woulda been,” a member of the squad says. After the Afghan National Army soldiers attached to the patrol suggest moving the dead man out of sight, the body is rolled up in a rug.

“It’s not good for people to see this,” one U.S. Marine says. (VIDEO INSIDE)  taskandpurpose.com/marine-afghanistan-documentary-combat-obscura/?bsft_eid=c9162912-dcbc-46da-81ef-213987481d19&utm_campaign=tp_daily_thursday_pm&utm_source=blueshift&utm_medium=email&utm_content=tp_daily_pm_nk&bsft_clkid=919a1f43-cfaf-43d1-9eee-f991fb2f8421&bsft_uid=7c674a6c-ae11-4ec4-84f1-aef0c34e44e5&bsft_mid=daf531c2-7774-4ede-b63e-6dce2feddcc1

The Taliban Have Gone High-Tech. That Poses a Dilemma for the U.S.

A member of the Afghan Special Forces is seen through a night-vision goggle during a training exercise with American Special Forces at Camp Shorab in Helmand Province in September. Credit Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

Once described as an ill-equipped band of insurgents, the Taliban are increasingly attacking security forces across Afghanistan using night-vision goggles and lasers that United States military officials said were either stolen from Afghan and international troops or bought on the black market.

The devices allow the Taliban to maneuver on forces under the cover of darkness as they track the whirling blades of coalition helicopters, the infrared lasers on American rifles, or even the bedtime movements of local police officers.

With this new battlefield visibility, the Taliban more than doubled nighttime attacks from 2014 to 2017, according to one United States military official who described internal Pentagon data on the condition of anonymity. The number of Afghans who were wounded or killed during nighttime attacks during that period nearly tripled.

That has forced American commanders to rethink the limited access they give Afghan security forces to the night-vision devices. Commanders now worry that denying the expensive equipment to those forces puts them at a technological disadvantage, with potentially lethal consequences.

For years, American commanders have been reluctant to give night-vision equipment to rank-and-file Afghan soldiers and police officers out of concern of widespread corruption among those forces. The devices — headsets and infrared lasers — are usually given only to elite Afghan commandos and police special mission units, according to American military officials.  www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/world/asia/taliban-night-vision.html

 

National Guard troops head to the border, paid for by the Pentagon

Veteran kills himself in VA medical center waiting room

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

www.facebook.com/AustralianUnions/videos/1838637272901554/

As waves of homeless descend onto trains, L.A. tries a new strategy: social workers on the subway

By many measures, the U.S. economy is doing well: the labor market is strong, monetary policy remains largely accommodative for the moment, and corporate America is expected to post its best quarter of profit growth in seven years. Despite that, economic growth has been fairly tepid, and it could be because any improvements in the economy are being unequally distributed.

According to Torsten Sløk, the chief international economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, income inequality is a major factor that has been holding back the U.S. economy for nearly a decade.

“One important reason why the expansion since 2009 has been so weak is that wealth gains have been unevenly distributed,” he wrote. “A decline in the homeownership rate and the number of households holding stocks has dampened consumer spending growth for the bottom 90% of households.”

Per his data, the median net worth for all income percentiles except the wealthiest one dropped between 2007 and 2016, usually by double-digit amounts.

For the poorest American families, in the lowest fifth of wealth, their net worth shed 29% over that period. Drops of at least 20% were also seen in every income percentile except for those in the 80-89.9 percentile, where the decline was a more modest 5%. The wealthiest decile, however, saw a jump of 27%, as seen in the following chart.

America actually ranks among the worst countries when it comes to income inequality, based on its Gini coefficient, a measure of the wealth distribution of a country’s residents. The coefficient for the U.S. is nearly 0.40, which puts it roughly even with Turkey, and above such nations as Israel, Greece, Spain, and Germany. Iceland, the most equal society measured by Deutsche Bank, has a coefficient below 0.25.

According to Sløk’s data, which is derived from DB Global Markets Research and the World Wealth and Income Database, the richest 0.1% of Americans owns as much as the entire bottom 90%, a trend that has been accelerating since the mid-1980s, while the richest 1% earn more than a fifth of total income in the U.S.

The wealthiest 10% own nearly 90% of stocks, the highest such ratio since 1983, meaning that the sharp gains seen in the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -2.34%  and the S&P 500 SPX, -2.19%  since the financial crisis bottom in 2009 have had little broad impact for most Americans.  www.marketwatch.com/story/why-income-inequality-is-holding-back-economic-growth-in-one-chart-2018-04-05

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

Madeleine Albright Warns: Don’t Let Fascism Go ‘Unnoticed Until It’s Too Late’

While Albright does not call Trump a fascist, she says that he is “the most anti-democratic leader that I have studied in American history.”  www.npr.org/2018/04/03/599120190/madeleine-albright-warns-dont-let-fascism-go-unnoticed-until-its-too-late

Race, Genetics and a Controversy (The Eugenicists are back…)

To the Editor:

In “ ‘Race’ in the Age of Modern Genetics” (Sunday Review, March 25), David Reich does a disservice to the many scientists and scholars who have demonstrated the scientific flaws of considering “race” a biological category.

This robust body of scholarship recognizes the existence of geographically based genetic variation in our species, but shows that such variation is not consistent with biological definitions of race. Nor does that variation map precisely onto ever-changing, socially defined racial groups.

This doesn’t mean that genetic variation is unimportant; it is, even if it does not follow racial lines. But history has taught us that studies of human genetic variation can be misunderstood and misinterpreted if sampling practices and historical contexts are not considered; if little attention is given to how genes, environments and social conditions interact; and if we ignore the ways that sociocultural categories and practices shape the genetic patterns themselves.

As applied to human beings, race is a social grouping. Genetically, there is only one human race.

ALAN GOODMAN
MARCY DARNOVSKY
AMHERST, MASS.

Reich’s article is here www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

Fentanyl arrests at San Diego border spur push to warn underage smugglers

www.facebook.com/attn/videos/1648577165177736/

US Puppet Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies at 91

As historic anti-corruption protests continue in Guatemala, another battle over impunity in the Central American country is unfolding. On November 6, 13 members of Congress introduced a proposal to give blanket amnesty to military members accused of committing war crimes during Guatemala’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict. The proposal was introduced by Congressman Fernando Linares Beltranena of the conservative National Advancement Party (PAN).

The reforms come as the Guatemalan Attorney General’s office continues to pursue cases against former military leaders for crimes against humanity, including the high-profile genocide trial against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. The office recently signaled they could reopened the case concerning the assassination of Bishop Juan José Gerardi in 1998.

The amnesty proposal seeks to reform the National Reconciliation law passed just prior to the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. The reform specifically seeks to remove articles 2, 7, and 8 from the law, and provide former military members with a blanket amnesty for all crimes committed. Article 2 and 7 provide guerrillas with amnesty for crimes against the state security forces, while Article 8 provides amnesty for all crimes except genocide, torture, and forced disappearance.

The civil war in Guatemala led to over 200,000 deaths and the disappearance of over 40,000, according to findings by the United Nations backed Commission for Historical Clarification nacla.org/news/2017/11/27/fighting-impunity-seeking-justice-guatemala

ICE Won’t Deport the Last Nazi War Criminal in America

Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 226,119 people. Jakiw Palij wasn’t one of them.

During the first three months of ICE’s 2018 fiscal year, the agency deported 56,710 people, 46 percent of whom had not been convicted of a crime. This year, ICE expects to deport 209,000 people (PDF). It is highly unlikely that Palij will be among them—even though Palij is a war criminal, the last Nazi war criminal living in the United States.

Palij served as a guard during World War II at the Trawniki forced labor camp, which also trained those participating in “Operation Reinhard,” a plan to exterminate every Jew in German-occupied Poland. He entered the country in 1949 without divulging his past and was later awarded citizenship, of which he was stripped by a federal judge in 2004 and ordered deported.

“During a single nightmarish day in November 1943, all of the more than 6,000 prisoners of the Nazi camp that Jakiw Palij had guarded were systematically butchered,” Eli Rosenbaum, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), said after the ruling. “By helping to prevent the escape of these prisoners, Palij played an indispensable role in ensuring that they met their tragic fate at the hands of the Nazis.”

But Palij, now 94, remains a free man because no one else wants him, either.  www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-won-t-deport-the-last-nazi-war-criminal-in-america/ar-BBKNRDg?ocid=ob-fb-enus

Solidarity for Never

San Diego Unified, Teachers Union OK Sellout Tentative Deal with Raises, Maternity Leave

It is a breathtaking sellout. W. Va teachers were sent back to work without winning the key issue they struck for–health insurance. Now, the SDEA tentative agreement, negotiated about one year after the previous contract expired (whatever came of No Contract No Work?) doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. There is some confusion as to whether the contract offers maternity/paternity leave only to members, or to everyone. This TA comes out when the biggest school worker strike wave in 30 years is happening. LA and SD could have gone out together and won far more for both units. I hope the school workers of San Diego have a fair chance to vote this down, create parallel councils that organize for activism behind the reason unions should exist: workers and employers have contradictory interests. We are not, and should not pretend to be “partners in production.” 

The three-year tentative agreement includes a 2 percent raise in the 2018-19 school year, with staggered payments: 1 percent to be be paid July 1, 2018, and 1 percent to be paid by February 2019.

In addition, the tentative pact awards SDEA employees a one-time, 1 percent off-schedule payment to be made by August 1. The one-time payment was negotiated in exchange for the settlement of an outstanding grievance independent of the contract negotiations.  timesofsandiego.com/education/2018/04/04/san-diego-unified-teachers-union-ok-tentative-deal-with-raises-maternity-leave/

As a Strike Wave Sweeps the USA, this is what some NEA Rep Assembly Delegates are planning for at the convention this summer:

Spy versus Spy

US, N Korea Hold Talks Via CIA Channels Ahead of Trump-Kim Meeting

he United States and North Korea are holding secret, direct talks ahead of the planned summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the media reported.

Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo and the CIA team have been operating through intelligence back-channels to make arrangements for the summit, the CNN news channel reported.

North Korean intelligence officials along with their American colleagues have met several times to determine where talks should be held, considering the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar as an option, according to CNN.

The North Koreans are insisting on having the meeting in their capital, Pyongyang, although it is unclear whether the White House wants to hold the talks there, the sources said.

The CIA has refused to comment on the meeting, according to an official representative. sputniknews.com/world/201804071063316883-us-north-korea-secret-talks/

The Magical Mystery Tour

Fascist Opus Dei vicar: We are fully united with the pope

In a letter to the New York Times, the U.S. vicar of Opus Dei said that the personal prelature has no conflict with Pope Francis, but supports him and is united with his mission.

“From my perspective, I don’t see that there’s any conflict with the Holy Father. Love for the Holy Father is part of our DNA. We pray for him every day. We learn from him,” Msgr. Thomas Bohlin told CNA April 5.

He quoted Opus Dei’s founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, who used to say that Opus Dei had three great loves in the Church: “Christ, Mary, and the pope.”

Bohlin spoke to CNA after responding by letter to the mention of Opus Dei in a March 24 opinion piece in the New York Times, written by Paul Elie, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

“While John Paul forged a relationship with Opus Dei — the strict and secretive movement with roots in the postwar Spain of Francisco Franco — Francis is at ease with the Community of Sant’Egidio, founded in Rome during the student uprisings of 1968 and now present in 70 countries, working with the poor, migrants, the elderly and people with AIDS,” Elie wrote.

Msgr. Bohlin responded in an April 3 letter to the Times’ editor. “As head of Opus Dei in the United States, I want to affirm that all of us in Opus Dei support the pope and his work as pastor of the universal Church,” he said.

Pitting Sant’Egidio and Opus Dei in opposition to each other Bohlin pointed to several signs of the Pope Francis’ support of Opus Dei.

“He has prayed at the tomb of Opus Dei’s founder in Rome; he has beatified Opus Dei’s first prelate, Álvaro del Portillo; and he has appointed several Opus Dei priests as bishops around the world,” the vicar said. “Recently, the pope sent a beautiful letter supporting a project for young people (UNIV) organized by members of Opus Dei.”creates a false dichotomy, he said, adding that Pope Francis “can be at ease with both.”    www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/opus-dei-vicar-we-are-fully-united-with-the-pope-13012

Male Escort Exposes 36 Gay Priests in File Sent to Vatican Containing Explicit WhatsApp Chats and Erotic Photos

A 1,200-page dossier containing the names of 34 “actively gay” priests and six seminarians in Italy has been sent to the Vatican by the archdiocese of Naples.

The allegations were compiled by Francesco Mangiacapra, a gay male escort who told local media he couldn’t put up with the priests’ “hypocrisy” any longer.

“The aim is not to hurt the people mentioned, but to help them understand that their double life, however seemingly convenient, is not useful to them or to all the people for whom they should be a guide and an example to follow,” Mangiacapra said, as reported by the Corriere della Sera.  www.newsweek.com/male-escort-exposes-36-gay-priests-file-sent-vatican-containing-explicit-829968

 

‘Trump Was Merely Sharing The Gospel With That Porn Star,’ Explains Jim Bakker

—Squashing accusations that President Trump had a sexual encounter with porn star “Stormy Daniels” while he was married to Melania, televangelist Jim Bakker explained to his audience Friday that he had confirmed that Trump was merely scheduling private time with the woman in a hotel suite in order to share with her the good news of Jesus Christ, as he had become acquainted with her and was very concerned that she was not a Christian.

“It is preposterous to assert that a virtuous believer like Mr. Trump would cheat on his beautiful wife so callously, and while their child was only months old,” a solemn Bakker said into the camera as colorful balloons provided a backdrop for some reason. “He was so concerned with the eternal state of Miss Daniels’ soul that he scheduled some alone time with just the two of them, so he could share with her how Jesus Christ had changed his life and how He could also save her from her sins.”

Nearly choking up with tears, Bakker went on to explain how much he loves and looks up to Trump as a model saint.  babylonbee.com/news/trump-merely-sharing-gospel-porn-star-explains-jim-bakker/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

www.facebook.com/orangedemocrats/videos/10156276399672334/

.

Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard to be stripped off Stanley Cup

Those Hockey Hall of Famers and the rest of the players who won an NHL championship from 1954-65 are being stripped off the Stanley Cup this spring to create room for a new layer of names without making the trophy too big to be skated around the ice by the winning captain or checked on an airplane for its next journey.

“People in Saskatchewan are a little upset Gordie’s name is coming off  globalnews.ca/news/4125036/gordie-howe-maurice-richard-stanley-cup/

Alan Lomax’s Massive Archive Goes Online

Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. It’s part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.

Lomax recorded a staggering amount of folk music. He worked from the 1930s to the ’90s, and traveled from the Deep South to the mountains of West Virginia, all the way to Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. When it came time to bring all of those hours of sound into the digital era, the people in charge of the Lomax archive weren’t quite sure how to tackle the problem.

“We err on the side of doing the maximum amount possible,” says Don Fleming, executive director of the Association for Cultural Equity, the nonprofit organization Lomax founded in New York in the ’80s.  www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/03/28/148915022/alan-lomaxs-massive-archive-goes-online

www.facebook.com/Gizzella.Quinn/videos/929293063911111/

So Long

www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/videos/10156903380267908/

.

 

This is the best piece on video about Winnie. It’s only available sporadically but worth checking…

www.pbs.org/independentlens/videos/winnie-trailer/