Rouge Forum Dispatch: Who Pulls the Strings on those Warriors who Pull the Triggers?
February 25th, 2018 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
On Feb. 23, 1940, Woody Guthrie writes “This Land Is Your Land” following a trip hitchhiking and riding the rails from California to New York. It was a musical response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”
West Virginia public schools close over teacher walkout
www.facebook.com/WVWorkingFamilies/videos/2189685571104256/
Teachers to continue strike on Monday
West Virginia teachers will continue their strike for a third day on Monday, state teachers union leaders announced late Friday.
Teachers went on strike Thursday in dissatisfaction over pay raise and benefit proposals from state legislative leaders and Gov. Jim Justice, and remained out on Friday. www.wvgazettemail.com/news/education/teachers-to-continue-strike-on-monday/article_6fab11d4-5956-5878-a2b2-f28b718b646d.html
50 years ago, Florida teachers walked off their jobs.
Teachers by the thousands walked off their jobs across Florida. Among their concerns: low pay, poor funding, a lack of planning time, missing materials, and more.
“We were at the mercy of the School Board and what they wanted to do,” said Floyd, who started teaching in Orange County in 1958. “We had no say-so over anything.”
So they left — resigned, actually, because strikes weren’t allowed — to make their position clear. More than 25,000 educators in all participated at the peak of the movement, which lasted days in some counties, weeks in others. (Then, AFT’s Gangster Pat Tornillo led his Dade unit back to work, scabbing). www.tampabay.com/news/education/teachers/50-years-ago-Florida-teachers-walked-off-their-jobs-Today-s-union-leaders-are-inspired_165549681
Can Schools Discipline Students for Protesting?
…in addition to walkouts, there are actions they can take for which schools cannot legally impose punishment.
For example, during school hours, students cannot be punished for speaking out unless their speech disrupts the functioning of the school. This is because — as the Supreme Court recognized in a 1969 decision upholding the right of Mary Beth Tinker to wear an armband to school in protest of the Vietnam War — students do not lose their constitutional rights “at the schoolhouse gate.” www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/student-speech-and-privacy/can-schools-discipline-students-protesting
‘For the Record’: Fighting Back Against a School Shooter (video within)
Since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, school districts across the U.S. have studied ways to keep kids safe from the threat of an active shooter.
Twelve students and one teacher died at Columbine, and since then many schools across the country have established lockdown procedures. In most cases, teachers are instructed to lock the classroom door, turn-off the lights and attempt to get the students in a corner of the room.
That was the protocol that was followed at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012 when Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults.
Recently a new and more aggressive response, taught by instructors like Ryan Hoover, has been gaining popularity. One major difference from the standard procedure is that if students and teachers can’t escape, they are taught to attack the gunman with whatever they have at hand. www.theblaze.com/news/2016/03/07/for-the-record-fighting-back-against-a-school-shooter
Vietnam Will Win: Military Realities
By the turn of the year 1967-68, it was clear that things had developed just as the NLF leadership had foreseen. And they continued to do so throughout 1968. At the end of January, on the eve of the Têt offensive, and with almost 500,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam, the U.S.-Saigon command had fewer mobile forces at its disposal than during the 1965-66 dry season when Westmoreland had about 200,000 U.S. troops under his command. Entire divisions were bogged down guarding bases, bridges and roads in a situation strongly reminiscent of the 800,000 strong French army in the latter phases of the Algerian war. Such a high proportion of French troops were locked up in their barbed-wire covered “mirador” fortresses guarding bases, bridges and stretches of roads and railways, that none were left for offensive operations.
The nearly 1,300,000-man army under Westmoreland had been pushed into the defensive, the initiative having passed into the hands of the NLF. Bases, garrisons, outposts were all encircled by NLF guerrillas, while NLF main force units launched operation after operation, starting with the Loc Ninh and Dak To battles in October-November 1967, and then others that prepared the ground for the Têt offensive. www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/21/vietnam-will-win-military-realities/
Sixties Project: Bibliographies
This is an archive of bibliographic resources in the field of Sixties and Viet Nam war studies.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPJgeg6hpA
GI Resistance: Soldiers and Veterans Against the War. A Bibliography
Compiled by Skip Delano
This text, made available by the Sixties Project, is copyright (c) 1996 by Viet Nam Generation, Inc., or the author, all rights reserved. This text may be used, printed, and archived in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law. This text may not be archived, printed, or redistributed in any form for a fee, without the consent of the copyright holder. This notice must accompany any redistribution of the text. The Sixties Project, sponsored by Viet Nam Generation Inc. and the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, is a collective of humanities scholars working together on the Internet to use electronic resources to provide routes of collaboration and make available primary and secondary sources for researchers, students, teachers, writers and librarians interested in the 1960s. www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Bibliographies/GI_Mvmt_bib.html
From: Jack Radey
The GI movement bibliography is very good. Two books, however, don’t seem to be on it. Shelby Stanton’s “The Rise and Fall of the US Army in Vietnam” is not on there. Shelby was a Green Beret, as he told me, because he is short, he was dressed in black pajamas and put on surveillance on the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos (where we didn’t have any soldiers, remember?). He had much of a lung punched out by a rocket hit on his compound. He casually mentions in his book that EVERY division in Vietnam had its own underground newspaper, and the paper of the unit that took Hamburger Hill offered a $25,000 reward… for the head of the brigadier general who ordered it. Shelby was hardly an antiwar activist, but did not like the US government bullshit, as he said, “I got my education in the mud.”
The other is Tom Wells, “The War at Home.” While a history of the antiwar movement and its effects on the White House and Pentagon, it describes the action that ended the war in Vietnam. This was a strike by Air Force and Navy aircrews and intelligence officers (and others) who decided the bombing of Hanoi etc in Operation Linebacker II constituted a war crime and refused to fly more missions. The only other place you can read about this is in Boyle’s excellent “Flower of the Dragon” which is listed. Almost no one knows about this action (the government deal with the air crews was, “Shut your mouths, never mention this, and we won’t press mutiny charges”) but sniffing around people I know who were in the Air Force, and some inquiries I made at the Air Force Command and Staff College in Montgomery, AL, I had little difficulty finding people who knew about it.
On September 15, 1963, four girls were killed when white supremacists planted more than a dozen sticks of dynamite beneath the side steps of the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The children were preparing for a sermon titled “A Love That Forgives.” According to one witness, their bodies flew across the basement “like rag dolls.”
When she heard the news, jazz musician Nina Simone was paralyzed. “It was more than I could take,” she remembered, “and I sat struck dumb in my den like St. Paul on the road to Damascus: all the truths that I had denied to myself for so long rose up and slapped my face. The bombing of the little girls in Alabama and the murder of Medgar Evers were like the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that made no sense until you had fitted the whole thing together. I suddenly realized what it was to be Black in America in 1963, but it wasn’t an intellectual connection…it came as a rush of fury, hatred and determination. In church language, the Truth entered into me and I ‘came through.’”
Simone’s initial reaction was less than Christian. “I had it in mind to go out and kill someone,” she remembered. “I tried to make a zip gun.”
Andy, her husband and manager, intervened. “Nina,” he said, “you can’t kill anyone. You are a musician. Do what you do.”
An hour later, Nina Simone had composed a song called “Mississippi Goddam.” “It was my first civil rights song,” she recalled, “and it erupted out of me quicker than I could write it down.” longreads.com/2017/04/20/a-history-of-american-protest-music-when-nina-simone-sang-what-everyone-was-thinking/
Teachers College Record Reviews Rouge Founder Wayne Ross’ book:
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Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship |
Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship is a brutally honest exploration of the current state of social studies teaching and teacher education. E. Wayne Ross’ book is a subversive blueprint, a mixtape capturing a lifetime of thinking, writing, and activism. Ross articulates a vision of a future social studies where citizens are “dangerous to an oppressive and socially unjust status quo, to existing hierarchical structures of power” (p. 50). Rethinking Social Studies is written in deeply theoretical, tactical, and personal ways, capturing Ross’ spirit as a transformative force willing to confront the dismal state of social studies education. His writing resonates outward, encouraging teachers and teacher educators to embrace the transformative potential of connecting social studies classrooms with real-life issues facing citizens and their communities. Throughout, Ross remains optimistic that citizen action, developed through “insurgent pedagogies” (p. 51), can prevail over a corporatized, capitalistic approach to social studies education.
Ross doesn’t pull any punches. From the start, the reader is confronted with his take on the current state of social studies. According to Ross, “Social studies is the engine room of illusion factories whose primary aim is reproduction of the existing social order; where the ruling ideas exist to be memorized, regurgitated, internalized, and lived by. If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!” (p. xxi). While social studies could be the most dangerous subject in schools, it has been reduced to the regurgitation of facts in the service of maintaining the status quo while producing eager consumers. Fortunately, Ross is an optimist who is living out the transformative spirit embedded in his vision for the future of social studies. www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=22274
Nazis arrest White Rose resistance leaders
Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, the leaders of the German youth group Weisse Rose (White Rose), are arrested by the Gestapo for opposing the Nazi regime.
The White Rose was composed of university (mostly medical) students who spoke out against Adolf Hitler and his regime. The founder, Hans Scholl, was a former member of Hitler Youth who grew disenchanted with Nazi ideology once its real aims became evident. As a student at the University of Munich in 1940-41, he met two Roman Catholic men of letters who redirected his life. Turning from medicine to religion, philosophy, and the arts, Scholl gathered around him like-minded friends who also despised the Nazis, and the White Rose was born.
During the summer of 1942, Scholl and a friend composed four leaflets, which exposed and denounced Nazi and SS atrocities, including the extermination of Jews and Polish nobility, and called for resistance to the regime. The literature was peppered with quotations from great writers and thinkers, from Aristotle to Goethe, and called for the rebirth of the German university. It was aimed at an educated elite within Germany.
The risks involved in such an enterprise were enormous. The lives of average civilians were monitored for any deviation from absolute loyalty to the state. Even a casual remark critical of Hitler or the Nazis could result in arrest by the Gestapo, the regime’s secret police. Yet the students of the White Rose (the origin of the group’s name is uncertain; possibly, it came from the picture of the flower on their leaflets) risked all, motivated purely by idealism, the highest moral and ethical principles, and sympathy for their Jewish neighbors and friends. (Despite the risks, Hans’ sister, Sophie, a biology student at her brother’s university, begged to participate in the activities of the White Rose when she discovered her brother’s covert operation.) www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nazis-arrest-white-rose-resistance-leaders
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The Little Red Schoolhouse
“I’m the guy who invented San Diego’s pension crisis,” said Jack McGrory. He now lives in a French-style chateau overlooking the ocean, owns race horses and a resort.
Jack of all trades: McGrory’s back, leading SDSU’s Mission Valley campaign
Letter: Recent decision to make Aztec identity task force anonymous is unwarranted
“The single most important ingredient in the recipe for success is transparency because transparency builds trust,” said Denise Morris, President & CEO of Campbell Soup Company
If only San Diego State President Sally Roush felt the same way.
Roush has decided that the 17-member task force assembled to “explore the future of the Aztec mascot and moniker” will remain anonymous.
Well, that’s it. Game over. Nothing to see here. With one single decision, Roush doomed the outcome of the task force before it even began. thedailyaztec.com/88060/opinion/letter-recent-decision-to-make-aztec-identity-task-force-anonymous-is-unwarranted/
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Michael Feinberg, a Founder of KIPP Schools, Is Fired After Misconduct Claims
KIPP, one of the country’s largest and most successful charter school chains, dismissed its co-founder on Thursday after an investigation found credible a claim that he had sexually abused a student some two decades ago, according to a letter sent to the school community.
The co-founder, Michael Feinberg, was accused last spring of sexually abusing a minor female student in Houston in the late 1990s, according to someone with close knowledge of the case who was not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. An outside investigation found her claim credible after interviewing the student and her mother, who both gave the same sequence of events.
Mr. Feinberg denies the accusation, his lawyer, Christopher L. Tritico, said.
Investigators also uncovered evidence that Mr. Feinberg had sexually harassed two KIPP employees. One case, in 2004, led to a financial settlement, the letter said; the other could not be corroborated because the woman involved would not cooperate, but the letter found it to be credible.
Police investigating missing school district funds (corruption endemic in capital’s schools)
National City police are investigating how nearly $12,000 went missing from the National School District after an internal audit revealed discrepancies in the district’s bookkeeping.
The department’s investigations division is looking into possible embezzlement involving former administrative assistant Xochitl Mercado, said National City Police Chief Manuel Rodriguez.
Mercado most recently worked in the school district as an administrative assistant to Chris Carson, the district’s assistant superintendent for business services.
Rodriguez said the police department started their investigation Sept. 22, 2017, a few days after the school district brought the matter to their attention. www.thestarnews.com/police-investigating-missing-school-district-funds/
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Stranger in Strange Lands
Joseph Conrad and the Dawn of Globalization (that would be imperialism)
In the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, nothing reshaped the world more than European imperialism. It redrew the map, enriched Europe, and left millions of Africans and Asians dead. For example, in 1870, some 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara was under the control of indigenous kings, chiefs, or other such rulers. Within 35 years, virtually the entire continent, only a few patches excepted, was made up of European colonies or protectorates. France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom had all seized pieces of “this magnificent African cake,” in the words of King Leopold II of Belgium—who took an enormous slice for himself.
In Asia in these same years, the British tightened their grip on the Indian subcontinent, the French on Indochina, and the Dutch on what today is Indonesia. Japan, Russia, and half a dozen European countries, even the tottering Austro-Hungarian Empire, won enclaves or concessions in China. Meanwhile, the United States fought a ruthless war in the Philippines, killing several hundred thousand Filipinos to establish an American colony.
It is startling, however, how seldom such events appear in the work of the era’s European writers. It would be as if almost no major nineteenth-century American novelist dealt with slavery or no major twentieth-century German one wrote about the Holocaust. It’s not that Europeans were unaware. Hundreds of thousands of them had lived or worked in the colonies, and the fruits of empire were everywhere on display: in palatial mansions and grand monuments built with colonial fortunes, in street names such as Rue de Madagascar in Bordeaux and Khartoum Road in London, in shops full of foreign trinkets and spices. In 1897, more than one million visitors came to see a world’s fair on the outskirts of Brussels that featured 267 Congolese men, women, and children, living in huts and paddling canoes around a pond. There were similar human exhibits at fairs in the United States. www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2018-02-13/stranger-strange-lands?cid=nlc-fa_fatoday-20180223
Analysis: ISIS hasn’t been defeated
The ODNI’s map of the areas where ISIS and al Qaeda operate.
Editor’s note: This article was first published by The Weekly Standard.
On January 19, the Pentagon released its new National Defense Strategy. The second paragraph of the 14-page declassified summary painted a dire picture. “Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding,” the Defense Department warned. “We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order—creating a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory. Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.”
That last line garnered widespread attention. It signaled that defense planners no longer want the jihadist wars unleashed by the 9/11 attacks to be their primary focus. The rest of the overview explained why. China is now a “strategic competitor,” while Russia seeks to “shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor.” Both China and Russia “want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” Meanwhile, rogue states such as North Korea and Iran increasingly pose threats to American interests. While the Defense Department recognizes that ISIS and other “terrorist groups” will continue “to murder the innocent and threaten more broadly,” Washington must shift its focus to “long-term strategic competition.”
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Navy sends destroyer to Black Sea to Desensitize Russia
The Navy has deployed the guided-missile destroyer Carney to join the destroyer Ross in the Black Sea in a move that U.S. military officials told CNN is intended to “desensitize” Russia to the presence of American military assets in the strategically important region.
The deployment of the Carney marks the first time in four years that two American destroyers have operated in the Black Sea outside of scheduled exercises. The move comes as Russia continues to militarize Crimea, the peninsula it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
In recent years, the U.S. and NATO have accused Russia of sending troops and military hardware to Crimea, and there are now reports that submarines have been added to the mix. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/02/20/navy-sends-destroyers-to-black-sea-to-desensitize-russia/
Russia Warns US Not To ‘Play With Fire’ In Syria After Massive Battle Reportedly Killed Hundreds
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the U.S. not to “play with fire” in Syria after a massive escalation in violence took place on all sides of the multi-faceted conflict earlier this month.
“The U.S. .should stop playing very dangerous games which could lead to the dismemberment of the Syrian state,” Lavrov said at a Middle East conference in Moscow on Monday, according to Bloomberg.
The U.S. has already announced plans to keep Syria divided until UN-sanctioned elections can take place across Syria, and it’s made it clear it will respond with force when Russian, Iranian, or Syrian forces threaten that goal.
On February 7, a group of pro-government fighters, who were reportedly majority Russian military contractors, launched what the United States called an “unprovoked attack” on one of its positions in eastern Syria. The U.S. responded with airstrikes and shelling killing between 100 and 300, according to a variety of reports.
Lavrov also spoke of another front in the Syrian conflict, saying that he and his allies in Iran and Syria “are seeing attempts to exploit the Kurds’ aspirations,” a reference to the United States’ support for Kurdish militias in northern Syria, who aspire to a state all their own. taskandpurpose.com/russia-mercenaries-warning-us-syria/?bsft_eid=84147d9c-0e0c-4afc-a55d-6073a249a29f&utm_campaign=tp_daily_tuesday_pm&utm_source=blueshift&utm_medium=email&utm_content=tp_daily_pm_ricks&bsft_pid=7cd03232-b006-41da-90e2-34f13d732049&bsft_clkid=3762407c-cd8b-4860-80df-d2dd9eb03aae&bsft_uid=7c674a6c-ae11-4ec4-84f1-aef0c34e44e5&bsft_mid=f028d093-a5f9-468a-9973-8b58f0966b1b&bsft_pp=1
Wave of Taliban Attacks Kills at Least 20 Afghan Soldiers (Perpetual war ok by Americans?)
The Taliban staged three attacks in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 20 Afghan soldiers as a high-level NATO delegation was visiting the country to discuss the peace process.
The insurgents have been striking checkpoints and small outposts at night in the turbulent southern provinces of Farah and Helmand.
In one attack, the insurgents detonated explosives packed into an American-made Humvee that had been captured from the Afghan Army. And in another, they made off with a Humvee, replenishing their supply.
In the most lethal strike, insurgents overran a checkpoint in Farah Province around 3 a.m. Saturday. An Afghan Army spokesman said that 18 government soldiers were killed and two others wounded, and that a firefight with the attackers had continued even after reinforcements arrived.
A member of the provincial council in Farah, Dadullah Qani, said that more than 20 soldiers had been killed and that the Taliban had captured the Humvee and burned an army truck. www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-soldiers.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Trump hints at allowing more troops to carry personal weapons on military bases (schools too!)
But Defense Department leaders have in the past resisted widespread changes to those firearms policies because of concerns it could lead to more accidental shootings and successful suicides.
The comments from the commander in chief came during a speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, while he was talking about possible solutions to gun violence in America.
“We’re going to look at that whole military base gun-free zone,” he said. “If we can’t have our military holding guns, it’s pretty bad.
“We had a number of instances on military bases, you know that. So we want to protect our military. We want to make our military stronger and better than it’s ever been before.” www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/02/23/trump-hints-at-allowing-more-troops-to-carry-personal-weapons-on-military-bases/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow
US, Chinese officials scuffled over ‘nuclear football‘ during Trump’s visit to Beijing
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A physical altercation erupted Nov. 9 when a Chinese security official attempted to bar a U.S. military aide carrying the nuclear weapon codes from entering the Great Hall of the People during President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, according to Axios.
The aide was carrying the “nuclear football,” the briefcase with the emergency codes that allow the president to authorize a nuclear attack when away from a command center.
“An individual, not part of the official delegation, attempted to prevent one of our protectees from entering a room. A U.S. Secret Service agent quickly intervened and a short scuffle ensued,” according to a statement from the Secret Service, reported Axios. www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/02/20/us-chinese-officials-scuffled-over-nuclear-football-during-trumps-visit-to-beijing/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow
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Seabee command triad fired after XO found strolling naked in woods
The entire command triad of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4, currently deployed to Okinawa, Japan, was fired Feb. 11 after the unit’s executive officer was found intoxicated and walking naked in the woods on Camp Shields.
Lt. Cmdr. Jason M. Gabbard, the unit’s XO, was relieved after being discovered in the woods wearing only his boots following a command gathering for chiefs and officers, Navy officials said.
The commanding officer, Cmdr. James J. Cho, and Command Master Chief (SCW/EXW) Jason K. Holden, were also relieved for their handling of the incident, which they attempted to cover up, a source told Navy Times.
The firing of a complete command leadership is rare. It happened with the leaders of the destroyer Fitzgerald following the deadly collision in June.
Still, it happened twice in three years, prior to that. All three leaders of the destroyer Bainbridge a ship were canned was in 2016 amid reports of a firework and gambling scandal. Also, in 2014, the leadership of the destroyer James E. Williams was fired as a result of a poor command climate report and subsequent investigation. www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/02/14/seabee-command-triad-fired-after-xo-found-strolling-naked-in-woods/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow
Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia (Part One) Frontline: Quite good!
www.pbs.org/video/bitter-rivals-iran-and-saudi-arabia-pqsnhk/
Your Marine Corps
Infantry Officer Course lowers requirement for hikes
Faced with towering attrition rates, the Marine Corps has steadily modified its grueling Infantry Officer Course ― changes that top Marines say are not attempts to water down standards, but to more accurately replicate today’s real-world requirements.
Recent changes include the number of evaluated hikes required to pass the course, and the removal of the physically demanding Combat Endurance Test as a strict requirement to graduate.
Under the new requirements, only three of those nine hikes will be evaluated, and Marines will have to pass all three evaluated hikes in order to graduate… www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/02/21/infantry-officer-course-lowers-requirement-for-hikes/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
White Male Privilege Squandered On Job At Best Buy
Despite being the beneficiary of numerous societal advantages and having faced little to no major adversity throughout his life, local man Travis Benton has spent the last four years squandering his white male privilege on a sales floor job at Best Buy, sources confirmed Tuesday. “You can get by with a regular HDMI cable, but if you’re looking at a length longer than 10 feet, I’d go with a gold-tipped one,” said the man dressed in a bright blue polo shirt and pin-on name tag as he continued to fritter away such innate life advantages as greater access to higher education, leniency from the justice system, and favorable treatment from other white males who lead and make hiring decisions at a disproportionately high number of American companies. www.theonion.com/white-male-privilege-squandered-on-job-at-best-buy-1819576421?utm_content=Main&utm_campaign=SF&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing
Donald Trump Jr. says he likes India’s poor because they ‘smile’
![Donald Trump Jr. wearing a suit and tie: The eldest son of U.S. President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. arrives for a meeting with journalists in Kolkata, India, on Feb. 21, 2018.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"73","h":"49","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBJpYSA.img?h=486&w=728&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=2022&y=1313"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBJpYSA.img?h=417&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=2022&y=1313"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBJpYSA.img?h=417&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=2022&y=1313"}})
Donald Trump Jr. is receiving some heavy criticism for a tone-deaf remark about India’s poorest residents during his visit to the country to promote new Trump Towers.
President Trump’s eldest son on Tuesday said in an interview with India’s CNBC affiliate, “the spirit of the Indian people” was unique to “other parts of the emerging world.”
“You can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face.” He did preface his statement with saying he didn’t mean to sound glib. www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-jr-says-he-likes-indias-poor-because-they-smile/ar-BBJq3dz?ocid=sf
How rich are the rich? If only you knew
American ‘exceptionalism’
When we do look at the data on wealth inequality in the U.S., it’s stark and dwarfs that of the rest of the developed world.
The conservative Hudson Institute in 2017 reported that the wealthiest 5 percent of American households held 62.5 percent of all assets in the U.S. in 2013, up from 54.1 percent 30 years earlier. As a consequence, the wealth of the other 95 percent declined from 45.9 percent to 37.5 percent.
As a result, the median wealth of upper-income families (earning US$639,400 on average) was nearly seven times that of middle-income households ($96,500) in 2013, the widest gap in at least 30 years.
More notably, inequality scholars Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the top 0.01 percent controlled 22 percent of all wealth in 2012, up from just 7 percent in 1979.
If you only looked at data on income inequality, however, you’d see a different picture. In 2013, for example, the top 5 percent of households earned just 30 percent of all U.S. income (compared with possessing nearly 63 percent of all wealth).
While the U.S. is not the only developed country that has seen wealth inequality rise over the past three decades, it is an outlier. The wealthiest 5 percent of households in the U.S. have almost 91 times more wealth than the median American household, the widest gap among 18 of the world’s most developed countries. The next highest is the Netherlands, which has a ratio less than half that. theconversation.com/how-rich-are-the-rich-if-only-you-knew-89682
San Francisco’s ‘Diseased Streets’ Are Being Compared to Some of Worst Slums in the World (video within)
A combination of discarded needles and piles of feces on the streets of San Francisco has caused least one expert to say that the city’s slums are comparable to those in developing countries.
Reporters with KNTV investigated what they referred to as the “diseased streets” of the city, and found that each of the 153 downtown blocks they surveyed — an area that encompasses playgrounds, hotels and government buildings — is littered with garbage. Included in this trash were at least 100 drug needles and 300 piles of feces.
Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Berkeley, warned that not only do the needles cause viral diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis, but dried fecal matter can release airborne viruses like the rotavirus. www.westernjournal.com/san-francisco-diseased-streets-compared-worst-slums-world/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=PostTopSharingButtons&utm_content=2018-02-22&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
‘School shooter in the making’: All the times authorities were warned about Nikolas Cruz
Nikolas Cruz’s dangerous and disturbing behavior was flagged repeatedly to authorities, both local and federal, over a span of two years starting in February 2016. But no one stopped him before he killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Here’s a time line of incidents where Cruz was reported to law enforcement. Many of the incidents involve the threat of a school shooting.
▪ Feb. 5, 2016: A Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy is told by an anonymous caller that Nikolas Cruz, then 17, had threatened on Instagram to shoot up his school and posted a photo of himself with guns. The information is forwarded to BSO Deputy Scot Peterson, a school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Tipster’s Warning to F.B.I. on Florida Shooting Suspect: ‘I Know He’s Going to Explode’
The warnings that law enforcement officials received about Nikolas Cruz were anything but subtle.
“I know he’s going to explode,” a woman who knew Mr. Cruz said on the F.B.I.’s tip line on Jan. 5. Her big worry was that he might resort to slipping “into a school and just shooting the place up.” Forty days later, Mr. Cruz is accused of doing just that, barging into his former high school in Parkland, Fla., and shooting 17 people to death.
Three months before the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a family friend dialed 911 to tell the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office about Mr. Cruz’s personal arsenal. “I need someone here because I’m afraid he comes back and he has a lot of weapons,” the friend said. NYTimes 2/23/18
As Gunman Rampaged Through Florida School, Armed Deputy ‘Never Went In’
The only armed sheriff’s deputy at a Florida high school where 17 people were killed took cover outside rather than charging into the building when the massacre began, the Broward County sheriff said on Thursday. The sheriff also acknowledged that his office received 23 calls related to the suspect going back a decade, including one last year that said he was collecting knives and guns, but may not have adequately followed up.
The deputy, Scot Peterson, resigned on Thursday after being suspended without pay after Sheriff Scott Israel reviewed surveillance video.
“He never went in,” Sheriff Israel said in a news conference. He said the video showed Deputy Peterson doing “nothing.” www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/nikolas-cruz-florida-shooting.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
District Will Suspend Kids Who Leave Class To Protest Florida Shooting – ‘We Are Here For An Education And Not A Political Protest’
NEEDVILLE, TX (CBSDFW.COM) — “We are here for an education and not a political protest.” That’s is the message from Needville ISD Superintendent Curtis Rhodes Tuesday in response to a call by political groups for students to walk out of class to protest gun issues in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
In a post on Facebook, Rhodes said, “A school is a place to learn and grow educationally, emotionally and morally. A disruption will not be tolerated.”
Rhodes said that students who walk out of class — or disrupt school — to protest current gun laws face a possible suspension. “They will be suspended from school for three days and face all the consequences that come along with an out of school suspension.” dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/02/21/suspend-kids-who-protest-florida-shooting/amp/
Top 10 Signs the U.S. Is the Most Corrupt Nation in the World (2018 Ed.) Juan Cole
6. The US military budget is bloated and enormous, bigger than the military budgets of the next twelve major states. What isn’t usually realized is that perhaps half of it is spent on outsourced services, not on the military. It is corporate welfare on a cosmic scale. I’ve seen with my own eyes how officers in the military get out and then form companies to sell things to their former colleagues still on the inside. Precisely because it is a cesspool of large-scale corruption, Trump’s budget will throw over $100 billion extra taxpayer dollars at it. www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/top-10-signs-us-most-corrupt-nation-world-2018-edn?akid=16766.2582026.qoOEev&rd=1&src=newsletter1089160&t=8
On Feb. 24, 1912, at the height of the Bread & Roses strike, the police and state militia attacked women and children in the Lawrence, MA train station. In the week after the police attack this powerful editorial cartoon appeared in newspapers around the world. “Law and Order in Lawrence.” A giant police officer, labeled “The Lawrence Way,” crushes women and children under his feet as he swings his bloody club at them. On one side of the illustration Lawrence, MA is shown and labeled “The hunger city. Dividends for mill owners – starvation wages for workers.” On the opposite side, a woman named Sympathy says “Let the children come” as she stands over a place labeled “Homes of the workers of other cities.” Industrial Workers of the World Collection, Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State U.
Border Wall Project Begins: $18 Million to Replace 2.25-Mile Section in Calexico
The federal government Wednesday broke ground on the first border wall replacement project awarded under President Donald Trump.
Customs and Border Protection is replacing a 2.25-mile section of border fencing constructed in the 1990s using scrap metal with a 30-foot-high bollard-style wall just south of downtown Calexico. The project covers an area west of the Calexico West Port of Entry, according to the agency. timesofsandiego.com/politics/2018/02/21/first-border-wall-replacement-project-begins-18-million-to-replace-small-2-25-mile-section/
Ready, Fire, Aim: The Science Behind Police Shooting Bystanders
According to a 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time.
The data show what any police officer who has ever been involved in a shooting can tell you–firing accurately in a stressful situation is extremely hard. In an article for TIME last year, Amanda Ripley looked what happens in the brain and body when shots are fired. The brain stem sends out signals that cause blood vessels to constrict and hormones to surge. Studies have shown that eyesight becomes narrower (literally tunnel vision) under such conditions. People who have been in gunfights describe hearing very little and perceieve time slowing down. Amid this chaos, as police officers have to make difficult, split-second decisions, humans can lose motor skills as the body reverts to basic fight or flight instincts.
Ready, Fire, Aim: The Science Behind Police Shooting Bystanders
Solidarity for Never
‘It’s Time To Take Action’: Students Lead Protest to Change Gun Laws: NEA/AFT seek to herd gun frenzy (hey, there’s WARS on) into Democratic Party voting booth
There’s a new face on the age-old gun debate: our students, and they won’t be silenced. They are demanding that the adults in power keep them safe and they will not stand by and allow elected officials to fail them any longer.
As of Feb. 14, just a month and a half into the new year, a total of 20 people have been killed and more than 30 have been injured in shootings at American elementary, middle, and high schools. Only weeks earlier at Marshall County High School in Kentucky two students were killed by a 15-year old shooter who left fourteen others wounded and all traumatized perhaps for the rest of their lives.
AUDIO: NEA Vice President Says No to Arming Teachers
A gunman killed ten at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Twenty-eight young children and their teachers had their lives cut short down at Sandy Hook. Thirty-three died when one shooter opened fire at Virginia Tech.
Students are saying, no more. This time, they might be right. neatoday.org/2018/02/21/students-lead-protest-to-change-gun-laws/
NEA/AFT’s counterfeit issue:
Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools (killing millions elsewhere is fine by Nationalist NEA/AFT)
After the slaughter of students and staff in Parkland, Florida, the time for action has never been more urgent. The politicians sit on their hands as our children and their teachers are murdered in their schools. We will be silent no more! The failure to enact rational laws that bar access to guns designed for mass shootings is inexcusable. It is past time to speak out and act.
Pledge your support to stop gun violence here.
We call for mass action on April 20, the anniversary of the horrific shootings at Columbine High School. networkforpubliceducation.org/2018/02/join-us-day-action-stop-gun-violence-schools/
Thank the Counterfeit Unions of the Empire
Are Teachers’ Unions on the Brink of Demise?
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver a major blow to teachers’ unions in the coming months: Teachers in about half of states may no longer have to pay mandatory fees if they’re not union members, which could cause drops in both revenue and membership.
There’s national speculation about what this all could mean—while observers say this case won’t be unions’ demise, it could cause the political juggernauts to lose some power. And some teachers are wondering whether this will signal a shift in how teachers’ unions operate.
At stake in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 are the so-called “agency” or “fair-share” fees that public-employee unions in 22 states charge to workers who choose not to join but are still represented in collective bargaining. The plaintiff in the case argues that these policies violate free speech—he is forced to pay money to a group that advocates for causes he does not support. The unions say all workers gain from the bargaining they do for salaries and other benefits, so paying a fee for that is only fair.
The case, for which oral arguments will be delivered later this month, would affect all public-employee unions, including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and their state and local affiliates. With the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, to the Supreme Court, many analysts, onlookers, and some union representatives themselves predict that the justices will rule in Janus’ favor. www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/02/14/are-teachers-unions-on-the-brink-of.html?cmp=eml-enl-tu-news2&M=58381189&U=1666178
NEA Names Venture Capitalist Ted Dintersmith 2018 Friend of Education
Spy versus Spy
Video: Glenn Greenwald and James Risen Debate the Trump/Russia Investigation
The Magical Mystery Tour
Florida Lawmakers Advance Bill Requiring Schools To Display ‘In God We Trust’
State legislators in Florida came together on Wednesday — the same day student activists gathered outside the House chamber in Tallahassee to demand stricter gun laws, one week after the school massacre in Parkland — to pass a measure related to schools, but not guns. HB 839 would require every public school in Florida to display “in a conspicuous place” the state motto, “In God We Trust.”
House members passed the legislation 97 to 10. www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/22/588002860/florida-lawmakers-advance-bill-requiring-schools-to-display-in-god-we-trust
Political mystic Billy Graham only 4th private citizen to lie in honor at U.S. capitol, 1st since 2005
The body of Rev. Billy Graham will lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol next week, making the evangelist and presidential advisor only the fourth private citizen to receive the recognition.
House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Graham, who died Wednesday at age 99, will lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda from Feb. 28-March 1. www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2018/02/billy_graham_only_4th_private.html
Catholic Archbishop: ‘I’d Rather Go to Prison Than Report Child Abuse to Police’
One of the highest-ranking officials in the Catholic Church has stated that he would “rather go to prison” than report pedophilia to police.
Australia’s most powerful clergy, Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart, says he’s prepared to be jailed for failing to report child sex abuse by pedophile priests.
He made the shocking statement in response to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse saying there should be “no excuse, protection nor privilege” for clergy who failed to alert police of abuse.
Hart insisted that sexual abuse was “a spiritual encounter with God through the priest” and was “of a higher order” than criminal law. nativescomunity.info/2018/01/31/catholic-archbishop-id-rather-go-to-prison-than-report-child-abuse-to-police/
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Baltimore ax-throwing bar to open in April in Highlandtown
Urban Axes, a chain-bar concept involving patrons throwing axes at targets, will open in April in Highlandtown.
On Thursday, the Baltimore City Liquor Board approved a liquor license for the bar located at 1 N. Haven St., according to a liquor board spokeswoman. www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/midnight-sun-blog/bs-fe-urban-axes-baltimore-opening-20180216-story.html
www.facebook.com/telesurenglish/videos/1295505463926186/
Trump and the ‘Society of the Spectacle’
Nearly 50 years ago, Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” reached bookshelves in France. It was a thin book in a plain white cover, with an obscure publisher and an author who shunned interviews, but its impact was immediate and far-reaching, delivering a social critique that helped shape France’s student protests and disruptions of 1968.
“The Society of the Spectacle” is still relevant today. With its descriptions of human social life subsumed by technology and images, it is often cited as a prophecy of the dangers of the internet age now upon us. And perhaps more than any other 20th-century philosophical work, it captures the profoundly odd moment we are now living through, under the presidential reign of Donald Trump.
As with the first lines from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” (“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”) and Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” (“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”), Debord, an intellectual descendant of both of these thinkers, opens with political praxis couched in high drama: “The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.” www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/trump-and-the-society-of-the-spectacle.html?emc=edit_th_20170220&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=38940097
www.facebook.com/spirit.of.dogs/videos/1738185416231782/
www.facebook.com/detroitfreepress/videos/10156340714560530/
So Long
In Our Memory: Colin
