We Say Fight Back!

‘We’re all in it for the kids’: Education unions lead thousands in job action at Queen’s Park

Thousands of striking teachers and education workers rallied at the Ontario Legislature on Friday in a demonstration they say is intended to send a message to Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce.

“We’re all in it for the kids,” head of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association Liz Stuart told CBC News.

“I am really hoping that the government really understands that this is about all of our members. We have 30,000 of them here today.”

Earlier Friday morning, Stuart was joined at a news conference by Harvey Bischof of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), president of the Association of Franco-Ontarian Teachers (AEFO) Rémi Sabourin, and Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO).

In all, nearly 200,000 teachers and education workers demonstrated in 72 school boards on Friday, affecting nearly 5,000 schools and two million students across the province.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-teachers-provincewide-strike-1.5470980?fbclid=IwAR36_2esJnJlcaQW_LcV2LQCXJBttrE2eRACP-DaMyqyy0u9GR04KOyt428

UC Santa Cruz graduate assistants will continue to withhold grades past deadline: WILDCAT!!!

University of California Santa Cruz graduate assistants said they will continue the unsanctioned strike past the midnight deadline. The university says those who do not turn in their grades may not have their positions available for the Spring quarter and beyond. The students are seeking a 60% pay increase due to the high cost of housing in Santa Cruz.

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Proposed Book Banning Bill in Missouri Could Imprison Librarians

Bill would allow review boards to censor books, fine or imprison librarians who violate the law

A bill proposed in Missouri this month represents a transparent, shameful attempt to legalize book banning in public libraries within the state, PEN America said today.

The bill — the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act or House Bill 2044 — aims to add several provisions to the state’s funding law for public libraries. These new provisions establish “parental library review boards” that would evaluate whether any library materials constitute “age-inappropriate sexual material.” Members of these five-member boards, who would be elected at a town meeting by a simple majority of voters, are empowered to determine whether material is appropriate, including by evaluating its literary merit. Public librarians are explicitly barred by the statute from serving on such review boards, even if they are from the community.

“This is a shockingly transparent attempt to legalize book banning in the state of Missouri,” said James Tager, deputy director of Free Expression Research and Policy at PEN America. “   pen.org/press-release/proposed-book-banning-bill-in-missouri-could-imprison-librarians/?utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0jpKK2OfwVpCE_tnB7MPO-SlughC2iiP9vNtILzd6CH_r4gYGywOlD6VE

Assange’s US Extradition Hearing Opens Monday

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

This time when U.S. soldiers are killed by an Afghan, Trump does not call off talks with the Taliban. Is ending the war the only way to end these killings?

…the war has become a bleeding stalemate in which even some Afghan soldiers turn their guns on American service members, viewing them as invaders instead of partners. The American sergeants mourned at Dover Air Force Base were killed by an Afghan soldier whose uniform, salary and M249 light machine gun were paid for by the United States.

Of the roughly 3,500 total American and NATO deaths in this war, American officials say, more than 150 have been killed in such “green-on-blue” attacks   www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/world/asia/afghanistan-peace-american-deaths.html

US, Taliban Agree to Week-Long Fake Truce in Afghanistan

The long expected “reduction in violence” between the US and the Taliban was finalized, sign and put into effect on Friday at midnight. The deal will last seven days, and could be immediately followed by the Afghanistan peace deal.

Taliban officials are suggesting that if all is well, the final peace deal would be signed on February 29, Pompeo confirmed the date, but US officials aren’t confirmed the specifics of this plan.

On the other hand, it is being reported that if the peace plan is signed, the Taliban and Afghan government would enter into their own power-sharing talks in the 10 days that follow. This may be difficult with Afghanistan still dealing with a contested election outcome.

For many months, all indications are that the peace deal itself is fairly simple. The Taliban wants all foreign troops out of the country, and the US wants assurances that the Taliban will keep ISIS and al-Qaeda out of the country. Beyond that, the Taliban is expected to work out deals with the US-backed government, whatever that turns out to be.  news.antiwar.com/2020/02/21/us-taliban-agree-to-week-long-truce-in-afghanistan/

Afghan troops say Taliban are brothers and war is ‘not really our fight.’

The world is waiting anxiously to see whether the U.S. and Afghan governments and the Taliban will agree to a one-week truce that could set the stage for a “permanent and comprehensive” ceasefire and the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign occupation forces from Afghanistan. Could the talks be for real this time, or will they turn out to be just another political smokescreen for President Trump’s addiction to mass murder and celebrity whack-a-mole?

If the ceasefire really happens, nobody will be happier than the Afghans fighting and dying on the front lines of a war that one described to a BBC reporter as “not really our fight.” Afghan government troops and police who are suffering the worst casualties on the front lines of this war told the BBC they are not fighting out of hatred for the Taliban or loyalty to the U.S.-backed government, but out of poverty, desperation and self-preservation. In this respect, they are caught in the same excruciating predicament as millions of other people across the greater Middle East wherever the United States has turned people’s homes and communities into American “battlefields.”

In Afghanistan, U.S.-trained special operations forces conduct “hunt and kill” night raids and offensive operations in Taliban-held territory, backed by devastating U.S. airpower that kills largely uncounted numbers of resistance fighters and civilians. The U.S. dropped a post-2001 record 7,423 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan in 2019.   www.nationofchange.org/2020/02/17/afghan-troops-say-taliban-are-brothers-and-war-is-not-really-our-fight/

Reminder: The Truth About Tonkin

www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/the-weekly/eddie-gallagher-navy-seal.html

Combat video, text messages and confidential interviews with members of the Navy SEALs obtained by The New York Times reveal chilling details about the conduct of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher.

Trained as a medic, sniper and explosives expert, Gallagher was the consummate leader of Alpha Platoon, SEAL Team 7, part of the Navy’s elite commando force. But when his own men said he committed war crimes, it sent shock waves up the chain of command — reaching all the way to the commander in chief.

Gallagher’s case continues to roil the Navy even after his acquittal on the most severe charges, and the public debate on Fox News and Twitter has widened the rift between President Trump and some top military leaders.

What exactly happened in Iraq in 2017 that so alarmed Gallagher’s brothers in arms? And why has the case resonated with Trump and his political base?  (NYTIMES The Weekly)

Droning the World

How the President Became a Drone Operator
From Obama to Trump, the Escalation of Drone Warfare
By Allegra Harpootlian

We’re only a few days into the new decade and it’s somehow already a bigger dumpster fire than the last. On January 2nd, President Trump decided to order what one expert called “the most important decapitation strike America has ever launched.” This one took out not some nameless terrorist in a distant land or a group of civilians who happened to get in the way, but Major General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its military operations across the Middle East.

Among the thousands of ignored American drone strikes since the 9/11 attacks, this was not one of them. In the wake of the assassination, we’ve seen: the Iraqi parliament vote to expel American forces from their country; all the Democratic presidential candidates make statements condemning the strike; thousands of protestors around the world take to the streets; and both chambers of Congress introduce resolutions aimed at curbing the president’s expanding war powers. Even though there is still so much we don’t know, one thing is for sure. Everything we thought we knew about drone warfare — and America’s wars more broadly — is about to be thrown out the window.   www.tomdispatch.com/post/176649/tomgram%3A_allegra_harpootlian%2C_droning_the_world/

Risen: The Biggest Secret

My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror

I was sitting in the nearly empty restaurant of the Westin Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, getting ready for a showdown with the federal government that I had been trying to avoid for more than seven years. The Obama administration was demanding that I reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about a botched CIA operation in my 2006 book, “State of War.” I had also written about the CIA operation for the New York Times, but the paper’s editors had suppressed the story at the government’s request. It wasn’t the only time they had done so.  theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/

All the Times the US Allied With Soleimani Against Common Enemies, Giving Him Air Support at Tikrit

Soleimani played a key role in helping defeat ISIL in Iraq, where he was a de facto and even tactical U.S. ally.

Since the U.S. political establishment and press has been demonizing Gen. Qasem Soleimani since he was rubbed out by Trump, it is perhaps worth complicating the story—especially now that Trump is accusing him of having targeted not one but four U.S. embassies. Trump is a notorious and compulsive liar, and there is no reason to think that charge is true. The prime minister of Iraq says he invited Soleimani to Baghdad for peace negotiations with Saudi Arabia and then Trump just suddenly blew his guest away. Soleimani came openly on a commercial flight and went through passport control with his diplomatic passport. His arrival in Baghdad was not part of a covert operation to hit Americans. Nor did Soleimani, as Wolf Blitzer breathlessly reported on CNN kill “millions” (when? where?).

Nor was he a terrorist; terrorists are non-state actors. He was a general in the Iranian military. Soleimani fought in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, which was a defensive war on Iran’s part, since Iraq aggressively invaded under Saddam Hussein. The United States supported Saddam to the hilt in his aggression. So you’d have to say that in the 1980s Soleimani was doing something heroic, whereas the Reagan administration was doing something shameful. Reagan even ran interference for Saddam at the U.N. when Iran brought a complaint about the Iraqi use of chemical weapons.   www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/11/all-times-us-allied-soleimani-against-common-enemies-giving-him-air-support-tikrit?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1F1x_39EjfWng03hF6SQWzbTdkhHkVJ7QjKb7OSBFsxNNSLkejbroOkZ8

 

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Wells Fargo is paying $3 billion to settle U.S. probes of fake-accounts scandal

Wells Fargo & Co. will pay $3 billion to settle U.S. investigations into more than a decade of widespread consumer abuses under a deal that lets the scandal-ridden bank avoid criminal charges.

The deferred-prosecution deal with the Department of Justice spares the San Francisco lender a potential criminal conviction that could create serious complications for banks, if it cooperates with continuing investigations and abides by other conditions for three years. The accord also resolves a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investigators found that Wells Fargo’s overly aggressive sales targets led thousands of employees to open millions of unauthorized accounts in customers’ names or foist other products on them from 2002 to 2016, often by creating false records or misappropriating their identities, the Justice Department said Friday in a statement announcing the penalties. That generated millions of dollars in fees and interest, and in some cases it damaged customers’ credit ratings.

US debt surpasses $23 trillion for first time

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

The hearings have showed the role of medical professionals, including keeping count during waterboarding sessions, in the agency black sites where prisoners were tortured.

When the C.I.A. strapped down Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at a secret site in Poland in 2003, those inside the cell included a three-man waterboarding team, black-masked guards — and a doctor.

The doctor’s stated role was to monitor the health of the detainee. He also kept count of each near drowning.

“Literally, the physician had a little silver thing,” James E. Mitchell, one of the architects of the interrogation program, testified last week to the military tribunal at Guantánamo Bay. The doctor, he said, “would click how many times the water was poured” as a guard kept time with a stopwatch.

But the C.I.A. doctors did more than count waterboarding sessions. Government investigations and evidence in the pretrial hearings of the men, including Mr. Mohammed, accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, show doctors conducted “rectal rehydration,” carried out rectal cavity searches and examined swollen feet and legs of captives who were sleep deprived for days by being shackled in painful positions.  www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/cia-black-site-doctors.html

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands says Mr. Epstein and his associates used a database to track victims as young as 11 years old.

New evidence shows Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused and trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private Caribbean island, some as recently as 2018, significantly expanding the scope of his alleged conduct, a top law enforcement official said in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

Mr. Epstein, a wealthy financier who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail last year, was bringing girls as young as 11 and 12 to his secluded estate in the Virgin Islands, known as Little Saint James, and kept a computerized database to track the availability and movements of women and girls, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit, which was filed by Denise N. George, the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, broadened the dimensions of the wrongdoing in which Mr. Epstein was said to have engaged. He had been charged by Manhattan prosecutors in July with sexually exploiting dozens of women and girls in New York and Florida, but they did not point to any actions beyond 2005.  www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-virgin-islands.html

LAPD scandal over alleged gang framing expands; chief sees a ‘criminal aspect’

The investigation into allegations that members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite Metro Division falsely portrayed people as gang members or associates has expanded into a criminal probe and forced LAPD leaders to inform community members about the scandal.

It has also raised questions about the criminal cases brought by the officers under scrutiny. Officers assigned across the city are suspected of falsifying field interview cards during stops and entering incorrect information about those questioned in an effort to boost stop statistics.

“This definitely has a criminal aspect. Falsifying information on a department report is a crime,” Chief Michel Moore told the Police Commission on Tuesday. “I must look straight at these allegations. It does give me concern.”  www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-14/lapd-scandal-lapd-gangs

Solidarity for Never

Quisling Owen Bieber, Auto Workers’ President During Period of Decline, Dies at 90

Grimes is among 12 people convicted of federal crimes during a years-long investigation of corruption within the UAW and auto industry. The investigation has revealed that UAW leaders embezzled money from worker paychecks, shook down union contractors and schemed with auto executives   www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2020/02/17/ex-uaw-aide-mike-grimes-forfeiting-home-luxuries-guilty-plea/4788671002/

GM says Fiat Chrysler not cooperating in racketeering suit

General Motors Co. filed a motion Friday in U.S. District Court asking a judge to make Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV hand over evidence related to a racketeering case against the Italian American automaker.

GM argues in the court filing that Fiat Chrysler has refused to participate in the discovery phase of the federal civil racketeering lawsuit filed by GM. The filing essentially demands documents related to the case.

The motion is “standard practice,” according to Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor.

“This isn’t full-scale discovery yet,” Henning said. “That will come probably after Fiat Chrysler files a motion to dismiss. This is the next step in the case. This is pretty standard. It’s nothing outlandish.”

The delay could allow third-parties to dispose of evidence, GM argues.

“FCA’s refusal to engage in any discovery until its motion to dismiss is ruled upon raises the real risk that important evidence about the RICO enterprise they led and the specific instances of bribery, fraud and other wrongdoing that FCA executives have already admitted may be lost,” GM spokesman Jim Cain said   www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2020/01/10/general-motors-says-fiat-chrysler-not-cooperating-racketeering-suit/4434095002/

UAW corruption fallout hits innocent OPEIU bystanders

The latest casualties of the federal investigation into United Auto Workers corruption don’t even belong to the union.

They’re 64 members of Office Professional Employees international Local 459, the clerical, technical and maintenance workers who will lose their jobs in 60 days because the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources on the Detroit River is being closed following agreement between the union and General Motors Co. bargainers in last fall’s national contract talks.   www.detroitnews.com/story/business/columnists/daniel-howes/2020/01/30/uaw-corruption-fallout-hits-opeiu-bystanders/4612215002/

Union Report: The Numbers Are Complicated, but AFT Is Worth Around $580 Million, Financial Filings Show

The American Federation of Teachers is only about half the size of the National Education Association, and its ranks are filled with many members who work outside the field of K-12 public education. Nevertheless, its influence extends beyond its size. This is mostly because of where the bulk of its membership is located. AFT represents school employees — or shares representation with NEA — in nine of America’s 10 largest districts.

Though similar in policies and focus, AFT is structured differently than NEA. Since NEA comprises about 13,000 mostly small local affiliates, state affiliates are its main source of funding, staff and services. Conversely, AFT has very large urban locals but limited or no presence in many states. It only makes sense for its locals to handle the load.

That structure makes it difficult to paint a comprehensive picture of the union’s finances. A rundown of state affiliate finances, such as the one I compiled for NEA, would omit a major component of revenues (the locals), while a rundown of local finances would be a herculean, if not impossible, task.

What I’ve created here is a 2017-18 financial status table   www.the74million.org/article/union-report-the-numbers-are-complicated-but-aft-is-worth-around-580-million-financial-filings-show/

Spy versus Spy

He supervised operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East and oversaw a top-secret link with a high official of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Magical Mystery Tour

L.A. Archdiocese settles priest abuse case for $1.9 million

The children in the parish knew him only as Father Larry.

One of those children, referred to in court documents as John BR Doe, was an altar boy at San Gabriel Mission Church from 1982 to 1984 when, he said, the priest sexually abused him.

As a teen, Doe told church officials what he’d suffered. Years later, he would learn that Father Larry — Lawrence Lovell — had been convicted of child molestation in 2003 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. And he would find a redacted version of his own account on the internet, detailing the abuse he said Lovell carried out when he was a child.

He’d also learn he wasn’t Lovell’s only victim.  www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-30/los-angeles-archdiocese-settles-priest-abuse-case

Televangelist Acton Bowen Sentenced To 1,008 Years For Sexually Abusing Children

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

More than three days passed before Japan imposed a quarantine. That delay and other missteps helped produce the largest outbreak of the virus beyond China.

The captain came over the intercom early in the evening: A passenger who had left the ship nine days earlier had tested positive for the new coronavirus sweeping through China.

While the guests on board were unnerved, it was the final night of their two-week luxury cruise aboard the Diamond Princess. The revelry continued as the ship headed toward the port in Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city.

Passengers dined on filet mignon, attended shows in the 700-seat theater and crowded the bars and dance floors into the night. Cruise directors hastily distributed a slate of activities, including Ping-Pong, karaoke and Bollywood dance lessons, to occupy guests who would have to remain on the ship another day while public health officials screened them for symptoms.

…Feverish passengers were left in their rooms for days without being tested for the virus. Health officials and even some medical professionals worked on board without full protective gear. Sick crew members slept in cabins with roommates who continued their duties across the ship, undercutting the quarantine.

With 634 infections and two deaths, the cruise ship represents the largest concentration of coronavirus cases outside China, meriting its own category in the data compiled by the World Health Organization.   www.nytimes.com/2020/02/22/world/asia/coronavirus-japan-cruise-ship.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Xu Zhiyong, a prominent Chinese legal activist, went silent over the weekend. His girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, a social activist, has gone missing.

He portrayed China’s leader, Xi Jinping, as hungry for power. He accused Mr. Xi of trying to cover up the coronavirus outbreak in central China. In one of his most daring writings, he urged Mr. Xi to resign, saying, “You’re just not smart enough.”

Then, over the weekend, Xu Zhiyong, a prominent Chinese legal activist, went silent. The authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou detained him on Saturday, according to Mr. Xu’s friends, after he spent nearly two months in hiding. His girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, a social activist, went missing on Sunday, Mr. Xu’s friends said.

The activist is the latest critic to be caught up in Mr. Xi’s far-reaching efforts to limit dissent in China.   www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/world/asia/coronavirus-china-xu-zhiyong.html

So Long