Rouge Forum Dispatch: Can a Year of International Protests Become Class Conscious Uprisings??
We Say Fight Back!
France on strike: Power cuts, schools shut, no Eiffel Tower
French union activists cut electricity to nearly 100,000 homes or offices. Eiffel Tower staff walked off the job. Even Paris opera workers joined in Tuesday’s nationwide protests across France, singing an aria of anger as workers rallied against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64.
Despite 13 days of crippling train and subway strikes, French President Emmanuel Macron and his government stayed firm. The prime minister declared his “total” determination to reshape a pension system that unions celebrate as a model for the rest of the world but that he calls unfair and destined to collapse into debt.
Lighting red flares and marching beneath a blanket of multi-colored union flags, thousands of workers snaked through French cities from Brittany on the Atlantic to the Pyrenees in the south.
Hospital workers in scrubs, Air France staff in uniforms, lawyers wearing long black robes — people from across the French workforce joined in the strikes and protests in higher numbers than the last cross-sector walkout last week.
The retirement reform that has brought them together is just one of their many gripes against Macron, a business-friendly centrist they fear is dismantling France’s costly but oft-envied welfare state.
Workers from the hard-left CGT union on Tuesday carried out what they called “targeted” blackouts on electricity networks around Lyon and Bordeaux to call attention to their grievances, and their power.
Several European countries have raised the retirement age or cut pensions in recent years to keep up with lengthening life expectancy and slowing economic growth. Macron argues that France needs to do the same.
Tourists canceled plans and Paris commuters took hours to get to work Tuesday, as train drivers kept up their strike against changes to a system that allows them and other workers under special pension regimes to retire as early as their 50s.
“Monument Closed” read a sign on the glass wall circling the base of the Eiffel Tower, which was shut for the second time since the strike, one of the most protracted France has seen in years, started Dec. 5. apnews.com/6e8881cfd9882fdfe90e50999c4bb342?fbclid=IwAR1TM-WZTXx8KQIZTzHOyPuEh1-C5CicPeBSBwGhcyRVzlKHtj09I9zwRW4
California Kaiser Mental Health Workers Launch Strike; Problems ‘Keep Getting Worse’
More than 4,000 Kaiser Permanente mental health professionals in California launched a five-day strike on Monday at Kaiser facilities across the state.
Psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, addiction specialists and others represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers say that Kaiser mental health clinics are severely understaffed, forcing some to work after hours to serve more patients. Meanwhile, they say, patients are forced to wait as long as two months for follow-up appointments because of inadequate staffing.
“We’re striking because the problems that plague Kaiser’s mental health system keep getting worse,” said Kenneth Rogers, a Kaiser psychologist, in a statement.
“We don’t have enough time to provide proper patient care which includes the preparation and follow up work that goes into every appointment. And patients are being forced to endure even longer wait times for appointments, while Kaiser sits on billions of dollars refusing to fix the problem,” Rogers added. www.npr.org/2019/12/16/788620859/california-kaiser-mental-health-workers-launch-strike-problems-keep-getting-wors
‘There’s Really No Refuge’: Santa Cruz Grad Students Strike Amid Housing Crunch
All is not well in Banana Slug country.
Final grades for the fall quarter are due at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the campus of some 19,000 students with a curious mascot, but a wildcat strike has put those report cards in jeopardy. Graduate students, who declared a work stoppage earlier this month, have vowed not to deliver grades for the undergraduate courses they work with until the administration meets their demands for higher pay.
Specifically, graduate students are calling for a cost of living adjustment — a monthly bump of just over $1,400 to help them cope with the region’s high cost of housing. And to do so, they have decided to act independently of their official statewide union, United Auto Workers Local 2865, which in 2018 negotiated a systemwide wage increase of 3% per year over four years.
The union has not publicly backed the students’ wildcat strike and did not respond to NPR’s request for comment Wednesday.
“Really, it’s rent burden,” Stephen David Engel, a Ph.D. student in the school’s History of Consciousness Department, explains to NPR. “Graduate students are paying 60-70% of their wages on rent — and that includes, by the way, students who live in, quote, ‘subsidized housing’ on campus. So there’s really no refuge — the university does not provide a refuge [from] the housing market.” www.npr.org/2019/12/18/789268753/there-s-really-no-refuge-santa-cruz-grad-students-strike-amid-housing-crunch
Edward Snowden, NSA leaker, loses civil suit brought by U.S. over publication of ‘Permanent Record’
Edward Snowden is not entitled to receive proceeds from the sale of the former intelligence contractor’s memoir, “Permanent Record,” a federal court judge ruled Tuesday.
Citing agreements Mr. Snowden entered into with the CIA and National Security Agency, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady ruled that the U.S. government is entitled to collect any money he makes off his memoir and related public events.
Mr. Snowden, 36, has been wanted in the U.S. for more than six years in connection with criminal charges brought as a result of leaking classified material to the media. He released “Permanent Record” on September 17, and the Department of Justice sued him the same day for publishing the book in violation of non-disclosure agreements he signed with both the CIA and NSA. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/18/edward-snowden-nsa-leaker-loses-civil-suit-brought/
‘The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis’
In a recent editorial published in the New York Times, the Chinese blogger Murong Xuecun, writes: “The Communist Party’s dumbing down of our language was a deliberate effort to debase public discourse.… This deliberate use of language to obscure and confuse serves a clear objective: to conceal the reality of China’s lack of democracy and indeed to pretend that democracy exists.”[1] The author refers to this bureaucratic language as “Mao language,” which he says was used extensively during the Cultural Revolution. “Intellectual discussion, along with reason, were thrown out the window. In this atmosphere, words lose real meaning. The party can then use words to obfuscate and lie.” But Murong Xuecun seems himself to be a victim of the very manipulation of language he talks about. He too uses the expression “Cultural Revolution” in the sense officials do, reducing a complex social movement to a political movement under Mao’s control.
Yiching Wu’s The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis has among other qualities the capacity to get the reader interested in this complexity. After this book, it will be difficult to talk about the Great Cultural Revolution (GCR) by referring merely to the bureaucratic version of it, or even to pretend, as neo-Maoist currents do nowadays, that Mao provided revolutionary leadership during the GCR.[2] Wu’s book fits within a well-established tradition that includes independent researchers, both academic and non-academic, as well as a few radical socialist political groups in Hong Kong, Europe, and the United States that have developed a critique of the GRC years
The social turmoil may have been initiated by the party bureaucracy, but gradually it gave birth to anti-bureaucratic tendencies. These were eventually smashed by the popular army called in by Mao. Testimony by young rebel Red Guards (RGs) has also been published.[3] These accounts show how the official version of GCR terror against the Chinese people hides the fact that the rebel RGs who criticized the bureaucratic system constituted the core of the victims of the army’s repression during the late 1960s. networks.h-net.org/node/11717/reviews/89127/reeve-wu-cultural-revolution-margins-chinese-socialism-crisis
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Susan Ohanian: Data-derived student reading lists fail
An article in VTDigger (State launches new math and reading ed tech initiative) reveals that Vermont has contracted with MetaMetrics, an education assessment and data analytics company, to provide materials for Vermont’s K-12 schools. We are told that “MetaMetrics ‘Lexile’ and ‘Quantile’ products suggest books, worksheets, and instructional videos based on a student’s individual math and English scores. Those scores are generated using a student’s results on standardized tests.”
Vermonters need to shout “Wait a minute!” before handing over their kids to this heir of Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose 1911 tome “Principles of Scientific Management” promised to create a utopian society of perfect efficiency. Today, Taylor’s heirs offer us the nightmare world of Big Data systematizing everything: schools tracking student “outputs” with the promise of optimal statistical outcomes. Educational historian Herbert Kliebard called this “a veritable orgy of efficiency,” with teachers positioned as delivery agents for what Big Business dictates. In “Utopia is Creepy and Other Provocations,” Pulitzer Prize finalist Nicholas Carr noted that this is where “Puritanism and fascism meet and exchange fist bumps.”
As a longtime reading teacher I have scrutinized the MetaMetric’s Lexile Framework that claims to establish norms for reading for each grade level. Let’s look at grade 3 where they say a student in the 50th to 90th percentile should be reading books with Lexile scores from 645 to 980. If we look at 730 titles, we get “The Book Thief,” a book The New York Times called “brilliant and hugely ambitious,” cautioning that “a book so difficult and sad may not be appropriate for teenage readers.” Also at 730 are the decidedly adult titles Hemingway’s “Farewell to Arms”; Patricia Cornwall’s “Black Notice,” in which the decomposed remains of a stowaway lead Dr. Kay Scarpetta on an international search; “The Shipping News” by Annie Proulx, an author Publishers Weekly noted “routinely does without nouns and conjunctions.” vtdigger.org/2019/12/19/susan-ohanian-data-derived-student-reading-lists-fail/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare
letters
Why Education Reforms Aren’t Working
Readers offer their ideas for improving schools, including less focus on test prep and more teacher involvement in policy.
I taught through various eras of so-called education reform. Very early in my career, as a beginning New York City teacher, I received an award to spend the summer studying special methods for teaching children of poverty at Princeton University. Children were bused in from Trenton.
Over the years, upstate New York schools where I taught received lots of special federal funds: We bought art to hang in our school, bought machines to give children extra phonics drills, bought tons of textbooks, sent teachers off to be drilled on intensive phonics, hired experts to fly in with their PowerPoints, and on and on.
How long will we continue to beat a dead horse? When will we help families directly, ensuring that all children live in families with adequate minimum income and adequate housing?
Education reform has enriched many people. It’s time to start reform where it’s needed, directing the riches to children.
I’d start education reform tomorrow by giving all children a voucher for 10 free books of their choice. And I’d work at making sure the children have homes where they can take those books.
Susan Ohanian
Charlotte, Vt.
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Esper wants to move troops from Afghanistan to the Indo-Pacific to confront China
While an announcement of a drawdown of several thousand American troops from Afghanistan is expected soon from the White House, the secretary of defense wants to redeploy those forces to the Indo-Pacific region to confront China.
There are currently 13,000 U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. During a Monday visit to Kabul, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said President Donald Trump may soon announce a decision to reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan to as low as 8,600 troops.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Monday that he has not yet issued any orders to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, but he explained that a reduced footprint with or without a settled peace agreement with the Taliban was still a possibility.
“I would like to go down to a lower number because I want to either bring those troops home, so they can refit and retrain for other missions or/and be redeployed to the Indo-Pacific to face off our greatest challenge in terms of the great power competition that’s vis-a-vis China,” Esper said Monday.
Esper said he believes the U.S. can reduce the number of troops because the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Army Gen. Austin Miller says he can conduct both the counterterrorism and advising mission in Afghanistan with fewer troops. www.marinecorpstimes.com/flashpoints/2019/12/18/esper-wants-to-move-troops-from-afghanistan-to-the-indo-pacific-to-confront-china/
Militarism Has Become Enormously Popular and Nearly Universally Accepted
The accolades for those who fight and fought wars need to end with their proper care in and out of the military. Soon after the War on Terror began, local and national news outlets began the obeisant and slavish celebration of everything military. It became so widespread that I found myself unable to watch local and national news outlets without reeling in disbelief. I knew better from having had some skin in the military’s “game” during the Vietnam era and later attempted to help and support the few veterans who sat in the classes I taught and seemed not to be getting the care that they needed from the government. What do the words “Support Our Troops” mean during a time of endless and immoral wars? Trump thinks that the most heinous of war crimes need to be immediately erased from the records of those who commit those crimes against civilians.
The US has not championed a just cause in war since World War II. www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/19/militarism-has-become-enormously-popular-and-nearly-universally-accepted/?fbclid=IwAR16AxdkdI4DBXCvdDeZxlvW7OXwjIQ_6UvkTnggEwG8FtBxJG07qgsgDWo
STRANDED WITHOUT A STRATEGY
Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war. Both were destined to fail.
In the beginning, the rationale for invading Afghanistan was clear: to destroy al-Qaeda, topple the Taliban and prevent a repeat of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Within six months, the United States had largely accomplished what it set out to do. The leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban were dead, captured or in hiding.
But then the U.S. government committed a fundamental mistake it would repeat again and again over the next 17 years, according to a cache of government documents obtained by The Washington Post.
“If there was ever a notion of mission creep it is Afghanistan,” said Richard Boucher, who served as the State Department’s top diplomat for South Asia from 2006 to 2009, according to a transcript of what he told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “We have to say good enough is good enough. That is why we are there 15 years later. We are trying to achieve the unachievable instead of achieving the achievable.”
In unusually candid interviews, officials who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama said both leaders failed in their most important task as commanders in chief — to devise a clear strategy with concise, attainable objectives.
Diplomats and military commanders acknowledged they struggled to answer simple questions: Who is the enemy? Whom can we count on as allies? How will we know when we have won?
Their strategies differed, but Bush and Obama both committed early blunders that they never recovered from, according to the interviews.
After a succession of quick military victories in 2001 and early 2002, Bush decided to keep a light force of U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely to hunt suspected terrorists. Soon, however, he made plans to invade another nation — Iraq — and Afghanistan quickly became an afterthought.
James Dobbins, a career diplomat who served as a special envoy for Afghanistan under Bush and Obama, told government interviewers it was a hubristic mistake that should have been obvious from the start.
“First, you know, sort of just invade only one country at a time. I mean that seriously,” Dobbins said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “They take a lot of high-level time and attention and we’ll overload the system if we do more than one of these at a time.”
By the time Obama took office in 2009, al-Qaeda had largely vanished from Afghanistan. But the Taliban had made a comeback.
Obama tore up Bush’s counterterrorism strategy and approved a polar-opposite plan — a massive counterinsurgency campaign, backed by 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops, as well as tons of aid for a weak Afghan government.
In contrast with Bush, Obama imposed strict deadlines and promised to bring home all U.S. troops by the end of his presidency.
But Obama’s strategy was also destined to fail. U.S., NATO and Afghan officials told government interviewers that it tried to accomplish too much, too quickly, and depended on an Afghan government that was corrupt and dysfunctional.
Worse, they said, Obama tried to set artificial dates for ending the war before it was over. All the Taliban had to do was wait him out.
Bob Crowley, a retired Army colonel who served as a counterinsurgency adviser in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers.
Over the past 18 years, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 came home wounded, according to Defense Department figures.
Today, about 13,000 U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan. The U.S. military acknowledges the Taliban is stronger now than at any point since 2001. Yet there has been no comprehensive public reckoning for the strategic failures behind the longest war in American history.
There has been no Afghanistan version of the 9/11 Commission, which held the government to account in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on American soil; no Afghanistan version of the Fulbright Hearings, when senators aggressively questioned the war in Vietnam; no Afghanistan version of the Army’s official, 1,300-page, introspective history of the war in Iraq.
In 2014, a small federal agency created by Congress decided to try to fill the void.
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR, launched an $11 million project — titled “Lessons Learned” — to study the war’s core mistakes. After interviewing more than 600 people, agency researchers published seven reports that recommended policy changes.
To avoid controversy, SIGAR sanitized the harshest criticisms from the Lessons Learned interviews and omitted the names of more than 90 percent of the people it spoke with. It also scrapped plans to publish a separate report on deficiencies in the Afghan war strategy.
After a three-year legal battle, The Post obtained notes and transcripts, as well as several audio recordings, from more than 400 of the interviews. In stark language, the documents reveal that people who were directly involved in the war could not shake their doubts about the strategy and mission, even as Bush, Obama and, later, President Trump told the American people it was necessary to keep fighting.
“What were we actually doing in that country?” an unidentified U.S. official who served as a liaison to NATO said in a government interview. “What are our objectives? Nation-building? Women’s rights? . . . It was never fully clear in our own minds what the established goals and timelines were.”
Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House official under Bush and Obama, said few people paused to question the very premise for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“Why did we make the Taliban the enemy when we were attacked by al-Qaeda? Why did we want to defeat the Taliban?” Eggers said in a Lessons Learned interview. “Collectively the system is incapable of taking a step back to question basic assumptions.”
Boucher, a career diplomat who also served as chief State Department spokesman under Bush, said U.S. officials did not know what they were doing.
“First, we went in to get al-Qaeda, and to get al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and even without killing bin Laden we did that,” Boucher told government interviewers. “The Taliban was shooting back at us so we started shooting at them and they became the enemy. Ultimately, we kept expanding the mission.”
WHAT THEY SAID IN PUBLICMarch 28, 2002
“The only thing you can do is to bomb them and try to kill them. And that’s what we did, and it worked. They’re gone.”
— Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, MSNBC interview
Rumsfeld’s premature declaration was the first of many times that senior U.S. leaders mistakenly assumed they could end the war on their terms. The Taliban was beaten down but hardly gone.
Lulled into overconfidence by the apparent ease of conquering Afghanistan, the Bush administration refused to sit down with defeated Taliban leaders to negotiate a lasting peace — a decision U.S. officials would later regret.
The Taliban was excluded from international conferences and Afghan gatherings from 2001 to 2003 that drew up a new government, even though some Taliban figures had shown a willingness to join in. Instead, the United States posted bounties for their capture and sent hundreds to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“A major mistake we made was treating the Taliban the same as al-Qaeda,” Barnett Rubin, an American academic expert on Afghanistan who served as an adviser to the United Nations at the time, told government interviewers. “Key Taliban leaders were interested in giving the new system a chance, but we didn’t give them a chance.”
The Taliban was not involved in the 9/11 attacks; none of the hijackers or planners were Afghans. But the Bush administration categorized Taliban leaders as terrorists because they had given al-Qaeda sanctuary and refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.
While the Taliban was easy to demonize because of its brutality and religious fanaticism, the movement proved too large and ingrained in Afghan society to eradicate.
“Everyone wanted the Taliban to disappear,” Rubin said in a second Lessons Learned interview. “There was not much appetite for what we called threat reduction, for regional diplomacy and bringing the Taliban into the peace process.”
An unnamed U.N. official agreed, telling interviewers that it was the biggest missed opportunity of the war.
“At that moment, most Hizb-i-Islami or Taliban commanders were interested in joining the government,” the U.N. official said, referring to another Afghan militia that fought U.S. troops. “Lesson learned: If you get the chance to talk to the Taliban, talk to them,” the official said.
Belatedly, U.S. officials came to realize it was impossible to vanquish the group. Today, Pentagon officials say the only way to end the war is with a political settlement in which the Taliban reconciles with the Afghan government.
Last year, the U.S. government opened direct, high-level peace talks with the Taliban for the first time.
Five of the Taliban’s negotiators are former U.S. prisoners of war who each spent a dozen years in captivity in Guantanamo. The lead U.S. envoy is Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and later as ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations.
In a Lessons Learned interview in December 2016, Khalilzad acknowledged that by refusing to talk to the Taliban, the Bush administration may have blown a chance to end the war shortly after it started.
A year after Khalilzad’s Lessons Learned interview, Trump pulled him back into public service by tapping him as the U.S. envoy for negotiations with the Taliban.
Federal officials redacted extensive portions of Khalilzad’s interview before releasing a transcript to The Post in June, saying it contained classified information. In a court filing, the Justice Department said disclosure of the classified material “might negatively impact ongoing diplomatic negotiations.”
The Post has asked a federal judge to review whether Khalilzad’s remarks were properly classified. A decision is pending.
In Lessons Learned interviews, other officials said the Bush administration compounded its early mistake with the Taliban by making another critical error — treating Pakistan as a friend.
THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS
In hundreds of confidential interviews that constitute a secret history of the war, U.S. and allied officials admitted they veered off in directions that had little to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11. By expanding the original mission, they said they adopted fatally flawed warfighting strategies based on misguided assumptions about a country they did not understand.
The result: an unwinnable conflict with no easy way out.www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-strategy/
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Cspan Book Tv reminder: How the US Lost Iraq
www.c-span.org/video/?187854-4/how-america-lost-iraq
Two Marine Raiders and corpsman face manslaughter charges in retired Green Beret master sergeant’s death
Two Marine Raiders and a Navy corpsman with 3rd Raider Battalion face a general court-martial for charges related to the death of a retired Green Beret working as a Lockheed Martin defense contractor in Erbil, Iraq.
Gunnery Sgt. Joshua Negron, Gunnery Sgt. Daniel Draher and Chief Petty Officer Eric Gilmet face charges that include involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, obstructing justice and orders violations, according to Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.
The charges stem from an alleged fight outside of an Erbil, Iraq, nightclub in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, 2019, that resulted in the death of Rick Anthony Rodriguez, a retired Army Special Forces master sergeant with multiple combat deployments who once served as operations sergeant for Operation Detachment Alpha Team 775.
“At this time, charges against three members of MARSOC in connection with the death of Mr. Rodriguez have been referred to a general court-martial,” according to a Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command email statement. “During this process, it is imperative that the rights of the service members are protected, and the integrity of the military justice system is maintained. We are committed to ensuring this process is conducted in a fair and impartial manner.” www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/12/16/two-marsoc-raiders-and-corpsman-face-manslaughter-charges-in-retired-green-beret-master-sergeants-death/
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Two separated North Carolina Marines sentenced for distributing opioids that killed Marine corporal
Two former Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, were sentenced to prison Tuesday for aiding and abetting and distributing pills that contained a mix of oxycodone and fentanyl, according to the Department of Justice.
Twenty-year-old Cpl. Mark M. Mambulao of Evansville, Wyoming, died April 15, 2017.
He had been at a party in Richlands, North Carolina, with Marine Marcos Villegas, 24, of St. Charles, Illinois, when Villegas gave the 20-year-old corporal oxycodone pills that were laced with fentanyl, U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. said in a DOJ press release.
In the early morning after the party Villegas found Mambulao unresponsive. He rushed the Marine to a nearby hospital where Mambulao soon died of a fentanyl overdose and low alcohol content, the DOJ said in October. www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/12/18/two-separated-north-carolina-marines-sentenced-for-selling-opioids-that-killed-marine-corporal/
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
French telco Orange found guilty over workers’ suicides in landmark ruling
French telecoms group Orange (ORAN.PA) and its former CEO Didier Lombard were guilty of “moral harassment” that prompted a spate of suicides during a restructuring at the company in the late 2000s, a Paris court ruled on Friday.
The landmark ruling against the former telecoms monopoly is bound to reverberate in French boardrooms as it could pave the way for other similar collective procedures.
The court sentenced Lombard to a year in jail, of which eight months will be suspended, and a 15,000 euros ($16,700) fine. Yet since that term is under two years and as Lombard does not present a danger to society, he will not spend time behind bars under French court rules.
The traumatic episode of workers’ deaths at the company in the late 2000s led to deep soul-searching over corporate culture in France.
The court found Orange guilty of the same charge, and fined it 75,000 euros ($83,200).
“In financial terms, the sentence is light, but this is the first time a French company gets a criminal conviction for moral harassment and that is very bad in terms of reputation,” said a lawyer specializing in white-collar crime. www.reuters.com/article/us-france-justice-orange-sentences/french-telco-orange-found-guilty-over-workers-suicides-in-landmark-ruling-idUSKBN1YO12D
US Steel closing mill, laying off 1,500 Detroit workers
U.S. Steel Corp. announced this week that it will close a mill near Detroit, laying off more than 1,500 workers as it tries to address financial losses.
The news comes just months after U.S. Steel announced it would be laying off 200 workers at the same mill, Great Lakes Works.
U.S. Steel said they expect to end the mill’s iron and steelmaking operations by April 1, 2020, with another part of the mill closing by the end of 2020. The estimated job loss is 1,545 workers. thehill.com/policy/finance/475529-us-steel-closing-mill-laying-off-1500-detroit-workers?fbclid=IwAR23iOWfZBo3MVyX3fH94rL2ij1Xvd575fFM5T5gl2W4K7vaO0Rt89q0ZO0
Ailing former WorldCom CEO ordered freed from prison
A former top executive sentenced to 25 years in prison in one of the largest corporate accounting scandals in U.S. history was ordered freed from prison Wednesday for medical reasons.
U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni ordered the release of former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers after hearing lawyers discuss his medical problems. Ebbers was not in court and his lawyers said he was hospitalized Wednesday.
Several family members for Ebbers who attended the proceeding rejoiced, sobbing and hugging one another, when the judge announced her ruling. She said she’ll issue a written ruling explaining her reasons at a later time.
Detroit’s comeback is a myth
The economy booms, the construction cranes jam the skylines while the homeless set up camp on the sidewalks and bathe in the public fountains
The Social Security office in Detroit is a dispiriting place done up in industrial grays. It is filled with the long, glum faces of those who molder in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy waiting for some faceless bureaucrat to help them.
Take a number. Sit down. No loud noises. No food. No phones.
Into this purgatory enters Gus Malone, a raggedy 52-year-old homeless man, along with his invisible dog Timmy. Gus parades Timmy up and down the gray carpet of the waiting room as if it were the competition floor of the Westminster Kennel Club.
‘Good boy, Timmy!’ crows Gus upon reaching the far wall, making an ostentatious pivot on the soles of his secondhand sneakers and cantering Timmy back across the waiting room. He brings him to heel near the take-a-number machine. ‘Timmy, you’re a good boy!’
Here, Gus casts a sideways glance up at the government clerk who is sitting behind the bulletproof glass, wanting to be sure she is taking all this in. But it appears that imaginary dogs are as common at the Social Security office as daffodils in spring. The bureaucrat bats not an eyelash at the dog who is not there.
Gus has come to the Detroit office to file a disability claim with the federal government, hoping to hit the jackpot of all jackpots — $771 a month, every month, for the rest of his natural-born days.
Gus then admits that there really is no Timmy. It is a ruse that he characterizes as ‘playing crazy’. The invisible-dog bit may be the dollop of perceived schizophrenia that will fast-track his application directly to the top of the ‘approved’ basket.
‘I’m just a man trying to eat,’ says Gus to a woman with an oxygen tank sitting next to him. ‘I’m trying to eat, while not getting ate. Who it really hurt anyway?’ The lady nods knowingly toward him. spectator.us/detroit-comeback-myth/?fbclid=IwAR1WpRBYRaeDb7oUgaZp76ao2p4jfU_RXhUnHLAI73ZXh4pkcdBs9Ncpmx
Sacklers withdrew over $10 billion in a decade from Purdue Pharma
The Sackler family – owners of Purdue Pharma – transferred more than $10 billion in a decade from the OxyContin maker to its trusts and holding companies, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing a new audit commissioned by the drugmaker.
The audit, which was prepared by consulting firm Alix Partners, is likely to add further scrutiny on how much the Sackler family should pay to resolve lawsuits that Purdue Pharma face regarding the U.S. opioid epidemic, the New York Times added.
Lawsuits filed by state and local governments allege Purdue and the Sacklers contributed to a public health crisis that has claimed the lives of nearly 400,000 people since 1999 by aggressively marketing opioids while downplaying their addiction and overdose risks.
The audit showed that from 2008 through 2017, Purdue’s payouts to the Sackler family totaled $10.7 billion, the report said. The auditors reported that they did not know how much cash distributed to the Sacklers was actually used to pay taxes.
“We need full transparency into their total assets and must know whether they sheltered them in an effort to protect against creditors and victims,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said.
Purdue reaped up to $13 billion in profits to Sackler family, the U.S. states said in October, opposing efforts to halt lawsuits alleging the and its owners helped fuel the epidemic.
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers
The authorities can scan your phones, track your face and find out when you leave your home. One of the world’s biggest spying networks is aimed at regular people, and nobody can stop it.
China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state.
Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private databases examined by The New York Times.
Once combined and fully operational, the tools can help police grab the identities of people as they walk down the street, find out who they are meeting with and identify who does and doesn’t belong to the Communist Party.
The United States and other countries use some of the same techniques to track terrorists or drug lords. Chinese cities want to use them to track everybody. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/china-surveillance.html
CBP denies access to doctors seeking flu vaccinations for migrant children
A group of doctors, who last month pressured U.S. Customs and Border Protection to allow them to give flu vaccines to detained migrant children, have now taken their fight to the driveway of a detention facility in San Ysidro and said they are not leaving until they get approval.
About 40 people, including medical doctors licensed to practice medicine in California, marched Monday from Vista Terrace Neighborhood Park to the detention facility on Beyer Boulevard, calling for CBP to let them in or let the children out to participate in a free mobile clinic they set up outside. They were joined by at least another dozen medical students and supporters.
Three children died from the flu while in federal immigration custody during the past year. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/story/2019-12-09/doctors-flu-shots
Depraved Ruling Elite File: Jeffrey Epstein: Surveillance Video From First Suicide Attempt Found
Now-deceased sex offender’s cellmate sought video for trial, but U.S. attorney admits no one knows where footage is
A day after prosecutors admitted that surveillance video from Jeffrey Epstein’s first alleged suicide attempt was missing, the footage has been found. “Earlier today, the government confirmed with MCC staff that the video was preserved by [Metropolitan Correctional Center] staff upon defense counsel’s request,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Swergold told the judge, a day after stating it was likely the footage “was not preserved,” the Daily News reports. The contents of the found footage were not revealed.
Surveillance video footage from outside the prison cell where Jeffrey Epstein first attempted suicide is missing, prosecutors revealed Wednesday during a hearing involving the now-deceased multimillionaire sex offender’s former cellmate.
Soon after the alleged July 23rd suicide attempt, the lawyers for Nick Tartaglione, an accused murderer and former New York City policeman who shared the cell with Epstein, sought to obtain a copy of the surveillance footage from outside the cell; Epstein had claimed that Tartaglione assaulted him, while Tartaglione said that he saved Epstein’s life after the failed attempt. www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jeffrey-epstein-surveillance-video-first-suicide-attempt-missing-929476/?fbclid=IwAR3ZR0BNyRllHtL6q2aHqSvpKetXY8AGP1m8BgtWnjz4SfyvwOhfuDzRF9s
Missing’ jail video from first Jeffrey Epstein suicide attempt has been found, prosecutors tell judge
- Federal prosecutors have located surveillance video showing the area around the cell of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on the day of his first suicide attempt in the Metropolitan Correctional Center jail in Manhattan.
- The video, which prosecutors previously said was missing, was being sought by lawyers for Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer accused of four murders, who claims he save Epstein’s life in July.
- Epstein, a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, died from what has been ruled suicide by hanging in August. www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/video-of-jeffrey-epstein-jail-suicide-attempt-is-found.html
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0y1SjbVkkU
NYC exec accused of having sex slave denies knowing Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein
A Manhattan exec accused of grooming a child model to be his sex slave wants her to drop legal claims that he has ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s fixer Ghislaine Maxwell, according to new court papers.
Douglas Graham — who was sued last month by Nikki Henry for allegedly starting a sexual relationship with her when she was 14 — says that despite the fact that he knew Maxwell’s media mogul father, Robert, he doesn’t know Ghislaine or Epstein, according to new papers filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“Graham has not communicated with Mr. Maxwell since 1978. Graham has never met, nor has he ever communicated with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Plaintiff knows this. Yet, she and her attorneys included the following scandalous and totally immaterial allegation in the sham Verified Complaint,” Graham’s lawyer, Peter Smith, alleged in the court documents.
Graham, 69, says that “in 2019, there is no more certain and effective way to gravely [injure] a man’s reputation [than] to accuse him of being friends with Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged ‘madam,’ Ghislaine Maxwell,” the court papers say. nypost.com/2019/12/18/nyc-exec-accused-of-having-sex-slave-denies-knowing-ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein/
Jeffrey Epstein allegedly kept nude portrait of Ghislaine Maxwell ‘with her legs open’
Jeffrey Epstein had a huge portrait of accused madam Ghislaine Maxwell completely naked with her legs wide open in a party room in his New Mexico ranch, a former employee claimed Thursday.
The graphic painting of the British media heiress was a centerpiece in the poolroom of the “Zorro Ranch,” where Maxwell was an almost constant presence and even had an office, the staffer told The Sun.
The late pedophile — who famously had a bizarre painting of Bill Clinton in a blue dress — also filled the ranch with photos of his famous pals, including Clinton, Prince Andrew and even John Travolta, his former IT worker told the paper.
‘There was this huge painting of Ghislaine naked with her legs open, 6 foot by 6 foot,” the unidentified worker, who said he worked for Epstein for more than 10 years, told The Sun. “She was on a chair, leaning back, with her legs open. You could see everything. She would definitely have posed for that.”
He said Maxwell — long accused of being Epstein’s madam — had an upstairs office and “spent more time at the ranch than he did.”
“I’d see what was on her computers, modeling pictures of girls and that kind of thing,” he insisted, saying some looked like professionals. nypost.com/2019/12/12/epstein-allegedly-kept-nude-portrait-of-ghislaine-maxwell-with-her-legs-open/
Solidarity for Never
Driven by greed: Alliance of FCA, union leaders fueled decade of corruption
The government’s four-year investigation has revealed how labor leaders misused the bailout’s historic second chance by embezzling money from worker paychecks, shaking down union contractors and scheming with auto executives. The conspiracy stretched from the California desert and a union town on the banks of the Missouri River to the woods of Northern Michigan and the Jersey Shore.
“When the UAW goes on strike and the workers are making — I think it was $275 per week … And what does the leadership get? Bottles of booze worth $1,300. Lavish steak dinners,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider, the Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Detroit, told The News.
In all, UAW officials and auto executives are accused of misappropriating nearly $34 million since the bailout 10 years ago, according to an analysis by The News. That money includes embezzled member dues and funds siphoned from facilities that train roughly www.detroitnews.com/in-depth/business/autos/2019/12/18/greed-driven-alliance-fca-uaw-leaders-sparks-decade-corruption/2634016001/150,000 of the union’s nearly 400,000 members.
‘Cronies,’ ‘side chicks,’ corruption mark dissolution of Region 5
When United Auto Workers Region 5 Director Jim Wells died suddenly in 2012, the union’s retired president, Ron Gettelfinger, traveled to Missouri to attend the funeral.
He was not welcome, say three sources familiar with the situation, turned away by the Wells family and some of its supporters. It was an unambiguous public rebuke intended to deliver payback for an internecine disagreement that could not be forgiven.
Eight years earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor launched an investigation of Region 5 over allegations its leaders had tried to circumvent campaign finance laws to support the reelection of incumbent Gov. Bob Holden. According to several sources familiar with the situation, Wells asked Gettelfinger to intervene. He refused.
Gettelfinger retired in 2010 after two terms leading the union amid a fraught period marked by federal bailouts and concessions in bankruptcy. An Indiana native with deep roots in Kentucky, Gettelfinger possessed a deep command of the union’s complex contracts, an innate BS detector and little appetite for the drinking, smoking and carousing common in the upper reaches of the union’s leadership. www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/12/17/cronies-side-chicks-mark-dissolution-uaw-region-5/2629929001/
How a decade of corruption unfolded at the UAW
June 10, 2009: Chrysler exits bankruptcy, forms alliance with Fiat SpA that is initially backed by U.S. government.
2009-14: Fiat Chrysler provides the United Auto Workers National Training Center with annual transfers between $13 million and $31 million per year. FCA Vice President Alphons Iacobelli controls finances, spending at the training center.
July 2009: Iacobelli and others begin transferring tens of thousands of dollars from the training center account to The Leave the Light on Foundation, UAW Vice President General Holiefield’s charity.
2009-15: More than $1.2 million in funds from the charity are used to pay Holiefield, his wife, Monica Morgan-Holiefield, and other UAW officials. Iacobelli gives Holiefield and other UAW officials credit cards in the name of the training center, paid for by FCA. Iacobelli ultimately admitted to paying more than $1.5 million to UAW officers and employees through the training center to sway union negotiations. www.detroitnews.com/in-depth/business/autos/2019/12/17/how-decade-corruption-unfolded-united-auto-workers-timeline/4387408002/
Spy versus Spy
Child of Russian spies gets to keep Canadian citizenship
Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that a son of Russian spies can keep his Canadian citizenship.
Alexander Vavilov was born in Canada and issued with a Canadian passport in the belief that his parents were Canadian citizens.
But in fact, his parents had used false identities to go under “deep cover” for the Russian government.
The favourable ruling ends a long fight by Mr Vavilov to keep his citizenship and return to Canada.
Alexander Vavilov was born Alexander Foley in Toronto on 3 June 1994 to Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Donald Howard Heathfield.
His older brother Timothy was also born in Toronto four years earlier.
But their parents’ real names were Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov and they were sending intelligence back to Russia.
When Mr Vavilov was two the family moved to France and then later to the US, which is where officials started getting suspicious.
His parents were arrested by the FBI in 2010. Mr Vavilov was then aged 16 and up until that point he and his brother had been unaware of their real identities. www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50858439
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4D96fPl_hI
Goar Vartanyan, Celebrated Soviet Spy, Dies at 93
Without her and her husband, also a Soviet spy, “the history of our world could have been different,” the Kremlin said. But her exact role remains a secret.
Goar Vartanyan, a Soviet spy who forged a formidable espionage partnership with her husband and helped protect Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt during their historic meeting in Tehran in 1943, died on Nov. 25 in Moscow. She was 93.
Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R., confirmed the death in a statement to the news media, praising Ms. Vartanyan and her husband, Gevork Vartanyan, who died in 2012.
“He is a Hero of the Soviet Union!” the statement said. “She is the heroine of all his achievements! He passed away first. She passed away today.”
Without them, “the history of our world could have been different,” a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said, www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/world/europe/goar-vartanian-dead.html
Wikileaks: OPCW-DOUMA – Release Part 3
Today WikiLeaks releases more documents showing internal disagreement within the OPCW about how facts were misrepresented in a redacted version of a report on an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
Amongst these is a memorandum written in protest by one of the scientists sent on a fact finding mission (FFM) to investigate the attack. It is dated 14 March 2019 and is addressed to Fernando Arias, Director General of the organisation. This was exactly two weeks after the organisation published its final report on the Douma investigation.
WikiLeaks is also releasing the original preliminary report for the first time along with the redacted version (that was released by the OPCW) for comparison. Additionally, we are publishing a detailed comparison of the original interim report with the redacted interim report and the final report along with relevant comments from a member of the original fact finding mission. These documents should help clarify the series of changes that the report went through, which skewed the facts and introduced bias according to statements made by the members of the FFM.
The aforementioned memo states that around 20 inspectors have expressed concerns over the final FFM report, which they feel “did not reflect the views of the team members that deployed to Douma”. Only one member of the fact finding team that went to Douma, a paramedic, is said to have contributed to the final version of the report. Apart from that one person, an entirely new team was gathered to assemble the final report, referred to as the “FFM core team”.
This new team was staffed with people who “had only operated in country X”, according to the memorandum. It is not clear what country that refers to, except that it is presumably not Syria. It is possible, though only speculation, that country X refers to Turkey, as OPCW has sent teams into refugee camps there to interview survivors from Douma.
The author of the memorandum states that he was the one originally tasked with analysis and assessment of the two cylinders found on the scene of the alleged chemical attack. This was a task he undertook “in the understanding [he] was clearly the most qualified team member, having been to the location in Douma and because of [his] expertise in metallurgy, chemical engineering (including pressure vessel design), artillery and Defence R&D”. He continues: “In subsequent weeks I found that I was being excluded from the work, for reasons not made clear”.
The author explains that he had frequently asked to be updated on the progress of the final report and to be allowed to review the draft, but was turned down on both counts. “The response was utmost secrecy”.
Once the final report was released on the 1st of March 2019, it became clear that the conclusions of the report had changed significantly in the hands of the new “core” team that assembled it into its final form: wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/
The Magical Mystery Tour
Trump slams US evangelical magazine that called for his removal
Christianity Today publishes editorial calling for Trump’s removal over his ‘profoundly immoral’ actions.
US President Donald Trump on Friday blasted the magazine founded by the late Reverend Billy Graham after the influential publication for conservative evangelical US Christians called for him to be removed from office.
Christianity Today on Thursday wrote in an editorial, entitled “Trump Should Be Removed from Office”, that it could no longer stand on the sidelines after the Republican president’s impeachment this week by the US House of Representatives.
“The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” it wrote. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.” www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/trump-slams-evangelical-magazine-called-removal-191220141854170.html?fbclid=IwAR0QrmjFC8sn9vJfMlEu-hsVxxtnuHUVj9QTaVpwsO2UwmVXcMrdny7DVx4
Vatican Tribunal now Overwhelmed by Clergy Sex Abuse Cases
The Vatican office responsible for processing clergy sex abuse complaints has seen a record 1,000 cases reported from around the world this year, including from countries it had not heard from before — suggesting that the worst may be yet to come in a crisis that has plagued the Catholic Church.
Nearly two decades after the Vatican assumed responsibility for reviewing all cases of abuse, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is today overwhelmed, struggling with a skeleton staff that hasn’t grown at pace to meet the four-fold increase in the number of cases arriving in 2019 compared to a decade ago.
“I know cloning is against Catholic teaching, but if I could actually clone my officials and have them work three shifts a day or work seven days a week,” they might make the necessary headway, said Monsignor John Kennedy, the head of the congregation’s discipline section, which processes the cases.
“We’re effectively seeing a tsunami of cases at the moment, particularly from countries where we never heard from (before),” Kennedy said, referring to allegations of abuse that occurred for the most part years or decades ago. Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Italy and Poland have joined the U.S. among the countries with the most cases arriving at the congregation, known as the CDF. www.voanews.com/europe/vatican-tribunal-now-overwhelmed-clergy-sex-abuse-cases
As Protests Rage on Citizenship Bill, Is India Becoming a Hindu Nation?
Several people have been killed as unrest spreads to new corners of the country. Many see the passage of a new law as anti-Muslim.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has rounded up thousands of Muslims in Kashmir, revoked the area’s autonomy and enforced a citizenship test in northeastern India that left nearly two million people potentially stateless, many of them Muslim.
But it was Mr. Modi’s gamble to pass a sweeping new citizenship law that favors every South Asian faith other than Islam that has set off days of widespread protests.
The law, which easily passed both houses of Parliament last week, is the most overt sign, opponents say, that Mr. Modi intends to turn India into a Hindu-centric state that would leave the country’s 200 million Muslims at a calculated disadvantage.
Indian Muslims, who have watched anxiously as Mr. Modi’s government has pursued a Hindu nationalist program, have finally erupted in anger. Over the past few days, protests have broken in cities across the country. www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/world/asia/india-citizenship-protests.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Church Members Publicly Demand Their Tithes After Pastor Acquired Range Rover
Popular Ghanaian and Founder of Zoe Outreach Embassy, Pastor Kelvin Kwesi Kobiri, got what he bargain for when he was attacked by angry church members for issueing a dud cheque to them after investing huge some of money in his two companies.
The Drama took place at the premises of the Tarkwa Circuit Court in Tarkwa, Western Region on Monday, December 16, 2019.
He went to respond to the suit filed against him for issuing 3 dud cheque. But unfortunately, the court did not sit because the judge was on vacation.
But immediately when he was about to leave the court in his Range Rover, people who invested, including the church members storm the court premises to attack him. They were shoving him in a violent manner as they demanded he paid them back their money or they won’t allow him go.
And also angry members used the opportunity to demand for the refund of their tithes. news-af.feednews.com/news/detail/311bb6911e0f929fa222c5387f515566_ng?country=ng&language=en&share=1&client=
Fringe ‘religious’ group member escalates his headgear fight with ICBC
“My religious head covering is an expression of my beliefs. I am being denied the right to express myself in a manner afforded to members of other beliefs and other faiths”
There is, Gary Smith says, no good reason for ICBC to refuse his request to wear his headgear for his driver’s licence photo.
His headgear, a colander, is part of his religion: Smith is a Pastafarian, a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
ICBC has informed him it doesn’t qualify as religious headgear, have refused to accept a photo of him wearing it for his licence, and Smith has now filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
“My religious head covering is an expression of my beliefs,” he said. “I am being denied the right to express myself in a manner afforded to members of other beliefs and other faiths …“There is no test of faith that any government agency, including ICBC, can apply to judge whether or not a person earnestly believes what they profess when they ask to be photographed with a religious head covering.” vancouversun.com/news/local-news/fringe-religious-group-member-escalates-his-headgear-fight-with-icbc
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Wife kept husband’s corpse in freezer for 10 years while collecting his VA benefits
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The apartment complex’s maintenance worker grew concerned when his usual correspondence with one of the building’s tenants, 75-year-old Jeanne Souron-Mathers, went unanswered for weeks. So, he called the police.
Authorities found the deceased body of Souron-Mathers the moment they entered the Tooele, Utah, apartment, a discovery that prompted a detective’s subsequent arrival to inspect whether any foul play was involved. What he found shocked him.
“[The detective] started looking around, and opens up a deep freezer and finds an unidentified adult male that is deceased,” Tooele City Police Sgt. Jeremy Hansen told the Salt Lake Tribune.
There, piled into the freezer, was the fully intact body of Souron-Mathers’ husband, military veteran Paul Edward Mathers, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Fingerprints taken from the freezer-bound corpse confirmed the identity of the veteran, who would have turned 69 years old in November, the report said. www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2019/12/18/wife-kept-husbands-corpse-in-freezer-for-10-years-while-collecting-his-va-benefits/
Part of Upper Peninsula approaching 10 feet of snow already; Snowbanks tower over sidewalks
A film featuring the worst of the “left” from the not-too-distant past:
above. “Cold Moon in San Diego’s Pacific Beach”
So Long
2019
The Dispatch goes on hiatus for a bit. On to 2020!
