We Say Fight Back!

Rouge Forum Conference
Call for Proposals
May 27 & 28, 2016
Hosted by
St. Mary’s University
Calgary, Canada
Proposal Deadline: Monday April 4th , 2016
Conference Theme: Teaching for Democracy and Justice in an Age of Inequality

This year’s Rouge Forum is dedicated to the overarching question of how we engage our students or communities in important issues and work necessary to foster a more
just and democratic world. We look to bring scholars, teachers, and community members with varied experiences, perspectives, and approaches in order to contribute to the larger conversation with the conference attendees.

Here, we are intent on providing a more fulsome conference experience, where attendance means more than simply presenting and listening.

At this year’s Rouge Forum we are developing new formats to better enable meaningful conversations between attendees and presenters; one’s that lead to the sharing of ideas and experiences, while forging new relationships within and across disciplines for a common purpose: the pursuit of a more just and democratic world. We encourage speakers and participants from any discipline whose work intersects with the broad theme of the conference to attend this year’s Rouge Forum.

We are particularly interested in having discussions around pressing issues of current significance in our communities and across the world. Discussions are encouraged to address at least one of the following themes, broadly construed: rougeforum.org/Proposals2016.pdf 

Chicago Teachers Union to strike April 1 if Claypool’s promise to cut the pension pickup is kept… ‘Unfair Labor Practice strike’ legal under labor law, says union attorney…

The Chicago Teachers Union will strike on April 1, 2016, if the Chicago Board of Education goes through with the promise, made by its latest “Chief Executive Officer” Forrest Claypool, to take away the pension pickup from union members at the end of March 2016. The pension pickup, which is seven percent of pay, has been part of the CTU compensation package since 1981 and is included in the union’s contracts since. www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=6162&section=Article

Congratulations on the publication of:

Reviewed here   www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/03/10/evicted-kicked-out-in-america/

Eviction Nation Three-quarters of families who qualify for housing assistance don’t get it because there simply isn’t enough to go around. This arrangement would be unthinkable with other social services that cover basic needs. What if food stamps only covered one in four families?

America stands alone among wealthy democracies in the depth and expanse of its poverty. Ask most politicians what we should do about this, and they will answer by calling for more and better jobs. Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House, thinks we need to do more to “incentivize work.” Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, thinks we should raise the minimum wage. But jobs are only part of the solution because poverty is not just a product of joblessness and low wages. It is also a product of exploitation.

Throughout our history, wage gains won by workers through organized protest were quickly absorbed by rising rents. As industrial capitalists tried to put down the strikes, landlords cheered workers on. It is no different today. When incomes rise, the housing market takes its cut, which is why a two-bedroom apartment in the oil boomtown Williston, N.D., was going last year for $2,800 a month and why entire capital-rich cities like San Francisco are becoming unaffordable to the middle class. If rents rise alongside incomes, what progress is made?  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/the-eviction-economy.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-top-region&region=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Daniel Webster: “Education is a wise and liberal form of police by which property and life and the peace of society are secured.”  (“Biology as Ideology”)

Corruption Endemic In Capitalist Schools  A veteran former compliance officer at the University of Louisville says in a lawsuit that President James Ramsey and his lieutenants tried to squelch enforcement of conflict of interest rules, including in a case involving Ramsey himself.

In the suit, filed Monday in Jefferson Circuit Court, Robin Wilcox, a deputy compliance officer who worked 10 years at the university, alleges Ramsey “intentionally and knowingly” committed official misconduct, in part by refraining “from performing his duties as prescribed” by law to benefit himself and others.

The explosive 18-page whistleblower complaint also alleges that Ramsey falsely stated to the university community that allegations of misconduct against two vice presidents were not brought to the university’s attention until the summer of 2014, when he knew they were reported in December 2012.  www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2016/02/29/suit-ramsey-guilty-official-misconduct/81125242/

UC Davis chancellor received $420,000 on book publisher’s board

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B Katehi received $420,000 in compensation as a board member for John Wiley & Sons, a leading publisher of science, engineering and math textbooks for universities.

Katehi served on the Wiley board from 2012 to 2014, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. She received $125,000 in pay and stock in 2012, $144,000 in 2013 and $151,000 in 2014.

Under pressure, Katehi resigned this week from the board of DeVry Education Group as the for-profit company faces scrutiny from federal officials for allegedly deceiving students about job and income prospects.

Katehi’s decision in February to accept a paid board seat from DeVry prompted state Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, to demand information on how much she and other chancellors receive in side income at a Capitol hearing Thursday on education funding.  Read more here: www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/the-public-eye/article63917982.html#storylink=cpy

Rouger Bill Boyer in Detroit School

In Recolonizing Detroit: Ruined Schools

Since this city emerged from bankruptcy at the end of 2014, it has eked out a tentative recovery, tearing down thousands of abandoned houses, restoring streetlights and luring new businesses.

Today in Detroit, “you see a mayor and a Council working together to rebuild this city,” a triumphant Mayor Mike Duggan said in his annual State of the City speech last week.

But the public school system in Detroit is now on the verge of its own fiscal crisis. Darnell Earley, the departing state-appointed emergency manager, said the Detroit Public Schools, battered by declining enrollment and debt of $3.5 billion, could run out of money by April. Some officials in Michigan have predicted that the district is headed for bankruptcy.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/as-detroit-starts-to-mend-its-schools-lurch-toward-fiscal-crisis.html?_r=0

Letter to NYTIMES Re: As Detroit Starts to Mend:

Detroit is not “mending.” It is being re-colonized. About 8% if the city’s nearly 140 square miles, downtown, have been taken. It’s white, full of public and private police, under constant surveillance. The rest of the city is, for the most part, in ruins. Nearly 2/3rds of the buildings are vacant. Key to any recovery: good schools which would keep young, employed, people in town. But the schools are wrecked as well. The problem is not democracy. It is racism and poverty. School reform without social and economic reform won’t work. Nothing is planned to address poverty. Rather, a shell game of good/bad schools exists. Now, the lone people who fought for better schools, rank and file educators, are on trial while the leadership of the union, which organized the decay of Detroit education, collects dues, and stands aside. Colonization, remember, went badly for the first inhabitants.

Dr Rich Gibson
Emeritus professor of education
San Diego State University

The state has agreed to pay former Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Darnell Earley $82,862.90 as part of an agreement he negotiated with the governor’s office just before announcing his resignation last month.

Earley will be available through mid-July to consult with DPS and state Treasury officials as the district goes through a transition under new leadership, the agreement says.

Earley became DPS’s fourth emergency manager in January 2015 under a $225,000 annual contract. His tenure grew increasingly rocky, with teachers staging sick-outs earlier this year to protest building problems they said he failed to fix. Earley also faced criticism for being the emergency manager in Flint when the city temporarily switched water sources, a move that ultimately led to the water crisis there.  www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/03/03/state-pays-earley-83000/81287180/

USC’s tuition will top $50,000 for the first time

USC, always striving to reach new heights, is set to cross a dubious milestone: Tuition for the 2016-2017 academic year will surpass $50,000 for the first time.

With a price tag of $51,442 for tuition and an additional $841 in fees, USC is sure to be in the running for the unofficial title of most expensive place in the country to get a college degree. According to U.S. News & World Report, Vassar College in New York won that honor for the current school year by charging $51,300 in tuition and fees. Even Harvard, that paragon of academic excellence, charges undergraduates a mere $45,278 in tuition and fees.  The bigger tuition bill comes as USC is rising both in academic reputation and as a financial powerhouse. In two decades, it has climbed from 51st to 23rd in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of national universities. It’s now in the midst of a $6-billion fundraising drive.  www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-usc-tuition-20160304-story.html

CSU Boss: Hand Out more fake degrees!  California State University Chancellor Timothy White sees a “train wreck” ahead.

That’s how he described what will happen in the state’s future unless the number of graduates with bachelor degrees significantly increases.

“People talk a lot about the water drought, but perhaps the degree drought is more significant in and more long-term impact,” he said during a forum Wednesday with faculty members and students at San Diego State University.

Independent analysts looking at future job demands have predicted that California’s workforce will have a shortfall of one million employees with bachelor degrees by 2025 or 2030.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/05/chancellor-white-bachelor-graduates/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Bidding War
How a young Afghan military contractor became spectacularly rich.

America’s war in Afghanistan, which is now in its fifteenth year, presents a mystery: how could so much money, power, and good will have achieved so little? Congress has appropriated almost eight hundred billion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan; a hundred and thirteen billion has gone to reconstruction, more than was spent on the Marshall Plan, in postwar Europe. General David Petraeus, a principal architect of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, encouraged the practice of pumping money into the economy of Afghanistan, where the per-capita G.D.P. at the time of the invasion was around a hundred and twenty dollars. He believed that money had helped buy peace during his command of American forces in Iraq. “Employ money as a weapons system,” Petraeus wrote in 2008. “Money can be ‘ammunition.’ ”

The result was a war waged as much by for-profit companies as by the military. Political debate in Washington has focussed on the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan and the losses that they have sustained. To minimize casualties, the military outsourced any task that it could: maintenance, cooking and laundry, overland logistics, even security. Since 2007, there have regularly been more contractors than U.S. forces in Afghanistan; today, they outnumber them three to one.

One result has been forms of corruption so extreme that the military has, in some cases, funded its own enemy. When a House committee investigated the trucking system that supplied American forces, it found that the system had “fueled a vast protection racket run by a shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials, and perhaps others.” Its report concluded that “protection payments for safe passage are a significant potential source of funding for the Taliban.” The system risked “undermining the U.S. strategy for achieving its goals in Afghanistan.”

The system has also made a few individuals very rich. Hikmatullah Shadman, an Afghan trucking-company owner, earned more than a hundred and sixty million dollars while contracting for the United States military; for the past three years, he has been battling to save much of his fortune in a federal court in Washington, D.C. In United States of America v. Sum of $70,990,605, et al., the Justice Department has accused Hikmat, as he’s known, of bribing contractors and soldiers to award him contracts.  www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-man-who-made-millions-off-the-afghan-war?mbid=nl_160301_Daily%20A&CNDID=39165830&spMailingID=8607382&spUserID=MTEyNjMyNjM4NjI0S0&spJobID=880113475&spReportId=ODgwMTEzNDc1S0

The U.S. just sent a carrier strike group to confront China

The U.S. Navy has dispatched a small armada to the South China Sea.

The carrier John C. Stennis, two destroyers, two cruisers and the 7th Fleet flagship have sailed into the disputed waters in recent days, according to military officials. The carrier strike group is the latest show of force in the tense region, with the U.S. asserting that China is militarizing the region to guard its excessive territorial claims.

Stennis is joined in the region by the cruisers Antietam and Mobile Bay, and the destroyers Chung-Hoon and Stockdale. The command ship Blue Ridge, the floating headquarters of the Japan-based 7th Fleet, is also in the area, en route to a port visit in the Philippines. Stennis deployed from Washington state on Jan. 15.

The Japan-based Antietam, officials said, was conducting a “routine patrol” separate from the Stennis, following up patrols conducted by the destroyer McCambell and the dock landing ship Ashland in late February.

The stand-off has been heating up on both sides. After news in February that the Chinese deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile battery to the Paracel Islands, U.S. Pacific Command head Adm. Harry Harris told lawmakers that China was militarizing the South China Sea.

“In my opinion China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea,” Harris testified on Feb. 24. “You’d have to believe in a flat Earth to believe otherwise.”

Overnight, Chinese officials dismissed claims that China was militarizing the region, pointing to the Stennis’s patrol as evidence that the U.S. was to blame for the increased military tensions.  www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/03/03/stennis-strike-group-deployed-to-south-china-sea/81270736/

Marines Need Rouge  MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. —  The Corps is asking an unlikely source for help.

Commandant Gen. Robert Neller has put out the call for “disruptive thinkers” — Marines who live outside the box, love to challenge the status quo, and are often viewed as trouble makers.

It’s time they step up and speak out, Neller said, and it is time for leaders to listen. The commandant wants nothing short of a cultural revolution; a new era in which Marines are encouraged to come up with solutions, and leaders serve as advocates to accelerate those ideas to decision makers.

Neller addressed the issue at an innovation symposium hosted by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab Feb. 23-24. The hundreds of Marines and industry officials in attendance were adamant: The system is broken. The Pentagon can’t fix itself, let alonethese emerging issues. There are an increasing number of hot spots around the world; no two are alike, and the circumstances are ever changing and increasingly complex. Technologies that could help have often evolved before older technologies are even fielded.

That’s why leadership is looking to bypass the bureaucracy and harness the cognitive, creative, innovative abilities  www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2016/03/04/commandant-looks-disruptive-thinkers-fix-corps-problems/81279544/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

How a Democrat Killed Welfare

Clinton’s 1992 election was meant to be a turning point in American politics. Liberals breathed a sigh of relief, believing him to be a much-needed break from the Reagan-Bush era of “small government” and social welfare cuts.

But the optimism surrounding Clinton’s election — and favorable assessments of his time in office since — ignore the destruction his administration brought to poor and working people, especially African Americans, and mask not only the continuation but intensification of anti-poor policies. Rather than offering a reprieve from punitive austerity, Clinton took the Reagan-Bush agenda a step further. If his administration was a turning point, it turned us in the wrong direction.

In 1994, Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the largest crime bill in history, which allocated $10 billion for prison construction, expanded the death penalty, and eliminated federal funding for inmate education. The act intensified police surveillance and racial profiling, and locked up millions for nonviolent offenses such as drug possession. It helped usher in the era of mass incarceration that devastated communities of color (for which Clinton himself has recently apologized).

Clinton’s simultaneous expansion of federal law enforcement and shrinking of the federal workforce to its lowest level in thirty years reallocated taxpayer dollars from employing people in social service jobs to putting more cops on the streets.

The starkest example of the many racist and anti-poor measures directed at African Americans and passed during his administration was the 1996 welfare reform bill, which transformed welfare from an exclusive and unequal cash assistance system that stigmatized its recipients into one that actually criminalized them.

Hillary Clinton’s Role in the Mexican Drug War

High-profile human rights cases — such as the kidnapping and disappearance of the 43 students from the teacher-training college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in September 2014 — sparked renewed attention to the devastating effects of the U.S.-funded drug war in Mexico. Yet, they didn’t come out of nowhere.

Forced disappearances like these were ballooning even as Clinton was pushing Mérida Initiative programs forward, with official records reaching upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 people a year in 2011 and 2012. According to the United Nations, these widespread kidnappings and disappearances often involve state authorities, and the problem is worsened by the government’s failure to investigate.

U.S. laws explicitly prohibit the delivery of aid to foreign individuals and units implicated in systematic human rights violations. But files released by WikiLeaks revealed that Clinton’s State Department regularly received information on widespread “official corruption“ in Mexico, even as they were bolstering the flow of equipment, assistance, and training that ended up in the hands of abusive and compromised security forces.

Indeed, in 2009 and 2010 — the middle years of Clinton’s tenure at State — U.S. embassy cables boasted that intelligence and military between the two countries had never been better.

At least 2,079 Clinton emails contain classified material

At least 2,079 emails that Hillary Clinton sent or received contained classified material, according to the State Department’s final update from its review of more than 30,000 emails.

The State Department released a new batch of 3,871 pages of Clinton’s emails Monday evening in response to a court order. Of those, 261 contain classified information. Most were at the confidential level, which is the lowest level of classification. Twenty-three of them were at the Secret level.

None of Clinton’s emails was marked as classified during her tenure, State Department officials say, but intelligence officials say some material was clearly classified at the time www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article63218372.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

From an 1890 Communist Manifesto preface by Engels:

“When [the Manifesto] appeared, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists. On the one hand were the adherents of the various utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On the other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases, people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support rather to the “educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian communism — in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the General Rules of the International] we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it.”

The Clintons and Wall Street: 24 Years of Enriching Each Other

For twenty four years the Clintons have orchestrated a conjugal relationship with Wall Street, to the immense financial benefit of both parties.   They have accepted from the New York banks $68.72 million in campaign contributions for their six political races, and $8.85 million more in speaking fees.  The banks have earned hundreds of billions of dollars in practices that were once prohibited—until the Clinton Administration legalized them.

The extraordinary ambition displayed in the careers of Bill and Hillary Clinton defies description.  They have spent much of their adult lives soliciting money from others for their own benefit.  A 2014 story in Time magazine said this:

“Few in American history have collected and benefited from so much money in so many ways over such a long period of time…the Clintons have attracted at least $1.4 billion in contributions…”

Time failed to dig deeply enough.  A more thoroughly researched expose’ in the Washington Post a year later doubles the amount to $3 billion.  www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/the-clintons-and-wall-street-24-years-of-enriching-each-other/

Even critics understate how catastrophically bad the Hillary Clinton-led NATO bombing of Libya was

The Times spoke of “Clinton’s deep belief in America’s power to do good in the world,” but did not stress that this belief is rooted in an aggressive militarism. It did quote French President Sarkozy, who fondly remembered how the secretary of state “was tough, she was bullish,” but the Times’ reporting understated Clinton’s belligerence.

At 13,000 words in length combined, the articles are important contributions to the historical record. Yet although they are critical of Clinton and her leadership in the conflict, they fail to acknowledge the crimes of U.S.-backed rebel groups, and ultimately underestimate just how disastrous the war was, just how hawkish Hillary is and just how significant this will be for the future of the United States — not to mention the future of Libya and its suffering people.

The U.S. president does not have as much control over economic and social issues as many pundits, analysts and even voters often insist. One must not forget that the head of state does not control the Congress or the judiciary. But the president does have enormous power when it comes to international affairs, diplomacy and war. This makes foreign policy one of the most crucial issues in any presidential campaign.

Clinton’s leadership in the catastrophic war in Libya should ergo constantly be at the forefront of any discussion of the presidential primary.

Throughout the campaign, Clinton has tried to have her cake and eat it too. She has flaunted her leadership in the war as a sign of her supposed foreign policy experience, yet, at the same moment, strived to distance herself from the disastrous results of said war.

Today, Libya is in ruins. The seven months of NATO bombing effectively destroyed the government and left behind a political vacuum. Much of this has been filled by extremist groups.

Millions of Libyans live without a formal government. The internationally recognized government only controls the eastern part of the country. Rivaled extremist Islamist groups have seized much of the country.

Downtown Benghazi, a once thriving city, is now in ruins. Ansar al-Sharia, a fundamentalist Salafi militia that is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., now controls large chunks of it. ISIS has made Libya home to its largest so-called “caliphate” outside of Iraq and Syria.  www.salon.com/2016/03/02/even_critics_understate_how_catastrophically_bad_the_hillary_clinton_led_nato_bombing_of_libya_was/

And for the Sanders Believers: Mike Alewitz: BIRDS OF A FEATHER

To the delight of the faux left and former socialists, Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard has resigned from her post and endorsed Bernie Sanders.

Gabbard, along with her father, Hawaii Senator Mike Goddard, was the founder of “Stand Up for America” after September 11 – to promote patriotism and bring the country together as “one nation under God.”

Mike Gabbard is a vitriolic anti-gay creep that led a campaign against gay marriage in Hawaii in the 1990s, saying: “I am accused of being a hatemonger, but I’ve never given anyone AIDS.” He founded the “Stop Promoting Homosexuality International” and hosted the anti gay radio program “Let’s Talk Straight, Hawaii” and an anti-gay cable TV program “The Gay Deception.”

Distancing herself somewhat from the elder Gabbard (while cultivating his donors), the apple did not fall all that far from the tree.

As Tulsi Gabbard has stated: “To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii who have already made overwhelmingly clear our position on this issue… As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

While a City Councilwoman in Honolulu, Gabbard led a Giuliani-like fight against the homeless. She is a lifelong militarist and military policewoman, citing her support to Sanders as based on her belief that he will be a strong commander in chief.

Like Sanders, Gabbard has carefully crafted a progressive image while maintaining the support of right-wing forces.

Welcome to Bernie’s Political Revolution.

Yuck.

 

China to lay off five to six million workers, earmarks at least $23 billion

China aims to lay off 5-6 million state workers over the next two to three years as part of efforts to curb industrial overcapacity and pollution, two reliable sources said, Beijing’s boldest retrenchment program in almost two decades.

China’s leadership, obsessed with maintaining stability and making sure redundancies do not lead to unrest, will spend nearly 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to cover layoffs in just the coal and steel sectors in the next 2-3 years.

The overall figure is likely to rise as closures spread to other industries and even more funding will be required to handle the debt left behind by “zombie” state firms.

The term refers to companies that have shut down some of their operations but keep staff on their rolls since local governments are worried about the social and economic impact of bankruptcies and unemployment.

Shutting down “zombie firms” has been identified as one of the government’s priorities this year, with China’s Premier Li Keqiang promising in December that they would soon “go under the knife”..

The government plans to lay off five million workers in industries suffering from a supply glut, one source with ties to the leadership said.  uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-layoffs-exclusive-idUKKCN0W33DS

Staring down an economic reckoning in the Detroit of China  economic storm clouds are gathering in China, particularly in the northeast industrial heartland. Of particular concern are China’s 150,000 state-owned enterprises, which employ some 30 million people. In an ominous sign, China said last week it had set aside $15.3 billion to assist 1.8 million workers who may be laid off — just in the coal and steel sectors — in the next two years.

Whether the government can really cut bloated payrolls at “zombie companies” laden with debt and excess capacity, and let market forces play a bigger role, remains to be seen. Moody’s Investor Service lowered its outlook on China’s government bonds from stable to negative this week, citing concerns about rising debt and expressing pessimism about Beijing’s stomach for reforming state-owned enterprises. At the same time, the agency also cut its outlook to negative on dozens of large state-run enterprises such as China Mobile, warning that the government may curb support for them.

Chinese leaders are gathering this week in Beijing for the country’s annual legislative session, during which they are to approve a five-year economic road map for the country.

If China does have the will to order mass layoffs at state-run firms, the cuts may hit particularly hard in the northeast, home of Changchun. State-owned companies in heavy industry such as coal, steel and auto-making still account for about half of the northeast’s economic activity, while nationwide, state-backed firms contribute less than one-third of gross domestic product.  graphics.latimes.com/china-economy/#nt=notification

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

So Long Al Jazeera     This is the final Al Jazeera America newsletter. Although we are no longer updating our website, today we launched a legacy page with the best journalism we have produced over the last two and a half years. We encourage you to continue to watch our channel on TV until April 12. And for the latest news please visit Al Jazeera English  www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/27/1492281/-Goodnight-and-good-luck-R-I-P-Al-Jazeera-America

New World Order 25 years on…

Hate Group Mapping USA (interactive) 

www.splcenter.org/hate-map

 

Solidarity for Never

Mike Alewitz’

NEA to Spend $5 Million on ESSA Implementation

Spy versus Spy

FBI Locked up that Apple Phone: the (idiot) F.B.I. acknowledged on Tuesday that his agency lost a chance to capture data from the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers when it ordered that his password to the online storage service iCloud be reset shortly after the rampage.

“There was a mistake made in the 24 hours after the attack,” James B. Comey Jr., the director of the F.B.I., told lawmakers at a hearing on the government’s attempt to force Apple to help “unlock” the iPhone.

F.B.I. personnel apparently believed that by resetting the iCloud password, they could get access to information stored on the iPhone. Instead, the change had the opposite effect — locking them out and eliminating other means of getting in.

The iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the assailants in the Dec. 2 attack in which 14 people were killed, is at the center of a fierce legal and political fight over the balance between national security and consumer privacy. Many lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing of the House Judiciary Committee seemed torn over where to draw the line.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/technology/apple-and-fbi-face-off-before-house-judiciary-committee.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The Fake Fox Spy (long) Clizbe, a 55-year-old former C.I.A. officer and intelligence contractor, has cultivated a diverse set of interests in his later years. He loves bird watching and participates in his local Christmas Bird Count, an informal census organized by the Audubon Society. He has a patent on a device, the TimeOff, that prevents unattended-stove fires. But Clizbe’s true motivating force — a holdover, perhaps, from his decade with the agency — is an unrelenting compulsion to get to the bottom of things. He vets every person he meets, interrogating every fact presented to him. This perpetual need to turn everything inside out is the defining trait of Clizbe’s personality, and he remains faithful to it, even when it incurs him great personal expense.

Clizbe grew up poor in Halifax County, North Carolina, raised by a single mother. In 1980, after failing out of East Carolina University, he joined the Air Force. Aptitude tests revealed a gift for languages, so Clizbe enrolled in intensive Vietnamese courses and then was shipped to the Philippines, where he spent three years monitoring Vietnamese radio communications.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/magazine/the-plot-to-take-down-a-fox-news-analyst.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Payout chart’ for molestation: Secret archive held chilling details of clergy abuse

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane speaks about the 147-page report on alleged sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. The report was made public at a news conference Tuesday. (J.D. Cavrich/Altoona Mirror via AP)

A Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania announced Thursday that it will post the names online of priests credibly accused of sexually abusing children, a decision that came two days after a dramatic grand jury report alleged a decades-long cover-up.

Advocates hope that the grand jury report, which was announced just two days after the movie “Spotlight” focused national attention on child sexual abuse by winning the Oscar for Best Picture, will lead to new legislation permitting more prosecutions of abusive priests and those who supervised them.

The report relied on a secret archive at the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, which dates back to the 1950s and was opened up this summer when authorities obtained a search warrant. The grand jury interviewed surviving priests and their alleged victims, and compiled a 147-page account detailing accusations against more than 50 religious leaders including priests and teachers.

“These findings are both staggering and sobering. Over many years hundreds of children have fallen victim to child predators wrapped in the authority and integrity of an honorable faith,” the grand jury wrote.

As dramatic as the report’s allegations are, however, it does not recommend criminal charges, mainly because the statute of limitations has expired. The same is true for potential civil cases….The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference said in a statement that it supports Pennsylvania’s current statue of limitations laws.    ht

Saudi Arabia sentences a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism

the 28-year-old man admitted to being an atheist and refused to repent, saying that what he wrote reflected his own beliefs and that he had the right to express them. The report did not name the man.

It added that ‘religious police’ in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing the Quranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teaching fuelled hostilities. The court also fined him 20,000 riyals – or, just short of £4,000  www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-sentence-man-to-10-years-in-prison-and-2000-lashes-for-expressing-his-atheism-on-a6900056.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

 

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So Long

Last known sit-down striker, Richard Wiecorek, dies at 99

When Richard Wiecorek would attend White Shirt Day, the annual commemoration of the Flint sit-down strike that forced General Motors to recognize the UAW, he would receive a hero’s welcome.

“Younger guys that come from all over, they’d come up to him and shake his hand,” said his daughter, Adeline Cox of Flint. “They’d say, ‘thank you for what you did.’ ”

Wiecorek, believed to be the last surviving worker to participate in the historic 44-day strike in Flint in 1936-37, died Saturday at a rehabilitation center in Grand Blanc. He was 99.

Wiecorek was proud of his status as a sit-downer, the local name for the workers whose efforts are credited with helping unionize the auto industry.

The sit-down strike began Dec. 30, 1936, at one of Flint’s GM plants, Fisher Body 1  www.freep.com/story/news/2016/02/28/sit-down-striker/81078284/

 

William H. Schaap, a radical lawyer, author and publisher who fought against investigative abuses by government agencies at home and abroad, died on Feb. 25 in Manhattan. He was 75.

The cause was pulmonary disease, his niece Rosie Schaap said.

Mr. Schaap began his activism in law school, counseling students arrested in Chicago for protesting segregated housing.

As a lawyer, he defended Columbia University students arrested in 1968 for occupying campus buildings to protest the war in Vietnam. In the late 1960s, he left a Wall Street law firm where he was an associate and moved to Japan and Germany with his wife, Ellen Ray, to counsel resisters to the war in Vietnam.

In 1976, they formed what became CovertAction, a publication that reported on illegal Central Intelligence Agency activities. It also identified C.I.A. agents by name, from unclassified sources, a practice outlawed by Congress in 1982. Mr. Schaap also represented C.I.A. whistle-blowers, like Philip Agee.  www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/nyregion/william-h-schaap-radical-lawyer-author-and-publisher-dies-at-75.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160303&nlid=2254121&tntemail0=y&_r=0