Rouge Forum Dispatch: Connecting reason to Power.
We Say Fight Back!
Student Debt Strike: You are not a Loan With stagnant wages, systemic unemployment, and public service cuts, we are forced to go into debt for the basic things in life — and thus surrender our futures to the banks. Debt is major source of profit and power for Wall Street that works to keep us isolated, ashamed, and afraid. Using direct action, research, education, and the arts, we are coming together to challenge this illegitimate system while imagining and creating alternatives. We want an economy in which our debts are to our friends, families, and communities — and not to the 1%. strikedebt.org/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPJgeg6hpA
Coming in C’Punch–The Wars on Vietnam: A Better Recollection than the Pentagon’s and the Liberals–by Rich Gibson Following the victory of the Vietnamese people over the U.S. empire and its allies on April 29/30, 1975, elites in the U.S. those who operate within the armed weapon and executive committee of the ruling class that is government, moved quickly to (1) recapture the economy, wrecked by years of warfare; (2) exercise authority over the schools, often up in flames of fire and critique; (3) dominate the military, riddled with desertions, refusals, and shot-up, fragged, officers; (4) retake the culture–to eradicate the Vietnam Syndrome, the memory of the loss as well as the why, who, when, where, and what of the war: especially the Why? The “How’s” are gone too.
In the past month, the Pentagon, PBS, and the for-profit press took a three pronged approach to the Vietnam Wars: (1) praise the returned troops and promote the notion of a home-country stab in the back, (2) highlight the evacuees and the US heroes of the April ‘75 evacuations, and (3) focus on the post-war babylift and the Vietnamese babies now grown up.
In my searches, the journalists’ “W’s” are missing or frothed over. More on that later. Let’s turn to the high-water mark of liberal critique.
Tom Hayden, in his, “The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Protests,” (Counterpunch, May 3, 2015) does a fine job recreating many of the details of the wars on Vietnam–from the point of view of a liberal Democrat who spent years in the California legislature and who must have grown rich as well from his marriage to Jane Fonda, once anti-war prima donna, later Ted Turner’s wife and religious-“feminist” later still.
Hayden’s standpoint does not serve his broader analysis well. Perhaps that explains why the words “capitalism,” and “imperialism,” never appear in his piece. Nor does Marx, so powerfully influential to the Vietnamese movement as well as the world’s anti-war movements.
Class and empire’s wars define our times, as they did then.
Vietnam was an imperialist war. Rubber, tin, rice, were all key to any empire’s designs (rubber, like oil, moves the military), while the other indicators of imperialist action (regional control, markets, cheap labor) easily come into view if we walk back the cat from Vietnam’s current state as a low-wage center. richgibson.com/warsonvietnam.htm
Mexico: 2 Years on, AutoDefensas Still Fighting
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Capitalist San Diego Schools Divert Bond Money san Diego Unified School District has spent almost a billion dollars of taxpayer funding in modernizing school sites – but not in the way it was advertised in 2008 and 2012 when the tax increases were put on the ballot.
If you want to see where some of the money has been going, look no further than the new turf fields taking San Diego Unified schools by storm.
With its spending decisions thus far, the district appears to be prioritizing a few select categories: technology, site modernization, air conditioning and athletic facilities….Every school in the district is getting a new football stadium – a $107 million price tag in total. www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/san-diego-explained-sd-unifieds-bond-spending-priorities/
In the Detroit Real/False Hope Shell Game, 8 more schools split off, teachers fired Teachers and principals at eight poor-performing Detroit schools will have to reapply for their jobs under a restructuring plan announced Thursday that also calls for new and expanded academic programs.
Darnell Earley, emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools, said the restructuring is part of a larger “transformational change” underway in the 47,000-student district.
The goal is to improve academic achievement at the schools and make them more competitive.
Without offering specifics, the district said it will “work to raise academic rigor” at the schools and increase opportunities for students in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math.
There will also be efforts to improve school climate and safety. www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/05/07/dps-restructure-eight-schools/70973124/
UC Santa Cruz Upending Tradition of Activism and Affordability UC Santa Cruz, or UCSC, is part of a ten-campus network that is widely considered to be a paragon of state university systems. Traditionally, California residents were able to attend the world-class institutions at a relatively affordable cost, but that has started to change in recent decades, as budget crises and a decrease in state support for higher education prompted sizable tuition hikes. Undergraduate tuition, which is uniform across the UC system, has more than doubled in the last decade to its current level of $12,192. It’s increased at a much higher rate than the national average, which in 2014 was $9,139. Officials point out that financial-aid programs for low- and middle-income families make tuition free for more than half of the schools’ in-state students—but as the recent controversy suggests, that’s not always enough.
UCSC doesn’t have the same recognition as UC institutions such as UCLA and Cal Berkeley; it’s endowment is much smaller, and its athletics are Division III. What it is known for, however, is its foundation in radical politics and its support of student activism. Founded in 1965, when Vietnam-era activism was growing across American campuses, Santa Cruz’s student body immediately took part in the nationwide movement. That character stuck even as UCSC grew and prospered in the ensuing decades. www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-betrayal-of-student-activism/392759/
CAEP, Having Filled Schools with people with incoherent, unsystematic, mystical world views, people who don’t mind war and segregation, dumps prezzie The board of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, now the sole national accreditor of teacher-preparation programs, made an unexpected move May 7 to replace the group’s founding president, James G. Cibulka.
Christopher Koch, until recently the Illinois state superintendent of schools, will serve as CAEP’s interim director while a search for a new president is launched, the organization said in a release.
The release gave no explanations for the sudden change in leadership. As I’ve reported, though, CAEP has had a rocky few months. It has been criticized for a disorganized piloting of its new accreditation standards. And the major association representing teachers’ colleges has already signaled that it wants revisions to some of those standards.
Cibulka, a former dean of the college of education at the University of Kentucky, was initially tapped in 2008 to lead the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, one of two predecessors to CAEP. As president, he launched several new initiatives, including a report calling on the field to increase the amount of hands-on student-teaching and the panel charged with writing the new CAEP standards.
Cibulka was also one of the negotiators during a 2012 attempt to craft new federal regulations for teacher preparation. In that role, he had a hand in brokering compromises between two factions that, broadly speaking, supported or opposed the U.S. Department of Education’s proposals. The negotiations ultimately broke down, and the Education Department released its own draft of the rules in November. blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2015/05/in_surprise_move_teacher_ed_ac.html
above, Beverly Hall, top criminal test cheat + superintendent who died before trial
Overcharged by RICO, but guilty of being guardians of capital and damaging kids, Atlanta Test Cheaters long term damage A new study commissioned by the Atlanta public schools found that the district’s test-cheating scandal disproportionately affected black students and sparked an increase in charter school enrollment in the city.
In the report, “The Long-Run Effects of Teacher Cheating on Student Outcomes,” researchers from Atlanta-based Georgia State University found little evidence that the cheating had a significant effect on student attendance or behavior.
The researchers focused on the relationship between teacher cheating and post‐cheating student test scores, attendance, and behavior. The report concluded that evidence of negative effects in math was mixed, but the damage to performance in reading … blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2015/05/atlanta_schools_test-cheating_.html
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
China Closes on AnarticaFew places seem out of reach for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests.
So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica, 2,000 miles south of this Australian port.
Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans.
He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft, to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs.
It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island.
But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia, confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions.
China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining. But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say. www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/world/asia/china-pursuing-strategic-interests-builds-presence-in-antarctica.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Say Iran! Would you please Save the US’ ass in Iraq? The oil refinery Security forces based at the country’s largest oil refinery in Baiji are in danger of losing control of the strategic facility, Iraqi officers and US officials have warned. The Islamic State controls large areas inside the refinery and have besieged the remaining Iraqi troops. The Iraqi military and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are moving towards Baiji in an effort to break the siege.
Iraqi officers have painted a dire picture of the situation inside the refinery. A colonel said that the complex “had been completely surrounded after militants cut all remaining supply routes used by the security forces,” Reuters reported. The Islamic State has mounted several attacks, including suicide bombings, in order to gain significant ground at the facility. The colonel also said that “up to two thirds” of the refinery is under the jihadist group’s control…..
A special forces officer interviewed by Reuters also said that several sub-refineries, the northern part of the refinery, and a large portion of the southern part of the complex is under Islamic State control. The jihadist group has pushed so far into the refinery that airstrikes will be difficult to conduct without damaging the facility, according to one Iraqi officer.
The US military has also warned that the situation in Baiji is in danger of spiraling out of control. Yesterday, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told reporters that the fighting is “flowing in the wrong direction,” in favor of the Islamic State. (video inside) www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/05/fighting-at-iraqs-baiji-oil-refinery-is-flowing-in-the-wrong-direction.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LongWarJournalSiteWide+%28The+Long+War+Journal+%28Site-Wide%29%29
Incapable of Saying, “People Make Gods; Gods don’t make people; you have fairies dancing in your heads; Religion is the ideology of death,” US may be losing PR war to IS It is a problem that has proved more difficult to solve than almost any other for counterterrorism officials. In the 14 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has degraded al-Qaeda, tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden and protected the country from any mass-casualty follow-up attacks.
Al-Qaeda’s brand of militant ideology, however, has only spread.
Previous U.S. efforts have ranged from covert CIA propaganda programs to a Walt Disney-produced film. Their ineffectiveness has hindered attempts to rebalance U.S. counterterrorism policy, leaving the government heavily dependent on armed drones, commando teams and other instruments of lethal force.
With less than two years to go in Obama’s second term, his administration is trying yet another approach. Fernandez, 57, has been replaced, and the unit he led has been instructed to stop taunting the Islamic State. The State Department recently launched a new entity, the Information Coordination Cell, which plans to enlist U.S. embassies, military leaders and regional allies in a global messaging campaign to discredit groups such as the Islamic State.
The plan is to be “more factual and testimonial,” said Rashad Hussain, 36, a former White House adviser brought in to lead the effort. It will seek to highlight Islamic State hypocrisy, emphasize accounts of its defectors, and document its losses on the battlefield — without recirculating its gruesome images or matching its snide tone. “When amplified properly, we believe the facts speak for themselves,” Hussain said. www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-propaganda-war-us-tried-to-play-by-the-enemys-rules/2015/05/08/6eb6b732-e52f-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html?hpid=z1
Daesh Claims Responsibility for Prison Break in Baghdad www.albawaba.com/news/daesh-claims-responsibility-prison-break-baghdad-692282
Five years earlier, Right-wing Hegelian Fascism saluted left-wing Hegelian Fascism
The Hitler-Stalin Pact lasted 22 months……
As US/NATO Troops Practice on Russia’s Borders, US boycotts Russia’s celebration of the anti-fascist war victory A senior politician in Russia has criticised alleged US attempts to “isolate” the country by urging a boycott of events to commemorate the end of Second World War in Moscow next month.
A diplomatic row broke out on Sunday after Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic, said he was banning the US ambassador to the country from his residence, Prague Castle.
Andrew Schapiro, the ambassador, had earlier criticised Mr Zeman for his decision to attend Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on May 9, saying it would erode EU unity over criticism of Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict.
Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, stepped into the fray on Monday.
“Judging by the hysterics of the US ambassador to the Czech Republic, they’re stressing out in Washington because of Western leaders’ trips to Moscow for May 9,” he wrote on Twitter. “They’re afraid that isolation [of Russia] won’t work out.”
Russian officials have already made clear their disgust that several Western leaders are snubbing the Victory Day events, marking 70 years since the end of the war. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11518150/Moscow-criticises-US-attempts-to-isolate-Russia-over-Victory-Day-events.html
The Number One Reason For Hospitalizing Soldiers? Mental Disorders (see p11) www.afhsc.mil/documents/pubs/msmrs/2015/v22_n04.pdf#Page=5
Drugging Soldiers SINCE the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a large and steady rise in the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among our troops. One recent study of 289,000 Americans who served in those countries found that the rates of the disorder jumped to 22 percent in 2008 from just 0.2 percent in 2002.
Given the duration of these wars and the length and frequency of deployments, when compared with other wars, perhaps such high rates of PTSD are not so surprising. Prolonged exposure to a perilous and uncertain combat environment might make trauma common.
But there is another factor that might be playing a role in the increasing rates of the disorder, one that has escaped attention: the military’s use of stimulant medications, like Ritalin and Adderall, in our troops. There has been a significant increase in the use of stimulant medication. Documents that I obtained in late 2010 through the Freedom of Information Act, and have recently analyzed, show that annual spending on stimulants jumped to $39 million in 2010 from $7.5 million in 2001 — more than a fivefold increase. Additional data provided by Tricare Management Activity, the arm of the Department of Defense that manages health care services for the military, reveals that the number of Ritalin and Adderall prescriptions written for active-duty service members increased by nearly 1,000 percent in five years, to 32,000 from 3,000. www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/why-are-we-drugging-our-soldiers.html?_r=1
US Training another set of Jihaddists to Fight in Syria (against?) (CNN)The Pentagon is poised to begin, as soon as this week, a controversial program to train moderate Syrian rebels at locations in Turkey and Jordan to fight ISIS, according to several U.S. defense officials.
The first of 400 U.S. military trainers have now arrived in both countries. Out of a list of 3,000 rebels who have expressed interest in joining the program, some 400 have passed the initial security screening. Once final approval is given, they will be training on small arms, radios, medical gear and battlefield tactics.
The plan is for them to return to their towns and villages and be able to specifically defend them against ISIS. However, U.S. officials are aware, they say, of the risk that some of the trained fighters could decide to take their weapons and fight the Assad regime which is not the goal of the training. www.cnn.com/2015/05/06/politics/khaled-khoja-free-syrian-army-u-s-support/
Hey San Diego! N. Korea Claims it fired a missile from a sub North Korea said Saturday that it had successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine.
Although American officials had suspected North Korea was developing such a missile system, the country had not previously claimed to have conducted a test launching. The test, if confirmed, would pose a new challenge to the United States and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, which have been trying to build missile defense capabilities to guard against potential North Korean missile attacks. Submarine-launched missiles are harder to detect and intercept.
“There took place an underwater test-fire of Korean-style powerful strategic submarine ballistic missile,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday. “The test-fire proved and confirmed that the ballistic missile fired from the submarine fully met the requirements of the latest military science and technology.” www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/world/asia/north-korea-says-it-test-fired-missile-from-submarine.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Britain: Liberal Saps Crushed by Cons (either way, the attacks will contiune) David Cameron has returned to Downing Street with the Tories having defied polls and won the general election.
The Conservatives made gains in England and Wales and are forecast by the BBC to secure 331 seats in the Commons, giving them a slender majority.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said he would stand down on Friday, saying his party must “rebuild” with a new leader.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has also said he will quit, with his party set to be reduced from 57 to eight MPs.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage is also quitting after he failed to win Thanet South, losing by nearly 2,800 votes to the Conservatives.
In other election developments:
- The BBC forecast, with 643 of 650 seats declared, is Conservative 331, Labour 232, the Lib Dems 8, the SNP 56, Plaid Cymru 3, UKIP 1, the Greens 1 and others 19. www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32633099
Tweedle Obamagogue vs Twaddle Warren as Trade Wars become hot Escalating the fight with his own liberal base, President Obama, in an interview posted online on Saturday, took on Senator Elizabeth Warren, a champion of the left, by suggesting that she was motivated by politics in her battle against his proposed Pacific trade accord.
Mr. Obama said that some of Ms. Warren’s warnings about the potential damage of the trade deal were nothing more than the “hypotheticals” of a law-school professor and were, at their root, “absolutely wrong.”
“The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” Mr. Obama told Matt Bai of Yahoo News in an interview conducted on Friday at Nike’s headquarters near Beaverton, Ore. “And, you know, she’s got a voice that she wants to get out there, and I understand that. And on most issues, she and I deeply agree. On this one, though, her arguments don’t stand the test of fact and scrutiny.”
The president’s rebuttal of Ms. Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who came to national prominence in part through her work with the Obama administration, underscored the schism within the Democratic Party over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal.
Ms. Warren, a former Harvard law professor, has become an outspoken leader of those Democrats who argue that the agreement would cost American jobs. www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/us/politics/obama-calls-elizabeth-warren-absolutely-wrong-on-trans-pacific-trade-deal.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
China’s Middle Finger Raised to Obamagogue “A diplomatic triumph” is a phrase which is being used by Chinese media when referring to 57 nations joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as prospective founding members.
The signing up of the nearly sixty members from the organization’s inception was beyond the expectation of many people who participated in the establishment of the AIIB.
The AIIB is an international financial institution whose founding was proposed in 2013 by the government of China. The general purpose of this multilateral development bank is to provide finance to infrastructure projects in the Asian region.
Analysts of international affairs and finance in China, the United States, and Europe say that the unexpected success of the bank represents a major turning point in an undeclared contest for global influence between Washington and Beijing. …
The AIIB is viewed as a rival to the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), since the AIIB is independent from the Bretton Woods system while the others are in the system and dominated by either United States or Japan.
The Chinese government is frustrated that US Congress has obstructed the voting rights reform in the IMF that would give China more say in global economic governance. thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-aiib-is-seen-very-differently-in-the-us-europe-and-china/
Stagnation in Finance, Industry, Unemployment and Wages Down Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in April, and the
unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and
business services, health care, and construction. Mining employment
continued to decline.
Household Survey Data
In April, both the unemployment rate (5.4 percent) and the number of
unemployed persons (8.5 million) were essentially unchanged. Over the
year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down
by 0.8 percentage point and 1.1 million, respectively. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Asians increased
to 4.4 percent. The rates for adult men (5.0 percent), adult women (4.9
percent), teenagers (17.1 percent), whites (4.7 percent), blacks (9.6
percent), and Hispanics (6.9 percent) showed little or no change in April.
(See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks increased by 241,000
to 2.7 million in April. The number of long-term unemployed (those
jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 2.5 million, accounting
for 29.0 percent of the unemployed. www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Capitalist War Profiteers Line Up to be Sure the Next Prezzie likes war (safe bet) Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers has formed a new pressure group, now active in Iowa and New Hampshire, to serve as the “premiere national security and foreign policy organization during the 2016 debate” and to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”
Roger’s group, Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, is hosting candidate events and intends to host a candidate forum later this year. The organization does not disclose its donors. But a look at the business executives helping APPS steer presidential candidates towards more hawkish positions reveals that many are defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism: firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/09/military-contractors-form-group-pressure-2016-candidates-adopt-hawkish-positions/
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
Hillbillary: Government as an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich When Hillary Clinton video-announced her bid for the Oval Office, she claimed she wanted to be a “champion” for the American people. Since then, she has attempted to recast herself as a populist and distance herself from some of the policies of her husband. But Bill Clinton did not become president without sharing the friendships, associations, and ideologies of the elite banking sect, nor will Hillary Clinton. Such relationships run too deep and are too longstanding.
To grasp the dangers that the Big Six banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) presently pose to the financial stability of our nation and the world, you need to understand their history in Washington, starting with the Clinton years of the 1990s. Alliances established then (not exclusively with Democrats, since bankers are bipartisan by nature) enabled these firms to become as politically powerful as they are today and to exert that power over an unprecedented amount of capital. Rest assured of one thing: their past and present CEOs will prove as critical in backing a Hillary Clinton presidency as they were in enabling her husband’s years in office.
In return, today’s titans of finance and their hordes of lobbyists, more than half of whom held prior positions in the government, exact certain requirements from Washington. They need to know that a safety net or bailout will always be available in times of emergency and that the regulatory road will be open to whatever practices they deem most profitable.
Whatever her populist pitch may be in the 2016 campaign — and she will have one — note that, in all these years, Hillary Clinton has not publicly condemned Wall Street or any individual Wall Street leader. Though she may, in the heat of that campaign, raise the bad-apples or bad-situation explanation for Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, rest assured that she will not point fingers at her friends. She will not chastise the people that pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop to speak or the ones that have long shared the social circles in which she and her husband move. She is an undeniable component of the Clinton political-financial legacy that came to national fruition more than 23 years ago, which is why looking back at the history of the first Clinton presidency is likely to tell you so much about the shape and character of the possible second one….
No matter what spin is used for campaigning purposes, the idea that a critical distance can be maintained between the White House and Wall Street is naïve given the multiple channels of money and favors that flow between the two. It is even more improbable, given the history of connections that Hillary Clinton has established through her associations with key bank leaders in the early 1990s, during her time as a senator from New York, and given their contributions to the Clinton foundation while she was secretary of state. At some level, the situation couldn’t be less complicated: her path aligns with that of the country’s most powerful bankers. If she becomes president, that will remain the case. www.tomdispatch.com/post/175993/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_hillary%2C_bill%2C_and_the_big_six_banks/
May 9, 2015, marks one year since Dr G.N. Saibaba, lecturer of English at Ramlal Anand College, Delhi University, was abducted by unknown men on his way home from work. When her husband went missing and his cellphone did not respond, Vasantha, Dr Saibaba’s wife, filed a missing person’s complaint in the local police station. Subsequently the unknown men identified themselves as the Maharashtra Police and described the abduction as an arrest.
Why did they abduct him in this way when they could easily have arrested him formally, this professor who happens to be wheelchair-bound and paralysed from his waist downwards since he was five years old? There were two reasons: First, because they knew from their previous visits to his house that if they picked him up from his home on the Delhi University campus they would have to deal with a crowd of angry people—professors, activists and students who loved and admired Professor Saibaba not just because he was a dedicated teacher but also because of his fearless political worldview. Second, because abducting him made it look as though they, armed only with their wit and daring, had tracked down and captured a dangerous terrorist. The truth is more prosaic. Many of us had known for a long time that Professor Saibaba was likely to be arrested. It had been the subject of open discussion for months. Never in all those months, right up to the day of his abduction, did it ever occur to him or to anybody else that he should do anything else but face up to it fair and square. In fact, during that period, he put in extra hours and finished his PhD on the Politics of the Discipline of Indian English Writing. Why did we think he would be arrested? What was his crime? www.outlookindia.com/article/professor-pow/294265
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Chicago to pay millions for 20 years of Police Torture Chicago made history today as the first municipality in the United States to pass legislation providing reparations for victims of police torture. The landmark policy will allot financial compensation to the mostly African-American men tortured from 1972 to 1991 under Area 2 Commander John Burge and his infamous “midnight crew.” The legislation gives victims access to psychological counseling, education and job training, and mandates that public schools teach about the torture; a permanent memorial will also be erected in the city.
More than 100 victims are estimated to have been subjected to heinous abuse under Burge and his cohorts, and still suffer from the psychological aftermath. “People were electrically shocked on their genitals, people were suffocated with plastic bags, people were beaten with telephone books and flat jacks, others were subjected to mock execution,” including via stimulated Russian roulette, Joey Mogul, an attorney who has worked with victims of Chicago police torture for 18 years, tells Rolling Stone.“In some cases [the torture] led to false confessions,” Mogul says.read more: www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/chicago-to-pay-5-5-million-in-reparations-for-police-torture-victims-20150506#ixzz3Zc7ciW3X
Mexico: Cartel Uses RPG to down Military Chopper Mexican officials arrested the leaders of the Juarez and Gulf Cartels, dealing a solid blow to the two gangs.
But the fracturing of these cartels has been coupled with the rise of the “Jalisco Cartel- New Generation” (JCNG), a bold and violent new cartel in Mexico’s southern state of Jalisco.
JCNG was formed by former deputies of the Mileno and Sinaloa Cartels after they fell apart in 2009. Since then, the cartel has been terrorizing the state of Jalisco and its capitol, Guadalajara.
In the most recent episode of violence, which took place on May 1, the cartel took the battle against government forces to the next level, using a rocket-propelled grenade to take down an army helicopter.
Guillermo Valdés is a former Mexican intelligence official. He has also chronicled the history of Mexico’s cartels in his book, “A History of Drug Trafficking in Mexico”.
“This is the first time they have knocked out a helicopter,” Valdés told the Wall Street Journal. thehigherlearning.com/2015/05/08/mexican-cartel-uses-rpg-to-shoot-down-army-helicopter-amidst-violence-in-guadalajara/
Mexico: One Copper and One Mayor busted for 43 students’ deaths Mexican police arrested one of the senior police officers accused of involvement in the disappearance of a group of 43 student teachers last year, the country’s interior ministry said on Thursday.
Francisco Salgado, 41, was the deputy head of the police in the southwestern city of Iguala, where 43 student teachers went missing in September last year. The government says the group was detained by corrupt police officers who handed them over to a local drug gang that killed them and then incinerated their bodies.
The incident shocked Mexico, sparking nationwide protests, and plunged Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto into his deepest crisis since taking office in 2012. In a statement, Mexico’s interior ministry said Salgado was captured in the central Mexican city of Cuernavaca.
Statements from police in Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula alleged that on the night of Sept. 26, Salgado had ordered that roughly 13 of the student teachers should be handed over to members of the drug gang, the interior ministry said.
Witness statements also alleged that Salgado received 600,000 pesos ($39,187) a month from the drug gang in return for protection, the ministry said. Since his disappearance, the ministry said he had been hiding in residences belonging to family members.
In November, Mexican authorities captured Jose Luis Abarca, who was at the time of the incident mayor of Iguala, and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, in Mexico City. Abarca has since been charged with the kidnapping of the students. www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mexico-captures-cop-allegedly-involved-disappearance-students-n355756
Here are the Racist, Homophobic San Francisco Copper Texts www.vox.com/2015/5/8/8573497/san-franciso-police-racism
Collective Bargaining Agreement
25,407 Ballots counted 83% turnout
Yes: 24,743 97.4%
No: 664 2.6%
Health Benefits Agreement
25,366 Ballots counted 83% turnout
Yes: 25,166 99.2%
No: 200 0.8% www.utla.net/contractdemands
Caudillo Castro the Second to Suck up to the Latest Pope
Pope Francis is set to receive Cuban President Raul Castro in a private audience at the Vatican.
The Argentine Pope played a key role in a recent diplomatic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba.
President Castro, who is stopping off as he returns from Russia’s WW2 Victory Day parade, wishes to thank the Pope for his help, Vatican radio says.
The Roman Catholic Church has maintained relations with Havana since the 1959 revolution.
The Pope will visit Cuba on his way to the United States in September. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32679290
Spy versus Spy
If NSA Spying is illegal, why is Snowden illegal? A U.S. spying program that systematically collects millions of Americans’ phone records is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, putting pressure on Congress to quickly decide whether to replace or end the controversial anti-terrorism surveillance.
Ruling on a program revealed by former government security contractor Edward Snowden, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans’ calling records in bulk.
Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for a three-judge panel that Section 215, which addresses the FBI’s ability to gather business records, could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a “staggering” amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans,” Lynch wrote in a 97-page decision. “We would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate.”
The appeals court did not rule on whether the surveillance violated the U.S. Constitution.
It also declined to halt the program, noting that parts of the Patriot Act including Section 215 expire on June 1. www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/07/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSKBN0NS1IN20150507
The Magical Mystery Tour
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — A suburban Phoenix family says their Christmas cheesecake sent them the message of a holiday miracle.
The Arizona Republic reports that when the family in Scottsdale, Ariz., pulled their dessert out of the oven, it cracked as it cooled and formed a crucifix.
The family members, who have not given their names publicly, say the crucifix is a message.
They say they won’t be eating the cheesecake. Instead, they plan to sell it and donate the money to a local charity or church. www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2013/12/crucifix_on_a_cheesecake_arizo.html
Is this Mohammed?
No. That’s not Mohammed!
Is this Mohammed?
No. That is not Mohammed.
Is this Mohammed?
No. That is not Mohammed.
Are any of these Mohammed?
No. None of them is Mohammed!
Is this Mohammed?
No Silly. That is the underwear bomber.
Stop it.
Two gunmen were killed and a security guard wounded in an attack outside a controversial Dallas-area event Sunday evening where organizers were holding a contest for cartoons featuring the Muslim prophet Muhammad, police said.
The shooting in Garland, a Texas suburb about 20 miles from Dallas, was preceded by messages from two social media accounts that supported extremist Islamic viewpoints.
One tweet, sent at 6:35 p.m., used the hashtag “#texasattack.” The user wrote, “May Allah accept us as mujahideen.” Attendees inside the conference didn’t get word about the shooting until 6:50 p.m.
The Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest, led by prominent conservatives who are critical of Islam, was ending when two men drove up in a car and began shooting at a Garland school security officer who was apparently helping protect the building, said Garland officials.
“He was shot in the leg, transported to the hospital and he’ll be fine,” Garland Mayor Douglas Athas told the Los Angeles Times.
One of the gunmen was shot “immediately” by Garland police, and the other was shot and killed when he reached for a backpack, leading police to fear the men may have brought explosives, Athas said.
Officials then evacuated the area as attendees inside were led away from the front of the building. www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-shooting-20150503-story.html
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Spotify Offers Robert Johnson’s Greatest hits www.udiscovermusic.com/the-legacy-of-robert-john
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P4WhmJt9XM
So Long
Folk musician Guy Carawan died Saturday at the age of 87. The civil rights pioneer suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and died in his sleep at his home in Tennessee, WEWS reported. Carawan was the voice of the civil rights movement and is best known for the protest song “We Shall Overcome.” He did not write it, and did not claim to, but he helped popularize it during rallies in the 1960s. www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/guy-carawan-musician-known-for-we-shall-overcome-dies-at-87/ar-BBjouLr?ocid=fbmsn
