We Say Fight Back!

South Carolina teachers, state employees rally for better pay, send governor letter

Susan S. Smith, an Anderson special education teacher, drove to the Statehouse early Saturday morning to voice her concerns about unequal education in the state and teacher pay.

Though lawmakers are poised to increase teachers’ salaries by 1-2 percent for the next budget year, and Smith said she is grateful for any raise, she said the amount is “nowhere near” what teachers need.

“I hope that our voices are heard,” she said as she joined dozens of other teachers and state employees to rally for better pay and launch a campaign, “South Carolinians Deserve The Best.”

The rally comes amid similar protests in other states, most recently North Carolina, where educators have pushed for better pay. While teacher strikes led to school being cancelled in some states, Saturday’s event was timed not to disrupt school.

The rally also took place in front of an empty Statehouse, as lawmakers have adjourned for the year, though they are scheduled to return for several days later this month to work out differences between House and Senate bills and to take up any vetoes.

Wearing red T-shirts and holding signs, the Statehouse crowd cheered and chanted, applauded speakers, and at one point yelled “Shame on you, South Carolina!” due to a benefit system that has left the state facing a critical shortage of teachers.

“Enough is enough!” yelled Kathy Maness, executive director of the Palmetto State Teachers Association. “The time has come for the General Assembly to recognize that our public schools and state services are South Carolina’s most important priority and do what they must do to protect them from further damage.”

Maness and other speakers urged colleagues and state workers to talk to lawmakers in their districts and to vote for candidates who are willing to improve pay.  www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/south-carolina/2018/05/19/south-carolina-teachers-state-workers-rally-livable-wage/624009002/

 

Organizing Upgrade

Several Charlotte Education Association members are concerned their students are not fully getting the help they need and have chosen to voice their concern by joining the statewide movement “Wear Red for Public Ed.” That participation, however, has been met with resistance from Charlotte Public Schools administrators.

Close to 50 current and former Charlotte Public Schools teachers, and members of the Michigan Education Association gathered in the Charlotte Upper Elementary School parking lot Wednesday, May 23 proudly wearing red shirts. The group took things a step further that morning, taking part in a planned “walk in,” in which they entered the building as one large group prior to the start of the school day. A similar walk in took place at Washington Elementary School the same morning.

The walk ins were the direct result of a memo teachers received from CPS Superintendent Mark Rosekrans and Board of Education president Lee Wheaton on Wednesday, May 9 that stated in part that “wearing clothing at work in support of a political cause,” goes against district policy.  county-journal.com/communities/charlotte/teachers-unite-in-red-for-students/

Want to know Korea?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgsUvtHAcJA

.

www.facebook.com/Boston25News/videos/10154964279778122/

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=anRLUg-ruaw

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Ammo box falls from Fort Bliss helicopter, crashes into school (education agenda=War agenda)

England is still educating different classes for different functions in society

The working classes still get less of everything in education, including respect, argues Diane Reay. She suggests that in order to move towards a fairer educational system, England needs to implement a National Education Service that provides the same standards and level of resources to all children, regardless of class and ethnic background.

Historically, the English educational system has educated the different social classes for different functions in society. However, in the 21^st century, the expectation is that the English state system is providing roughly the same education for all. In my new book I argue that it does not. Even within a comprehensive school, when young people are all being educated in the same building, the working classes are still getting less education than the middle classes, just as they had when my father was educated at the beginning of the 20^th century. We are still educating different social classes for different functions in society.

The book is based on a mix of statistics, more than 500 interviews and my personal memoir of growing up as a free school meal child living on a council estate. The book argues that, despite a whole plethora of policy initiatives from testing regimes, league tables, school choice, academies and free schools, the return to traditional models of both primary and secondary curriculum and to a preoccupation with ‘school improvement’ and ‘school effectiveness’, little has changed in relation to how the working classes are valued within education. And despite the incessant focus on social mobility, England is at the bottom of the league table for working class children achieving high academic levels.  blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/uk-educating-different-classes-for-different-functions/

The administrator who oversees the district’s embattled Promise program could soon get a $24,000 boost in salary and benefits.

The Broward County School Board is expected to decide whether to give initial approval to an upgraded job description for Mickey Pope, who made $149,389 as of fall 2017 as executive director of student support services.

Under the proposal, her title would be chief of student support services, reporting directly to the superintendent instead of the chief academic officer.

The promotion is being made “to emphasize serving the needs of students, staff, families, and schools” in the wake of the shootings Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” a district report says.

The move comes at a time when Broward’s school discipline policies have come under fire, particularly the Promise program, which provides alternatives to arrest for students who commit certain misdemeanors.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported this month that the program is part of a culture of leniency in the district that allows students to get countless second chances and that student success rates are exaggerated. Superintendent Robert Runcie also has been criticized for insisting gunman Nikolas Cruz had no part in the program, only to backtrack this month and acknowlege Cruz was referred to the program but didn’t complete it.

Critics on social media assailed Pope’s possible promotion.  www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-florida-school-shooting-promise-raise-20180521-story.html

Above, a photo of Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills Michigan. Cranbrook, a k-12. has its own attached art colony. Five man made swimming pools, one smaller than the next, connected by lovely waterfalls. There is an on-site planetarium. An art museum. Football, rugby and soccer fields. Multiple tennis courts. Hockey rinks.  Science labs. Dormitory for on-campus students. Less than 700 kids.

40 acres of the carefully groomed campus are gardens. Cranbrook has a $300 million dollar endowment. It’s where Mitt Romney went to school. Daniel Ellsberg. Me too. And Eric Chester. It’s part of a relatively small group of private schools where the ruling classes train their children, and children of the poor alike, in order to understand how power works. Holding a globe, a past headmaster addressing the assembled youth said, “Gentlemen, this is ours, and during your tenure at Cranbrook, you will learn how we make it work.” Cranbrook and its like sits on top of a fundamentally segregated (class and race) not-so-public education system in the US.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranbrook_Schools

U.S. Public Schools Have Lost Nearly 20% Of Their Librarians Since 2000

The United States can’t afford librarians, according to a new analysis of federal data.

Between 1999-2000 and 2015-16, U.S. public schools lost 19% of full-time equivalent school librarians, according to a School Library Journal article by researcher Keith Curry Lance that examined National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data.

The shortage in public school librarian employment — which saw the most dramatic drop following the Great Recession of 2008 and hasn’t recovered since — has hit districts serving minorities the hardest. Among all the districts that have retained all their librarians since 2005, 75% are white, Education Week reports. On the other end of the scale, student populations in the 20 districts that lost the most librarians in the same time comprised 78% students of color.

In other words, while U.S. employment rates are back up in the wake of the Great Recession, the public school librarian sector has not rebounded, and the nation’s collective failure to rebuild its public information infrastructure is hitting minorities the hardest.

Some states suffered a more dramatic loss than the average. The number of librarians employed across Florida’s 67 school districts has dropped by 27% since just 2005, according to a 2017 Herald Tribune article, leaving several districts without any librarians at all. In replacement, the Herald Tribune argues, paraprofessionals run libraries as media aides — a position that requires just a high school diploma and a certification, and which starts at $14.60 an hour. Librarians with masters’ degrees, however, are often the first to go when budgets need to be cut.

Education Week’s articles also argues that librarian’s roles are being replaced by other, less qualified job titles: As public school librarians dwindled by 20%, schools saw an 11% rise in counselors, 19% boost in instructional aides, and a full 28% more school administrators.  www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/05/21/u-s-public-schools-have-lost-20-of-their-librarians-since-2000/#3cee8ae45ce5

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.youtube.com/watch?v=msUY9p_ZPVE

The Most Damning Sentence On The War In Afghanistan You’ll Read Today

“Between 2001 and 2017, U.S. government efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan mostly failed.”

That’s the main conclusion in the latest “lessons learned” report to Congress from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). After 16 years, nearly 2,400 U.S. service members killed, and untold billions spent, the U.S. government is no closer to achieving the “peace and freedom” that President George W. Bush promised would prevail in Afghanistan when he announcedcombat operations there in October 2001.

The reason? The United States basically made the same mistakes it made in Iraq, according to SIGAR chief John F. Sopko: the government “greatly overestimated its ability to build and reform government institutions,” mainly because the U.S. programs for rebuilding Afghan civil society “were not properly tailored to the Afghan context, and successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the physical presence of coalition troops and civilians.”

When the U.S.-led coalition handed over control to the Afghan government in 2014, he added, “the services and protection provided by Afghan forces and civil servants often could not compete with a resurgent Taliban as it filled the void in newly vacated territory.” Just as ISIS filled the void left by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (and the ongoing civil war in Syria), the Taliban and other militant groups easily returned to Afghanistan. Now, nearly 17 years after the U.S. invasions, nearly half of country’s districts are contested.

Here are the critical bits from the latest SIGAR report:

• Arrogance: The U.S. government “greatly overestimated its ability to build and reform government institutions in Afghanistan as part of its stabilization strategy,” the report said. Nation-building is hard, it turns out: A 2015 RAND Corporation assessment of U.S. nation-building efforts after World War II found that post-war reconstruction efforts only actually stuck in countries like, say, Germany and Japan, that already had some relative economic wealth despite wartime devastation; by contrast, “no post-colonial program of reconstruction could turn Somalia, Haiti or Afghanistan into thriving centers of prosperity.”
• Wasteful spending: The post-invasion stabilization programs instituted by the United States “were not properly tailored to the Afghan context,” as the SIGAR report put it. As a result, the those billions in taxpayers dollars the U.S. funneled into the country “in search of quick gains often exacerbated conflicts, enabled corruption, and bolstered support for insurgents.” This is to say nothing of the perennially bad oversight that the DoD exercises over its war dollars. Sweet!
• An inadequate strategy: Because the coalition prioritized the most dangerous districts first, it continuously struggled to clear them of insurgents,” the report reads. “As a result, the coalition couldn’t make sufficient progress to convince Afghans in those or other districts that the government could protect them if they openly turned against the insurgents.” Ugh.

One last key point: In its timeline of U.S.-led stabilization efforts, the SIGAR report notes that President Barack Obama’s 50,000-troop surge in 2010 in the service of an aggressive and explicit stabilization strategy and set withdrawal timeline “had a profound and harmful impact on countless downstream decisions regarding stabilization planning, staffing, and programming.” Say what you will about President Donald Trump’s emphasis on a conditions-based approach to the Afghan War laid out in 2017; according to SIGAR’s assessment, it’s a far more practical approach to the U.S. military presence there than a time-based one, no matter how depressing that may be.

“Between 2001 and 2017, U.S. government efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan mostly failed.” That’s OK: Maybe the next 16 years will be better!

Read the whole SIGAR report below:

taskandpurpose.com/war-afghanistan-stabilization-failure/?bsft_eid=6bf83495-323c-4e87-a849-2a6f864fd212&utm_campaign=tp_daily_thursday_pm&utm_source=blueshift&utm_medium=email&utm_content=tp_daily_pm_ricks&bsft_pid=faa5f91f-5d51-47b9-a8dc-5dc28278944a&bsft_clkid=ecbc2b30-91b3-496f-87a3-d0ea589086b3&bsft_uid=7c674a6c-ae11-4ec4-84f1-aef0c34e44e5&bsft_mid=80e06a4a-e36d-45e1-bee5-d5997c90c8af&bsft_pp=1

www.facebook.com/MarineCorpsTimes/videos/10156300925372383/

.

Taliban overruns second district in Ghazni

The Afghan Taliban claimed it overran the district of Ajristan in the southeastern province of Ghazni after laying siege to the district center for several days. If confirmed, Ajristan is the second district in Ghazni to be overrun by the Taliban in the past week.

The Taliban made the claim in a statement that was released today on its official website, Voice of Jihad, which is published in five languages: Dari, Pashtu, Urdu, Arabic, and English.

According to the Taliban, a “major of enemy troops surrendered to Mujahideen and the rest were forced to flee,” and the district center and police headquarters was taken “without any firefight.” The Taliban claimed it showed the besieged Afghan troops a “message of esteemed leader” Mullah Haibatullah, which presumably is the offer of amnesty for military, police, and government officials who lay down their arms and promise not to work with the Afghan government and Coalition.

Additionally, the Taliban claimed it seized “a sizable amount of war spoils” and its fighters “are conducting [clearing] operations in the district.”  www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2018/05/taliban-overruns-second-district-in-ghazni.php?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ebb%2021.05.18&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief

Trump Drones On
How Unpiloted Aircraft Expand the War on Terror

They are like the camel’s nose, lifting a corner of the tent. Don’t be fooled, though. It won’t take long until the whole animal is sitting inside, sipping your tea and eating your sweets. In countries around the world — in the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, Africa, even the Philippines — the appearance of U.S. drones in the sky (and on the ground) is often Washington’s equivalent of the camel’s nose entering a new theater of operations in this country’s forever war against “terror.” Sometimes, however, the drones are more like the camel’s tail, arriving after less visible U.S. military forces have been in an area for a while.

Scrambling for Africa

AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s Africa Command, is building Air Base 201 in Agadez, a town in the nation of Niger. The $110 million installation, which officially opens later this year, will be able to house both C-17 transport planes and MQ-9 Reaper armed drones. It will soon become the new centerpiece in an undeclared U.S. war in West Africa. Even before the base opens, armed U.S. drones are already flying from Niger’s capital, Niamey, having received permission from the Nigerien government to do so last November.

Despite crucial reporting by Nick Turse and others, most people in this country only learned of U.S. military activities in Niger in 2017 (and had no idea that about 800 U.S. military personnel were already stationed in the country) when news broke that four U.S. soldiers had died in an October ambush there. It turns out, however, that they weren’t the only U.S soldiers involved in firefights in Niger. This March, the Pentagon acknowledged that another clash took place last December between Green Berets and a previously unknown group identified as ISIS-West Africa. For those keeping score at home on the ever-expanding enemies list in Washington’s war on terror, this is a different group from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), responsible for the October ambush. Across Africa, there have been at least eight other incidents, most of them in Somalia.

What are U.S. forces doing in Niger?  www.tomdispatch.com/post/176427/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_recognizing_the_camel%27s_nose/#more

www.facebook.com/TYTpolitics/videos/2036671603247211/

House Democrats and Republicans Unite to Expand U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

Democrats attempted to include gun control legislation in the bill that would have expanded background checks, while Republicans sought to include an amendment requiring the military buy only American-made dinner and flatware.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved its version of the $717 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019 on Thursday, with a bipartisan 351 to 66 vote that included 131 Democrats. The significant increase in the NDAA budget garnered the support of both parties, which cited concerns about the readiness of the U.S. military. Democratic amendments aimed at limiting spending on nuclear weapons and slashing the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons account were defeated.

According to Military Times, the House’s version of the bill “includes plans to boost active-duty military end strength, a 2.6 percent pay raise for troops, and sizeable boosts for military aviation upgrades and equipment maintenance, all in line with White House plans to boost American defense power.”

The budget will allow defense officials “to spend more than $39 billion on military aviation upgrades,” and includes $44 billion to replace Army equipment and parts, as well as general equipment maintenance. The measure also includes plans for 77 new F-35 fighter jets, two submarines, and modernization plans for nearly 3,400 tactical vehicles.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) says the bill “takes the next steps to rebuilding our military and reforming the Pentagon  www.mintpressnews.com/democrats-republicans-unite-ndaa/242773/

Former McCain CO sentenced at court-martial for fatal collision

Sanchez was sentenced by Navy judge advocate Capt. Charles Purnell to a letter of reprimand and a forfeiture of $2,000 per month for three months. He currently has a base pay of $9,009 per month.

www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/05/25/former-mccain-co-sentenced-at-court-martial-for-fatal-collision/

Marine battalion commander sacked during deployment

 

More than a dozen U.S. Air Force airmen were linked to a drug ring at a base that controls America’s nuclear missiles and have faced disciplinary actions – including courts martial, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

Military investigators cracked the ring in 2016, after one of the service members made the mistake of posting drug-related material to social media.

Nearly half of the airmen were convicted of using or distributing LSD — which the Pentagon has stopped screening for in drug tests, the AP reported Thursday. Citing records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the news service reports that the drug ring operated at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, just outside of Cheyenne, Wyo.

The airmen took the drugs — which also included ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana — during their off-duty time, but at least one airman acknowledged that while under the influence of LSD, he wouldn’t have been able to respond properly if he had been suddenly called to duty.

Evidence in the airmen’s cases showed that they did the drugs at state parks or at parties in Denver, where a group went longboarding on the streets after taking LSD, according to the AP. It also includes quotes from some service members who recalled having “bad trips,” and others who said their experiences had been positive.

“Minutes felt like hours, colors seemed more vibrant and clear,” Airman Kyle S. Morrison is quoted as saying. “In general, I felt more alive.”

But Air Force prosecutors had a different view, saying that taking the hallucinogenic drug can produce “paranoia, fear and panic, unwanted and overwhelming feelings, unwanted life-changing spiritual experiences, and flashbacks.”  www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/24/614013988/air-force-uncovered-lsd-use-among-airmen-guarding-nuclear-missiles

Number of homeless veterans spikes locally despite efforts to house more

Despite the city’s concerted effort to house and shelter homeless veterans, a report released last week found that their numbers had increased by 24 percent in this past year, reaching 1,312.

What happened?

It’s hard to say, but San Diego isn’t alone. In 2017, the number of homeless veterans nationwide increased for the first time in seven years, although not as dramatically as in San Diego County. The 2017 count found about 40,000 homeless veterans nationwide, up by nearly 600 people and a 1.5 percent increase from the previous year.

Overall, however, homelessness among veterans has improved significantly. Nationally, the number of homeless vets dropped 46 percent from 2010 to 2017. San Diego County had 2,200 homeless veterans in 2010, and this year’s number reflects a 40 percent decrease over the past seven years.

Locally, people in the field said this year’s increase could be linked to housing cost or people transitioning out of the military who haven’t saved money and prepared for civilian life. At least one person suspected that veterans were moving to San Diego County from other areas, outpacing efforts to help ones already here.   www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/homelessness/sd-me-homeless-veterans-20180522-story.html

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

The Fed’s $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-Reported

The media’s inscrutable brush-off of the Government Accounting Office’s recently released audit of the Federal Reserve has raised many questions about the Fed’s goings-on since the financial crisis began in 2008.

The audit of the Fed’s emergency lending programs was scarcely reported by mainstream media – albeit the results are undoubtedly newsworthy.  It is the first audit of the Fed in United States history since its beginnings in 1913.  The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for “financial assistance” during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) amended the Wall Street Reform law to audit the Fed, pushing the GAO to step in and take a look around.  Upon hearing the announcement that the first-ever audit would take place in July, the media was bowled over and nearly every broadcast network and newspaper covered the story.  However, the audit’s findings were almost completely overlooked, even with a number as high as $16 trillion staring all of us in the face.  www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/#2755361f26b0

My Financial Road Map for 2018: Nomi Prins

…The last time deregulation and protectionist businessmen filled the US presidential cabinet was in the 1920s. That led to the Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and ultimately, brought us to World War II as I explained in All the Presidents’ Bankers. 

During the past decade, the helium that inflated asset bubbles and fortified the global banking system was central bank Collusion. At some point the financial dam is destined to break – it has to, and it will. On that sober note, I leave you with this quote from The Rich Boy written in 1926 before the Great Depression by F. Scott Fitzgerald: 

“The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.”

Whoever we are and wherever we live, may we face the challenges of this year, and our times, with awareness, courage and action. www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/tag/trump

The Coming Collapse: Messianic Hedges

More than $8 of every $10 of wealth created last year went to the richest 1%.

That’s according to a new report from Oxfam International, which estimates that the bottom 50% of the world’s population saw no increase in wealth.

Oxfam says the trend shows that the global economy is skewed in favor of the rich, rewarding wealth instead of work.

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International.

The head of the advocacy group argued that the people who “make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food” are being exploited in order to enrich corporations and the super wealthy.

The study, released ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, was produced using data from Credit Suisse’s (CS) Global Wealth Databook.  money.cnn.com/2018/01/21/news/economy/davos-oxfam-inequality-wealth/index.html

A Look at the Shocking Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2018

General student loan debt facts

First, let’s start with a general picture of the student loan debt landscape. The most recent reports indicate there is:

• $1.48 trillion in total U.S. student loan debt
• 44.2 million Americans with student loan debt
• Student loan delinquency rate of 11.2% (90+ days delinquent or in default)
• Average monthly student loan payment (for borrower aged 20 to 30 years): $351
• Median monthly student loan payment (for borrower aged 20 to 30 years): $203  studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/

The Wealth-X Billionaire Census 2017

Gilbert seals $618M tax incentive package for 4 Detroit projects

 

Bill Clinton’s upcoming windfall

Bill Clinton will spend his summer rolling in dough.

Next month the former president is scheduled to crisscross the US and Canada in a promotional tour for his new novel, in some cases charging $1,500 a ticket for on-stage events, dubbed “A Conversation with President Bill Clinton.”

Clinton, already a best-selling author for his 2004 autobiography “My Life,” began raking in the cash for the fictional thriller that he wrote with mega-bestselling novelist James Patterson, before the book was finished. He and his co-author reportedly signed a seven-figure deal with Showtime last year for the rights to turn “The President is Missing” into a TV series.

Frenzied bidding for the television rights for the book, which is scheduled to go on sale June 4, began at $5 million last fall among some of the biggest players in Hollywood, including Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, according to published reports.  nypost.com/2018/05/19/bill-clinton-is-about-to-make-a-lot-of-money/

Hungarian Billionaire Soros drops $1.5 million into PAC supporting DA candidate Jones-Wright (more interference than Russkies?)

Rumor became fact Monday when campaign finance records filed late Friday showed Soros contributing $1.5 million to the California Justice & Public Safety committee, which is supporting Jones-Wright.

The contribution may be the largest individual money drop ever in a county campaign, excluding candidates who self-financed. It is the largest made in a race for the District Attorney’s Office, which has had only three competitive races in nearly a quarter century — in 1994, 2002 and 2014.

It’s unclear if all of the money will be spent for Jones-Wright. Statewide campaign finance reports show Soros and the same PAC have supported district attorney candidates in Sacramento County and Contra Costa County this year.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sd-me-soros-contribution-20180507-story.html

Supreme Court Decision Delivers Blow To Workers’ Rights

In a case involving the rights of tens of millions of private sector employees, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, delivered a major blow to workers, ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations. www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaV4sazWto

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeN9IxxFW6Q

This is what the war criminals Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power did to Benghazi 

An EPA Guard Just Literally Shoved a Reporter Out of the Building

Scott Pruitt convened an EPA national drinking water summit in response to criticism that the EPA and White House had intervened to block a report that disclosed the harmful effects of certain contaminants in drinking water. Now, the summit has become a center of a new controversy. The Associated Press, CNN, and E&E News were barred from covering Pruitt’s speech on Tuesday.

The summit was intended to solicit feedback on a class of chemicals, perfluorinated compounds, PFAS, that can be found in nonstick coatings and firefighting foam. The study, which has still not yet been released by the Trump administration, finds the chemicals can cause health problems and developmental defects at levels far below what the EPA officially considers to be safe.

When AP reporter Ellen Knickmeyer showed up at the EPA building to report on the day’s events, guards barred her “from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building.” When she asked “to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.”  www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/05/an-epa-guard-just-literally-shoved-a-reporter-out-of-the-building/

US lawmakers call Pentagon to probe torture allegations in Yemen

House of Representatives votes to require defence secretary to determine whether US troops were involved in torture. (again)

The measure, which was adopted on Thursday unanimously on the floor by a voice vote, calls on Pentagon chief Jim to Mattis to look into whether US military personnel or any of the country’s allies were involved in torturing detainees…

The House vote came a few days after veteran CIA officer Gina Haspel was sworn in as the agency’s first female director on Monday.

Haspel was confirmed by the Senate last week in a 54-45 vote, despite vigorous opposition over her role in setting up alleged “black sites” used to detain and torture individuals accused of being “terrorists”.  www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/lawmakers-call-pentagon-probe-torture-allegations-yemen-180526152134868.html

 

Orlando Police scramble to defend Amazon facial recognition pilot

“We would never use this technology to track random citizens, immigrants, activists, or people of color,” Mina told the crowd. “The pilot program is just us testing this technology out to see if it even works.” Facial recognition algorithms have struggled with racial bias across the industry; no relevant data is available on bias in Amazon’s system specifically.

When the news first broke, Mina had claimed the pilot was limited to use on cameras inside police headquarters, but today, he revised that to include three cameras facing public areas in downtown Orlando. Still, the only faces uploaded for search were seven OPD officers, all of whom had volunteered.

Mina defended the possibilities of facial recognition more broadly, pointing to a case earlier this year in which an Orlando man was arrested for kidnapping threats against the singer Lana Del Rey.   www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17391632/amazon-facial-recognition-orlando-police-rekognition

75-Year-Old Mayor Is Attacked in Greece, and Nationalists Rejoice

youtu.be/nAVAP3zbBf0

THESSALONIKI, Greece — The 75-year-old mayor of Greece’s second-largest city was brutally assaulted by a far-right mob at a public gathering over the weekend, an attack that brought gleeful expressions of support from nationalist groups and heightened concerns about a rise in hate crime in the country.

The mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, who is known for his liberalism and outspoken views against far-right violence and racism, was attacked Saturday afternoon in the northern city of Thessaloniki by about a dozen people during a ceremony commemorating the World War I genocide of Pontic Greeks by Turkish forces.  www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/world/europe/greece-mayor-thessaloniki-attack.html

Solidarity for Never

Weingarten is a millionaire. Gacria made more than $500,000 in 2016. Democrats brought Race to the Top, Duncan being cheered by NEA “leaders” at the RA, Rahm Emanuel now destroying Chicago schools. Obama, Hillary, et al, started seven wars, causing the deaths of perhaps a million people and throwing more than a million into desperate homelessness. Rank and file wildcats won some victories–all of those wildcats throttled by Weingarten, Garcia, and others. Now, they want to end the wildcats, which make them irrelevant, and herd us into voting booths, pretending that the likes of Pelosi will save us. They won’t.

Exclusive: Ahead of a Key Supreme Court Decision, America’s Largest Teachers Union Slashes Budget by $50 Million, Projects That 300,000 Members May Leave

The nation’s largest teachers union plans to reduce its budget by $50 million in anticipation of an unfavorable verdict in Janus v. AFSCME, a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in February that challenges the right of government unions to charge non-members for representing them.

When delegates to the National Education Association meet in Minneapolis in July, union leaders will introduce a two-year budget that cuts expenditures by $50 million, an estimated 13 percent reduction from this year.

NEA’s budget committee forecasts a two-year loss of 307,000 members if, as expected later in the spring, the Supreme Court eliminates agency fees — mandatory costs to workers who don’t become union members but are covered by union agreements. Those near-term losses will almost entirely occur in the 22 states where fees are still charged, erasing post-recession membership gains in places like California, New Jersey, and New York.

As of the end of April, NEA’s total membership stood at 3,018,492 active education employees and retirees. Almost all of its affiliates with significant membership growth in the past year were states with agency fees.

Though the proposed budget cuts will not take effect until September, NEA has already begun to reduce staff, eliminating 41 staff positions through buyouts, early retirements, and attrition. NEA employs more than 500 people at its Washington, D.C., headquarters; the average salary is $123,613 plus benefits.

Affiliates in agency-fee states appear to be following suit. The Massachusetts Teachers Association recently approved a budget that projects a 10 percent membership loss in the 2018–19 school year, for example.

NEA’s leaders will also propose a change to who counts as a member. A new category called “community ally” would be open to “any person who demonstrates support in advancing the cause of public education, who advocates for the mission, vision, and core values of the Association, and who is not eligible for any other membership category.”  www.the74million.org/article/exclusive-largest-union-to-slash-budget-by-50-million-in-advance-of-supreme-court-decision-300000-members-will-leave-within-2-years-leaders-predict/?utm_source=The+74+Million+Newsletter&utm_campaign=547cbc1d04-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_077b986842-547cbc1d04-176109065

4th August 1914: The Great Betrayal and Collapse of the Second International

…Everyone expected the SPD to declare is opposition, in line with its principles. But to everyone’s shock and dismay, the German Party leadership declared that Germany’s declaration of war as a “defensive war” against Tsarist aggression. This betrayal meant supporting the imperialist war by voting in the Reichstag for the Kaiser’s war budget.

On the fourth of August 1914, the chairman of the Party read out their declaration in the German Reichstag:

“We are faced now with the iron fact of war. We are threatened with the horrors of hostile invasions. We do not decide today for or against war; we have merely to decide on the necessary means for the defence of the country. Much, if not everything, is at stake for our people and their freedom, in view of the possibility of a victory of Russian despotism, which soiled itself with the blood of the best of its own people.  www.marxist.com/4th-august-1914-the-great-betrayal-and-collapse-of-the-second-international.htm

Idiot UAW President Dennis Williams praises Trump’s tariff approach

President Donald Trump won praise from UAW President Dennis Williams, who said Thursday that American workers want current trade policy changed and like the idea of new tariffs on foreign cars.

“I welcome the fact that they’re investigating this and considering,” Williams told a media roundtable at union headquarters in Detroit. “The American workers have been handed a short stick for a long time.”

Williams, one of the country’s top leaders in organized labor, said Trump is echoing consistent themes that helped him win the presidential election with the support of blue-collar workers.

“When he is working in the best interest of working men and women in this country on trade and things that really impact the working class, then we will support him,” said Williams, who represents 430,000 dues-paying union members.

The tariff review process is long and complicated — and necessary, he said.  www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/05/24/uaw-president-trump-tariffs/640518002/

Spy versus Spy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=baYEMiTnrrs

The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election

AN EXTREMELY STRANGE EPISODE that has engulfed official Washington over the last two weeks came to a truly bizarre conclusion on Friday night. And it revolves around a long-time, highly sketchy CIA operative, Stefan Halper.

Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election, in which the Reagan campaign – using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter’s foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering.

Over the past several weeks, House Republicans have been claiming that the FBI during the 2016 election used an operative to spy on the Trump campaign, and they triggered outrage within the FBI by trying to learn his identity. The controversy escalated when President Trump joined the fray on Friday morning. “Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president,” Trump tweeted, adding: “It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a “hot” Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!”

In response, the DOJ and the FBI’s various media spokespeople did not deny the core accusation, but quibbled with the language (the FBI used an “informant,” not a “spy”), and then began using increasingly strident language to warn that exposing his name would jeopardize his life and those of others, and also put American national security at grave risk. On May 8, the Washington Post described the informant as “a top-secret intelligence source” and cited DOJ officials as arguing that disclosure of his name “could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI.”

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, who spent much of last week working to ensure confirmation of Trump’s choice to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, actually threatened his own colleaguesin Congress with criminal prosecution if they tried to obtain the identity of the informant. “Anyone who is entrusted with our nation’s highest secrets should act with the gravity and seriousness of purpose that knowledge deserves,” Warner said.

But now, as a result of some very odd choices by the nation’s largest media outlets, everyone knows the name of the FBI’s informant: Stefan Halper. And Halper’s history is quite troubling, particularly his central role in the scandal in the 1980 election. Equally troubling are the DOJ and FBI’s highly inflammatory and, at best, misleading claims that they made to try to prevent Halper’s identity from being reported.

To begin with, it’s obviously notable that the person the FBI used to monitor the Trump campaign is the same person who worked as a CIA operative running that 1980 Presidential election spying campaign.  theintercept.com/2018/05/19/the-fbi-informant-who-monitored-the-trump-campaign-stefan-halper-oversaw-a-cia-spying-operation-in-the-1980-presidential-election/

RIP Luis Posada Carriles: Veteran Terrorist, Cocaine Trafficker, CIA Agent

…Posada would end up playing a leading role in planning the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. On April 20 1961, five merchant ships carrying 1,400 US-trained and armed Cuban exiles arrived at an inlet on the southern coast of Cuba, aiming to stage a counter-revolution. It was not to be — two of the ships were quickly sunk, including the vessel carrying most of the supplies. Two CIA planes attempting to provide air-cover were also shot down. Within 72 hours all invaders had been killed, wounded or surrendered.

After the failure, Posada was trained by US intelligence in sabotage and the use of explosives, and worked closely with the CIA in Miami, being a major participant in the infamous Operation 40. The group was an unofficial ‘hit squad’, carrying out assassinations and terror attacks across the mainland US, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. He would remain an official CIA employee until 1967.

In 1968, he relocated to Venezuela, becoming a naturalized citizen. CIA files indicate his troublemaking in the hemisphere continued unabated, with involvement in bombing campaigns, overthrows of leaders troublesome to US financial interests in the region, and much more.

Aviation Atrocity

On October 6 1976, Air Cubana Flight 455 on its way from Barbados to Jamaica was bombed shortly after takeoff, killing all 73 people on board, including the Cuban national fencing team — many of whom were mere teenagers.

Police in Trinidad arrested two Venezuelans — Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo — both of whom were connected with Posada, and worked for his ICI security agency. The pair admitted planting two bombs on the plane, in a plot mapped out by Posada and his ellow Cuban exile militant Orlando Bosch.

Documents declassified in 2006 indicate the CIA was well aware of the attack in advance, and Posada’s leading role in its planning and execution.

Posada was subsequently arrested too — in his possession was a map of Washington DC, which documented the daily route to work of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Foreign Minister and refugee from the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who’d been assassinated in a car bomb attack September 21 1976…

Posada resurfaced in the US in 2005 — within weeks, he was arrested due to international pressure on the Bush administration to hold him to the same standard as other accused terrorists. However, officials refused to turn him over to Venezuela or Cuba, or try him on terrorism charges — he did however end up in court on the comparatively trifling charge of lying to immigration officials. He was acquitted of all charges in 2011, and lived out his days in Miami, financially supported by the city’s large Cuban exile population.  sputniknews.com/military/201805251064773136-posada-cia-castro-terrorism/

The Magical Mystery Tour

 

.

www.facebook.com/BigThinkScience/videos/1434061180039335/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Boots makes the big time

…he honed a spiel consisting of “various levels.” Level 1 was 23 words long, and on a recent afternoon, in a coffee shop in Riley’s hometown, Oakland, Calif., he recited it to me more or less exactly as he recited it over the years to potential actors, producers, investors and advice-givers:

“It’s an absurdist dark comedy with magical realism and science fiction, inspired by the world of telemarketing. It’s called ‘Sorry to Bother You.’ ”

Riley interrupted himself: “So it’s all those things, then — telemarketing. People usually laugh right there. ‘O.K., tell me more. …’ ”

At which point he would take them to Level 2:

“Cassius Green is a black telemarketer with self-esteem issues and existential angst who discovers a magical way to make his voice sound like it’s overdubbed by a white actor.”

Riley let that premise sink in, then moved to Level 3:

“This catapults him up the ladder of telemarketing success, to the upper echelon of telemarketers, who sell weapons of mass destruction and slave labor via cold calling. In order to do this, he has to betray his friends who are organizing a telemarketers’ union.”

Who, at this point, could resist knowing more? And who, having heard the rest — the coke-snorting billionaire bad guy, the climactic battle, the many dystopian flights of fancy — could resist helping Riley get the thing up on screen? The answer was: plenty of people. “I wasn’t getting many responses,” he recalls.  www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/magazine/how-boots-riley-infiltrated-hollywood.html

Ahistorical American Toadies fete royal wedding in pubs, hotels and homes

From pubgoers in pajamas to merrymakers in finery at a posh hotel, Americans cheered and teared up Saturday as they watched Meghan Markle marry Prince Harry in a royal wedding with trans-Atlantic resonance.

People gathered at wedding watch parties — some before dawn — at a Hollywood pub and New York’s swanky Plaza hotel, in oceanfront towns in Florida and spots in the Rocky Mountains, to see an American of mixed race heritage become part of Britain’s royal family.

If the U.K. and the U.S. have long enjoyed a “special relationship,” this gave it a whole new meaning.

“It was a real-life fairy tale,” said Erin Massa, 34, who watched at a Minneapolis pub. “If someone my age from America can suddenly become a princess, essentially, anything really is possible.”

About 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away at a home in Burlington, New Jersey, Paula Jackson gasped when Markle emerged from the Rolls-Royce that brought her to St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, the British royals’ longtime home.

“I’m just so happy for her,” said Jackson, dressed in a jeweled blazer and tiara. “She will be an example for our young, African-American women.”    apnews.com/1787f4a7142d476c92a21e02bf1c716b

We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling. It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every quality, good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is formed on such an abject levelling system?—It has no fixed character. To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of non-age over wisdom and experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.  oll.libertyfund.org/quote/312

Dad Captures The Horror Of Helping Out On A School Trip With Hilarious Live Tweets

‘This last batch of puking has set off some sort of chain reaction and more children are now puking and lots more crying.’

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/dad-live-tweets-school-trip_uk_5b03cfabe4b07309e05ba850?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=main_fb

 

www.facebook.com/ijrredpresents/videos/185760428790681/

As Detroit Recolonizes, Creepiness abounds, like this Mickey Mouse statue

The 17-foot-tall bronze statue went up in front of One Campus Martius on Friday. Paid for by unofficial downtown curator-at-large Dan Gilbert and his wife Jennifer, “Waiting” is said to be “synonymous” with Detroit’s “momentum.”  www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/05/21/detroits-new-creepy-ass-mickey-mouse-statue-draws-mixed-reactions

www.facebook.com/alucidnation/videos/1676821885921428/

So Long

We memorialize this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPJgeg6hpA