We Say Fight Back!

Enduring Voices, the Story of Detroit’s Fifth Estate Underground paper is introduced here on video:

www.joelsilvers.com/film-and-video/

Microsoft Employees Question C.E.O. Over Company’s Contract With ICE

Microsoft employees questioned the company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, on Thursday, presenting him with a petition signed by more than 300,000 people that called on the software maker to cancel its contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to two people who attended the event.

Mr. Nadella was attending an annual gathering with interns at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., when the employees used the question-and-answer session to ask about the company’s government contracts, said the people, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. One employee presented Mr. Nadella with a USB stick that contained the petition, along with the signatures, including 500 from Microsoft employees, they said.

“We demand Microsoft stop enabling ICE’s mission to punish families seeking safety,” read the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The petition also called for all tech companies that support the operations of ICE and the Customs and Border Protection agency to “cancel their contracts.”  www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/technology/microsoft-ice-immigration.html

‘I’ve been a hostage for nine years’: Fired teacher wins battle with D.C. schools

For nine years, Jeff Canady lived in a cash-strapped limbo. The D.C. Public Schools teacher was fired in 2009 after 18 years in city classrooms, the school system deeming him ineffective.

Canady, 53, contested his dismissal, arguing that he was wrongly fired and that the city was punishing him for being a union activist and for publicly criticizing the school system.

For nearly a decade, Canady, jobless and penniless, waited for a decision in his case — until now.

Earlier this month, an arbitrator ruled in favor of the fired teacher, a decision that could entitle him to hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and the opportunity to be a District teacher again. The school system can appeal the ruling, which was made by an arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association, a nonprofit organization that settles disputes outside of court.

“I’ve been a hostage for nine years,” Canady said. “And the District wants to keep it that way.”

School system spokesman Shayne Wells said DCPS “just received the arbitrator’s decision and is in the process of reviewing it.”

Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, said Canady isn’t the only one fighting to get his job back. Other educators who were fired years ago and allege unjust dismissals are waiting for their cases to be settled with the school system.

Canady was one of nearly 1,000 educators fired during the 3½ -year tenure of Michelle Rhee — the controversial former D.C. schools chancellor who clashed with the union and instituted a teacher evaluation system that dictated teachers’ job security and ­bonuses. About 200 of those teachers lost their jobs because of poor performance, 266 were laid off amid a 2009 budget squeeze and the rest failed to complete new-employee probation or did not have licensing required under the federal No Child Left Behind law.  www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/ive-been-a-hostage-for-nine-years-fired-teachers-wins-battle-with-dc-schools/2018/07/22/ac352722-8c27-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.c90935c536d2

Rhode Island Union Members Announce: The Strike is On.

www.facebook.com/UNAPRI/videos/1971424446221949/?t=23

In the video, she refuses to hand over her phone, to stop filming or to take her seat on the flight to Turkey, despite repeated requests, calmly explaining she will follow the rules if the man is removed. She won!

www.independent.ie/world-news/and-finally/swedish-student-stops-mans-deportation-with-protest-on-plane-37154362.html

Sorry, Bernie, We Need Radical Change

by PAUL STREET (Rouge Keynoter)

One of the more darkly amusing narratives in current establishment Democratic Party positioning for the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 presidential contest is the claim that the Bernie Sanders tendency represents a radical “socialist” threat that will tip the races to the Republicans and Trump.

Never mind that the progressive and mildly social-democratic policies Sanders and his cadre of Democrats back – Medicare for All, progressive taxation, free college tuition, a significant increase n the federal minimum wage, the re-legalization of union organizing – have longstanding majority support from the U.S. populace.

Never mind that it precisely the centrist neoliberal nothingness of the dollar-drenched dumpster- fire that is the current corporate Democratic Party (aptly described by Sheldon Wolin as “the Inauthentic Opposition” in early 2008) that has delivered state and federal government over to the widely hated, radically regressive and arch-reactionary (racist, sexist, white-nationalist, and eco-fascist) Republicans.

Never mind that Sanders goes out of his way again and again to proclaim that the changes he advances “are NOT radical ideas” but are instead moderate reforms.

And never mind that Bernie continues to function as an electoralist get-out-the-major party-vote “sheep dog” for the aforementioned dumpster-fire and inauthentic opposition – the dismal demobilizing Dems.

“Don’t Be Rude to White Nationalists, Do What Alexandria Did”

A few weeks ago, Sanders said he did not support being rude to “people” when he was asked about incidents in which Trump administration officials were publicly harassed because of their vicious policy of kidnapping migrant children at the southern U.S. border.  www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/sorry-bernie-we-need-radical-change/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

www.facebook.com/wesh2news/videos/10156576793003748/?t=41

Opportunist Anti-Test Movement that refused to address capital and empire, Slows to a Crawl Having taught nothing significant …

Just a few short years ago, there were real questions about whether Congress would ditch annual, standardized assessments as part of a makeover of the nation’s main K-12 education law. At the same time, parents were increasingly choosing to opt their children out of standardized tests.

But the Every Student Succeeds Act ultimately kept the tests in place. And since then, at least some of the steam has gone out of the opt-out movement in states such as New Jersey and New York, considered hotbeds of anti-testing fervor.

Some of the biggest skeptics of annual, standardized testing have taken a break from what was a big push to reduce the number of federally required tests. And they don’t expect there will be another opportunity to roll back federal testing mandates for quite awhile.

“Nobody is fighting on it now,” said Monty Neill, the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, who has spent decades engaged in the national fight to pare back assessments and has recently announced his retirement. “It’s too early for the next round. On the consequences of the tests, the lengths of the tests, the nature of the tests, [the debate’s] continuing. It’s not on any state table now because there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Neill is grateful that some states took opportunities in ESSA to broaden accountability beyond test scores and shift teacher evaluation away from test results, although most state ESSA plans don’t go as far as he’d like.

On the other side of the coin, organizations that see annual standardized testing as a key equity principle are also taking note of a break in the anti-test action.

“I think it is much quieter, whether that’s because ESSA plans [are mostly approved] and [the] federal law is not going to be opened up for awhile,” said Patricia Levesque, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a think tank started by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But, she said, she doesn’t expect that the debate is dead forever. “A lot of things are cyclical. That’s just the way that policy is.”

ESSA, like its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act, requires states to test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. But the new law says states must use other factors—such as chronic absenteeism—in identifying schools for extra support. And it gives states wide latitude to figure out how to intervene in struggling schools and evaluate teachers.

NCLB required states to test all their students. Schools that assessed fewer than 95 percent of their students were considered automatic failures.

Under ESSA, states must somehow account for low test participation, but just how to do that is up to them. And states can continue to have laws affirming parents’ right to opt their students out of tests, as Oregon does. ESSA also requires states to mark non-test-takers as not proficient.  www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/07/23/anti-test-movement-slows-to-a-crawl.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58556396&U=1666178

Detroit schools’ outdated curriculum sets students up to fail, audit finds

The auditors’ findings were unsettling.

Middle schoolers in Detroit’s main school district have been taking pre-algebra classes that have “virtually no relationship” to the state’s mathematics standards.

Students in kindergarten through third grade have been taught with an English curriculum so packed with unnecessary lessons that they don’t have time to get a firm grasp of foundational reading skills.

That “sets students up for a school career of frustration with anything that requires reading,” auditors found.

And an entire district of more than 50,000 students has been using textbooks that are so old and out of date that it’s likely that most students, for years, have been taking the state’s annual high-stakes exam without having seen much of the material they’re being tested on.

The test results can nonetheless be used to make potentially devastating decisions, like whether schools should be forced to close.

In short, the auditors who came to Detroit last fall to review the district’s curriculum found that students here have been set up to fail.

“It’s an injustice to the children of Detroit,” said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

But while this might sound like just another example of dysfunction in a long-troubled district, curriculum experts say that Detroit is among hundreds — possibly thousands — of districts across the country that are using textbooks and educational materials that are not aligned to state standards.  www.bridgemi.com/detroit-journalism-cooperative/detroit-schools-outdated-curriculum-sets-students-fail-audit-finds

DeVos Proposes to Curtail Debt Relief for Defrauded Students

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed on Wednesday to curtail Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, requiring that student borrowers show they have fallen into hopeless financial straits or prove that their colleges knowingly deceived them.

The DeVos proposal, set to go in force a year from now, would replace Obama-era policies that sought to ease access to loan forgiveness for students who were left saddled with debt after two for-profit college chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, imploded in 2015 and 2016. The schools were found to have misled their students with false advertisements and misleading claims for years.

Afterward, the Obama administration forgave hundreds of millions of dollars in student loans and began rewriting regulations to crack down on predatory institutions and bolster borrowers’ ability to seek debt relief from the federal government. But higher education institutions, including historically black colleges and universities and for-profit educators, maintained the new rules were far too broad and subjected them to frivolous claims that carried significant financial risks.

In June 2017, just one month before the Obama rules were to take effect, Ms. DeVos announced that she would block and rewrite them.

Now the Trump administration is proposing new rules that would require borrowers to prove that they have fallen into deep financial distress to file a claim for debt relief, or to prove that the higher education institutions they attended had intentionally misled them. The department would also require that relief applicants divulge personal information that could have impacted their job prospects beyond their college experiences, including drug test results, health concerns and performance evaluations.

The proposal would establish a federal standard for what constitutes “misrepresentation” on the part of institutions, requiring that claims show “reckless disregard” through false or deceptive claims. It would also impose penalties on institutions that show signs of poor financial health, such as a high number of loan defaults or court judgments.  www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/us/politics/betsy-devos-debt-relief-for-profit-colleges.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Success Academy High School Sees Wave of Teacher Departures

Some teachers who left complained of harsh policies like forcing students to repeat a grade and a lack of respect for staff viewpoints

www.wsj.com/articles/success-academy-high-school-sees-wave-of-teacher-departures-1532473339

 

Ref Rodriguez resigns: 3 things to know about the Los Angeles Unified school board member’s departure

Early Monday, the embattled school board member pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy and four misdemeanor counts for making campaign contributions in another person’s name. As part of a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to immediately resign from office. Rodriguez won’t serve any jail time but instead will serve three years’ probation and work 60 days of community service.

The departure leaves a hole on the seven-member school board that remaining board members will have to decide how to fill. Yet to be determined is who, if anyone, they will appoint to represent Rodriguez’s District 5 until voters can select the next permanent board member.

Rodriguez’s departure puts into question the power dynamics of the board that oversees the nation’s second-largest school district. In 2017, charter school-backed board members won a majority on the board in the most expensive school board race in the nation’s history.  Here are three things to know about how we got here — and what happens next:  laschoolreport.com/ref-rodriguez-resigns-3-things-to-know-about-the-los-angeles-unified-school-board-members-departure/

Sexual Abuse Victim Says School Board Knew Miami Teacher Had History of “Grooming” Students

 

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

www.facebook.com/wcgeary/videos/10211234231911651/?t=11

Accused of Rape and Torture, Exiled Afghan Vice President Returns (US approves)

After more than a year in exile, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum returned to his native Afghanistan on Sunday facing criminal charges of rape and kidnapping, as well as accusations of brutality, human rights abuses and killing his first wife.

General Dostum also remains the country’s first vice president.

Waiting to greet him on Sunday at Kabul’s international airport was a government delegation and, apparently, a suicide bomber.

An array of top officials met his plane and, despite the criminal charges against him, they gave him safe passage — not to jail, but to his office and home, in a deal that Afghan officials have said was negotiated by President Ashraf Ghani in the wake of widespread protests and unrest among his fellow Uzbeks.

Moments after he left the airport, however, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the traffic circle at the exit, killing 20 people, including nine members of a security detail assigned to General Dostum, and wounding 90 others, according to police and health officials.,,

General Dostum’s return from exile is the latest episode in the tumultuous career of the Uzbek leader, an illiterate former Communist enforcer turned warlord who at one time or another was allied with every side in Afghanistan’s long war — including the Taliban — and turned on most of them.

He is accused of war crimes, including allowing his men to suffocate thousands of Taliban prisoners in locked truck containers.

Long a protégé of the Central Intelligence Agency, which mentored and armed him, General Dostum has proved a powerful political player in Afghan elections in recent years, able to deliver his small but united Uzbek minority as a four-million-strong bloc, giving him outsize influence. Mr. Ghani took him on as his running mate in 2014, despite previously calling him a “known killer.”  www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/world/asia/afghanistan-general-abdul-rashid-dostum-rape.html

Taliban overruns 2 districts in eastern Afghanistan

 

Above, the last British Soldier, Afghan War, 1842

The Taliban overran the district centers of Omna and Gayan in the eastern province of Paktika today after several days of heavy fighting. The Taliban takeover of the two districts occurred as US generals attempted to put a positive spin on the Afghan military’s capabilities.

“After almost two days of heavy fighting, Taliban captured both district centres,” a member of Paktika’s provincial council told Reuters. At least three Afghan security personnel were killed, the council member said.

The Taliban confirmed that it took control of Gayan. In a statement released on its official website, Voice of Jihad, the Taliban said that it prevented security forces from reaching the beleaguered district center for five days and Afghan personnel fled due to the lack of reinforcements.

“With escape of enemy the said district completely came under the control of Mujahideen as all other areas of the district were already overtaken by Mujahideen,” the Taliban claimed.

Both Omna and Gayan districts have been highly contested over the past year. Omna changed hands between the Taliban and the Afghan government multiple times in 2017. The Taliban overran Gayan in Sept. 2017 but lost control of the district center shortly thereafter. The Taliban controlled most of the area outside of both district centers.

Paktika province remains highly contested. Of the 19 districts, three are controlled by the Taliban, four by the Afghan government, and the remaining 12 are contested, according to an ongoing study by FDD’s Long War Journal.

The loss of Gayan and Omna occurred just four days after US Army Major General Andrew Poppas, Resolute Support’s deputy chief of staff for operations, touted the prowess of the Afghan military since the government’s unilateral ceasefire ended more than three weeks ago. After citing an Afghan-supplied (and likely highly inflated) body count of 1,700 insurgents killed and wounded during a three week period, Poppas said the Afghan military is taking the fight to the Taliban. [See LWJ report, NATO command touts body count of ‘Taliban irreconcilables’.]  www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2018/07/taliban-overruns-2-districts-in-eastern-afghanistan.php?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ebb%2026.07.18&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief

The Afghan Army Will Never Defeat the Taliban. It has no grand strategy, like the US, and cannot say: Hey let us do equality, and by the way, people make gods, gods don’t make people. Stop it.

www.facebook.com/MarineCorpsTimes/videos/10156460493417383/?t=9

US defense policy bill clears House, rockets to Senate

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TMq3m_Oli4

Kabul: A US soldier was killed and two others wounded in an “apparent insider attack” in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, NATO said, the first such killing in nearly a year.

The so-called “green-on-blue” attack is the latest in a series of incidents in which Afghan forces have turned their weapons on international troops with whom they are working.

“The wounded service members, who are in stable condition, are currently being treated,” NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan said in a statement.

“The incident is under investigation.”

NATO did not release the identity of the American soldier killed or provide further details about where the incident took place.  www.news18.com/news/world/us-soldier-killed-in-green-on-blue-insider-attack-at-afghanistan-airport-1804751.html

Newest U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan Mirrors Past Plans for Retreat (14,000 US troops and Uncounted Mercs remain in Afghanistan)

The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country.

The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers.

The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad.

The retreat to the cities is a searing acknowledgment that the American-installed government in Afghanistan remains unable to lead and protect the country’s sprawling rural population. Over the years, as waves of American and NATO troops have come and left in repeated cycles, the government has slowly retrenched and ceded chunks of territory to the Taliban, cleaving Afghanistan into disparate parts and ensuring a conflict with no end in sight.

When he announced his new war strategy last year, Mr. Trump declared that Taliban and Islamic State insurgents in Afghanistan “need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might and American arms.”

After the declared end of combat operations in 2014, most American troops withdrew to major population areas in the country, leaving Afghan forces to defend remote outposts. Many of those bases fell in the following months.

During a news conference last month in Brussels, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, said remote outposts were being overrun by the Taliban, which was seizing local forces’ vehicles and equipment.

“There is a tension there between what is the best tactic militarily and what are the needs of the society,” General Nicholson said.

The strategy depends on the Afghan government’s willingness to pull back its own forces. A Defense Department official said some Afghan commanders have resisted the American effort to do so, fearing local populations would feel betrayed.  www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/world/asia/trump-afghanistan-strategy-retreat.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Even the White Helmets have been rescued from Syria – so are we about to see the final battle of the war? (Fisk)

Will it be the Last Battle? For three years, Idlib has been the dumping ground for all of Syria’s retreating Islamist militias, the final redoubt of every combatant who has chosen to fight on, rather than surrender to the Syrian army and the Russian air force – and to Hezbollah and, to a far smaller degree, the Iranians.

Brigadier general Suheil al-Hassan, the “Tiger” of Syrian military legend and myth – who can quote the poet Mutanabi by heart but prefers to be compared to Erwin Rommel rather than Bernard Montgomery – will surely take his “Tiger Forces” with him for the final reckoning between the Damascus regime and the Salafist-inspired and western-armed Islamists who dared to try, and very definitely failed, to destroy Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Thanks to Donald Trump, it’s all over for the “rebels” of Syria because they have been betrayed by the Americans – surely and finally by Trump himself in those secret discussions with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, perhaps the most important of the “unknowns” of that translators-only chat – as they have by the Gulf Arabs.

Three weeks earlier, the Americans had told the rebels of southwestern Syria below the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that they were on their own, and could expect no more military assistance. Even the White Helmets, the first-responder heroes or propagandists of the rebel war (take your pick, but be sure they will soon be described as “controversial”) have been rescued with their families from the rebel lines by the Israelis and dispatched to safety in Jordan.

The Israelis are a bit miffed that they weren’t thanked by the White Helmets’ civil defence units for their humanitarian assistance – but what do they expect when they spent their time attacking Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian forces during the war, supplying medical aid to the Nusrah Islamist fighters who came to their lines and never – ever – bombed Isis? Do the White Helmets want to be associated with Israel right now?

But the Israelis got what they really wanted: a Russian promise that the Iranians will stay far away from the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan plateau. It’s all a bit odd, since there are precious few Iranian troops in Syria – and you can forget the humbug from the Washington “experts” – but it fits in with Benjamin Netanyahu’s morbid and theatrical conviction that Iran is “a noose of terror” round Israel’s neck. In any event, Putin knows a thing or two about the Syrian war: bombs talk, but so does cash.

For why else has Putin just announced a $50bn (£38bn) dollar Russian investment in Iran’s oil and gas industry? Isn’t this simply a downpayment for Iran’s past investment in Syria’s war? A “thank you but you can go now” gift from Moscow in return for a, no doubt, triumphal march-past in Tehran of Iran’s returning “victorious” forces, back from their Islamic revolutionary duties in Syria?

After meeting Putin in the Kremlin less than two weeks ago, Ali Akbar Velayati, “Supreme Leader” Khamenei’s senior adviser on foreign affairs, agreed that their talks “focused on Russian-Iranian cooperation … as well as the situation in the region, including developments in Syria”. And there you have it. Iran’s economy is propped up, but it’s got its Syrian marching orders from Putin.

You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling: Marriage and family hampered by military life, survey results say (Jody lives)

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

U.S. Businesses Are Bullish Amid Worldwide Instability

Potential perils are in plain sight: An intense and unpredictable tariff battle is alarming businesses across the country. The annual federal deficit is heading toward $1 trillion. Credit card debt is soaring. And the synchronous wave that lifted every world economy at the year’s start has dissipated.

So what?

Such risks have done little to puncture the exuberant optimism that is encouraging American businesses to ramp up hiring and consider new investment.

The confidence is rooted only partly in hard-nosed data, like the rapid pace of growth expected for the second quarter and record low jobless rates. It is also a sign of harder-to-measure sentiment. “Animal spirits are high,” said Tim Ryan, United States chairman of the global accounting and consulting firm PwC, referring to the gut feelings and impulses that can drive economies to elation or despair.

Business leaders who complained that they sometimes felt vilified as engineers of inequality — or greedy exploiters — now say they are pleased to be viewed as part of the solution, creating jobs and wealth. “They feel good about themselves, like they are the good guys,” Mr. Ryan said, describing comments from hundreds of chief executives to his firm over the past quarter. “They are sitting up a little straighter in the chair.”

 

www.facebook.com/TheOther98/videos/2085845251426442/

Why The Facebook, Netflix Stock Collapse Could Signal A Big Market Change

Some of the best performing stocks of recent times have been breaking down, a hint that the market may be gearing up for a rotation. Facebook (FB), Netflix (NFLX), Twitter (TWTR) and Intel (INTC) have all flashed signs their bullish outperformance may be over. There are fears that their disappointing results could mean the huge revenue and profit growth of recent times may not be sustainable.

The negative action from these big-cap leaders could herald a broad stock market retreat, or simply a rotation into different sectors. Either way, investors should pay close attention.

Facebook Stock

Facebook stock crashed 19% on the stock market Thursday, plunging below its 50-day and 200-day moving averages as well as a recent buy point in massive volume, triggering multiple sell signals. It also suffered the biggest ever single-day decline in market cap after losing $100 billion in value. Facebook earnings topped. But revenue and some user metrics slightly missed views, while the social media giant warned of decelerating growth going forward.  www.investors.com/research/facebook-stock-netflix-stock-market-signal/

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

Israel Picks Identity Over Democracy. More Nations May Follow.

Breaking News: Judge Lets Secret Service Hide White House Visitor Logs

Washington, D.C., July 27, 2018 – Federal Judge Katherine Failla agreed with government lawyers and is allowing the Secret Service to hide the White House visitor logs in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive, together with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The visitor logs – 5.99 million records worth – were routinely released by the Obama administration, with no harm to national security or personal privacy.

Judge Failla, of the Southern District of New York, relied on a 2013 D.C. Circuit ruling in finding that the visitor logs for core White House offices are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, although she agreed that certain other parts of the Executive Office of the President are covered.

The Secret Service has already admitted during the course of the lawsuit that it maintains no records system for tracking the president’s visitors at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties, meaning anyone – foreign lobbyists and otherwise – can pay for access to the president without being vetted or recorded.

The only record the government has released so far in response to the FOIA suit is one document, totaling two pages, concerning the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – this after telling Judge Failla and the plaintiffs that DHS would produce all the visitor logs.  nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia/2018-07-27/breaking-news-judge-lets-secret-service-hide-white-house-visitor-logs

www.facebook.com/TheOther98/videos/2517399884937641/?t=47

Imran Khan addresses vote rigging allegations in Pakistan election victory – video (Pakistan ISI runs the Taliban–he likes ISI)

The former international cricket star Imran Khan has declared victory in Pakistan’s general election, hailing what he described as “the fairest” vote in the country’s history, despite widespread allegations it was rigged in favour of his Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

In a televised address to the nation from his house in Bani Gala, a wealthy suburb of Islamabad, Khan struck a unifying tone, pledging to rise above personal attacks and lift up the poor.

Solidarity for Never

Ex-UAW official pleads guilty, agrees to cooperate in corruption scandal

Nancy Johnson, the onetime senior official in the UAW Chrysler Department, pleaded guilty Monday in a wide-ranging corruption scandal involving Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

As part of the agreement, the 57-year-old acknolwedged before U.S. District Judge Paul Borman in Detroit that she violated labor laws, and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution’s case against other union and FCA officials.

“I didn’t have a right,” she said in court, referring to her use of credit cards for personal items.

The governement said Johnson spent thousands of dollars meant for autoworker training on personal items, including first-class airline tickets, expensive luggage, $1,160 Christian Louboutin shoes, $4,587 at LG’s Prime Steak House and $6,900 at Renaissance Resort & Spa.

Her actions, the prosecution has alleged, were part of a wider corruption conspiracy among UAW and FCA that involves bribes for favorable contracts. The UAW and FCA have denied that allegation, saying a few corrupt individuals stole the money, and their actions did not affect labor agreements.

Johnson’s agreement to cooperate suggests that the feds are investigating whether the alleged conspiracy goes any deeper into both organizations.

Sergio Marchionne, who was replaced Saturday after becoming gravely ill following shoulder surgery, had been questioned in 2016 about the scheme by investigators with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to a source familiar with the investigation. He had previously announced he planned to retire next year.

Johnson’s plea also comes less than two weeks after Monica Morgan, the widow of a former UAW vice president, who is also a metro Detroit photographer, was sentenced in the wide-ranging scandal in which the prosecution alleges the misuse of millions of dollars.  www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/07/23/uaw-official-guilty-corruption-scandal/818989002/

Ex-UAW boss Dennis Williams OK’d using training center funds, aide says

Here’s Quisling!

UAW President Dennis Williams told senior officials to use automakers’ funds to pay for union costs, including lavish meals, travel, key witness says.

A former labor official told federal prosecutors that United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams directed subordinates to use funds from Detroit’s automakers, funneled through training centers, to pay for union travel, meals and entertainment.

As part of a plea agreement filed Monday, Nancy Adams Johnson told investigators Williams made the directive to relieve pressure on the union’s budget. Williams, the union’s president from 2014 until mid-June, and the UAW had no comment on the allegations made by Adams Johnson, the second-highest ranking official in the union’s Fiat Chrysler department.

Money filtered through the training centers for the benefit of UAW officials is at the center of a widening scandal that has led to seven convictions, a shakeup at the highest levels of the auto industry and raised questions about the sanctity of labor negotiations between the union and Detroit’s automakers.

“Maybe this is what the senior levels of the UAW were used to, but at its core, this is a significant betrayal of trust,” said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “This is how a small fraud becomes a much bigger one.”

Adams Johnson’s plea agreement does not identify the “high-level UAW official” who made the directive. Sources familiar with the investigation told The Detroit News that she identified that official as Williams. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation.  www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2018/07/26/uaw-president-dennis-williams-conspiracy-directed-use-automaker-funds-through-training-centers/822741002/

Why the American Federation of Teachers Is Uniquely Vulnerable to the Supreme Court’s Janus Verdict on Mandatory Union Fees

Here’s Quisling II and III

The American Federation of Teachers held its biennial convention in Pittsburgh this month. Fresh off the Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME that public unions can’t charge fees to non-members — a break from long-held practice that will cost labor millions in revenues and untold membership losses — conventioneers were defiant.

“This is our moment. This is our movement,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten in her keynote address to delegates.

She supported her optimism by announcing that membership levels were at an all-time high. AFT claims 1,755,015 members, with growth that has been uninterrupted even by the 2008 recession.

But AFT’s membership numbers require a lot more scrutiny and interpretation than do those of the National Education Association.

NEA has affiliates in all 50 states. Its smallest state affiliate, in Mississippi, has almost 4,800 working members. It does have some members in the private sector and in other professions, but even its non-teachers mostly work in the field of public education.

AFT has affiliates in only 34 states. Only 21 have memberships larger than that of NEA’s Mississippi affiliate. Counting the AFT’s branch in the District of Columbia, a total of 22 affiliates are home to the overwhelming bulk of AFT members. Fifteen of those are in former agency fee states, making AFT a lot more vulnerable to the effects of Janus.

AFT has maintained membership growth because it has no presence in most of the states where NEA has lost members over the past 10 years. In fact, more than one-third of AFT’s membership works in one state, New York. One of every six AFT members works in New York City.

Six percent of AFT members are state and municipal government employees in fields unrelated to education. Seven percent are nurses and health professionals. Fifteen percent work in higher education.

That leaves 72 percent who work in K-12 public education. Since, on average, there is one education support employee for every teacher in the U.S. public school system, it is very likely that K-12 public school teachers are a minority in AFT. By contrast, about 70 percent of NEA members are certified K-12 public school teachers.

The composition of AFT’s membership is an important factor for the union’s future because reduced resources will force the union to prioritize its recruitment and retention efforts. NEA has a simpler task. Most of its members are K-12 public school teachers and most of its money comes from K-12 public school teachers.  www.the74million.org/article/analysis-why-the-american-federation-of-teachers-is-uniquely-vulnerable-to-the-supreme-courts-janus-verdict-on-mandatory-union-fees/

Spy versus Spy

During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA’s William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale—not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages into the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, “We are now in the U.S. war room.”

Cut/paste this link to hear and see the answers Putin offered to NBC, that were not aired.

www.facebook.com/inthenow/videos/987590074724695/

The CIA is hunting for its next generation of talent

 

The Magical Mystery Tour

Cardinal McCarrick, prominent US Catholic, resigns over abuse claims

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a prominent US cardinal accused of sexually assaulting a teenager nearly 50 years ago.

Theodore McCarrick, 88, a former Archbishop of Washington, must also carry out “penance and prayer” pending a canonical trial, the Vatican said.

Last month US Church officials said the allegations were credible.

Mr McCarrick has said he has “no recollection” of the alleged abuse. Further allegations have since emerged.

Mr McCarrick was one of the most prominent US cardinals and is one of the most high-profile Catholic leaders to face abuse claims.

In a statement, the Vatican said Pope Francis had accepted Mr McCarrick’s resignation from the cardinalate and had ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry.

The statement also said he would be placed in seclusion “for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial”.

His resignation means the titles of Cardinal and “your eminence” are removed, America Magazine editor and Jesuit priest James Martin said on Twitter.

How unusual is this?

Mr McCarrick’s resignation from the cardinalate is the first since 1927, when Father Louis Billot resigned because of political tensions with the Holy See, according to the New York Times newspaper.  www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44993221

Child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church: What you need to know

From Australian country towns, to schools in Ireland and cities across the US, the Catholic Church has faced an avalanche of child sexual abuse accusations in the last few decades.

Recent high-profile cases and harrowing testimony given to public inquiries have kept the issue in the headlines.

Meanwhile alleged cover-ups continue to dog the Church, and victims groups say the Vatican has not done nearly enough to right its wrongs.

Here’s what you need to know.

How did this all come to light?

Although some accusations date back to the 1950s, molestation by priests was first given significant media attention in the 1980s, in the US and Canada.

In the 1990s, the issue began to grow, with stories emerging in Argentina, Australia and elsewhere. In 1995, the Archbishop of Vienna, Austria, stepped down amid sexual abuse allegations, rocking the church there.

Also in that decade, revelations began of widespread historical abuse in Ireland. By the early 2000s, Church sexual abuse was a major global story.

In the US, determined reporting by the Boston Globe newspaper (as captured in the 2015 film Spotlight) exposed widespread abuse and how paedophile priests were moved around by Church leaders instead of being held accountable. It prompted people to come forward across the US and around the world.

A Church-commissioned report in 2004 said more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children – mostly boys.

A 2009 report found that sexual and psychological abuse was “endemic” in Catholic-run industrial schools and orphanages in Ireland for most of the 20th Century.  www.bbc.com/news/world-44209971

CBS News Video: Pregnancy from rape a gift from god.

www.cbsnews.com/video/gop-senate-candidate-pregnancy-from-rape-a-gift-from-god/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

A Neoliberal Nightmare at OZY Fest 2018

Amid a split in the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton headlined an event that was part music festival, part TED Talk. We went with two hosts from Chapo Trap House to check it out.

On August 11th, 1999, the Dalai Lama brought thousands of New Yorkers to Central Park to hear him preach the gospel of nothingness. About 20 years later, a tech start-up called OZY Media updated His Holiness’ concept as a bipartisan bacchanal of surrender complete with false prophets, matching accessories and the pacifying sense that everything will be fine – if only we embrace our fate as steerage passengers on the SpaceX™ Titanic.

Fueled by Silicon Valley venture capital, the third annual OZY Fest brought together the brightest minds of neoliberalism for an extended sermon on the importance of staying the course. It was sponsored by Volvo, and combined TED talk-like panels during the day with bland indie music into the night. CNBC called it “New York’s answer to SXSW.” Featured names included Chelsea Handler, Malcolm Gladwell, Common and Grouplove. The undisputed headliner: Hillary Clinton. As a critical chronicler of Hillary in particular and late capitalist decline in general, I had to see it for myself.

…We arrived to a gaggle of wilting professional types in motivational T-shirts (clear winner: “Dance like Russia isn’t watching”) sitting cross-legged on the ground while Alex Rodriguez and some likeminded folks testified from the main stage (or as the fest calls it, “the platform”) as to how each became an entrepreneur in terms Christman likened to a religious conversion. “It’s like being a born-again Christian,” he observed. “‘When did you become an entrepreneur?’” If A-Rod mentioned the entrepreneurial benefits of being a rich and famous baseball player, he did so only in passing…

Much of the panel focused on education. “Educational entrepreneur” Mi spoke about children in the language of the market: parents must “invest” in them. She spun her business model of contracting down-on-their luck Americans to instruct Chinese students in English via webcam for $14-$18/hour, plus incentives, as a positive for everyone involved. When she used the phrase “curriculum product,” I thought Christman might have an aneurysm…

And then, just like that, we were ready for Chillary, queen diva, lover of hot sauce, OG abuelita, the screen onto which so many foot soldiers of #theresistance project their hopes and fears to this day. “I’m with her! I’m with her!” chanted an excited group of women from the stands. Dressed in the flowing robes of a cult leader newly beatified by a year-long silent retreat, she appeared from on high to deliver her underwhelming gospel – in conversation, of course, with OZY investor Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve.

The theme of the sermon was Russia. Specifically: How Russia staged a coup against our rightful Queen in favor of a crude (and legitimately worse) interloper. “It was a very broad and a very successful cyber attack on our electoral system,” Clinton said. “The attack goes to the heart of our democracy. The great mystery is why the president has not spoken up for our country.”

“There are some tech experts in Silicon Valley whom I have met who say that maybe what they will do this time is really disrupt the actual election,” she continued. “We are still very vulnerable.” Her repeating leitmotif of a solution: “The best way to deal with them is to vote in November.” Perhaps starting to wrap their minds around the catch-22 presented, the cheering women began to slouch.

Folks perked up again when the sermon culminated in a dramatic cutaway to an inspirational video montage of grassroots resistance by activists around the nation: Charlottesville, Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter, the ICE airport protests. “It’s exhausting, but we cannot stop,” Clinton proclaimed, her blue robes growing to engulf the world. Holy Abuelita, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. Guess this is what those crazy commies are on about when they say the Democratic Party is the graveyard of social movements. Capital and its faithful administrators have never met a movement they can’t absorb.  www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/a-neoliberal-nightmare-at-ozy-fest-2018-702600/

www.facebook.com/verkeersregelaargilde/videos/631578753881469/?t=102

 

www.facebook.com/dogsarefamily.tv/videos/223013888335434/?t=6

www.facebook.com/JohnnyyRambo/videos/2128615297211612/?t=75

So Long

Dead Rat Costcutter Marchionne of Fiat Chrysler, bailout hack, layoff and two tier wage expert, corrupter of the corrupt UAW.