We Say Fight Back!

WHERE ARE WE? THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE WORLD TODAY

XI Congress of Historical and Social Research of CEICS – Center for Study and Research in Social Sciences
International Meeting of the Revolutionary Left
– Call for Papers –
Where are we? The Revolutionary Left and the class struggle in the world today
Buenos Aires, from September 1 to 3 of 2016   rikowski.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/where-are-we-the-revolutionary-left-and-the-class-struggle-in-the-world-today/

The purpose of the Buck Dinner is to raise funds for peace, justice, equality and “To give money and moral support to people and organizations involved in ongoing struggles and who are unlikely to obtain aid from conventional sources.”
— Maurice Sugar, one of the founders of the Buck Dinner
and a legendary figure in Detroit labor and civil rights communities

The Buck Dinner has funded hundreds of organizations and causes since its beginnings in 1929. This unique annual gathering in Metro-Detroit, Michigan, has grown to some
800 attendees. The Buck Dinner raises funds to provide grants to organizations and programs that work for social justice.
In 2015, the Buck Dinner gave away approximately $70,000
in grants to some 40 organizations.

APPLY FOR A GRANT    www.buckdinner.org/

Romila Thapar: ‘The Protests by JNU Students, Teachers Have Been Remarkable’

Eminent historian Romila Thapar has been associated with JNU since its earliest years. She talks to writer Githa Hariharan about JNU’s vision for educating the young to be questioning citizens. She also traces the pattern of recent attacks against voices of dissent on Indian campuses. Her advice to students and teachers is that they should continue to raise questions, both in and outside the classroom.

JNU sedition case: Meet the family of the student who is a ‘danger to Mother India’

In an old brick house in Bihat village in Bihar’s Begusarai district, the home of arrested JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar, his parents are stunned by the sedition charge slapped on him. They say he can never be “a danger to Mother India” as he is being called.

Confined to his bed since 2013 when the left side of his body was paralysed, 65-year-old Jaishankar Singh maintains: “I could study only up to Class X but I ensured my children received good education. Education is the biggest capital for poor people like us. No video or audio footage has shown my son saying anything anti-national. He has been framed.” Turning to a crowd that has gathered at his home, he asks, “What do you think will happen?  indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/jnu-sedition-case-afzal-guru-event-kanhaiya-kumar/

A Chilling Abuse of Law

The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Students Union, on charges of sedition marks a dramatic escalation of the undeclared war the Narendra Modi government and the Sangh parivar are waging against the culture of democratic dissent in India. The incident that triggered the arrest was the alleged chanting of “anti-national” slogans by persons unknown at an event on the university campus. Union home minister Rajnath Singh announced on Twitter that he had ordered the Delhi police to “take strong action against the anti-India elements.” Apart from its raid on JNU, the police has also filed sedition charges in a second case stemming from another meeting in Delhi to commemorate the hanging of Afzal Guru where “anti-national slogans” were apparently raised.

Now, whether the home minister likes it or not, there is no law which bans speech that is “anti-national”. The crime of sedition still remains on the statute books. However, as the courts in India have repeatedly ruled, slogans and speech, however distasteful and odious they may be, cannot be considered seditious under Section 124 of the IPC unless they involve the direct and imminent incitement of violence against the government  thewire.in/2016/02/13/a-chilling-abuse-of-law-21520/

PhD SCHOLARSHIPS @ KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON

Kingston University London is advertising ten PhD scholarship across the entire university, these are likely to be highly competitive. The scholarships covers a living allowance and UK/EU fees. Deadline is 18th March 2016

More information of the scholarship and the application can be found here: www.kingston.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/funding/phd-studentships-2016/

A TOTAL of 443 university lecturers took part in the strike organised by the University Teachers Initiative (IVU) on February 15 across Slovakia.   Most of them hail from Bratislava-based Comenius University, the TASR newswire learnt from Juraj Halas of IVU. Lecturers from 18 out of a total of 35 Slovak universities are involved in the strike, which comes on the heels of the Slovak Teachers’ Initiative (ISU) that began on January 25, according to the organisation’s website isu.sk.

Most employees are striking at Comenius University in Bratislava – 237 (80 at the Faculty of Arts, 73 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and 58 at the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics), the SITA newswire wrote. Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica has 64 striking lecturers, Academy of Performing Arts Bratislava 25, Žilina University 23, Academy of Fine Arts Bratislava 21, Slovak University of Technology Bratislava 21, and Prešov University 18. At other colleges and universities in Slovakia, fewer than 10 lecturers have joined the protest. The striking employees include not just lecturers, but also researchers and non-pedagogic employees.

“With the strike, we’ve sent a clear message to both the incumbent and future governments that university educators stand ready to defend the interests of their colleagues from kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools,” said Halas, adding that the strike is still underway. He also pointed out for TASR that managements of some universities in eastern Slovakia are attempting to obstruct employees from joining the strike.  spectator.sme.sk/c/20098579/education-almost-450-university-lecturers-on-strike.html

Reminder: The Full Stanley Nelson “Black Panthers” film is here video.kqed.org/video/2365657009/

DEBT STRIKERS VISIT THE HILL: The Corinthian debt “strikers” took to Capitol Hill Thursday morning to make their case for loan discharges to Senate HELP Committee staff and staff of at least nine senators, including Dick Durbin, Al Franken, Barbara Mikulski and Cory Booker. It was an emotional showing, with speakers sobbing as they shared their experiences and others in the audience tearing up, as well. Among the aggrieved former students was Alicia Stevens, who attended Florida Metropolitan University, which became a Corinthian-owned Everest University campus about a decade ago. Stevens is $33,000 in debt and lives in low-income housing off of $914 a month in Social Security payments. But she’s worried the government will start garnishing those benefits to cover her debt. “Going in, I was 59 years old – I went in in 2005 and they had already been investigating Corinthian,” Stevens said. “Why didn’t the [department] stop sending them money?”

The Little Red Schoolhouse

EdWeek Shocker: Black Male Teachers a Dwindling Demographic   Nationally, black males represent roughly 2 percent of all public school teachers.  …America’s K-12 schools have never been more diverse, with nonwhite students now outnumbering whites, but efforts to diversify the nation’s teaching corps haven’t kept pace. As a group, U.S. teachers remain overwhelmingly white and female—and black men are the most underrepresented demographic in the teaching ranks. And surveys and anecdotal information show that teachers of color can feel the sting of bias in schools as easily as minority students in mostly white educational environments.  www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/02/17/black-male-teachers-a-dwindling-demographic.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1

Detroit Schools Death Spiral A “desperate” Detroit Public Schools is running out of cash, is unable to borrow and urgently needs the state to approve legislation that will provide financial relief, a district official reiterated Monday.

Marios Demetriou, the district’s deputy superintendent of finance and operations, detailed the district’s dire outlook at City Hall at the request of the Detroit City Council. The presentation comes weeks after the panel approved a resolution opposing legislation being debated by state lawmakers to reform DPS.

DPS, which has struggled for years with declining enrollment and persistent budget deficits, is likely to run out of cash by April. On June 30, the district will need $45 million and, by August, $126 million “in order for us to to survive,” Demetriou said.

“The district is running out of cash. It can’t borrow anymore. We are desperate and need help right now,” he said. “That is the urgency of why this legislation was introduced. It needs to pass.”  www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2016/02/15/detroit-school-finances-city-council/80425210/

I’m a New York City school administrator. Here’s how segregation lives on.

Many Americans believe school segregation is a thing of the past. But it still shapes the school I co-founded – and many others.

The doors opened to our homemade banners and smiling faces. It was the first day of school ever for the Urban Assembly Unison Middle School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. It was my first day ever as a leader in the school I co-founded. I was 27 years old.

The racial demographics of the 85 students arriving: 74 percent African American, 15 percent Hispanic, 9 percent Asian, and one white student. At the beginning of sixth grade these students, on average, read at a second-grade reading level. Nearly 40 percent of them had special needs, 35 percent had been left back once or twice, 10 percent lived in temporary housing, 10 percent lived in foster care, and 92 percent lived in families whose aggregate family income fell below the federal poverty line.

My colleagues and I started this school in 2012 because we wanted to bring a progressive curriculum called Learning Cultures — which promotes collaboration and creativity and all the qualities that middle-class families want in their children’s education — to a population of students that normally gets stuck with rigid, test-prep-oriented teaching. I’d seen Learning Cultures work at a school with both well-to-do and less well-off kids in downtown Manhattan. I wanted to see it work in a full-on high-poverty Brooklyn school, too. www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools-segregation

UC says the cost of its secret snooping system is secret

University of California President Janet Napolitano’s office is refusing to disclose the price of those controversial Internet snooping scanners installed recently at the 10 UC campuses — or reveal whether the taxpayer–financed security system went through competitive bidding.  www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/UC-says-the-cost-of-its-secret-snooping-system-is-6828242.php

Homeland Security’s Napolitano who runs the UC system

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

U.S. sends F-22s to South Korea as tension mounts with North Korea

Four of the most advanced U.S. fighter jets flew over South Korea on Wednesday in a clear show of force against North Korea, a day after South Korea’s president warned of the North’s collapse amid a festering standoff over its nuclear and missile ambitions.

The stealthy, high-tech F-22 planes capable of sneaking past radar undetected landed at Osan Air Base near Seoul after the flyover escorted by other U.S. and South Korean fighter jets.

Pyongyang will likely view the arrival of the planes flown from a U.S. base in Japan as a threat as they are a display of U.S. airpower apparently aimed at showing what the United States can do to defend its ally South Korea from potential aggression from North Korea. www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2016/02/16/f-22s-south-korea-north-korea-rocket-test/80486106/?=recache

China said to deploy missiles on South China Sea island

Chinese state media said defenses had been in place on Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain in the hotly disputed sea, for years, and denied it was militarizing the island.

Satellite images taken on February 14 appeared to show several missile batteries and support vehicles, according to ImageSat International, which took the images.  www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/asia/china-missiles-south-china-sea/

Hundreds of Marines have been quietly deploying over the past 16 months to assist the Iraqis fighting to retake territory, hard won by U.S. troops over the past decade or more, from brutal ISIS militants.

As 2015 drew to a close, the Iraqi army hoisted its flag above the center of Ramadi’s city center and declared victory. The seven-month struggle to retake the gateway city in western Anbar province was bloody and costly, but dealt ISIS a strategic blow and proved that the Iraqi military — with coalition air support — is capable of sustained offensive operations.

It also opened the door to greater U.S. involvement and a follow-on drive to retake the northern city of Mosul.  www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2016/02/14/marines-new-iraq-mission/79836640/

Turkey shelled positions held by a U.S.-backed Kurdish (pinko) militia in northern Syria for a second day on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the Syrian government, whose forces are advancing against insurgents in the same area under the cover of Russian airstrikes.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said Turkish artillery units fired at Kurdish fighters in the Syrian town of Azaz in Aleppo province, saying it was in response to incoming Kurdish fire.

Turkish troops have shelled areas under the control of Syria’s main Kurdish faction, the People’s Protection Units, known as YPG, in the past. The group has been most effective in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, but Ankara appears increasingly uneasy over the group’s recent gains in the country’s north.

“Turkey has responded in this manner in the past,” said Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan. “What is different is not that Turkey has responded in such a way but the fact that there are different movements in the region. The YPG crossing west of the Euphrates is Turkey’s red line.”

The YPG is the main fighting force of Syrian Kurds and a key ally of the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group. Turkey, which is also in the alliance, considers it an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.  www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/opposition-activists-say-turkey-shelling-kurds-in-syria/2016/02/14/0e8407f6-d300-11e5-a65b-587e721fb231_story.html

Taliban suicide attacks and a fierce battle for the northern city of Kunduz made 2015 the worst year for Afghan civilian casualties since the United Nations began tracking the data, officials said on Sunday, in a sobering reminder of the cost of the conflict at a time when the prospect of peace seems as distant as ever.

The United Nations documented 3,545 civilians killed and 7,457 injured last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the United Nations Human Rights Office said in a report presented at a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The total casualty figure, 11,002, was 4 percent above the 2014 level. The number of civilian injuries rose 9 percent, though there were 4 percent fewer deaths.

The statistics do not “reflect the real horror of the phenomenon we are talking about,” Nicholas Haysom, the United Nation’s secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, told journalists.

“The real cost we are talking about in these figures,” he said, “is measured in the maimed bodies of children, the communities who have to live with loss, the grief of colleagues and relatives, the families who make do without a breadwinner, the parents who grieve for lost children, the children who grieve for lost parents.”

Battles between insurgents and Afghan government forces or their affiliated militias produced the largest number of civilian deaths and injuries, the United Nations found, followed by improvised explosive devices.  www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/world/asia/afghanistan-record-civilian-casualties-2015-united-nations.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Generals to Cruz: Carpet Bombing Won’t work  If presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz was listening to top military brass, he would know that his proclaimed tactic to defeat the Islamic State group wouldn’t work.

“Carpet-bombing is not effective for the operation we’re actually executing because we’re using precision-guided munitions on a regular basis,” Lt. Gen. Charles Brown Jr., commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, told reporters during a briefing Thursday.

“Daesh doesn’t actually mass itself where you could actually even use that kind of tactic, and that’s a tactic that is really not effective for the fight we’re actually executing today,” he said, using the Pentagon’s alternative name for the Islamic State group.

Cruz, R-Texas, in early December promised the American public that “we will utterly destroy ISIS. We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.” On the campaign trail this month, he echoed similar sentiments.  www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/02/18/generals-ted-cruz-carpet-bombing-isis-wont-work/80575502/

Trump was Right: Bush Lied on Iraq 

There is an enormous amount of powerful evidence to prove it:

• Former Vice President Dick Cheney kicked off the push for war in August 2002 by claiming: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” Cheney’s speech had not been vetted by the CIA, and John McLaughlin, the CIA’s deputy director, shortly afterward told Congress that the likelihood of Iraq initiating a WMD attack “would be low.” Another CIA official later recalled that the agency’s reaction to Cheney’s speech was, “Where is he getting this stuff from?”
• The Bush administration said that aluminum tubes Iraq had tried to import were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs” — even as Bush himself was being told the State Department and Energy Department believed (correctly, of course) they were intended to be used as conventional rockets.
• Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union address that “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” even though his administration had been repeatedly warned this was dubious (and it turned out to originate with crudely forged documents).
• Colin Powell doctored intercepted Iraqi communications for his U.N. presentation to make them appear more alarming.

… and much more.  theintercept.com/2016/02/18/trump-is-right-bush-lied-a-little-known-part-of-the-bogus-case-for-war/

 

With exoskeletons, paralyzed troops walk again

Burch is a paraplegic, paralyzed from the chest down, from an accident in Guam that he doesn’t remember.

All he knows is that one minute, he was speaking with his sergeant in a hotel room, and then, it’s the next day, he is on the ground outside the hotel being rousted by an employee, and he can’t move — not his hands, his arms or legs.

“They were trying to lift me up, get me to move. But that wasn’t going to happen,” Burch said.

Burch had sustained a fracture to his seventh cervical vertebrae — the lowest bone in his neck. At 21, the aircraft rescue and firefighting specialist had little use of his arms, none of his legs and an indeterminate prognosis for eventual mobility.

But friends and family members say Burch never gave up hope for regaining use of his limbs. And after several surgeries and recovery in Hawaii, he was transferred to the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, to see just how far he could push his body.www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/benefits/health-care/2016/02/14/exoskeletons-paralyzed-troops-walk-again/80197126/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Japan’s economy shrank in the final three months of 2015, the government said on Monday, undergoing a more severe contraction than experts had expected amid signs that global growth was stalling.

The Cabinet Office said output in Asia’s second-largest economy declined by 1.4 percent in annualized, price-adjusted terms. Most sectors — from consumption and housing investment to exports — deteriorated.

The decline in Japan’s gross domestic product was the second in three quarters, and was sharper than most private sector economists had forecast. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted a contraction of 0.8 percent, on average.

With concerns about the health of the global economy sending shudders though the financial markets, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is facing what may be the toughest test yet of his three-year-old campaign to lift Japanese growth rates and end two decades of deflation.

One crucial pillar of that campaign — a weaker currency — has lately begun to crack. The yen dropped by about 40 percent against the dollar from the time Mr. Abe took office in late 2012 until the end of last year, as the Japanese central bank carried out an aggressive program of monetary stimulus.

The devaluation of the yen enriched automakers and other big companies that earn most of their revenues abroad, and sent the Japanese stock market soaring. It helped nudge consumer prices higher, too, another central goal of Mr. Abe’s economic agenda, known as Abenomics.

But since late last year, a flight to safe assets by global investors has reversed the yen’s direction. Stocks have tumbled   www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/business/international/severe-contraction-and-falling-prices-in-japan-signal-tough-test-for-abenomics.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Menacing, crudely written signs hung from highway bridges or left with mutilated corpses have delivered the message: Mexico’s fastest-growing drug trafficking group, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, is now in Tijuana — and fighting to expand its influence.

The group’s growing presence coincides with a surge in homicides in Tijuana that started last spring, authorities said, and have continued in these first weeks of the new year, with many of the perpetrators and victims described as low-ranking members of the city’s neighborhood drug trade.

Drug-related killings accounted for more than 80 percent of Tijuana’s 670 homicides in 2015, the highest number in five years, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. A total of 71 homicides last month marked the most violent January in the city since 2010.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/feb/13/nueva-generacion-cartel-moves-tijuana/

The Vampire Squid Tells Us How to Vote

Detroit News: The Recolonization of the City may go Wrong: But the outlook is not as rosy as the boosters would have us believe.

“There are a lot of things that are really broken,” said Rodrick Miller, president and CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., about Detroit’s business environment.

Miller said the businesses thriving outside downtown and Midtown are mostly small retail shops, neighborhood services, restaurants and social entrepreneurs. There’s still no move toward a larger, flagship retail store in the central city because the market still just isn’t there.

Nor is the workforce.

A January report from JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Detroit’s workforce shows a quarter of the labor force is unemployed. There are only enough jobs in Detroit to employ 37 percent of the population. And just 26 percent of Detroit jobs are held by people who live in Detroit.  www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2016/02/18/buss-editorial-detroit/80593354/

Clinton lies about lying: I don’t believe I ever lied to the public

Hillary Clinton says she’s always tried to be honest and doesn’t believe she ever told a lie to the American people.

“Well, I have to tell you, I have tried in every way I know how, literally from my years as a young lawyer all the way through my time as secretary of State, to level with the American people,” the presidential contender told CBS in an interview Thursday, when asked if she was always truthful with the public.

“I’ve always tried to. Always. Always,” she added.

When pressed further, Clinton said she doesn’t believe she has ever lied.

“Well, but, you know, you’re asking me to say, ‘Have I ever?’ I don’t believe I ever have,”    thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/270006-clinton-i-dont-believe-i-ever-have-lied

Chief: Flint water so corrosive it damaged fire engines, endangered sprinklers Water from the Flint River was so corrosive that it has damaged Flint’s fire trucks and may have endangered sprinkler systems in homes, businesses and government buildings, according to the city’s fire chief.

Chief David Cox Jr. told WJRT-TV that the pumps used to draw water to fight fires “are being destroyed by whatever is in the water.”

A city mechanic spotted an unusual amount of rust building up in the pump’s intake valves, damaging the rubber seals, which could significantly decrease water pressure to battle fires.

Fire officials also contacted sprinkler companies to request that they inspect the water-suppression systems.

In October 2014, six months after the state-controlled city switched to the Flint River, General Motors stopped using the river water because of fears that the highly corrosive water would rust car parts.

Gov. Rick Snyder spokesman David Murray told us today that state officials plan to address any problems that arise from the water crisis.motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/02/11/chief-flint-water-so-corrosive-it-damaged-fire-engines-endangered-sprinklers/?utm_source=Motor+City+Muckraker+Feed&utm_campaign=51a42cf9cb-Muckraker+Report+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7357c748b3-51a42cf9cb-175321493

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCpZUDIquQw

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

U.S. Marshals Are Arresting People in Texas Who Have Outstanding Student Loans

Here’s what the U.S. government says about the student loan you may have been tardy about paying back: “If your loan is placed with a collection agency, you will be responsible for costs incurred to get payment. The holder of your loan can take other actions to collect as well.” Those “other actions” involve withholding your tax refund or, in some cases, garnishing your wages. And, this week in Texas, they began to involve federal agents in combat gear bursting into debtors’ houses and arresting them.

That’s what happened to Paul Aker. Seven armed U.S. marshals arrived at his door in Houston last Thursday, arrested him on the spot, and took him to jail. He owed all of $1,500, outstanding since 1987. Aker told Fox 26 that without any warning, his 29-year-old debt was forcibly being collected; the marshals took him to federal court and made him sign a payment plan. “It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker told Fox 26.   nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/us-marshals-forcibly-collecting-student-debt.html?mid=facebook_nymag

Solidarity for Never

“Communist” Party of South Africa produced:

A great deal of detail about poverty and inequality in South Africa remains unspoken. Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

Spy versus Spy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=llc11KLiKVE

The Magical Mystery Tour

Voice of God Retreats before the onrushing Donald:

I think what happened with the Pope is the Mexican officials got to this guy, and told him about this guy in the United States called Donald Trump who wants to close up the border –and let people come in but they have to come in legally– close up the border, and no mention of drugs or crime, and the Pope just got carried away…

Actually the press built it up a little more than it was, he was talking about walls, you know, the man lives in a wall[ed city], builds walls, and then you look at the Vatican, there’s a massive wall.

LAURA INGRAHAM: Surrounding all of Vatican City, last time I checked.

TRUMP: It’s a massive wall. I brought it up, the press gave him a pass on that, but that is one big wall.

Do you know the number on trophy ISIS wants more than anything else is the Vatican? www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/19/donald_trump_forgives_the_pope_he_just_got_carried_away_after_hearing_mexican_side_of_the_story.html

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

So Long

III