{"id":18566,"date":"2015-11-22T00:55:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T08:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=18566"},"modified":"2015-11-22T00:55:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T08:55:54","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-fascism-mulitiplies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-fascism-mulitiplies\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: Fascism–Mulitiplies"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over four decades of public life, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built an unrivaled global network of donors while pioneering fundraising techniques that have transformed modern politics and paved the way for them to potentially become the first husband and wife to win the White House.<\/p>\n

The grand total raised for all of their political campaigns and their family\u2019s charitable foundation reaches at least $3 billion, according to a Washington Post investigation.<\/p>\n

Their fundraising haul, which began with $178,000 that Bill Clinton raised for his long-shot 1974 congressional bid, is on track to expand substantially with Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 White House run, which has already drawn $110 million in support….After Bill Clinton\u2019s unsuccessful, labor-backed race for Congress, the couple hewed toward monied interests, courting banks and corporate leaders in Arkansas. It was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout their careers as they drew support from groups often in opposition: union leaders and corporate chiefs, trial lawyers and tech titans, top industrialists and liberal activists…Today, the two major national teachers\u2019 unions rank among the Clintons\u2019 biggest supporters. The National Education Association<\/span> has contributed at least $1.3\u00a0million to bolster their races, while the American Federation of Teachers<\/span> has given more than $756,000 to support them politically and at least $1\u00a0million to their foundation…<\/p>\n

In her current campaign, Clinton has pledged to rein in Wall Street. She has proposed higher taxes on high-frequency traders and an end to special tax breaks for hedge fund managers, and recently called for more aggressive enforcement of criminal statutes that govern the finance industry.www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/politics\/clinton-money\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/i>Play Video<\/span>1:41<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n

Here are Hillary Clinton’s all-time top political supporters<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Take a look at some of the people who’ve contributed the most support to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political career over the years. (Sarah Parnass\/The Washington Post)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But her rhetoric has not alarmed her backers in the financial sector. So far, donors in the banking and insurance industries have given $6.4 million to her campaign and allied super PACs, behind only those in communications and technology, The Post found.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton is drawing enthusiastic support from Silicon Valley, one of the first industries to rally around her husband nearly a quarter-century ago.<\/p>\n

Out of the Blue: Hillary\u2019s Sociopathy Revealed in Des Moines<\/a><\/h1>\n

by<\/span> Paul Street<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton said something remarkable and out of the blue during the second Democratic Party presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, last Saturday \u2013 something that ought to lead to the suspension of her quest for the White House. The comment came in response to a CBS debate moderator and Bernie Sanders pointing out that her campaign had received millions of dollars in election contributions and speaking fees from leading Wall Street financial institutions while Sanders relies on small contributions from ordinary middle- and working-class Americans. Here\u2019s what Hillary said:<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, I am very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent. So I \u2013 I represented New York. And I represented New York on 9\/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy. And it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How\u2019s that for a wild comment out of the blue \u2013 out of the tragic blue skies over New York City fourteen years and two months ago? It\u2019s good that most of Hillary\u2019s individual donors are female and that she has a large number of donors. But leading major party presidential candidate typically get donations from hundreds of thousands of people. The fact remains that Mrs. Clinton is very heavily and disproportionately funded by predominantly male Wall Street elites, who back her because she is (quite reasonably) understood by them to be a good friend of the corporate and financial elite.\u00a0 www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/11\/17\/out-of-the-blue-hillarys-sociopathy-revealed-in-des-moines\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Clinton Foundation released its 2014 tax return as well as amended returns for the previous four years and an audit of its finances.<\/strong> That fulfilled a pledge made last April by Clinton Foundation acting CEO, Maura Pally, who acknowledged that the foundation had previously made a few unfortunate accounting \u201cmistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalists are going to be scouring through this new financial information and pumping out \u201cbalanced\u201d stories that evade what is already evident, namely that the Clintons have used their foundation for crass profiteering and influence peddling.<\/p>\n

If the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies do their jobs, the foundation will be closed and its current and past trustees, who include Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton, will be indicted. That\u2019s because their so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich Clinton family friends.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is beyond dispute that former President Clinton has been directly involved in helping foundation donors and his personal cronies get rich. Even worse, it is beyond dispute that these very same donors and the Clintons\u2019 political allies have won the focused attention of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton when she served as Secretary of State. Democrats and Clinton apologists will write these accusations off as conspiracy mongering and right-wing propaganda, but it\u2019s an open secret to anyone remotely familiar with accounting and regulatory requirements for charities that the financial records are deliberately misleading. And not coincidentally, those records were long filed by a Little Rock\u2013based accounting firm called BKD, a regional auditor with little international experience.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s odd that a small Arkansas-headquartered firm would handle the books for a giant entity like the Clinton Foundation, and even odder given that BKD has been implicated in a variety of misconduct. For example, last year the Securities and Exchange Commission sanctioned BKD for \u201cviolating auditor independence rules when they prepared the financial statements of brokerage firms that were their audit clients.\u201d harpers.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/shaky-foundations\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Little Red Schoolhouse<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rather than Social + economic Reform, developers will get rich on San Diego School Re-build (add more segregation) <\/strong>It\u2019s happening. The district will build and revamp Memorial Prep, a long-struggling middle school in Logan Heights. Officials plan to spend at least $100 million on the effort.<\/p>\n

In addition to a middle school, the district also plans to create a new high school on the same campus. The money for the renovations will come from Props. S and Z, two voter-approved school construction bonds passed in 2008 and 2012.<\/p>\n

Councilman David Alvarez and school board member Richard Barrera announced the plans at a town hall meeting this past weekend at the Logan Heights library.<\/p>\n

District officials believe the new school, which they hope will open by fall 2019, will give parents the option of sending their kids to a high-quality middle school without busing them to more affluent neighborhoods.\u00a0 www.voiceofsandiego.org\/topics\/education\/memorial-prep-rebuild-gets-a-vision-and-a-price-tag-100-million\/?utm_source=Voice+of+San+Diego+Master+List&utm_campaign=2cd55cccbc-Learning_Curve&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-2cd55cccbc-81862829&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-2cd55cccbc-81862829<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Detroit<\/a>Want a job in Detroit where all the teachers were fired 3 years ago and the union did nothing but sue to collect dues and kids still don’t have books\/teachers? <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Detroit Public School District says it knows there is a teacher shortage impacting kids and teachers. The question is, how long will it take to fill about 170 openings?<\/p>\n

As the district tries to fill positions, burned out teachers are leaving. One of them is the only math teacher at the Detroit Institute of Technology, a school with 300 kids.<\/p>\n

\u2018The math will tell you, it doesn\u2019t add up,\u201d said Carrie Russell, the only math certified math teacher at DIT.<\/p>\n

She says next week is her last. She is quitting.<\/p>\n

She says she is tired of struggling to get by financially in a district that assigns one math teacher to a school of 300 students. She says she can\u2019t succeed to her own personal standards under the circumstances.<\/p>\n

She also says she makes only about $37,000 and hasn\u2019t had a raise in years.<\/p>\n

There is talk that teachers could face more cuts. She has a Bachelor\u2019s degree in Engineering, and Master\u2019s degrees in Business and Education.\u00a0 www.wxyz.com\/news\/fix-my-schools\/detroit-public-schools-working-to-address-teacher-shortfall-as-educators-continue-to-leave-district<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Detroit<\/a>Detroit: No Books\/No Teachers <\/strong>teachers are underpaid, facing uncertainty under Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, and can\u2019t even get books for the kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can they teach, if they don\u2019t have the materials?\u201d asked Perez.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have math books,\u201d said Kelly Davis, a 4th grade teacher who still works at Maybury.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just try to do what I can with the kids in my classroom, and that number just almost doubled yesterday morning,\u201d said Davis.<\/p>\n

This happened because the third grade teacher left.<\/p>\n

Some teachers and kids were shuffled into different classes, increasing class size for some. Other students are in one of three classes without a certified teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are parents, a lot of them don\u2019t know their teachers are a substitute, uncertified, teaching your kids,\u201d said Perez.<\/p>\n

She says the instability and lack of teachers and resources is impacting kids. Her daughter is not where she wants her to be academically. www.wxyz.com\/news\/fix-my-schools\/parents-call-on-governor-snyder-to-act-as-their-children-face-classes-without-certified-teachers<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The strings attached to SDSU’s Confucius cash<\/h1>\n

Iron lady of Chinese government calls tough shots in education war<\/h3>\n

DSU’s Confucius expansion is taking place against a backdrop of debate on U.S. campuses regarding the untoward influence of a well-heeled foreign government on traditional Western academic values and independence.<\/h3>\n

Last year, the University of Chicago, one of the first American universities to host a Confucius Institute, pulled the plug on the operation amid controversy over its aims and methods, as portrayed in remarks made by Madame Xu Lin, director of Hanban, <\/a>the Chinese government agency that runs the Confucius program.<\/p>\n

“The university and Hanban have engaged in several months of good faith efforts and steady progress toward a new agreement,” the school said in a September 25, 2014, statement. <\/a>“However, recently published comments about UChicago in an article about the director-general of Hanban are incompatible with a continued equal partnership. The University is therefore suspending negotiations for the renewal of the agreement at this time.”<\/p>\n

The story in the Chinese-language daily Jiefang<\/em> said, “Many people have experienced the inflexibility and toughness of Xu Lin,” according to a translation by Inside Higher Ed.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Xu Lin\u2019s showdown with Chicago occurred after more than 100 faculty members signed a petition demanding that the university close the institute because it was under the thumb of the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

www.sandiegoreader.com\/news\/2015\/nov\/12\/ticker-strings-attached-sdsus-confucius-cash\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"capitalist<\/a>Mass. and the Capitalist School Shell Game At <\/strong>a dinner with colleagues in 2009, Mitchell Chester, Massachusetts\u2019s commissioner of education, hatched what seemed like an obvious answer \u2014 a national test based on the Common Core standards that almost every state had recently adopted.<\/p>\n

Now Dr. Chester finds himself in the awkward position of walking away from the very test he helped create.<\/p>\n

On his recommendation, the State Board of Education decided last week that Massachusetts would go it alone and abandon the multistate test in favor of one to be developed for just this state. The move will cost an extra year and unknown millions of dollars.\u00a0 Across the country, what was once bipartisan consensus around national standards has collapsed into acrimony about the Common Core, with states dropping out of the two national tests tied to it that had been the centerpiece of the Obama administration\u2019s education strategy.<\/p>\n

San Ysidro (SoCal) District: 30% Kids Homeless <\/strong>According to board members, 30 percent of San Ysidro School District students lead nomadic lifestyles without stable living conditions.<\/p>\n

“The misconception is that when you hear ‘homeless’ you think someone who lives on the streets. In reality, a lot of our children are transitional homeless. They live in motels, in cars, move back and forth, in garages or on their aunts\u2019 and uncles’ couches,” said Antonio Martinez, board president<\/p>\n

Martinez says more than 1,500 students live in such conditions. Half of those attend Willow Elementary fox5sandiego.com\/2015\/11\/19\/san-ysidro-school-district-says-30-percent-of-its-students-are-homeless\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Obama’s drone war a ‘recruitment tool’ for Isis, say US air force whistleblowers\u00a0 <\/strong>Four former US air force service members, with more than 20 years of experience between them operating military drones, have written an open letter to Barack Obama warning that the program of targeted killings by unmanned aircraft has become a major driving force for Isis and other terrorist groups.<\/p>\n

The group of servicemen have issued an impassioned plea to the Obama administration<\/a>, calling for a rethink of a military tactic that they say has \u201cfueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like Isis, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guant\u00e1namo Bay\u201d.In particular, they argue, the killing of innocent civilians in drone airstrikes has acted as one of the most \u201cdevastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world\u201dThe letter<\/a>, addressed to Obama, defense secretary Ashton Carter and CIA chief John Brennan, links the signatories\u2019 anxieties directly to last Friday\u2019s terror attacks in Paris<\/a>. They imply that the abuse of the drone program is causally connected to the outrages. \u201cWe cannot sit silently by and witness tragedies like the attacks in Paris, knowing the devastating effects the drone program has overseas and at home,\u201d they wrote.www.theguardian.com\/world\/2015\/nov\/18\/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers<\/a><\/p>\n

\"drone<\/a>Experts: Terrorists learning from one another and going after soft targets (like W. Ukraine?)<\/p>\n

Counterterrorism experts liken the Paris attacks to what happened in Mumbai in November 2008, when a team of 10 Islamist militants, pledged to fight to the death, terrorized the city for four days and killed 164 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Paris and Mumbai attacks both used small, well-armed bands of terrorists striking simultaneously and sequentially against multiple soft targets in an urban area. The Paris attackers added suicide vests to increase the carnage,\u201d former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel wrote on a Brookings Institution blog<\/a> devoted to Middle East politics.<\/p>\n

The similarity isn\u2019t by accident, said Peter Bergen, vice president at the think tank New America.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States, school shooters study other school shooters, in particular Columbine. This is true of terrorists as well. They study tactics that have worked before,\u201d Bergen said. www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/health-science\/experts-terrorists-learning-from-one-another-and-going-after-soft-targets\/2015\/11\/15\/68405564-8bb2-11e5-acff-673ae92ddd2b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_suicidebomb-6pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory<\/a><\/p>\n

Tiptoeing to WWIII\u00a0 <\/strong>The purpose of war is to give yourself a strong position at a peace conference. In the days when warfare was state versus state, that is what generals used to remind politicians: we can bring the enemy to its knees, but it is you who has to design the peace. Sometime between 1991 and 2003, the US forgot this principle and the result is the situation we have now.<\/p>\n

Iraq is effectively dismembered into Shi\u2019a, Kurdish and Isis-run territories. Parts of Afghanistan are being reconquered by the Taliban. Syria\u2019s disintegration has propelled millions of refugees into Europe<\/a>, Turkey and Lebanon. And the Islamic-fascist regime of Isis has staged the first sophisticated \u201cmarauding attack\u201d on European soil, killing people who had assumed, like the rest of us, that the disintegration of the Middle East was somebody else\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n

Now it is Nato\u2019s problem. In British security circles, there is tacit acceptance that, if it wanted to, France could invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty<\/a>, which requires Britain to render military support to an ally under attack. Article 5 is the political deterrent designed into Nato at conception. It gives all signatories the right to wage war legally, as an act of self defence, under principles recognised by the UN charter. It has only once been invoked: by the US after 9\/11.\u00a0 Obviously, there are legal difficulties: Isis is not recognised as a state, though it claims to be one and controls a defined geographic area. Nevertheless, the Paris attack clearly breached \u201cthe security of the North Atlantic area\u201d \u2013 the phrase used in Article 5 to define the objective of any retaliation. If the French requested it, and major states refused, it would mark the end of the alliance\u2019s credibility. Either way, British military planners will be right now exploring options for what to do if France<\/a> requests military aid. www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/nov\/16\/isis-military-france-paris-attacks-nato-article-5?CMP=share_btn_fb<\/a><\/p>\n

www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U9xkyfv3oGk<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

ISIS: What the US Doesn\u2019t Understand Ahmed Rashid<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/header>\n

Over the last few days, as the United States has stepped up its bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria, it has been hard to escape another reality: the US is still looking for a coherent strategy against the Islamic State. Along with its relentless drive across the deserts of Syria and Iraq, and its continued massacre of civilians and members of endangered minorities, ISIS can now also claim its first victim in Washington with the sacking<\/a> of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. His departure\u2014prompted in part by divisions with the White House over Syria policy\u2014highlights the deep problems of an air offensive against ISIS that has alienated Arab states and other allies in NATO, even as it has failed to bring tangible results.<\/p>\n

The crisis ISIS has created for the West and the Arab world cannot be effectively addressed until there is a broader understanding of what ISIS wants. The first thing we need to recognize is that ISIS is not waging a war against the West. In view of the staggering growth in the number of ISIS\u2019s international recruits\u2014there are now estimated to be some 18,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries\u2014the growing possibility that some who have joined the group may return home to carry out acts of terrorism must be taken seriously. There is also a risk that others who never went to Syria, like the shooter in the Canadian parliament in October, will be inspired by ISIS to carry out such attacks.<\/p>\n

In contrast to al-Qaeda, however, ISIS has not made the US and its allies its main target. Where al-Qaeda directed its anger at the \u201cdistant enemy,\u201d the United States, ISIS wants to destroy the near enemy, the Arab regimes, first. This is above all a war within Islam: a conflict of Sunni against Shia, but also a war by Sunni extremists against more moderate Muslims\u2014between those who think the Muslim world should be dominated by a single strand of Wahhabism and its extremist offshoot Salafism and those who support a pluralistic vision of Muslim society. The leaders of ISIS seek to eliminate all Muslim and non-Muslim minorities from the Middle East\u2014not only erasing the old borders and states imposed by Western powers, but changing the entire ethnic, tribal, and religious composition of the region.\u00a0 www.nybooks.com\/blogs\/nyrblog\/2014\/dec\/02\/isis-what-us-doesnt-understand\/\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

From Mumbai to Paris<\/strong><\/p>\n