globalresearch--2019-01-08--Los Angeles Teachers Prepare for Strike

Los Angeles Teachers Prepare for Strike

More than 33,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are set to strike Thursday in what would be the largest walkout by educators in the US since last year’s statewide strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona. Like the previous struggles, the battle in the nation’s second largest school district centers on the fight by educators against the assault by both the Democratic and Republican parties on the right to public education.  Teachers are demanding pay raises, smaller class sizes and increased funding to hire more nurses, librarians, counselors and other critical support staff. They are also opposing the school authorities’ use of standardized tests to scapegoat teachers for educational problems caused by the defunding of education and the deterioration of social conditions. In Los Angeles, as in other school districts, the shutting down of “failing schools” has been used as the justification for a vast expansion of for-profit charter schools, which siphon off an estimated $600 million from LA public schools each year.  While last year’s statewide strikes largely pitted educators against Republican-led state governments, in Los Angeles teachers are fighting directly against the Democratic Party, which controls the school district and the local government, holds the governor’s seat, and wields a super-majority in both houses of the state legislature.  Students and teachers march in downtown LA last month (Source: WSWS)  While the teachers’ unions in California and nationally have falsely promoted the Democrats as allies of teachers and defenders of public education, the Democratic Party has proven to be just as ruthless an enemy as the Republican Party. Decades of bipartisan funding cuts have reduced California schools, once known as the best in the nation, to 43rd in the US in per-pupil spending.  The state is expecting a $15 billion budget surplus, but the new governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, has declared that any proposals for increased K-12 school funding will have to be “whittled down” because “we all” have to “live within in our means.” After a meeting with state Democrats, he told the Sacramento Bee last month, “We’re not going to deviate from being fiscally prudent”—a reference to his predecessor Jerry Brown’s austerity measures.  Yet both corporate-controlled parties have showered Silicon Valley and the entertainment and finance industries with endless tax cuts. California is home to the largest number of billionaires—144—in the nation.  The school district, headed by the multi-millionaire former investment banker Austin Beutner, has refused to budge. It is demanding that the paltry three percent raise it is offering be contingent on cutting the health care benefits of future teachers. School officials are also rejecting out-of-hand the teachers’ demands for increased school funding and hiring, and a curtailment of charter schools.  An article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times (Beutner is the newspaper’s former publisher and CEO), complained that teachers are demanding “more control over how money is spent at schools, how much time is given over to standardized testing and how space on district campuses is allocated to charter schools.” The article continued:  Beutner got his start in the privatization of public assets when he was tapped by the Clinton administration to head the State Department’s collaboration in the dismantling of state-owned property in the Soviet Union and its sell-off to criminal asset strippers. Backed by powerful corporate interests pushing for more for-profit charter schools, Beutner, a Democrat and former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, hopes to inflict a devastating defeat on the teachers and accelerate the privatization of public education.  In the face of this all-out assault, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), which is affiliated with both national teacher unions—the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—has kept teachers on the job without a new contract for a year-and-a-half, including months of state mediation and fact-finding. In so doing, the union ignored a near unanimous strike mandate by rank-and-file teachers.  In a last-ditch effort to prevent a walkout, UTLA officials are meeting with school authorities on Monday. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece Sunday, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl wrote:  This vague formula appears to invite the district to offer some cosmetic change in its position in order to block a strike.  If the UTLA is unable to prevent a strike, it plans to follow the pattern of the NEA and AFT in 2018 in West Virginia and other states where the unions worked to isolate the teachers and then cut deals with the political establishment that abandoned educators’ demands for substantial improvements in pay and school funding. The unions did everything they could to prevent the spread of strikes across the US and prevent the movement of educators from developing into a political confrontation with the Democratic Party.  Instead, they sought to channel the opposition of the teachers behind the campaign of the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections under the banner of “Remember in November.” The outright treachery of this policy is already becoming evident to the teachers in LA.  In his comment in the Times, Caputo-Pearl tried to boost illusions that teachers could achieve their aims by lobbying for increased funding from the Democrats in the state capital in Sacramento. The UTLA president also promoted a Democratic-backed initiative on the 2020 ballot that includes a modest increase in capital gains taxes.  The unions peddled the same illusions and lies last year in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, with the result that none of the supposed funding guarantees have been honored and no significant increase in school funding has occurred.  A court ruling by a federal judge over the weekend, which denied the district’s efforts to compel special education teachers to work during a strike, indicates that the state is looking to the union to quickly shut down a walkout before it can escalate into a broader movement of teachers and the working class more generally.  But that is exactly what is needed. If the LA teachers are to mount a serious fight, they must take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands through the formation of rank-and-file action committees in every school and community. These committees must formulate their own demands, including a 30 percent increase in wages, the reconversion of all charter schools to public schools and a vast increase in funding.  To conduct this fight, LA teachers must join their struggle with that of educators in Oakland and other school districts and fight for a statewide strike to defend the right to high quality public education. The fight of teachers must be linked to broader sections of workers as part of an assault on the fortunes of the super-rich and the fight for a radical redistribution of wealth to meet social needs.  Los Angeles educators who spoke to the WSWS Teacher Newsletter expressed their determination to fight. Lamisha, a school counselor in her fifth year with the district, said,  “I travel to an elementary school one day, a middle school another day, and a high school another day, and so on. Things are getting worse because of the social crisis, and we have no support. “Everything is on a minimum level for maximum problems. We need more counselors who can work with kids with anger management and other problems. If a child is homeless, they’re experiencing trauma. How can they learn? We need to get to the root of the problems, and no one’s tackling that one.” “The teachers have got to speak out now,” Barbara, a special education assistant since 1999, told the WSWS. “Almost everybody I know is working two jobs to make ends meet. The three percent they’re offering the teachers is nothing. It used to be that you’d automatically get a three percent raise, like a cost-of-living raise. Then you’d get a real raise on top of that. Even people working at In ‘n Out and McDonalds are getting better raises.”  Barbara, who is member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, added,  “Our union has thrown us under the bus. We were told that if we attended the training in June, we would get an additional five percent in pay. That never happened. Our contract was violated. I don’t understand why we can’t go out in support of the teachers. All my local said we’re going to do is wear red. That’s all.” “I have been teaching for over 25 years and every year teachers have been mandated to do more with less,” an LA teacher posted in the comment section of a local news outlet. “The evidence is in my classroom and in the school. The school grounds are unkempt, as you can see scuff marks, trash across the campus, dirty restrooms, dusty windows, because the district has downsized custodial staff. My kindergarten students and I sweep the room and pretend to ‘ice skate’ with baby wipes while listening to music to mop the room. “Our library is neglected because we only have a librarian every other week and the library is closed the week she is not there. There are less resources and teachers are treated like children. We have to justify why we need a learning tool or why we need certain books to meet students’ needs. Many of us either swallow the cost and buy what we need or we just make do with what we have—which is not enough. “Sometimes I think it’s a miracle I still try to engage my students despite all the obstacles I encounter every day. I enjoy teaching my students and I value them. That’s why I think the course we’re on as a district is not sustainable. I cannot continue to subsidize my students’ education and it’s getting harder and harder for me and my colleagues to pretend that everything is okay. It’s not. That’s why I’m willing to strike—so that my students and I get the respect we deserve.”  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.


globalresearch--2019-02-19--A New Despotism in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism

There is a fascinating chapter toward the end of Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America titled “What Kind of Despotism Do Democratic Nations Have to Fear?” in which the author attempted something truly extraordinary – to describe a social condition which humankind had never before encountered. We find him trying to put his finger on something which does not yet exist, but which – in his extraordinary political imagination – he was able to foresee with startling clarity.  I maintain that we have good reason to fear that the business model of commercial surveillance – pioneered by Google and adopted by Facebook, among others – is serving to undermine the foundations of our democracy. Shoshana Zuboff explains in her new book, The Age of Surveillance Capital (Public Affairs, 2019), that the system works by treating human experience as “free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvements, the rest are declared as proprietary behavioral surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence,’ and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioral futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behavior.”  In effect, we are becoming the subject of a new insidious, subtle, and almost invisible form of subjugation that was foreseen with uncanny ability by Tocqueville in 1849. Over a hundred and seventy-five years ago, Tocqueville wrote:  He goes on to describe the elevation of  The notion of a bubble here is a useful one: central to the work of Jakob von Uexküll, an Estonian-born biologist and one of the fathers of biosemiotics, is the concept of the umwelt – or ‘surrounding-world’ – the ‘soap-bubble’ that each creature creates for itself and which constitutes their experiential world. The umwelt is composed of signs as bearers of meaning, and for each organism the umwelt is the whole of their reality. What distinguishes us as human beings is that our umwelt is not fixed, immobile, rigid, or static. One of the ways we can understand the effect of Facebook’s algorithms on its users is that the umwelt each user inhabits runs the danger of effectively shrinking: growing smaller and ever more calcified.  In “How Facebook’s Algorithm Suppresses Content Diversity and How the Newsfeed Rules Your Clicks,” the author Zeynep Tufekci asserts that researchers were able to definitively conclude that, by a measurable amount, Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm reduces a user’s exposure to “…ideologically diverse, cross-cutting content…”  By assuring that we are exposed only to that which we are likely to approve of and assent to, our umwelt – or social reality – is that much more diminished and homogenized.  Facebook’s business model has far-reaching implications, especially in terms of our ability to empathize with others – others who may not be like, or think like, ourselves. This had devastating results in Myanmar where Facebook became a tool for ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. While it certainly may not have been its intention, Facebook has become a “forum for tribalism” promoting a “simplistic version of ‘community’” while arguably “harming democracy, science and public health” – as Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests in Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018).  Much of my research has shown that there is a close relationship between empathy and our ability to creatively reconstruct the umwelt of the other. While one cannot share his or her umwelt – each of us remains in our own soap-bubble, as it were – we can participate in a common umwelt, which in many ways is purportedly the stated goal of social media. It is ironic that Facebook, which claims to prize connectivity above all, has in fact, contributed to producing the opposite result – where each of us fixed in a vapid and hardened bubble of isolation.  In the face of an American government that is increasingly retreating from its responsibilities, we must recognize that Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the new leviathans. In serving users only those posts with which they will agree, Facebook is like Tocqueville’s ‘tutelary’s power’ which “everyday … renders the employment of free will less useful, and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space, and little by little steals the very use of free will from each citizen.” These companies do not simply want to automate information: as Zuboff observes, “the goal now is to automate us… to produce ignorance by circumventing individual awareness and thus eliminate any possibility of self-determination.”  Facebook’s business model represents a new insidious form of subjugation that does not tyrannize, but as Vaidhyanathan observes, “it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”  Facebook has contributed its share to the deterioration of epistemic norms and has helped to usher in the era of so-called post-truth. The motivation behind this disdain for truth as such, has always been the same – namely, it serves the bottom line. As McNamee puts it: “on Facebook, information and disinformation look the same; the only difference is that disinformation generates more revenue, so it gets better treatment.”  Over a two-year period preceding the 2016 election, one hundred and twenty-six million Americans saw Russian-backed content. Facebook was at best reckless in the rampant and deliberate spread of disinformation through fake Russian accounts; which is to say that by allowing the proliferation of fake news, Facebook incontrovertibly helped Donald Trump to become the President of the United States. Facebook has provided fertile ground for the spread of grossly irresponsible conspiracy theories and “hopelessly inaccurate viral posts.”  Like many others, McNamee suggests that users should have control over their own data and metadata – as if data ownership is the solution to the scourge of surveillance capitalism. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it fails to ask the more elementary question of whether such data should exist at all. As Zuboff observes “It’s like negotiating how many hours a day a seven-year-old should be allowed to work, rather than contesting the fundamental legitimacy of child labor.” Surveillance capitalism represents a new form of despotism, one that is harming our capacity for individual autonomy in order that behavioral data can continue to be generated unimpeded, supplying markets and the advertisers that are Google’s and Facebook’s real customers.  We are becoming the kind of solipsistic and atomistic society that Tocqueville foresaw, “an enumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose … each of them, withdrawn, and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others… As for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he does not see them; he touches them and does not feel them.” Alexis de Tocqueville warned us that oppression may take forms which are gentle, quiet, calm, but nonetheless, inimical to genuine freedom. To adequately respond to the problem will require more than demanding greater privacy or data ownership – it will involve a radical questioning of our basic assumptions, and a new understanding of what democracy means and entails in the age of capitalistic surveillance.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.


globalresearch--2019-11-21--Chicago Teachers Union Ratifies Contract in the Aftermath of 11 Day Strike

Chicago educators on November 16 approved by a wide margin the contract negotiated by their union leadership.  On October 17, 25,000 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members walked off the job demanding better salaries and working conditions among other issues.  The strike also was joined by members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which reached a tentative agreement prior to the teachers. A division of SEIU represents thousands of security guards and teachers’ assistants in Chicago Public Schools system.  An October 30 tentative agreement between the CTU and the city administration was agreed upon by the executive board ending the strike paving the way for a return to classes for 350,000 students on November 1. The deal created the conditions for schools to open fully staffed since the SEIU said it would not return to work until the city administration reached an agreement with the CTU.  This agreement guarantees all CTU members a 16% salary increase over the five-year life of the contract. The City of Chicago has also pledged to invest $35 million into the school system in order to reduce class sizes, placing at least one nurse and a social worker in every building by 2023.  Public support for the strike was widespread throughout the city and around the United States as school systems have come under tremendous pressure due to privatization of services, the proliferation of charter schools and tax-funded vouchers for private educational institutions. Although Chicago is a major center for industrial production, retail outlets and finance capital, the majority African American and Latinx communities still suffer from disproportionate allocations for schools.  Many of the students attending the Chicago Public Schools come from families living just above or below the poverty lines. A housing crisis which has plagued many large urban areas has impacted Chicago with the razing of public housing complexes, an epidemic of home foreclosures and the rising costs of rental units.  The recent work stoppage was the second of its kind since 2012. Nonetheless, it appears as if the situation has worsened for students, service employees and teachers over the last seven years.  Two issues raised by the CTU during the strike appear to have remained unresolved: the growing demand for affordable housing and the need to address the shrinking availability of trained librarians within the CPS. Since the previous strike in 2012, the number of librarians has declined.  An article published in the November 8 edition of American Libraries Magazine says of the situation in Chicago that:  The lack of available librarians is the direct result of the austerity which has impacted public schools. In Chicago many of the librarians have either been laid off, resigned or found positions in other sectors.  Some more affluent areas of the city have kept school libraries open through parental and community volunteers. Nonetheless, this is not necessarily an option for distressed neighborhoods and it does not address the pressing need for personnel trained in information science.  This same above-mentioned report published by American Libraries Magazine continues by emphasizing:  “While the new contract commits funding to 120 schools in economically depressed parts of the city to create new positions—though Wiltse says the language of the contract allows the funds to be used for programming or materials, not necessarily for hiring new employees—principals are tasked with making tough decisions on where to allocate those dollars. They could opt to bring librarians back to their schools, but they likely won’t, Wiltse says. ‘This contract had a lot of really big wins for our students, but it’s not going to help the lack of librarians in our school system,’ she says.”  Chicago’s new Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first woman and only third African American to serve in that position, was elected to office in April of this year amid a groundswell of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party political machine. Lightfoot pledged to improve the social conditions of the working class and poor residents of this municipality of 2.7 million people.  However, the mayor failed to negotiate an agreement with the CTU that could have avoided the 11-day strike. Tensions between the administration and the CTU continued after the tentative agreement was announced on October 30 as representatives of the union refused to appear in a proposed joint press conference with Lightfoot.  CTU President Jesse Sharkey wrote an open letter to the public after the tentative agreement in which he characterized the political atmosphere in the city as lacking representation on the part of the electorate to choose members of the CPS board. The board is selected by the mayor making all of its members political appointees of the city administration.  The letter also went on to address broader social issues underlying the strike, stressing:  “While a linchpin in our bargaining was the demand to lift our paraprofessionals out of poverty, this was not a strike solely about wages and benefits. We returned to our school communities with the same pay increase that was on the table before our strike. We fought, instead, to shift CPS policy away from a relentless agenda of austerity and privatization toward real student needs, and, by extension, the needs of the neighborhoods our school communities anchor. We fought for the common good of students, and CPS must now — for the first time in decades — invest in the bare minimum: a nurse in every school every day; social workers and counselors; and manageable class sizes, especially in schools with urgent needs.”  The Chicago Teachers’ strike follows similar actions over the last year-and-a-half. Beginning with an unexpected statewide strike in West Virginia, teachers continued to demand better wages and working conditions along with pension guarantees in other districts in Oklahoma, North Carolina, Arizona, Kentucky, Arkansas and Colorado.  Strikes occurred in 2018 and 2019 in Los Angeles and Oakland, California. Similar labor actions have taken place among bus drivers in Georgia and part-time faculty members in Virginia. This trend has been labelled #RedforEd.  November 19 was a day of action by the Indiana State Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which stayed away from the classroom to stage a rally at the Capitol building in Indianapolis. The union websites published testimonials from teachers deploring the deteriorating conditions under which they are working.  City administrations and school districts are increasingly subjected to the withholding of tax revenues for the purpose of funding high profile prestige economic projects owned and controlled by capitalist corporations. The Lincoln Yards Development in Chicago is a prime example of this process where taxpayers in the city are mandated to provide $1.3 billion in Tax Increment Funding (TIF).  A major community struggle aimed at blocking the transferal of public funds for corporate profit-making projects is underway in Chicago. Mayor Lightfoot while running for office said she had reservations about the Lincoln Yard Development and its reliance on TIF. Nevertheless, after being elected, Lightfoot gave her support to the project along with a majority of the Board of Alderman.  The Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights is suing Sterling Bay, the Lincoln Yards Development leader, saying that the utilization of TIF violates the laws of the State of Illinois which suggests that the funds should be invested in distressed communities for the benefit of the people who live there.  Aneel Chablani, chief counsel for the Lawyers Committee, said of the legal ramifications of the project:  These issues can potentially link the labor unions with community-based movements against austerity. The current phase of capitalist development requires even greater levels of worker exploitation and the expropriation of public funds for private investments which further enrich the billionaire ruling class.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Featured image is from the author


globalresearch--2019-12-15--The Humane Obligation of Conscience. Capitalist Orchestrated Horror. Desperate Protests Across the G

The Humane Obligation of Conscience. Capitalist Orchestrated Horror. Desperate Protests Across the Globe

The world war of Democracy against its people is now official.  On Oct 20, 2019, Chilean president Sebastian Pinera publicly admitted the singular capitalist threat implicitly and silently embraced by virtually all politicians across our embattled Earth: Pinera formally declared war on his people. Said this corporatist salesman of the draconian and ever-expanding horrors of corporatist austerity- better known as greed:  “We are at war against a powerful enemy, who is willing to use violence without any limits.”  Then, Pinera had his army unload their weaponry on the non-violent protesters; attempting to kill the dreams of freedom by these impoverished Chilean people who had reached the limits of their human tolerance for this oppression. As a natural reaction, a million Chileans hit the streets to raise their middle fingers at Pinera and all he and his puppet masters stand for. Then they did it again. They continue to do so this day.  Pinera’s self-serving lie, however, had already been recently translated into English by another corporate lackey also no longer possessed of proper human conscience: disgraced former UK Prime Minister Theresa May, who, while departing No.10 for Brussels with her ever reddening barbed tail thus tucked between her bowed and knee scabbed legs, declared to the world:  The World is in flames as never before. Humanity has had all it can take. It will take no more.  Now cornered by national oppression orchestrated by an insatiable globalist salivation for untold riches, the human-animal has but one remaining choice. It is now time for strong words and stronger actions. It is time for real populist leadership. It is time– in any national language– for growing worldwide opposition and activism to come together as one. The forces of capitalism fight minute-by-minute in a collective battle against humanity. The world must now rebel with maximum strength, not only as nations but as the global Congress of the Humane.  As seen in so many desperate protests across the globe, this Congress is increasing, but so far without a cohesive effort that transcends boundaries with a common focal point, one that will bring all national protest movements together to fight this corporate enemy of man. After spending a week marching through the streets of London while reflecting with optimism on the increased opposition protests globally, it just may be that Extinction Rebellion- that scourge started mere months ago here in London- will provide effective necessary organization and an epicentre of protest to this overdue worldwide non-violent demand for real systemic governmental change.  Today, the list of truly populist national leaders is a rarity of decimal point proportions. This past month’s’ American backed and capitalist orchestrated horror show coup against newly re-elected Bolivian President Evo Morales well illustrates this in detail each and every day. Those who aspire to true leadership- like Morales- are demonized, marginalized and vilified- or overthrown- by Zio-Corporate interests and a complicit media that exists for the same purpose as Pinera and May and who have no interest whatsoever in populist democracy.  Rather, today’s leaders of each of the purported international democracies- political, spiritual, and societal- are in reality a far-reaching sociopathic conspiracy cloaked within a very antiquated definition of “democracy” long ago dead and gone. These faux leaders are gladly willing to steal the livelihood of the many while defrauding all but themselves of any future prosperity, thus stealing the democratic apple once known as “Hope” and turning it, instead, into nothing more than a dangling carrot.  Yet…they still want more!  Throughout our ever more impoverished world, what these forces of non-stop austerity do not want, will never tolerate, and abhor to the base of their soulless drive for greed- ever – is resistance: A public resistance that becomes a rebellion and then sparks into revolution. This natural humanist cycle –now suffering under similar social conditions as seen today-has been repeated throughout history by humane civilian necessity when the proper conscience of man finally awakens to the vital need for personal or family liberation from…one’s own government!  These “primal forces of nature, Mr Beale”?! Oh, how they detest Extinction Rebellion.  For, it is THEM that we come for!  As I stepped off the train at Paddington Station after a two-hour ride down to London, memories came to mind of arriving in Los Angeles, then New York, then Washington, D.C., in what seemed like aeons ago, but a mere eight years. Like tens of thousands of others back then whose backs had been broken by the last straw of capitalism, I had come to resist. The name of that resistance was called, “Occupy!”  In those heady days, there was an optimism in the air and an understanding, like here this past few weeks at XR, that it was indeed the “system itself” that was-is-the problem, and that we could change it. Would change it. As documented in more than twenty articles from the Occupy camps at that time and recently encapsulated in, “The Day American Activism Died,” a nation rose to fix that endemic problem: to fix the system. Occupy provided a communal epicentre within scores of US towns for common collective protest. We did this so well- all of us– that Occupy was within 30 days of the first Occupy National Assembly and a potential move to a third political party. Better: A return to the proper definition of populist democracy too long ago forgotten.  Then America’s new constitutional scholar president… he crushed it!  That experience in becoming involved with Occupy on both coasts of America, now on this new day, left an indelible and sad memory of what might have been.  So, while marching up the stairs of Charing Cross station in London, a city steeped in populist history that provided sanctuary to Marx and later Lenin and saw the powerful rise of the political epicentres of The Weavers and the Chartists who propagated social revolution in the time of the industrial revolution. Walking over to Trafalgar Square to join my new brethren at the main XR camp, as I tossed down my backpack- the same one as long before- I once again slowly straightened my spine, drew breath and looked about the camp; slowly turning 360 to carefully study this brand new epicentre of protest: it’s colours, it’s tents, its banners, its protesters chatting with impassioned gestures in small groups, the costumes; drummers beating skins, musicians playing and optimism dancing.  Listening with just the right ears to these increasing winds of change, one could hear a special note so rarely heard: that perfect low rumbling pitch…a cadence? A march? Ever-increasing in its frequency, rising high across this XR camp, entwining with every part of it to create a sweet music that only a concert made of the full instruments of human protest can distil into a simple smile. Oh, it had been far, far, too long. So, so many memories roared back in once again before moistened eyes.  But what had we learned?  The world everywhere howls in protest. Worldwide, democracy is now merely oppression rebranded. The old fashioned definition is repeatedly dashed on the rocks of capitalist austerity while the cries of so many nations beg for release from the iron grip of America, IMF, World Bank, EU, and the docket of ever-greedy corporations and their prostitute politicians who provide them with the military support for their crimes. This has been witnessed just this past week in Chile, Guinea, Catalonia, Kashmir, Hong Kong, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Pakistan, Gaza, Egypt, Lebanon, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and again on the Brexit stained streets here in London; where the same human condition has been squeezed- and squeezed– to rebellion.  These protests are growing. They will not stop.  Worldwide, the problem is now understood by far too many. Silence? Acquiescence? Obedience? No more. World protesters are now righteous in their individual causes and sacrifices. But, they all so far lack the one essential strength- the First Rule of Democracy– necessary to achieve real long-lasting change. So far, they resist alone. To win, all must come together.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 180 in-depth articles over the past ten years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk  All images in this article are from the author


pravadareport--2019-04-24--Americas choice a party of criminals or a party of cowards

America's choice: a party of criminals or a party of cowards

If there is one unwritten, but immutable, law governing the world, it is that people advocating for social change, or even revolution, are automatically at a disadvantage.  One reason is that those who uphold the status-quo are often also the ones profiting from it.  Absent significant motivation, they are not about to yield even a modicum of power or privilege, regardless of how corrupt or unjust this status-quo might be.  Those who advocate for change, on the other hand, might easily agree that such change is necessary, but vigorously disagree about how extensive it should be.  During the civil rights struggles of the late 1960s, for example, more traditional activists contended that laws against discrimination, and more opportunities for racial minorities to gain employment in a capitalist society, was an adequate solution, while younger, more militant activists, argued that nothing short of revolution and the destruction of the capitalist system would suffice.  Yet, even among these more militant activists, unity was hard to achieve.  Questions arose about who should be included in this revolution.  Some, for example, believed it was essential to include the working class, while others argued that America's working class was the same group that elected "law and order" candidate Richard Nixon to the presidency (twice!).  Also, some revolutionaries, who followed traditional Marxist thinking, contended that no revolution could be successful without the right social conditions being in place.  Others subscribed to Regis Debray's theory of focalism.  Focalism utilized the traditional Leninist theory of vanguardism, which contended that it was essential for the most politically enlightened to educate the masses, through words and deeds, about the necessity for drastic social change, and by doing so they could ignite the desire for revolution where none had existed before.  To support his theory, Debray explained how an initially small band of revolutionaries was able to defeat a numerically superior foe during the Cuban revolution.  It could be argued, however, that perhaps the proper social conditions were in place in Cuba to make its revolution a success.  This argument can be bolstered by the failure of Che Guevara's focalist efforts in Bolivia in 1967.  One of the most interesting arguments Guevara proffered was that revolutions were not only a necessity to overthrow repressive dictatorships, but even essential in a democracy.  Elections, in his view, were designed to placate the masses by providing the illusion of change without the reality of it.  Perhaps the most important social condition necessary for any significant change to transpire is when a substantial number of people come to believe they have nothing to lose if they oppose the status-quo.  In most dictatorships, where there are often mammoth income gaps between the wealthy and the poor, this desperation often comes easily.  But most democracies, like the United States (even with its huge income disparities between the rich and poor), have managed to provide all but the most impoverished with enough material goods to make them afraid of losing them.  An excellent example of this comes from a semi-biographical play written by the late, great Rod Serling.  In one scene, the main character laments to his friend, "You know how they do it?  They pay you $100,000 a year until you need that much to live on.  Then you spend the rest of your life terrified they're going to take it away."  It should also not be surprising that many of these material goods are diversionary in nature, designed to keep people so immersed in superficiality that they come to accept it as substance.  Those who doubt this, just look around.  People are glued to their telephones and other forms of social media.  So-called "news" is inundated with celebrity gossip, and people are more aware of alleged (and usually artificially manufactured) feuds between the rich and famous than they are actual conflicts where the innocent are dying.  People spend hours, even days, playing video games.  And those who think the blacklisting of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was about his alleged "disrespect" for the flag, think again.  Football is the ultimate diversion, with countless hours and dollars being spent watching and/or betting on games or participating in "fantasy" football leagues, not to mention a treasure-trove for advertisers.  Kaepernick shattered this diversion by compelling unwilling people to face the reality of racial injustices that occur both inside and outside of America's legal system, something the social control mechanisms of American society would rather have people ignore.  In 1994, a former employee of the State of Arkansas filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Democratic President Bill Clinton. In 1998, the Republican controlled House of Representatives decided that some of the statements Clinton had made in response to this lawsuit sufficiently arose to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" standard required by the United States Constitution, and they voted to impeach him on two charges: perjury and obstruction of justice.  Fast forward to the coup of 2000, when a corruptly politicized United States Supreme Court appointed Republican George W. Bush president of the United States.  Thanks to this appointment, the Bush administration did and/or sanctioned the following:  Lied, in order to enrich their cronies in the oil and armaments industries, about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction-a lie that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the destabilization of the region; advocated the use of torture, even the torture of American citizens; obliterated the Constitutional right to due process; and abused the material witness statutes.  And this is only a partial list.  But even though the Democratic party held a majority in both the House and Senate from 2007-2009, Bush's actions, in this party's eyes, did not meet the "high crimes and misdemeanor" criteria.  Then followed Democratic President Barack Obama, and a weary world, sickened by the Bush years, awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact he had done nothing to deserve it, and, as his presidency progressed, even demonstrated he was completely unworthy of it.  Through his lackey, then-Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama did everything in his power to not only ensure those who engaged in torture and war crimes during the Bush years went unpunished, both criminally and civilly, but even zealously prosecuted and imprisoned people who exposed these crimes.  The result was that former torturers became law professors, federal judges, and one even heads the CIA-the very agency responsible for much of this torture.  Yet, when the Republicans talked impeachment, not one of their alleged impeachable crimes dealt with Obama's coddling of torturers and war criminals.  Now we have Republican Donald Trump, and a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.  And once again this party's abject stench of cowardice is ubiquitous.  Despite allegations in the now famous (or infamous) Mueller Report that Trump repeatedly attempted to obstruct justice, this still, according to the so-called "mainstream" Democrats, isn't enough to impeach him (even though it was sufficient enough for the Republicans to impeach Clinton), nor is the fact that Trump violated federal law by paying "hush money" during his campaign to silence women about sexual relationships he had with them.  The principal excuse being cited for why Democrats are terrified to impeach Trump is that it could negatively impact Democratic candidates during the 2020 election.  Yet the facts don't bear this out.  First of all, the Republicans did not hesitate to impeach Clinton, even though it was politically unpopular to do so.  According to a 1999 article on CNN.com, only "a third of the country" supported his impeachment, and more than 50% agreed with the Senate's ultimate decision to allow him to remain in office.  In addition, as discussed above, Republican George W. Bush obtained office after Clinton.  Although the machinations used to get him there were duplicitous, they never could have happened if the election had not been close.  As also mentioned above, until the final two years of his time in office Bush enjoyed a Republican majority in one or both Houses of Congress, and Republicans also controlled one House of Congress during four of the eight years Obama was in office, and in his final two years they controlled both.  In other words, the political fallout against Republicans for the impeachment of Clinton was negligible.  And it should not be forgotten that Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes, winning only because of the anachronistic idiocy of the so-called "Electoral College."  And, despite Mueller's assertion that no "collusion" took place between Trump and foreign governments to ensure his election, it has also been determined that bogus posts by foreign governments on social media sites were designed to help Trump garner votes.  This determination has resulted in some of these sites pledging to be more proactive in preventing "fake news."  So, the mainstream Democrats' excuse about the fear of political "repercussions" if they impeach Trump is specious at best, and gutless at worst.  If you're asking why there was a discussion about the need for change, and perhaps even revolution, at the opening of this article, the answer is simple:  Ever since the dawn of the new millennium, Americans, election after election, have trudged to the polls (if they bother to vote at all), to sheepishly vote for either the party of the criminals (Republicans) or the party of the cowards (Democrats).  It's time for that to change, even if it takes a revolution to do it.


slate--2019-01-23--The Next Step in MeToo Is for Men to Reckon With Their Male Fragility

The Next Step in #MeToo Is for Men to Reckon With Their Male Fragility

These are devastating times for survivors of sexual assault. It is devastating to live through the constant barrage of new accusations, and it is devastating to have witnessed a credibly accused man like Brett Kavanaugh elevated to the Supreme Court. It is also devastating to have lived through the 2016 election, when credible accusations of sexual misconduct and assault from numerous women did not prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.  Progressives and feminists like me are enraged, perhaps especially, by the way we see conservatives defending serially accused men, such as Roy Moore, and assailing survivors, such as Christine Blasey Ford. Yet, if my own experiences of sexual abuse have taught me something, it is that liberals need to take a long look in the mirror before laying blame solely on the outdated patriarchal models overtly embraced by the right. Though the fierce opposition to female liberation from the right is well-known, progressives and feminists also need to demonstrate a willingness to address the unique challenges of misogyny and sexual abuse from men who claim, and maybe even fully believe, themselves to be feminists. Understanding the specific problems of addressing sexual abuse perpetrated by progressive men can unearth and explain some of the broader issues our society at large is facing when it comes to alleviating gender-based oppression more broadly. It’s also worth acknowledging that many women who are abused by men claiming to be feminists are particularly afraid to speak out. This is unsurprising—when we speak out, we are betraying “our” men.  We will not win this struggle for gender liberation until we focus more on perpetrators, men, and masculinity rather than on survivors, women, and femininity, and in many cases that means holding “our” men accountable. We should not be afraid to accurately frame the problem—to change our language from “she was raped” to “he raped her.” One of the largest hurdles facing us as we struggle to dismantle gendered oppression is that it has thus far largely been considered the realm of women to understand and rectify. Men are often absent from conversations on gender because they are considered the default gender, and so rethinking these ideas is not deemed their work. But as increasing numbers of women have a voice in decision-making structures, and as the #MeToo movement has started to shift the ground, it is becoming impossible to ignore us. Men are now expected to catch up.  We will not win this struggle for gender liberation until we focus more on perpetrators, men, and masculinity rather than on survivors, women, and femininity  Unfortunately, as has happened with issues of race, the patriarchal forces in our society have largely reacted with defensiveness. The parallels to structural oppression on the basis of race are apparent when analyzing the central arguments Robin DiAngelo makes in her book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. The complicity of all white people in racial oppression stems from the systemic nature of white supremacy, in that it is collective and engineered into social machinery; this counters the long-held misconception that racism operates only at the individual level, in a conscious and intentional manner. This is the same framework we must apply to the gendered hierarchy—it is not enough for men to simply not abuse women just as it is not enough for white people not to be avowedly racist. All men, even the “good men,” must also recognize the structures that are in place to maintain male hegemony. These structures are still very much intact among progressives, where good men may be enabling the abuse of women even when they are not aware of it.  Since the Harvey Weinstein news first broke in October 2017, we have read countless stories about sexual abuse. Many, if not most, of them focusing on the theme of power, yet the gendered aspect of sexual harassment—while often implicitly present in the discussions—is one that has been taboo to explicitly state. But neglecting gender-based explanations and analyses leaves us vulnerable to inaccurately identifying the critical male dimension of the problem. Progressives have an aversion to gender distinctions for many reasons—understandably because such distinctions have long been deployed to subjugate women and queer people. But this reluctance has led to stripping #MeToo of an explicitly gendered dimension and focusing solely on institutional hierarchies, where sexual harassment is regarded as primarily an issue of power imbalances in institutions. And yet, in an analysis devoid of gender, there is a blatant disregard to the structural power that men wield in society, especially straight white men.  It’s essential for us to realize that even sexual liberation emerged within a social atmosphere of pervasive misogyny. It is often overlooked that men have long been sexually liberated with respect to women—perhaps too liberated—to the extent where a woman’s agency and refusal is regarded as another obstacle to eradicate. This is a gendered difference that has been baked into our legal system and our cultural understanding for centuries, and undoing this requires applying a critical gender lens to discussions pertaining to sex and power. Laws in the West previously sexually confined women, but now, even as women gain more sexual agency, slut shaming, a key facet of rape culture, enforces control over women’s sexual agency.  It is time for us to place responsibility where it belongs—not on women’s sexuality and bodies but on the shoulders of men and masculinity.  Culturally, men who are sexually proactive and successful in seducing large numbers of women are lauded, while women who do so are denounced and shamed. I remember a man once telling me that in his freshman year of high school, a girl performed oral sex on him, and somehow word spread. He said it was his best year of school, and her worst. The overwhelming evidence indicating a primarily one-sided flow of sexual violence and abuse from men toward women (and toward other men and nonbinary individuals) is also ignored if we factor gender out of the equation and focus solely on institutional hierarchy. This is not to say that women never perpetuate abuse, but it is possible for #MeToo to explicitly put an emphasis on female survivors of sexual abuse. #BlackLivesMatter provides a strong model for this approach, as a movement that emphasizes the oppression of one particular group—black people—through systemic police violence. Advocates for racial justice have provided many cogent rebuttals to “All Lives Matter” arguments that criticize the movement for focusing on black victims. These rebuttals provide a framework for #MeToo advocates to similarly emphasize the critical need for the movement to focus on the gendered dimension of the problem.  This doesn’t mean there is no space for men to be allies to the movement, but it does mean that such allyship requires more reckoning than what this moment seems to allow. There is an additional layer of complexity to misogyny from feminist men: the dissonance between their conscious values and their subconscious absorption of misogyny. Similar to the internal conflict within conservative men between their values of sexual puritanism and their feelings of lust, some progressive men experience the disconnect between their avowed feminism and their internal sexual urges, often responding to social pressure, to sexually objectify women. As with the puritans, the progressive male rage is unleashed on women, and we are then resented by men for evoking these unethical urges within them. It is time for us to place responsibility where it belongs—not on women’s sexuality and bodies but on the shoulders of men and masculinity.  In order to effect broad change, the key vehicle will be changing the toxic aspects of received masculinity, particularly through early interventions to prevent harm to another generation of children. As revealed by the ensuing controversy after the Gillette commercial, which challenged men to confront toxic masculinity within themselves and other men, these efforts will be met with fierce resistance and defensiveness. Patriarchy is fueled by “male fragility” in similar ways that white supremacy is maintained by “white fragility.” Men need to be part of the conversation on gender justice, but they must also be willing to investigate their own role in contributing to the oppression of women—even if it is unknowing. Process and policy remedies are also direly needed as we wade through the institutional and systemic minefield of hurdles women face when challenging sexual abuse and harassment. Law enforcement itself poses both difficulties and risks for survivors in the way sexual violence is currently handled, leaving many in fear of reporting such crimes. Reforming the judiciary and legislation to provide more equitable treatment to survivors, particularly those who are most marginalized, is critical to improving individual outcomes.  Such reform also poses a challenge for progressives because the push for sexual accountability is often cast as oppositional to the call for due process, a cornerstone of progressive thought. The history of discomfort with prosecution resides in the traditional use of judicial and penal processes by the powerful to indict the weak, and modern-day liberal discomfort surrounding criminalization includes an additional desire to treat even perpetrators of heinous acts with humanity. These guiding principles are well-intentioned, but they fail to apply a nuanced consideration for sexual crimes against women. Sexual violence usually involves a more powerful perpetrator and a more vulnerable victim, upending the progressive assumption of universally powerless defendants. In cases of sexual harassment, the power advantage of the perpetrator to the victim is often overwhelming. Owing to these currents on the left, progressive feminists working to build a viable victims’ rights movement have sought alliances with conservatives in order to bring focus on the harm suffered by survivors of sexual violence. In an essay, “The Rise of the Victims’-Rights Movement,” historian Jill Lepore explores the relationship between the unlikely bedfellows, and concludes that some of the changes to the court system from this alliance are leading to tougher sentencing standards. Progressives should certainly evaluate the effects of survivor-centered advocacy on incarceration and punishment, but this must be weighed against the long history of women being denied justice. #MeToo is currently unfairly portrayed to be against due process. It is not—it instead attempts to acknowledge the anger and frustration at how long due process and justice have been denied to women both institutionally and culturally.  The case of Cyntoia Brown highlights the continued complexity of these intersections. Brown, a victim of child sex trafficking and a woman of color, was 16 years old when she was sentenced to life in prison, for shooting a man who had solicited her for sex and taken her to his home. Recently, a court ruled that she must serve 51 years before she was eligible for release, a decision reversed in early January when she was given clemency. Brown will now be released in August, and her case shows a situation where the court believing her as a survivor of sexual abuse and exploitation led to a lighter sentence, running contrary to the framing where believing victims abets questionable prosecutions. Instances where women have killed their abusers—or those abusing their children—provide an important counterpoint to simplistic links between believing survivors and increased incarceration.  These challenges are also present for survivors who are women of color in cases where the perpetrators of sexual harassment or violence are men of color. The white lens of the social left has traditionally favored denying woman of color justice rather than doing the messy work of grappling with issues of sexual misconduct and violence by men of color. This task is daunting because the system is already set up to disenfranchise men of color, as Lara Bazelon demonstrated in a recent New York Times op-ed explaining how the stricter standards for prosecuting sexual assault had resulted in a vast increase in men of color being imprisoned. Bazelon penned her support for recent changes to Title IX to adjust backward Obama-era reforms, partially based on consultations with “men’s rights activists” put forth by the Trump administration. These are certainly systemic problems, but it’s worth noting that they track onto our already established patriarchal hierarchies of power. Progressives—and especially white progressives—tend to erase the challenges women of color and trans women face in reporting sexual assault.  Race also plays a key role in survivors being believed. Lena Dunham’s confession that she lied to discredit Aurora Perrineau—a black woman—to protect her friend and colleague Murray Miller—a white man—further exposes the racism women of color who speak out often face. Women of color and trans women will be disproportionately affected by obstacles for women to report sexual harassment and abuse. Marginalized women—lower income women, women of color, trans women—are prime targets for abusers, because we are less likely to be believed by authorities and institutions, less likely to be supported by the largely cis white rape survivor support networks, and less likely to be represented by plaintiff firms that consider their economic bottom lines when accounting for jury bias against marginalized women.  We will not move forward until we understand that misogyny is something that is so embedded that it imbibes our own thinking and that of those men we love most dearly.  There are also unique complications for survivors of abuse when the perpetrators are influential and visible progressive men. Since much of the labor and support for survivors is done in progressive circles, powerful progressive perpetrators often have deep personal ties to those involved in that realm and command respect and admiration from victims’ rights advocates. Survivors may thus experience fear, isolation, and rejection by those from whom they seek support, as often the personal loyalties of the traditional sources of support are with the perpetrators. Transgender women face the additional vector of exclusion because many of those activists who most deeply understand the issues of sexual harassment and rape do not even consider us women.  Just as the broader social hierarchies present obstacles to justice, our interpersonal hierarchies do as well. Men we love and respect, in whom we want to believe, populate our worlds in ways no other oppressor group does. Every aspect of our interrelation with the world is entwined with having faith in the ties that surround us, from the bonds with our fathers to our fierce love for our sons. Not him, we want to think, especially when he is there in the trenches with us against the patriarchy. But it should not be considered a setback to the #MeToo movement when male allies face allegations of violence or misconduct. It is instead a potent reminder of how pervasive such toxic behaviors in fact are. None of this is to suggest that progressives are worse on gender justice than those on the right—clearly this is not the case. However, it goes to show how fraught the struggle for gender justice is and how grueling the fight for women’s liberation will be. The chains and shackles of misogyny encircle us all, we all have implicit biases, and we all exhibit “himpathy.” And we will not move forward until we understand that misogyny is something that is so embedded that it imbibes our own thinking and that those men we love most dearly, our sons, our partners, our fathers, are easily induced to oppress women by the prevailing forces of social conditioning. It is possibly all men, including men that we love.  Women have long been advocating and organizing for our fundamental right to physical safety, largely without any concrete support and effort from men. As we continue on the laborious road to “taking back the night” and constructing a future without the blight of sexual violence, we should look to the men closest to us and ask more of them. Where necessary, we should hold them accountable, as difficult as it may seem. Men, including those we love, should understand that inaction from them makes them complicit in perpetuating a culture that is hostile and violent toward women. There should no longer be opportunities for men to remove themselves from our efforts, and we must insist that the men in our lives are active and introspective participants in our fight for gender liberation. After all, women’s and queer people’s liberation from patriarchal oppression is inextricably linked to freeing men from the bludgeons of toxic masculinity. None of us can be truly free unless all of us—women, men, and everyone in between—are.


21stcenturywire--2019-08-01--2020 Debate Tulsi Gabbard Takes Down Kamala Harris Twitter Censors Gabbard

2020 Debate: Tulsi Gabbard Takes Down Kamala Harris – Twitter Censors Gabbard

The second installment of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate was held in Detroit last night, and appeared to be more energetic than the previous night, featuring numerous lively exchanges between candidates.  Most notably, sparks flew between Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and California Senator Kamala Harris, as Gabbard attacked Harris’s problematic record on criminal justice as her state’s prosecutor and attorney general.  “There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” said Gabbard said. Harris tried to rebuke Gabbard, but only received a second blow in return. Watch:  During the entire first hour of the debate, CNN’s panel of ‘moderators’ actively avoided Gabbard allowing her to speak only once in the first 60 minutes of the contest, while favoring DNC favorites Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, both of who were given near unlimited time to talk and argue back and forth in lengthy exchanges.  After the debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Kamala Harris about the exchange with Gabbard, and Harris proceeded to unleash an ad hominem attack on the Hawaii Congresswoman, calling her “an apologist” for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Watch:  Harris’ press secretary, Ian Sams, went on to label Gabbard’s supporters as part of a clandestine “the Russian propaganda machine.”  Quickly falling into line behind the Democrat’s Russiagate conspiracy were mainstream journalists, including Wajahat Ali from the New York Times, immediately reacting by circulating xenophobic smears claiming that Gabbard’s trending popularity is part of some secret Russian plot:  Not losing any time in manipulating public opinion for this US election, Silicon Valley gatekeepers at Twitter quickly moved to suppress Tulsi Gabbard from its US Trending topics – effectively erasing her from its US rankings of trending topics, although Gabbard was clearly visibly in their world rankings. This  was more proof that self-styled technocrats at Twitter are in fact directly involved in election meddling and interference in the US:  Despite Twitter’s best efforts to censor Gabbard, interest in her performance clearly dominated Google Trends in across the US:  Recently Tulsi Gabbard filed a lawsuit against Google for censoring and erasing the Democratic candidate.  Independent journalist Tom Luongo describes how Google acted to blunt interest in her campaign in the critical hours after the first democratic debate. He explains:  The two main points of her lawsuit are: 1) suspending her Google Ad account for six hours while search traffic for her was spiking and 2) Gmail disproportionately junked her campaign emails.  This represents an intervention into her ability to speak to voters and, as such, is a violation of not only her First Amendment rights but also, more critically, campaign finance law.


activistpost--2019-11-08--Chechen Leader Ramzan Kadyrov Suggests Killing Users Who “Insult Honour” Online

Chechnya’s outspoken ruler Ramzan Kadyrov has publicly suggested the murder of his government’s critics online.  During a government meeting about the development of small businesses on November 5, Kadyrov appeared to condone extrajudicial attacks on online critics, calling on youth organisations, law enforcement agencies, and the government to come together to name and shame such users.  This is not unusual behaviour for Kadyrov, who has ruled the restive autonomous republic of one million in Russia’s North Caucasus since 2007. For several years, human rights defenders have consistently cited Chechnya as one of Russia’s most repressive regions, citing widespread torture, disappearances, and a complete intolerance of dissent. This makes Chechnya an extremely dangerous place for any kind of critical or investigative journalism; in 2017, the Russian journalist Elena Milasheva went into hiding after receiving death threats connected with her reporting on an ongoing crackdown against LGBT people in Chechnya.  The most striking sentence in Kadyrov’s speech read:  Initially, Kadyrov appeared to stress the legality of these threats, possibly referring to a law passed this year against “disrespect” to the authorities online. The Chechen leader added that “the law, constitution, and democracy are for the well-being of the people,” but warned that “all the rest are crooks, traitors, rabble-rousers, and schizophrenics of all stripes; we must stop them.” Ominously, Kadyrov warned that “if somebody insults honour, it is impossible to leave him alone, even if the whole world burns with a blue flame and the laws of all countries are violated.”  Predicting a public outcry, Kadyrov complained that “now they’ll all say: ‘Ramzan said that somebody must be killed’ yet again.” His prediction was correct: Kadyrov’s words have been reported by both pro-Kremlin and independent media outlets, generating fierce criticism in the comments sections of both.  Kadyrov’s speech was originally broadcast by CGTRK Grozny, a state-owned television channel close to Chechnya’s regional government. It only received wider attention after the BBC’s Russian service produced a video with Russian subtitles. Most of Kadyrov’s address to the regional government was in Chechen, with occasional phrases in Russian. That could be deliberate; the BBC has noted that Kadyrov is much more belligerent when speaking in Chechen.  There are, after all, not many non-native Chechen speakers worldwide; this fact has led Russian government officials to claim that Kadyrov’s words were mistranslated. On November 7, Kadyrov’s press secretary Alvi Karimov told Interfax-News that BBC had not covered Kadyrov’s words objectively and that “their translator knows Chechen as well as I know Tahitian.” But other responses suggest that the translation was accurate; the same day, Chechnya’s ombudswoman for human rights Kheda Saratova remarked that while she could not support such words as a human rights defender, she sympathised with Kadyrov, who was fed up with being insulted online and made death threats simply for effect, in order to get his critics to be silent.  But it’s possible that these words were not merely an outburst on the spur of the moment.  In April, Kadyrov met with local media representatives and demanded that they step up the fight against “ideological attacks against Chechnya and Russia,” giving speaker of parliament Magomed Daudov and Akhmed Dudayev, the recently-appointed head of CGTRK Grozny, three months to show results. This also led to a wave of social media harassment against the popular exiled blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a Chechen Islamist video blogger living in exile whose Telegram channel is sharply critical of Kadyrov’s government.  This has become a common response to prominent Chechen critics. As Kavkaz Realii, the North Caucasus service of RFE/RL, has reported, citing anonymous sources, the Chechen authorities have run a “troll factory” since at least 2017, whose employees register under Russian-sounding names to post support for Kadyrov online, giving the impression that his heavy handed rule has admirers across the rest of Russia. By October 2019, Dudayev declared that Kadyrov and Chechnya were victims of attempts at defamation from overseas, the battle against which would be aided by a full reorganisation of state media.  In light of these efforts, it is no surprise that Kadyrov has made similar threats in the past. A similar incident occurred in June 2019, when a lingering territorial dispute between Chechnya and the neighbouring Russian republic of Dagestan flared up again. In this tense atmosphere, Kadyrov’s Instagram account (of which he is an avid user) was filled with critical and sometimes offensive comments from Dagestani users. Kadyrov was indignant, and recorded a video on June 11 in which he said that he had “brotherly respect” to Dagestanis and fellow Chechens, the security services were watching such behaviour online:  This was no bluster; it appears that Chechnya’s authorities closely follow the mood on social media. In fact, they have an extensive history of publicly humiliating Chechens live on television for any kind of criticism or dissent, including that expressed on social media. On February 1, a man named Musa Susayev apologised on television for sharing an anonymous message on WhatsApp criticising the conduct of Chechnya’s gas company. On July 27, 16-year old Magomed Akhmatov had to repent live on air in a conversation with Chechnya’s chief mufti Salah Mezhiyev, which was broadcast by GTRK Grozny, saying that he was “deceived by people who care nothing for me,” and “apologised before the entire Chechen people.” In September, the brothers Adam and Magomed Ismayilov were made to apologise publicly to local officials on television for leaving comments on social media speculating about the origin of the funds for a large new mosque in the city of Shali.  But across the rest of Russia, these statements are received with deep unease. At a time when charges of “extremism” have been brought against protesters such as Yegor Zhukov for much, much less, a widely shared impression across the RuNet is that Chechnya’s ruler is a law unto himself. This is probably why Russia’s presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently dismissed the idea that the Kremlin would call Kadyrov to account for his words:


aljazeera--2019-01-17--May searching for Brexit plan B by reaching out to opposition

May searching for Brexit 'plan B' by reaching out to opposition

British Prime Minister Theresa May is reaching out to opposition parties and other legislators in a battle to keep Brexit on track after surviving a no-confidence vote.  European Union countries are also debating on how to move forward now that the UK Parliament has rejected May's Brexit deal with the bloc and with the March 29 exit date looming.  Parliament overwhelmingly rejected the deal on Tuesday night, in a crushing defeat for May. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn immediately called for a no-confidence vote, but May's government narrowly survived it on Wednesday night.  May invited opposition leaders for talks about how best to avoid leaving the EU without an agreement. But Corbyn has so far declined to meet with May unless she takes the "no-deal" possibility off the table.  EU countries have generally reacted to the Brexit political crisis unfolding in the UK by putting the onus on the British government and its legislators to decide what they want to do.  Some British legislators want May to call for an extension of negotiations with the EU and postpone the March 29 deadline to leave the bloc, while others are lobbying for a second Brexit referendum. The prime minister has so far rejected those options.  France's prime minister is holding a special government meeting on Thursday on how his country will cope with a possible no-deal Brexit.  The French parliament adopted a law on Wednesday allowing emergency measures after March 30 in the event Britain leaves without a deal.  Such measures could aim to reduce problems in cross-border trade and transport, notably through the Eurotunnel beneath the English Channel, and allow British workers and retirees based in France temporary permission to stay until a longer-term deal is worked out.  EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier was expected in Lisbon, Portugal, where he was due to meet local officials and give a news conference on Thursday. Barnier said Wednesday in Strasbourg he was more concerned than ever about the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without an agreement.  If May fails to forge consensus, the world's fifth largest economy will drop out of the EU on March 29 without a deal or will be forced to halt Brexit, possibly holding a national election or even another referendum.  May has repeatedly refused to countenance another election and has warned that another referendum would be corrosive as it would undermine faith in democracy among the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.  "I believe it is my duty to deliver on the British people's instruction to leave the European Union. And I intend to do so," May said outside Downing Street in an attempt to address voters directly.  "I am inviting MPs from all parties to come together to find a way forward," May said. "This is now the time to put self-interest aside."  As the United Kingdom tumbles towards its biggest political and economic move since World War II, other members of the EU have offered to talk though they can do little until London decides what it wants out of Brexit.  Yet ever since the UK voted by 52-48 percent to leave the EU in June 2016, British politicians have failed to find agreement on how or even whether to leave the EU.  In a sign of just how hard May's task may be, the main opposition leader, Corbyn, refused to hold talks unless a no-deal Brexit was ruled out.  "Before there can be any positive discussions about the way forward, the government must remove clearly, once and for all, the prospect of the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit from the EU and all the chaos that would come as a result of that," he said.  But the further May moves towards softening Brexit, the more she alienates dedicated Brexiteers in her own party who think the threat of a no-deal Brexit is a crucial bargaining chip.  Without a deal, trade with the EU would then default to basic World Trade Organization rules.  Company chiefs are aghast at the political crisis over Brexit and say it has already damaged Britain's reputation as Europe's pre-eminent destination for foreign investment.  From Channel Tunnel operator Eurotunnel to Scottish whisky distillers, firms have called for urgent and decisive government action and warned of the consequences of a no-deal Brexit.  "If anybody believes that you can just go ahead without some sort of an agreement here, I think that that is reckless," said John Bason, finance chief of Associated British Foods, the food and retail group which has sales of over $20bn.  "The UK's food supply generally is dependent on the free flowing-border," Bason said.  Labour wants a permanent customs union with the EU, a close relationship with its single market and greater protections for workers and consumers.  But the chairman of May's Conservative party, Brandon Lewis, said on Thursday that Britain should not stay in the current customs union because striking international trade deals after Brexit is a priority.  He said senior ministers would meet colleagues from across the House of Commons, Britain's lower house of parliament, on Thursday.  The Times newspaper said both remaining in a full customs union with the EU and delaying Brexit through an extension of Article 50 would be discussed at meetings between the government and legislators.  Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday a delay to Brexit was now inevitable, adding that leaving the EU without a deal would inflict profound economic damage on the UK.


aljazeera--2019-05-06--Israel and Gaza reach ceasefire agreement amid tense calm

Palestinian officials say a ceasefire agreement has been reached with Israel to end a surge of violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel that has led to the deaths of at least 25 Palestinians and four Israelis.  Gaza officials confirmed to Al Jazeera that a deal was reached at 1:30 GMT, and no Israeli air raids on the Palestinian territory have been reported since the deal came into effect.  The officials said Egypt and Qatar helped mediate an end to days of attacks between Gaza and Israel.  There was no confirmation from the Israeli side. However, the Israeli army early on Monday lifted all protective restrictions imposed near the Gaza area during the weekend's flare-up.  The Home Front Command instructed residents of the south to return to their routines.  The Israeli Transportation Ministry announced that all public bus routes in the south would return to full and normal operation. The railway line between the cities of Ashkelon and Beersheba was also set to resume later in the morning.  An Islamic Jihad official, on condition of anonymity, said the truce agreement was based on Israel easing its blockade of the Gaza Strip.  Among the steps, he said, were the easing of limits on the fishing zone to 12 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza and improvements in Gaza's electricity and fuel situation.  An Egyptian official also confirmed the deal on condition of anonymity.  The prime minister of the occupied West Bank-based Palestinian Authority government Mohammed Shtayyeh said on Monday that the government welcomed "any effort for a ceasefire, especially the Egyptian efforts."  "We are hoping that this will lead to an end to the tragedy against our people and preserve their lives," he said, speaking at a government meeting in the city of Ramallah.  Shtayyeh called on the United Nations to stop Israeli aggression against Palestine and to provide international support for its people in the Gaza Strip.  The flare-up was the most serious clash between the two sides since a spate of fighting in November.  Rocket sirens in southern Israel, which had gone off continuously over the weekend, sending residents running for cover, were quiet for a few hours straight before dawn on Monday.  On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered "massive strikes" on the Gaza Strip after a two-day escalation in which Israeli warplanes and gunboats targeted Gaza as fighters in the besieged enclave fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel.  A 34-year-old Hamas commander was killed on Sunday in what the Israeli military described as a targeted strike.  An army statement accused Hamad al-Khodori of "transferring large sums of money" from Iran to armed factions in Gaza.  Other Palestinian victims included two pregnant women and two infants. In Beit Lahiya, a town in the northern Gaza Strip, an Israeli air raid hit a residential building, killing a four-month-old baby and her father.  A 12-year-old boy, Abdelrahman Abu al-Jadyan, was also killed in the same attack. The bodies of his parents, Talal and Raghda, were recovered under the rubble on Monday, bringing the death toll in the Gaza Strip to 25 killed.  In the Israeli city of Ashkelon, a 58-year-old Israeli man was killed after being struck by shrapnel from a rocket attack. Two other Israelis, critically wounded in a separate rocket attack on a factory on Sunday afternoon, later died.  Around two million Palestinians live in Gaza, the economy of which has suffered years of Israeli and Egyptian blockades as well as recent foreign aid cuts and sanctions by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas' West Bank-based rival.  Israel said its blockade was necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from the area.


breitbart--2019-11-18--Grand Valley State University Kills Pledge of Allegiance Tradition

Students at Grand Valley State University in Michigan voted last week to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at student government meetings over concerns that it is discriminatory and oppressive.  According to a report by The College Fix, Grand Valley State University students voted last week to end their tradition of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before student government meetings. Student activists argued that the pledge was oppressive and discriminatory against international students. The students voted last week 22-10 in favor of the Pledge ban.  Dorian Thompson, a student senator at Grand Valley State University, told The College Fix that student government members made a strong push to end the tradition.  “The arguments to remove it were to create an inclusive environment, that it represented an oppressive government, and that there are international students that we should be representing,” Thompson said in a short comment.  “Of course our country doesn’t have the brightest past with human rights issues, but with liberty and justice for all, that says right there no matter what interesting times we are in we will always rise above it and go forward and not backwards,” Thompson added.  Thompson claims that he will fight to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance tradition at Grand Valley State University. In a Facebook post, Thompson wrote that “the fight” to defend the pledge “is not over.”  “[M]ake this no mistake, the fight is not over,” Thompson wrote on Facebook. “No matter if I continue to serve on this body or decide that they do not represent my values and leave, I will do everything in my power to fight this disgraceful act. God bless our flag, and may God bless our great country.”  Breitbart News reported in September that the student government at the University of Oklahoma made a similar decision to end their Pledge of Allegiance tradition. A resolution before the student government made the case that the pledge was incompatible with the First Amendment. The student government voted 15-11 in favor of the resolution.


cnn--2019-09-08--Trump says he canceled secret Camp David meeting with Taliban leaders

(CNN) President Donald Trump said Saturday that Taliban leaders were to travel to the US for secret peace talks this weekend but that the meeting has been canceled and he's called off peace talks with the militant group entirely.  Trump tweeted that he scrapped the meeting after the Taliban took credit for an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed a dozen people, including an American soldier  Inviting Taliban leaders onto American soil is an unprecedented move and a significant development in America's longest running war just days from the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It comes after Trump said as recently as late last month that he is planning to withdraw thousands of US forces from Afghanistan but will keep 8,600 troops in the country at least for the time being. It's not clear if Trump's Saturday night announcement will impact that plan.  "Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday," Trump tweeted Saturday night.  Trump claimed that before traveling to the US on Saturday evening, "Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to......an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people."  "I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations," Trump added.  CNN military analyst John Kirby, a retired Navy rear admiral and former State Department and Pentagon spokesman, called the news "stunning," saying this would give the Taliban "a boost of political legitimacy that they don't deserve at this stage in negotiations and would be a huge propaganda victory for them, not to mention a slap at the Afghan government and President Ghani."  The President slammed the leaders for thinking that the attacks would improve their negotiating position.  The State Department referred CNN to the White House for comment. The US National Security Council did not respond to request for comment.  The Afghanistan government blamed the Taliban for the canceled peace talks, saying the group's "obstinacy to increase violence against Afghans" is the "main obstacle" to peace negotiations.  "We have consistently stressed that genuine peace is possible when the Taliban stop the killing of Afghans, embrace an inclusive ceasefire, and enter into direct negotiations with the Afghan government," the government said in a statement.  The insurgent group has not halted its campaign of violence as the peace talks with the US have taken place but Thursday's killing of an American when a deal was reportedly close appears to have prompted the dramatic move from the President.  The Afghan government did not push for the cancellation of the meeting at Camp David after the Taliban attack this week, it was a decision by the White House and the State Department, according to a source familiar with the planning.  Despite Trump saying in his tweet Saturday that peace negotiations are called off, new dates are being discussed by the White House for a potential meeting with the Taliban and the Afghan government, the source says. It's unclear if the Taliban will have to make hard and fast commitments before the meeting or if Trump is using the cancellation and rescheduling simply as a negotiating tactic.  The US troop withdrawals could mark the beginning of the conflict triggered by 9/11 that has cost billions in taxpayer dollars and claimed more than 2,300 American lives.  In his tweets, Trump cast doubt on the leaders' bargaining abilities in light of the killings.  Earlier this week CNN was told by a source informed on the matter that the State Department and the National Security Council were working on scheduling a US-Afghan government meeting as well as a US-Taliban meeting on US soil, though the location was never explicitly stated. Afghanistan wanted it sooner rather than later, but the US side was looking at the middle of this month as the most likely date.  Trump was involved in the planning personally, hoping that it would come to fruition in the coming week, the source said. He got personally attached to the outcome and the logistics of the talks after meeting with top advisers about the Afghan peace process in August.  Before that, US Special Envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad had been given a long leash to do the negotiating to bring all parties -- including the Taliban -- to an agreement.  A source familiar with details of the meeting told CNN the plan had been for Trump to meet separately with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and with the Taliban's chief negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. If Trump's meetings had gone well, the hope was to convince the two Afghans to meet face to face.  The stakes were high, according to the source, because it would have been politically toxic for Mullah Baradar to meet with Ghani. The Taliban negotiator is not authorized to talk to the Afghan government.  The Afghan government had for months been frustrated that they had not been invited to Washington by Trump during his first two and a half years in office. Afghan officials had planned to come last year right after UN General Assembly meeting but the trip fell apart because the timing did not work out, and the Trump administration canceled the visit.  Trump's announcement Saturday comes as the US and the Taliban appeared to be close to finalizing a peace deal. Khalilzad returned to Doha, Qatar, this week to resume talks with the Taliban.  Khalilzad had told Afghanistan's TOLOnews on Monday that the US and the Taliban have reached an agreement "in principle," pending final approval by Trump.  Khalilzad said that based on the draft agreement, the US would pull troops from five bases across Afghanistan within 135 days so long as the Taliban met conditions set out in the agreement. The US currently has about 14,000 service members in Afghanistan, alongside NATO troops, helping to train and advise Afghan troops and conducting counterterrorism operations.  This story has been updated with additional developments Saturday.


cnsnews--2019-02-13--Radical Green New Deal Coming to a Community Near You

Radical ‘Green New Deal’ – Coming to a Community Near You

Politicians in Washington are often immersed in endless political fights with little regard for the impact of the policies they are actually fighting over.  We see this with taxes, regulations, spending, trade and other issues.  The decisions they make often have unforeseen consequences in communities and small towns.  This week, the left’s new rising star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her allies, introduced their far-reaching radical “Green New Deal.”  These ideas are not only being discussed in Washington, but they are actually well under way and causing great debate and conflict in many communities throughout the United States.  In New York, Governor Cuomo and his green energy bureaucrats have imposed mandates to reduce carbon emissions.  Appealingly entitled Clean Energy Standards (CES), these mandates call for over 50 percent of the state's utilities to generate electricity through renewable sources by 2030.  In addition, Governor Cuomo issued an executive order mandating over 2,000 megawatts of energy be generated, also by 2030, using offshore wind.  How is all of this being paid for you might ask.  Well, by the same folks who always pay – you, the taxpayer.  Indeed, to fund the CES, New Yorkers will pay an increase of $3.6 billion in electricity costs according to a report by Continental Economics. That’s just to get things going.  By 2050, New Yorkers will be subsidizing Cuomo’s green new deal to a tune of over one trillion dollars, “providing scant, if any, measurable benefits” the report states.  Footnote: U.S. per person CO2 emissions have declined to their lowest levels in over six decades. The U.S. Energy Administration reports that from 2005-2017 U.S. energy related emissions are down 14 percent.  But it’s not just about the numbers, the money and the costs.  There is tremendous environmental and community impact experienced by the deployment of green energy.  Utility scale solar facilities, not built in the desert, require destruction of the land – trees and farms – and they can permanently alter the character of the community.  There is additional risk from muddy runoff, which can impact roads, streams and tributaries.  Water is needed for cleaning the panels so solar companies often have to tap into water sources impacting local wells and aquifers. If decommissioning is not handled appropriately, when their use is complete, these solar fields can be left to rot causing additional environmental damage, waste of land and taxpayers being left to pay the clean-up costs.  Solar and wind facilities, largely propped up by taxpayers’ subsidies, are causing environmental damage and community conflict.  But local citizens going about their daily grind are never told or warned about these troubles.  Rather, they are told to be proud that a green energy project is coming to a community near you. But in some communities, the people impacted, and the taxpayers being forced to pay for these projects, are standing up and voicing concerns about the damage they can cause.  Residents in Spotsylvania, Virginia, for example, are pushing back against what would be the largest utility scale solar complex east of the Mississippi, covering over 6,000 acres – that’s half the size of Manhattan. It would be the fifth largest solar facility in the U.S. and the twelfth largest in the world.  This large, not so green, facility is part of embattled and controversial Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s version of the green new deal.  Local citizens have formed citizens groups. Large numbers of citizens are attending local government meetings and voicing their concerns. This all proves, once again, that if we are going to fight the not-so-good deals emanating from Washington and some state capitals, citizen activism is critical.  Because while all of this sounds and feels good to the politicians, someone has to live with the consequences.  Ken Blackwell is former Mayor of Cincinnati, Secretary of State of Ohio and former Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.