October 3, 2014

'The real objective of the 9/11 attacks was to prompt American overreaction: to goad Washington....'

from Consortium News:


Obama Does ‘Stupid Stuff’ in ISIS War
October 2, 2014

President Obama famously counseled his foreign policy team “don’t do stupid stuff,” but he is now violating his own principle by plunging into an incoherent war policy in Iraq and Syria rather than challenging the stupid “group think” of Official Washington, as Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett explain.

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett


While President Barack Obama continues — at least for now — to resist redeploying large numbers of U.S. soldiers to fight the Islamic State on the ground, the military components of the anti-Islamic State strategy he has laid out effectively recommit the United States to its post-9/11 template for never-ending war in the Middle East.

In the end, such an approach can only compound the damage that has already been done to America’s severely weakened strategic position in the Middle East by its previous post-9/11 military misadventures.

Thirteen years after the fact, most of America’s political and policy elites have yet to grasp the strategic logic that motivated the 9/11 attacks against the United States. Certainly, al-Qa’ida was not averse to damaging America’s economy and punishing its people. But Osama bin Laden knew that effects of this sort would be finite, and thus of limited strategic value; he had no illusions about destroying “the American way of life.”

The real objective of the 9/11 attacks was to prompt American overreaction: to goad Washington into launching prolonged military campaigns against Muslim lands. These campaigns would galvanize popular sentiment across the Muslim world against the United States, mobilize Middle Eastern publics against regional governments (like the one in bin Laden’s native Saudi Arabia) that cooperate politically and militarily with it, and rally them in favor of jihadi fighters who resist American domination. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/02/obama-does-stupid-stuff-in-isis-war/

October 3, 2014

The Return of the Corporate Court

from truthdig:


The Return of the Corporate Court

Posted on Oct 2, 2014
By Bill Blum


Jesse Busk has almost no chance of winning his lawsuit when it comes before the Supreme Court for oral argument Wednesday during the opening week of the new 2014-15 term. His dismal prospects stem not from any legal weaknesses in his case but from one overriding fatal flaw—he’s an ordinary working person challenging the prerogatives of corporate power. Cases like his seldom succeed before the panel led by Chief Justice John Roberts, rated by many observers and scholars as the most pro-business iteration of the high tribunal since the early 1930s.

Busk used to work as an Amazon.com “warehouse associate” in Las Vegas, filling orders placed by customers of the online retail behemoth, earning between $11.65 and $12.35 an hour without health care or paid leave for shifts that typically lasted 12 hours. Technically, he wasn’t employed by Amazon but by Delaware-based Integrity Staffing Solutions Inc., a high-powered nationwide agency that provides temporary workers to Amazon as well as other big-name companies such as Walmart, JPMorgan Chase and Zappos.com.

As depicted in the CNBC documentary “Amazon Rising” that aired in June, the services that warehouse associates perform hoisting commodities large and small off shelves and onto giant conveyor belts for packing and mailing are grueling and unrelenting, relieved only by 30-minute meal breaks and brief trips to the bathroom that are discouraged by supervisors. One former employee interviewed in the film described her stint at the massive complexes that Amazon euphemistically labels “fulfillment centers” as akin to time served “in a prison.”

In 2010, Busk and Laurie Castro, a warehouse associate from the fulfillment center in Fernley, Nev., filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Integrity, alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the New Deal-era statute designed to protect the rights of hourly workers to minimum wages, prompt paychecks and overtime. Among other grievances, they contended they were owed back pay for uncompensated time spent checking out of work each day, standing in airport-like security lines for up to 25 minutes. Together with hundreds of other workers, they were required to remove their wallets, keys and belts, and made to pass through metal detectors and sometimes had their bodies passed over with hand-held wands to prevent employee theft and what Amazon calls “inventory shrinkage.” ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_return_of_the_corporate_court_20141002

October 3, 2014

Michigan had a long tradition of moderate Republicans, but ...........

....... this current batch of MI Republicans belongs in a right wing insane asylum.

October 3, 2014

Yikes, just yikes! (trying to bleach history in Colorado)

DENVER (AP) — A fight in Colorado over how United States history is taught is coming to a head in suburban Denver on Thursday, with students and teachers expected to pack a school board meeting where the controversial changes could face a vote.

Turnout is expected to be so high that the teachers union plans to stream video from the meeting room — which holds a couple hundred people — on a big screen in the parking lot outside. Students are making plans to start their protests early in the day.

Students across a majority of the 17 high schools in Colorado's second-largest school district have walked out of classes in droves over the past few weeks, waving signs and flags in protests organized by word of mouth and social media.

The protests started Sept. 19, when the Jefferson County school board proposed creating a committee to review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights" and don't "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/jefferson-county-school-board-fight_n_5920574.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

October 2, 2014

Trying to eliminate protest and civil disobedience from the history books?

DENVER (AP) — A fight in Colorado over how United States history is taught is coming to a head in suburban Denver on Thursday, with students and teachers expected to pack a school board meeting where the controversial changes could face a vote.

Turnout is expected to be so high that the teachers union plans to stream video from the meeting room — which holds a couple hundred people — on a big screen in the parking lot outside. Students are making plans to start their protests early in the day.

Students across a majority of the 17 high schools in Colorado's second-largest school district have walked out of classes in droves over the past few weeks, waving signs and flags in protests organized by word of mouth and social media.

The protests started Sept. 19, when the Jefferson County school board proposed creating a committee to review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights" and don't "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/jefferson-county-school-board-fight_n_5920574.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

October 2, 2014

Airlines face Ebola fallout

Health experts say travelers face little risk of contracting Ebola on airplanes, but the disease’s arrival in the United States is bringing new worries about its ability to hop between countries and continents.

Those concerns escalated with Wednesday’s statement from United Airlines that the Ebola patient now being treated in Texas probably connected through Washington Dulles International Airport on Sept. 20 while en route from Brussels. Federal health authorities have said the patient’s trek originated in Liberia — one of several African countries suffering from the fast-spreading Ebola outbreak — but posed no danger to fellow passengers because he had yet to become contagious.

Customs and Border Protection officers are watching for signs of the disease in U.S.-bound travelers, with help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, airline crews are getting reminders about standard procedures for dealing with infected passengers — including tools like gloves, goggles and antimicrobial wipes. ..................(more)

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/ebola-airports-airlines-111538.html#ixzz3F06oqcTv

October 2, 2014

Repairing Sandy Damaged Rail Tunnels Could Snarl Commute for Years

Repairing Sandy Damaged Rail Tunnels Could Snarl Commute for Years

Thursday, October 02, 2014 - 12:01 AM
WNYC
By Kate Hinds




Almost two years ago, Sandy flooded four of Amtrak's six tunnels in and out of Manhattan with 13 million gallons of sea water. While the agency flushed the tunnels out in the days following the storm, chemical deposits containing chlorides and sulfates remained, slowly attacking the rails, cracking concrete, and damaging electrical systems.

Now, a new engineering report commissioned by Amtrak says while the tunnels are structurally sound, they should be taken out of service, one at a time, for extensive repairs to fix the "significant damage" caused by the storm. That work, if conducted around the clock, could take up to a year to complete in each tunnel.

The MTA performed similar work on one its tunnels recently, when it shut down the R train tunnel to make Sandy repairs.

Two of the four Amtrak tunnels under the East River, which also serve Long Island Rail Road, the nation's busiest commuter rail line, were also flooded. And both Amtrak tunnels under the Hudson River, which also serve New Jersey Transit, were flooded by Sandy. To shut down either of the Hudson tunnels, "you’re talking about debilitating losses in service," says Richard Barone of the Regional Plan Association. Because of the way the tunnels are configured, trans-Hudson rail service would need to be reduced by 75 — not 50 — percent. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.wnyc.org/story/amtrak-tunnels/

October 2, 2014

Police Departments Retaliate Against Organized "Cop Watch" Groups Across the US

(Truthout) When communities attempt to police the police, they often get, well... policed.

In several states, organized groups that use police scanners and knowledge of checkpoints to collectively monitor police activities by legally and peacefully filming cops on duty have said they've experienced retaliation, including unjustified detainment and arrests as well as police intimidation.

The groups operate under many decentralized organizations, most notably CopWatch and Cop Block, and have proliferated across the United States in the last decade - and especially in the aftermath of the events that continue to unfold in Ferguson, Missouri, after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown.

Many such groups have begun proactively patrolling their communities with cameras at various times during the week, rather than reactively turning on their cameras when police enter into their neighborhoods or when they happen to be around police activity.

Across the nation, local police departments are responding to organized cop watching patrols by targeting perceived leaders, making arrests, threatening arrests, yanking cameras out of hands and even labeling particular groups "domestic extremist" organizations and part of the sovereign citizens movement - the activities of which the FBI classifies as domestic terrorism. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/26527-police-departments-retaliate-against-organized-cop-watch-groups-across-the-us

October 2, 2014

Amy Goodman: A Force More Powerful in Jefferson County, Colo.

from truthdig:


A Force More Powerful in Jefferson County, Colo.

Posted on Oct 1, 2014
By Amy Goodman


“Don’t make history a mystery” read one of the signs at a rally in Jefferson County, Colo. High-school students in this suburban district, referred to locally as “JeffCo,” have been walking out of class en masse this past week, protesting the planned censorship of the district’s Advanced Placement (AP) United States history curriculum by the local school board. The board proposed a committee that would review the course, and others, adding material to “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” as well as eliminating anything the board thought could “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” The student walkout coincided with several days of “sick-outs” by teachers. Ironically, the school board’s attempts to stifle teaching about the history of protest in the United States has provoked a growing protest movement.

School boards have long been an electoral target of the right wing in the U.S. In JeffCo, the current conservative majority won a narrow victory in November 2013, an off-year election with low voter turnout. “About 33 percent of the total population that could vote voted. Elections matter, and especially school-board elections,” John Ford said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. He’s a social-studies teacher at Moore Middle School and the president of the Jefferson County Education Association, representing more than 5,000 teachers, librarians, counselors and other employees of the district.

The power of school boards is often underestimated. “I’ve been paying attention to the school board for the past year, and I have been increasingly concerned about what’s been going on,” Ashlyn Maher told me. She is a senior at Chatfield High School who helped organize the student walkouts. Civil disobedience has a long and storied role in U.S. history. The Declaration of Independence itself, so cherished by conservatives and progressives alike, instructs “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Maher says that disobedience is “the foundation of our country. I took AP U.S. history myself, and all I was presented with were the facts. And then I made the opinions based on those facts. I was never told what to think.”

The teachers also have been battling the board majority since it took power. “We’ve had a long history of collaboration with the school board and the superintendent. And that’s all coming to an end,” Ford said. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_force_more_powerful_in_jefferson_county_colo_20141001

October 2, 2014

Open Letter on Censorship and Google

from truthdig:


Open Letter on Censorship and Google

Posted on Oct 1, 2014
By Zuade Kaufman


George Orwell was right: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Such power isn’t limited to rewriting history. It extends to defining what we hear, what we read, what we say—and ultimately what we think. It affects all of us, especially those who believe in the potential of words to shine a light on hidden agendas, hold the powerful to answer, and express ideas that shape our values.

The threat is both from governments, which feel a need to control their people, and from companies that have an unceasing urge to increase their power and their wealth.

.....(snip).....

Earlier this year Google threatened to block an award-winning UK-based music webzine, Drowned in Sound, for displaying covers of albums by Sigur Rós, a post-rock band from Reykjavik, and Lambchop, an alternative/country band from Nashville. DiS fixed the matter by laying colored squares over the disputed areas. But DiS founder Sean Adams worried out loud that Google was only a small step away from seriously compromising freedom of expression.

For the past 18 months, Truthdig has been engaged in on-and-off battles with Google—and it’s been baffling for us. At best, the rules being imposed are poorly defined. At worst, they are arbitrarily imposed. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/open_letter_on_censorship_and_google_20141002