From NOEBIE.net
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has released a special report on its year-long investigation into charter schools spending in the United States. You can access the full report “Charter School Black Hole” here.
The report reveals that over the last twenty years, $3.7 billion has more or less evaporated, with no transparency or accountability.
The New Anti-Capitalist Party, one of the leading organizations on the Left in France, issued a statement today, after the attacks in Paris of the evening of 13 November.
The only response to wars and terrorism is the unity of the workers and people, over and above their origins, their skin colour, their religions, across the borders, to fight together against those who want to silence them, to dominate them, to do away with this capitalist system which generates cruelty.
Read the Full Statement: The cruelty of imperialist wars results in the cruelty of terrorism | International Viewpoint
Today, we remember Paris. We also remember Beirut and Gaza and Kunduz, and all of the innocent victims of violence created by a system which has outlived its usefulness.
“We have shattered the myth that there is nothing progressive candidates can do against the avalanche of corporate money. We have shown that it is entirely possible, if there is the political will, to refuse donations from big corporations and instead base ourselves on the support of working people and win. That is why we have won, and successfully I might add, not just independent of corporate cash but also independent of the two political parties that represent that corporate cash.”
Kshama Sawant spoke to her supporters on November 3rd as her reelection victory was confirmed.
Read the full text of the speech.
Today marks the 77th anniversary of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.”
The plaque reads “This synagogue is 100 years old, and was on November 9th, 1938, on The Kristallnacht, torched by the Nazis.”
Let us never forget.
I love America. Truly, I do. It is the land of great ideals, as well as the land of my birth.
I also respect and applaud self-sacrifice in service to others, and in service to those ideals.
So I was slow to understand the true nature of the constant prompts to “support our troops” and the endless parade of militaristic spectacle over the past couple decades. In the wake of the attacks of September 11th, the knee-jerk jingoism didn’t sit well with me, but I didn’t fully understand why.
Then comes the news this week of a joint oversight report released by Arizona Republican Senators John Flake and John McCain, documenting that over the past few years, the Pentagon spent $6.8 million to pay for patriotic displays during the games of professional sports teams. For me, this calls to mind the 1936 Summer Games.
Here are a couple of articles of interest on the subject.
No, thanks: Stop saying “support the troops” – A nation that continuously publicizes appeals to “support our troops” is explicitly asking its citizens not to think. It is the ideal slogan for suppressing the practice of democracy, presented to us in the guise of democratic preservation.
Military spectacle and American sport – Fifteen years after the beginning of the so-called “War on Terror,” no facet of life in the United States—political, legal or cultural—has escaped the dark shadow of the American military-intelligence apparatus. Everything is subordinated to the needs of the state. Personal communications are intercepted and stored, protests are monitored and school curricula are manipulated. Hollywood works with the CIA to produce films like “Zero Dark Thirty” to justify the government’s illegal torture program, and a worker can hardly take his or her family to the ballgame without being inundated with pro-war lies and propaganda.
Maria Svart of the DSA was on Washington Journal last Sunday to talk about the organization, Democratic Socialism and the Bernie Sanders campaign.
“Do we want a society where greed rules and it’s everyone for themselves and we don’t look out for each other, or do we want a society where we work together?”
This morning I was in the studios of WKAN Radio with Bill and Allison to discuss our Racial Taboo townhall event that will be held at 6 PM on next Tuesday, October 27th in the fourth floor auditorium of the Kankakee Public Library. You can click on the player below to listen.
The event is sponsored by the Kankakee County Branch of the NAACP, the Kankakee Public Library and Feed Arts & Cultural Center. It’s free and open to the public.
Hope to see you there!
A Song Apropos of the Day: John Brown by David Rovics
Let us remember John Brown on the anniversary of his raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry.
“Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the so-called great, every man in this court would have deemed it worthy of reward rather than punishment.”
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars.
Take a few moments and browse this treasure trove of information, the results of months of work by Jeremy Scahill and others (and a massive security leak that has sent the U.S. government into panic mode).
Source: The Drone Papers