oh me, oh my.., how did the real concerned student 1950 ever make it?!?!?!?

mizzoumag |  His master’s degree in economics at MU was supposed to take two years — 1950–52 — but Gus T. Ridgel, who had graduated magna cum laude the previous spring from Lincoln University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, told his adviser he could do it in one.Well, we have problems because I don’t have enough money,” Ridgel, MA ’51, DS ’96, said. “I only have enough money for two semesters.”

Ridgel took his case to the department chair, who saw no harm in letting give it a try. Ridgel would go on to be MU’s first African-American student to earn a graduate degree.

All he had to do was take four semesters’ worth of courses in two and turn in a master’s thesis at the end of it. That’s the plan he started with, says Ridgel, now 87, and it’s the one he ended with.

It was a seven-day-a-week-job,” he says. “There wasn’t a lot of time for social events.” Between classes and thesis writing, he had little time to enjoy Columbia, and, being African-American, many options weren’t available to him. After the dining halls closed for the evening, there was only one place near campus — a coffee shop near University Bookstore — where an African-American student could get something to eat. When he and a few friends sat down for lunch at a different nearby restaurant between classes, his white friends were told they could be served, but Ridgel had to leave. They all walked out.

Ridgel says he was aware he was one of the first black students on campus, but he didn’t focus on it. His objective was just to graduate. “My ‘first’ was purely coincidental,” he says. He didn’t imagine at the time that he’d be coming back decades later to be honored and interviewed.

meanwhile, on the non-BLM, no-mandingo side of the occupy 2.0 protest movement...,

LATimes |  Nearly three years ago, a group of about 200 workers at McDonald's, Taco Bell and other New York City fast-food restaurants walked off the job and rallied for higher wages.

It was widely described as the largest series of demonstrations ever in the fast-food industry.

Fast-forward to Tuesday, and the so-called Fight for $15 movement seeking better pay for fast-food and other low-wage workers has spread to what organizers say are 270 cities across the U.S. All three Democratic presidential candidates weighed in with support on Twitter after rallies began. The governor of New York and the mayor of Pittsburgh issued orders Tuesday that will lead to a $15 minimum wage for all government workers.

How the once-fledgling campaign has captivated national political discourse is a testament to the uneasiness still felt by many Americans left out of the recovery from the Great Recession. Although jobs have continued to grow since the depths of the downturn, earnings for lower- and middle-income workers have not.

By galvanizing efforts around fast-food workers — people who many interact with on a daily basis — the movement's organizers, backed in part by the nation's second-largest labor union, have worked to change the public perception of low-wage work.

"For many of us, these are workers who we see every day, yet they're invisible," said Harley Shaiken, a UC Berkeley labor expert. "What the Fight for 15 has done is give faces, names and personal stories that many, perhaps most, working Americans can identify with."

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has been the same since 2009, and efforts have stalled in Congress to increase wages. But at the state and local level, there has been an unprecedented wave of action to boost wages since the movement began in 2012.

mandingos

slate | Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s blaxploitation Western about an ex-slave’s revenge against plantation owners, centers on a practice called “Mandingo fighting.” Slaves are forced to fight to the death for their owners’ wealth and entertainment. Did the U.S. have anything like this form of gladiatorial combat? No. While slaves could be called upon to perform for their owners with other forms of entertainment, such as singing and dancing, no slavery historian we spoke with had ever come across anything that closely resembled this human version of cock fighting. As David Blight, the director of Yale’s center for the study of slavery, told me: One reason slave owners wouldn’t have pitted their slaves against each other in such a way is strictly economic. Slavery was built upon money, and the fortune to be made for owners was in buying, selling, and working them, not in sending them out to fight at the risk of death.

While there’s no historical record of black gladiator fights in the U.S., this hasn’t stopped the sport from appearing again and again in popular culture. The 1975 blaxploitation film Mandingo, which Tarantino has cited as “one of [his] favorite movies,” is about a slave named Mede who is trained by his owner to fight to the death in bare-knuckle boxing against other slaves. That film was inspired by the book of the same name by dog-breeder-turned-novelist Kyle Onstott. (The term Mandingoitself comes from the name of a cultural and ethnic group in West Africa, who speak the Manding languages.) There is at least one other cinematic example of the fighting, in Mandingo’s sequel, Drum.

Slaves were sometimes sent to fight for their owners; it just wasn’t to the death. Tom Molineaux was a Virginia slave who won his freedom—and, for his owner, $100,000—after winning a match against another slave. He went on to become the first black American to compete for the heavyweight championship when he fought the white champion Tom Cribb in England in 1810. (He lost.) According to Frederick Douglass, wrestling and boxing for sport, like festivals around holidays, were “among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection.”

It’s also true that, as embodied by the fictional “Mandingo fighting,” there has long been a fascination with the supposed physical prowess of the black body. The rise of prizefighting in the 19^th century saw black men such as Peter Jackson and George Dixon making a show of their manliness to white and black audiences. Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” scene in Invisible Man—in which the narrator must spar other black men in order to obtain a scholarship to a black college—uses a less sensationalistic approach to portray the fetishization of black men fighting. “This is a vital part of behavior patterns in the South, which both Negroes and whites thoughtlessly accept,” Ellison once said. “It is a ritual in preservation of caste lines, a keeping of taboo to appease the gods and ward off bad luck. It is also the initiation ritual to which all greenhorns are subjected.”

when you think you're a mandingo, but you're not....,

columbiamissourian |  MU faculty member Melissa Click has apologized. And Tuesday night, she resigned her courtesy appointment with the Missouri School of Journalism.

Click was caught up in an incident Monday between a freelance photographer and protesters near the Concerned Student 1950 camp on Mel Carnahan Quadrangle.

"Yesterday was an historic day at MU — full of emotion and confusion. I have reviewed and reflected upon the video of me that is circulating, and have written this statement to offer both apology and context for my actions," Click, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon by the College of Arts and Science.

"I have reached out to the journalists involved to offer my sincere apologies and to express regret over my actions. I regret the language and strategies I used, and sincerely apologize to the MU campus community, and journalists at large, for my behavior, and also for the way my actions have shifted attention away from the students’ campaign for justice," the statement said.

A courtesy appointment allows members of one academic unit to serve on graduate committees for students from other academic units. Click teaches mass media in the Communication Department. The School of Journalism is a separate entity.

The Journalism School's Executive Committee, including Dean David Kurpius, met Tuesday morning to discuss the vote and prepare a statement on Click's actions Monday as seen in footage of an incident between the photographer, Tim Tai, an undergraduate in photojournalism, and the protesters — including MU's Greek Life and Leadership Assistant Director Janna Basler.

absent mandingos, hungerstriker would've died of organ failure while these simps were left on the quad to freeze...,

theatlantic |  “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American.

First Amendment protections for photographers are vital. And I agree with my colleague, James Fallows, that Tai demonstrated impressive intellectual and emotional poise. But video of his encounter with protestors is noteworthy for another reason.

In the video of Tim Tai trying to carry out his ESPN assignment, I see the most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded. They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe.

It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces.”

“I support people creating ‘safe spaces’ as a shield by exercising their freedom of association to organize themselves into mutually supporting communities,” Ken White wrote prior to this controversy. “But not everyone imagines ‘safe spaces’ like that. Some use the concept of ‘safe spaces’ as a sword, wielded to annex public spaces and demand that people within those spaces conform to their private norms.”

Yesterday, I wrote about Yale students who decided, in the name of creating a “safe space” on compass, to spit on people as they left a talk with which they disagreed. “In their muddled ideology,” I wrote, “the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.”

misty and britney already issued thallium doses pre-measured for out-of-pocket mandingos...,

thenation |  Too often, those sympathetic with college athletes define them by their hardships instead of by their dazzling, inescapable strengths. We rightfully look at their absence of due process, their lack of access to an income, their hellacious practice and travel schedules, their inability to take the classes of their choosing, and their year-to-year scholarships that consign them to being more “athlete students” than “student athletes.”

Yet they also have a power that if exercised can bring the powerful to their knees. So much of the political and social economy of state universities is tied to football, especially in big-money conferences like Southeastern Conference, where Mizzou plays. The multibillion-dollar college football playoff contracts, the multimillion-dollar coaching salaries, and the small fortunes that pour into small towns on game day don’t happen without a group of young men willing to take the field. The system is entirely based on their acceptance of their own powerlessness as the gears of this machine. If they choose to exercise their power, the machine not only stops moving: It becomes dramatically reshaped.

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement threatens the operating of this machinery like nothing since the black athletic revolt of the 1960s and 1970s. These conferences, particularly the Southeastern Conference, field teams that, in the words of sports sociologist Harry Edwards, “look like Ghana on the field and Sweden in the stands.” In other words, black football players in particular have a social power often unseen and not commented upon. It’s there all the same.

These athletes are a sleeping giant. At a school like Mizzou, where just 7 percent of the students are black but a whopping 69 percent of the football players are, one can see how their entry in the struggle had a ripple effect that tore through Columbia and into the college football–crazed national consciousness.

first northwestern, now southeast conference mandingos better watch their red cups closely at parties...,

NYTimes |  Well, that was fast.

When was it, exactly, that the African-American football players at the University of Missouri tweeted that they were going on strike until “President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed” from office? It was Saturday night, around 9 p.m. Eastern time.

In other words, nearly two months had gone by before the football players decided to get involved. Once they did, Wolfe lasted all of 36 hours. Later in the day, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin said he would resign as well, effective at the end of the year.

In announcing his resignation Monday morning, Wolfe said he was motivated by his “love” for his alma mater. No doubt he was sincere. But it is hard to believe that his calculations didn’t include money as well: the $1 million that Missouri would be contractually obliged to pay Brigham Young University if the Tigers failed to play Saturday’s game; and the mess it would create for itself — and the Southeastern Conference, which it joined only four years ago — if a players’ strike lasted to the end of the season. Missouri’s final SEC game in late November, against Arkansas, is scheduled to be televised by CBS, which pays the conference $55 million a year for television rights.

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As Andy Schwarz, an economist who has been deeply involved in a series of antitrust lawsuits against the N.C.A.A., put it, “the issues at Missouri are far more important than college football, but the Missouri athletes showed that the color that matters most is green.”

"the machine" hella weak at mizzou?

themaneater |  MU’s chapter resumed in 2003, according to Theta Nu Epsilon’s website. From 2004 until 2007 there are reports of new initiates in the fall and spring semesters. Anywhere from five to 11 members per semester have been inducted, according to the website. Fall initiation occurs in November and spring initiation is in April, though there are discrepancies and inconsistencies concerning these dates on the website.

Rather than participating in Tap Day, Theta Nu Epsilon marks initiation through banquets, according to the national website. ΘΝΕ has never participated in Tap Day ceremonies.

The founder of MU’s Theta Nu Epsilon chapter might have also played a role in the creation of QEBH, a senior class society and the oldest recognized secret society on campus. Dr. Royall Hill Switzler founded the organization in 1898, three years after the establishment of Theta Nu Epsilon.

Defoe reportedly held an advisory position for QEBH, according to the chapter website of Theta Nu Epsilon at MU. From 1900-1902, six students were listed in The Savitar as having membership in both Theta Nu Epsilon and QEBH. Today, prominent inductees of QEBH include Chancellor Brady Deaton and Vice Chancellor Cathy Scroggs.

The most recent connection between the two societies was in 2007. MU’s ΘΝΕ website listed MU graduate Dustin Barker as the president of the society that year. Barker was inducted into QEBH in 2007. In a phone interview, he acknowledged the website but said he has not had contact with Theta Nu Epsilon recently. Barker described the organization as having an on-and-off presence on campus.

Current QEBH members were not familiar with Theta Nu Epsilon or the connection between the two organizations’ histories.

Every year, QEBH inducts one sophomore to become president as a senior. Junior Rachel Newman was inducted last year and said she was shocked after learning she would be recognized.

“The common bond between all the societies here is that members seek to preserve the best interest for the university and promote all the university has given them,” Newman said.

Scroggs said these honor societies are meaningful at the university and provide students a chance to alert employers of their success, as they would with an honors diploma or other achievements.

There are similar honors societies on campus such as Mizzou 39, but membership is public. According to the Mizzou Alumni Association website, seniors are “chosen for their academic achievement, leadership and service to Mizzou and the community.”

Scroggs said QEBH recognizes its inductees based on their service, involvement, leadership and academic success on campus. The difference between public and private societies is the time of recognition, she said. Mizzou 39 is a senior award while most of the Tap Day organizations recognize juniors.

“Students take pride in being recognized by other students,” Scroggs said. “The fact that it’s secret makes it that more special.”

QEBH members were hesitant to speak on the record due to the secrecy surrounding their organization.

Despite this, members are publicly recognized on Tap Day and some have even listed QEBH on their LinkedIn profiles. Some members of Mortar Board Society, Mystical Seven and Omicron Delta Kappa have also posted their membership on LinkedIn.

While MU shows no evidence of having a political machine like Alabama, there is a documented concentration of campus-wide power in secret societies.

Of the 61 undergraduates tapped last year, 43 percent belong to a fraternity or sorority. Twenty-six percent of those undergraduates were also awarded Mizzou 39 membership this year. Other popular organizations were Homecoming Steering Committee or Homecoming Court, the Missouri Students Association, Summer Welcome and honor fraternities.

"leaders" are trivially expendable if they fail to "keep a lid on a pot about to boil over"

theweek |  Hours after University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe resigned Monday morning, R. Bowen Loftin announced he will step down from his position as chancellor of the University of Missouri's Columbia campus.

Loftin will start in his new role as director for research facility development on Jan. 1, 2016, The Columbia Tribune reports. Hank Foley, the senior vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, has been appointed interim chancellor. Wolfe resigned from his position after students and faculty began to protest against his response to race-related issues at the school. "I take full responsibility for this frustration and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred," he said. Donald Cupps, chairman of the Board of Curators, announced Monday that within the next 90 days, the University of Missouri system will appoint its first chief diversity, inclusion, and equity officer; will make extra support available for students, faculty, and staff who have been discriminated against; and will make additional efforts to hire and retain diverse faculty and staff.

The Columbia Tribune reported earlier in the day that deans from nine different University of Missouri colleges sent a letter to Wolfe and the Board of Curators, calling for Loftin's dismissal. In the letter, the deans said they met with Wolfe, Loftin, and Provost Garnett Stokes on Oct. 13 to express their concerns over "the multitude of crises on our flagship campus," and said those issues "have continued to deteriorate into a campus crisis that demands immediate and decisive action. It is the Chancellor's responsibility as the Chief Executive Officer of the campus to effectively address these campus issues." The deans went on to write that Loftin proved he was not an adequate leader by eliminating and then reinstating health insurance for graduate assistants and getting rid of the vice chancellor for health sciences position, and claimed he created a "toxic environment through threat, fear, and intimidation."

Last week, a similar letter was sent to Wolfe and the Curators from the Department of English, which stated that 26 faculty members expressed no confidence in Loftin, with two people abstaining from the vote.

lol, BeeDee always misses the point, but that fact never slows him down...,

ISOM |  I spoke of my observations and deductions to the people in our group as well as to my various literary friends and others.

I told them that this was the center of gravity of the whole system and of all work on oneself; that now work on oneself was not only empty words but a real fact full of significance thanks to which psychology becomes an exact and at the same time a practical science.

I said that European and Western psychology in general had overlooked a fact of tremendous importance, namely, that we do not remember ourselves; that we live and act and reason in deep sleep, not metaphorically but in absolute reality. And also that, at the same time, we can remember ourselves if we make sufficient efforts, that we can awaken.

I was struck by the difference between the understanding of the people who belonged to our groups and that of people outside them. The people who belonged to our groups understood, though not all at once, that we had come into contact with a "miracle," and that it was something "new," something that had never existed anywhere before.

shenwu |  The most basic and important difference between internal and external martial arts is the method of generating power or "jing" (manifest energy). At the root fundamental level, the most important factor which qualifies an art as internal is the use of what the Chinese call "complete," "unified" or "whole body" power (jengjing). This means the entire body is used as a singular unit with the muscles of the body in proper tone according to their function (relaxed, meaning neither too tense nor too slack). Power is generated with the body as a singular unit, and the various types of energies (jing) used are all generated from this unified power source.

The external martial arts, although engaging the body as a whole in generating power sequentially, do not use the body in a complete unit as do the internal martial arts. The external styles primarily use "sectional power" (ju bu li), which is a primary reason they are classified apart from the internal arts. A variation of this sectional power in the external arts is the special development of one part of the body as a weapon (iron palm, iron broom, etc.). The internal tends to forego these methods in favor of even development of the whole body, which m turn is used as a coherent unit.

 Xing Yi Quan, Tai Ji Quan and Ba Gua Zhang all have unified body motion as their root; hence, they are internal styles. However, since each of these styles emphasizes different expressions of this unified power, they are not the same style.

justice, nature, escape...,

afurtherrecord |  MR. O. Let us return to the question of justice. It is interesting for language. What is justice?

Q. Something that is fair to two people.

MR. O. Who would be fair? As conditional arrangement it can be understood. As a general thing, it is fantastic. You forget that organic life is based on murder. One thing eats another: cats and rats. What is justice among cats and rats? This is life. It is nothing very beautiful. So where is justice?

Q. Why do people think that nature is beautiful if this is how it works?

MR. O. What is beautiful? What you like.

Q. How can God be love if He created nature like this?

MR. O. For a certain purpose. Besides, what do you call nature? Earthquake is also nature. But for the moment we apply the term 'nature' to organic life. Evidently it was created like that because there was no other means. How can we ask why? It was made so. If we don't like it, we can study methods to run away. This is the only possibility. Only we must not try to imagine that it is very beautiful. We must not pretend that facts are different from what they are.

Q. Are you going to put man on the same footing as the rest of organic life?

MR. O. There is no difference, only other units are fully developed, and man is only half developed.

Q. Man can be beyond the law of murder?

MR. O. He has the possibility of escape.

Q. What are ways of escape from murder?

MR. O. Man is under 192 laws. He must escape from some of them.

Q. You said that men are responsible for what they did, and animals not?

MR. O. Men 1, 2 and 3 are less responsible; men No. 4, and so on, are more responsible; responsibility grows.

Q. What means responsibility?

MR. O. First, an animal has nothing to lose, but man has. Second, man has to pay for every mistake he makes, if he has started to grow.

Q. That implies justice.

MR. O. No, nobody would call it justice if you had to pay for your mistakes.

Q. Does not justice mean to get what we deserve?

MR. O. Most people think it is getting what we want and not what we deserve. Justice must mean some co-ordination between actions and results of actions. This certainly does not exist, and cannot exist, under the Law of Accident. When we know the chief laws, we understand that we live in a very bad place, a really bad place. But, as we cannot be in any other, we must see what we can do here. Only, we must not imagine that things are better than they are.

Q. Things will remain as they are unless everyone is conscious?

MR. O. Things will remain as they are, but one can escape. It needs much knowledge to know what can be escaped and what cannot. But the first lesson we must learn, the first thing that prevents us from escaping is that we don't even realize the necessity to know our position. Who knows it, is already in a better position.

personal attainment is the result of effort against fate..,

afurtherrecord |  Q. You said before that if we can't get of prison in one lifetime, then one can't get out at all. What do you mean by prison?
MR. O. Prison is prison. Same principles apply for all prisons. Too late to do anything after you are buried. From another point of view, if one did nothing in one life, double chance that one will do nothing in the next. Principle one can always do tomorrow what one didn't do to-day. Improvement of this principle is to do it day after to-morrow.
Q. To get out of prison—does that mean to escape some of the laws men live under?
MR. O. One law only. And if you say 'Which?', I shall say, 'Formatory, formatory!'

Q. Are there more or less than 48 laws governing our world— organic life?
MR. O. According to the diagram of the Ray of Creation 48 laws govern earth—gravity, things like that. Many, many laws under which earth lives—movement, physical laws, chemical laws. Organic life is governed by 96 laws.
Q. The same as moon?
MR. O. The same number but quite a different manifestation. Organic life is not similar to moon. Moon is a cosmic body, organic life is a film on the surface of the earth. The number of laws only shows the relation of a given unit, but not its being or consistency, so there is no similarity.
Q. Could you give an example of one law?
MR. O. Many of them you know. Take man: he lives under physical laws, biological laws, physiological laws peculiar to man, such as temperature, climate, etc. We know some of these laws, but there are many laws about which we know nothing at all. For instance, there are cosmic laws which don't belong to the three laws of earth itself—they are connected with some bigger sphere and govern certain things which, from our point of view, appear trivial and insignificant. For instance, there is a definite law that each class of living beings can only eat a certain kind of food (from a certain density to a certain density). Man can eat things from such and such a density to such and such a density, from such and such a quality to such and such a quality. And he cannot change this just as he cannot change the air he breathes or the temperature in which he can exist. There are many things like that—they are all laws under which man lives. But there are many things about it we cannot know; many things we don't know about the conditions in which we live.
Q. You said as we progressed we should eliminate some of the laws? You said man lives under 96 laws.
MR. O. I said organic life is under 96 laws. Man lives under many, many more laws. Some are biological, physical and so on; then, coming to quite simple laws—ignorance, for instance. We do not know ourselves—this is a law. If we begin to know ourselves, we get rid of a law. We cannot learn 'this is one law, this is another law, this is a third law'. For many of them we have no names. All people live under the law of identification. This is a law. Those who begin to remember themselves can get rid of the law of identification. In that way we can know these laws. It is necessary to know, to understand little by little, the nature of laws from which one can become free. Then it is necessary to try to get free from one law, then from another. This is the practical way to study them.
Q. What are we to get rid of?
MR. O. You can get rid of identifying, negative emotions, imagination. .. .
Q. Aren't these habits?
MR. O. Habits are smaller divisions. Laws govern us, control us, direct us. Habits are not laws.
Q. You mean we must be subject to these laws on earth?
MR. O. We cannot fall under them or not fall under them. They don't ask us—we are chained.
Q. But can we get free?
MR. O. We can—on conditions. Ways enter here—the four ways are ways of liberation from unnecessary laws. Without schools one cannot know from which laws one can get free, or find means of getting free from them. The idea is that we are under many mechanical laws. Eventually we can get rid of some of these laws by becoming subject to other laws. There is no other way. To get out of the power of one law, you must put yourself under another law. This is the general idea. You can be shown the way—but you must work yourselves.
Q. Any personal attainment is the result of effort against fate?
MR. O. Fate may be favourable or not. It is necessary to know what one's fate is. But it cannot liberate us. Ways enter here. The four ways are ways to liberate us from laws. But each way has its own characteristics. In the three traditional ways the first step is the most difficult. In the Fourth Way man remains in the same conditions, and he must change in these conditions. These conditions are the best for him, because they are the most difficult.

washington prepares for WW-III

wsws |  The Senate hearing on cybersecurity touched briefly on the internal challenge to American militarism. The lead witness, retired Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency and former head of the Pentagon’s CyberCommand, bemoaned the effect of leaks by NSA contractor Edward Snowden and Army private Chelsea Manning, declaring that “insider attacks” were one of the most serious threats facing the US military.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia asked him directly, referring to Snowden, “Should we treat him as a traitor?” Alexander responded, “He should be treated as a traitor and tried as such.” Manchin nodded heartily, in evident agreement.

While the witnesses and senators chose to use the names of Snowden and Manning to personify the “enemy within,” they were clearly conscious that the domestic opposition to war is far broader than a few individual whistleblowers.

This is not a matter simply of the deep-seated revulsion among working people in response to 14 years of bloody imperialist interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and across North Africa, important as that is.

A war between the United States and a major power like China or Russia, even if it were possible to prevent its escalation into an all-out nuclear exchange, would involve a colossal mobilization of the resources of American society, both economic and human. It would mean further dramatic reductions in the living standards of the American people, combined with a huge blood toll that would inevitably fall mainly on the children of the working class.

Ever since the Vietnam War, the US military has operated as an all-volunteer force, avoiding conscription, which provoked widespread opposition and direct defiance in the 1960s and early 1970s. A non-nuclear war with China or Russia would mean the restoration of the draft and bring the human cost of war home to every family in America.

Under those conditions, no matter how great the buildup of police powers and the resort to repressive measures against antiwar sentiments, the stability of American society would be put to the test. The US ruling elite is deeply afraid of the political consequences. And it should be.

mcstain proclaims "growing military dissatisfaction"

zerohedge |  Conjuring images of "the kind of incrementalism that defined much of the Vietnam conflict," John McCain came out swinging today exposing the frustration top military officers have with President Obama's policies. "There’s a total lack of confidence in the president's leadership," the warmonger raged, adding - as perhaps a veiled threat - "there’s a level of dissatisfaction among the uniformed military that I’ve never seen in my time here."

Interestingly, as The Washington Times reports, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, echoed McCain's comments, demanding that, The White House be "more inclusive in the decision-making process," rather than 'icing' The Pentagon out

"People who have spoken truth to power get retired," ranted McCain, "all you have to do is look at a map of the Middle East in 2009 and then compare it to a map of today," to see an utterly failed strategy.

Mr. McCain argued that the frustration on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon stems from the administration’s “complete lack of any kind of coherent strategy, much less a strategy that would have any success on the battlefield” against Islamic State and the Assad regime.

“We’re sending 50 — count them, 50 — special operations soldiers to Syria, and they will have ‘no combat role,’ the president says,” said Mr. McCain. “Well, what are they being sent there for? To be recreation officers? You’re in a combat zone, and to say they’re not in combat is absurd.”

But the White House, he argued, has effectively blinded itself to such absurdities by promoting a system over the past seven years that suppresses dissenting voices.

"Compliant and easily led military leaders get promoted,” he said.

When it comes to actual policy, Mr. McCain lamented, the administration pursues half-measures and decisions, “when they are made, consistently disregard recommendations from the uniformed military.”

The failure to break Islamic State’s hold on Syria and Iraq, and its spread into North Africa, have resulted in “very poisoned relations that now exist between many in both houses of Congress and the president,” said Mr. McCain.

“There’s a total lack of confidence in the president’s leadership,” he said.

read more here...

Mr. McCain said Mr. Obama’s past claims that things were improving in the region have undercut his credibility today.

military has betrayed thousands of combat veterans...,

dailykos |  22,000 army soldiers with mental health, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) issues have received misconduct discharges instead of treatment since 2009, an NPR investigation has found. They are denied benefits and pensions as a result. This is despite a law that was passed when previous instances of this pattern of behavior were uncovered.

      Daniel Zwerdling and Michael De Yoanna have an extensive report on the investigations done by NPR and Colorado Public Radio. (Audio will be available at 7:00pm EST) One of the key elements in breaking the story was 20 hours of recordings made secretly by a soldier who had been targeted for discharge, despite plenty of evidence he had serious medical issues. Fort Carson is the main subject of the investigation, but the practice has also been found at other posts. From the NPR story:

...an investigation, based on hours of secret recordings from James, hundreds of pages of confidential documents from Fort Carson, and interviews with dozens of sources both inside and outside the base. And that evidence suggests the Army failed to pursue key evidence in its investigation, ruling out claims of mistreatment from nine other war veterans without ever interviewing or even contacting the men.

And according to figures acquired by NPR and CPR under the Freedom of Information Act, the Army has been pushing out soldiers diagnosed with mental health problems not just at Fort Carson but at bases across the country.

The figures show that since January 2009, the Army has "separated" 22,000 soldiers for "misconduct" after they came back from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with mental health problems or TBI. As a result, many of the dismissed soldiers have not received crucial retirement and health care benefits that soldiers receive with an honorable discharge.

   Read the whole report; listen to the audio. This is damnable stuff. The Army generals continue to whitewash the problem; until heads roll in the upper ranks, this is likely to continue. This is the kind of thing a functioning Congress should be investigating. It will be interesting to see how far this story goes, and if any of the presidential campaigners will pick up on it.

the war on drugs only works if people support it

theantimedia |  “If an addict comes into the Gloucester Police Department and asks for help, an officer will take them to the Addison Gilbert Hospital, where they will be paired with a volunteer ‘ANGEL’ who will help guide them through the process. We have partnered with more than a dozen additional treatment centers to ensure that our patients receive the care and treatment they deserve — not in days or weeks, but immediately.

“If you have drugs or drug paraphernalia on you, we will dispose of it for you. You will not be arrested. You will not be charged with a crime. You will not be jailed.

“All you have to do is come to the police station and ask for help. We are here to do just that.”

Five months since the program launched, Campanello reports positive results: over 260 addicts have been placed in treatment. This summer, shoplifting, breaking and entering, and larceny dropped 23% from the same period last year. “We are seeing real people get the lives back,” he said. “And if we see a reduction in crime and cost savings that is a great bonus.”

Other police officers are following suit. John Rosenthal is the co-founder of Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, a nonprofit that helps police departments around the country adopt programs similar to Gloucester’s. Rosenthal says almost 40 departments in nine states (Connecticut, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont) have adopted at least some aspects of the program, and 90 more departments want to get involved.

Though the specifics of the programs vary, they all aim to treat addicts. Police are even participating through Veterans Affairs, as opiate addiction is high among veterans.

The program, which Campanello has funded with money seized during drug arrests, has been well-received by departments that implement similar strategies. John Gill, a police officer in Scarborough, Maine, said his local police station saw a “profound” change. He credits Gloucester with the courage to go through with it: “It was the Gloucester ANGEL project which showed us that a relatively modest-sized police agency could have a real impact. And like Gloucester, we couldn’t afford to wait until the perfect solution came along.”

the democratic principle can only survive where life seriously imitates art

monbiot |  What have governments learnt from the financial crisis? I could write a column spelling it out. Or I could do the same job with one word. Nothing.

Actually, that’s too generous. The lessons learned are counter-lessons, anti-knowledge, new policies that could scarcely be better designed to ensure the crisis recurs, this time with added momentum and fewer remedies. And the financial crisis is just one of multiple crises – in tax collection, public spending, public health, above all ecology – that the same counter-lessons accelerate.

Step back a pace and you see that all these crises arise from the same cause. Players with huge power and global reach are released from democratic restraint. This happens because of a fundamental corruption at the core of politics. In almost every nation, the interests of economic elites tend to weigh more heavily with governments than those of the electorate. Banks, corporations and land owners wield an unaccountable power, that works with a nod and a wink within the political class. Global governance is beginning to look like a never-ending Bilderburg meeting.

As a paper by the law professor Joel Bakan in the Cornell International Law Journal argues, two dire shifts have been happening simultaneously. On one hand, governments have been removing the laws that restrict banks and corporations, arguing that globalisation makes states weak and effective legislation impossible. Instead, they say, we should trust those who wield economic power to regulate themselves.

On the other hand, the same governments devise draconian new laws to reinforce elite power. Corporations are given the rights of legal persons. Their property rights are enhanced. Those who protest against them are subject to policing and surveillance of the kind that’s more appropriate to dictatorships than democracies. Oh, state power still exists all right – when it’s wanted.

Many of you have heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). These are supposed to be trade treaties, but they have little to do with trade, and much to do with power. They enhance the power of corporations while reducing the power of parliaments and the rule of law. They could scarcely be better designed to exacerbate and universalise our multiple crises: financial, social and environmental. But something even worse is coming, the result of negotiations conducted, once more, in secret: a Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), covering North America, the EU, Japan, Australia and many other nations.

Only through WikiLeaks do we have any idea of what is being planned. It could be used to force nations to accept new financial products and services, to approve the privatisation of public services and to reduce the standards of care and provision. It looks like the greatest international assault on democracy devised in the past two decades. Which is saying quite a lot.

even Nature whistling past the graveyard and kicking the can down the road?

theconversation |  A sustainable Australia is possible – but we have to choose it. That’s the finding of a paper published today in Nature.

The paper is the result of a larger project to deliver the first Australian National Outlook report, more than two years in the making, which CSIRO is also releasing today.

As part of this analysis we looked at whether achieving sustainability will require a shift in our values, such as rejecting consumerism. We also looked at the contributions of choices made by individuals (such as consuming less water or energy) and of choices made collectively by society (such as policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions).

We found that collective policy choices are crucial, and that Australia could make great progress to sustainability without any changes in social values.

Competing views 

Few topics generate more heat, and less light, than debates over economic growth and sustainability.

At one end of the spectrum, “technological optimists” suggest that the marvellous invisible hand will take care of everything, with market-driven improvements in technology automatically protecting essential natural resources while also improving living standards.

Unfortunately, there is no real evidence to back this, particularly in protecting unpriced natural resources such as ocean fisheries, or the services provided by a stable climate. Instead the evidence suggests we are already crossing important planetary boundaries.

Other the other end of the spectrum, people argue that achieving sustainability will require a rejection of economic growth, or a shift in values away from consumerism and towards a more ecologically attuned lifestyles. We refer to this group as advocating “communitarian limits”.

A third “institutional reform” approach argues that policy reform can reconcile economic and ecological goals – and is attacked from one side as anti-business alarmism, and from the other as indulging in pro-growth greenwash.

the kernal of the argument

WaPo |  It took years for the Internet to reach its first 100 computers. Today, 100 new ones join each second. And running deep within the silicon souls of most of these machines is the work of a technical wizard of remarkable power, a man described as a genius and a bully, a spiritual leader and a benevolent dictator.

Linus Torvalds — who in person could be mistaken for just another paunchy, middle-aged suburban dad who happens to have a curiously large collection of stuffed penguin dolls — looms over the future of computing much as Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs loom over its past and present. For Linux, the operating system that Torvalds created and named after himself, has come to dominate the exploding online world, making it more popular overall than rivals from Microsoft and Apple.

But while Linux is fast, flexible and free, a growing chorus of critics warn that it has security weaknesses that could be fixed but haven’t been. Worse, as Internet security has surged as a subject of international concern, Torvalds has engaged in an occasionally profane standoff with experts on the subject. One group he has dismissed as “masturbating monkeys.” In blasting the security features produced by another group, he said in a public post, “Please just kill yourself now. The world would be a better place.”

There are legitimate philosophical differences amid the harsh words. Linux has thrived in part because of Torvalds’s relentless focus on performance and reliability, both of which could suffer if more security features were added. Linux works on almost any chip in the world and is famously stable as it manages the demands of many programs at once, allowing computers to hum along for years at a time without rebooting.

Yet even among Linux’s many fans there is growing unease about vulnerabilities in the operating system’s most basic, foundational elements — housed in something called “the kernel,” which Torvalds has personally managed since its creation in 1991. Even more so, there is concern that Torvalds’s approach to security is too passive, bordering on indifferent.

don't be stupid or degenerate - avoid chemsex with your digital butt plug and you'll be just fine...,

gizmodo |  Security researchers have come across a new kind of Android malware, which purports to be a well-known app but then exposes your phone to root attacks—and is virtually impossible to remove.

The new malware has been found in software available on third-party app stores. The apps in question use code from official software that you can download from Google Play like Facebook and Twitter, reports Ars Technica, so they initially seem innocuous and even provide the exact same functionality.

But in fact they’re injected with malicious code, which allows them to gain root access to the OS. In turn, a series of exploits are installed on the device as system applications, which makes them incredibly hard—for most people, impossible—to remove. Fist tap Big Don.