Did you know there are U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Africa? Why?

U.S. training combat forces in Africa

It's called AFRICOM. You didn't hear or read much about its secret war in Africa until three years ago when four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger and earlier this year when Spc. Henry Mayfield Jr., 23, from the Chicago suburb of Hazel Crest was killed in combat in Kenya. But it's a serious and costly imperialist military adventure.

Last week, the Pentagon admitted for the third time that its bombing campaign against terrorist groups in Somalia, which has been underway for more than a decade, had caused civilian casualties there. The U.S. military has carried out more than 180 airstrikes in Somalia since 2017, 42 of them in 2020.

There are currently about 7,500  U.S. troops and 1,000 DoD civilians or contractors (mercenaries) based throughout Africa, who are primarily tasked with training as well as combat missions. Most operate from Camp Lemonnier, a permanent and growing U.S. base in Djibouti, which is used as a staging ground and command center for special operations missions across the continent, The U.S. has another 200 troops in Kenya and roughly 100 "nonuniformed personnel".

AFRICOM'S self-proclaimed mission?

U.S. Africa Command, with partners, counters transnational threats and malign actors, strengthens security forces and responds to crises in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.

But AFRICOM's unstated purpose also has to do with U.S. global strategic contention with Russia and China than it does with fighting terrorism. China now has 52 embassies in Africa — a 24 percent increase from 2012.

AFRICOM didn't start with Trump's administration but goes back to Clinton in the late 90s and was escalated by Bush and then Pres. Obama in 2004. Trump, with his "America First" approach to foreign policy, has actually been committed to a 10% "drawdown" of troops on the African continent despite the objection of hawks like John Bolton and Steve Bannon.

U.S. military adventures in Africa will likely continue and increase under a hawkish, anti-China Biden administration especially with Susan Rice or Tammy Duckworth as his V.P. or in a key foreign policy position.

Even though congress willingly surrendered its constitutional war powers back during the Korean and Vietnam "conflicts", it still oversees the gigantic Pentagon budget and gladly funds foreign military adventures like the current ones in Africa, regardless of the consequences here at home and without any public debate.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Samantha Eyler-Driscoll

Senior Editor at the Stigler Center and its publication ProMarket, and one of six members of the ProMarket editorial board, I have opposed since its inception the proposal by my colleague Luigi Zingales to provide a platform to Steve Bannon at the Stigler Center, as well as the use of ProMarket to promote the provision of that platform, on grounds that it normalizes white nationalism and implicates us in the concrete violence wrought on American lives every day by that ideology. -- Resignation statement

Donald Trump

"I wouldn't say I'm a feminist..." -- Interview with Piers Morgan 

Janelle Monae

 “We are also daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and human beings. We come in peace, but we mean business.” -- Grammys

Tiffany Kidd, Ballou H.S. math teacher

“I feel like we’re now in a culture where we’re forced to fail students, where we used to be able to provide solutions.There’s been anger and frustration.” -- Washington Post

Chicago State board member Nicholas Gowen 

...said he was taken aback by Vallas’ resignation. “Quite frankly, I’m a little floored,” Gowen said. “If he desires to run for mayor, then of course he can’t keep this position, but that should have been made clear early on if that was his desire. I find it hard to believe this was a lark.” --  Tribune

Recess is the fourth R https://t.co/4176f7JKJ6

— John Merrow (@John_Merrow) January 29, 2018

...and the horse he rode in on.

Best headline: Alabama Voters to Roy Moore: F*ck You and the Horse You Rode in On

The real horse that he rode in on, of course, was the broke-back nag of racism, misogyny, religious zealotry, and confederate revivalism.

Listening to the Republican talking heads on cable news this morning whitesplaining Doug Jones' amazing win in AL, you get the feeling that the revolt by black, women and young voters had nothing to do with it. They're mostly bemoaning the coming Democrat "tsunami" in 2018 and finger-pointing at Steve Bannon, as if the so-called "mainstream" GOP didn't rally behind white supremacist, child molester Roy Moore. 

Their claim is that Moore was just a poor candidate and that Bannon somehow "dragged the president into a losing race” (Actually quoting the Guardian here). Trump hilariously plays along with this assessment, claiming that he wasn't really backing Moore after all and that he knew all along that Jones would win.

The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017

Maybe that was a typo and DT meant his dick was stacked against him.

But from my perspective, there was so much more to this race than individuals Bannon, Trump, or Moore vs. Jones. This was mainly a major body blow against the white supremacy and the resurgent racist and neo-fascist confederacy that Moore, Trump and Bannon embody and that have been a hallmark of the first year of Trump's administration.

I'd be careful not to overstate this. Alabama is still Alabama and still comfortably a red state steeped in segregation and Jim Crow. That didn't change yesterday and Democrats still have their work cut out for them in busting up the "solid South".

Campaign mastermind Joe Trippi, will get a lot of credit for Jones' win (as he should) as will the DNC leadership who came late, but came, with money and support for black voter turnout. The Sanders left and groups like MoveOn  were visible  in their support. But it was mainly black civil rights organizations like NAACP and black student groups that did the ground work getting people to the polls despite all the Republican-made restrictions on voting aimed specifically at black voters.

Showing off their white blindspot were some local DSAers who refused to back Jones because he wasn't socialist enough. 

It's one thing to dis the current Dem leadership, which needs to be replaced. It's another to show up on the battlefield.

Behind Randi Weingarten's secret meeting with Steve Bannon

The Washington Post reports that neo-fascist, white supremacist Steve Bannon, Pres. Trump’s former chief strategist (replacing the recently-indicted Paul Manafort) secretly met with AFT leader Randi Weingarten in April to talk about "education issues".

The meeting was set up by right-wing media mogul and Trump ally, Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media Inc. who, according to the Post, "is a friend of both Trump and Weingarten". Ruddy approached Weingarten about the secret meeting because Trump “likes her” and supported opening a conversation to see whether there was common ground", says Ruddy.

The idea for a conversation between the White House and Weingarten developed, Ruddy said, when he was talking to the president about education and mentioned he knew Weingarten. Trump also knew her — both were prominent figures in New York in their own fields.

“The president knows her and likes her,” Ruddy said. “He obviously knows her from the New York world. . . . So I mentioned this to the president as an opening to communications with her. Steve [Bannon] was excited about that. I set up a meeting and they had a private meeting outside the White House.”

Actually, Trump's rationale for the meeting is much clearer than Weingarten's. Trump had already been successful in driving a wedge in the labor movement through meetings with Teamsters President Jim Hoffa and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Each applauded Trump for pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threatening other international trade agreements. Trumka even took a seat on Trump's manufacturing council (which never met) and supported Trump's plan to build the oil pipeline through the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota.

Also, around the same time as the Bannon/Weingarten meeting, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was holding his own closed-door meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Nobody knows what went on behind those doors. But within weeks, a voucher bill was passed in IL by a majority Democratic legislature, without any resistance from Emanuel.

Weingarten however, offers no strategic or tactical rationale for her consenting to hold the secret (from her own membership) meeting. When she tries, she sounds like someone who has drunk the  populist kool-aid.

She says, she thought Bannon sought the meeting [she thought? m.k.] because he believed there was common ground; she and her union have been critical of the power of hedge fund managers and “crony capitalists,” as has Bannon. 

Bannon, an enemy of the hedge-funders???

No, no, no. Not true... Bannon's rise to power has been largely underwritten by hedge funders and crony capitalists like billionaire Robert Mercer, a long-time Trump crony who up until this week ran Renaissance Technologies and it's crown jewel, the Medallion Fund, which, according to Bloomberg, is perhaps the world's greatest money-making machine. Medallion is open only to Renaissance's roughly 300 employees, about 90 of whom are Ph.D.s, as well as a select few individuals with deep-rooted connections to the firm. The fabled fund, known for its intense secrecy, has produced about $55 billion in profit over the last 28 years.  

Weingarten tells the Intercept:

“Look, I will meet with virtually anyone to make our case, and particularly in that moment, I was very, very concerned about the budget that would decimate public education,” Weingarten said. “I wanted it to be a real meeting, I didn’t want it to be a photo-op, so I insisted that the meeting didn’t happen at the White House.”

Weingarten didn’t take notes at the meeting, which was held at a Washington restaurant, but told The Intercept she and Bannon talked about “education, infrastructure, immigrants, bigotry and hate, budget cuts … [and] about a lot of different things.”

Her takeaway: Bannon is no Martin Luther King. Really?

The [Martin Luther] King philosophy of jobs and justice is not the Bannon philosophy, let’s put it that way.”

But on the other hand, she did buy some of his faux working-class populism.

“I think he sees the world as working people versus elites. And on some level, he’s thought about educators as working-class folks."

Lots of questions here... Why did it take seven months for this meeting to be revealed, and only then by a Bannon friend? Why, with the AFT and the labor movement in general in a state of crisis, bleeding members and money, would Weingarten look to Bannon for common ground?

I'm not saying or implying that Weingarten cut a back-room deal with Bannon. I'm not sure that either of them had the power to make any kind of deal. I think this was more of a feel-out meeting that was intended to be kept secret on all sides.

Weingarten and the union leadership seem lost at sea with no real sense of direction. She has nothing to deal. Her first instinct seems to be to scramble for her own personal seat at the table. Or as she puts it...

“If you are the president of the union and you’re fighting fiercely to get budget restorations and to not have a dismantlement of public education or of higher education and the administration asks to – or it’s made clear to you that they want to meet – you meet,” she said. “You don’t not meet. You meet.”

 At the same time she was secretly not not meeting with Bannon, she was also asking DeVos to do joint school tours with her. This even while DeVos was being picketed by parents and teachers at local public schools.

But her meetings with Bannon and DeVos did nothing to get adequate funding for public ed. Since the meetings, the federal public school budget has been slashed to pieces and billions of dollars shifted over from public schools to privately-run charters and school vouchers.

Meeting with Elites... Intercept explains:

Hearing Bannon attack elites, including the types of hedge fund Democrats who fund the charter school movement, in the same way she would, was surreal. “He hates crony capitalism,” Weingarten said. “The same kinds of things [we say], you could hear out of his mouth, and that’s why it’s so — you sit there in a surreal way, saying, ‘How can you sit right next to all these elites?'

That would be a great question for Weingarten herself to answer.

No, this is not a time for secret meetings with fascist demagogues. It is a time for organizing and mobilizing rank-and-file resistance.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Dick Gregory in Greenwood, Miss, April 2, 1963 after a voter registration protest.

Dick Gregory, R.I.P. 

I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn't have what I wanted. -- Chicago Defender

CTU's Brandon Johnson on IL Senate Bill1

We're not having the real conversation which should be about revenue...We have a taxing system that is unfair and unjust. -- Hitting Left 

Steve Bannon

"The Trump presidency is over." --Weekly Standard

Netanyahu's hand-picked Israeli minister, Ayoub Kara

“Due to the terrific relations with the U.S., we need to put the declarations about the Nazis in the proper proportion... Trump is the best U.S. leader Israel has ever had. His relations with the prime minister of Israel are wonderful, and after enduring the terrible years of Obama, Trump is the unquestioned leader of the free world, and we must not accept anyone harming him.” -- Jerusalem Post

Historian Eric Foner

 “Obviously, we have some pretty deep divisions along multiple lines—racial, ideological, rural versus urban...Whether they will lead to civil war, I doubt. We have strong gravitational forces that counteract what we’re seeing today... People are not debating the Civil War. They’re debating American society and race today.” -- New Yorker: Is America headed for a new kind of civil war?

Former WI Senator Russ Feingold

 Even if the white supremacists are condemned, even if the entire Republican party rises up in self-professed outrage at white supremacists, if voter suppression and other such racist policies survive, the white supremacists are winning. -- Guardian 

 Gen. Curtis LeMay wrote:

 “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?” -- In “Strategic Air Warfare,” by Richard H. Kohn

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 'Move fast and break things...'

Bannon: "Move fast and break things" 

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

“We have got to have the guts to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies and move forward toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program, And I’ll be introducing legislation shortly to do that.” -- All In with Chris Hayes

Chicago Ald. Roderick Sawyer

"I just don't know what value he [Paul Vallas] adds to this university, that's my concern. I don't even know what a crisis intervention specialist means." -- Chicago Tribune

 Allyson Moloney, a K-4 special education teacher

“All of our paraprofessionals are tied up with testing. Even our ‘specials’ teachers — gym and tech — are tied up with PARCC testing. We don’t have a lot of extra bodies that can help us out.” -- Sun-Times

Reince Priebus

"I'm not in any trouble." -- Politico

Nicole Jorwic, dir. of rights policy for the Arc, an advocacy organization for people with intellectual disabilities 

We would hope that in his future rulings, Judge Gorsuch would see that the purpose of IDEA is to help students with disabilities achieve more meaningful progress that can ultimately lead to their success and full life in their communities." -- New York Times

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE)

“By appointing Mr. Severino to enforce the life-saving protections that he has made his personal mission to dismantle, the Trump administration has once again put the fox in charge of the hen house." -- LGBTQ Nation

Gwenda Blair, Trump biographer 

...said of Trump’s supporters: “They voted for a guy who could fix it, the CEO, on The Apprentice for 10 years, who could make a deal with anybody.”  -- Guardian

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kellyanne Conway 

"I misspoke one word." -- Chicago Tribune

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly

Respectfully but firmly, the retired general told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with President Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command. -- Washington Post

Donald Trump tells O'Reilly...

 “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?” -- Washington Post. 

Susana Mendoza

IL Comptroller Susana Mendoza

“We are now going into a third year without that balanced budget proposal. He hasn’t done it once. He hasn’t done it twice. As a result of that, my office is responsible for having to pay $11.2 billion in bill backlogs. That’s how bad of a situation we’re in. We’ve had six downgrades to our credit since Gov. Rauner has taken office." -- Chicago Tribune

Jim Durkin, Rauner's House leader threatens AFSCME families

"But the fact is, if you cross him... if you do that, you're crossing a governor who's, I think he's going to do what he thinks is best at the end of the day, which is not going to be in the best interests of AFSCME members and their families and loved ones." -- Chicago Tribune

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska)

“I have heard from thousands—truly thousands—of Alaskans who shared their concerns about Mrs. DeVos. They’ve contacted me by phone, by e-mail, in person.” -- Wall Street Journal

Michael Petrilli, conservative think-tanker on DeVos' blunder

"It's impossible to argue that most online charter schools are high-performing because most are performing abysmally." Petrilli should know. He once worked for K12 Inc.,. -- NPR

DeVos appointment is central part of Trump's coup. Say 'NO'!

Alaskans gathered outside U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Anchorage office urging her to oppose the nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary Monday. (Bill Roth / Alaska Dispatch News)

Unless the vote is postponed, today is the day of decision on Betsy DeVos. There are many reasons to oppose the appointment of right-wing billionaire DeVos, from her ignorance of and disdain for public education, her extremism in pushing privatization and "choice" (privately-managed charters and vouchers) to her imposition of religious fundamentalism into the schools, crossing the constitutional separation of church and state.

But more importantly, the DeVos appointment, along with the rest, should be seen as part and parcel of the Trump/Bannon/corporatist/white nationalist coup d'etat. This is not simply a matter of her competence as an administrator or policy adviser to the president.

Senate Democrats, who've been rendering unto Caesar on previous Trump appointments, appear to have united in opposition to DeVos. It's about time. But it's unlikely that they will pick up enough Republican votes to stop her.

Therefore, building the resistance movement to save and transform public education remains the charge of teachers, unions, parents, students, civil rights groups and community activists as it was under the Duncan-led D.O.E.. Only this time around, the stakes are even higher.
#Resist

CREDO Action said Monday that 1.45 million people had signed a petition urging the Senate to block DeVos' nomination.

Why Trump will fail... Former Bush State Dept. guy, Eliot Cohen, writes in the Atlantic,

 He will fail most of all because at the end of the day most Americans, including most of those who voted for him, are decent people who have no desire to live in an American version of Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, or Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.