Madonna postpones tour after stay in intensive care

Madonna postpones world tour after stay in intensive care with serious bacterial infection.

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The Army Warned Troops in 1945 of the Danger of Fascism. That Warning Rings True Today

 

 

On March 25, 1945, the United States Army issued “Fact Sheet #64: Fascism!” to promote discussions amongst American troops about fascism as the war in Europe wound down to a close. Discussion leaders were alerted “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze; nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

 

It is worth revisiting the Army’s warnings as Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans denounce legal due process and threaten civil war.

 

Four key points were addressed in the Army fact sheet to be included in discussions.

(1) Fascism is more apt to come to power at a time of economic crisis;

(2) Fascism inevitably leads to war;

(3) It can come to any country;

(4) We can best combat it by making our democracy work.

 

The fact sheet described findings by war correspondent Cecil Brown who toured the United States after leaving Europe. Brown discovered that most Americans he talked with were “vague about just what fascism really means. He found few Americans who were confident they would recognize a fascist if they saw one.” The War Department was concerned that ignorance about fascism could make it possible for it to emerge in the United States and issued recommendations for how to prevent it.

 

As a simple definition, the War Department described fascism as the “opposite of democracy. The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people. Fascism is government by the few and for the few.” Fascists remain in power through “skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security . . . At the very time that the fascists proclaimed that their party was the party of the ‘average citizen,’ they were in the pay of certain big industrialists and financiers . . . They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled against each other.”

 

The War Department acknowledged that the United States had

 

native fascists who say that they are ‘100 percent American’ . . . [A]t various times and places in our history, we have had sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which experience has shown can be properly identified as ‘fascist’.

 

The War Department warned,

 

An American fascist seeking power would not proclaim that he is a fascist. Fascism always camouflages its plans and purposes . . . Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-American- ism’.

 

The War Department identified three attitudes and practices that fascists share in common. Fascists pit “religious, racial, and economic groups against one another in order to break down national unity . . . In the United States, native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti- foreign-born.” Fascists also “deny the need for international cooperation” and that “all people — regardless of color, race, creed, or nationality have rights.” They “substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count.” Finally, for fascists, the “[i]ndiscriminate pinning of the label ‘Red’ on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device.”

 

Learning to identify American fascists and detect their techniques was not going to be easy, but

 

it is vitally important to learn to spot them, even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy . . . In its bid for power, it is ready to drive wedges that will disunite the people and weaken the nation. It supplies the scapegoat — Catholics, Jews, Negroes, labor unions, big business — any group upon which the insecure and unemployed

 

are willing to blame.

 

They become frightened, angry, desperate, confused. Many, in their misery, seek to find somebody to blame . . . The resentment may be directed against minorities — especially if undemocratic organizations with power and money can direct our emotions and thinking along these lines.

 

The goal of the fascist doctrine is to prevent “men from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.”

 

Fascists may talk about freedom, but

 

freedom . . . involves being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.

 

 

* This article was originally published here

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Andrew Ridgeley: I wish Wham had played a farewell tour

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Andrew Ridgeley: I wish Wham had played a farewell tour

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New York's Education Wars a Century Ago Show how Content Restrictions Can Backfire

 

 

 

Matthew Hawn, a high school teacher for sixteen years in conservative Sullivan County, Tennessee, opened the 2020-21 year in his Contemporary Issues class with a discussion of police shootings.  White privilege is a fact, he told the students.  He had a history of challenging his classes, which led to lively discussions among those who agreed and disagreed with his views.  But this day’s discussion got back to a parent who objected.  Hawn apologized – but didn’t relent.  Months later, with more parents complaining, school officials reprimanded him for assigning “The First White President,” an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which argues that white supremacy was the basis for Donald Trump’s presidency.  After another incident in April, school officials fired him for insubordination and unprofessional behavior.

 

Days later, Tennessee outlawed his teaching statewide, placing restrictions on what could be taught about race and sex.  Students should learn “the exceptionalism of our nation,” not “things that inherently divide or pit either Americans against Americans or people groups against people groups,” Governor Bill Lee announced.  The new laws also required advance notice to parents of instruction on sexual orientation, gender identity, and contraception, with an option to withdraw their children.

 

Over the past three years, at least 18 states have enacted laws governing what is and is not taught in schools. Restricted topics mirror Tennessee’s, focusing on race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  In some cases, legislation bans the more general category of “divisive concepts,” a term coined in a 2020 executive order issued by the Trump administration and now promoted by conservative advocates.  In recent months, Florida has been at the forefront of extending such laws to cover political ideology, mandating lessons that communism could lead to the overthrow of the US government.  Even the teaching of mathematics has not escaped Florida politics, with 44 books banned for infractions like using race-based examples in word problems.

 

In a sense the country is stepping back a century to when a similar hysteria invaded New York’s schools during the “Red Scare” at the end of World War I, when fear of socialism and Bolshevism spread throughout the US.  New York City launched its reaction in 1918 when Mayor John Francis Hylan banned public display of the red flag.  He considered the Socialist Party’s banner “an insignia for law hating and anarchy . . .  repulsive to ideals of civilization and the principles upon which our Government is founded.”

 

In the schools, Benjamin Glassberg, a teacher at Commercial High School in Brooklyn, was cast in Matthew Hawn’s role.  On January 14, 1919, his history class discussed Bolshevism.  The next day, twelve students, about one-third, signed a statement that their teacher had portrayed Bolshevism as a form of political expression not nearly so black as people painted it.  The students cited specifics Glassberg gave them – that the State Department forbade publishing the truth about Bolshevism; that Red Cross staff with first-hand knowledge were prevented from talking about conditions in Russia; that Lenin and Trotsky had undermined rather than supported Germany and helped end the war.  The school’s principal forwarded the statement to Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools, who suspended Glassberg, pending a trial by the Board of Education.

 

Glassberg’s trial played out through May.  Several students repeated the charges in their statement, while others testified their teacher had said nothing disrespectful to the US government.  Over that period, the sentiments of school officials became clear.  Dr. Tildsley proclaimed that no person adhering to the Marxian program should become a teacher in the public schools, and if discovered should be forced to resign.  He would be sending to everyone in the school system a circular making clear that “Americanism is to be put above everything else in classroom study.”  He directed teachers to correct students’ opinions contrary to fundamental American ideas. The Board of Education empowered City Superintendent William Ettinger to undertake an “exhaustive examination into the life, affiliations, opinions, and loyalty of every member” of the teachers union.  Organizations like the National Security League and the American Defense Society pushed the fight against Bolshevism across the country.

 

After the Board declared Glassberg guilty, the pace picked up.  In June, the city’s high school students took a test entitled Examination For High Schools on the Great War.  The title was misleading.  The first question was designed to assess students’ knowledge of and attitude toward Bolshevism.  The instructions to principals said this question was of greatest interest and teachers should highlight any students who displayed an especially intimate knowledge of that subject.  The results pleased school officials when only 1 in 300 students showed any significant knowledge of or leaning toward Bolshevism.  The “self-confessed radicals” would be given a six-month course on the “economic and social system recognized in America.”  Only if they failed that course would their diplomas be denied.

 

In September, the state got involved.  New York Attorney General Charles D. Newton called for “Americanization,” describing it as “intensive instruction in our schools in the ideals and traditions of America.”  Also serving as counsel to the New York State Legislative Committee to Investigate Bolshevism, commonly known as the Lusk Committee after its chairman, Newton was in a position to make it happen.  In January 1920, Lusk began hearings on education.  Tildsly, Ettinger, and Board of Education President Anning S. Prawl all testified in favor of an Americanization plan.

 

In April, the New York Senate and Assembly passed three anti-Socialist “Lusk bills.”  The “Teachers’ Loyalty” bill required public school teachers to obtain from the Board of Regents a Certificate of Loyalty to the State and Federal Constitutions and the country’s laws and institutions.  “Sorely needed,” praised the New York Times, a long-time advocate for Americanization in the schools.  But any celebration was premature.  Governor Alfred E. Smith had his objections.  Stating that the Teacher Loyalty Bill “permits one man to place upon any teacher the stigma of disloyalty, and this even without hearing or trial,” he vetoed it along with the others.  Lusk and his backers would have to wait until the governor’s election in November when Nathan L. Miller beat Smith in a squeaker.  After Miller’s inauguration, the Legislature passed the bills again.  Miller signed them in May despite substantial opposition from prominent New Yorkers.

 

Over the next two years, the opposition grew.  Even the New York Times backed off its unrelenting anti-Socialist stance.  With the governor’s term lasting only two years, opponents got another chance in November, 1922, in a Smith-Miller rematch.  Making the Lusk laws a major issue, Smith won in a landslide.  He announced his intention to repeal the laws days after his inauguration.  Lusk and his backers fought viciously but the Legislature finally passed repeal in April.  Calling the teacher loyalty law (and a second Lusk law on private school licensing) “repugnant to the fundamentals of American democracy,” Smith signed their repeal.

 

More than any other factor, the experience of the teachers fueled the growing opposition to the Teachers’ Loyalty bill.  After its enactment, state authorities administered two oaths to teachers statewide.  That effort didn’t satisfy Dr. Frank P. Graves, State Commissioner of Education.  In April 1922, he established the Advisory Council on Qualifications of Teachers of the State of New York to hear cases of teachers charged with disloyalty.  He appointed Archibald Stevenson, counsel to the Lusk committee and arch-proponent of rooting out disloyalty in the schools, as one member.  By summer the Council had earned a reputation as a witch hunt.  Its activities drew headlines such as Teachers Secretly Quizzed on Loyalty and Teachers Defy Loyalty Court.  Teachers and principals called before it refused to attend.  Its reputation grew so bad that New York’s Board of Education asked for its abolishment and the President of the Board told teachers that they need not appear if summoned.

 

A lesson perhaps lies in that experience for proponents of restrictions on what can be taught today.  Already teachers, principals, and superintendents risk fines and termination from violating laws ambiguous on what is and is not allowed.  The result has been a chilling environment where educators simply avoid controversial issues altogether.  Punishing long-time and respected teachers – like Matthew Hawn, whom dozens of his former students defend – will put faces on the fallout from the laws being passed.  How long before a backlash rears up, as it did in New York over Teachers’ Loyalty?

 

* This article was originally published here

Exclusive: Is Homeopathy 'Placebo' And 'Dangerous'? Expert Addresses 10 Common Doubts

While homeopathy has existed for centuries, this alternative medicine has remained a disputed topic in the world of medical science. While many swear by homeopathy, others have dismissed it as a 'placebo' and even 'dangerous'. A homeopathy doctor weighs in and refutes 10 popular "myths" about homeopathy. 

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ಕರಳದ ಚನನ ಸಗಣ; ಸವಪನ ಸರಶಗ ಬದರಕ ಕಸ ರದದ

ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು, ಜೂನ್ 27: ಕೇರಳದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಿಕ್ಕಾಪಟ್ಟೆ ರಾಜಕೀಯ ಸಂಚಲನ ಮೂಡಿಸಿದ್ದ ಚಿನ್ನ ಸಾಗಣೆ ಪ್ರಕರಣದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಆರೋಪಿ ಸ್ವಪ್ನಾ ಸುರೇಶ್‌ಗೆ ಬೆದರಿಕೆ ಹಾಕಿದ ಕ್ರಿಮಿನಲ್ ಕೇಸ್‌ಗೆ ಹೊಸ ಟ್ವಿಸ್ಟ್‌ ಸಿಕ್ಕಿದೆ. ಸ್ವಪ್ನಾ ಸುರೇಶ್‌ಗೆ ಬೆದರಿಕೆ ಹಾಕಿದ್ದಾರೆನ್ನಲಾದ ಆರೋಪ ಸಂಬಂಧ ವಿಜೇಶ್‌ ಪಿಳ್ಳೈ ವಿರುದ್ಧ ಕ್ರಿಮಿನಲ್‌ ಕೇಸ್‌ ದಾಖಲಿಸಲು ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು ಪೊಲೀಸರಿಗೆ ಮ್ಯಾಜಿಸ್ಪ್ರೇಟ್‌ ಕೋರ್ಟ್‌ ನೀಡಿದ್ದ ಅನುಮತಿಯನ್ನು ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ

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TV producer Daisy Goodwin accuses Tory mayoral hopeful of groping

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TV producer Daisy Goodwin accuses Tory mayoral hopeful of groping

Daisy Goodwin says Daniel Korski put his hand on her breast during a meeting.

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ಕಲಜಗಳ ಅತಥ ಉಪನಯಸಕರ ಗರವಧನ ಬಡಗಡ ಷರತತಗಳ

ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು, ಜೂನ್ 26; ಸರ್ಕಾರಿ ಪ್ರಥಮ ದರ್ಜೆ ಕಾಲೇಜುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕಾರ್ಯ ನಿರ್ವಹಣೆ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಿರುವ ಅತಿಥಿ ಉಪನ್ಯಾಸಕರ ಮೇ ತಿಂಗಳ ಗೌರವಧನ ಬಿಡುಗಡೆ ಮಾಡಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಕಾಲೇಜು ಶಿಕ್ಷಣ ಇಲಾಖೆ ಈ ಕುರಿತು ಆದೇಶವನ್ನು ಹೊರಡಿಸಿದ್ದು, ಷರತ್ತುಗಳನ್ನು ಸಹ ಆದೇಶದೊಂದಿಗೆ ಲಗತ್ತಿಸಿದೆ. ಕಾಲೇಜು ಶಿಕ್ಷಣ ಆಯುಕ್ತರಿಂದ ಅನುಮೋದನೆಗೊಂಡ ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿಯನ್ನು  ಕಾಲೇಜು ಶಿಕ್ಷಣ ಇಲಾಖೆ ನಿರ್ದೇಶಕರು ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಸರ್ಕಾರಿ ಪ್ರಥಮ ದರ್ಜೆ

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100ರ ಹಸತಲಲಲ ಟಮಟ ಉಳದ ತರಕರಗಳ ದಬರ!

ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು, ಜೂನ್ 26; ಜೂನ್ ಅಂತ್ಯ ಸಮೀಪಿಸಿದರೂ ರಾಜ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಉಂಟಾಗಿರುವ ಮಳೆಯ ಕೊರತೆ ಬೆಲೆ ಏರಿಕೆಗೆ ಕಾರಣವಾಗಿದೆ. ಕುಡಿಯುವ ನೀರಿಗೆ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆ ಎದುರಾಗಿದ್ದು, ತರಕಾರಿ ಬೆಳೆಗಳು ಒಣಗಿದ್ದು, ಮಾರುಕಟ್ಟೆಗೆ ಸರಬರಾಜು ಕಡಿಮೆಯಾಗಿ ಬೆಲೆ ಏರಿಕೆಗೆ ಕಾರಣವಾಗಿದೆ. ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು ನಗರ ಸೇರಿದಂತೆ ವಿವಿಧ ಜಿಲ್ಲೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕಳೆದ ಒಂದು ವಾರದಿಂದ ತರಕಾರಿಗಳ ಬೆಲೆ ಗಗನಮುಖಿಯಾಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಟೊಮೆಟೊ ಬೆಲೆ 100ರ ಗಡಿಗೆ ತಲುಪಿದೆ.

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