Ominous developments in three states this summer – Oregon, Texas, New Jersey, and one city – Chicago, provide a glimpse into the Pentagon’s new playbook to recruit soldiers from high schools across the country. In brief, the military has been engaged in a robust lobbying campaign to lower academic standards to make it easier to recruit youth.

New recruits have long been required to hold a high school diploma or a GED certificate. This requirement is a major impediment to finding enough soldiers to meet annual targets, but even when struggling students barely manage to graduate, the Pentagon has developed a plan to marshal more of them into the military.

Friday, July 21, 2017, 3:00 – 5:00 PM.
Location:  35 East Gay Street, Second Floor, Columbus, OH 43215.
Facebook event

Candidates say campaigns are about articulating programs, issues and priorities. But people vote for candidates based on how that person makes them feel. Consciously or unconsciously, elections are about giving voice to values.

Voters are moral proxies who want to know that a candidate or elected official truly cares about them — that they are authentic — more than they care about what they know.

President Donald Trump and his administration are expressing moral values that have no market value. The Golden Rule has both moral and market value. Trump wouldn’t want done to him what he’s doing to the majority of the American people.

Trump’s values express reverse gratification. The powerful are suppressing the weak; the rich are exploiting the poor; the elephant is crushing the gnat.

Los Angeles, July 16, 2017 – The Los Angeles Workers Center and Hollywood Progressive co-present the revolutionary classic Storm Over Asia.

Unlike most Bolshevik silent movies that take place in the European parts of the Soviet Union, V.I. Pudovkin’s 1928 Storm Over Asia is set in Mongolia, where it was shot on location, along with filming in Siberia. The sprawling saga occurs during the Russian Civil War and depicts a forerunner of Third World liberation movements, as Asians fight Western imperialists. This far out Far East classic has the epic sweep of future big screen extravaganzas with casts of thousands, and is arguably a Soviet Spartacus or Braveheart.