By Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies/Common Dreams

March 19 marks 15 years since the U.S.-U.K invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. The U.S. military has refused to keep a tally of Iraqi deaths.
General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the initial invasion, bluntly told reporters, “We don’t do body counts.”
One survey found that most Americans thought Iraqi deaths were in the tens of thousands. But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion.

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Posted on March 16, 2018

Most Cops Not Trained In First Aid

“In 2017,” Vice notes, “[Chicago] had 3,457 shooting victims – 246 of which were children.
“To make matters worse, Chicago’s South Side – where many of these shootings take place – doesn’t even have a trauma center with the ability to treat adult shooting victims.
“To help combat these shortfalls, a grassroots community organization known as Ujimaa Medics has stepped in.
“Ujimaa Medics trains local kids as young as 12 on how to treat gunshot wounds and how to manage crowds at the scene of a shooting.
“Rodney Lucas traveled to Chicago to meet one of the organization’s co-founders and see their training firsthand.”

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Posted on March 14, 2018

By Normon Solomon/Common Dreams

Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don’t want people to hear.
“If you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or an aggressive war,” he said in a statement released last week, “don’t wait to put that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself . . . Do what Katharine Gun did.”
If you don’t know what Katharine Gun did, chalk that up to the media power of the war system.

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Posted on March 9, 2018

By The Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs

Links by Beachwood.
SPRINGFIELD, IL – Illinois legislators and county fair officials gathered at the Statehouse to showcase the positive economic benefit county fairs bring to the state and urge the Governor to release $1.4 million in funding that was appropriated as part of the FY18, which passed last year.
The Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs highlighted the results of a University of Illinois Extension Department of Community and Economic Development study, which found that county fairs bring $170 million annually to the state’s economy and support 1000 non-fair related jobs.
“Local county fairs provide both measurable economic benefits and immeasurable community benefits to Central and Southern Illinois communities. I urge the governor and his administration to do the right thing and release this funding, which will help downstate communities that have struggled in the recent past,” said state Sen. Dave Koehler (D-Peoria).

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Posted on March 8, 2018

By The Illinois Mental Health Opportunities for Youth Diversion Task Force

SPRINGFIELD, IL – A state task force has delivered a final report recommending 14 action steps to deliver needed services and help keep youth with mental health conditions out of jails and prisons.
“Of the nearly 30,000 youth arrests and 11,000 youth admissions to local jails in Illinois each year, research consistently suggests that approximately 70 percent meet the diagnostic criteria for having a mental health condition, and at least 20 percent live with serious mental health condition, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, and other conditions that severely impair their ability to function,” according to the report by the Illinois Mental Health Opportunities for Youth Diversion Task Force.
“Frequently, a youth’s disruptive or illegal behavior is related to symptoms of a mental health condition that has gone undetected and untreated,” the report states. “Instead of treating these instances as an opportunity to connect these youth to effective community-based mental health services they are too often directed toward law enforcement. These youth – the majority who have lives already marred by racism, poverty, and violence – then cycle through jails, probation offices, courts, and prisons. The opportunity to divert youth early is wasted, and youth end up in a system that is ill-equipped to provide the necessary treatment.”
The task force recommended made the following recommendations:

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Posted on March 7, 2018

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

Antwan Wilson, the chancellor for D.C. Public Schools, agreed to leave his post last month after news broke that he had flouted his own school enrollment policy. Wilson sought to bypass the extremely competitive school lottery system in order to transfer his daughter to a higher-scoring school. The reaction from the city council and the public was harsh, swift and widespread. Having lost the support of his boss, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, Wilson stepped down, eventually agreeing to a six-month severance package.
Despite his position, Wilson did what an uncounted number of parents do daily: He sought to transfer his child to a higher-performing school. Public school superintendents are expected to enroll their children in their own school district to gain public trust. Wilson and his wife felt that the performing arts school his eldest child attended wasn’t a good fit. The neighborhood school the Wilsons are zoned for only had 1 percent of its students meet math expectations on last year’s standardized exam and 6 percent in reading. So Wilson’s wife coordinated with the deputy mayor of education, Jennifer Niles, to transfer their daughter to Woodrow Wilson High School, popular in the district, which has 22 percent of its students meet expectations in math and 54 percent in reading. Wilson High has a waiting list of 639 families.

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Posted on March 6, 2018

By Jon Stewart/Losing Libertarian Candidate for Governor

Links added by Beachwood.
BLOOMINGTON, IL – In what normally is an ordinary, boring, third-party nominating convention turned into a battle royale free-for-all as the Libertarian Party voting members convened to Bloomington’s Parke Regency Hotel this past weekend.
Running for the gubernatorial nomination were two first-timers and former pro wrestler and former GOP congressional candidate Jon Stewart, who was making his fourth attempt at public office.
After the first round of voting, Matthew C. Scaro was eliminated, and the frontrunner, Navy veteran Kash Jackson, failed to received over 51% of the vote, which moved the voting into a second round between Jackson and Stewart.
As tensions grew, the jumbotron slowly revealed the second round results . . . and it was a tie!
“At that point, the entire room erupted into chaos, cheers and confusion,” said Stewart campaign manager Donny Henry. “There has never been a tie in our party’s history, and with the contentious race between the candidates, this just added fuel to an already roaring inferno of ill feelings.”

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Posted on March 5, 2018

By Julia Conley/Common Dreams

The non-partisan RAND Corporation’s sweeping new analysis on gun policy in the U.S. reveals that gun violence would be reduced with stricter laws restricting access to firearms – but also stresses that efforts to complete research on the issue have often been stymied by a lack of resources, due to a funding freeze that was pushed by the National Rifle Association decades ago.
Despite the lack of research to draw from, RAND’s findings did point to the conclusion that laws to prevent children from accessing firearms can decrease suicides and unintentional injuries or deaths and that universal background checks would lead to a drop in suicides and violent crimes. Concealed-carry and stand-your-ground laws – both backed by the NRA – were also found to increase violent crimes.
However, the group’s two-year effort to understand the precise impact gun control policies – and lack thereof – have had on the safety of American communities, was frequently frustrating, as researchers “consistently found inadequate evidence for the likely effects of different gun policies on a wide range of outcomes,” according to the study, Gun Policy in America.

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Posted on March 2, 2018