I broke a nail trying to open my package from my state reps. At least there’s a good story inside Wisconsin’s latest Blue Book. I’ve heard of Sister Cities before, but never knew their origin. Looks like another weapon used in the Cold War against Communism.
Read More »Wisconsin will now require Asian American history to be taught in schools
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Why are the Hmong in Wisconsin?
Unlike past immigrant groups, the Hmong were political refugees who fled their country because of war and persecutions. The Hmong refugees were legally admitted to the United States by the U.S. government and were initially resettled by church organizations such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Service. Area churches sponsored Hmong families here in Wisconsin and other states in the U.S. The 2010 U.S. Census has shown that there are 49,240 Hmong Americans living in Wisconsin. Community with significant Hmong population include: Milwaukee, Wausau, Sheboygan, La Crosse, Madison, Eau Claire, Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, Manitowoc, Stevens Point, Wisconsin Rapids, Menomonie, and Fond du Lac.
A Look Back at the CIA’s Dirty War in Laos
Laos was (and remains) a very poor country that at the time of the encounter with the CIA was predominantly composed of illiterate peasants working the land in the form of subsistence agriculture. It was colonized by France in 1893; however, unlike in neighboring Vietnam, and to a lesser extent in Cambodia, there was hardly any investment or development of infrastructure or education in Laos. There was no Laotian “collaborating elite,” as was the case with French-speaking and French-educated Vietnamese Catholics. Furthermore, though a small place with a small population, Laos contains an estimated 49 different ethnic groups. A lot of the tension was more along tribal than ideological lines. The CIA, under the leadership in Laos of its highly strategically capable director, Bill Lair, chose to ally particularly with one of the tribes, the Hmong, under their charismatic but brutal head, Vang Pao. After the U.S. lost the war in Laos (at the time of the defeat by Vietnam, 1975), the promises made to the Hmong that they would be offered refuge and welfare in the U.S. were not kept. Though some did make it to the U.S., most Hmong today live in squalid conditions in camps in Laos or in neighboring Thailand.
Under what was code-named Operation Momentum, the CIA engaged in a sustained and relentless bombing campaign, starting in 1961. There was more bombing of Laos than there was of Germany or Japan during World War II. Throughout the war there was on average, the author states, one bombing attack every eight minutes. Ultimately, some 10% of the Laotian population was killed and 25% made refugees. The author reveals that according to a secret U.S. government assessment of the bombing campaign, 80% of all casualties were civilians. With much of the fighting concentrated in the Plain of Jars, he estimates that the population in the course of the 1960s declined from 150,000 to 9,000 in that region. But the narrative of the end of the war does not bring to an end the tragic story of the bombing: One-third of the bombs remained unexploded, and they continue killing and maiming to this day.
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Operation Momentum transformed the CIA from an organization that primarily gathered intelligence into one that engaged in killing and the covert overthrow of regimes considered unfriendly to the U.S. The CIA tried on a number of occasions to assassinate Fidel Castro. The overthrow of “unfriendly” democratically elected regimes included that of the prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. The CIA also provided political and military support to some of the world’s harshest dictators, such as Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran, Rafael Trujillo in Dominican Republic, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (Congo) and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
Wisconsin supreme court appears poised to strike down legislative maps and end Republican dominance
Taylor Meehan, an attorney for legislative Republicans, argued that districts had long been considered to be contiguous as long as they kept towns, counties and wards whole. In Wisconsin, localities have annexed disconnected parts of land that have resulted in strange shapes. “You can define contiguity as strictly or as loosely as you want,” she said.
They look like Swiss cheese!
Related:
Advocates rally to protest Wisconsin’s ‘etch-a-sketch gerrymandered maps’
Wisconsin Republicans withhold university pay raises in fight over school diversity funding
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University of Wisconsin is shutting down in-person instruction at two branch campuses
Wisconsin Senate passes $2B tax cut package, though Evers veto likely
Evers had called on the Legislature to pass a package that included $365 million in new child care funding; a $65 million boost in University of Wisconsin funding; $200 million to pay for a new engineering building at UW-Madison; $243 million to create a new 12-week family medical leave program for Wisconsin workers and millions more for workforce education and grant programs.
The Republican bill would also create a state tax credit for families paying for child care; increase income tax deductions for private school tuition; make professional credentials granted to workers in other states valid in Wisconsin; and prohibit state examining boards from requiring counselors, therapists and pharmacists pass tests on state law and regulations. 😳
In place of a public hearing that never happened on a fast-tracked Republican bill creating a new process for redistricting, advocates for nonpartisan, fair maps held a two-hour event of their own Monday to denounce the GOP proposal.
Fair maps advocates hold ‘public telling’ to air opposition to GOP redistricting plan
The bill would also create a single primary for all candidates
Bipartisan group wants ranked choice voting for congressional races
I’ve talked before about the utter stupidity (and danger) of trying to turn the internet into Disneyland: a safe space for little kids, where they’ll never encounter any content that makes them upset, but plenty of states (and many people in Congress) are trying to do it anyway.
Wisconsin Pushing Bill That Requires Websites To Treat All Users As If They’re Children
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin endorsed by Donald Trump is calling for people to take up “pitchforks and torches” in reaction to a story that detailed his giving to anti-abortion groups, churches and others — rhetoric that Democrats say amounts to threatening violence.
Wisconsin GOP candidate calls for ‘pitchforks and torches’
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