When No Lives Matter Economic Stimulus Could Be Tied To Vaccination Compliance

theatlantic |  Other researchers with whom I spoke echoed many of the same concerns about people’s possible resistance to taking a vaccine, especially if its rollout is botched. To avoid such mistakes, Michele Andrasik and Chris Beyrer, who are among the leaders of the COVID-19 Prevention Network, an initiative by the National Institutes of Health, have already started to test different messages for communicating the benefits of immunization to the public. As Beyrer told me, early results indicate that an emphasis on the importance of the vaccine for revitalizing local communities will be crucial. “A lot of people are feeling very isolated,” he said, “so we are building a lot around solidarity: ‘We are all in this together!’”

Because of the influence of the anti-vaxxer movement, the vaccination rate for measles has dropped so low in certain areas of the country that children from Brooklyn to Santa Monica have contracted the potentially life-threatening disease. It is natural to fear that the same could happen with the coronavirus. But this ignores the fundamental differences between the two diseases. “You can’t just take the anti-vaxxer mentality you see with measles,” Flier told me, “and apply it to the situation we face with COVID.”

But will enough people get it? What happens if, as the CBS poll suggests, one in five Americans refuses to cooperate?

According to the experts I spoke with, the threshold for herd immunity for COVID-19 is likely to fall somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the population. Since about one in 20 Americans is likely to have suffered from COVID-19 by the time a vaccine becomes available, this means that somewhere between 45 and 65 percent of the American population will need to be vaccinated.

In the case of measles, herd immunity requires an almost total social consensus about the utility of vaccines. As some children have painfully learned, such near unanimity is difficult to sustain. But in the case of COVID-19, anti-vaxxers would have to convert a much larger proportion of Americans in order to have a similarly devastating impact on our collective health. Unless one in three—or even one in two—Americans refuses a vaccine that would allow them to go back out into the world without fear and protect their loved ones from a deadly pandemic, the U.S. is likely to reach herd immunity.

Again and again, the coronavirus has defied expectations about how it is likely to behave. We would therefore be well advised to reckon with the possibility that things could once again break against us. Perhaps this virus is not only uniquely suited to disrupting human civilization but also unexpectedly adept at beating our attempts to immunize people against it.

Phugg You Gone Do?!?!? La Kosher Nostra STAY Laughing At Your Passive Punk CuckAzz...,

Fist tap Dale |  This is a condensed version of the three hour phone call between survivor Maria Farmer & investigative journalist Whitney Webb. I’ve included all of their discussion relating to Mossad, Mega Group, Les Wexner, and Israel. These are the key pieces of information that the mainstream media won’t touch and is in fact complicit in keeping this decades long blackmail operation continuing. Jeffery Epstein was not the head of the snake, he was only mid management and was assigned by Israeli Intelligence to work for Ghislaine Maxwell in the 80’s, who reported to billionaire Zionist Les Wexner. *Alan Dershowitz decided to yet again attack another Epstein victim smearing Virginia wasn't enough, so he wrote a blast piece accusing Maria Farmer of being a bigoted anti-semite because of this phone call. This is inexcusable- Maria Farmer is a victim of racism by these fake Jewish supremacists INCLUDING Alan "I kept my underwear on" Dershowitz. 

She is not the racist, her captors were. She clearly says she knows its not all Jews in this call, she accuses the elite & mafia for what happened to her & her sister & the other victims. This particular EDITED video is only focusing on the Zionist/ Israeli connections in the phone call, but please take the time to hear out the full 3 hour unedited call with Whitney Webb. Maria Farmer isn't the anti-Semite, nor is Whitney Webb. Alan Dershowitz and this band of criminals hiding behind a Jewish identity to get away with their wicked crimes are the anti-semites. https://www.blacklistednews.com/artic... I hope you guys listen to the full unedited phone call between Farmer & Webb, because there’s a lot I didn’t include in this video. 

You can listen to it here: 

Part 1: https://youtu.be/MGtDj8drWvE 

Part 2: https://youtu.be/kItJSpQeyCg 

You can also read Whitney Webb’s investigative series here: Too Big to Fail: the Epstein Investigation : https://www.mintpressnews.com/categor... 

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case: https://www.mintpressnews.com/shockin... Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s Mentor and the Dark Secrets of the Reagan Era: https://www.mintpressnews.com/blackma... 

Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-gr... These Scrubbed Reports Reveal New Secrets Into the Prince Andrew-Jeffrey Epstein Relationship: https://www.mintpressnews.com/scrubbe... 

The Genesis and Evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton Relationship: https://www.mintpressnews.com/genesis... 

Former Israeli Intel Official Claims Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell Worked for Israel: https://www.mintpressnews.com/ari-ben... 

Whitney Webb is working on writing a book that covers the intelligence aspects of the story. Keep an eye out for her book in late summer! She’s amazing! 

Please feel totally free to re-upload or share this video. I provided a download link because I want to encourage people to expose the criminal Zionist network. The more the REAL story gets out there, the more likely we can bring justice to the victims and put these gangsters away! Wexner, Maxwell, Barak, Netanyahu, Rothschild, Lauder, Bronfman, and Dershowitz are all villains who have been complicit in trafficking children around the world in order to blackmail the political elite to control them for Israel’s agenda. They must be exposed! 

Follow Whitney Webb: https://twitter.com/_whitneywebb 

Follow Maria Farmer: https://twitter.com/ArtisticBlower

To Find Out Who Rules Over You, Find Out Who You MAY NOT Criticize

For 100 minutes, not a single truth was discussed outside the truth that Abraham Cooper is supremely arrogant about being in a position of strength and control, and very explicitly says as much to the slobbering, grinning, and thoroughly chastened and humiliated negroe "celebrity".

Nick Cannon's jaws and knees must really, really hurt after a hundred minutes of grinning, bowing and scraping before this nasty little Brooklyn mensch.

Finally, isn’t it in the nature of contemporary culture, with its emphasis on entertainment, consumption, and sex, to be the perfect environment in which to hide many “Invisible Gorillas”? Isn’t it a whirlwind of fixations and distractions, replete with untold numbers of “woke” viewers happy to report that they’ve been enthusiastically counting passes and have the accurate number? Isn’t it rather the axiom of our time that, from the idiotic Left to the idiotic Right, Invisible Gorillas stroll freely and unhindered, laughing and waving as they go, hidden in plain sight?

Tried to tell you where this is headed last week Manifesto of Secure Tolerance

Masks Prove And Signal Your Compliance With The Great Reset

off-guardian |  Recently I had the poor judgment to turn on National Public Radio for about an hour, under the impression that I was going to learn something about the day’s news.

I could have saved myself the trouble. During the hour in question, I learned nothing at all about the presidential election campaign (now in its final months), nothing about the tens of millions of my fellow citizens whose jobs have been snatched away by government fiat, nothing about climate change, nuclear arms buildups, international refugees or growing worldwide poverty – nothing even about the intensification of air and water pollution authorized by recent federal regulation, although pollution kills an estimated 100,000 Americans every year.

No – for a solid hour, I heard the following: that COVID19 – in reality, at most, a moderately serious flu virus – is the worst medical threat the United States has ever faced; that this “deadly” virus (the word “deadly” was repeated obsessively, even though the disease is fatal in a tiny percentage of cases) has been empowered by a conspiracy of Republican politicians serving the arch-demon Donald Trump; that recent data showing the rapid decline in deaths attributable to the virus may have been faked, because the numbers aren’t what the “experts” want them to be; and that a massive increase in COVID19 tests – primarily among people between 20 and 40 years of age who are subjected to swabbing because their employers demand it, not because they’re in any danger – cannot possibly have anything to do with a rise in the number of reported infections, and that anyone who dares to suggest otherwise is “putting lives at risk.”

But the real theme of the hour was masks, masks, masks: how to make them, how to wear them, their different types, who doesn’t seem to have enough of them, and why muffling our faces (even though no such thing was ever demanded of us during dozens of past viral outbreaks) is absolutely, positively good for us all.

I waited in vain for some mention of the fact that every single order requiring the wearing of muzzles in the US is probably unconstitutional, a matter that National Public Radio – which once prided itself on its legal affairs reporting – might have been expected to care about.

Nor did anyone mention that just a few months ago, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention was explicitly advising against a general mask-wearing regime, as was Anthony Fauci, the High Priest of COVID19.

No, facts would only have complicated matters. After all, we already knew what good little boys and girls were expected to do with those muzzles. At the close of each weather forecast, just in case anyone had missed the point, the reporter said cheerily, “And when you go out – put on a mask.” “And drink milk with every meal,” I half expected him to add, but I guess self-conscious condescension would have spoiled the effect.

Put on a mask.

In well over half a century, I cannot remember a weather report that ended with a brisk piece of non-meteorological advice, let alone a patently silly one – after all, if these magical masks were to make any difference, their greatest usefulness would have been at the beginning of the outbreak, not on its heels. 

Yet throughout March, while police-state fever prompted the suspension of democracy in some 40 states and most of the US population was being hustled into virtual house arrest, the pro-incarceration crowd’s loudest voices unanimously insisted that masks were of no practical value.

Pimp-Procuress Tried To Create Global "Community" (Male-Bonding Via Two Piece And A Biscuit Snacks?)

influencewatch  |  The Project’s mission was to raise awareness for ocean conservation efforts. Maxwell spoke at a 2014 Council on Foreign Relations event about the issue. ^[8] She also spoke at events at the United Nations in 2013 and 2014. ^[9][10] She also gave a TED Talk. ^[11][12]

These high-profile events dovetailed with Maxwell’s and the Project’s high-profile partnerships. The Project’s effort to hold the United Nations to sustainable promises made regarding the ocean were praised and backed by the Clinton Global Initiative. ^[13][14]

Maxwell authored a 2015 op-ed for the Project’s newsletter, “The Daily Catch,” which theorized the moment the oceans “failed” due to environmental harm. ^[15] Archives of The Daily Catch were live as of August 17, 2019. TerraMar Project’s director of development Brian Yurasitis’ LinkedIn profile shows that the Project had several projects as part of its mission. ^[16] One project was the “How I sea” campaign, which collected stories from environmentalists and others who took photos of the ocean around the world. ^[17]

The #NoMoreButts initiative was the Project’s effort to create more opportunities for smokers to dispose of cigarette butts in an environmentally friendly fashion. ^[18]

Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell is the daughter of controversial British media magnate Robert Maxwell, who was implicated in mishandling the pension fund of the Daily Mirror after his death in 1991. ^[19]

After Ghislaine Maxwell moved to New York following her father’s death, she became widely known for her high-end social connections with U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, British royalty, and others. ^[20][21] She attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. ^[22]

Despite decades in the public eye, she became a very private person in 2016. That year, she sold her $15 million home and largely disappeared from the public. ^[23]

After Epstein’s death, Maxwell became a notable figure amid allegations that she was involved in Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking scheme. A federal court ordered the release of 2,000 pages of documents related to a 2015 lawsuit filed by one of Epstein’s accusers; the woman alleged that Maxwell had solicited her to perform sex acts for Epstein as a 16-year-old. Maxwell denied the allegations and has not been criminally charged for these alleged acts as of early July 2020. ^[24] Maxwell reportedly has settled lawsuits with two women who claimed she was involved in Epstein’s exploitation without admitting guilt. ^[25][26]

Maxwell has been involved in many public projects and efforts. She co-hosted a launch party for the publishing platform Ideapod in 2013. ^[27][28]

In July 2020, federal prosecutors secured an indictment of Maxwell on charges related to conspiracy in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls; she was arrested and faced trial as of early July.^[29]

The Great Reset Presages The Rise Of Organized Global Authoritarianism

wikipedia  |  The International Trade Organization (ITO) was the proposed name for an international institution for the regulation of trade.

Led by the United States in collaboration with allies, the effort to form the organization from 1945 to 1948, with the successful passing of the Havana Charter, eventually failed due to lack of approval by the US Congress. Until the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994, international trade was managed through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, which established an international institution for monetary policy, recognized the need for a comparable international institution for trade to complement the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.^[1] Bretton Woods was attended by representatives of finance ministries and not by representatives of trade ministries, the proposed reason why a trade agreement was not negotiated at that time.^[2]

 

In early December 1945, the United States invited its war-time allies to enter into negotiations to conclude a multilateral agreement for the reciprocal reduction of tariffs on trade in goods. In July 1945, the US Congress had granted President Harry S. Truman the authority to negotiate and conclude such an agreement. At the proposal of the United States, the United Nations Economic and Social Committee adopted a resolution, in February 1946, calling for a conference to draft a charter for an International Trade Organization.

A Preparatory Committee was established in February 1946, and met for the first time in London in October 1946 to work on the charter of an international organization for trade; the work was continued from April to November 1947.^[3]

 

Derek Chauvin Is Going To Beat That Murder Charge...,

medium |  There are six crucial pieces of information — six facts — that have been largely omitted from discussion on the Chauvin’s conduct. Taken together, they likely exonerate the officer of a murder charge. Rather than indicating illegal and excessive force, they instead show an officer who rigidly followed the procedures deemed appropriate by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). The evidence points to the MPD and the local political establishment, rather than the individual officer, as ultimately responsible for George Floyd’s death.

These six facts are as follows:

1. George Floyd was experiencing cardiopulmonary and psychological distress minutes before he was placed on the ground, let alone had a knee to his neck.
2. The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) allows the use of neck restraint on suspects who actively resist arrest, and George Floyd actively resisted arrest on two occasions, including immediately prior to neck restraint being used.
3. The officers were recorded on their body cams assessing George Floyd as suffering from “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS), a condition which the MPD considers an extreme threat to both the officers and the suspect. A white paper used by the MPD acknowledges that ExDS suspects may die irrespective of force involved. The officers’ response to this situation was in line with MPD guidelines for ExDS.
4. Restraining the suspect on his or her abdomen (prone restraint) is a common tactic in ExDS situations, and the white paper used by the MPD instructs the officers to control the suspect until paramedics arrive.
5. Floyd’s autopsy revealed a potentially lethal concoction of drugs — not just a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl, but also methamphetamine. Together with his history of drug abuse and two serious heart conditions, Floyd’s condition was exceptionally and unusually fragile.
6. Chauvin’s neck restraint is unlikely to have exerted a dangerous amount of force to Floyd’s neck. Floyd is shown on video able to lift his head and neck, and a robust study on double-knee restraints showed a median force exertion of approximately approximately 105lbs.

Let’s be clear: the actions of Chauvin and the other officers were absolutely wrong. But they were also in line with MPD rules and procedures for the condition which they determined was George Floyd was suffering from. An act that would normally be considered a clear and heinous abuse of force, such as a knee-to-neck restraint on a suspect suffering from pulmonary distress, can be legitimatized if there are overriding concerns not known to bystanders but known to the officers. In the case of George Floyd, the overriding concern was that he was suffering from ExDS, given a number of relevant facts known to the officers. This was not known to the bystanders, who only saw a man with pulmonary distress pinned down with a knee on his neck. While the officers may still be found guilty of manslaughter, the probability of a guilty verdict for the murder charge is low, and the public should be aware of this well in advance of the verdict.

While we should pursue justice for George Floyd, we should be absolutely sure that we are pursuing justice against his real killers. A careful examination of the evidence points to the procedures and rules of the MPD, rather than the police officers following these procedures and rules, as the real killers of George Floyd. If anyone murdered George Floyd, it was the MPD and the local political establishment. This is why Attorney General Keith Ellison has expressed how difficult a conviction will be.

American Police Violence Toward Blacks Is A Subset Of Its Violence Toward Americans

quillette |  Tony Timpa was 32 years old when he died at the hands of the Dallas police in August 2016. He suffered from mental health difficulties and was unarmed. He wasn’t resisting arrest. He had called the cops from a parking lot while intoxicated because he thought he might be a danger to himself. By the time law enforcement arrived, he had already been handcuffed by the security guards of a store nearby. Even so, the police officers made him lie face down on the grass, and one of them pressed a knee into his back. He remained in this position for 13 minutes until he suffocated. During the harrowing recording of his final moments, he can be heard pleading for his life. A grand jury indictment of the officers involved was overturned.

Not many people have seen this video, however, and that may have something to do with the fact that Timpa was white. During the protests and agonizing discussions about police brutality that have followed the death of George Floyd under remarkably similar circumstances, it is too seldom acknowledged that white men are regularly killed by the cops as well, and that occasionally the cops responsible are black (as it happens, one of the Dallas police officers at the scene of Timpa’s death was an African American). There seems to be a widespread assumption that, under similar circumstances, white cops kill black people but not white people, and that this disparity is either the product of naked racism or underlying racist bias that emerges under pressure. Plenty of evidence indicates, however, that racism is less important to understanding police behavior than is commonly supposed.

Timpa was, of course, just one case and might be dismissed as an anomaly. On the other hand, we are told that what happened to George Floyd is what happens to black people “all the time.” But because the killing of black suspects by white police officers receives more media attention and elicits more outrage, such instances leave us vulnerable to the availability heuristic—a cognitive bias that leads us to form judgements about the prevalence of phenomena based on the readiness with which we can recall examples. Had Tony Timpa been black, we would all likely know his name by now. Had George Floyd been white, his name would likely be a footnote, briefly reported in Minneapolis local news and quickly forgotten. In fact, white people are victims of police mistreatment “all the time” too. And just as the Timpa case tragically parallels the Floyd one, there are countless episodes paralleling those we hear about involving black people.

Where Do Local PoPo Get The Nerve To Unconstitutionally Surveil Black Folks?!?!?

niemanlab |  On Aug. 20, 2018, the first day of a federal police surveillance trial, I discovered that the Memphis Police Department was spying on me.

The ACLU of Tennessee had sued the MPD, alleging that the department was in violation of a 1978 consent decree barring surveillance of residents for political purposes.

I’m pretty sure I wore my pink gingham jacket — it’s my summer go-to when I want to look professional. I know I sat on the right side of the courtroom, not far from a former colleague at The Commercial Appeal. I’d long suspected that I was on law enforcement’s radar, simply because my work tends to center on the most marginalized communities, not institutions with the most power.

One of the first witnesses called to the stand: Sgt. Timothy Reynolds, who is white. To get intel on activists and organizers, including those in the Black Lives Matter movement, he’d posed on Facebook as a “man of color,” befriending people and trying to infiltrate closed circles.

Projected onto a giant screen in the courtroom was a screenshot of people Reynolds followed on Facebook.

My head was bent as I wrote in my reporter’s notebook. “What does this entry indicate?” ACLU attorney Amanda Strickland Floyd asked.

“I was following Wendi Thomas,” Reynolds replied. “Wendi C. Thomas.”

I sat up.

“And who is Wendi Thomas?” Floyd asked.

She, he replied, used to write for The Commercial Appeal. In 2014, I left the paper after being a columnist for 11 years.

It’s been more than a year since a judge ruled against the city, and I’ve never gotten a clear answer on why the MPD was monitoring me. Law enforcement also was keeping tabs on three other journalists whose names came out during the trial. Reynolds testified he used the fake account to monitor protest activity and follow current events connected to Black Lives Matter.

My sin, as best I can figure, was having good sources who were local organizers and activists, including some of the original plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit against the city.

In the days since cellphone video captured white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin squeezing the life out of George Floyd, a black man, residents in dozens of cities across the country have exercised their First Amendment rights to protest police brutality.

Here in Memphis, where two-thirds of the population is black and 1 in 4 lives below the poverty line, demonstrators have chanted, “No justice, no peace, no racist police!”

The most recent protests were sparked by the killings of Floyd and of Breonna Taylor, a black woman gunned down in her home by Louisville, Kentucky, police in March. But in Memphis, like elsewhere, the seeds of distrust between activists and police were planted decades ago. And law enforcement has nurtured these seeds ever since.

An Unflinching Review Of The History Of Policing In America

plsonline.eku.edu |  In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.

These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).

In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the "Slave Patrol" (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing "Jim Crow" segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.

The key question, of course, is what was it about the United States in the 1830s that necessitated the development of local, centralized, bureaucratic police forces? One answer is that cities were growing. The United States was no longer a collection of small cities and rural hamlets. Urbanization was occurring at an ever-quickening pace and old informal watch and constable system was no longer adequate to control disorder. Anecdotal accounts suggest increasing crime and vice in urban centers. Mob violence, particularly violence directed at immigrants and African Americans by white youths, occurred with some frequency. Public disorder, mostly public drunkenness and sometimes prostitution, was more visible and less easily controlled in growing urban centers than it had been rural villages (Walker 1996). But evidence of an actual crime wave is lacking. So, if the modern American police force was not a direct response to crime, then what was it a response to?

More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the "collective good" (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state.

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How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence

nonsite |  But, when we step away from focus on racial disproportions, the glaring fact is that whites are roughly half or nearly half of all those killed annually by police. And the demand that we focus on the racial disparity is simultaneously a demand that we disattend from other possibly causal disparities. Zaid Jilani found, for example, that ninety-five percent of police killings occurred in neighborhoods with median family income of less than $100,00 and that the median family income in neighborhoods where police killed was $52,907.

….

What the pattern in those states with high rates of police killings suggests is what might have been the focal point of critical discussion of police violence all along, that it is the product of an approach to policing that emerges from an imperative to contain and suppress the pockets of economically marginal and sub-employed working class populations produced by revanchist capitalism.

There is no need here to go into the evolution of this dangerous regime of policing—from bogus “broken windows” and “zero tolerance” theories of the sort that academics always seem to have at the ready to rationalize intensified application of bourgeois class power, to anti-terrorism hysteria and finally assertion of a common sense understanding that any cop has unassailable authority to override constitutional protections and to turn an expired inspection sticker or a refusal to respond to an arbitrary order or warrantless search into a capital offense. And the shrill insistence that we begin and end with the claim that blacks are victimized worst of all and give ritual obeisance to the liturgy of empty slogans is—for all the militant posturing by McKesson, Garza, Tometi, Cullors et al.—in substance a demand that we not pay attention to the deeper roots of the pattern of police violence in enforcement of the neoliberal regime of sharply regressive upward redistribution and its social entailments. 

I’m not much given to autobiographical writing, least of all as a mechanism for establishing interpretive authority, even though I recognize that that pre-Enlightenment ploy has become coin of the realm for the “public intellectual” and blogosphere bloviator stratum.
——-
I’m still not going to natter on about my racial bona fides; I’ll leave that domain to the likes of Mychal Denzel Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates, for whom every sideways glance from a random white person while waiting on line for a latté becomes an occasion for navel-gazing lament and another paycheck. (A historian friend has indicated his resolve, when white colleagues enthuse to him about Coates’s wisdom and truth-telling, to ask which white college dropouts they consult to get their deep truths about white people.) I just wanted to anticipate the reaction and make clear that I recognize it for the cheesy move that it is.

Indianapolis Slave-Catchers Caught Grabbing Titties And Whooping Ass

caitlinjohnstone |  Wherever these videos emerge online you will inevitably see a deluge of cop apologia (which I decided just now I’ll be calling copologia) saying the footage is fake or the victim deserved it and the cop’s just trying to get home to his family blah blah blah. There is not enough gold in the earth’s crust to make the number of olympic medals these people deserve for all the mental gymnastics they are performing to excuse unprovoked, completely unnecessary acts of violence from public employees whose job isn’t even statistically all that dangerous.

Most of these copologists do not even know why they are falling all over themselves to try and justify police brutality. It’s a conditioned response, like turning your head when someone calls your name. They don’t think about it, it’s just something they’ve been conditioned to do by decades of media and cultural indoctrination into an empire whose survival depends on the existence of a violent and militarized police force. They hear Pavlov’s bell and start salivating, just as they’ve been programmed to.

The thing is, their creative energy is being spent entirely in vain. Police and their apologists have already lost the argument.

A police force which cannot respond to protests about police brutality without the internet being flooded with a steady stream of police brutality footage is a police force in sore need of drastic overhaul. It has already been proven that that is in fact the case. There’s no taking it back. There’s no fixing it. It’s done. The debate is officially over. Huge, sweeping changes must immediately be made, and there’s no valid reason for the protests to stop until that has occurred.

These videos have made it clear that the institution of policing in America is completely sick from coast to coast, right down to its very culture. The most obvious example I can point to is that watching just a few minutes of the footage of police brutality at these protests makes it undeniably apparent that a belief pervades police culture that it is okay to physically assault someone who has made you feel emotionally upset. Over and over and over again we see police accosting civilians for saying impolite words to them or making rude gestures, or not demonstrating an adequate level of subservience. Over and over and over again we see an attack on a cop’s ego treated as an attack on the cop himself.

This is absolutely ridiculous. These are public servants. Imagine if teachers, mail carriers or DMV employees were routinely assaulting anyone who spoke impolitely to them.

Although It Crushed Tax Revenues: Controlavirus Did Not Bring About Any Cuts In Police Funding

fastcompany |  As images from protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death have spread around the country, a key demand from protesters has been the defunding of city police departments: that cutting the money a city spends on police would, in fact, make communities safer. They’ve pointed to the tactical gear and equipment that the police have been pictured using as evidence that cities spend far too much money on their law enforcement, at the expense of other agencies that often lack funds to offer basic services to residents.

This is an apt time to be making that demand, as cities are in the process of figuring out next year’s budgets. But despite the fact that every U.S city is being forced to make drastic cuts to existing programs in the face of a stunning loss of tax revenue from closed businesses during the  COVID-19 pandemic, one area of city government is seeing virtually no cuts at all: police departments.

Under New York mayor Bill de Blasio’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2021, the NYPD—which currently has a budget of $6 billion—would see a cut of just $23.8 million, or 0.39%, Gothamist reported. In contrast, the Department of Education would have its budget cut by $827 million—3% of its overall funding. The Department of Youth and Community Development, which funds after-school programs, literacy services, and summer youth work programs, would lose 32% of its budget.

In a letter to the mayor sent May 30, New York City Council Speaker Cory Johnson and other council members called for every city agency to identify meaningful savings they could make, so the nearly $9 billion budget gap is made up with 5-7% cuts from each department, rather than disproportionately larger cuts for a few agencies. “No proposed cut should be one that would weaken the social safety net or hurt vulnerable New Yorkers,” they wrote. An April letter sent to de Blasio from the Communities United for Police Reform pointed out that in 2019, when the city allocated $6 billion to the NYPD, it allocated just $2.1 billion to homeless services, $1.4 billion to housing, preservation, and development, and $1.9 billion to the health department.

In Los Angeles, the LAPD budget is slated to actually increase by $123 million. The proposed 2020-2021 spending includes nearly $41 million in bonuses for officers who have college degrees, “even as thousands of other city employees face pay cuts amid a financial crisis at City Hall,” the Los Angeles Times reports, along with pay raises for officers. Overall, the current plan increases LAPD’s budget by 7.1%, while it cuts the budget for the Housing and Community Investment Department, which, per the Times, “sends inspectors to look for violations at apartment buildings,” by 9.4%.

LAPD will receive just under 54% of Los Angeles’s total general fund—money not raised or collected for special purposes such as voter-passed measures—which allocates $1.8 billion to the agency. When you include pensions and retirement, building services, liability claims, and “other department related costs,” though, the total price tag of the police department tops $3 billion.

Who's REALLY Doing The LOOTING In The "Occupy Main Street" Reorganization?

jacobin |  Headlines this morning are all about looting — specifically, looting in Minneapolis, after the police killing of an unarmed African-American man was caught on video. In the modern vernacular, that word “looting” is loaded — it comes with all sorts of race and class connotations. And we have to understand that terms like “looting” are an example of the way our media often imperceptibly trains us to think about economics, crime, and punishment in specific and skewed ways.

Working-class people pilfering convenience-store goods is deemed “looting.” By contrast, rich folk and corporations stealing billions of dollars during their class war is considered good and necessary “public policy” — aided and abetted by arsonist politicians in Washington lighting the crime scene on fire to try to cover everything up.

To really understand the deep programming at work here, consider how the word “looting” is almost never used to describe the plundering that has become the routine policy of our government at a grand scale that is far larger than a vandalized Target store.

Indeed, if looting is defined in the dictionary as “to rob especially on a large scale” using corruption, then these are ten examples of looting that we rarely ever call “looting”:

1. “The Fed Bailed Out the Investor Class“: “Thanks to this massive government subsidy, large companies like Boeing and Carnival Cruises were able to avoid taking money directly — and sidestep requirements to keep employees on.”
2. “Millionaires To Reap 80% of Benefit From Tax Change In Coronavirus Stimulus“: “The change — which alters what certain business owners are allowed to deduct from their taxes — will allow some of the nation’s wealthiest to avoid nearly $82 billion of tax liability in 2020.”
3. “Stealth Bailout’ Shovels Millions of Dollars to Oil Companies“: “A provision of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law gives [companies] more latitude to deduct recent losses. . . . The change wasn’t aimed only at the oil industry. However, its structure uniquely benefits energy companies that were raking in record profits.”
4. “The Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package“: “As part of the economic rescue package that became law last month, the federal government is giving away $174 billion in temporary tax breaks overwhelmingly to rich individuals and large companies.”
5. “Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Bailout for Struggling Health Providers“: “Twenty large chains received more than $5 billion in federal grants even while sitting on more than $100 billion in cash.”
6. “Airlines Got the Sweetest Coronavirus Bailout Around“: “The $50 billion the government is using to prop up the industry is a huge taxpayer gift to shareholders.”
7. “Large, Troubled Companies Got Bailout Money in Small-Business Loan Program“: “The so-called Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to help prevent small companies from capsizing as the economy sinks into what looks like a severe recession. . . . But dozens of large but lower-profile companies with financial or legal problems have also received large payouts under the program.”
8. “Public Companies Received $1 Billion Meant For Small Businesses“: “Recipients include 43 companies with more than 500 workers, the maximum typically allowed by the program. Several other recipients were prosperous enough to pay executives $2 million or more.”
9. “Firms That Left U.S. to Cut Taxes Could Qualify for Fed Aid“: “Companies that engaged in so-called corporate inversion transactions while maintaining meaningful U.S. operations appear to be eligible for two new programs.”
10. “The K Street Bailout“: “Lobbyists already got bailed out, in effect, when corporations got bailed out. This is kind of the ultimate in double dipping; corporations are nursed back to health by the sheer force of Federal Reserve commitments, this allows them to keep their lobbying expenses up, and then lobbyists lobby for free money for themselves.”

This looting is having a real-world effect: as half a billion people across the globe could be thrown into poverty and as 43 million Americans are projected to lose their health care coverage, CNBC reports that “America’s billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the U.S. lockdown between mid-March and mid-May.”

Lil'Fauci Has Known That Chloroquine Is An Effective Inhibitor Of Coronaviruses Since 2005

onenewsnow |  How did he know this? Because of research done by the National Institutes of Health, of which he is the director. In connection with the SARS outbreak - caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS- CoV - the NIH researched chloroquine and concluded that it was effective at stopping the SARS coronavirus in its tracks. The COVID-19 bug is likewise a coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2. While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1, it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies. They both use the same host cell receptor, which is what viruses use to gain entry to the cell and infect the victim.

The Virology Journal - the official publication of Dr. Fauci’s National Institutes of Health - published what is now a blockbuster article on August 22, 2005, under the heading - get ready for this - “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.” (Emphasis mine throughout.) Write the researchers, “We report...that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.”

This means, of course, that Dr. Fauci (pictured at right) has known for 15 years that chloroquine and it’s even milder derivative hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) will not only treat a current case of coronavirus (“therapeutic”) but prevent future cases (“prophylactic”). So HCQ functions as both a cure and a vaccine. In other words, it’s a wonder drug for coronavirus. Said Dr. Fauci’s NIH in 2005, “concentrations of 10 μM completely abolished SARS-CoV infection.” Fauci’s researchers add, “chloroquine can effectively reduce the establishment of infection and spread of SARS-CoV.”

Dr. Didier Raoult, the Anthony Fauci of France, had such spectacular success using HCQ to treat victims of SARS-CoV-2 that he said way back on February 25 that “it’s game over” for coronavirus.

He and a team of researchers reported that the use of HCQ administered with both azithromycin and zinc cured 79 of 80 patients with only “rare and minor” adverse events. “In conclusion,” these researchers write, “we confirm the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine associated with azithromycin in the treatment of COVID-19 and its potential effectiveness in the early impairment of contagiousness.”

Pritzker: Cain't B'Lee You Stankazz Peasants Kwestined ME!!! Some Ass-Whoopings Are In Order...,

patch |  Melania Trump recently "found her voice" in stay-at-home America, the Washington Post's style-section declared, citing the first lady's recent tweets praising grocery workers and public service announcements promoting the CDC's public health guidance.

Former first lady Michelle Obama teamed up with Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to spread the word about free public coronavirus testing sites around the district, where she's self-quarantining with former President Barack Obama and their daughters. 

 But in Illinois, we haven't heard much from first lady M.K. Pritzker, except early this month when she signed on to help raise money for Art for Illinois relief program.

In Crain's Chicago Business columnist Greg Hinz's day-in-the life tale of Illinois' rookie governor amid the pandemic, we learned Pritzker watched "Tiger King" on Netflix, a how he usually ends his day — "a little dinner, then he chats with his son and makes more calls" — but nothing of the first lady or his daughter.

The governor didn't mention his wife when reporters asked the billionaire about how he's doing physically and emotionally under his own stay-at-home order.

"I'll just say I'm managing through this time reasonably well," Pritzker said on April 17. "I think there is an emotional component to this that I'll just not spend a lot of time on."

As things turn out, as the governor makes regular public pleas for Illinoisans to be "All In" during the extended stay-at-home fight to slow the spread of COVID-19, Mrs. Pritzker has been out of state, sources told Patch. 

Specifically, the first lady has been spending time at their $12-million equestrian estate in Wellington, just down the horse trail from Bruce Springsteen, Bill Gates and Billy Joel, the family purchased shortly after J.B. was elected governor last year.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with that. "First lady" isn't an official title. Mrs. Pritzker can raise cash for Illinois artists from anywhere. She has no obligation to sequester herself in their Astor Street mansion in the Gold Coast when her family can hop on a private plane to stay-at-home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the family estate in the Bahamas (close to the governor's off-shore bank accounts) and, of course, their place in the "winter equestrian capital of the world" in Florida.

Lil'Fauci Out'Chere Hustling Hard On Behalf Of Gilead (Remdesivir)

nakedcapitalism |  The Wall Street produced an intriguing piece the other day, “The Secret Group of Scientists and Billionaires Pushing a Manhattan Project for Covid-19,” which while picked up and signal-boosted by other venues — Business Insider, Daily Mail, Newsweek, Beckers Hospital Review (the best) — doesn’t seem to have generated any additional reporting. The scientists, billing themselves as “Scientists to Stop COVID-19,” have produced an oddly untitled deliverable[1] (PDF, seventeen pages) dated March and April 2020. It’s worth a read. (Two hours ago, news came that the administration has initiated “Project Warp Speed,” which seems inspired by this project, but there’s no reporting on personnel, and it’s not clear thei y adopted the recommendations of the scientists. I’m guessing that the issues I am about to raise for the deliverable of the “Secret Group” will also apply to Project Warp Speed[2].)

Given that “personnel is policy,” I’ll first reduce people mentioned in the Wall Street Journal story, and the scientists who signed the March-April deliverable to tabular form. After that, I will take a quick look at the scientists’ deliverable, focusing especially on issues of governance and restoring our economy.

As a sidebar, I must protest at the PR-driven use of “Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project cost $23 billion in US dollars and employed 130,000 people. I don’t think anything of that scale is being proposed, unfortunately. End sidebar.

Now let’s look at the billionaire and multimillionaire backers of… well, whatever the project is really called; I’ll call it, following the Wall Street Journal, the Secret Group. In addition to backers, there are also fixers, who connect the backers and the scientists to the administration, agencies, and other firms, primarily in Big Pharma. I have ordered the backers and fixers not alphabetically but by net worth.

Having looked at personnel, I’m going to look at two policy recommendations. (I’m skipping over the Committee prioritizing remdesivir[2]; my layperson’s sense is that there are a lot of potentia treatments out there, and it makes more sense to accelerate many rather than one. I also note that the stock market just had a massive pop based on a preliminary remdesivir result from Gilead, and I certainly hope that none of the backers were front-running it.)

Wee Phuk Yu Social Credit Can't Hold A Candle To American Sicherheitsdeinst Fur Profit

theatlantic  |  COVID-19 has emboldened American tech platforms to emerge from their defensive crouch. Before the pandemic, they were targets of public outrage over life under their dominion. Today, the platforms are proudly collaborating with one another, and following government guidance, to censor harmful information related to the coronavirus. And they are using their prodigious data-collection capacities, in coordination with federal and state governments, to improve contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, and other health measures. As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently boasted, “The world has faced pandemics before, but this time we have a new superpower: the ability to gather and share data for good.”

Over the past decade, network surveillance has grown in roughly the same proportion as speech control. Indeed, on many platforms, ubiquitous surveillance is a prerequisite to speech control.

The public has been told over and over that the hundreds of computers we interact with daily—smartphones, laptops, desktops, automobiles, cameras, audio recorders, payment mechanisms, and more—collect, emit, and analyze data about us that are, in turn, packaged and exploited in various ways to influence and control our lives. We have also learned a lot—but surely not the whole picture—about the extent to which governments exploit this gargantuan pool of data.

Police use subpoenas to tap into huge warehouses of personal data collected by private companies. They have used these tools to gain access to doorbell cameras that now line city blocks, microphones in the Alexa devices in millions of homes, privately owned license-plate readers that track every car, and the data in DNA databases that people voluntarily pay to enter. They also get access to information collected on smart-home devices and home-surveillance cameras—a growing share of which are capable of facial recognition—to solve crimes. And they pay to access private tow trucks equipped with cameras tracking the movements of cars throughout a city.

America’s private surveillance system goes far beyond apps, cameras, and microphones. Behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to most Americans, data brokers have developed algorithmic scores for each one of us—scores that rate us on reliability, propensity to repay loans, and likelihood to commit a crime. Uber bans passengers with low ratings from drivers. Some bars and restaurants now run background checks on their patrons to see whether they’re likely to pay their tab or cause trouble. Facebook has patented a mechanism for determining a person’s creditworthiness by evaluating their social network.

When Ya Pimp-Hand TRULY Strong You Protect Deeze Heaux' Cash Flow

greenvilleonline |  The worshipers filed in row by row, sedans in front, trucks in back. It was Friday night after a long week of news centered around the novel coronavirus and this congregation came to sing, to dance, to laugh and to connect – and to do it all from their cars.

In a new uncertain era, American ingenuity notched another victory at Relentless Church in Greenville Friday evening as Pastors John and Aventer Gray led worship drive-in style for hundreds of people who each sat isolated yet not alone – cars running, windows rolled up, listening along on the radio – as Gray danced his way to the microphone and welcomed them to an innovative service before a pre-recorded video of an hour-long church service played on a giant projection screen.

“We are in the middle of a global pandemic, but we are still the church and we are not going to allow anything to stop us from doing two things: worshiping God and honoring our elected officials who have told us to maintain social distancing,” Gray said as he opened the service. “And so even though the enemy doesn't want us to gather, he can't stop us from worshiping in our cars.”

When Ya Pimp-Hand Strong But Ya IQ-75...,

LATimes |  Pentecostal preacher Tony Spell didn’t just stand before his congregation on Sunday in defiance of the governor’s order to stay home: He leaped into the pews, paraded, hugged and laid hands on worshipers’ foreheads in prayer.

“We’re free people. We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to cower,” the Rev. Spell said from the pulpit of Life Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Baton Rouge. “We’re not breaking any laws.”

Across Louisiana, the coronavirus has infected more than 3,500 people and led to 151 deaths as of Sunday, with one of the highest per-capita death rates in the country down the interstate in New Orleans. To limit its spread, Gov. John Bel Edwards banned gatherings of more than 50 people earlier this month and on March 22 issued a stay-at-home order. 

To comply, Catholic churches canceled Mass and switched to virtual services. Many Protestant churches did too. But some have continued to gather, with none drawing more attention than Life Tabernacle.

 The 60-year-old church has continued to use its fleet of two dozen buses to bring hundreds of congregants to services three times a week from five surrounding parishes, including congregants from mobile home parks and public housing in low-income neighborhoods. More than 1,100 people of various races worship by age group at seven sanctuaries on the property. In addition to spiritual guidance, the church offers free breakfast. Only about 10% have stayed away, said Spell’s father, the Rev. Tim Spell, 66, including his own 90-year-old father who has been sheltering at home.