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.

Bet Not Axe No Kwestins About George Floyd And Derek Chauvin's Priors...,

theamericanconservative |  The most effective kind of propaganda is by omission. Walter Duranty didn’t cook up accounts from smiling Ukrainian farmers, he simply said there was no evidence for a famine, much like the media tells us today that there is no evidence antifa has a role in the current protest-adjacent violence. It is much harder to do this today than it was back then—there are photographs and video that show they have been—which is the proximate cause for greater media concern about conspiracy theories and disinformation.

For all the hyperventilating over the admittedly creepy 2008 article about “cognitive infiltration,” by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, it was a serious attempt to deal with the problem of an informational center being lost in American public life, at a time when the problem was not nearly as bad as it is today. It proposed a number of strategies to reduce the credibility of conspiracy theorists, including seeding them with false information. Whether such strategies have been employed, perhaps with QAnon, which has a remarkable ability to absorb all other conspiracy theories that came before it, is up to the reader’s speculation.

So it is today with George Floyd as well. It seems like there are perfectly reasonable questions to be asked about the acquaintance between him and Derek Chauvin, and the fact that the rather shady bar they both worked at conveniently burned down. But by now most of the media is now highly invested in not seeing anything other than a statistic, another incident in a long history of police brutality, and the search for facts has been replaced by narratives. This is a shame, because it is perfectly possible to think that police have a history of poor treatment toward black people and there might be corruption involved in the George Floyd case, which is something Ben Crump, the lawyer for Floyd’s family, seems to suggest in his interview on Face the Nation this weekend.

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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Mayor Quinton Lucas Letter To KCPD: "Ass-Up Face-Down Is What I Do....,"

kansascity |  A week after hundreds of people gathered on the Country Club Plaza to protest racism and police brutality, Mayor Quinton Lucas sent a letter to Kansas City police thanking them for their work during the demonstrations.

The letter, dated June 10 with an official letterhead, says some members of the public laid at the officers’ feet centuries-old race problems, and says it was “unreasonable” to assign blame to rank-and-file officers. It notes the long hours, “harsh insults” and injuries experienced by police. 

Some community leaders on Thursday questioned the mayor’s focus on the suffering of the police, noting that Kansas City officers had used pepper spray and tear gas on protesters, sometimes in ways that sparked sharp outcry from members of the public. 

One Kansas City man has said a rubber bullet fired by police may cause him to lose an eye. Another had his leg violently smashed by a police tear gas canister. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said her office is reviewing video of Kansas City officers who pepper-sprayed a pair of protesters, arresting one after he yelled at police.

On Thursday, Lucas said he recognized the concerns protesters raised but he wrote the letter to acknowledge the many patrol officers, detectives and others for the work they perform each day to protect the city. 

He noted a female homicide detective he saw examining evidence and speaking to witnesses following a shooting that left one dead and four injured near his home at 18th and Vine streets. 

“I sent it (the letter) because this is what I’m thinking,” he said. “It is what I do with anything else and some people will not like and some people will.”

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article243456141.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article243456141.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article243456141.html#storylink=cpy

Has The SmartPhone As Witness Brought Police Brutality To An Inflection Point?

technologyreview |  Once again, footage taken on a smartphone is catalyzing action to end police brutality once and for all. But Frazier’s video also demonstrates the challenge of turning momentum into lasting change. Six years ago, the world watched as Eric Garner uttered the same words—“I can’t breathe”—while NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo strangled him in a chokehold. Four years ago, we watched again as Philando Castile, a 15-minute drive from Minneapolis, bled to death after being shot five times by Officer Jeronimo Yanez at a traffic stop. Both incidents also led to mass protests, and yet we’ve found ourselves here again.

So how do we turn all this footage into something more permanent—not just protests and outrage, but concrete policing reform? The answer involves three phases: first, we must bear witness to these injustices; second, we must legislate at the local, state, and federal levels to dismantle systems that protect the police when they perpetrate such acts; and finally, we should organize community-based “copwatching” programs to hold local police departments accountable.

The good news is there are already strong indications that phase one is making an impact. “There have been so many different moments that should have been the powder keg, but they just weren’t,” says Allissa V. Richardson, an assistant journalism professor at the University of Southern California who recently wrote a book about the role of smartphones in the movement to end police brutality. “I think that this is different.”

Smartphones are still the best tool for proving police brutality and shifting public opinion. And early research from Richardson’s team has noted several indicators that they have already done so.

By tagging photos of protesters by race, for example, they have found that the current demonstrations are far more diverse than previous police brutality protests. This suggests that, as with historical examples, other racial groups are now readily allying with black people. By analyzing the news and social media with natural-language processing, they have also found that discussion about whether the victim was a respectable person or did anything to deserve violent treatment has been less prevalent in the case of Floyd than others killed by police.

Richardson has found this same shift to hold true in focus groups and interviews. In the past, white people often expressed sentiments like “This person was no angel,” she says, but the tone now is completely different. Even though Floyd was arrested on charges of using a fake $20 bill, “they say, ‘You know what? We are in the middle of a pandemic. I would probably do the same thing,’” she says. Then they point to the long string of killings that made it impossible for them to deny racism and police brutality any longer: George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner.

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.

Derek Chauvin's Murderous Lil'Dick Energy Bad For Bidnis, Bad For Uhmurukuh!!!

I told you a little of this over a week ago. But further confirmation is coming to light.

TMU |   When asked if Chauvin had a “problem with Black people,” Santamaria commented that she believes “he was afraid and intimidated.”

In the past, Santamaria has commented that Chauvin had a tendency to become unnecessarily aggressive during nights when the club had a primarily Black clientele, especially in terms of by dousing crowds with pepper spray and resorting to calling police as backup in a move she described as “overkill.”

In video footage from May 25 that has been seen tens of millions of times over the past two weeks, Chauvin can be seen choking Floyd with his knee during an arrest attempt that ultimately led to his death.

The white now-former officer held his knee down on the 46-year-old unarmed Black man’s neck for a total of 8 minutes and 46 seconds in total, and two minutes and 53 seconds after Floyd lost consciousness, according to a criminal complaint. Three officers also took part in the deadly events.

The three other former officers who have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin during the second-degree killing of Floyd are J Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao.

Watching The Police: Do You See What I See?

slate |  Someone says he’s bleeding from his ear. Have you just watched an old man die? Is he dying?

For this subset of people, many of whom seem to be in the process of radicalizing, any one of these dozens of videos can become the occasion for a deep dive that unravels most of the assumptions that have shielded police from widespread scrutiny. Take the Buffalo incident: The viewer sees a tall, thin, older man walking toward a group of police officers. He’s wearing a blue sweater. The cops are in short-sleeved shirts and gloves. There are some forbiddingly decorative concrete spheres in the scene, of the sort one might find outside a conference center; the viewer will learn at some point that this is all happening in Buffalo, New York, where, the day before, this very group of officers knelt with protesters in a moving celebration of communal harmony. 

The Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team—as you, hypothetical white viewer, eventually learn they’re called—is carrying batons and wearing helmets. The tall old man holds what looks like a police helmet in his left hand. In his right he holds what looks like a phone. As with so many of these videos, you can’t quite hear. This is worrying: You believe in getting all the context. But the first lesson of this mess is that context is a luxury. Like the protesters, like minorities pulled over for a traffic stop, like police, even, the only information you have is what’s in front of you. What you see is this: The old man seems to address the officers briefly, reaching toward one and tapping his arm with his phone. The officer who received the taps reacts as if he’s been stung and shoves the old man hard. The old man falls directly backward, out of the scene. There is an awful sound. The camera pulls back. The man lies on the cement with a dark fluid pooling under his head. His right hand, which is still holding the telephone, gives up; you watch the phone fall as it goes limp. 

Someone says, He’s bleeding from his ear. Have you just watched an old man die? Is he dying? The officer (who knows no more than you do) looks briefly concerned and walks on. Another officer starts to bend toward the man; he is stopped by his colleagues. They walk on. The man bleeds.

Context will come in time, and it will not make this better. You will read that the Buffalo Police Department reported this incident as an injury incurred when one person at the protest “tripped and fell.” Only when the news team that captured this circulates the footage will the public realize that the record has been falsified. Buffalo Police Cpt. Jeff Rinaldo will say there was no deception at all, just an honest mistake. “How the situation was being observed, it was being observed from a camera that was mounted behind the line of officers,” he says. “The initial information, it appears the subject had tripped and fallen while the officers were advancing.” He will congratulate the police on how quickly they corrected the record. “There is no attempt to mislead,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown will say of the police statement, echoing Rinaldo. 

You want to believe there was no attempt to mislead. But something is off. The “initial information” about the incident, you realize, should obviously have come from Buffalo Police Cpt. Jeff Rinaldo’s officers. Not some camera, no matter where it was. In calling an obvious cover-up a mistake, both the mayor and the police captain are acting as if it’s a given that not one of the 14 law enforcement officers you saw in that video—who witnessed what happened—could be counted upon, let alone expected, to tell the truth. Rinaldo speaks in a language so wrenched by adherence to the passive voice that it barely sounds like English: The situation was being observed … the initial information, it appears. 

You’ve heard of the “blue wall of silence”—the anti-snitch code whereby police protect each other from accountability to the public. But maybe you thought it was more a Hollywood invention than a plague sickening American towns. Evidence for it, and evidence for rampant dishonesty by police unaccustomed to being doubted or questioned, is mounting. You read, for example, that police reported that $2.4 million in Rolexes were looted from a store in SoHo, even though the store spokesman said, “no watches of any kind were stolen, as there weren’t any on display in the store.” You start to wonder about other police reports on looting. Maybe you’ll think back to last week, an age ago now, when protesters and journalists were beaten and tear-gassed in Lafayette Park so Trump could pose in front of a church. The following day, the U.S. Park Police strenuously denied using tear gas at all. If you’re unusually attentive, you might also remember that Park Police walked that denial back several days later, citing confusion over whether pepper balls counted as tear gas (they do).

Never mind: You’re trying to focus on this one case in Buffalo, and the next steps matter: The Buffalo Police Department suspends two officers without pay while an investigation is conducted. Most regard this as the bare minimum since the principal offenders—who you now know are named Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe—not only assaulted an old man but might have lied to their superiors about it. Maybe you’re relieved there’s a modicum of accountability. That relief quickly dissolves. It emerges that Torgalski and McCabe’s colleagues find this minimal consequence outrageous: The day after the two officers’ suspension, 57 members of the Buffalo Police Department’s Emergency Response Team resign from the team (though not the police force—they remain employed there) to support their two colleagues. They believe the men who shoved an old man to the ground are being treated abusively. “Our position is these officers … were simply doing their job. I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards,” said Buffalo Police Benevolent Association president John Evans. Before you can pause and really take this in—he did slip in my estimation—the Buffalo Police Union will post on its website, “These guys did nothing but do what they were ordered to do. This is disgusting !!!”

Maybe, as a hypothetical white American who’s always had good relations with police, you are shocked to find the police union excusing obvious misconduct as “just following orders” and doubling down on the lie that the man slipped. You’ve heard that police lie, but it’s being driven home to you differently now that your attention is focused. You’re watching the lies happen in real time. You saw, with George Floyd’s death, that Minneapolis police initially reported he “appeared to be suffering medical distress”—a curious way of saying a man was asphyxiated. The original statement Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder chose to send reporters read “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.” That’s all we would have known about George Floyd’s death had it not been for the brave teenager who recorded it in real time. The revelation isn’t that the lies are new. It’s that they’re everywhere.

The For-Profit Militarized Police State Is JoeBidenBama's Political Legacy

jacobinmag |  Defund the police” has become a nationwide mantra, and for good reason: budget data from across the country show that spending on police has far outpaced population growth and drained resources from other public priorities.

Basically, our cities have been siphoning money from stuff like education and social services and funneling the cash into ever-larger militarized security forces.

Nationally, the numbers are stark: between 1977 and 2017, America’s population grew by about 50 percent, while state and local spending on police grew by a whopping 173 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to data from the Urban Institute. In other words, the rate of police-spending growth was triple the rate of population growth.

Chicago and New York embody the trends.

The former has been losing population over the last decade. At the same time, Mayor Rahm Emanuel grew the police budget by 27 percent during his eight-year term, to the point where Chicago now spends more than 38 percent of its general fund on police. Those increases coincided with a spate of police brutality scandals, as well as budget cuts that resulted in teacher layoffs and the mass closure of Chicago public schools. And yet Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has been pushing a new 7 percent increase in the police budget.

In New York, it’s a similar story. Back in 2008, the city spent $4.1 billion on its police force, according to City Council documents. Twelve years later, the city is spending $6 billion on its police force. That’s a 46 percent increase during a period in which the city’s population growth was essentially flat. A new report by New York City comptroller Scott Stringer notes that in the last five years alone, spending on police rose by 22 percent, driven by a 6 percent increase in the number of officers on the force.

All this happened during a period when the city experienced many years of budget cuts to social servicesandschools. Indeed, as Public Citizen points out, New York’s police budget is now “more than the city spends on health, homelessness, youth development and workforce development combined.”

These are hardly anomalies, as illustrated by a Center for Popular Democracy report looking at twelve major cities. That analysis concluded that “governments have dramatically increased their spending on criminalization, policing, and mass incarceration while drastically cutting investments in basic infrastructure and slowing investment in social safety net programs” to the point where today, “police spending vastly outpaces expenditures in vital community resources and services.”

Shut It Down You Ain't Black And I Ain't Defunding Shit!!!

thehill |  Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden's campaign said on Monday that the former vice president does not support calls to defund the police amid growing calls to do so by activists across the country. 

“As his criminal justice proposal made clear months ago, Vice President Biden does not believe that police should be defunded," Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters.

"He hears and shares the deep grief and frustration of those calling out for change, and is driven to ensure that justice is done and that we put a stop to this terrible pain," Bates added. "Biden supports the urgent need for reform — including funding for public schools, summer programs, and mental health and substance abuse treatment separate from funding for policing — so that officers can focus on the job of policing."

Calls to defund police have grown amid nationwide protests over the death last month of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest. A majority of the Minneapolis City Council voted to disband the local police department and replace the office with what members have said will be a new model of public safety.

Democrats have largely embraced calls to reform police departments, but have stopped short of endorsing calls to defund police. Republicans have seized on the issue to argue Democrats are going too far with their calls for reforms.

Geriatric JiggaJoo Pelosi Almost Fell On Her Dessicated Old Azz....,

caitlinjohnstone |  Democratic Party leaders are currently under fire for staging a ridiculous performative display of sympathy for George Floyd by kneeling for eight minutes while wearing Kente cloth, a traditional African textile. The streets of America are filled with protesters demanding a total overhaul of the nation’s entire approach to policing. The Democratic Party’s response is to put on a children’s play using black culture as a prop, and advance a toothless reform bill whose approach we’ve already established is worthless which will actually increase funding to police departments.

Meanwhile it’s blue states with Democratic governors and cities with Democratic mayors where the bulk of the police brutality people are objecting to is occurring. The Democrats are going out of their way to spin police brutality as the result of Trump’s presidency, but facts in evidence say America’s violent and increasingly militarized police force would be a problem if every seat in every office in America were blue.

I don’t know what will happen with these protests. I don’t know if the demonstrators will get anything like the changes they are pushing for, or if their movement will be stopped in its tracks. What I do know is that if it is stopped, it will be because of Democrats and their allies.

America vs. The DC-NYC System That Protects Its Own

turcopelier |  Suppose some very rich folks bought the majority of American media. They control that by influencing who is hired, promoted and fired throughout their networks. Smaller players, internet businesses, etc. are dependent on the larger players for content. They are similarly controlled by the big players.

Now suppose there is also a global foundation, operated by the most skilled politicians of their era. Their business model is simple. They control and operate a global influence network. People with money can buy influence from this network.

The network, which we will call “the respectable tendency”, to borrow Andrew Roberts term, extends deep into worldwide media and perhaps more importantly, public services around the globe. Of course all of this is benign because the purpose of this endeavor is the advancement of planetary human well being. To this end it seamlessly creates or combines with a variety of good causes, to advance its agenda, for example, the advancement of women, minority rights, gay rights, the environmental movement.

Now we come to practical matters.  As the behaviourists posit: “where you stand is where you sit” - Miles Law. The foundation lives by this saying and drives it deep into every organ it touches. Be aware that when the foundation touches you it makes a Faustian bargain. You do something for it, one day it returns the favor. For example,  you might be asked as a civil servant to do something that is perhaps borderline corrupt.  You are found out but no matter; you reappear as a professor at a prestigious University, or a fellow at a think tank, or a media personality on a Tee Vee network or perhaps a judge. The foundation takes great care to ensure it keeps its end of the bargain. It also publicly destroys the careers of those that reject its overtures using whatever weapon comes to hand, for example sexual innuendo, allegations of discrimination, whatever. Fear and greed are its tools.

Lets assume that the foundation has had almost total success in recruiting Congress and the higher ranks of the career public service. There are two exceptions; the first is President Trump who is fireproof against the entreaties of the foundation. More about the other later.

So now let’s look at the events of Trumps Presidency through this lense.

Russiagate - explained.

The illegal and obvious judicial persecution of Flynn and others who have associated with Trump - explained.

The conversion and public recantings of former Trump appointees - explained.

The criticisms of Trump and public professions of love for foundation causes like #metoo and BLM by senior business leaders - explained.

The deliberate frustration of President Trumps agenda by Congress - explained.

The relentless and unjustified criticism of Trump by the media - explained.

Knees Will Be On Everyone's Necks In The Months Ahead...,

off-guardian  |  Early in 2017, as the outgoing front man for the CIA/warfare/Wall St. state, Barack Obama, left his time bombs for the future. The pink pussy hats were sent out marching to open the show. Russia-gate was launched; eventually impeachment was tried. The Democrats. with their media allies, went on a non-stop attack.

It was all so obvious, so shallow in its intent, as it was meant to be. But millions who were in the doll house were outraged, obsessed, frantic with rage. They bought the con-game. Both those who hate Trump and those that love him have spent almost four years foaming at the mouth, breathless.

Trump was cast as the personification of evil. A relentless attack on Trump began and has continued all this time. It is pure theater. Trump remains at the helm, as planned, holding the Bible aloft in a style reminiscent of a Bible thumping Klansman from The Birth of a Nation. Only the ignorant thought it might have been different.

He knows how to perform his role. He is a fine actor. He outrages, spews idiocies, as he is supposed to do. That Mussolini style stance, that absurd hair, the pout. Just perfect for an arch-villain. It’s so obvious that it isn’t. Herein lies the trick.

And who profits from his policies? The super-rich, of course, the power-elite.

Who just stole 6-10 trillion dollars of public money under the hilariously named Cares Act? The super-rich, of course, the deep-state.

It was a bi-partisan bank robbery from the public treasury carried out under the shadow of Covid-19, whose phony hyped up numbers were used to frighten the populace into lockdown mode as the Republican and Democratic bank robbers smiled in unison and announced forcefully, “We care!” We are here to protect you.

Remember how Barack Obama “saved” us by bailing out Wall St. and the big banks to the tune of trillions in early 2009. Then waged unending wars. Left black Americans bereft. He cared, too, didn’t he. Our leaders always care.

Obama was the black guy in the white hat. Trump is the white guy in the black hat. Hollywood on the Potomac, as Gary Wills called it when Ronald Reagan was the acting-president.

Now Obama’s war-loving side-kick, the pale-faced, twisted talking Biden is seriously offered as an alternative to the Elvis impersonator in the White House. This is the false left/right dichotomy that has the residents of the doll’s house in its grip.

If you can’t see what’s coming, you might want to break out of the house, take off your mask, go for a walk, and take some deep breaths. The walls are closing in.

America vs. The Police: Militarized Local Gangs Organized To Protect Their Own

thestreet  |  Please consider a few key snips from FDR's Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Service, August 16, 1937, emphasis mine.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. 

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

Roosevelt was discussing strikes, but public unions threaten them all the times, especially teachers' unions. They demand money "for the kids". The school boards are padded with teachers demanding more money "for the kids".

Collective bargaining cannot possibly exist in such circumstances. Unions can and have shut down schools. The unions do not give a damn about the kids.

Notice I said "unions" do not give a damn. Many, if not most, teachers do care for the kids, but the union does not. The unions can, and do, protect teachers guilty of abusing kids. It is nearly impossible to get rid of a bad tenured teacher or a bad cop.

Unions also threaten to shut down mass transportation.

None of this is in the public interest.

Abolish Public Unions Entirely

Union leaders have a mandated goal of protecting bad cops, bad teachers, and corrupt politicians. Unions blackmail politicians and threaten the public they are supposed to serve.

Union leaders will do anything to stay in power, the kids and the public be damned.

The only way to deal with the situation is to "effectively" abolish public unions entirely.

The key word is effectively. What do I mean by that? Take away 100% of their power as opposed to ending their right of association.

Recommended Steps

1. National right-to-work laws
2. Abolishment of all prevailing wage laws
3. Ending public unions ability to strike
4. Ending collective bargaining by public unions

Consider Illinois' prevailing wage laws: Prevailing wages are union wages. Municipalities and businesses have to pay prevailing wages. If they do not hire union workers, they get picketed.

Why bother hiring non-union workers if you have to pay union wages in the first place?

As a direct result, municipalities and businesses must overpay for services in Illinois.

Illinois is Bankrupt

Not only do public unions protect bad cops, bad teachers, and bad employees in general, Illinois is bankrupt after giving in repeatedly to union contract demands and pension spiking.

Crusty Geriatric JiggaJoos Kente Cloth CLOWNING!!!

After Serving Protesters Some Lip, Mayor Lucas Will Now Slow-Walk Local Control Into Oblivion

                            

kansascity |  Kansas City’s police force remains firmly in the grip of the governor’s office, as it has for more than 80 years. Why? 

Here’s a dirty secret: Kansas City hasn’t really worked for local control. Mayors, City Council members and civic leaders have paid lip service to the idea but have done little to actually make it happen. They like it when someone else is responsible for the police.

Others, including police officers and leadership, have actively opposed local control for decades.

Examples abound, but one will do. In 2011, rich guy Rex Sinquefield wanted to pour millions into a petition campaign to give both St. Louis and Kansas City control of their departments, through a statewide vote. Officials in St. Louis embraced the idea.

Kansas City? No, the city mumbled. We’re not ready. So the measure went to the 2012 ballot, without Kansas City. Missourians overwhelmingly gave St. Louis its police department back.

The next year, then-Mayor Sly James appointed a task force — a bold move, right? — which eventually decided, by a one-vote margin, to recommend continued state control. 

Four members missed the final vote.

Defenders of state control insist it keeps politics out of the department. It’s a silly claim on many levels, but consider this: Six lobbyists represent the Kansas City police board in Jefferson City. Kansas City’s Fraternal Order of Police has 10 registered lobbyists.

The people in the streets have zero lobbyists, which means protests are important, but not enough.

Last week, likely Democratic nominee for governor, Nicole Galloway, endorsed local police control in Kansas City. “The closer government is to the people the more accountable it is,” she said. And she’s right.

Gov. Mike Parson? Asked about local control last week, his knees buckled. “It takes legislative action,” he muttered, pointing out the obvious but not answering the question. 

Elections matter, Kansas City. If local control is important — and it is — the choice seems clear. In fact, every legislative and statewide candidate in Missouri this year should answer a simple question: Local control, yes or no?

But voting is just one part of the equation. In February, the City Council approved a committee to study local control. “There are likely advantages and disadvantages … if local control of the Kansas City Police Department were returned to the City,” the resolution says.

No. Local control has been studied for decades, and the case is now absolutely clear, and irrefutable: It will bring accountability and responsibility to a department that too often acts as if it’s immune to meaningful citizen oversight. 

On Thursday, the council updated the committee’s task, telling it to “develop options” for local control. It’s an important start. Quinton Lucas, who was endorsed by the Kansas City Fraternal Order of Police, will play a critical role. If he slow-walks local control, we’ll know what’s going on.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/dave-helling/article243359256.html#storylink=cpy

Lucas What You Doing?!?! - Impotently Whooping My Gums...,

thesaker |  I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious than any previous crisis I can recall.  And to explain my point, I would like to begin by saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not about.  They are not about:

1. Racism or “White privilege”
2. Police violence
3. Social alienation and despair
4. Poverty
5. Trump
6. The liberals pouring fuel on social fires
7. The infighting of the US elites/deep state

They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.

It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of “cause” and “pretext”.  And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are the true cause of what we are witnessing.  At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you want, but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US society.

The next thing which we must also keep in mind is that evidence of correlation is not evidence of causality.  Take, for example, this article from CNN entitled “US black-white inequality in 6 stark charts” which completely conflates the two concepts and which includes the following sentence (stress added) “Those disparities exist because of a long history of policies that excluded and exploited black Americans, said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning group.”  The word “because” clearly point to a causality, yet absolutely nothing in the article or data support this.  The US media is chock-full of such conflations of correlation and causality, yet it is rarely denounced.

For a society, any society, to function a number of factors that make up the social contract need to be present.  The exact list that make up these factors will depend on each individual country, but they would typically include some kind of social consensus, the acceptance by most people of the legitimacy of the government and its institutions, often a unifying ideology or, at least, common values, the presence of a stable middle-class, the reasonable hope for a functioning “social life”, educational institutions etc.  Finally, and cynically, it always helps the ruling elites if they can provide enough circuses (TV) and bread (food) to most citizens.  This is even true of so-called authoritarian/totalitarian societies which, contrary to the liberal myth, typically do enjoy the support of a large segment of the population (if only because these regimes are often more capable of providing for the basic needs of society).

Right now, I would argue that the US government has almost completely lost its ability to deliver any of those factors, or act to repair the broken social contract.  In fact, what we can observe is the exact opposite: the US society is highly divided, as is the US ruling class (which is even more important).  Not only that, but ever since the election of Trump, all the vociferous Trump-haters have been undermining the legitimacy not only of Trump himself, but of the political system which made his election possible.  I have been saying that for years: by saying “not my President” the Trump-haters have de-legitimized not only Trump personally, but also de-legitimized the Executive branch as such.

[Sidebar: this is an absolutely amazing phenomenon: while for almost four years Trump has been destroying the US Empire externally, Trump-haters spent the same four years destroying the USA from the inside!  If we look past the (largely fictional) differences between the Republicrats and the Demolicans we can see that they operate like a demolition tag-team of sorts and while they hate each other with a passion, they both contribute to bringing down both the Empire and the United States.  For anybody who has studied dialectics this would be very predictable but, alas, dialectics are not taught anymore, hence the stunned “dear in the headlights” look on the faces of most people today]

Finally, it is pretty clear that for all its disclaimers about supporting only the “peaceful protestors” and its condemnation of the “out of town looters”, most of the US media (as well as the alt media) is completely unable to give a moral/ethical evaluation of what is taking place.

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.

What Does A "Transition Period" From The Olmecs To The Mayans Even Mean?

sciencealert |  A giant, sprawling structure almost a mile long has been discovered at the southern tip of Mexico, with researchers saying it may represent the oldest and largest monument of the ancient Maya civilisation ever found.

The site, called Aguada Fénix, is located in the state of Tabasco, at the base of the Gulf of Mexico. It's so vast for its age, the find is making archaeologists recalibrate their timelines on the architectural capabilities of the mysterious Maya.

Before now, the Maya site of Ceibal (aka Seibal) was thought to be the oldest ceremonial centre, dating back to around 950 BCE.

Aguada Fénix, which measures over 1,400 metres (almost 4,600 ft) in length at its greatest extent, dates to a similar timeframe, with researchers estimating it was built between 1000 and 800 BCE – but its immense size and scope make it unlike anything found before from the period.

"To our knowledge, this is the oldest monumental construction ever found in the Maya area and the largest in the entire pre-Hispanic history of the region," the researchers, led by archaeologist Takeshi Inomata from the University of Arizona, explain in a new paper about the discovery.

What's even more staggering is that this huge, unknown structure has actually been hiding in plain sight for centuries, seemingly unrecognised by the modern Mexicans living their lives on top of the vast complex.

Virtual Tour Of Gobekli Tepe

Take The Virtual Tour Of Gobekli Tepe