NPR | Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an
epidemic. A truth many Americans are acknowledging since the murder of
George Floyd, as protests have occurred in all fifty states calling for
justice on his behalf. But this tension between African American
communities and the police has existed for centuries. This week, the
origins of American policing and how those origins put violent control
of Black Americans at the heart of the system.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 massprotests, 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.
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 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.
slate |Someone says he’s bleeding from his ear. Have you just watched an old man die? Is hedying?
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
National right-to-work laws
Abolishment of all prevailing wage laws
Ending public unions ability to strike
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.
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
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:
Racism or “White privilege”
Police violence
Social alienation and despair
Poverty
Trump
The liberals pouring fuel on social fires
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
-
Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
-
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
