Tag: Civil Disobedience

They Are All Anarchists!

Closing Thought–30Jul20

Out Dear Leader and his lap dog Barr are stating that Portland protests have nothing to do with the death of a black person…..

First Barr’s statement….

Attorney General William Barr is defending the aggressive federal law enforcement response to civil unrest in America, saying “violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests” sparked by George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. Barr will tell members of the House Judiciary Committee at a much-anticipated hearing on Tuesday that the violence taking place in Portland, Oregon, and other cities is disconnected from the death of Floyd, which he described as a “horrible” event that prompted a necessary national reckoning on the relationship between the Black community and law enforcement. “Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd’s death or any legitimate call for reform,” Barr will say of the Portland protests, according to a copy of his prepared remarks released by the Justice Department on Monday and reported by the AP.

Then there is Trump trying to make it out as some attempt to overthrow the government…..”they are all anarchists”…..but sadly Mr. Trump it is bigger than Portland.

  • Portland: A bag containing loaded rifle magazines and Molotov cocktails was found at a park near where protests have been staged for two months in Portland, police said. A photo of the items was shared in a tweet from police that said someone pointed out the bag to officers at Lownsdale Square Park, per the AP. Meanwhile, the city’s protest late Sunday started peacefully, but intensified early Monday. US agents declared an unlawful assembly and deployed several rounds of what appeared to be tear gas, flash bangs, and pepper balls from the federal courthouse downtown.
  • Shots fired: The discovery came just hours after two people were arrested following reports that a shot was fired in the same Portland park. Officers responded just before 7:30pm. A person believed to be the gunshot victim arrived later at a hospital via a private vehicle with non-life threatening injuries, police said. It wasn’t clear if either incident was connected to the demonstrations.
  • Trump: “The ‘protesters’ are actually anarchists who hate our Country,” the president tweeted Sunday evening. He also took issue with the “wall of moms” in Portland, a group of women who stood together between federal officers and protesters, notes the Daily Beast. “The line of innocent ‘mothers’ were a scam that Lamestream refuses to acknowledge, just like they don’t report the violence of these demonstrations!”
  • Oakland: A protest in Oakland, Calif., in support of racial justice and police reform turned violent Saturday night when a small group of demonstrators wearing helmets and goggles and carrying large signs that doubled as shields set fire to a courthouse, vandalized a police station, and shot fireworks at officers, authorities said, per the AP.
  • Richmond: In Virginia’s capital, a dump truck was torched as several hundred protesters and police faced off late Saturday during a demonstration of support for the protesters in Portland. Police declared it to be an “unlawful assembly” at around 11pm and used what appeared to be tear gas to disperse the group.
  • Atlanta: In downtown Atlanta on Sunday, federal agents examined damage to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where windows were shattered late Saturday.
  • Baltimore: People from a group of nearly 100 demonstrators spray-painted anti-police messages on a Fraternal Order of Police building and adjacent sidewalks on Saturday night in Baltimore.

This is how you handle the mothers that Trump say are not protesting…..please click on the links to see what this is all about……..

https://twitter.com/i/status/1287817041693609985
 
WE have MOTHERS protecting protesters…..then we have FATHERS with leaf blowers protecting the mothers that are protecting the protesters and now VETERANS are there to protect the fathers protecting the mothers who are protecting the protesters.
 
 
According to Donald the Orange….Mothers are anarchists….fathers are anarchists and now veterans are anarchists…..
 
In case anyone is interested (probably not) those protesters in the Antifa/anarchists have been linked to ZERO murders……
 

Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and “far-left fascism” a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.

A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator.

Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/us-rightwing-extremists-attacks-deaths-database-leftwing-antifa

Antifa is a convenient bogeyman……they can lie about these protesters like they have always lied about this they do not agree with…….

People continued to resist fascism, as this poisonous political plant took root in Latin America and thrived under Franco in Spain. Many leftists who fought these fascists did not call themselves antifa – but that’s what they were. Antifascism was and remains a frame of mind and a determination to act morally – against fascism.

So it was something of a surprise in the early twenty-first century to see antifascists smeared as dangerous, violent thugs. This reactionary recasting of an old struggle reached its zenith in 2020, when Donald Trump, a demagogue with fascist leanings, announced that he would designate antifa a domestic terror organization. No matter that doing so is probably illegal. No matter that antifa is not an organization. These people who fight fascism must be put down by the police, Trump said. And then, in Portland, Oregon, he proceeded, probably illegally, to do so.

The Antifa Bogeyman

The good news is that all those anarchist, the Moms, the Dads and the Vets have helped end the siege of Portland by Trump’s secret police……

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown says she has reached a deal with administration officials that will see the “occupying force” of federal agents removed from downtown Portland. Brown said Wednesday that agents from the US Marshals Service and US Customs and Border Protection will begin a phased withdrawal Thursday and Federal Protective Service officers at the city’s federal courthouse will be bolstered by state troopers instead, the Oregonian reports. Brown said the agents “refused accountability and brought strife to our community” during nightly confrontations with protesters. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler—who was tear-gassed by federal agents last week—hailed what he called the end of an “illegal occupation.”

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf confirmed that an agreement had been made, although he described it in very different terms. “We are not removing any law enforcement while our facilities and law enforcement remain under attack,” he tweeted Wednesday. But “the state of Oregon is finally agreeing to cooperate with our federal forces,” he said in a second tweet, “exactly what we asked for since the nightly violence broke out two months ago.” He added: “We’re glad Oregon is now correcting their months long error.” President Trump said Wednesday that agents would remain in Portland until local authorities “secured” the city, the AP reports. “Either they’re gonna clean up Portland soon, or the federal government is going up, and we’re gonna do it for them,” he said.

Wolf will say whatever Trump wants him to say….he is that much of a puppet.

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A “Gestapo” Coming Soon

Looks like that fascist police dud AG Barr has a new idea to make all protests illegal…..

Attorney General William Barr is reportedly forming a task force to address “anti-government extremists.”

Barr outlined the group in a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

“Although these extremists profess a variety of ideologies, they are united in their opposition to the core constitutional values of a democratic society governed by law,” Barr reportedly wrote in the memo. “Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and coercion.”

Barr’s efforts come amid weeks of nationwide protests sparked by the May 25 death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police that extremists groups have used to create chaos – including violence and the destruction of property

The report about the task force also came on the same day that President Trump signed an executive order that bolsters existing law and that could send those who destroy federal statues to a maximum 10 years in prison.

Trump has said “anarchists” and “extremists” are among those committing such acts.

Barr said Friday on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast that the already existing, federal Joint Terrorism Task Force has 500 active investigations into acts of violence during recent protests.

(justthenews.com)

As an old radical….I see shades of COINTELPRO……

HUH?

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was the official name of the programmatic project conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under state-sponsored terrorist J. Edgar Hoover. It’s stated aim was the spying on, infiltrating, discrediting, disrupting and destruction of domestic organizations and individuals it considered “subversive”. According to the FBI, “intensified attention under this program should be afforded to the activities of such groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam.“

On March 8, 1971, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pa., and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent.  The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, as the group called itself, forced its way in at night with a crowbar while much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. When agents arrived for work the next morning, they found the file cabinets virtually emptied.

Within a few weeks, the documents began to show up — mailed anonymously in manila envelopes with no return address — in the newsrooms of major American newspapers.

COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological warfare, planting false reports in the media, smearing through forged letters, harassment, wrongful imprisonment, extralegal violence and assassination. Covert operations under COINTELPRO took place between 1956 and 1971, however the U.S. Government has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception and continues to this day.

FBI COINTELPRO: The U.S. Government’s War Against Dissent

Somethings never change……a conserv that wants to end all dissent….never mind the right we have to dissent…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Deja Vu (Again)–1968

These days we are witnessing a possible turning point in American society…..I say ‘possible’ because I have witnessed the people let social issues be dictated by the people that do not want change in any way.

In summer of 1967, African Americans protested, marched, and rioted in cities across the country. The unrest convinced President Lyndon Johnson to set up the Kerner Commission, which spent about six months doing research, visiting slums, and holding hearings. In 1968, they published a provocative report that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson recently called “the last attempt to address honestly and seriously the structural inequalities that plague African Americans.”

“Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans,” the Kerner report said. “What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/06/09/872402262/what-a-1968-report-tells-us-about-the-persistence-of-racial-inequality

There is more similar with 1968 and 2020 than most people realize….

Racial tensions, clashes between police and protesters, a general sense of chaos — 1968 and 2020 seemed to have a lot in common. Observers wrote about how Trump’s use of “law and order” rhetoric echoed Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968. The comparison makes broader sense, too: 1968 was a destabilizing year in American politics, marked by Civil Rights protests, uprisings born out of racist oppression, assassinations, violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (classified later as a “police riot”) and protests against the Vietnam War. Racial tensions and inequality were at the center of the instability that year, with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. sparking uprisings in cities across the country.

But 1968 isn’t the only chapter in American history that’s relevant to the current crisis. America has a long history of racial injustice, which makes it difficult to isolate any one precedent for the current environment. History has a way of building on itself; the injustices of one generation are passed on to the next, even as incremental progress is made. This is why I want to share with you three other episodes that also help contextualize the moment we’re in now. They, like 1968 and the broader Civil Rights movement, highlight the depths of violence and injustice that black Americans have faced, and explain why everyday political processes have failed to bring about lasting systemic change.

1968 Isn’t The Only Parallel For This Political Moment

I started my protest days in the 1970s and the races were closer together then than now….and that is a shame that our system has consistently screwed the black population.

Now is the time for radical politics….so says Princeton’s Eddie Glaude, Jr (a professor from  my neck of the woods)……

A common reaction to these displays of violence and injustice in the past weeks is: This is not who we are. But what if that isn’t true? What if this is exactly who we are? That’s a far more uncomfortable idea to grapple with — and, if accurate, it demands far more radical solutions to America’s current malaise.

There are few people who have wrestled with these questions more deeply than Eddie Glaude Jr., the chair of Princeton University’s department of African American studies and author of books like Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Souland Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.

“In order to address this cultural practice of racial inequality, we have to narrate America differently,” Glaude Jr. says. “We have to confront the ugliness of who we are — and who we have been — so that we can imagine ourselves otherwise.”

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/9/21279536/radical-politics-george-floyd-protests-police-brutality-black-lives

I agree we need truly RADICAL politics if we want the change the direction of this country toward division….and then without it the divisions will continue to widen and the more inequality will become entrenched in society.

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Let’s Form A Commission

Good grief we have been fighting for racial equality for how long?

And in the 21st century we have come back to the bad old days of the 1960s and the fight for equality and the end of racism…..and the civil rights movement thought they had accomplished that with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act……but apparently nothing was truly settled in those days with those Acts.

I know let’s form a commission to get to the bottom of this problem.  Seriously?  A Commission?  Action to let politicians feel good about their cowardice.

That seems to be the reaction that all politicians have to the spiraling violence centered around the deaths of black citizens…..Trump has a plan, Dems have a plan and the GOP has a plan….https://lobotero.com/2020/06/19/gop-answer-to-police-violence/……..and all of them basically call for a commission or study group or whatever the politically correct term is these days….but in reality they are just giving a delaying game in the hopes cooler heads will prevail……in other words they are calling for what they always call for….INACTION!

There is nothing new about these calls for a “commission”…..it has been going on since the 1960s….and look where we are today…..fighting the same battles they fought in the 60s…..where’s the progress?

There’s a limit to the relevance of the so-called race riots of the nineteen-sixties to the protests of the moment. But the tragedy is: they’re not irrelevant. Nor is the history that came before. The language changes, from “insurrection” to “uprising” to the bureaucratic “civil disorder,” terms used to describe everything from organized resistance to mayhem. But, nearly always, they leave a bloody trail in the historical record, in the form of government reports. The Kerner Report followed centuries of official and generally hysterical government inquiries into black rebellion, from the unhinged “A Journal of the proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by some White People, in conjunction with Negro and other Slaves, for burning the City of New-York in America, and murdering the Inhabitants,” in 1744, to the largely fabricated “Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes, charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection in the state of South-Carolina,” in 1822. The white editor of the as-told-to (and highly dubious) “The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. . . . also, An Authentic Account of the Whole Insurrection, with Lists of the Whites Who Were Murdered . . . ,” in 1831, wrote, “Public curiosity has been on the stretch to understand the origin and progress of this dreadful conspiracy, and the motives which influences its diabolical actors.” What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/the-history-of-the-riot-report

Now is not the time to be faint at heart…..protesters MUST not settle for talk…..they have in the past and look where we are today.

Stay in the streets!

Do Not Settle!

“lego ergo scribo”

The “Zone”

This would make a good name for some expensive SciFi movie…..but in this case I am referring to the area of Seattle that has the social media jumping and blogs being crammed full of opinions and accusation…..

Most of which was fired by the reports on FOX News…..like these reports…..

On Fox News, host Tucker Carlson called it “chaos and craziness.” Laura Ingraham said it was “a Marxist cultural revolution” intended to “destroy everything that came before it.” In a tweet, President Donald Trump said it was being run by “Domestic Terrorists.”

These people are not describing a foreign war zone or a fallen city. They are describing the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, a roughly six-block area of Seattle taken over by protesters this week and declared a sovereign territory. Since the zone was established Monday, the internet has been filled with rumors about what it looks like and how it works. Fox News posted a photo of an armed guard at the entrance to the zone and said residents were being forced to show their IDs to get inside. Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best claimed that protesters were shaking down businesses for protection money. Something something Antifa something, cried various online pundits.

All of these rumors are false, and all of these people are lying to you. I live less than a mile from the autonomous zone. I have been there every day this week, in daylight and in darkness, speaking with protesters, meeting with friends, seeing movies and eating pizza.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-is-lying-about-seattles-autonomous-zone_n_5ee411bfc5b6426173ae6a3d

I know that those that believe every word from FOX News will not accept that it is a lie unless they hear if from FOX……and now they have!

Fox News has removed doctored images of Seattle’s protest zone that made it look more like a war zone, the New York Times reports. One image, of a man armed with a rifle in front of a shattered storefront, was really two spliced together—of broken windows in downtown Seattle on May 30 and a gunman at the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone on June 10. The Seattle Times, which broke the story, spotted another pic showing the gunman spliced with an image of a sign reading “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.” A third photo, of fiery protests in St. Paul, Minn., accompanied the Fox News headline “Crazy Town: Seattle helpless as armed guards patrol anarchists’ ‘autonomous zone,’ shake down businesses: cops.”

A Fox News rep responded by saying that “we have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront, both of which were taken this week in Seattle’s autonomous zone”—which the Seattle Times calls “inaccurate” because the photos were taken over 10 days apart. On Saturday Fox News posted a statement saying its “collage did not clearly delineate between these images, and has since been replaced.” President Trump has railed against the protest zone, tweeting that “Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle” and urging people to “take back your city NOW.” The Seattle Times describes the area as a “mostly peaceful” place where people gather for music, food, and documentary films.

Even with the admission of a lie and I bet there will be those that will ignore this and continue to regurgitate the lies.

We will see…..we will see…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Autonomous Zone (CHAZ)–2020

A Beginning Note–This post ought to keep the old farts busy for awhile sling insults and spreading their manure……enjoy.

The newest situation that has the lie machine working overtime is that of the Autonomous Zone in Seattle……a new way to protest….or is it?

Before let me give mt reader a little context…..

The very term makes people with a history background think about 1871 and the Paris Commune….

The Paris Commune was a popular-led democratic government that ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. Inspired by the Marxist politics and revolutionary goals of the International Workingmen’s Organization (also known as the First International), workers of Paris united to overthrow the existing French regime which had failed to protect the city from Prussian siege, and formed the first truly democratic government in the city and in all of France. The elected council of the Commune passed socialist policies and oversaw city functions for just over two months, until the French army retook the city for the French government, slaughtering tens of thousands of working-class Parisians in order to do so.

https://www.thoughtco.com/paris-commune-4147849

Then there is the term Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)…..a construct from the 1990s…..

Coined in 1990 by poet, anarcho-immediatist and Sufi scholar Hakim Bey, the term temporary autonomous zone (T.A.Z.) seeks to preserve the creativity, energy and enthusiasm of autonomous uprisings without replicating the inevitable betrayal and violence that has been the reaction to most revolutions throughout history. The answer, according to Bey, lies in refusing to wait for a revolutionary moment, and instead create spaces of freedom in the immediate present whilst avoiding direct confrontation with the state.

A T.A.Z. is a liberated area “of land, time or imagination” where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with. Locating itself in the cracks and fault lines in the global grid of control and alienation, a T.A.Z. is an eruption of free culture where life is experienced at maximum intensity. It should feel like an exceptional party where for a brief moment our desires are made manifest and we all become the creators of the art of everyday life.

Temporary autonomous zone

Now this brings me to the Autonomous Zone in Seattle…..or as it is called Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ)……

“THIS SPACE IS NOW PROPERTY OF THE SEATTLE PEOPLE.” So read a banner draped Tuesday on the city’s East Precinct police station, part of what the Seattle Times reports is a newly installed “protest society” called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ. Most notable about the CHAZ is there are no police there, after authorities retreated Monday and boarded up the building, per the Washington Post. It’s all part of the protesters’ eventual goal to defund the police and find a way to “more compassionately organize our city,” one of the movement’s leaders tells the Times. Per MyNorthwest.com and WPTV, it’s unclear how long police will stay away, or how long protesters will be allowed to stay in the six-block area. One person not thrilled about this new setup: the president.

“Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle, run by Radical Left Democrats,” Trump tweeted Wednesday night. “LAW & ORDER!” He also accused “Radical Left Governor @JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle” of “being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before,” adding, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped [sic] IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!” “‘Stoop’ tweeting,” Inslee responded, referencing Trump’s typo. “A man who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state’s business.” As for Mayor Jenny Durkan: “Make us all safe,” she posted. “Go back to your bunker.” More here and here on the CHAZ.

More on the similarities between Seattle and Paris of 1871……https://fee.org/articles/seattle-s-autonomous-zone-and-the-paris-commune-of-1871-are-ominously-similar/

Reports from CHAZ, described by The Stranger as “exceedingly chill,” make it sound like a mix of Occupy Wall Street and a college independent cooperative dorm. The cordoned-off area includes apartments, businesses, and the precinct, with protesters free to gather away from any police. According to news reports and accounts from observers, there is a “No Cop Co-Op” with free food, vegan pizza, LaCroix (and White Claw), a hot dog stand (not free), a medical center, a Mutual Aid Books table, a garden, and a giant Black Lives Matter mural.

(thenewyorker.com)

There are 30 demands coming out of CHAZ….read them here…..https://medium.com/@seattleblmanon3/the-demands-of-the-collective-black-voices-at-free-capitol-hill-to-the-government-of-seattle-ddaee51d3e47

There are some untruths (go figure) coming out about CHAZ……

Local reporters confirm that there are some CHAZ residents walking around with firearms (Washington is an open-carry state) but that they claim they are providing safety for CHAZ and other protesters accept their presence in the area. Seattle police walked back a previous claim that some businesses were being extorted to be able to operate in the area, with Best clarifying that they have not actually had any formal reports of extortion occurring.

Amazing nothing has changed in a hundred and fifty years…..the only answer for power brokers is to send in troops when the people want a better life.

It is easier to stomp down protests than to find answers to societal problems…..Trumpy is a true authoritarian at heart.

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Be well….Be Safe…..

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“lego ergo scribo”

“My Bad…….”

Closing Thought–12Jun20

We all have seen the images of the Head of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff….walking with the president after the suppression of protests so Trump could have a Bible moment in front of a church.

Now the General has said that he should not have been part of the photo op…….

The fallout from President Trump’s now-famous walk from the White House to St. John’s Church continues: On Thursday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologized for joining the president on that June 1 walk in military fatigues, reports CNN. “I should not have been there,” said Army Gen. Mark Milley in commencement remarks at the National Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

  • Defense chief: Esper, who also joined the walk, wrote a letter to Congress with Milley reiterating they did not realize the walk would be used for a photo op, reports the Washington Post. “We participated in the walk with the aim of observing damage in Lafayette Square and at (St. John’s) Church, and meeting with and thanking the National Guard members who were on duty,” they wrote.
  • More on the letter: Esper and Milley also sought to clarify the military’s role in the response to the protests, saying that National Guard troops in DC were there only in a supporting role and “were not ever in the District for purposes of civilian law enforcement.” Previously, Esper publicly disagreed with Trump on invoking the Insurrection Act—using the military in more of a domestic policing role—to quell protests.

I think the general has one the right thing by apologizing for his participation in the presidential theater…..

But I ask after a long distinguished career in the military and he did not think that would be an issue of him in combat fatigues while the population was in protests……what message did he think it would send?

He has done (I reiterate for those that cannot find the time to read my post) in my opinion the right think and he should have resigned over the issue to make it with an exclamation point.

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“lego ergo scribo”

 

Closing Thought–10Jun20

For two weeks the protests have taken over the news cycle and we are hearing words like tear gas, pepper spray (it is a chemical agent) and rubber bullets used as crowd control.

Rubber bullets is where this post is traveling….

Actually the term “rubber bullets” is far more lethal than the benign term would show…

As protests have taken over the U.S., police officers in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Kansas City, Chicago, and more have opened fire on crowds—bruising, maiming, and even permanently blinding peaceful demonstrators and members of the press. The shots fired have primarily been with what are colloquially called rubber bullets.

The name is a bit of a misnomer. These kinetic energy (KE) rounds are rarely made of rubber these days, and some even have metal components, just like conventional bullets. Most are actually shot from grenade launchers, though shotgun rounds are also popular, and rounds are even made for rifles and pistols. Instead of piercing the skin, the rounds are meant to strike someone with blunt force, incapacitating them like the swing of a baton but from afar.

More than a century in the making, rubber bullets can cause serious injury, and even kill, and it’s taken time for the semantics to catch up. Once called nonlethal weapons, research has demonstrated their dangers, like that up to 15% of people struck with KE rounds are left with a permanent disability. They were renamed “less-than-lethal” for a while in the early aughts, and now much of the world, including the UN, calls them by a more suitable title: “less lethal” rounds.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90512287/the-lethal-history-of-rubber-bullets-and-why-they-should-never-be-used-on-peaceful-protesters

What about tear gas?

An Ohio county coroner’s office is investigating whether the death of a 22-year-old was the result of police firing tear gas at her during a protest in Columbus, according to preliminary autopsy records obtained by the Dayton Daily News.

The records indicate Sarah Grossman’s father told the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office that she had been “exposed to tear gas and pepper spray” used by police at a May 28 protest. Family members had found Grossman unresponsive May 30. She arrived at a hospital in Miamisburg, Ohio, in cardiac arrest and died shortly after arrival, according to the preliminary records.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/501909-officials-investigating-allegation-that-ohio-womans-death-linked-to-tear

But that is an isolated case, right?

Of the studies that have been done, doctors note that most cases of tear gas exposure result in only temporary side effects, though some cases can result in severe complications, including death.

…

“The most overwhelming aspect of the pain was an intense tightness in my chest. It felt like my heart might burst or collapse into itself and it was so bad I thought I might be having a serious medical issue,” he wrote.

When tear gas and smoke is fired from canisters, there’s also a risk of serious injury if protestors are hit with the canisters.

https://www.businessinsider.com/side-effects-of-ferguson-tear-gas-can-kill-2014-8

Just yet another attempt to put a civilized face on brutality.

Work for a more inclusive society and they would not have these problems or need such barbarous tactics.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is This The ‘American Spring’?

Once again the minorities of the US have had to take to the streets to make their case that is mostly ignored when tried to handle in a civilized method.

We all remember the ‘Arab Spring’ from a decade ago when people took to the streets to protest the injustice and corruption of their leaders.

And now the US has joined the movement.

Today, the George Floyd protests could become the spark of an “American Spring” of justice and equality. Interestingly, the Arab Spring was every bit about social justice in the MENA region as the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement is in the U.S. As diasporic scholars who lived under the dictatorship and through an uprising that led to substantial changes during the 2011 Tunisian Revolution, we acquired a critical understanding of the complexities and layers of social movements. Thus, we posit that the similarities are truly manifold.

Towards an ‘American Spring’ of Justice and Equality?

We watched as the thugs sent wave after wave of military and police to beat and maim protesters  trying to get them to disperse…..and they fought on…….Trump in true dictator fashion wanted to send in tanks to disperse protesters.

President Donald Trump pressed his advisers and Pentagon officials about sending tanks and military equipment as part of a show of force against protests over the death of George Floyd, according to a new report.

While pushing governors in a conference call to “dominate” the protests that have lasted eight days, and threatening to “put down” violent riots by deploying the US military, Mr Trump reportedly sought specific information on the sort of armoured vehicles and weaponry his administration could send to states across the country.

A senior administration official told the Daily Beast the president was enquiring about “the kind of hardware” that could be deployed amid protests when he mentioned “tanks” and other military units, including aircraft.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/george-floyd-protests-trump-tanks-military-protests-national-guard-a9546786.html

Does the militarization of the police lend to the brutality that we are witnessing?

The US police force is heavily militarised, thanks to the transfer of surplus military goods to law enforcement departments across the US for decades.

The scenes playing out across the US today have renewed worries that the militarisation of police has created a climate among law enforcement that encourages excessive force.

“In city after city, we are witnessing actions that could be considered unnecessary or excessive force,” said Rachel Ward, national director of research at Amnesty International USA.

“Equipping officers in a manner more appropriate for a battlefield may put them in the mindset that confrontation and conflict are inevitable,” Ward said in a statement on Saturday. 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/militarisation-police-encourage-excessive-force-200601195340742.html

I wrote about this militarization back in 2017…..https://lobotero.com/2017/02/17/coming-of-a-police-state/

Looks like it is not coming at all….it is here now and getting worse.

Of course we want to blame Donald the Orange for the problems we have today but we need to look at the actions of the elected GOP in the past…..

Some Republicans in Congress expressed outrage this week over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died of asphyxiation when a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his throat for more than 8 minutes, prompting days of protests and unrest across the country. But an examination of the voting records of Republicans from the last Congress finds that a huge number lawmakers voted against civil rights at almost every chance.

“I fully understand the anger that so many people feel. I felt that anger when I watched that video. I still feel that anger, and I fully support the right of people to peacefully protest and register their concerns,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said Monday, referring to footage of the white former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee onto the neck of Floyd. “Americans have the right to peacefully protest, no one has a right to violently riot.”

However, the NAACP publishes a legislative scorecard each Congress, indicating which lawmakers voted for the organization’s civil rights priorities and which lawmakers voted against them. And in the 115th Congress, Toomey received an “F” rating from the group after voting with the NAACP just 6% of the time. This included votes to confirm Jeff Sessions to be attorney general of the United States despite his history of racism, to roll back nondiscrimination rules for federal contractors, and to make it easier for automobile lenders to discriminate.

https://americanindependent.com/gop-civil-rights-votes-police-violence-protests-george-floyd-naacp-congress/

You read that right…..114 GOPers voted against civil rights legislation 90% of the time…..so to hear them spout crap now is just pathetic.

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Have We Seen All This Before?

Closing Thought–04Jun20

I realize that Americans are too busy to give a crap about anyone but themselves but I want to remind those that will listen….

The American civil rights protests….

How civil rights activists risked their lives to change America in ...
The Long, Painful History of Police Brutality in the U.S. | At the ...

My days of protests……antiwar days…..

Moving Photographs of Vietnam War Protests That Show the ...

A noble cause | The Spectator Australia

May 1970 Student Strike

South Africa….

Apartheid - South Africa's Policy of Racial Segregation ...

 

A South African Policeman, Judge, and Executioner", United Kingdom ...

Then there is the Occupied Territories and the violence from IDF…..

Palestinians rage against US shift on Jerusalem | The Times
Facts about the First Intifada – Middle East Monitor
Report: PA suspends security ties with Israel, Hamas warns ...

As I say….this is all NOTHING new…..we have been dealing with petty dictators and maniacs for many years….you would think that we would learn a lesson in all this protest, right?

Apparently the gravity of injustice is missed by way too many people.

Our police have become armed camps….not the same as the “protect and serve” guys from the past…..

With the militarization of local police forces on full display as heavily armed cops and armored vehicles patrol the streets and crack down on protests over the killing of George Floyd, Sen. Brian Schatz on Sunday said he plans to introduce an amendment to end the federal program that permits the transfer of excess military equipment to police departments across the nation.

“I will be introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to discontinue the program that transfers military weaponry to local police departments,” the Hawaii Democrat tweeted late Sunday.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/01/militarization-cops-full-display-senator-plans-amendment-end-transfer-military

Good luck with that….the Senate?  You mean that bastion of BS where good bills go to die?

These police tactics are looking a lot like the apartheid policies of Israel against Palestinians.

https://www.972mag.com/george-floyd-us-israel-occupying-power/

Can we say Kent State?

This Is How Kent State Happened

Plus I am not impressed by Democrats and their handling of the protests…..all they have is words….little action…..

Trump has operationalized his efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship, based on the military and the police, through a massive military deployment in Washington, D.C., which is under his direct control. He is also escalating pressure on states to crack down on demonstrations after his threat on Monday to send in the military if they do not respond aggressively enough.

In innumerable public statements, Democratic members of Congress, governors and mayors commenting on Trump’s actions ignored the fascistic and authoritarian character of Trump’s actions, focusing instead on declarations that Trump is not being “helpful” in controlling the demonstrations.

“Let’s not overreact,” said Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, calling Trump’s statements “bluster.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was asked if she would request military intervention, replied that this would only be necessary “because they’ve [the Trump administration] thrown a lot more gas on a fire that was burning.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/03/pers-j03.html

Hopefully no one thinks these words and mental farts are in any way in support.

Have they stepped up to make the plight theirs?

I have not seen anything that would show me that Dems would do little different…..words are not action!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”