Open Thread 2020-46
News & views ...
Posted by b on June 10, 2020 at 17:47 UTC | Permalink
next page »Here's Adolph Reed keeping it real. He's being viciously attacked for it. Go figure. Stands to reason. No quarter for the truth.
To Adolph Reed, amen brother. Amen.
How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence
What is clear in those states, however, is that the great disproportion of those killed by police have been Latinos, Native Americans, and poor whites. So someone should tell Kai Wright et al to find another iconic date to pontificate about; that 1793 yarn has nothing to do with anything except feeding the narrative of endless collective racial suffering and triumphalist individual overcoming—“resilience”—popular among the black professional-managerial strata and their white friends (or are they just allies?) these days. 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. It is also a demand that, in insisting that for all intents and purposes police violence must be seen as mainly, if not exclusively, a black thing, we cut ourselves off from the only basis for forging a political alliance that could effectively challenge it. All that could be possible as political intervention, therefore, is tinkering around with administration of neoliberal stress policing in the interest of pursuing racial parity in victimization and providing consultancies for experts in how much black lives matter.5
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 18:00 utc | 2
WATCH: New York police chief accuses media of treating police like ANIMALS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NluVe6j7Hkg
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1270451011677798402
Posted by: Mao | Jun 10 2020 18:06 utc | 3
Millions Of Taxpayer Dollars Are Going To Schools That Push Conversion Therapy
A HuffPost investigation has found schools in voucher programs that list “counseling” as discipline for LGBTQ students. The counseling, a form of conversion therapy, can be seriously harmful.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/voucher-programs-conversion-therapy_n_5ed07722c5b6c9605a95e4a2
Posted by: Mao | Jun 10 2020 18:09 utc | 4
Yale has published research that shows HCH + AZ has 50-fold benefits and insignificant risks
Using Hydroxychloroquine and Other Drugs to Fight Pandemic
In the author's words:
COVID-19 is really two different diseases. In the first few days, it is like a very bad cold. In some people, it then morphs into pneumonia which can be life-threatening. What I found is that treatments for the cold don’t work well for the pneumonia, and vice versa. Most of the published studies have looked at treatments for the cold but used for the pneumonia. I just looked at how well the treatments for the cold worked for the cold. There are five studies done this way, four of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin and one with hydroxychloroquine plus doxycycline, and they all show that treating the cold part of COVID-19—the early part—works very well.
The article completely decimates the arguments against using HCQ + AZ or HCQ + doxycycline, specifically in early outpatient use.
Posted by: BM | Jun 10 2020 18:11 utc | 5
A very interesting overview of what is happening in Libya.
b might want to comment on the situation.
Posted by: dh-mtl | Jun 10 2020 18:13 utc | 6
WATCH: New York police chief accuses media of treating police like ANIMALS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NluVe6j7Hkg
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1270451011677798402
Posted by: Mao | Jun 10 2020 18:06 utc | 3
Oh really? If so, well done media! Maybe the police can learn something from the experience.
Posted by: BM | Jun 10 2020 18:14 utc | 7
This aspect and legacy of George Floyd is being repressed and suppressed by #BlackLivesMatter. Blacks are killing each other in epidemic numbers and it's via gun violence. Floyd preached against this and lamented it. It's part of his legacy. Where are the protests against this? #BlackLivesMatter, right? Of course they do, and they matter just as much when a black person takes another black person's life.
George Floyd: An anti-gun activist who preached peace, love and God
In an undated post on social media, George Floyd, who worked as a mentor to young people, condemned gun violence: "I got my shortcomings and my flaws, and I ain't better than nobody else. But, man, the shootings that's going on, I don't care what religion you're from or where you're at. I love you, and God loves you. Put them guns down."Floyd's anti-gun activism attracted the attention of two Houstonians, hip-hop artist and entrepreneur Corey Paul and Pastor Patrick "P.T." Ngwolo, who were looking for contacts in the Third Ward for their social justice religious outreach. "We were extremely fortunate to meet George," Corey Paul said on the Democracy Now! news hour. "George was already preaching peace, love, God, unity, advocating against gun violence … before we showed up. So, when we got there, George basically said, 'If it's God business, then it's my business.'"
It's an insult to George Floyd, to his name and his legacy, that we're not using his death to talk about blacks murdering blacks at an epidemic rate and what needs to be done to reverse the epidemic.
Homicide Is A ‘Devastating Plague’ On Black Communities, And It Is Time We Stop Ignoring It
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 18:17 utc | 8
In Poland in 2019, a statue of a Roman Catholic priest, the late Monsignor Henryk Jankowski, is toppled and then restored two days later.
A Solidarity hero accused (never convicted) of sexually abusing minors.
https://apnews.com/ca68af33179141e2a758d1b1564eab31
Posted by: snow_watcher | Jun 10 2020 18:18 utc | 9
Maybe the police can learn something from the experience.
We have tried for 50+ years.
Not going to happen-- psychopathic sociopaths are who they are.
The proletariat is finally embracing reality.
Posted by: Duncan Idaho | Jun 10 2020 18:28 utc | 10
@BM/5
Yikes!
Be careful.
Remember as 'B' clearly warned you a couple of weeks ago, we are not allowed to speak favourably about Hydroxychloroquine because something something #OrangeManBad and you're "troll" if you say something positive about it etc...
Even if your own family members (I'm in London but got family in New York ) were given it when they first got ill.
Anyway. Thanks for the links by the way.
Stay safe.
Posted by: Skeletor | Jun 10 2020 18:28 utc | 11
In Libya, as in Idlib, Turkish drones have caused very significant damage to tanks and artillery positions ... what is the defence?
Posted by: chet380 | Jun 10 2020 18:30 utc | 12
What is a Vassal State? ... visited a Neocon website putting on the warpaint against China and posters accused China of oppressing their vassal states and it got me thinking, what is a fair definition of a vassal state. This is what I came up with.
A Vassal state: Needs are subordinate to the wants of the master, not allowed to make their own choices, not allowed to leave the relationship on their own, they are expendable.
N. Korea, are they a vassal state of China? I don't see any of these attributes. N. Korea depends on China many times but the master state needs the vassal more than the vassal needs the master.
Iraq is a vassal state of the U.S. (I had many choices, too many) Recently, they needed a waiver from Pompeo to buy electricity from Iran, talk about humiliating. We ignored multiple requests to leave and threatened to impose a trade embargo and freeze their bank accounts if they pushed the issue but told they 'could' bring up the issue later. We them more than they need us for as long as we must have military bases close to Iran and the ability to kill Iraqis we don't like. If we leave, we will leave Iraq in ruins rather than allow them to have unfettered trade with Iran.
Posted by: Christian J Chuba | Jun 10 2020 18:35 utc | 13
450.org @2--
Yes, that's a most important point, the WHY behind the formation of police forces. This multipart essay details "The History of Policing in the United States" and gives us two key clues: Policing in the South emerged to enforce slavery, while in the North it evolved much later primarily as a means of social control:
"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....
"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."
It seems clear the two systems and their rationales merged with the main goal being social control, not the protections of freedoms and otherwise serving the community as the logo Protect & Serve implies, unless we look at that logo from the Establishment's POV, for it then becomes clear who the police protect and serve. When looking at Labor History, it becomes very clear who police served and protected while totally ignoring the rights of those they attacked--the Police Riot has a very long and sordid history and certainly attacked whites more than blacks since the former constituted the greater mass of industrial workers then and now. However, whites weren't subjected to being hunted down and lynched for sport and entertainment in ways that evidenced cultural approval for such terroristic acts. Rightly or wrongly, it's that putrid history that strikes a chord with all people, particularly when the vastly greater amount of violence used against workers is suppressed and barely studied in survey US History courses, the curriculum of which is controlled by that same Establishment wanting to maintain social control.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 18:41 utc | 14
HREF="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-06-02-revealed-the-uks-largest-intelligence-agency-is-infiltrating-british-schools/">Spooks in UK schools for national security
GCHQ officers are operating in at least one school, while parents of pupils at schools across the programme do not appear to have been informed about the extent of the spy agency’s role in it.
Evidence also suggests that quotes purporting to be from children praising the programme have been manufactured.
Further, GCHQ’s Cyber Schools Hub (CSH) programme, also known as CyberFirst, appears to be disseminating propaganda to school children, telling them it acts as the “heart of the nation’s security”.
My step daughter attends one on the map. I've contacted the school, and will keep you posted.
Posted by: Some Random Passerby | Jun 10 2020 18:53 utc | 15
It is also a demand that, in insisting that for all intents and purposes police violence must be seen as mainly, if not exclusively, a black thing, we cut ourselves off from the only basis for forging a political alliance that could effectively challenge it. All that could be possible as political intervention, therefore, is tinkering around with administration of neoliberal stress policing in the interest of pursuing racial parity in victimization and providing consultancies for experts in how much black lives matter.5
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 18:00 utc | 2
There is some truth to it. However, this argument is based on a premise, largely correct, that the racist white majority will be oblivious as long as it is "black problem". It reminds me when many years ago Republicans wanted to semi-privatize Social Security, cutting the guaranteed benefits etc. In their propaganda, they invented the argument that this would benefit Blacks because they contribute the same share of income as everyone else, or more on the average (this tax is somewhat regressive), but benefit less because of lower life expectancy. The support for the reform in Southern states
(most conservative) collapsed.
Many comments on the root causes mentioned the misbegotten "qualified immunity" doctrine that lets the official kill, endanger lives etc. with impunity. For example, a recent killing in Louisville was outrageous, because of some faint suspicion that a home can be a place where a drug trafficker keeps his drugs, police invaded that home in the middle of the night without knocking, the boyfriend of the young women shot at them -- people are invading the house, and the police responded with a hail of bullets killing the sleeping woman. This is a very extreme and dangerous version of a "search". Apparently, lower level police has a latitude how to conduct a search, and the proposed reform was to require that "no knock" search has to be approved by the chief of police. However, no hair could fall from his head if he/she would rubber stamp such request (making stupid decisions that put lethal risks on citizens is legal). Almost, as a political appointee, police chief can be fired more easily.
Qualified immunity puts many people at risk, live, limb and property, and it has extensive libertarian criticism. The rot in American justice system is wider and identified in many studies, and it has to be reviewed on political arena. However, "law on order statist bias" is bipartisan, e.g. some outrageous Supreme Court decisions on "qualified immunity" had only two dissents, Sotomayor (leftmost) and Thomas (rightwing and libertarian).
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jun 10 2020 18:54 utc | 16
14 Cont'd--
Another important excerpt from the liked essay @14 that's highly informative:
"Defining social control as crime control was accomplished by raising the specter of the 'dangerous classes.' The suggestion was that public drunkenness, crime, hooliganism, political protests and worker 'riots' were the products of a biologically inferior, morally intemperate, unskilled and uneducated underclass. The consumption of alcohol was widely seen as the major cause of crime and public disorder. The irony, of course, is that public drunkenness didn't exist until mercantile and commercial interests created venues for and encouraged the commercial sale of alcohol in public places. This underclass was easily identifiable because it consisted primarily of the poor, foreign immigrants and free blacks (Lundman 1980: 29). This isolation of the 'dangerous classes' as the embodiment of the crime problem created a focus in crime control that persists to today, the idea that policing should be directed toward 'bad' individuals, rather than social and economic conditions that are criminogenic in their social outcomes.
Of course, none of the above is ever related via media when discussing the overall issue--that it began as a class/immigrant/racial issue is suppressed so the root of the problem doubly emphasized above is never discussed and is thus another component in the longstanding Class War. Another input never considered is the many penny press True Crime and Police Gazette publications that twisted the minds of the gullible during the period from 1880-1930, which today are present in the all too many cop "reality" shows on TV, although some are now finally being pulled from broadcast.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 19:00 utc | 17
I'm waiting for the good people to bring down Cecil Rhodes statue and force Christ Patten resign from Oxford University.
Posted by: JC | Jun 10 2020 19:01 utc | 18
Piotr Berman @16--
"Qualified immunity" is clearly unconstitutional as it violates the 4th, 5th, and 7th Amendments, and has no place in settled law. It will enter the dust bin just as non-majority verdicts in jury trials did.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 19:10 utc | 19
@6 dh-mtl
Thanks for that link, a very interesting and detailed article. It seems Haftar is an erratic and unreliable character and the LNA’s major foreign allies/sponsors, including Russia, make no secret of the fact that they basically consider him a temporary “necessary evil” until a more solid and reliable leader can be found.
Posted by: Daniel | Jun 10 2020 19:22 utc | 20
If you think the 8 minutes George Floyd, a black man brought the whole world on its knees. How about watching a white man begging for his life and nobody, give a shit, the cop was acquitted in 2016. So you think only back lives matter and White man, Brown man or Yellow man life doesn't matter? What a sick world?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WViiA3XHoAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8
I speak for myself and only myself not associated to any groups local, nationwide or worldwide. Hey bring down Cecil Rhodes statue and force Christ Patten resign from Oxford University. Bless you for reading this.
Posted by: JC | Jun 10 2020 19:23 utc | 21
14 & 17 Cont'd--
Sorry, but I must copy/paste another excerpt for this aspect of the Outlaw US Empire's political history gets very little mention--Tammany Hall usually being the sole example provided without any details of how it functioned and for whom. New York City wasn't the only large city where this sort of police-political syndicate arose:
"Early American police departments shared two primary characteristics: they were notoriously corrupt and flagrantly brutal. This should come as no surprise in that police were under the control of local politicians. The local political party ward leader in most cities appointed the police executive in charge of the ward leader's neighborhood. The ward leader, also, most often was the neighborhood tavern owner, sometimes the neighborhood purveyor of gambling and prostitution, and usually the controlling influence over neighborhood youth gangs who were used to get out the vote and intimidate opposition party voters. In this system of vice, organized violence and political corruption it is inconceivable that the police could be anything but corrupt (Walker 1996). Police systematically took payoffs to allow illegal drinking, gambling and prostitution. Police organized professional criminals, like thieves and pickpockets, trading immunity for bribes or information. They actively participated in vote-buying and ballot-box-stuffing. Loyal political operatives became police officers. They had no discernable qualifications for policing and little if any training in policing. Promotions within the police departments were sold, not earned. Police drank while on patrol, they protected their patron's vice operations, and they were quick to use peremptory force. Walker goes so far as to call municipal police 'delegated vigilantes,' entrusted with the power to use overwhelming force against the 'dangerous classes' as a means of deterring criminality."
Yes, "organized crime" was developed by the police and their politico allies as further means of social control and to augment their salaries. Still happens today with the nation's supposedly most important intelligence agency--CIA--being the most formidable criminal organization on the planet.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 19:27 utc | 22
In the last blog post, I mentioned the Johnson County War. During that conflict, wealthy, powerful cattle barons, who formed a consortium known as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) that still exists to this day, utilized private mercenaries to execute a list of seventy homesteaders. Thankfully & fortunately, the homesteaders organized and were able to corner the thug/goon mercenaries. They were set to kill the thug/goon mercenaries when the calvary arrived at the last minute at the behest of the cattle barons and saved the mercenaries. Those mercenaries, as much as any other precursor, were a precursor to today's police.
A great movie based loosely on the events surrounding the Johnson County War is Michael Cimino's oft-criticized and unheralded Heaven's Gate. It's an excellent movie in every way. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest it. Warning. It's expansive and long. Epically long, but worth every minute of it. Cimino transports you to that time and place. Positively engrossing.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 19:28 utc | 23
Good Chris Martenson YT yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjyNw8qgkaw (starts ~min 26:30)
Topics Include:
-Deliberate maiming (shooting eyes) of protesters by police rubber bullet guns
- Proactive Incentive ideas for stopping police misconduct/brutality:
1. Police to be held liable for excessive use of force outside of standardized guidelines. Any monetary judgments against violators to be paid out of police pension funds, not by taxpayers.
2. Individual police to be required to carry 'malpractice' insurance (like drivers, doctors, lawyers or other professions) policies, in case monetary judgments/damages are ruled against them.
3. Any law enforcement officer/official caught planting incriminating evidence/withholding exculpatory evidence shall face the same penalties (fines/prison time) as the crimes they attempted to frame the accused of.
Other good stuff too about latest CV related news...
Posted by: gm | Jun 10 2020 19:42 utc | 24
>How about watching a white man begging for his life and nobody,
>give a shit, the cop was acquitted in 2016.
Yes, I have seen the video of that sadistic assassination. Nobody cares because "Black Lives Matter" is all about divide-and-conquer. Do they even have a program beyond register-and-vote? They want to "reform" police regulations and "train" police that murder is wrong? I think cops already know that.
A few decades ago I mentioned to a black community advocate that they would get more support from other communities if they pointed out that police are equal-opportunity abusers and killers. The response was a torrent of rage.
OK then. Good luck doing it on your own. It seems the culture of "I'm the biggest victim" has deep roots.
Posted by: Trailer Trash | Jun 10 2020 19:53 utc | 25
When has any politician or the police ever protected our rights? They seem hell bent on erasing as many as possible. Also, why did it take a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol but not drugs? Hmm...
Posted by: Shadow | Jun 10 2020 19:55 utc | 26
Posted by: BM | Jun 10 2020 18:11 utc | 5
You do not "treat" "colds". A cold goes away after a few days with or without treatment.
Posted by: somebody | Jun 10 2020 19:56 utc | 27
The ruling class only needs one tactic: divide and rule. But how do I try to explain that to a black 16 year old math student who has recently started looking at me with murder in his eyes? Everything i can think of just sounds like a cliche.
Also... the media deserve no pity, they made their allegiances clear (for the millionth time) with Assange.
Posted by: Rae | Jun 10 2020 20:48 utc | 28
It didn't take very long as an examination of the literature shows the rise of Police came with the rise of Capitalism and many excellent books exist on the subject, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in looking beyond one's predilections on the topic. Further proof cementing that verdict:
"State police agencies emerged for many of the same reasons. The Pennsylvania State Police were modeled after the Phillipine Constabulary, the occupation force placed in the Philipine Islands following the Spanish-American War. This all-white, all-'native,' paramilitary force was created specifically to break strikes in the coal fields of Pennsylvania and to control local towns composed predominantly of Catholic, Irish, German and Eastern European immigrants. They were housed in barracks outside the towns so that they would not mingle with or develop friendships with local residents. In addition to strike-breaking they frequently engaged in anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic violence, such as attacking community social events on horseback, under the pretense of enforcing public order laws. Similarly, the Texas Rangers were originally created as a quasi-official group of vigilantes and guerillas used to suppress Mexican communities and to drive the Commanche off their lands."
I wonder if those now in control of what's being called the Seattle Commune will form some type of police or other defense force. According to this article, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone will be self-policing. IMO, this development deserves watching as it's not getting much media attention a la Occupy Wall Street.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 21:01 utc | 29
Rae @28--
You can begin by telling the truth about the history of policing. The short essay I've linked to and excerpted provide you with the means to do that.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 21:03 utc | 30
@8 450.org
It's an insult to George Floyd, to his name and his legacy, that we're not using his death to talk about blacks murdering blacks at an epidemic rate and what needs to be done to reverse the epidemic.
This is called “concern trolling.”
Bringing up black on black violence is a popular tactic amongst racist elements of the right to deflect attention from the gratuitous brutalization and murder of unarmed black folk at the hands of American police officers. It also implies that there is an inherent, genetic disposition towards violence that is unique to people of African descent which, of course, is a cornerstone of anti-black racism.
I do however agree with people like Adolph Reed Jr. that the overemphasis on race when talking about police violence is counterproductive and serves to obscure the class dimension of this epidemic. The fact is that the victims of police violence in the US are overwhelmingly poor. Not many middle- or upper class people, whether black white, Latino or any other ethnicity, are boot stomped or killed by cops.
Identity politics based on race and gender gets a lot of support from the liberal mainstream and is relentlessly promoted by pro-capitalist, pro-Democrat media. Adolph Reed calls the identitarian left the “left wing of neoliberalism” because they completely ignore the overwhelming role class plays in determining who gets shafted by the system. It’s not that racism isn’t real, it certainly is, and the mechanism by which people under a capitalist system get excluded from society and discriminated against is always economic. But making it all about race, and only race, keeps focus away from the brutal reality of poverty under capitalism and this very much serves the interests of the establishment, hence its enthusiastic support of identity politics.
Reed recently got “cancelled” by the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and accused of being a “class reductionist”, a charge leveled by identitarians against anyone they accuse of giving insufficient attention to race and gender issues. The American left is failing, and will keep failing, until it can extricate itself from the clutches of identity obsessives (and the Democratic Party). You can’t build a mass movement by selectively fighting for rights based on the racial or gender characteristics of the people being victimized. Recognizing the racist aspect of police violence is fine but if the argument is ultimately framed as “end police violence against African Americans”, as it currently is, the unspoken implication is going to cause problems.
Race essentialism, which used to be the domain of the racist far-right, is now embraced by the mainstream American liberal “left” which has lost, or never even learned, how to view capitalist society through the lens of class analysis. It’s kind of ridiculous that all these bourgeois activists and academic cultural theorists call themselves leftist and Marxist but recoil in horror when someone mentions class. How can any politics that excludes criticism of capitalist class relations call itself left wing or Marxist? It’s a farce.
Making race/gender essentialism the cornerstone of “the left” makes working class solidarity impossible, keeps the left weak and divided and benefits the neoliberal capitalist Democratic Party. The spectacle of white protestors literally bowing down in front of their black counterparts perfectly encapsulates why identity politics and race essentialism are epic strategic failures.
It implies a racial hierarchy that is inherent and fixed regardless of an individual’s actions or mindset. It makes being white an “original sin” that even the best intentioned white person cannot escape. This makes solidarity and building a working class movement with mass appeal impossible, it serves the interests of neoliberalism and capitalist imperialism, it makes “multicultural” friendships and are relationships all but impossible and it is rocket fuel for the racist far-right because race essentialism is their bread and butter. It can’t be overstated how incredibly f*****g toxic and counterproductive this is. Yeah, lecturing working class white people who have been under the capitalist boot for decades that they are unfairly privileged and guilty of oppressing “minorities” just by being born is sure to win them over. Yet this nonsense is embraced by the American and, increasingly, by the European left as the core of their politics while capitalism, economics and class analysis are ignored or sneeringly dismissed as things only “white brocialists” care about. It’s going to get very ugly and the racist right is going to swell its ranks while the liberal “left” helpfully blows its own feet off with both barrels.
Posted by: Daniel | Jun 10 2020 21:20 utc | 31
Let's not forget the likes of The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. They are also precursors to contemporary police. Another excellent movie that speaks to this theme and validates karloft1's latest post is John Sayles' Matewan. It deals with the Matewan Massacre which is the precursor to the Battle of Blair Mountain where bombs were dropped from airplanes on the striking miners. The bombs were left over from World War I. The United States government supplied aerial surveillance.
Here's an interview with John Sayles.
John Sayles Talks About Battle of Blair Mountain, Film Matewan & GOP's Union Busting Efforts
Trump has the audacity to pretend he's a friend of the coal miners, or what's left of them. He's a friend of the owners and The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency or its contemporary equivalent. You work, Trump doesn't. He's never worked a day in his life. He has no notion of what work is, but he knows enough to know work is not for him, that it's for you instead as he and his ilk spit and piss and crap on you.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 21:21 utc | 32
Another recent case of U.S. police officers ignoring the health condition of a black man and killing him as a result (although, in this case, they immediately attempt to revive him):
Police body-cam footage: Javier Ambler's fatal encounter with Williamson County Sheriff's deputies (YouTube).
Posted by: S | Jun 10 2020 21:23 utc | 33
Economic news:
World Bank is predicting that between 70-100m people will driven back below poverty line
WB's "poverty line" is just USD 1.90 per day. It was only USD 1.00 until some four years ago, and is outdated.
In reality, if you really take inflation into account, there are much more people living below the real poverty line in the capitalist world.
And no V-shaped recovery for the capitalist world either:
Returning to normal? Hardly, according to OECD projections
World Bank's global forecasts are out:
WB: 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020
I noticed there are a lot of people here that still have faith in capitalism. The problem is only with the demented variation found in the USA, they say; the European model is the way to go, they say...
Well, this is Germany:
German exports fell 24% in April compared to March; -31% annualized (April 2019) - worst since 1950
Germany’s industrial production slumped by 17.9 percent month-over-month in April 2020
As a bonus: Japan's machinery orders fell 52.8% in May (another record).
--//--
It's official: USA is - finally (after 12 years cooking the books and printing trillions of Dollars) - in a recession:
NBER: US economy is in recession and has been since February
Bonus news:
Here's the true graphic of the "V-shaped recovery" of the CNBC post some days ago - pay attention to the yellow circle!:
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 21:01 utc | 29
I wonder. People usually need the police to feel safe. If the police can feel safe in a country where everyone may carry a gun or not is another matter.
What is the position of black and brown policemen on this? They seem to be underrepresented in the police force but not non-existant.
38 police officers killed in the line of duty in 2019
The manner of the deaths doesn't follow any pattern, said Robyn Small with the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Some officers died responding to robberies or domestic disturbances. Others were ambushed.Overall, that's less than last year -- 47 officers were gunned down by the end of 2018, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
You think, should the police go on strike, it will be kumbaya? If the police leave an area who fills the vacuum?
This will destroy poor neighbourhoods not make them any better.
Posted by: somebody | Jun 10 2020 21:34 utc | 35
More concern trolling. I find this tragic and horrifying, truly. It's taboo to talk about it or mention it though, because if you do, regardless of who you are, you will be branded a racist and the killing will continue because the issue is too sensitive to discuss intelligently and constructively with those who have an agenda. It's clear militarized police forces and more brutal police enforcement isn't the answer to this. The roots of it go much deeper and are much more complex.
92 shot, 27 Fatally, In Chicago's Most Violent Weekend of 2020
At least 50 other people were hurt by gun violence across Chicago between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. Monday.Last weekend, Chicago saw its deadliest Memorial Day weekend in five years with 10 shot dead and 39 others wounded.
The answer is, obviously, to pretend it's not happening. Of course, to all those who are dying, it's all too real.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 21:46 utc | 36
36
Agree. The level of aggression in the US has always been high.
Last time I looked this was solved by neutering social movements and destabilizing black communities via drugs.
Frankly, an economic situation like this has led to secession in Europe. Trump seems to intentionally provoke it.
Related to these shifts have been dramatic demographic changes. In just a decade, Democratic-voting districts have become strikingly better educated and more diverse. For example, Democratic-voting districts have seen their share of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree rise from 28.4% in 2008 to 35.5%. For their part, Republican districts have barely increased their bachelor’s degree attainment beyond 26.6% and have meanwhile become notably whiter and older. Today, therefore, neither party represents the same types of places it did just 10 years ago. As such, the Democratic Party is now anchored in the nation’s booming, but highly unequal, metro areas, while the GOP relies on aging and economically stagnant manufacturing-reliant rural and exurban communities.What might these divides look like in the future? It’s hard to imagine the current extreme shifts going much farther. The concentration of more than 70% of the nation’s professional and digital services economy in the territory of one party would seem to register an almost unsustainable degree of polarization.
Posted by: somebody | Jun 10 2020 22:07 utc | 37
@31, concern trolling my ass, you sick f*ck. All of this is interrelated. No one said a damn thing about blacks being more violent than anyone else. It's disingenuous of you to claim I am what you have claimed I am. I am not that. Not by any stretch.
This is real. This is happening and it's all-too-often overlooked because it's a difficult problem that persists because it doesn't lend itself to an easy fix. Yes, it is an issue of class and this is a class war of which racism is a tool used by the elite to divide and conquer.
While the gunfire is particularly pervasive in certain distressed and disinvested parts of the city, it can arise anywhere, though some neighborhoods remain comparatively safe. Some residents ponder leaving, while others live in constant fear that their family will fall victim next — and for good reason.Peter Moskos, a Baltimore cop turned criminology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said he estimates, based on census data and the city’s elevated rates of gun violence, that upwards of 10% of black men in the most violent neighborhoods of East and West Baltimore will be shot dead, most before they turn 35.
“It’s hard to fathom,” he said.Those in its path say the violence comes like a tornado: Sending shrapnel in all directions, it is impossible to ignore and crushing in its impact.
For some, it’s a repeated horror.
“This violence will tear your family apart,” said Arnetta Brown, 55, whose 28-year-old son, Brian Simms Jr. was fatally shot in the city’s Edgecomb neighborhood in 2013, and whose 16-year-old grandson, Markell Hendricks, was fatally shot in Franklin Square in March.
“This violence will suck all the breath out of your body and will wake you up in the middle of the night and make you think you’re suffocating," Brown said.
For you foreigners, I highly suggest you watch The Wire in its entirety. It's one of my favorite series of all time. It's an education. You can't help feel for the characters. They are victims of their circumstances for sure, because they have no options.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 10 2020 22:17 utc | 38
The topic of renaming military bases named after Confederate generals had come up. Pat Lang will blow a fuse.
Posted by: Bart Hansen | Jun 10 2020 22:18 utc | 39
somebody @35--
I've never needed police to feel safe; nor have I ever looked upon police as friendly. The police and "system of law" were responsible for the death of my mother. I've never been in a situation where I required police protection. What generates criminal activity? Socio-economic conditions. If the US government did what the Constitution's Preamble says it ought to, aside from White Collar fraud, there would be very little crime as the primary driver of stress and strife would be removed. Thus, the vast majority of "street crime" within the Outlaw US Empire is systemic and structural. As for the historical use of guns, in my research today I came across this publication, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society, with a preview offered at the link I suggest reading for it's highly educational as it tells you the No Duty to Retreat judicial doctrine was only adopted and upheld in 1921. The current problem stems from that decision and the cultural forces that produced it. I've maintained our culture's very dysfunctional, and this is but one manifestation.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 22:21 utc | 40
BM #5
re Yale HCQ study.
The article completely decimates the arguments against using HCQ + AZ or HCQ + doxycycline, specifically in early outpatient use.
It is good to see real science being applied rather than voodoo shilling for big pharma.
Still waiting for the editor resignations at Lancet and NEJM on their publication of the hoax science article.
Let me be very clear about pharmaceuticles: the interaction of two dissimilar substances can be extraordinary beneficial. My personal example is from a Specialist Pharmacologist that treated a bone disease in my thumb arising from mechanical injury. He explained thus:
The bone problem has three quite separate stages of treatment.
At the first week common antibiotic remedies are vital and effective. I was too late for that.
If that stage is missed then a common and potent antibiotic combined with a substance commonly used to treat gout is vital. The combination of the two flattens the peak of the antibiotic such that it is sustained in the bloodstream for 24 hours until the next dose of the two. A fourteen day process as I recall. It was totally successful.
If that second stage is missed then late intervention is extensive use of antibiotics and the gout remedy over months as the bone decomposition bacteria have spread throughout ones metabolism and lodge randomly to wreak havoc. This treatment regime is punishing on the body and digestive tract and many people cannot endure it.
This Specialist was a high street operator in nice office NOT a pharmacy.
So lets not be jumping to hasty dismissals of what may or may not 'work' and when. Humans vary, diets vary and propensities are highly variable. It is the responsibility of scientists to be honest and act in the best interests of humanity. Clearly the study published in the Lancet and NEJM was fake science and those journals fell for it because of either inadequate editorial investigation of the paper, confirmation bias, inadequate consideration of human consequences.
The WHO stands condemned for being suckered by fake news, confirmation bias, malign financial manipulation or perhaps inadequate investigation of the authors and claims of the paper.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jun 10 2020 22:29 utc | 41
450.org @36 & 38--
Yes, the widespread censoring of the real amount of gun related violence committed within the Outlaw US Empire is totally counterproductive and was replaced by all the "cop reality shows" populating cable TV, which I liken to the lurid penny press True Crime and Police Gazette types of publications for the masses. I do think all the violence has produced one positive outcome: The realization by the vast majority that the Outlaw US Empire has a very sick, dysfunctional society & culture that's anything but Civilized. For me, that's been apparent since the mid-1960s not long after 11/22/1963 and confirmed beyond doubt on 4/4/1968 when I was just 12. The national heritage of the Outlaw US Empire is one of slaughter, oppression and exploitation that's ongoing, although it seems to have slowed some. One big problem is many people don't want to know about their reality and how they contribute to its perpetuation, although that too seems to be changing somewhat. Perhaps its the lack of sports distractions at all levels that's forced more people to look in the mirror and their community to see what's been there all along for the first time. But whatever the reason, I welcome the admittedly unfocused social ferment--For an Empire that promotes Chaos, that Chaos is now growing within I see as a welcome turn of the screw.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 22:47 utc | 42
Mao | Jun 10 2020 17:54 utc | 1:
The shop owner should have listened to the police officer. Refusing to follow requests will make the police believe you're the culprit. The guy's gun would have been confiscated but it can be recovered afterwards. It's a good thing the officer didn't shoot the guy.
Posted by: Ian2 | Jun 10 2020 22:48 utc | 43
This thread's unofficial topic of police, policing, law, justice, and culture led me to do some further research, some of which I've already provided. But at the root of the topic is the issue of how people using their culture arrive at formulating their society and the aspects that govern it be they formal rules or informal taboos and mores. Hobbes was the first post-Enlightenment author to explore the issue in Leviathan. Roy Nichols, who I cited on the previous thread, wrote Blueprints for Leviathan: American style, in which he writes in the Forward:
"Probably no society has ever achieved greater faith in self-government and the efficacy of the written word to implement it [as opposed to coercion] than has the Anglo-American."
Amazing words to read which led to asking when they were published--1963, prior to the orgy of violence that's since occurred at home and overseas. But what of the idealized goal of self-government that Dr. Cornell West just deemed a "failed experiment"? It appears that goal still exists when we look at those establishing the "Seattle Commune," and I believe it exists elsewhere including my small town and state. I wonder what Hobbes, Nichols, Beard, Neivens, and a host of others would write today as they gaze upon the scene that's unfolded since September 1945.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 23:41 utc | 44
typo there karlofi: Hobbes was post renaissance rather than enlightenment. People pay attention to your posts so it matters.
Glen Ford at BAR, defending the 'riots':
"...“Movement” politics is how the people flex their power, while electoral politics under a corporate duopoly system is the domain of the moneyed classes. This is a lesson learned in the Sixties -- a period when some years saw as many as 5,000 separate demonstrations. The makeup of the U.S. House and Senate did not change dramatically during that tumultuous decade. Political contributions kept most incumbents in office, year after year, as is the case today. But, for a time, the lawmakers behaved differently -- voting for civil rights and social justice measures they had not previously supported -- when confronted with masses of determined people in motion, who sometimes burned cities, ..."
https://www.blackagendareport.com/time-sharpen-our-weapons-and-wits
Always good it is a 'must read' this week.
Ford makes the point that those blacks doing their best to keep white protesters at a distance are doing the work of the ruling class for it. As other posters have pointed out, above, the nature of policing is explicable in terms of the very violent history of the United States and its empire. What happened in Minneapolis cannot be separated from what was routine in Fallujah, goes on in Tegucigalpa daily and has characterised policing in every region and every sector of the economy in the States. That was well understood in 1947 and one of the motives behind Taft Hartley was to break the dominant currents in the CIO which understood the role that the cops had played-and always do play- in union busting as well as in preserving Jim Crow.
Posted by: bevin | Jun 11 2020 0:05 utc | 45
yeah, the who is condemned, just like the un was condemned by the same usual suspects - usa, or trump inc... the usa and trump throw enough condemnation around for the whole nation.. i notice how they spread it with their foreign policy and i sure as hell ain't buying any of their pontifications on these international structures... that is a reason right their to believe something 180 opposite...
wonder where peter au is?
Posted by: james | Jun 11 2020 0:06 utc | 46
@karlof1
Just read that "History of Policing" article you recommended. Amazing stuff. Pretty clearly devastates the notion that police are even remotely effective at dealing with crime - and were never intended to be. This equates with the experience in Europe especially as it relates to the history of anarchism in Europe.
So I double down on my anarchist line: The only good cop is a dead cop.
Going further with my "human nature is the problem" philosophy, I think the description of events in the History of Policing article demonstrates that "American democracy" was basically dead by the mid-1800's. As I've noted before, it was actually basically dead in the late 1700's - both before and after the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created, as a result of the economic elites being opposed by the lower classes leading to riots that resulted in the suspension of habeas corpus - by one of the "Founders", no less.
The "American Dream" is almost like the Zionist dream of a "Fortress Israel" protecting Jews from harm forever: a complete fantasy that never had any possibility of being realized, any more than Hitler's dreams of Germany dominating the world.
People keep thinking "all we have to do is..." - and it immediately founders on human nature. This is why I'm a radical Transhumanist - only the complete supersedence of human nature offers a way forward.
And the fact that less than 1 in a million humans agrees with that is proof of the point.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:13 utc | 47
Although numerous studies have suggested people can spread the virus before they show symptoms, the WHO has largely dismissed those as anecdotal or pointed out that they were based on modelling.Babak Javid, an infectious diseases doctor at Cambridge University Hospital, says many scientists are persuaded by the studies published so far and think WHO should publish the data it is citing to explain why it believes transmission of the disease in people without symptoms is “rare”.
“If you’re going to make a really important statement like that, it would be good to back it up,” Javid said. “I think WHO is an important organisation, but they’ve made a lot of statements that have been misleading.”
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:18 utc | 48
Video evidence increasingly disproves police narratives
In Buffalo, authorities suspended and charged two officers who were seen last week shoving peace activist Martin Gugino, who fell backward and struck his head on the sidewalk. The charges came only after video captured by a television crew was broadcast. The shove was not mentioned in an initial statement saying that Gugino fell. Police later apologized and said they were “working with incomplete details during what was a very fast-moving and fluid situation.”
People spin everything they do to make sure what they did is on the "right" side of the line - no matter what they did.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:22 utc | 49
Remember, kids, racism against Slavic people is still okay:
Is This the Trump Tipping Point? (The New York Times, Jennifer Senior, June 7, 2020)
You never want to say that you’ve reached a tipping point with this administration. Donald J. Trump has proved to be the Nosferatu of American politics: heartless, partial to Slavs, beneath grace and thus far impervious to destruction.
…
Yes, that’s the opening paragraph. In the corresponding Twitter thread only two Serbs notice there’s something wrong with it. Most think it’s fine, and some even think it’s “fantastic” and are congratulating the author.
Posted by: S | Jun 11 2020 0:22 utc | 50
Once passing through Harlem by bike, I found a wallet on the street filled with money. I thought about it for a minute, decided that it wouldn’t do me any good holding on to it, so I rode it up to the police station near the statue of Harriet Tubman. Two officers were in a conversation and ignored me, but I interjected that I’d found a wallet, maybe they could handle it. They pointed to a restaurant across the avenue and suggested I should have used it to purchase a meal. Then they took it from me.
Later I recounted to a friend this illuminating tale, and he said, “cops...Shouldn’t have given them that wallet, they’ll justt keep it ”
Posted by: Geoff | Jun 11 2020 0:24 utc | 51
This cop behavior is simply bizarre and arguably psychotic...
Video Shows Cops Slashing Tires Across Minneapolis During Protests
Bruce Gordon, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, conceded that police were responsible, according to The Star Tribune."State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement," he told the paper. He added that officers also honed in on vehicles "that contained items used to cause harm during violent protests," such as rocks or concrete, though it's difficult to believe every car at Kmart contained such items.
See my line above on how people spin everything they do to be on the "right" side of the line...
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:25 utc | 52
New York Police Are Jailing Protesters For Days Without Charging Them
And that's fine with the judge... Basically it's "cop open season" on citizens outside their homes...
Many detainees allege that they were prevented from calling family or lawyers and denied water and medical assistance.The arrests were not limited to alleged looters or even to peaceful protesters out past curfew. The NYPD arrested the Canadian journalist Anna Slatz on June 2 and held her for two days, even though reporters are theoretically among the workers exempted from the city's curfew. Other essential employees, such as delivery drivers, also number among the arrested.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:27 utc | 53
@ 53 rsh... defines the american system... profit to be made in the prison system, even if someone isn't charged.. hold them indefinitely...
Posted by: james | Jun 11 2020 0:32 utc | 54
@39 Bart Hansen
Trump's tweet is as follows.
It has been suggested that we should rename as many as 10 of our Legendary Military Bases, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Benning in Georgia, etc. These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations. Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!
First of all, America did not win WWI or WWII. It helped in both endeavors, but it was a group effort. If not for the Soviet Union's turning the tide at Stalingrad and pushing the Nazis back into Germany, America may never have entered the European War during WWII. It was only then that America realized if it didn't enter, Europe would go to the Soviet Union and the Communists. To the victor go the spoils, so America decided to enter because it wanted some of the spoils. Let's be clear about history, Fat Donny. That analysis, by the way Fat Donny, comes from the Eisenhower Institute.
Secondly, I'm glad you mentioned Fort Benning. Fort Benning is the base on which many Latin dictators and their shock troops were taught to torture and murder. They were taught such things as dropping dissidents from helicopters into the ocean. Nice. They were taught to not be bothered by murdering Catholic clergy. Ronny Reagan had the Pope's go-ahead that "leftist" leaning clergy and nuns were fair game because they were traitors to the fascist cause. God frowned upon their Bolshevik activism and therefore they must and should be punished and so they were. The establishment at Fort Benning was named The School of the Americas. Speaking of changing names, due to the controversy surrounding the school and the negative publicity, the name of the school was changed to the Western Hemisphere Institute For Security Cooperation. I think Fort Noriega would have been a better name, or Fort Pinochet. These are Fat Donny's kind of guys. Rapists and torturers. Tin pot dictators.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 11 2020 0:34 utc | 55
Your defense budget at work...
US Navy’s new supercarrier unable to launch jets for days after electromagnetic catapult fails
No cause for the breakdown has been found, according to an internal US Navy document. After several days, the US Navy said, it found a workaround to the catapult problem and jets were able to resume flight operations on Sunday.
I assume they found a really big guy to kick the jets off the carrier... You can't make this stuff up, folks. I mean, what happens if the Chinese or Russians use electronic warfare means to shut down the launch capability because of a bug in the software? Scratch one "supercarrier"...
The military spends millions to not upgrade computers
Here's why the Pentagon still spends big bucks on Windows XP.
If say, the major software controlling the USS Gerald R. Ford's magnetic launch system is optimized for Windows 7, then it would be extremely risky to upgrade to Windows 10 without extensive testing, which the Ford can't do while conducting its mission.(Note: We couldn't find what software the USS Ford is running for EMALS. This is just a for-instance.)
Right...
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:34 utc | 56
bevin @45--
Thanks for the correction; it didn't seem correct at the time, and it wasn't! Nichols work I mention @44 is rather mind provoking, and I do wish I could copy/paste from the text some more of his observations regarding the ordeals associated with arranging a self-governing society. The book's about the several rounds of experimentation made in the construction of the "American Leviathans"--plural since there were several: The one prior to 1860; the Confederate Leviathan; and the Reconstructed American Leviathan. Yes, Nichols examines the time period he's most familiar with, but his overall thrust can be carried forward to examine later time periods. Certainly, the American Leviathan was again remade before and after WW1, during the 1930s, post-WW2, the mid 1960s, and has undergone several negative modifications beginning in 1971 and continuing till now. The treatise I'm working on essentially demands the need for it to be overhauled once again lest the entire edifice dissolve, which I don't see as healthy for a great number of citizens.
RSH @47--
Thanks for your reply! Our POVs differ but IMO our goals are the same. The USA has never had a completely functional democracy. As Nichols admits, it's an ongoing, evolving project, incapable of becoming perfect since designed by imperfect humans. The class-based originations of policing as I wrote aren't at all understood, even by the police, and that's a big part of the problem. The focus on Civil War statuary is occurring not because of the personages but because of the change in society's nature and primary concern after the War--Civility based upon Law and Order imposed by force rather than cultural persuasion which was a result of the prevailing anarchy in both the North and South prior to the rise of American Industrialism and the battles to forge unions.
But there's even more to the saga--the Civil War had greatly slowed immigration, which rapidly increased due to the war's end and escalating European unrest that unseated the "dark" Europeans. Much is blamed on the failure of Reconstruction, but did Reconstruction ever have a chance to succeed--IMO, it was doomed to failure from the outset. The social upheaval was taken advantage of by those whose business plan was based on fraud; so in a way, we're still feeling the affects of the Civil War as we're exploited by a not altogether new sort of Carpetbagger that arrived on the scene in the late 1970s and continues to feast on the body politic.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 11 2020 1:09 utc | 58
Ajit Singh @ajitxsingh - 23:50 UTC · Jun 9, 2020A Hong Kong "pro-democracy" leader denounced George Floyd protests while activists shutdown a local #BlackLivesMatter rally. Far from being in solidarity, HK's protest movement is allied with the same far-right Republicans seeking to crush BLM. My latest:
Not surprising once you understand that these so-called “pro-democracy activists” are nothing but Western colonial supremacists at heart (=racists).
Posted by: S | Jun 11 2020 1:17 utc | 59
Maybe the Difference between a “Cop” and a “Crook” is Just a Badge
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/06/political-abcs-maybe-the-difference-between-a-cop-and-a-crook-is-just-a-badge/
(In the expanding continental empire that became the USA, the rural police were either the auxiliaries of the slave patrols or the “deputised” vigilantes in the service of big landowners, railroads, mining companies or ranchers.)
Posted by: Duncan Idaho | Jun 11 2020 1:49 utc | 60
karlof1 #22
Yes, "organized crime" was developed by the police and their politico allies as further means of social control and to augment their salaries. Still happens today with the nation's supposedly most important intelligence agency--CIA--being the most formidable criminal organization on the planet.
Thanks for that fascinating post karlof1, I suspect that in the early 1900's those USA scientists collaborating and learning alongside Pavlov's experimental lab were also developing theories of social control and practising various stimulus on animals and perhaps people. It is very important to remember that Pavlov spent three decades and more exploring the ways conditional reflexes could be created, refined and nullified.
That is a prodigious effort and must have produced some extraordinary talking points at the various conferences and science symposia of the day.
The escalation in direct home attacks on USA lands by 'rogue' terrorists and 'psychotic' shooters has severely heightened fear and loathing and demand for police effectiveness. But that expectation of effectiveness is confronted and rejected as policing declines every year and public mass shooting increases.
The public drooling for a better world remains incessant and yet entirely frustrated - just like a dog.
There seems to be some mighty sinister experimentation being played out on the USA public. A thorough reassessment of USA published papers and the labs that foster wide social experiments derived from Pavlov and his successors seems well past due.
The policing practice in the USA is grotesquely distorted from its primary social need or purpose and it is way past time to reign it in and refocus. Policing should never be about assaulting civilians for trivia even if they pass a miserable counterfeit $20 bill or sell a cigarette or get noisy at a demonstration. In my land there are large numbers of counterfeit bills in circulation but the big distributers and printers get busted NOT unwitting civilians.
The many reports of police setting out rocks and pavers etc to enable destruction by passing agents provocateur or angry people is a blatant indicator of a malign instruction set within policing. This evidence alone is sufficient to warrant a major judicial inquiry in some rational form. I saw one video from Canada that was simply extraordinare as to police methodically wandered around a public park gatherin rocks and piling them on a cairn on the roadside in advance of a passing demonstration against police violence.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jun 11 2020 1:54 utc | 61
coroners and medical examiners have probably limited investigations out of fear of getting infected and overwork. I’d suggest the decline is more to underreporting, especially as authorities are on the defensive over lockdowns destroying economy and lives and seek to grasp news that minimize the adverse effects.
According to CDC for suspected suicide or homicide, state laws usually require a medical examiner or coroner to complete the death certificate. Because suicide is particularly subject to inaccurate determination, the incidence of suicide may be underestimated by 10%-50%
The determination of suicide requires that the death be established as both self-inflicted and intentional. For most certifiers, establishing intentionality is the most difficult criterion. Thus, a certifier might conclude that a death was not a suicide because information proving intent was not collected. However, absence of evidence of intent is not evidence of absence of intent.
Besides pathology and toxicology —investigatory, and psychologic evidence and statements of the decedent or witnesses must be collected.
I am sure in normal times these guys take the time to investigate properly. However, during covid Lockdown I am sure shortcuts were taken out of necessity and only the most obvious cases were recorded as suicides. As such comparisons with past years are apples and oranges.
People really need to start questioning things more
Also I do think the suicides will be more prevalent after lock down once the economic shock sets in from job losses, evictions and foreclosures. The effects will be long lasting and be with us long after the virus has disappeared
Posted by: Kay Fabe | Jun 11 2020 2:00 utc | 62
"This thread's unofficial topic of police, policing, law, justice, and culture led me to do some further research,"
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 23:41 utc | 44
With all due respect to your well-written, thoughtful posting history and your evidently prodigious academic mind, you can research all you want about the history of policing but you will not find the answer to what is happening today. That is because what is happening right now is bigger than the police. The police are just one symbol. But make no mistake; the people are the police and the police are the people. Everyone is in this together.
What is happening now - from the anti-black racism demonstrations to the lunatic COVID-19 lockdowns - is a world-wide orchestrated attempt to destabilize and tear down the societal order - for what ultimate goal I do not know. But in order to achieve it the police are being systematically dehumanized in order to make them permissible targets for "social justice warriors." People have varying degrees of opinions of the police based on personal experience, and there is certainly a long list of shameful and criminal acts that have been committed in the name of law and order. But there is also an undeniable long and strong history of true public service from the police. They do make many communities safe in both appearance and actuality. There are many police officers who possess honour and integrity and respect and nurture the values of Peel's Principles by actively putting them into practice in their every day work. Good people would not be attracted to the profession if it were otherwise.
When the societal order breaks down the predators amongst us have free reign to have their way with the sheep. If it finally comes to that, those of us sheep still alive and well will rue the day we celebrated tearing it all down.
Be careful what you wish for. A coercive power will always eventually emerge in society and the new one may not be so benign compared with the one currently being pilloried based on the presentation of selective facts. There was a reason the French people turned to Napoleon after many years of chaos and REAL blood flowing in the streets from the Revolution. But since we can’t ask them, just ask an average citizen of Hong Kong who actually lives there what the recent “democracy” demonstrations in that country were like and how the CCP looks good now as a result.
Posted by: Activist Potato | Jun 11 2020 2:03 utc | 63
https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-chaz/
The People's Republic of Capitol Hill, Seattle. A short distance from the gorgeous Seattle Museum of Asian Art in Volunteer Park. Since the Seattle cops are all cringing in the dark, and dusting off their resumes, how long will the museum's priceless and irreplaceable collection remain unlooted?
Oh well, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Posted by: mr punch | Jun 11 2020 2:09 utc | 64
Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:34 utc | 56:
I wonder how much the Generals are getting paid by Micro5h1t to allow the use of Windoze. Idiots.
Posted by: Ian2 | Jun 11 2020 2:14 utc | 65
Under president Xi Jinping Chinese imperialism to the south and west increases: Doklam in 2017, Pangong Lake in 2020: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190889.shtml
This Belt and road Initiative keeps on looking more sinister and less economical by the day. Is the belt for belting?
Posted by: Antonym | Jun 11 2020 2:38 utc | 66
@450.org and karlof1
Read your comments. Interesting discussion.
In the past few days, I dedicated all my free time to watch as many videos on YouTube, pro and con, about the police In this country. Sadly and regrettably, I was overwhelmed by the degree of brutality, condescension and harassment of law abiding citizens displayed by various police, sheriff and state troopers from around the country. As if, they were taught to escalate any given situation in order to entrap a citizen in a wrongdoing that could lead to an arrest, if the suspect is lucky.
The police is simply out of control and it is not a case of a few bad apples. If the police cannot police themselves then they need find another job. A. Culture of us-against-them has become the norm within most police departments to the degree that they will protect their own even if it means to both go to jail. Brothers to the end.
Saw an article from a retired cop comparing themselves with doctors, which I am one, and the accidental or negligent deaths in the latter profession and how the society has come to accept those deaths. The most ridiculous and unfair comparison. Never mind that my oath and job is to preserve life. But he neglected to mention that doctors are not protected in any way if they are negligent or careless. They pay a big price. That is not the case for most police killing cases. They are protected from top to bottom as a whole.
Solutions: That culture of immunity and protectionism needs to be abolished. Strict community oversight needs to be implemented. Salaries need to be based on meritocracy. Law suits against police wrongdoing needs to come out of the police departments budgets, not a separate city fund, which both are paid by taxpayers anyway.
The talk of defunding and abolishing police departments is a ridiculous notion. That utopia of community self policing will never materialize. In fact, most of the people pushing that agenda are elements of Antifa and anarchist.
We are in deep trouble as a society and certainly at the crossroads. This could easily turn into an invitation to a police state, formally and openly, without our consents. If that ever happens, hope you have your passports handy and have some savings to start a new life elsewhere.
Posted by: Alpi | Jun 11 2020 2:47 utc | 67
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 11 2020 1:09 utc | 58 so in a way, we're still feeling the affects of the Civil War as we're exploited by a not altogether new sort of Carpetbagger that arrived on the scene in the late 1970s and continues to feast on the body politic.
Interesting point. I'd say we are indeed suffering from mistakes made in the past. This seems to be a human trait: 1) Make a mistake; 2) Attempt to correct the mistake, leading to 3) making more mistakes as a result of a poorly thought-through correction - or more likely, a failure to comprehend the root cause of the original mistake.
Posted by: Activist Potato | Jun 11 2020 2:03 utc | 63 the people are the police and the police are the people. Everyone is in this together.
And that is the real problem - "society" as a mythology which is believed in with religious fervor, just like the state, morality and religion itself. "Ghosts in the head", as Max Stirner would put it.
"What is happening now...is a world-wide orchestrated attempt to destabilize and tear down the societal order - for what ultimate goal I do not know."
The ultimate goal is the same for every human being: to be released from the fear of not being "good enough" to survive in human society. Which in turn is based on the fear of death, because ostracism from human society is perceived as death, either psychological or actual. The elites are just human beings who through luck, or accident of birth, or simply more psychopathic drive than other people, have acquired the power to try to achieve that goal. And the sad fact is that goal is *not* achievable - which means this conflict will go on forever - unless of course we change the terms of engagement by changing human nature.
"But in order to achieve it the police are being systematically dehumanized in order to make them permissible targets for 'social justice warriors.'"
No - they dehumanized themselves. That's what "The History of Policing" article karlof1 posted was about.
"But there is also an undeniable long and strong history of true public service from the police."
As Jimmy Dore pointed out in his recent videos, it is the *system* that prevents police from being professional. Cops who *do* want to "protect and serve" are weeded out. And the history article shows that this is based on the history of the country. It is endemic and can't be corrected by half-measures.
"Good people would not be attracted to the profession if it were otherwise."
But they don't stay. They either become corrupted or they leave. Perhaps a handful of "good cops" remain. Remember the history article mentioned the Knapp Commission in New York in the 1970's. I remember reading once that the Commission found that *every single cop in New York* was on the take. Not a few "bad apples" - *every single cop*. That can't be explained by the "few bad apples" trope.
"When the societal order breaks down the predators amongst us have free reign to have their way with the sheep."
No one is denying that there are predators. The predators were *created* by the system that runs this country. But in the end, it comes down to the people to deal with those predators. It's like the movie, "The Magnificent Seven" (the original, not the remake). This was an explicitly anarchist movie - and a right-wing anarchist movie at that. Bandits (representing the state) coerce a small village to hand over most of their crops to feed the bandits (i.e., taxes.) The people raise a little money and hire seven American gunslingers to take on the bandits. This might be considered the equivalent of the anarchist "private protection agency" concept. The gunslingers initially set the bandits back on their heels, but are eventually put in a bad situation by the bandits, and are on the verge of losing. But the people, emboldened by the example of the gunslingers, take up whatever weapons they have and attack the bandits themselves, defeating them.
This is what *has* to happen. Except, to quote Percival Rose yet *again*: "That ain't gonna happen." And the reason once *again*: human nature. As someone once said, if you made an average American President, he would govern like Idi Amin.
"pilloried based on the presentation of selective facts."
Now you've drifted off into complete bullshit. The history of the US - and the history of the state and society everywhere - is overwhelmingly against your thesis.
"There was a reason the French people turned to Napoleon after many years of chaos and REAL blood flowing in the streets from the Revolution."
And there was a reason the Paris Commune arose. And a reason it was suppressed by corrupt police. History doesn't start where you want it to.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 2:50 utc | 68
bevin @ Jun11 0:05 # 45
I agree! That post at Black Agenda Report is a must read.
It aligns with what I have said at moa many times: only Movements will change anything.
I thought a pro-democracy Movement like France's Yellow Vests would be logical but unlike the French, US Americans have no real societal 'commons' left to save. Instead, it's black anger that has formed a powerful Movement for change.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jun 11 2020 2:53 utc | 69
Richard Steven Hack @ Jun11 0:13 # 47
I'm a radical Transhumanist - only the complete supersedence of human nature offers a way forward.
I think you do yourself a disservice with the radical Transhumanist moniker. In the 60's they called for much the same thing: "raising consciousness", enlightened POV, and "transcending/transcendent" understanding. Such a call is essentially returning to humanism, while a capital-focused mindset is what is "trans-human".
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jun 11 2020 3:07 utc | 70
450.org #55
On renaming USA forts;
Fort Detrick could be Fort Bug or even Fort Bugger, Fort Leaky.
But never Fort Covid.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jun 11 2020 3:09 utc | 71
Antonym #66
This Belt and road Initiative keeps on looking more sinister and less economical by the day. Is the belt for belting?
The belt is for flogging idiot Indian Generals who deliberately provoke China by constructing fortifications on the Chinese land beyond the border as stated in the story you linked to.
The belt is also to flog idiot USA admirals that think they have rights to threaten China in the South China Sea thousands of kilometers from the USA shoreline.
The belt is for flogging idiot USA warmongers and their idiot President who think they have the right to threaten and intimidate any nation on earth that declines to be their slave.
The Road is to replace expensive and limited shipping for the trade in goods between nations in Eurasia. It also provides a transport system free from idiot USA Admirals that would threaten China, idiot USA captains that are prone to ramming into merchant vessels on a regular basis.
Just think Antonym, if ever there were a bridge across the Suez the entire African / Eurasian continents would be efficiently linked for trade and cooperative economic development. And Africa might prosper along with that. Plus the bonus would be the decline in maritime traffic and the immense damage to the Private Equity vultures that prey on that maritime traffic.
Odd that there are numerous wars underway right in the path of that better world order. All USA wars too.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jun 11 2020 3:30 utc | 72
Meanwhile, in India, the world's largest Hindutva Empire ... sorry... liberal democracy, a barely concealed humanitarian nightmare unfolds--particularly against its lower castes--with nary a peep of "human rights" protest from its Anglo-American allies.
Hunger, Misery, Chaos, Brutality, and Humiliation: The Nightmare That Is India’s Lockdown
https://www.anti-empire.com/hunger-misery-chaos-brutality-and-humiliation-the-nightmare-that-is-indias-lockdown/
Posted by: ak74 | Jun 11 2020 3:41 utc | 73
@59 Thank you S. Great piece of writing by Ajit Singh. I particularly enjoyed Joshua Wong's mental acrobatics. He obviously doesn't want to lose the support of young Western progressives but he can't be too critical of Trump.
I'm sure most of the Hong Kong protesters think the protests in the US are ridiculous. After all Americans live on the Golden Mountain.....what do they have to complain about?
Posted by: dh | Jun 11 2020 3:43 utc | 74
Just wondering how many here would votes for Hillary Clinton come 3 Nov?
How many here would votes for Biden and who would you like to see his running mate.
Im gonna be honest I'm staying home.
Posted by: JC | Jun 11 2020 3:44 utc | 75
Desperate empire reduced to counting cars in Wuhan to keep beating the dead "Covid-19 came from China" horse.
Posted by: JW | Jun 11 2020 4:25 utc | 77
Following the surrender of the East Precinct of the Seattle Police Department to an Antifa mob and the occupation of Seattle City Hall, a source on the ground in Seattle says that other police precincts around the city are preparing to be the next targets.
Regarding the autonomous zone established by the Antifa-led mob, the source—whose anonymity we are protecting—says, "They bar media from entering and screen people coming in. They are walking around fully armed. Talking about making their own currency and making their own flag. SPD is talking about abandoning the west precinct now.
"West precinct has the 911 call centre. This is just like the Occupy movement. Soon we will have feces and drugs everywhere and people getting assaulted and raped in the encampments.
"They've been relocating everything quietly while the focus has been elsewhere. They know that it's only a matter of time before these fools have to direct their issues back on the police. Since yesterday, I haven't seen a single police office or vehicle downtown. Even when they took over city hall, there were no signs of PD at headquarters across the street."
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-antifa-mob-planning-to-take-over-more-seattle-neighbourhoods
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 4:28 utc | 78
Gone with the Wind has been taken off HBO Max following calls for it to be removed from the US streaming service.
HBO Max said the 1939 film was "a product of its time" and depicted "ethnic and racial prejudices" that "were wrong then and are wrong today".
It said the film would return to the platform at an unspecified date with a "discussion of its historical context".
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52990714
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 4:40 utc | 79
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jun 11 2020 3:07 utc | 70 In the 60's they called for much the same thing: "raising consciousness", enlightened POV, and "transcending/transcendent" understanding.
Not even remotely the same thing. Those movements were mostly related to Eastern philosophy (or some persons' attempts to comprehend Eastern philosophy) as well as a broad "mysticism". Timothy Leary was a proponent of all that, but he subsequently became a Transhumanist, although he never used that term, to my knowledge.
"Such a call is essentially returning to humanism, while a capital-focused mindset is what is 'trans-human'."
Nope. There *are* "Transhumanists" who declare that Transhumanism is based on earlier humanism concepts. Frankly, they're wrong. The original meaning of the term transhumar comes from Dante Alighieri who used it to describe "going beyond the human" in religious terms. In some respects, it can be considered similar to the Gnostics, some of whom believed that it was better to *be* God than to worship God. Apparently Dante had some philosophical musings on such matters.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, however:
The term transhumanism was coined by English biologist and philosopher Julian Huxley in his 1957 essay of the same name. Huxley referred principally to improving the human condition through social and cultural change, but the essay and the name have been adopted as seminal by the transhumanist movement, which emphasizes material technology. Huxley held that, although humanity had naturally evolved, it was now possible for social institutions to supplant evolution in refining and improving the species. The ethos of Huxley’s essay—if not its letter—can be located in transhumanism’s commitment to assuming the work of evolution, but through technology rather than society.
Wikipedia makes a more explicit definition:
The biologist Julian Huxley is generally regarded as the founder of transhumanism after using the term for the title of an influential 1957 article. The term itself, however, derives from an earlier 1940 paper by the Canadian philosopher W. D. Lighthall.[16] Huxley describes transhumanism in these terms:Up till now human life has generally been, as Hobbes described it, 'nasty, brutish and short'; the great majority of human beings (if they have not already died young) have been afflicted with misery… we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted… The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity.[17]
I found another article that describes Lighthall's conception of the term:
Thanks to some detective work by the distinguished historian Peter Harrison and one of his students, Joseph Wolniak, we see that Huxley used the word as early as 1951, but not 1927 as some have suggested. What’s more, Huxley may have borrowed the word and the general idea from another writer.The Harrison/Wolniak essay appeared earlier this month in an open access journal, Notes and Queries. In it, they trace the modern use of transhumanism back to a Canadian intellectual, W. D. Lighthall. In 1940, Lighthall published a paper entitled “The Law of Cosmic Evolutionary Adaptation: An Interpretation of Recent Thought” in a journal called Proceedings and Transactions. In it, Lighthall advances a view of cosmic, biological, and cultural evolution, a view he calls “transhumanism.”
What makes Lighthall intriguing is that he attributes the core idea of transhumanism to the biblical writer, St. Paul, mediated by the poet Dante. Dante invents the Italian word, trasumanar, in a context that echoes Paul. Harrison and Wolniak point out that the standard Victorian translation of Dante, Henry Francis Carey, renders the key line in Dante as “Words may not tell of that transhuman change…”
Lighthall, Harrison and Wolniak suggest, simply added “-ism” to Carey’s “transhuman.” They comment on Lighthall: “…it is clear that he is seeking to baptize his new scientific version of transhumanism by invoking Dante’s trasumanar and St Paul’s rapture.”
The big question is whether Huxley read Lighthall. Probably…but no proof. For now, the Harrison/Wolniak contribution is the definitive reading of the history of transhumanism. If they’re right–and I believe they are–then it is abundantly clear that the origins of transhumanism lie in religious hopes for transformation.
So while humanism may have been the original intent of the term as used by Huxley, it has been appropriated by Transhumanists as essentially meaning the only way to achieve real change is by transcending the human condition - which means transcending human nature, which in turn means transcending the human body and brain. Specifically, the intent is to eliminate normal aging and biological death. The most important work in this vein is Alan Harrington's "The Immortalist", which describes how "death is the root of all evil."
Capitalism has nothing to do with it. It's a science and technology focused philosophy. As the Britannica puts it:
The movement’s adherents tend to be libertarian and employed in high technology or in academia. Its principal proponents have been prominent technologists like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil and scientists like Austrian-born Canadian computer scientist and roboticist Hans Moravec and American nanotechnology researcher Eric Drexler, with the addition of a small but influential contingent of thinkers such as American philosopher James Hughes and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. The movement has evolved since its beginnings as a loose association of groups dedicated to “extropianism” (a philosophy devoted to the transcendence of human limits). Transhumanism is principally divided between adherents of two visions of post-humanity—one in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges.The membership of the transhumanist movement tends to split in an additional way. One prominent strain of transhumanism argues that social and cultural institutions—including national and international governmental organizations—will be largely irrelevant to the trajectory of technological development. Market forces and the nature of technological progress will drive humanity to approximately the same end point regardless of social and cultural influences. That end point is often referred to as the “singularity,” a metaphor drawn from astrophysics and referring to the point of hyperdense material at the centre of a black hole which generates its intense gravitational pull. Among transhumanists, the singularity is understood as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses that of humanity, which will allow the convergence of human and machine consciousness. That convergence will herald the increase in human consciousness, physical strength, emotional well-being, and overall health and greatly extend the length of human lifetimes.
The second strain of transhumanism holds a contrasting view, that social institutions (such as religion, traditional notions of marriage and child rearing, and Western perspectives of freedom) not only can influence the trajectory of technological development but could ultimately retard or halt it. Bostrom and British philosopher David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with those social institutions to promote and guide the development of human-enhancement technologies and to combat those social forces seemingly dedicated to halting such technological progress.
Where the "radical" comes in is mostly my addition. I fuse individualist anarchism with Transhumanism. I reject AI and so-called "uploading" as a solution to the problem. In my view, the purpose of AI research is to figure out how to change human brains to have the capability of AI - *without* having to create separate AI entities. That topic is beyond discussion here. I do agree that social and religious issues could derail the achievement of immortality and ascension to a "post-human" existence, although there is no guarantee that will happen. What is guaranteed is that governments and societies will *try*.
And we are back to the issue of human nature derailing anything and everything that might actually provide a way forward out of the morass that is human existence.
My solution is simply to take advantage of whatever technological progress is made in extending life span and human capability until such time as I can achieve something approximating the "post-human" condition. That's going to entail going way outside the reservation of normal social behavior. And of course at my age there is no guarantee I will even survive the next ten years (although I think I can - assuming the coronavirus doesn't get me.)
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 4:43 utc | 80
You've lost your blog b. Been reading daily for years, maybe I'll check in again in a few months.
Posted by: Netizen | Jun 11 2020 4:51 utc | 81
US military tried to block Russian military police
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNb324GGAlE
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 4:55 utc | 82
@mr punch 64
Welp, that didn't last long. The CHAZ is now being patroled by rapper Raz Simone and his crew, who are smashing heads and probably taking nerd's lunch money. Anarchists just got a crash course in the concept of 'monopoly of violence'.
Posted by: Benjamin | Jun 11 2020 4:56 utc | 83
Thank you, Activist Potato @ 63, well said, all of it.
Posted by: juliania | Jun 11 2020 4:57 utc | 84
Mao | Jun 11 2020 4:28 utc | 78:
Talking about making their own currency and making their own flag.
So, Cascadia? LOL
BTW, the US military wasn't attempting to block Russian patrols. They were attempting to go around them.
Posted by: Ian2 | Jun 11 2020 5:09 utc | 85
Coronavirus was brought into the UK on at least 1,300 separate occasions, a major analysis of the genetics of the virus shows.
The study, by the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium (Cog-UK), completely quashes the idea that a single "patient zero" started the whole UK outbreak.
The analysis also finds China, where the pandemic started, had a negligible impact on cases in the UK. Instead those initial cases came mostly from European countries.
The study showed that less than 0.1% of those imported cases came directly from China. Instead the UK's coronavirus epidemic was largely initiated by travel from Italy in late February, Spain in early-to-mid-March and then France in mid-to-late-March.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52993734
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 5:11 utc | 86
Bannon: "Many aspects of Floyd’s murder are driven by the CCP [Communist Party of China]. We know from the autopsy he had Covid-19, which came from the CCP. His system also had fentanyl which the CCP pushes through cartels in the Midwest. Floyd passed counterfeit money. All these come from Beijing."
https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/bannon-tells-at-us-election-is-all-about-china/
Posted by: occupatio | Jun 11 2020 5:14 utc | 87
Posted by: Ian2 | Jun 11 2020 5:09 utc | 85
BTW, the US military wasn't attempting to block Russian patrols. They were attempting to go around them.
It seems you are right. It was a Google translation of the original title of the video.
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 5:16 utc | 88
actually, it's worth skimming this piece by Bannon, because it touches on a larger geopolitical understanding. that is, if you peel away the elaborate spin and conspiracy theory falsehoods (which Bannon himself knows are fake), you can figure out the real narrative that drives white nationalists like Bannon and the Trump administration.
for example, Bannon says:
"[The CCP's] entire focus is going to be to control the Eurasian landmass with their partners Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Russia. And once they’ve done that, at the same time, pushing, pushing the West, pushing the United States to back off of the Eurasian landmass into the Pacific, at least a thousand miles back to Guam."
This is basically the Brzezinski doctrine about who controls the world continent of "Eurasia." Hence the US empire's freakout about China's Belt and Road.
>"basically a year ago, the Chinese Communist Party, after the One Belt, One Road conference, made a decision...to go on their own technology standards virtually at the same time."
in other words, the Chinese cannot be allowed to develop their own standards that could become global standards. it has to be shut down.
"Their view of war is very sophisticated. It deals in information deals and cyber deals and economics and kinetic. There’s certainly not a kinetic war. But more importantly, they’re conducting an information hot war. And an economic war....I don’t think Asia can be free, until we’ve had regime change in Beijing. And I am an absolute advocate of that.”
in other words, China is dangerous because they may eventually develop the ability to counter the US' global propaganda machine, therefore their media like CGTN must be contained or shut down.
also, China's economic might and magnetism will become greater than the US', and China's manufacturing base threatens US influence (think of COVID) and undermines its military might (which is based on manufacturing).
the key issues are all embedded in Bannon's talking points. don't pay attention to the fake stuff -- the real core issues are all here.
Posted by: occupatio | Jun 11 2020 5:19 utc | 89
Posted by: occupatio | Jun 11 2020 5:19 utc | 89 This is basically the Brzezinski doctrine about who controls the world continent of "Eurasia."
Or if you go back to the 1920's - and Karl Haushofer who expanded on Mackinder's theory of the "Heartland." Basically, Bannon is a "New Nazi."
"I don’t think Asia can be free, until we’ve had regime change in Beijing. And I am an absolute advocate of that.”
Good luck with that, Bannon. To quote Percival Rose *one more time!*: "That ain't gonna happen."
Bannon is 66 years old. He'll be dead for at least a decade before China's current form of government changes. And the US won't be behind it when it does.
In fact, once Trump is out of office, either in 9 months or another 4 years and 9 months, Bannon will fade back into the "Deplorables" wilderness from whence he came. He's just another guy who thinks of himself as "world historical" - in the same sense that Hitler did. But he's not. Like Trump, he's just another narcissist with delusions of grandeur.
So who cares? The problem is all the *other* morons among the elites who will be pushing the same agenda - which can only occur via nuclear war. Which will leave the 50 Major Metropolitan Areas of the US glowing in the dark. So, other than my personal preference not to glow in the dark, who cares?
There's only one - count 'em, one - solution to this problem of these elites: Dispose of the motherfuckers. If you're not willing to pursue that agenda, it's a waste of time discussing it. To paraphrase my cop line: "The only good elite is a dead elite." Figure out a way to make the elites dead or GTFO. :-)
'Cause no matter what else you do, leaving these clowns alive is simply giving them the chance to mess up the works again. That's human history.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 5:52 utc | 90
President Donald Trump's campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The demand, coming in the form of a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker that contained numerous incorrect and misleading claims, was immediately rejected by the network.
"We stand by our poll," said Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesman.
The CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released on Monday shows Trump trailing the former vice president by 14 points, 55%-41%, among registered voters. It also finds the President's approval rating at 38% -- his worst mark since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for one-term Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years -- and his disapproval rating at 57%.
In the letter to Zucker, the Trump campaign argued that the CNN poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/10/politics/trump-campaign-cnn-poll/index.html
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 6:13 utc | 91
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 6:13 utc | 91 President Donald Trump's campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
And the fun begins.
As I've said before, it's *way* too soon to start predicting who's going to win. Anything can happen in six months. Either Trump or Biden (or both!) could get the virus and drop dead (what's that Shakespeare line? "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished"?). We could have martial law by then if the riots start up again. We could be at war with Iran, Venezuela, China or Russia - or someone I can't even guess. Maybe Biden will be replaced by Clinton if he loses it completely before then.
But what we can count on is that it will be a shit-show to make 2016 look like a congregation of nuns. A lunatic narcissist vs a mentally deficient oldster (whether Biden or Clinton, works either way.) What could go wrong?
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 6:32 utc | 92
@occupatio | Jun 11 2020 5:19 utc | 89
Agree with your post but hope to deepen it—this "geostrategy" goes way back before Brzezinski wrote about it in his The Grand Chessboard, or for that matter before Nixon's The Real War as well. Both followed in the footsteps of the US Admiral Alfred Mahan and the British strategist Halford Mackinder who laid the basis for this imperialist strategic vision of world domination over a century ago.
Mahan, author of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, in the late 1800s developed the worldview of seeing history as a series of confrontations between a Sea Power and a Land Power (Athens-Sparta, Rome-Carthage, Britain vs. a series of European Land Powers, etc.), paving the way for US "manifest destiny" to transcend North America to become truly global imperialism. One of Mahan's most famous concepts is that either the Land Power or Sea Power could win at any time, but that time was on the side of the Land Power since with more people and resources it could eventually just build a bigger navy than the Sea Power could match—therefore the Sea Power had to go on an especially aggressive offensive early on to prevent this.
Mackinder in his 1904 presentation of The Geographical Pivot of History first developed the concept of the "world island" or "world continent" with its concentric "crescents". His most famous quote: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."
With the beginning of the "special relationship" between the US and UK after WW1 it was the easiest of mergers for these two imperialist strategic visions to join together. They've had various interpretations and refinements ever since, but Mahan and Mackinder are the originators of this "geostrategy" that predates the Cold War, WW2 and even WW1. That it predates the Russian and Chinese Revolutions indicates that it exists irrespective of ideology (thus the US's continued hostility to a non-subservient capitalist Russia), though anti-communism lends it an especially fevered tone, especially focused on China now.
At its outset this geostrategy was oriented toward European empires attempting to conquer the "heartland" or "pivot" to obtain the sheer imperial mass that would be needed for world conquest. But the Russian Revolution allowed the "heartland" to stand up as a Land Power in its own right, rapidly industrializing. Toward the end of his life Mackinder attempted to update his work, observing that if ever Eurasia were economically developed and spanned by rail and telecommunications lines from East Europe to the Pacific, this would result in a Land Power so vast—with the majority of the world’s people and resources—that no Sea Power could conquer or even blockade it.
Sound familiar? For a number of reasons beyond our scope here the USSR fell and broke apart, but not before China could pick up that torch, rapidly industrialize itself and now bring forth the Belt and Road Initiative. Russia joining China in a strategic relationship that is for all intents and purposes an alliance (that the US brought on itself—both Beijing and Moscow have read Mahan and Mackinder very thoroughly) is effectively Mackinder's nightmare made manifest. The antithesis of Manifest Destiny, LOL.
Nixon, Brzezinski and their wannabe successor Bannon are all simply continuing this more-than-century-old strategic tradition. But no "geostrategy" will save global capitalism from its own inner rot and sharpening contradictions, as the events of recent years have shown. This year especially recalls Lenin's observation that "There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen."
Posted by: Vintage Red | Jun 11 2020 6:46 utc | 93
@Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 5:52 utc | 90
Just saw your post as I posted my own—glad to see another here who knows the history of this ideology that has spawned a thousand war crimes.
Also agree, this must end with the demise with extreme prejudice of the capitalists and their henchmen. In the words of Louis de Saint-Just, "Those who make revolution half-way only dig their own graves."
Posted by: Vintage Red | Jun 11 2020 6:56 utc | 94
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 0:13 utc | 47
You say:
"The "American Dream" is almost like the Zionist dream of a "Fortress Israel" protecting Jews from harm forever: a complete fantasy that never had any possibility of being realized, any more than Hitler's dreams of Germany dominating the world."
So far so good, then,"People keep thinking "all we have to do is..." - and it immediately founders on human nature. This is why I'm a radical Transhumanist - only the complete supersedence of human nature offers a way forward."
As if "transhumanism" isn't a pipedream (sometimes referred to as philosophy) that is also likely to founder on the nature of humanity. Human nature won't be "changed" by technology. It is being reinforced by it through greater means of smart surveillance and systematic oppression than have hitherto existed. The result of any transhumanism will be towards an ultimate dystopia.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jun 11 2020 7:09 utc | 95
occupatio @ 87
Bannon truly is a unique mix of stupidity, racism and malevolent fantasy. Like a reborn script writer of the old Fu Manchu movies of the 1930s. Tragic that he has so many devotees.
Posted by: sad canuck | Jun 11 2020 7:09 utc | 96
I watched 'this week tonight' about the police and I thought it was good. Brilliant description of Joe Biden as "Joe Biden, the 'Getting shot in the leg instead of the heart' candidate".
Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Jun 11 2020 7:13 utc | 97
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jun 11 2020 7:09 utc | 95 As if "transhumanism" isn't a pipedream (sometimes referred to as philosophy) that is also likely to founder on the nature of humanity.
I did say that. There is a difference, though. Technology will keep progressing - absent either a deliberate effort to stop certain enabling technologies, or nuclear war. Whereas social change requires getting the majority of people on board with changes which, in the end, will likely fail precisely because of human nature.
"Human nature won't be "changed" by technology. It is being reinforced by it through greater means of smart surveillance and systematic oppression than have hitherto existed."
Can you read that back to yourself? You're explicitly saying that human nature is using technology to derail any efforts to solve the human problem. That's the dystopia you're seeing - and it's the result of human nature.
Can Transhumanist enabling technologies be used to create a dystopia? Certainly. Will they be? No one knows. I suspect we're also viewing the term "dystopia" through different lenses. What may be a dystopia to you may be my best outcome. in fact, I'm pretty sure that's the case.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 11 2020 8:28 utc | 98
Very interesting article by Alastair Crooke.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/06/08/for-this-to-slip-would-be-the-end-of-empire/
Posted by: Down South | Jun 11 2020 8:57 utc | 99
The nearly complete corruption of the U.S. republican form of government has largely come about due to the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in January 2010 that basically permitted unlimited donor-spending on political campaigns based on the principle that providing money, normally through a political action committee (PAC), is a form of free speech. The decision paved the way for agenda-driven plutocrats and corporations to largely seize control of the formulation process for certain policies being promoted by the two national parties.
No one has benefited from the new rules more than the state of Israel, whose hundreds of support organizations and principal billionaire funders euphemized as the “Israel Lobby” have entrenched pro-Israel donors as the principal financial resources of both major political parties.
https://ahtribune.com/us/israelgate/4206-ilhan-omar-surrenders.html
Posted by: Mao | Jun 11 2020 10:10 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
A black business owner armed with a gun was mistaken for a robbery suspect when a police officer punched him in the face, Decatur police Chief Nate Allen said today.
The situation happened nearly three months ago on March 15 but has become public now because of a surveillance video clip released on social media over the weekend. The video shows a police officer walk into Star Spirits & Beverages, a liquor store on Sixth Avenue in Decatur in north Alabama, and immediately punch the owner, 47-year-old Kevin Penn.
Penn says he called police that day to report his store had been robbed and that he was holding the suspect at gunpoint.
https://www.al.com/news/2020/06/decatur-police-officer-punches-liquor-store-owner-who-reported-robbery.html
https://twitter.com/griner/status/1270097304905748482
Posted by: Mao | Jun 10 2020 17:54 utc | 1