Category: Bigotry

From the Department of About F%$#ing Time

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The Department of Justice has sued Georgia over over its new racist voting laws. 

Personally, if evidence of a conspiracy to deprive citizens of their civil rights is found, and this is clearly fits the legal definition of a conspiracy, I’d like to see a criminal investigation with some of the principals subject to the risk of jail time:

Justice Department officials announced a federal lawsuit Friday against Georgia over new statewide voting restrictions that federal authorities allege purposefully discriminate against Black Americans, the first major action by the Biden administration to confront what it describes as efforts by Republican-led jurisdictions to limit election turnout.

The legal challenge takes aim at Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which was passed in March by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp (R). The law imposes new limits on the use of absentee ballots, makes it a crime for outside groups to provide food and water to voters waiting at polling stations, and hands greater control over election administration to the legislature.

The 46-page federal court filing came as numerous GOP-majority state governments have been seeking to impose new voting restrictions in the wake of President Biden’s victory over Donald Trump last November. Trump has spent months waging a baseless effort to discredit the result, making false and unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud.

In Georgia, Black voters helped drive record turnout for the presidential election and handed the state to Biden, who became the first Democrat to win its electoral votes in 28 years. High levels of Black voter turnout also helped Democrats Raphael G. Warnock and Jon Ossoff sweep the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia in January, ensuring full Democratic control of Congress.

Among other things, this lawsuit moves to bring Georgia under the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act again, and this is a good thing.

Politicians should not be allowed to prevent people from voting because they vote against those politicians. 

As an aside, if you live in Georgia, register as a Republican, and vote for the Trump-nuts in their primary so as to make a chance of Democratic victory in the general election more likely.

Training Will Not Help.

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Training does not reduce incidences of abusive law enforcement conduct. This has been shown over, and over, and over, and over again

What DOES help is firings and prosecutions, because the misconduct arises from the perceived impunity of police officers.

They don’t do this because they are poorly trained, they do this because they CAN do this, so the brutality of the Ocean City police needs to be treated as the crime that it is:

A year before video of the violent arrests of six Black teenagers in this Maryland resort town went viral, spurring calls for reform and demands for an investigation, a police lieutenant grabbed a White man who was shouting insults at officers and punched him in the face.

The Ocean City Police Department said the lieutenant’s actions were “within policy” that day on the crowded boardwalk, where the population swells with nearly 8 million visitors each year, and officers on foot and bicycle are charged with maintaining a “family friendly atmosphere.”

This is the problem.  The Police think that thier behavior is OK, and it is NOT.

………

Records released by the department show its officers use force a couple hundred times a year during arrests that are concentrated in the summer season. Policing experts say such confrontations illustrate the importance of de-escalation techniques, especially in today’s charged law enforcement environment. While limited, publicly available data shows the violent arrests in Ocean City have involved both Black and White civilians, with a disproportionate percentage of use-of-force incidents involving Black people.

At a time when Maryland and other states are launching new efforts to hold police officers accountable, and the nation is paying closer attention to police treatment of minorities, the June 6 and 12 arrests of several young Black men have drawn national attention.

The incidents — in which unarmed teens were shocked by Tasers, held down on the ground and repeatedly kneed in the rib cage — are generating questions about how a popular vacation spot polices its visitors, and whether officers should do more to de-escalate confrontations before resorting to force.

The real question should be about how a popular vacation spot polices its police.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan says that if people obey the law and are courteous to each other, they have nothing to worry about. “We have ordinances, and we do need to enforce those ordinances,” he said. “Our goal is compliance, and if people comply there’s really no issue. The majority of people do.”

And here is the crux of the issue:  The people of Ocean City, as represented by the Mayor, see the job of the police as being keeping the n*****s down, with a secondary roll of keeping non-townies in their place.

He Won’t See 22½ Months

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Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, and tried to do the same with many of the people he encountered, (in addition to being a tax cheat) was sentenced to 22½ for murdering George Floyd.

It’s nice that he got a sentence commensurate with his actions, which were callous and heinous, but I’m inclined to believe that he’s going to get preferential treatment in terms of prison assignments and by the parole board, so I don’t expect him to serve this in a maximum security prison, which the sentence would generally require, and I expect him to serve only a small portion of the actual sentence, rather than the ⅔ of the sentence generally required for parole:

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced Friday to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of George Floyd.

Before Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill announced the sentence inside a courtroom in the Hennepin County Government Center, members of members of Floyd’s family spoke about the impact of his murder. Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd wept as he struggled to speak.

“I wanted to know from the man himself,” he said, addressing Chauvin. “Why? What were you thinking? What was going through your head when you had your knee on our brother’s neck?”

Philonise Floyd, another of Floyd’s brothers, wiped his eyes as he spoke and asked the judge for closure by giving Chauvin the harshest sentence possible.

………

“I want to give my condolences to the Floyd family,” Chauvin said in a brief statement before he was sentenced. His defense team has indicated they will appeal.

Cahill’s decision started with the state’s sentencing guidelines which recommend 12 and a half years in prison for a conviction on unintentional second-degree murder for someone with no criminal history.

The prosecution asked for 30 years, or twice the highest recommended sentence of 15 years.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank reiterated the four aggravating factors the prosecution hoped would sway the judge to add years to Chauvin’s prison sentence — that Chauvin abused his position of authority, treated Floyd with particular cruelty, that the crime was seen by several children and that Chauvin knew the restraint of Floyd was dangerous.

I would add another reason for a harsh sentence:  This sort of behavior is ROUTINE for police officers in the United States, and thus the sentence needed to be severe in order to provide deterrence to other malefactors on police forces throughout the country.

Still, I expect him to be out into home confinement or some-such within 2 years.

I’ll Take Deeply Racist Company Culture for $500, Alex

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I’m referring, of course, to the Chocolate Factory, AKA Google, who has shuttered a diversity training program because the graduates were systematically underpaid, and too many of the quit.

This is racism presented as performative anti-racism:

Google has scrapped a scheme designed to train and hire engineers from diverse backgrounds – after people who made it through the program to become Googlers complained they were screwed over in pay.

The engineering residency program, known as Eng Res, has run since 2014. It’s aimed at those who don’t quite qualify as entry-level engineers; these folks are then trained up in various departments in the Chocolate Factory, and after a year they’re either hired as a proper developer or dropped.

The idea is to identify and top up the skills of people who show potential but have not had the same opportunities as others to learn and grow, or have faced unfair career-limiting hurdles, prior to applying for a role at Google. Newbie coders get a place at one of the world’s biggest names in tech, and Google gets a workers from a diverse range of backgrounds.

But after completing the program, alumni are given lower salaries, smaller bonus payments, and no stock units compared to their peers, a group of over 500 current and former Googlers have claimed.

Over time, this pay gap creates “systemic pay inequities,” according to presentation given to the web giant’s top brass by Eng Res graduates, Reuters reports.

Now, Google has dropped Eng Res altogether. A spokesperson told The Register a new program will be put in place.

It appears that the salary/bonus/stock option deficit was on the order of tens of thousands of dollars, and followed them throughout their careers.

I gotta figure that this blatant racism is central to Google corporate culture.  They think that “Those People” should be grateful for having a place at Google, and that this justifies underpaying them.

Guck Foogle.

It’s Officially Juneteenth

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This is the first Juneteenth that is an official Federal holiday, thanks to the legislation recently passed by Congress and signed into law.

Juneteenth celebrates the arrival of Union troops in Galveston, freeing the slaves in Texas.

Most of the mainstream media describe as something to the effect of, “Informed the slaves of their freedom,” but this is not true.

The slaves knew that they had been freed for years, their owners however, continued to use terrorist tactics to keep them enslaved, and the Union troops enforced the newly freed slaves freedom at the point of a bayonet pointed at the heart of their white former owners.

Even after losing the war, Southern slave holders tried to keep blacks as property, and had to be disabused of that notion by the threat of lethal force: (H/T Bear who Swims for the link)

………

My change in emotion comes after learning from historian friends that the oft-repeated tale of Union soldiers arriving in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865 to inform enslaved African Americans that they were free is pure fiction. Not because they weren’t legally freed 2-½ months earlier when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Or technically freed 2-1/2 years before when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slavery null and void in areas under rebellion, very much including Texas.

Rather, I now know, the big lie is the incessantly repeated canard that Galveston’s po’ ignant Black folks didn’t know they was free, and that U.S. Major Gen. Gordon Granger had to read a proclamation to spell it out for them.

In fact, they most certainly did know.

………

If Galveston’s Blacks already knew they were free, obviously so too did their slaveholders, who nonetheless kept them in bondage — not by cunning or deceit or ignorance, but by the brute force and tactics of dehumanizing torture they had been using for 200 years.

Gen. Granger didn’t bring liberation by words on a scroll but by troops with fixed bayonets.

………

On the outside chance that Down’s 2015 essay may have been superseded by new historical research, I spoke with him this week. It hasn’t been, he said, reiterating; “It’s not that Gen. Granger was giving information to the enslaved people. He was giving it to the masters” — at the barrel of a gun.

………

None of this is to say that African Americans, or all Americans, shouldn’t celebrate the well-intentioned holiday to Black freedom just created. But if you’re still clutching to any vestige of the popular myth, consider that well before Lee’s surrender, with the Confederacy clearly losing the war, slaveholders from throughout the South relocated their human property to Texas in advance of Union troops to preserve slavery for as long as they could.

………

 For them, I’ll explain: It’s called teaching what actually happened, and what didn’t. And what happened in Galveston on June 19, 1865, is that Gen. Granger arrived to forcibly liberate Black people from intransigent slaveholders who everyone knew were free.

That’s the true history of Juneteenth — along with a message that somehow has eluded the South and their white supremacist inheritors today:

You lost the damned war. Surrender already.

You lost. Get over it.

Even after surrendering, the South needed to be forced not to be evil at the barrel of a gun.

This lesson should be remembered, and perhaps emulated.

Also, in this case, (for once) I agree with John Roberts:  Remedial measures should not be limited to the former states of the Confederacy, but instead should be extended nation wide.

It’s time to pry their guns from their cold, dead hands.

Not Enough Bullets

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The banksters are fighting the debt relief plan for Black farmers who have been harmed by government and bank racism because early pay-offs will reduce their profits.

F%$# you.

You benefited from a system which sucked resources from Black farms for more than 100 years, and now you are whining about having their loans paid off early.

Let me repeat, f%$# you:

The Biden administration’s efforts to provide $4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers is encountering stiff resistance from banks, which are complaining that the government initiative to pay off the loans of borrowers who have faced decades of financial discrimination will cut into their profits and hurt investors.

………

Now, three of the biggest banking groups — the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and National Rural Lenders Association — are waging their own fight and complaining about the cost of being repaid early.

Their argument stems from the way banks make money from loans and how they decide where to extend credit. When a bank lends money to a borrower, like a farmer, it considers several factors, including how much interest it will earn over the lifetime of the loan and whether the bank can sell the loan to other investors.

By allowing borrowers to repay their debts early, the lenders are being denied income they have long expected, they argue. The banks want the federal government to pay money beyond the outstanding loan amount so that banks and investors will not miss out on interest income that they were expecting or money that they would have made reselling the loans to other investors.They also want other investors who bought the loans in the secondary market to get government money that would make up for whatever losses they might incur from the early payoff.

I will shed no tears over any money lost by these parasites.

They benefited and actively participated in the racism that destroyed over 90% of Black owned farms in the United States, and now they want more blood money.

NFL Was Doing What?

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The NFL has been engaging in “Race Norming” in evaluating players for brain damage from concussions.

To the uninitiated, race norming means that the Football league was assuming that Black people were stupid when evaluating players for impairment from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Gee, racism much?

The NFL and the lead attorney for about 20,000 former players on Wednesday both promised to end “race-norming” — a controversial practice that curves Black players’ cognitive test scores with data that assumes a lower level of function — as part of the payout process in the $1 billion-plus settlement of class-action concussion litigation against the league.

The statements from the NFL and attorney Chris Seeger came as the practice of race-norming in the settlement payout process, first brought to public attention last year in a lawsuit by two former players, has drawn heightened scrutiny in the courts and media.

………

The NFL, in its statement, maintained that no discrimination had occurred in the administration of the settlement, finalized in 2017, which has paid more than $800 million to more than 1,000 former players diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other brain-related diseases. But U.S. District Judge Anita Brody, who has overseen the settlement, has been so troubled by the revelation of race-norming that she took the unusual step of appointing a mediator earlier this year to investigate.

………

The use of race norms in the NFL’s concussion settlement payouts first came to light last August, when two former players accused the league in a lawsuit of discriminating against hundreds — and potentially thousands — of Black former players. In their suit, former players Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry alleged that race-norming prevented them from getting settlement payouts. In Davenport’s case, he claimed that a doctor initially diagnosed him with dementia, but the NFL appealed and demanded his test scores get curved using race-normed data, which resulted in a reversal of the diagnosis.

Clearly the goal here was to maximize profits at the expense of black players.

Come to think of it, “Maximize profits at the expense of black players,” could be the motto for the NFL.

Karen²

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Amy Cooper, who was caught on tape attempting to use the police to murder a bird watcher who noted that her dog needed to be leashed in that area of Central Park, has now sued her former employer, who fired her for the episode.

She is now claiming that she was fired because she was white.

My guess is that she has discovered that she is justifiably toxic and cannot get a new position anything near to what she used to do.

Consequences are a good thing, and they should apply to white people as well:

Amy Cooper, a white woman who last year became an international symbol of the routine racism that Black people face in their daily lives, is suing her former employer for firing her, arguing that she is a victim of racial discrimination.

Ms. Cooper makes the claim in a lawsuit filed this week against the investment firm Franklin Templeton, which terminated her employment a year ago after she was captured on a widely shared video in a tense encounter with a Black bird-watcher.

The lawsuit is the latest fallout from the May 2020 episode in Central Park, which touched off intense discussions about the history of white people making false, and sometimes life-threatening, accusations against Black people to the police.

………

She says in the suit, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan, that she “did not shout at Christian Cooper or call the police from Central Park on May 25, 2020, because she was a racist — she did these things because she was alone in the park and frightened to death.” She goes on to say that Mr. Cooper had selected her as a “target” and describes him as “overzealous.”

And the suit argues that Franklin Templeton did not thoroughly investigate the situation because of Ms. Cooper’s own race and gender, effectively reaching its decision to terminate her because she is a white woman.

They terminated you because are a self-important bigot, and people won’t hire you for the same reason.

The fact that you are a horrible human being who got caught on tape is karma, not oppression.

Nope, No Racism Here

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Carlette Duffy decided to get her home appraised, and though that her home was being low-balled because she was black, so, she got another appraisal and had a white friend pose as her brother, and that appraisal was more than double the previous two.

Even if you do all the right things, you pay just for the color of your skin, and this is a fact.

People who claim that racism is over because of Obama, or the Easter Bunny, or whatever, are full of crap:

A Black Indianapolis homeowner who had a nagging suspicion that her house was lowballed in two appraisals last year went to great lengths to conceal her race in a third. She removed photos of herself and her relatives and had a white friend pose as her brother for the appraiser’s home visit.

The result? The appraisal of Carlette Duffy’s home more than doubled.

Duffy’s home, which was assessed by different companies last year, was first appraised at $125,000, then $110,000 and finally $259,000 in November, according to the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana. The nonprofit announced this month that it had filed housing discrimination complaints on Duffy’s behalf with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

If you don’t think that bigotry and racism is an ongoing and pernicious problem, you are a hypocrite and a moron.

Cowardly Prosecutor Bullsh%$

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Elizabeth City, NC DA Andrew Womble has announced that he will not be charging the officers who unleashed a fusillade of bullets and killed Andrew Brown in his car.

He has also announced that this was a serious investigation, and that he won’t be releasing the body cam footage, because, f%$# you.

This does not fill me with confidence in the integrity of the investigation:

A North Carolina district attorney on Tuesday said officers were justified in the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man, in April, and that the sheriff’s deputies who fired will not face charges for killing the 42-year-old father of seven.

Andrew Womble said Brown’s death “while tragic, was justified” because three deputies “reasonably” believed deadly force was necessary to protect themselves and others while serving a warrant for Brown’s arrest on felony drug charges.

………

Brown’s death certificate said he died as the result of a gunshot wound to the head. Brown’s family commissioned an independent autopsy which specified that he was shot five times, once to the back of his head.

Womble said he would not release body-camera video of the confrontation, for which Brown’s family and supporters have repeatedly called to ensure integrity in the investigation of his death.

If the body cam footage were that clear, they would be streaming it on YouTube now.

They are covering it up because they have something to cover up.

This is Contemptible

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It turns that cops and medical examiners are conspiring to use Sickle Cell Trait to excuse police misconduct.

Sickle Cell Trait is the heterozygous form of Sickle Cell Anemia, and it has a limited effect on people.  It is almost universally asymptomatic.

Nevertheless, because it is almost exclusively associated with Black people, cops and their enablers use it as an an excuse for beating people to death:

When they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, N.C., there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody.

No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.

Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Mr. Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.

But the examiner’s determination belied certain facts about that night in October 2016, public records and interviews show. Accused of violating probation in a misdemeanor assault case, Mr. Perry was chased by parole and local police officers through the dark into a stand of trees, where only they could witness what happened next.

He had swelling of the brain, and a forensic investigator reported that he had an open fracture of his right leg. He was covered in dirt, and residents of a nearby housing complex told his family that when the officers emerged from the woods, their shoes and the bottoms of their pants were spattered in blood.

Yes, clearly this is a case of Sickle Cell Trait causing a broken leg, closed head trauma, and massive bleeding.

Mr. Perry’s case underscores how willing some American pathologists have been to rule in-custody deaths of Black people accidents or natural occurrences caused by sickle cell trait, which is carried by one in 13 Black Americans and is almost always benign. Those with the trait have only one of the two genes required for full-blown sickle cell disease, a painful and sometimes life-threatening condition that can deform red blood cells into crescent shapes that stick together and block blood flow.

………

The New York Times has found at least 46 other instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law enforcement officials or defenders of accused officers pointed to the trait as a cause or major factor in deaths of Black people in custody. Fifteen such deaths have occurred since 2015.

In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person who died had been forcefully restrained by the authorities, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns. Scattered across 22 states and Puerto Rico, in big cities and small towns, the determinations on sickle cell trait often created enough doubt for officers to avert criminal or civil penalties, The Times found.

………

“You can’t put the blame on sickle cell trait when there is a knee on the neck or when there is a chokehold or the person is hogtied,” said Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia and now chairman of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. “You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s fragile.’ No, that becomes a homicide.”

I guess that we need to add, “Living while Black,” to, “Driving while Black,” to the list of offenses that the authorities find worthy of the death penalty.

Suck it Up and Take It

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The White supremacist right has been aggressively infiltrating law enforcement across the United States for decades. 

The numerous police officers caught on tape invading the Capitol, it’s clear that this problem is far worse than was previously admitted.

Unfortunately, police are fighting these efforts tooth and nail: 

In the battle to stamp out extremism from the ranks of the police, lawmakers from California to Minnesota have proposed solutions they thought were straightforward.

Some laws would empower the police to do more robust background checks of recruits, letting them vet social media to make sure new officers were not members of hate groups. Other laws would make it easier for departments to fire officers with ties to extremists.

But legislators working to get these measures passed in recent months have found themselves confronting a thicket of obstacles and somewhat unexpected opposition, ranging from straight Republican vs. Democrat clashes to profound questions about protecting constitutional rights.

Last month, a police officer in Fresno, Calif., was fired after videos surfaced that showed him supporting the Proud Boys at a protest. “Such ideology, behavior and affiliations have no place in law enforcement and will not be tolerated within the ranks of the Fresno Police Department,” the police chief said.

Yet when lawmakers in the state recently proposed legislation to give police departments more power to weed out officers with extremist ties, they met resistance.

Brian Marvel, the president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, said in a statement that the organization supported the idea but not the legislation that was drafted. It would “infringe on a person’s individual rights,” he said, and possibly prevent someone from becoming an officer based on personal beliefs, religion or other interests.

………

Various such efforts have been simmering around the country for years, spurred by F.B.I. reports starting more than 15 years ago that document a concerted effort by white supremacist and other extremist organizations to infiltrate the police.

The events of Jan. 6 brought new momentum to those efforts, with more than 30 active or retired police officers coming under scrutiny for joining protests in Washington, and at least seven facing charges for storming the Capitol.

………

Racist gangs among Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies have been a problem for decades. In Virginia, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska and Louisiana, law enforcement officers have been dismissed in recent years for ties to the Ku Klux Klan. And various agencies have been shaken by revelations of police officers exchanging derogatory remarks about minorities on social media, with the Philadelphia Police Department dismissing 13 of the 72 officers it put on leave in 2019 because of such Facebook posts.

………

Police officers themselves, at least those who acknowledge that there is an issue, tend to welcome the idea that added scrutiny will drive bad officers away. Major unions in California have supported the general idea of scrutinizing applicants more closely, but they opposed the first draft in February of a law that would reject all candidates who had been members of hate groups, participated in their activities or publicly expressed sympathy for them.

(emphasis mine)

You can drive a truck through, “At least those who acknowledge that there is an issue.”

If you assume that just a few percent police are white supremacists, and add in those who know  and let it slide, you can very easily get to a majority of cops out there.

Given the fact that police have the authority to use lethal force on behalf of the state, and that police in the United States are so profligate with the use of lethal force on behalf of the state, aggressive action is essential to protect society.

Imagine That

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The department of Justice has condemned the Portland Police Bureau’s response to Black Lives Matter Protests.

This is not a surprise.  The police were rioting:

The Department of Justice has delivered a striking rebuke of the Portland Police Bureau for its brutal policing of last year’s racial justice protests, calling out the police for violations of bureau policy and the U.S. constitution, while criticizing a leadership structure that “lacks critical self-assessment” and broadly views “all force as justified.”

In the aftermath of the George Floyd murderer by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin last May, Portland erupted in a months-long streak of nightly protest demanding racial justice and police accountability. (Portland protests also made national news after President Trump deployed federal officers, who clashed with protesters and swept suspects off the streets in unmarked vans.) The city’s activists recently got a shout out from Floyds’ younger brother Rodney after Chauvin was found guilty. “I’d like to thank the people that stayed in the streets marching night and day — the people of Portland stayed in the streets for 83 days,” he said, “making a statement with us, encouraging us on our dark days.”

In real time, the protests against police violence were met with brutality from the Portland Police Bureau, whose commissioner is also the city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler. The Police used force against protesters more than 6,000 times, ranging from firing less-than-lethal munitions, to launching tear gas, to individual beatings delivered with batons. (Rolling Stone explored the contradiction of this progressive city’s violent cops in a dispatch last summer.)

………

The new letter from DOJ is dated May 5th and was published by The Oregonian. It is the federal government’s response to a PPB self-assessment of its work policing the nightly protests. In that assessment, the police appeared not to understand the public anger directed at the bureau, blaming the protests on shiftless youth, writing: “many younger people, lacking entertainment and work, often attended the protests, with some gathering regularly to socialize and drink and a portion of those then engaging in criminal activity.” Independent contractors, hired by the city to offer oversight, had earlier slammed PPB’s assessment as “tone deaf.“

………

The Department of Justice found much to criticize in PPB’s “abnormally high” use of force. And it calls out PPB leadership for its inability or unwillingness to impose restraint, writing, “PPB command broadly portrays all force as justified.”

………

Public anger at the police bureau runs deep. Racial disparities in arrests in Portland are the fifth worst in the nation. This year the city paid out a $2 million settlement to the family of Quanice Hayes, a Black teenager who was killed while on his knees in 2017 by a PPB officer with an AR-15. Last month, the police killed a man experiencing homelessness, Robert Delgado, who appeared to be in mental distress. As seen in video of the incident, the officer shot Delgado with an AR-15 from long distance while taking cover behind a large tree trunk. (The shooting is under state and county investigation.)

The Portland Police Bureau, as well as the Portland’s city council structure, whose commission based structure is antithetical to good government.

The case of Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, where he has strongly endorsed police brutality, and implied support for violence against protesters, is just one data point showing that this system does not work.

He Won’t, Though

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It appears that there has been an outbreak of extreme naivete at The Nation, where they expect Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to to confront The Ukraine over their embrace of Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, and revisionist history.

This will never happen.

Blinken, and Biden, are a part of a foreign policy establishment who never ended the Cold War, and simply changed the name from “USSR” to “Russia” on their to-do lists.

Fighting Nazis is simply too inconvenient for these folks:

From the moment he was nominated for secretary of state, the media has made much over the Holocaust’s impact on Antony Blinken. Blinken’s stepfather was a famous survivor; his upbringing made the Holocaust an indelible part of Blinken’s identity. Indeed, last month Blinken lambasted America’s callousness during the genocide, going so far as denouncing a World War II–era State Department official for refusing to aid Jews fleeing Europe.

The speech was hailed as a righteous reckoning—and it was. But condemning long-dead officials is one thing. Today, Blinken will have a chance to stand up for Holocaust victims in a far less comfortable environment. He will visit Kyiv, a city where, merely a week ago, hundreds marched in honor of a Nazi SS division. The march was denounced by Germany and Israel, but not the United States.

Blinken’s visit becomes a crucial test, considering that Ukraine is a key US ally: Addressing Kyiv’s blatant glorification of Nazi collaborators would be an opportunity to rise above the failures of his predecessors, placing the Holocaust above geopolitics.

Last Wednesday’s march was in honor of SS Galichina, a Ukrainian volunteer division in the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Party’s military arm responsible for the Holocaust. In 1944, SS Galichina was personally inspected by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s second in command and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. The division’s record of war crimes includes the Huta Pieniacka massacre, when an SS Galichina subunit exterminated around a thousand Polish villagers, chiefly by burning them alive.

………

The US embassy in Kyiv did not respond to a request for comment, while a State Department spokesperson replied, on background, “We welcome President Zelenskiy’s strong statement condemning the march,” and that the department “continues to monitor and systematically refute a longstanding Russian disinformation campaign that conflates support for Ukrainian sovereignty with support for neo-Nazi and fascist ideals.”

The comment did not explain what, if any, connection Kyiv’s SS march has with Russia or disinformation.

But the truly surprising thing is that Kyiv’s SS march made headlines at all. The reality is that glorification of Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators isn’t a glitch but a feature of today’s Ukraine.

One aided and abetted by the US state security apparatus, as evidenced by the strong support given by the US government during the Maidan protests.  (Victoria Nuland literally brought them cookies)

Shortly after the Maidan uprising of 2013 to ’14 brought in a new government, Ukraine began whitewashing Nazi collaborators on a statewide level. In 2015, Kyiv passed legislation declaring two WWII-era paramilitaries—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—heroes and freedom fighters and threatening legal action against anyone denying their status. The OUN was allied with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust; the UPA murdered thousands of Jews and 70,000–100,000 Poles on their own accord.

………

The typical reaction to this in the West is that Ukraine can’t be celebrating Nazi collaborators because it elected Zelenskiy, a Jewish president. Zelenskiy, however, has alternated between appeasing and ignoring the whitewashing: In 2018, he stated, “To some Ukrainians, [Nazi collaborator] Bandera is a hero, and that’s cool!”

Zelinskiy is a Kapo, and we should not be supporting what is going on in the Ukraine.  (Same goes to a lesser degree in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland)

If American foreign policy in the 21st century stands for anything beyond corporate profits, we need to be firmly anti-Nazi.

Glorification of Nazis leads to the creation of nativist political movements that eventually corrupt the politics, and lead to the implementation of Fascist policies.

Support Your Local Police

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A cop in Georgia (where else?) was planning to arrest black people to prevent them from voting. 

He is also hooked up with white supremacists online.

Am I the only one who thinks that this guy is not an isolated case?

A former Middle Georgia sheriff’s deputy bragged in text messages with members of an alleged extremist group that he had beaten a Black person he arrested and planned to charge Black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting, according to an FBI affidavit.

The ex-Wilkinson County deputy, Cody Richard Griggers, of Montrose, was fired last November after the FBI contacted the sheriff there about an investigation into illegal guns and their alleged ties to a California man said to have made violent political statements on Facebook.

Griggers, 28, a former Marine, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Macon to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, a crime the authorities discovered in their probe, which began last summer. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

………

Griggers, in the texts, was said to have claimed he was making and gathering illegal firearms and explosives.

Griggers, who is white, “also expressed viewpoints consistent with racially motivated violent extremism, including the use of racial slurs, slurs against homosexuals and making frequent positive references to the Nazi holocaust,” prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday announcing Griggers’ plea.

The prosecutors said that on Nov. 19 last year that the FBI searched Griggers’ patrol car and found a machine gun “with an obliterated serial number,” a weapon he was not allowed to have in his patrol car.

It was Griggers’ statements in text messages, however, that most concerned Wilkinson Sheriff Richard Chatman.

………

“I beat the (expletive) out of a (racial slur) Saturday. (Expletive) tried to steal (a gun magazine) from the local gun store. … Sheriff’s dept. said it looked like he fell,” the affidavit noted, quoting Griggers.

Griggers went on to write that the beating was for him “sweet stress relief.”

………

The affidavit also said Griggers had texted how he “intended to charge black people with felonies in order to keep them from voting.”

“It’s a sign of beautiful things to come,” he wrote, according to the affidavit. “Also I’m going to charge them with whatever felonies I can to take away their ability to vote.”

Griggers had worked as a deputy in Wilkinson County — which lies just east of Macon and has a population of about 9,000 people, about 40% of them Black — for just over a year, the sheriff said.

According to the FBI affidavit, Griggers also discussed “killing liberal politicians” with other members of the text group, writing they could “make it look like Muslims” were responsible.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, and I am not just talking about the Wilkinson County sheriff’s department.

Police departments across the nation are objectively pro-white supremacist.

RTead more here: https://www.bnd.com/news/nation-world/national/article251004169.html#storylink=cpy

Did Not Expect This

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It should come as no surprise that the Department of Justice planned to indict all 4 officers involved in George Floyd’s murder on Civil Rights charges. 

What does surprise me is that the DoJ planned to arrest Derek Chauvin in the court house in the event of a not-guilty verdict or a mistrial.

Leading up to Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, Justice Department officials had spent months gathering evidence to indict the ex-Minneapolis police officer on federal police brutality charges, but they feared the publicity frenzy could disrupt the state’s case.

So they came up with a contingency plan: If Chauvin were found not guilty on all counts or the case ended in a mistrial, they would arrest him at the courthouse, according to sources familiar with the planning discussions.

(emphasis mine)

These folks were sh%$ting their pants over the possibility that a bigot on the jury would blow everything up.

Clearly the Democratic Party is Anti-Semitic

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This what forced Virginia Republicans to hold their nominating convention on Shabbat, with no provision for observant Jews to vote at an alternate time.

This is not a surprise.

Silly Jews, votes are for Goys:

The Virginia Republican Party, already under fire for a process for picking a gubernatorial candidate that critics say excludes some voters, just disenfranchised another constituency: Shabbat-observant Jews.

A majority of the State Central Committee voted Thursday for a religious exemption to voting at the convention taking place on May 8, a Saturday, but did not meet the 75% threshold to pass. Elections Daily, an elections news site, reported that 38 officials voted for an exemption, 28 voted against and three abstained.

An official at the state GOP confirmed the vote and told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to submit a question in writing about the vote.

The Republican Jewish Coalition said on Twitter that it was disappointed in the decision.

………

Republicans in recent years have veered between primaries and conventions. Rank-and-file party members have often complained that conventions are a means for the leadership to make sure the candidates it favors get the vote.

This is not a surprise.

Republicans these days are determined to prevent the “Wrong People” from voting, and it comes as no surprise that Jews are the wrong people for them too.

If they had their way, they would repeal the 15th and 19th amendments as well, and limit the franchise to white Christian property owners.

H/T Stephen Saroff      o o  The Bear who Swims      
                        (_)_____o      
                     ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                         oo    oo

 

Quote of the Day

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He’s a Hateful, Bigoted Rich Prick, Always Has Been and Always Will Be

—Scott Lemieux on the fact that in high school, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson declared himself a member of the “Dan White” society while in high school.

Perhaps this is the story that @TuckerCarlson was trying to get ahead of. In his college yearbook, he listed himself as a member of the “Dan White Society.”

Dan White was the man who murdered Harvey Milk. pic.twitter.com/TYklyfC8tS

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) April 21, 2021

Roll Tape!

For those of you who are not up on the history, Dan White was a homophobic politician who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk, and then got a slap on the wrist because of Twinkies. (Not The Onion)

If you are inclined to think that he was “just” a collete school student at the time, understand that he spent much of his childhood in San Francisco, and knew exactly what he was saying.

Tucker Carlson is a complete f%$#ing tool.

Support Your Local Police

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It turns out that lots of cops have been making donations to racist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse.

If you are wondering how cops can donate to a racist murderer, you are not paying attention.  They are donating to a racist murderer, BECAUSE he was a racist murderer:

A data breach at a Christian crowdfunding website has revealed that serving police officers and public officials have donated money to fundraisers for accused vigilante murderers, far-right activists, and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans.

In many of these cases, the donations were attached to their official email addresses, raising questions about the use of public resources in supporting such campaigns.

The breach, shared with journalists by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets, revealed the details of some donors who had previously attempted to conceal their identities using GiveSendGo’s anonymity feature, but whose identifying details the website preserved.

The beneficiaries of donations from public officials include Kyle Rittenhouse, who stands accused of murdering two leftwing protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August. Rittenhouse traveled from neighboring Illinois to, by his own account, offer armed protection to businesses during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

……

Among the donors were several associated with email addresses traceable to police and other public officials.

One donation for $25, made on 3 September last year, was made anonymously, but associated with the official email address for Sgt William Kelly, who currently serves as the executive officer of internal affairs in the Norfolk police department in Virginia.

That donation also carried a comment, reading: “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

The comment continued: “Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”

…….

Meanwhile, several Wisconsin police officers donated to a fundraiser, “Support Rusten Sheskey”, held for the Kenosha police department officer whose shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, led to the protests that drew Rittenhouse to the city.

…….

Another donation to Sheskey was associated with the official email address of officer Pat Gainer of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin police department. Given under the screen name “PPPD Motor 179”, the donation also carried the comment: “Stay strong brother.”

About 32 more donations, totaling more than $5,000, came to Sheskey from private email addresses associated with Kenosha officers, but under badge numbers rather than names.

It goes on, and on, and on, but you have to conclude that violent racism is supported by a significant portion of our constabulary.

This needs to be ended.

 

 

Good.

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Both the Brooklyn Center police Chief and the cop who shot Daunte Wright have resigned. If this has happened a year ago, they would both still have their jobs.

Also, a year ago, Kimberly Potter would never have been charged with manslaughter.  Instead, at best, the DA would have commissioned a grand jury and then thrown the case as Bob McCulloch did in the case of the Michael Brown police murder in Ferguson, Missouri.

At the very least, the optics are changing.

George Floyd’s murder, and the protests growing from that, have led to a positive change in this country.